Bodak

Scene 5

And so it begins...

Doomed Shieldmaiden

Been a bit of a mad week, so I've not been as productive. I'll have something bigger next week.

Spot the Difference

I'm genuinely not advertising for the Decimator plugin (It's expensive, wait for a sale if you get it) but I have found it genuinely life-changing, at least as far as working with big scenes.

Here's one of the Knight characters from my Elves vs Goblins set. From Right to Left, you can see the original, full-poly version, and then one at 75, 50 and 33%. It's really hard to spot the difference even in the foreground: There's a little loss of quality in the materials- especially in ...

For the Queen!

First of November's pics: Queen Padme's Handmaidens are having a hard time again.

Getting muddy

One of the things I'm really pleased with in my Elves vs Goblins battle is the mud effects I've been using as the Elves fight their way across the killing-ground of cleared forest that the Goblins have cut down. I've used lots of decals to get mud splatter on boots as they run through the puddles, and of course- when they fall, they get even dirtier.

Rocketgirls

A few years back I got really excited by this outfit and had loads of ideas for it. Alas, my computer died shortly after and I ended up getting distracted by newer, shinier things. I always planned to go back though, and this is a more recent concept render for something that could have been a story. Unfortunately, after leaving it to cook overnight, I came down to find it only 2% complete, and it's sat in the corner of shame on my hard-drive ever since.

Maybe one day I'll revisi...

Coming in November:

First of all, thanks to everyone for joining! I honestly had no Idea I'd have this many members so soon!

Looking at the joining surveys, most people seem to be here for the exclusive artwork, so I'll focus on that next month: I said at the start that Tier 1 members would get 3 new pieces of art a month, but I'm going to push for one a week, though I'm not guaranteeing that every single one will be a massive battle. I noticed that the 'modern' folder is a little empty, so I'll def...

Shieldwall

In an ideal world, I'd have time to turn this into a proper story, but I ended up using the armour for a lot of other pieces, and I've got several similar stories on the go. I think starting something exciting only to get distracted by something else and never finish is probably a core part of the creative process.

In the Shieldwall 3

The problem with close-in formations is that it can be hard to see what's happening. With hindsight, I should have moved that figure in the foreground a bit, or deleted her altogether.

In the Shieldwall 2

Another close-up, this time from on the ground

In the Shieldwall 1

This is from a while back: Part of an experiment with trying to get a shield-wall formation. It could have ended up getting fleshed out into its own story, but in the end I used the armour for Palladins of Pellan, and a lot of the shield poses got recycled into the Elves vs Goblins battle.

Human trespassers!

This is from a while ago, but I haven't posted it yet. It's from before I decided that my Wood Elf archers shouldn't really be throwing themselves into combat, and that they probably would have swords-women with big shields to hide behind.

Core Work

Another initial scene plan for the buyer's tour-around: Here, the spokeswomen (in the suit) is giving him the hard sell as they pass through a training gym where the divers are doing some core-work. Look at the thumbnails on the left and you can see other named characters in various training outfits. These all have a scuba-outfit analogue and you'll see them in the battle scene later in the story.

Rookie Swimmer

I mentioned earlier that I often do complex poses separately before loading them into a scene. This trio is for the opening montage, where the mystery buyer gets to see his mercenaries training before he hands over any cash. One of the scenes will show the attackers training at a pool, and this younger-looking character is seen in the background getting shown how to fit her dive gear- again, watched critically by an instructor. In fact, it's the same instructor from the knife-fight scene, whi...

Building the Build-Up

If you've seen my published photo-stories, you'll know I love a good build-up.

I'll do a more detail post later on my file-structure and the character work I'm beginning- right now, I want to show you the sort of preliminary work I like to do, to give my story characters some depth.

This scene is going to be a training fight. From left to right, you can see:

• A base G8.1 figure with no morphs or clothes loaded. She's just a place-holder. I want the fight to l...

  2024-10-17 19:21:23 +0000 UTC View Post

The Moon Pool

Tier 2 members will have seen my plans for a scuba battle around a moon-pool. It's not the first time I've tried it with those costumes. This one never got off the ground, mainly because the lighting was too dark and the renders were taking ages.

