Caught in the Tuna Net

Getting sets for Poser is like reading real estate ads: sounds great and the photo looks good, but you need really walk around in them to find out what they’re like. They’re never as good as they sound. Mind you, there’s theoretically nothing wrong with a set made to be used at a distance. However, I like to work into the nooks and crannies of a set. Who the heck spends their time standing out in an empty space surrounded by grand structures? Not me and not my figments, that’s for sure. I also do not do cartoon images. I like my renders realistic.

And why the heck won’t they tell us when a set is not made for closeups? Are closeups only made for interiors? GRRR.

With those requirements in mind, I have a huge beef here: a lot of interesting sets available for Poser and Studio (and even Carrara) are actually NOT made to be used up close or even in the mid distance. What makes this the case?

• low resolution textures for the surface covered: nastily blurry and artifact-y when rendered at medium distance (within about 12 Poser feet)
• edges that are too sharp and too clean on old or worn buildings
• textures that are too regular or have moire patterns
• lack of mesh detail and general boxiness

These lists will be updated periodically. I’m not finished by a long shot with this!

The Roll Call of Crummy Sets

I’m not going to bag on the freebies—you get what you pay for.

Roll Call of Good Sets

None of them are perfect, but these are pretty darned good.

Fox Demon: Chusont'rai Shen-ro

My revelation with regards to lighting in Poser (I use 7 pro) began with the purchase of Blackhearted’s BH Pro Studio, over at Rendo. The tutorial alone in that product is worth the price, as I’m sure we’ve said here a bunch over the past year. Smile But the main thing I took away was using an IBL as a bit of fill light, and a different use of point and spot lights than most people start out with.

Point Lights

I used to think “Point lights = candles” or some other such specific point source. Well, that’s still true, but what I discovered is that you can get your textures to really sing if you use point lights and set a falloff range, like DistEnd = 6 (feet). Or whatever. (At least I think that’s close to the name of the parameter.) Rolling Eyes The trick is to position a light so the figure is near the edge of its falloff zone. Not for every light in the scene–that depends on the logic of the scene itself. And how bright the scene is supposed to be. And if the falloff is right but the light too dark, set it to over 100%. I will often set falloffs to just past the distance between the light and the main figure, with 120% brightness.

Set shadows to 0.77 to 0.88 or even lower, sometimes – not to 1.0. A 1.0 setting makes them not so much dark as just smudgy. They should be mysterious and transparent, not *black*–a sensibility I acquired as a painter. But I *always* use raytraced shadows on every light except IBLs (of course).

I do not put ambient occlusion on the lights–it tends to give you that X-files black-oil-eyes look with the effects of soot caught in the creases of everything. Yuck.

Spot Lights

I also discovered that you can do similar things with spot lights and get some wonderful looming-out-of-the-dark effects. Use a point light for the main light, set up an IBL (at about 40% brightness for starters), and then, if you need some more illumination with directionality, create a spot light with a very narrow End Angle, such as 20 to 45 degrees, and put it far away–like 20 poser-feet, so the light is spreading a lot by the time it hits your main figure, and use a falloff to just cover the back of the visible scene. Again, put shadows to 0.88.

Also, set all shadow biases to 0.333 or even 0.222. The default 0.888 comes out too grainy. I never use shadow maps.

I also use some helper scripts for lighting by SemiDieu over at RDNA to more easily create and delete lights. His IBL creation script will make what is called “Olivier’s IBL”, which lets you specify six colors for the IBL regions to match your scene! Very worthwhile. I generally love SemiDieu’s utility scripts.

And every time I add or adjust a light, I do a ray-traced test render at screen portal size and fairly low-quality settings, just to check things out. The thing that lets me know if the lights are doing their job, most specifically, is if the shadows give a proper feeling of shape, or “modeling” as it is used in painting. FYI, I will almost never, ever, have a main light straight face on, full face to the camera, either, for this reason–it comes out looking like a bad flash photograph and flat as hell, both in terms of modeling and texture response to the lights.

In the pic below, I used points, spot, and IBL as described. While it’s not the most compelling image in the world, the lighting works fairly well.

Clicky for larger…

Sorrows' Soldiers: Kerry

Mind you, I still do postwork. Poser lights may, even with a lot of effort, still not come out with a sufficient dynamic range of light and dark in the image, so some small adjustment in Photoshop may be required to get a more dramatic effect. I will also add a subtle color cast and pump up the saturation a little–not a whole lot, mind you–using Mystical Tone Tint & Color 2 filters, which have been worth every penny. The point of doing any of that is to hone in on the picture’s focal point and give unity to the image, using light, shadow, and overall tone.

