I See Stars! (Miss April)

Actually, I’ve been doing monthly girl-pinups for Jim Farris. It was his Christmas present for 2010!

Herewith Miss April! OK, she’s late. The rocket got delayed, and she had to hitch a ride on this old bomb. But she’s here! And she’s cheery! And pink.

Production notes: V4 with Aikobot2, the old As Shanim Rocket 50 prop, and a background from Mapp’s Heavens package. With postwork and Ron’s Bokeh brushes.

Holy Flaming Fire Chickens!

After the events that brought Fechin back into the Gotth fold, Coruanu went north to Virginia to apprentice to Ariolas and Taiev–something he’d wanted to do for a very long time. Cor is a mageborn full-blooded Elf, so there’s a lot of magick in him.

HOWEVER…the main challenge young mages have is surviving their own talents. For an Elf, Coruanu is young, being roughly fortyish. He’d taught himself a few things, but not really pursued it after meeting Ariolas in …well, we call it Elsewhere, where Cor came from… more long stories, gosh. Another time.

Anyhow…Ariolas, Master of Wisdom, the last Elvish sword-bearer, is one of the oldest mages around on earth, now–and is a puckish character, to be sure. (Cor was wondering about that cheesy shirt…what does, “The Flying Hamster of Doom Rains Coconuts on Your Pitiful Cities” mean, anyhow? Cor’s English isn’t too good.)

Ariolas: “So. A firebird is essentially a compounding of smaller fire and air elementals–an explosive mixture, as you can imagine, yes?”

Coruanu: “Yes, lord. You showed me.”

Ariolas: “Been practicing?”

Coruanu: “Um, well, some.”

Ariolas, sitting down out of range: “Well, that’s why we’re in a stone room at the moment. Don’t burn the rug, boy, I like it. Show me what you got.”

Coruanu speaks the long Word that conjures a firebird, and then: **FOOM** “AAAAaaaagh!”

Ariolas: “Hm, fire-chicks, how interesting, and three of them! What is it with you and chickens, boy? Keep them floating, there’s a lad.”

Coruanu: “AAAGH! Help!” *hops madly trying to avoid having his hair set on fire without dropping the chicks*

Ariolas is trying really hard not to roll on the floor laughing. He’ll rescue Cor in a moment, after he’s had a chance to juggle his little fire-chickens. Of course, torturing your apprentice is part of the fun of having one, you know.

Production Notes: M4 Enhanced with my two characters, sitting on furniture from Winnston’s River House stolen and put in DM’s Anardhaus; Ri is wearing a DAZ Elite skin, and Coruanu is in his usual AlanX skin; Ariolas has got one of Wayii’s free textures for the Styling M4 shirt (the only way you’ll ever see me use that thing) with Sickleyield’s straight-leg pants; Coruanu is in AS Narquelir’Kir with Narquelir Yes! and Naq Angel Noir textures; Noggin’s chickens flying about burning madly; Ron’s Particles in the effects. Hair, flaming chicks, color adjustment and Elvish snickers added in Post.

A CyberSorcerer Is Never Unarmed

I don’t know his story yet–but the latest gothboi sorcerer, Gloom, is back again. There’s something about his androgynous Art Nouveau looks that I really like.

The bats are cheesy, but hey, it was necessary.

Production notes: M4 Enhanced with Surreality’s Equinox character, a little tweaked but not much! jewelry from me (free) and Inception8 (stolen from Vickie); Kattey’s free Eagle Cape with ParrotDolphin Paisley texture; Mourning Sun corset; Pyro pants, also re-materialed; Cyberpunk M4 cyberarm with JM postapocalyptic texture; coflek-gnorg’s Technotown buildings; SilverKey3d bats (DAZ); hair, magick, haze all added in post.

"Gloom Happens": CyberSorcery

I don’t know who this is, yet. I’m sure he’ll inform me, shortly before he demands a novel be written about him–which is what Fechín did, after all. I may have unwittingly spawned another villain.