No guns please!

The padded walls in the tunnels were what really gave me the no-guns vibe, and a convenient excuse for spear-guns to be fired at wet-suits throughout the whole battle.

I know there's a gun-nut out there dying to tell me that they could use something short-barrelled with a subsonic, frangible round. It doesn't matter: They're using spear-guns and knives.

This is a test render for the interior lighting by the way. I'm torn between thinking it's too light, and thinking ...

Moon Pool

So I reckon the best way of getting in and out of the base is a Moon Pool. Here's a concept render for one of the base guards about to go out on patrol, while another one lounges around waiting for her turn, or drying off having just been out.

Security

Obviously, not all the base's defenders will be in the water at the same time: Some of them will be guarding choke-points and doorways and things. This is a possible outfit for those defenders, though I'm not entirely happy with the outfit. One thing I'm grappling with is that I want to have a contrast to all the skin-tight body-suits- hence the vests and shorts- while keeping a relatively grounded, military look, hence the combat boots and forage caps .

Swimmers

Obviously, it wouldn't be a scuba fight without some breathing apparatus. My initial concept is for an initial skirmish outside the facility, a breaching scene as the attackers force an entry, and then some tunnel fighting down those passage ways and a last-stand.

The orange diver looks a lot more high-tech than the black-suited one: That's because she'll be with the outnumbered defenders, and the lower-tech attackers will be using weight of numbers to overwhelm their opponents.<...

Adversaries

Another key bit of inspiration was seeing a clip of some of the fights in Dune 2. If you've seen it or read it, you'll know that a key part of the narrative world is that science magic and some hocus-pocus about worms means that nobody uses guns and most of the fighting is done hand-to-hand. It got me thinking that if a bunch of frog-women were to storm an undersea base, there'd be a convincing argument for all the fighting to be done with knives and spear-guns, so that stray bullets don't pi...

It all starts with a scene

Inspiration comes in various forms, but for me quite often, it's something I see on DAZ studio for a cut-down price. I've had my eye on this set for some time now( https://www.daz3d.com/easy-snap-universal-sea-habitat ), and it's sat patiently in my wish-list waiting for me to decide to buy it.

Last week, it was 85% off in one of the site's commendably frequent special offers,...

Triptych 2: Faye

I have to say, uploading the files to a folder is deeply unsatisfying.

Don't let them through

Pew-Pew! Silver bikinis! Thigh-boots! Lasers! It's the seventies again!

Angel Corps

Angel Corps was one of my first full picture-stories from back in the day, and people still ask me if I'll carry on with them. To be honest, I haven't found a look I'm fully happy with for Genesis 8, and I think I've got better characters and concepts now; Padme's handmaidens and the Rocketgirls both do the same thing but better.

Troll Smash

Obviously, the Troll doesn't need to work with a partner to have a chance against the Knights. The Elves are going to need something a bit special to deal with this bad boy.

This is an early concept pose- I'm not fully happy with how this is working. In 3DL I could add motion blur quite easily, whereas in Iray I don't think you actually can. I have a feeling it's just going to come down to the blur tool in GIMP.

Teamwork makes the Dream work

I'm working on the combat for the Evles vs Goblins set at the moment- The Knights have reached the gate and are fighting through the mass of Goblins. I find with close combat scenes especially, I get best results if I pose groups of combatants separately and then load them into the final scene. I always think of that scene in Ronin where they meet the underground doctor, and he's painting an individual samurai model for his diorama.

Here, I've got the Goblins using historically ...

Scene 4

How many renders do I need before anyone even draws a gun?!

Scene 3

Ooowee-ooowee-oooo... oooh-oooh-oooh...

Lighting continuity

Iray does some really clever voodoo with light-sources. It looks great, but it means that if you use an in-render effect for a laser beam, that beam needs to be in every scene you render in the composite. The floating pistols belong to figures who'll be rendered in a separate shot, or it will change the lighting, even on the right-hand side of the image where you wouldn't expect the light to fall. When I put the different scenes together to make a composite, there'd be seams between the image...