Never Say Never Again

Agent Riggs Returns! Hopefully the prototype jetpack that she just stole from SCEPTER activates before she hits the ground!

Short Version: If you like my DAZ version of Agent Riggs and Ms. Magique, they'll be getting the spotlight in this month's image!

Long Version: When I first started posting at DeviantArt, I had an extremely fast desktop computer, but it died unexpectedly around four years ago and took most of my custom characters with it. To replace it, I picked up a very fast laptop, which was great for what I needed at the time (rendering in Poser), but it was far too slow for me to work productively in DAZ Studio (which I've been casually experimenting with for about the last two years). I've been slowly accumulating a collection of gorgeous, high-quality DAZ Studio Genesis 8 modeling assets, but I've had no way to render them at a reasonable pace! I figured that eventually DAZ would resolve their speed issue, or I'd break down and get a faster computer. My work on the AA graphic novel over the last few months has been way too slow for my taste, which has been largely due to being limited by the speed of my now-obsolete laptop, so I decided that it was finally time for an upgrade... and I did not mess around. If you're into tech-speak, my new machine is a custom HP Omen with an i9 processor and an RTX 3090 graphics card. If computers were cars, this would be a Lamborghini. The image above was rendered at 2400x2400 resolution and it rendered in 700 iterations in less than two minutes. My laptop could not have assembled this image at all due to the number of figures, wardrobe items, accessories, vehicles and reflective surfaces, and even if I could have assembled the scene, the resulting render would have taken 8 - 12 hours at least. Basically, with this new machine, I can now work in DAZ as quickly as I use to work in Poser, and I can now work in Poser in the blink of an eye. If my outdated Poser content has been feeling a little stale for you lately as it has for me, this opens up a whole new world of creative opportunities that I can't wait to explore!

What does this mean for the future?

It means I'll be able to make much faster progress on the AA graphic novel going forward. It also means that you'll be seeing lots more DAZ renders featuring the Genesis 8 versions of AA, Pyrrah, Aella, Agent Riggs and Ms. Magique here, at DA, and on my SubscribeStar. You'll be seeing lots of NEW characters, locations, traps, costumes, and toys that I've been dying to play with for years. Eventually (but not yet) I'll return to doing commissions featuring the Genesis 8 models and characters as well. Next year, I'll be able to move forward with projects that I've had in mind for awhile, but lacked the technology to produce.

So, yeah... lots of good stuff is on the way!