Anyhow, was just playing and came up with a very moody, crazed gothboi type wielding magicks–for fun and the sheer joy of being able to render again.

Enjoy!

Production notes: Poser Pro2010 raytraced render; M4 Enhanced with a character & skins from Surreality’s Otherworldly Wonders: Equinox set (zowie, I’m glad she finally did a GUY); Cyberpunk M4 pants and cyberarm with one of the JM Postapocalyptic textures (I hope ForeverNyt appreciates the strain of making sure there are PANTS on my guys); various jewelry of my own and stolen from Inception 8′s cool bling for Vickie; hair, background, gloom and magick added in post. Pull up a chair, this might be fun…!

Diana

Finally, something like a real picture again.

It’s been over a month since my render-box pretty much died. I’ve been keeping the zombiefied remains (I do not mean that in any hacking sort of way) and now that my new compy is FINALLY set up and running, I have responded to a request from Jim Farris at the DAZ Commons for a pin-up–with a woman. *cough* But she’s escorted by this older fellow, so that’s OK, there’s still a guy in the picture. ;^) The original pic that we were supposed to work from was a Vargas illustration, also Diana. But…it just wasn’t me and I was WAY too lazy to create a proper dynamic dress for her–being ever so anxious to just FINISH a picture.

Production Notes: V4.2 with a Surreality’a Modern Muses Nera; Sanctum Arts Horde with “chill” texture; DM Druid Valley set; bow and quiver from V4 Wildenlander with an Arien texture; DM Totem Cloth with the green textures; Diana’s hair, some fixes & f/x done in post.

Otherwise:

I had issues with the Vargas original, which is why I re-imagined it, to use that awful word. Well, she should be blonde, since she’s Apollo’s twin, but I’ll give in on that. Secondly, silver is the color of the moon, so she would not have a gold crescent on her head. Pearls are wrong, belonging to the sea…but moonstones look pretty much the same from a distance, so, OK.

She’s the mistress of the hunt, and I can’t see her walking borzois on leashes. Honestly, like she was some Park Avenue lady? *snort* This called out for something rougher, and since she IS the Moon Mistress, a werewolf seemed perfect. And there is a relationship there: He’s protective of her, and she guides him gently; he’s watching us with a snarl, leaving her free to scan the horizon.

I used the Wildenlander bow, which came into her hand like this–and I thought: that’s much better than on her back while she’s walking the dogs. And while I liked the Aery Soul Aeterna dress, it was too…well, not cut out for running, which she would do, so I went to DM’s Totem Cloth and the Classic Fantasy greaves and arm guards–which don’t guard much, but she wouldn’t need them to, being a goddess and all. She’s not wearing shoes because she’s the original Wild Thing, you know? And her clothing is green and silver where I could fix that.

She’s passed through the Druid Valley stones and looks beyond them–that and the leaves make a nice setting for her to emerge from. The puffy clouds turned out to be *perfect* for silhouetting Mr. Nasty there, and there’s plenty of contrast to set the shapes off.

Lighting: Druid Valley scene 03 came in with some nice lighting, but they don’t include IBLs, which I like for fill lights. The Shaderworks Create Lights scripts are *indispensible*! And allow me to create Olivier’s IBLs very easily, matching the overall scene colors sufficiently. IBLs don’t get reflected, so hey, there’s no point in being over-exact with them. So I deleted one of the fill lights, put raytraced shadows on everything else, pulled the shadow density to a max of 0.888, and the shadow bias to 0.3333, as Blackhearted recommends in the tutorial that comes with his awesome light set, Pro Studio. Distance lights got high (like, 6 to 10) blur radius. Sampling I leave alone on the properties tab. I also added a face-glow light, a white point light with about a 10-foot falloff, 0.888 shadows, 0.333 shadow bias, a low but not hard blur radius, and put it at about 6 poser feet and close by her left shoulder. The falloff makes Surreality’s skin do great things!

Then I test rendered and tweaked..I always do about a dozen draft renders to check lighting and posing.