(Oh…and please, please, do not get ultra-happy with the Photoshop filters. I swear, most of them should be tried out and forgotten. Forever. Or used very, very sparingly.)

Someone I had not previously met asked me in a Renderosity site mail:

Hi there – i was browsing your gallery and am totally amazed by your fellas. How did you get the latest one to look so damn good?

I’m rather new to using M4, so I am still stumbling around with him looking drab and generic.

Are there any tips you can offer?

(My gallery on Rendo is here, if you want to know what s/he was talking about…)

Here’s what I said:

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I kind of Frankenstein my characters together from a lot of different parts! Here’s a short tut on the subject:

Skins:
First off, I don’t think I ever use the M4 hi-res skin, though it’s useful in setting up Poser shaders as an example.    Short answer–try different skin textures. The two kitsune pictures use the Prince Albane skin from RawArt at DAZ3d–it’s really excellent, albeit albino–and *that* sure is different! I also use the Jepe’s 6 Pack skins (from PoserAddicts) which I run through Texture Converter 2 and then set up the shaders for them in Poser 7 Pro. I use others, too.

Also: I use the M4 Displacement Maps (DAZ3d) to get the lovely vascularity. If you use Poser, Cliff Bowman created some great script to let you use them in Poser 6 or 7. You get some great musculature with these maps.

Characters:
First, you need at least the Morphs++ package, and I would advise getting M4 Enhanced/Mina for M4 as well. This morph package smoothed out a lot of the issues with M4–like his big balloony thighs! Once you have these, you should set up a base character with all the morph injections already done–big time saver.

Then use this basic figure to start your own characters, and as you develop them, save them as their own figures (CR2 files)

Faces:
I have a really visual imagination, so I have a pretty good idea of what these people look like. But if you don’t, try collecting photos of a particular actor you really like–don’t worry about making a celeb clone, that’s insanely hard–but you will end up with an interesting finished product that you’re happy with.

You NEED Morphs++ installed to do decent characters, as well as to use M4 Ehanced. No way around that.

Given that, start at the top of the morph lists on the head and work your way south. Dial up a full face, at about 0.3 or 0.4 strength, and then use the other dials to back it off and change it. If you want a more mature character, start with the “Old” morph at about 0.32 and then add in Young 0.1 or one of the named morphs. I did that with Kaminski, and he came out really well! Also be sure to use the face shape morphs! Heart, square, round–and try them at negative values. In fact, negative values are your friend in this task! Always check the negative value of a trate you don’t want to see if it gets you one you do. Such as: Need a thinner face? Try negative values for Round or Square.

Next, you may use the dials that adjust both sides at once, but be sure to use the right or left versions as well, to keep the face from being too symmetrical. People are just NOT symmetrical! So, for example, maybe have eye height at 0.02 on left eye and 0.1 on the right.

Be subtle in your use of dials! You won’t need 1.0 on most of them, except for some stuff with the philitrum or nose.

Expressions:
Same thing for expressions as character faces, with one caveat: Don’t even bother with the Happy, Sad, Angry expressions. They look like clown-faces. You’re better off making faces in a mirror you keep on your desktop and copying what you see! That’s what I do, anyhow. Of course, I have a fairly expressive face. :^p

I hope that gets you started. Please feel free to ask specific questions if you want, too. :^D

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And that goes for any of you blog readers, too.

I spent almost all of the past weekend at Gaylaxicon 2008 in Bethesda, Maryland, and I’m really glad I did. If you don’t know, Gaylaxicon is a rather boutique science fiction convention that is given yearly by the Gaylactic Network, a smallish but national fan organization. It’s generally very civilized and small. If you are a GLBT fan who likes science fiction/fantasy/horror this is a great thing. If you are a fan of GLBT sci fi/fantasy/horror, this is also for you. They draw several small press owners and reps, and that provides a lot of the “boutique” I spoke of.

Back last summer one of the ConComm wrote and invited me to be a guest—a speak on panels and amuse the attendees sort of thing—probably since I was the Artist GOH in 2000. It took me a while to get my head together on the subject and I did reply in the affirmative in August. Organizational issues not withstanding, Peter (who was doing registration) was gracious enough to let me in as a guest. Kay had to pay her own way, so I bought her lunch both days. The things she’ll do for sushi, honestly.

I got a much warmer reception than I expected, really, given that Kay and I were fairly cheesed off when we withdrew from those groups almost seven years ago. However, the hatchet’s been buried—and not in anyone’s head. The Gaylactic Network folks are decent people. As an organization, it has its flaws, but no more or less than many such. We ain’t none of us perfect. I’m glad that their current Speaker (president) is minded to make some changes, and I wish him luck with it. I just don’t have the time or energy to devote to that again—and Kay and I tried to make changes, too. Hopefully we planted some seeds way back then, and Wayne can make it work now.

