[BTS] Behind the Scenes & A Pin Up

I am surprised, I didn’t expect. My survey shows, that 90% of you want to know more what’s up behind the scenes. Who want to know more about the background of my creating process.

I was thinking about it, how to show and don’t make it too boring. To find a way, for “consumers”.
I think, when something special is going, I show you. There will be no order. I’m not an education channel.

Now, something special is going on right now.
Some basics. As most muscle girls 3D Artists I’m using DAZ3D Studio, as base. DAZ has figures “Off The Shelf”, and starting with it, is relatively easy. It’s like getting a driving licence. You pay for some basics and you can drive a car.  Becoming a formula 1 world champion is a different story.

I will tell you my backgrounds, what I am doing, the issues and my thoughts, also about other artists. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to bash anyone, it’s just about my honest thoughts.

Now let's start in this post about my current work. 1-2 Month ago DAZ came out with a new figure: Genesis 9, and with some extras Victoria 9, Gen9 itself is free, the small starter Kit of Victoria 9 (it has some extra stuff like a freckles skin map) was about $30.-. That’s how DAZ makes it’s money. The software itself is free.

The year 2015, when I startet with VR-Amazons, I needed figures for the game engine, fast. I had professional experience with 3D, creating technical animations in 3DSMax. But creating human figures is a very time intensive procedure. I had to learn UNITY, and how to use it in VR. VR was at the beginning. No time to create figures. So I took DAZ characters and bought some “Off The Shelf” muscle morphs and threw these pumped girl figures into the Unity game engine. Also had / still have a cooperation with Tigersan, to get his figures in a VR world.  A pain in the ass, to port them, because he uses a different program. It was a 3 times port.

OK, after some background knowledge from the past,  regarding the muscle girl figures and reducing my effort for VR-Amazons, lets go to the present. I have a little more time to work on the look of the girls. Especially on the muscles.  I wasn’t happy with these “Off the Shelf” muscle morphs, sold by DAZ, anymore. They are anatomically shit.  BTW: I see in a 10th of a second if a DAZ comic artist uses these shit morphs. 95% do. But maybe they are great story tellers. I'm more a visual guy.

So I decided to create my own, girls, remember, I’m 3DS Max specialist? But needed additional ZBrush for the details. Especially the maps. I tell later in another post about maps, also because I was not happy with the DAZ skin textures. I was always looking for more photo realism.

Back to the beginning of this post. Genesis 9 is out now, it has 60%  more polygons, than the last figure Genesis 8.1. This makes it possible to show muscles a little more detailed than before. Not much, still way to less. There are more possibilities by special NORMAL maps, but more about these in another post.

So I spent a week now porting my veins templates from Genisis 8.1 to Gen9. Why? With these new templates I can create new veiny Normal maps in Zbrush (very expensive software) for Gen9.  Why Genisis 9? Gen9 comes with really good skin and details maps, to create an even more photo realistic look.  The above renderings  and screen shot shows my muscle creating work in 3DS MAX, and first test renders of Genesi9  with my created first Normal maps and hand crafted muscle morphs. (Normal maps put more detail in a figure, in our case, more muscle detail).

But it will take a while until I use Genesis 9 for production. As said, DAZ makes their money with add ons to their figures, and I need to spend hundreds or thousand of $$$ to get all needed what I have for Gen 8.1.

PS: Please tell me, was this text too long?

PSS: Do you want to hear why Tigersans muscle girls look such detailed compared to others? It would be an additional story. (Hope he won’t ripp my head off  ;-) ). No, kidding,  it’s no secret, just technical based ;-)

PSSS: Would you like to see more Pin-Ups, single girl renderings I put extra effort on?

Bernard