Final render: Raytraced (ALWAYS), shadows & displacement used. Samples at 12, 2 bounces.

Some poke-through fixed in post, as well as toes and feet not hitting right on level ground.

Hair…lord, that’s it’s own book. The colors worked well in this one, and I did the depth of field in Photoshop, too.

BTW, used the Intuous4 to do this, as my new Cintiq is going to take getting used to. The Int.4 has better responsiveness, and I haven’t looked at what I’m drawing on in so long that it was confusing! LOL

So, more Cintiq practice later. I was just in a hurry to Get Something Done. I can be picky later.

Keep Your Enemies Closer: Alex and Fechín

You know the old Sicilian saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Fechín, the half-Oni sorcerer, had spent most of his 200+ years trying to eradicate the Gotth in revenge for his Master’s and his father’s deaths–but they are also his mother’s family. Alex, yes, *is* his cousin. Nothing worse than a family quarrel, is there?

By the end of book 5, this has finally come to a head, and…well, this is a spoiler, in a way. Sorrows, the god, insists: We do not kill our own.

Well, not directly, anyhow.

Nowadays, Alex and Fechín (left and right) are uneasy allies, as you can see.

Production notes: M4 Enhanced with my own characters; Raphael skin on Alex (new!) and AN Toru on Fechín; Cyberpunk M4 on Alex with both Wayii’s crash (shirt) and Postapocalyptic textures; LadyLittlefox’s Notorious on Fechín; DM Kross Court set; my own lighting setup; hair and color adjustments in post.

Better send a few bottles of rum. Only a copious amount of booze is going to keep this civil. ;^)

The Babysitter: Ian

At five-foot six, Ian Stewart is one of the smaller guys in the Coven. But he’s Alex’s Second, one of the soldiers, and the one Alex can depend on to get the most heinous jobs done. His FBI file agrees.

Then again…some jobs…

Alex’s brother-in-law and sister came home to find Ian calmly sitting in the living room, fire popping quietly behind him, and they boggled at the armaments.

“Ian?” Cass (Alex’s sister) said. “What’s with the guns?”

“You told me to keep them safe, didn’t you?”

“But…GUNS…and the three-year-old…!” Cass got white around the mouth. Somehow, she did not start screaming at him and tearing her hair out.

“Nah, he wouldn’t have gotten to them. We made sure.”

Morgan, Cass’s husband (and also Ian’s uncle), said, “Uh…so, were they good?”

“Yeah. And Juliana [the oldest] told them I’d shoot the twins if they were bad. It worked pretty well.”

Cass: “…”

Morgan: “Hmm, I’ll have to try that one.”

If you look closely, you can see that Ian’s smiling. He loves pulling people’s chains. He also hopes to get out of babysitting again.

Hah, fat chance. The kiddies think Uncle Ian is scary cool, especially since he taught the twins [10 years old ] how to clean his Glock.

Dear god. No, you don not want Uncle Ian babysitting for you. He’d organize the children into a commando raid on the candy store. But they *would* be in bed by nine, sharp. Or Else.

Production notes: My M4 Enhanced character with ID Kitt skin (his usual) and M4 hairy; Gym Rat Extreme shirt; Captain Hero pants with RoMan’s Captain Yes texture; Treadz on the feet; Peacemaker watch and Dark Line vambrace; guns by Wartech; Ness’ Regency dining room & Chinoiserie chair; my own lighting setup. Hair, specular highlights, corrections and so forth done in post.

Even Grad Students Need to Eat: Ian

It’s on the news: exotic dance is a good way to make money, and in this case, earn tuition.

Once upon a time, Ian Stewart was a kid from Queens who ran away to Vegas after graduating from high school early.  He’s short but buff, and he decided, in his typical fuck-you fashion, that he’d try exotic dancing. Fortunately, he learned his trade from two very nice dykes at a bar where the owner took care to see the dancers weren’t pressured into hooking.  Well, not unless they wanted to be.