Their current webgeek, Andrew, asked me what we could do with their site, and what do you know? The Open Source CMS that I use for the Great American Stations web site (I’m the site producer and webmother) is primarily a community-building tool. Hah. Building a Plone site is no picnic, let me tell you. However, it’s not that awful if you use a lot of the out-of-the-box features. Tweaking the skin really hard, however, as we did at Amtrak, is a trying enterprise. The learning curve can be steep, in that case. Nonetheless, Plone will let you build a really useful object base and let you concoct custom views into it. The Network needs something that will help them create a knowledge base, and special hosting needs aside, this will do the trick.

So, back to the convention. I sat on two panels, “How do you like your women,” and “Erotica in the Genre.” Egad! Smut AND geekification. Can it get any better? I don’t think so. The first panel didn’t do much, since opinion panels are full of…well, opinons. Boring. I sat and looked out upon the four or five women who had wandered in and they gazed back unconcernedly. I whispered to the butch next to me, who whispered back. Bad manners, that. Sorry. We all agree that Amanda Tapping is Hot. So is Gina Torres.

The second panel was quite interesting in that it talked about how mainstream or not erotica had gotten for sci fi/fantasy/horror (in books and media), and the GOH, Geoff Ryman, was fun to listen to. No, not THAT kind of interesting. Many useful writerish tidbits in that discussion. An interesting observation: men having the sort of romantic relationships women write about (especially in slash) IS the fantasy part of the story…which I thought was pretty funny. It made me think that what I’ve written isn’t too far off the mark, in terms of describing believable males.

Geoff also said something along the lines of men’s taste in erotica basically stultifying at age 13. Delicately put, that’s a partner ready to do the deed around every corner. This is interesting in light of people’s comments read on the DAZ3D Commons in a recent debate on the subject of “Have Women Lost Their Femininity,” which provided weeks of entertainment and many fine opportunities for absurdity. There were several gentlemen who allowed that they do say no, from time to time. Or that they just can’t find someone appropriate. In other words, they sounded like adults…but that’s real life, not fiction. No telling what they fantasize about…but of course, a look at their 3D Poser galleries would tell you in an instant.

All in all, things went rather better than expected. I did talk to Alicia Austin at length, as well as Geoff Ryman, and enjoyed both conversations immensely. Alicia’s been in fandom as an illustrator for donkey’s years, and her fine draftsmanship hasn’t wavered in all this time. She’s quite a lovely, down-to-earth person, too. Geoff is droll, witty, and Englishy. Kay got her sushi lunch, we caught up with old friends, and made some new ones. Well done. Thank you, Kay, for kicking my butt and making me go.

If there weren’t a magnificent August sunbeam from the skylights making my bed feel like a frying pan, I would be asleep and trying to breathe while lying down with this miserable flu.

Instead, I’m trying to make some progress with re-skinning this blog. Must re-skin something. After spending a couple of years with Plone, PHP and WprdPress seem a little crude, though they certainly do the job. Figuring out why the path to the theme’s images directory works in one place but not another…Oy. Same old problems, different CMS.  But it’s getting there. I use two fixed “faux columns” in my site’s layout, this is just a different arrangement of the same thing. I should be able to do this. Mind you, I’d do it faster if I weren’t semi-delirious.

My boss reminded me to annoy Kaiser P. into seeing me today. Alas, yesterday, someone over at Kaiser called someone, not me, and left a message for me. How inconsiderate of those (unknown) people not to pass it along! Maybe Kaiser will actually call me back today and I can spend several hours of waiting with other sick people to get something to cope with this sinus infection from a vastly over-worked physician. For this I pay a lot of money.

Code doesn’t care if I can’t breathe through my nose. Code in da nose? Hah.

My boss, a gracious lady I admire and respect (no, I’m not just sucking up) speaks of techies as not speaking English.  I completely understand that sentiment. Some geeks are not as good at it as others.  That business about “faux columns” for instance: there really are two columns of text on the web page…on the other hand, there are no columns, no text, and no web page, just a lot of little bits of light glowing out at me from this flat panel monitor. It’s consciousness and pattern-matching ability that makes sense of any of it. “This is not a pipe,” as Rene Magritte, would say.  “There is no spoon,” as a fictional character once opined.

Mmph. Back to consciousness, of which I am in short supply.  Now, where did I put that pixel???