Been awhile. Been busy, working on getting healthier after a very rough winter, working on moving my residence and working on getting the salon sold. Just a bit of stress lately, wouldn't you say??
This is a character from DAZ. Her name is Aiko. She is an anime character that has accompanying morphs that allow the artist to make her more realistic. The Dragon Scales are a freebie from the web, can't remember where I found them. She is posed and rendered in DAZ Studio, a free program for doing this sort of work. 3Delight is the rendering engine that is along the same lines as Renderman which was used to do such films as Shrek and I believe Finding Nemo (both are Pixar, can't remember). 3Delight is still being tapped for more rendering depth but as it now it's hard enough to learn. The background is done in PS-CS. Nice thing about DAZ Studio is that it allows for exportation using PNG with alpha kept in tact so it's very clean. Even hair, glass and other things that have transparency maps used survive the export very nicely!!
What can I say, I'm hooked!!
PS: To let you all know that Michael 3, Victoria 3 and Aiko 3 are all now FREE!! So you got DAZ Studio and those three HOT models for free, if you join the PC club you then can get clothes, props and hair for $1.99 not to mention all the freebies at Renderosity and other places on the www. If you want I can post some favorite sites that I frequent. I use the same user name all over the web so no searching for me with under different guises!!
Nice dragon scales. I could use something like that for the little dragon I recently made. Is the dragon scale a tileable texture? Could you remember where you found it?
Do drop by more often as your health improves. Sounds like real life is keeping you very busy these days. Gotta check Daz Studio one of these days.
Hope all is well in your world. Yea, well life goes on and I'm still here driving everyone crazy, in a good way I hope!! I love my 3D stuff, very fun but I still have some guilt about not finishing the Space Being (Universal Being) so it's still in my mind and I imagine when the right time comes I will finish it (I've got about an 1/8 th of it to finish, like the lower legs and feet and I'm done.
Ed, the lighting on the scales is a mixture of Diffuse, Specular and Glossiness. The last two more than the first one. It's an interesting process. Yea, it would be nice to hit a button and then render but that's what makes this all so cool, you have to WORK for the right render and each area of the body is sometimes different. Eyebrows and eyelashes have transparency maps applied in the Opacity area to create a realistic blending from the follicle to the tips of each hair. Lips can get tricky trying to apply just the right amount of glossiness and specular to make them shine and then of course you can apply a bump there to make them look a bit more realistic. The hair pieces follow the same path as the eyelashes and eyebrows. The scales I already explained.
There are some very talented folks over at DAZ Forums in the DAZ Discussion by the names of Questor and Lakys, smart boys they are and nice too!! Patience is a virtue in this area of 3D pose and render because it's NEVER that simple unless you don't care. I care so I learn. I imagine this will affect my 2D art in the future when I begin to pull it more equally together in how I handle painting light and light reflection and refraction.
Some think I waste my time with all this silly Poser/DAZ Studio stuff but what started out as a curiosity and then moved in to the realm of "This may help me in my 2D vector and painting areas!" to "WOW this is really much more involved than I thought it would be!" and I'm still learning every day. Learning vector using Xara X was just as involved for me as well. It's not that I'm giving up on vector but this is just another step in furthering my education in digital graphics. It all comes together in the end. My need to learn evolves with each step. I'm not out to learn every 3D program and model my own worlds of wonder (though if I could wrap my mind around that end of 3D I probably would, but..... ) I just want a better insight to this world of lighting and rendering. It helps one look at ones art and even the world differently. Light, color, reflection, refraction, texture.... it all looks different to me these days. The models and scenes rendered in either Poser 5 or DAZ Studio just happen to be a really fabulous way to learn all this stuff. I think DAZ is THE leader (in my opinion) in 3D human models. They are a bit too stringent in their take on what's descent and what's not though. Even though appropriate genintalia is included with each model they don't allow it to be shown in artistic renders to share with others in their galleries or forums but other forums and galleries allow for this. I guess it's a bit of the Morman attitude showing through. They are located in Utah. Nothing against the Morman community, the same can be said for the Baptist and Catholic being a bit to skiddish around the subjects of nudity and art containing it!! Kinda sad really considering that each of us IS naked under the clothes we wear!!
Ah, there I go again, off on a tangent. I think I've just about covered every subject that came to mind.
There's lots of dirty little images that come to mind when really thinking about that gesture she is making, dressed the way she's dressed and standing the way she's standing. I just can't express any of them here in this forum!!
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) I just want a better insight to this world of lighting and rendering. It helps one look at ones art and even the world differently. Light, color, reflection, refraction, texture.... it all looks different to me these days. The models and scenes rendered in either Poser 5 or DAZ Studio just happen to be a really fabulous way to learn all this stuff. I think DAZ is THE leader (in my opinion) in 3D human models. They are a bit too stringent in their take on what's descent and what's not though. Even though appropriate genintalia is included with each model they don't allow it to be shown in artistic renders to share with others in their galleries or forums but other forums and galleries allow for this. I guess it's a bit of the Morman attitude showing through. They are located in Utah. Nothing against the Morman community, the same can be said for the Baptist and Catholic being a bit to skiddish around the subjects of nudity and art containing it!! Kinda sad really considering that each of us IS naked under the clothes we wear!! 
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