Darkjedi

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"...I think really the figure just needs to be tilted towards the viewer, with the head closer, to show off that cool design..."

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The funny thing is, White Peregrine and I discussed this EXACT issue. I PMed him and mentioned that the pose he chose isn't the best for showing the costume because of the upward angle and the bright light off the shoulder obscuring the outfit's details.

His response was that the pose and lighting was more important to him. White Peregrine appears in several variants of the outfit and getting it exact wasn't a primary concern; he was more interested in the angle and drama.

So, with that in mind, I continued forward.

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Also, just curious, but do you make all these environments or do you get them from somewhere?

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I make my own environments. Well, I render them using 3D models I've purchased or built... but the images are all mine. I do all the arranging, lighting, and composition work to build a full scene.

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I've gotta say, hats off to ya. The pure amount of buildings there is astounding, especially taking into account modeling and texturing them... Heck, just arranging them would take a while.

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In the case of the buildings, I can't take credit for those wonderful structures - they were already modelled. They're part of a Poser set called 'Dystopia' and are available commercially on Renderosity. I've purchased a couple sets and have downloaded some freebies as they come up in the 'freebies' section.

So, for the White Peregrine scene, I pretty much just imported the models, adjusted the sky settings, and rendered. I'd estimate about 3 hours of time to set up the city... plus 2 hours for my computers to render it all out. Finally, this afternoon, I took some photos of clouds and composited those into the scene to add a little life.

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Also, just curious, but do you make all these environments or do you get them from somewhere?

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I make my own environments. Well, I render them using 3D models I've purchased or built... but the images are all mine. I do all the arranging, lighting, and composition work to build a full scene.

Thanks everyone, for the kind words.

Here's a few more exchanges between myself and White Peregrine. The biggest change was an alteration in the camera's position... from a street-level view looking up to an aerial view high above the city.

WP - first round of roughs

WP - second round of roughs

WP - costume check

This one was incredibly fun to do! A couple weeks ago, White Peregrine and I were talking about his piece and he had a cape on. He mentioned he'd eventually trade the cape for wings. Then, during our exchange of PMs, it was confirmed we'd be getting wings in I8... but we still weren't sure if 'angel wings' were part of the deal.

Two weeks ago, we got confirmation and I immediately PMed White Peregrine to get his piece underway. I had a cool idea I wanted to try, and he was completely open to whatever.

So, here's White Peregrine in all his winged glory.

WHITE PEREGRINE - poster

WHITE PEREGRINE - detail

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the fun side effect...getting to contact all the artists who have drawn WP and having them do it AGAIN...except in new costume and wings! ~

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Um... speaking of which...

Anytime anyone does anything with someone else's art, they should ask - regardless of how well-inteded the use might be.

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12" x 19"
Bigger is not always better but I like to have the extra room for the teeny tiny details.

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*cough* zoom in *cough*

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Good god I can't even tell where the text ends and the emotes begin!!!!

Keep it up though it's your signature style

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The 'faces' sometimes make my head hurt and I often have a hard time finding your message.

I've learned to mostly see beyond them and find the text, but it's not always easy to see the message through the ascii characters.

I use a 6" x 8".

I've used larger and they require too much arm motion. Don't be fooled by size.

Since I already have a tablet, I'll step out.

However... I'm still game for an official art trade!

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Hey darkjedi, just wondering, how long do those 3d renderings take, and what program do you use?

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Each piece is a different animal with it's own issues to solve, so it's impossible to give a good answer as to how long they take. I usually spend a day texturing the character's outfit, a day modelling custom props, a day setting up the background, a day posing and rendering the elements, and a day of compositing and post-work. So in general, about 5 days or effort.

Now, some characters don't need custom modelling because their outfit doesn't have shouldpads or anything (like FIRE LILY ), and others are single-tone outfits and I can do their textures in an hour. Other heroes (like the recent CYBORG-GIRL01) have lots of custom modelling and tons of chrome.

Interior backgrounds take a lot longer, while an airy outdoor scene can be done fairy quickly (like CRIMSON STORM ). Of course, there's always exceptions, such as the fur on ROWR and the electricity on THOR'S ASSASSIN , with each presenting it's own unique problems.

For my programs of choice, I use Maya for my modelling, Poser for my characters, Photoshop for texturing and post-work, and Vue 5 Infinite for rendering. Between these programs, I can usually create about a piece a week.

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"...Now I know why he was so circumspect about the details of his art trade..."

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Graver is a very cool person. The Force is strong in that one.

Congratulations to STARCHASM for passing the bar exam!!

I was contacted by Graver over a month ago about you taking your test, and he arranged an art-trade with me to get you a special gift if you passed. I did this piece last month and have been sitting on it until you got your results. Thank goodness you don't have to take it again.

So, with that very brief explanation, check these out...

RADEY AYTE - poster

RADEY AYTE - detail

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"... the yellow should be at the source of the fire...."

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I disagree. The source should be white.

When I paint fire, I use a couple specific steps;

1 - Start with the smoke and paint in dirty browns. Use broad, soft strokes.
2 - Move in tighter and start adding reds, making the color a little more pure.
3 - Move in tighter still and paint some oranges.
4 - Move in to just outside the source and paint some pure yellows.
5 - Finally, at the very middle, paint some white.