And there was a certain regular customer, one Mike Kaminski, whom the proprietor occasionally asked for a favor if the bouncers couldn’t handle things. Kaminski was a wetwork freelancers: he didn’t do freebies. But he’d put the fear of God into the occasional nasty customer to keep his favorite strip joint quiet and happy.  And that’s where he met young Ian.

That was a long time ago. Now Ian dances in Palmers Rest, where he goes to school at Trinity, because it’s good money on the side, and because he likes to. And Mike still comes to see him dance.

My Ian character brought over to M4 Enhanced. Blackhearted’s Pro Studio lights & set, scanty clothing from MPEII. Hair & smoke added in post. Pose adapted from a set by RoMan, and chair scavanged from a DM set.

Originally posted March 30, 2009

Kaminski, dressed to party

And you asked for more Kaminski-ness. I won’t say “goodness” because as characters go (at least in my own head) he’s…not exactly one of the good guys. But I do so like him. I think he comes into the category of “jumps out at you and scares you silly” or might *really* eat you for breakfast. One of the monsters with pretty faces.

Of course, he’s just looking pretty here, in his grungy sci-fi bedroom. LOL!

Oh, PS…as if you cared…he’s Ian’s ex. Taught the boy a *lot*.

Production details: M4 Enhanced plus M4 Hairy from Jepe (DAZ); Illusion 3d’s Mitchell skin with some extra node-fu of mine; Ratracer’s sci-fi bedroom (was here at Rendo); Blackhearted’s awesome Pro Luma lighting, a little tweaked. Hair painted in post, plus some tweaking of the background luminosity in post. The awesome harness is by Karth, and was free from DAZ. Billy T’s M4 Real Jeans. B999′s M4 Stompers. I think that’s all! Thanks for peeking in.

(Note: I use Poser Pro2010 these days.)

Decent final renders take a while. I know that some folks have a 5-minute rule and very limited patience, but my own FINAL renders, in Poser 7 Pro, with a quad core machine and 4 GB RAM, would often run overnight–4 hours is not unheard of. So you set it up and push Render before going to bed! Come back the next evening, see what’s happened. Pro2010 runs a bit faster, and I am often done in a third of the time.

TEST renders should be quicker–lower render settings, smaller pictures–15 minutes is the longest they go, usually.

Using “Layers”

Compose your renders with a foreground, middle, and background–in conceptual layers. Doesn’t really matter how many. The reason is this: if your scene is too complex to be final-rendered all at once, you can hide pieces of it and render those a bit at a time, and then assemble the finished renders into one document in post-production in Photoshop or PSP.

Say you have two people in the scene and a fairly detailed set, plus clothing and props. Poser bails on you when trying to render the final version at high-quality settings so you know you have to use layers. I did in this one:

Misdirection: Taiev

In this scene we have three (conceptual) layers:

Foreground: There’s an M4 character, and he’s wearing a nice outfit and holding a complex pistol model–it’s in the foreground, so I wanted the detail most especially.

Mid-ground: Then there’s the Oni female, who also has a complex outfit on, but no props. However, she’s done with V4, who is high-poly.

Background: The workstation and the whole rest of the set.

When composing layers, watch what casts shadows on what.

Lights: There are overhead point lights and an IBL for fill, all set up so that these various actors do not cast shadows directly on each other.  If the lady cast a shadow on the workstation or the wall, they’d have to be in the same layer with her. The lights are used in all the renders without moving them between times–their logic holds the layers together as glue. What you do not want to end up with is “unmotivated” lighting, that is, actors that are lit mysterious, by no discernable lights or by lights that couldn’t possibly exist in the final scene.

In the above example, I rendered the foreground and mid-ground without the set. This also gave me my alpha masks that I would use. I also managed to do a full-size z-depth mask by using lower render qualities. All in all, I ended up with four .psd render files that I then assembled in Photoshop, where I painted in the hair and  special effects.

See more about:

• Alpha masks and render passes
• Alpha masks and z-depth done in Photoshop