Fire is tricky to do, and it's great that you're trying to tackle something so difficult. Each piece you posted is getting better and better.

Sample 1

Sample 2

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Did you just say Poser Blows? As in the program?

*crosses fingers*

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No, the renderer. I have a thing against shadow mapping. Otherwise I'm a huge supporter of Poser and use it for all my character work.

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Most of those also have distributed rendering systems built into them, so if you have mulitple machines available, you can spread it out over them.....

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I use Vue 5 Infinite for it's awesome atmospherics. I *do* use a 5-machine render farm when I can, but larger renders are safer when you 'render to disk' and Vue doesn't allow render farming when you select that option.

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Also, you might want to reduce your raydepth in Firefly if the render took 40 hours. Even just a depth of 2 or 3 will be sufficient for most renders, 4 is about the maximum you want to go (since more and interobject reflections get seriously slow).

Now, when you add in refractive objects as well, nothing is going to help (save just using environment/transparency maps)........

I just wish Curious Labs would hurry up and optimize the renderer code to support dual core CPUs and multithreading......

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Good suggestions... but I don't use Firefly. In fact, the entire Poser render system pretty much blows and I never use it for finished work. I can't stand shadow mapping.

I use a true ray-trace system that gives some great effects.

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...sooo...uberchrome man would be a big suck ta do? crud, there goes another idea down the tubes...... ~

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Alone, that might be ok... but if you wanted "Uberchrome Man" to be locked in battle with the "Reflectinator", I might need backup.

Thanks all. This community is awesome in i's support of all things creative.

Now, a few responses;

As far as the use of nvironment maps, I usually don't go that route because I like the feel of knowng the reflecions are 100% correct. However, I didn't expect the chrome to take 40 hours to render and I might have used the environment map method if I'd known. The reflections were actually *too* reflective at the raw render stage and I took them down about 50%. Still, it wasn't a big deal since I set the render to run on one of my backup machines and my workflow wasn't seriously impacted.

Regarding the faces; I suppose they could use a little more expression, but the client is happy. It's ultimately his call - if he says 'tweak the faces', then I tweak the faces.

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PS: Is it me or the detail shot you identified as myso is actually Cyborg-girl?

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Ninja-Edited. Good catch.

This piece is officially the most difficult 3D piece I've done to date. It has 3 major colors that are very different (orange, pruple, and green), in very similar amounts. Plus, the reflective surface on CYBORG required over 40 hours of render time for her armor alone! Her armor also demanded that the entire set be modelled since it would reflect her entire surroundings. Thank goodness DAZ had this incredible warehouse interior.

I've spent the last 3 weeks on this piece... but I think the effort was worth it.

CYBORG-GIRL01 vs MISO - poster

CYBORG-GIRL01 vs MISO - detail shot of Cyborg-Girl

CYBORG-GIRL01 vs MISO - detail shot of post work

The easiest way is to render the image with a transparent background. I usually use PNG as my file format for that , since it keeps the alpha layer and only renders the character.

Once you have her rendered and saved as a PNG, you can just copy/paste onto any image you like.

I stopped reading when they canned Brandon, so I can't comment on the stories. I've continued to buy it more as a novelty than anything else (but they remain unopened).

I really enjoy your style. It's fresh, bold, and very lively. At some point, perhaps we can talk about an art trade or somesuch - I have some characters that I'd like to see in your technique.

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Ok. so. in PSP, I have No idea, But, this works for Photoshop:

- new layer
- hit D to reset your pallette to Black foreground White background
- Filter -> Render -> Clouds
- Filter -> Render -> Difference clouds (cntrl+f until you get a nice 'bolt' of lightning.)
- lasso tool around your bolt.
- Select -> invert
- Select -> feather (probably 15-30 depending on the size)
- cntrl-x
- de-select (cntrl+d)
- Cntrl+I to invert colors (making the bolt white, don't bother if it is already)
- cntrl+j to duplicate the layer, repeat until then bolt is 'bright' enough for you. select all the layers you just made and cntrl+e to merge them

At this point, you can Lasso select and feather again to refine the selection of the bolt you want, Edit -> transform to distort, scale, lengthen, rotate, etc.

then image -> adjustments -> hue/saturation, check the 'colorize' box and move the slider scales to get the color you want. optionally blur if desire.

Rinse, repeat for other bolts.


Thats how I made the lightning bolts in TA's pic

For more cartoony bolts, I can do those too...

make a straight white line on a new layer, (vertical) box it up with the rectangle marqee, filter -> distort -> shear. Play with the curves. Filter -> distort -> wave, hit randomize until you get what you like. edit -> transform to adjust, rotate, etc. move it where you want, duplicate layer, on the copy layer, filter -> blur -> guassian blur about, eh , 2-4. merge the two layers, adjust hue/saturation to desired color...

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Good gravy! You really do all that for lightning? I do mine in 4 steps or so...

- Create a new layer
- Double-click the layer in the 'layers' palette to get the layer style menu.
- Click 'outer glow'. Set to a nice blue, purple, yellow... whatever color you want.
- Draw on your layer in white.

That's how I did my version of TA; TA vs AOT