Average height of an elf is 1.9 meter. Average height of a dwarf is 1.2 meters - I'd say make him shorter.

I used the full body Goblin morph from Character Pack 1 for M3. I think there are two shorter ones... Hobgoblin and Kobold. For some reason I think the Orc morph is shorter too.

Or I can make Sam's model taller. She's standard V4 height whatever that is. I'm betting 5'7" ish.

You should still be able to scale out the mod. I know I've been trying to get one of our trolls done with the Freak, and the 150% up doesn't seem big enough.

I know somewhere I had an old tool from Renderosity though that was a basic measuring stick. I need to go through all my files on the server though and see (though now that I'm up to 7 gigs of files it gets pretty crappy to organize)

For my race line up, I used the standard size of the model as a baseline, and adjusted the rest proportionally (i.e., 1.75m =100%, 2m=119% etc.) I used M3 for all, ork and dwarf.

...I'll remember ot steer clear of that one. Unless a certain spell really does exist I'm kind of out of luck there.

I like the dwarf. My next project is going to be my Dwarf ex cosmonaut/Medic at Markova (though I really still love Squinky's version of her).

[edit]

Yeah, I can't wait until ,y membership is activate, With the savings on the items I tagged in my wish list, I will easily make back the cost of the membership with my first order. For backgrounds, I may be heading back to Milwaukee this summer. there are a lot of old derelict factories and foundries there that closed in the 70s recession. These would make for some nice dystopian backdrops.

There are two Dystopia city blocks packs for Poser for free on the DAZ site, but they look more appropriate for downtown shots.

...I already have those but don't have a full copy of Poser yet (currently evaluating the P7 demo). The blocks do work in D|S and actually look pretty good (minus the giant sized Leela )...

Linky

Interesting.. I found the outfit from Augmentation finally. Right here on DAZ Might just pick it up and use it as well.

My friend who is playing the dwarf didn't want the traditional long beard, so I did another image. I bought the 3 piece suits for M3 today so the figures are clothed.

Ramses and Sam 2

Sam, my adept, is looking an awful lot like Jessica Alba in this picture.

Blast it!! I've been playing in Daz3d off and on all day... Now I've broken down and joined the platinum club and started buying models.... Blast! Blast! Blast!

Nice looking.. she really does have the look. Only comment is you probably need to adjust the dwarf's arms, that pose didn't scale down and they are clipping.

Redjack, welcome to hell matey

Oh is see it ...the fingers are going through each other. Well I got another one.. back to underwear, with the third part of our team. He's a human Face... "Griffin" character pack right out of the box. I tweaked the dwarf to have more "dwarf-like" features, large nose, ears etc... I scaled the elf up to 104% and made her skinnier, to compensate. She's now at least as tall, if not taller than the human next to her.

Ramses, Sam, and Spades - concept

I started putting these on Renderosity, so my free web space doesn't get filled up.

Redjack... welcome. Addicting, isn't it?

Yeah, I'm finding as you scale bitz up and down, poses do have a tendency to get a little skewed. Hopefully I'll have something to throw up here later today though.. playing in this to do a piece for a backgroud.

Here is my first. Atreus, my elven physical adept in 'Dancing in the Void'. I don't quite like the hair, but I haven't figured what I want different....

Cool! Where did you get the homeless guy in the background? LOL.

I only have 2 hairstyles for males, and I used both of them in the picture below. They both look pretty good, though.

I started putting my renders on Deviant Art, becuase Renderosity only lets you upload 1 image a day for free.

Here is my latest version of the gang from Puyallups: Ramses, Sam, and Spades.

...I'm still waiting for them to receive my payment. Sent it off last week Friday (02/29) and it still hasn't made it to Daz (feel like I'm dealing with CanadaPost). The worst thing they are only a state over from me (Utah) I could have ridden there & back on my bike in less time. Even worse, there are a couple things I want in their 72 hr March Madness sale (Carrera Express & Bryce 6.1 - I can get both for only 36$ and change instead of 55$ or nearly 200$ list).

This isn't the first time I have experienced such delays with the post office they eve, lost an eBay payment on me recently.

Arrrrrrghhh I'm about to go postal on the USPS if this keeps up!

At least I think I got my sizing chart down. I've got a few other runners I'm working on, but only having 2 hairstyles for Mic and 2 for Dave makes it hard to do males damnit.

However, my female crew is coming along nicely

I'm playing with a simple magic effect and how to light it in this image. I took my Adept character, and dressed her as a blond human street mage. It's the Magus outfit from DAZ. It's hard to see but the background is the light dome from one of the free Dystopia downloads. I put one orange point light right in front of the fire, and lit the scene with one dark blue spot light. I also did my half-ogre champion from D&D, but this is Dumpshock. I don't have the horns yet, but I want to try a troll next.

Street Magic effect

...ah, like wow.

That is fantastic. So is this from a point light inside her hands? I've been trying to work with point lights a bit more.

I finally found a suitable background for Violet but would like to figure out how to make the lights from the bollards illuminate her instead of resorting to the usual "overhead streetlight" and/or "headlight" spots. When I placed point lights in the bollards it made them look like they were about to go critical mass & explode.

Went back to the original lighting, but it seems too bright.

Violet on the prowl

The only other solution I can think of is using low intensity spotlights instead, but simply narrowing the focus reduces them to a hard visible pinpoint on the target instead of a softer fill light like the point light provides.

I usually use spotlights with narrow focus, and low intesnity, and I also add some color touch to them to soften them up in some cases.

It's a magic effect freebie from Renderosity (there's a fire and an electricity one included). The I used an orange point light right in front of the effect at 10% luminosity. The rest of the scene is lit with a dark blue spotlight from above, front right.

...alas, I still have not received my acknowledgment email from 'Rosity (been a week now) so I am unable to download freebies from there. The electrical one would be great when I finally work up the Short One as she has the Elemental Effect - Electricity adept power.

[edit]

OK just checked & it seems I had a momentary bout of the "Short One's Dain Bramage syndrome" in that I dyslexed my email address. Now am registered.

After playing with it a bit.. DAZ Studios lighting kinda sucks I'm not finding as many controls as I'm used to with Bryce. I'm going to try exporting a few figures into Bryce and do a bit more with lighting there. If any of you get your hands on it, remember the lighting gels are what you want to look for to push things like what KK was talking about. Hell, the lighting can do a lot once you learn how to use it...

An example of lighting with gels and multiple spotlights in Bryce

...yeah that's what I'm looking for. More diffuse. As a matter of fact, Daz is having a 72 hr sale with Bryce 6.1 marked down to 27.99$ My order goes in tomorrow (though I wish they received the payment for my PC club membership, it would even cost me less then).

Cruised Renderosity's site , Unfortunately most of the offerings specify Poser only in the requirements & not tested in D|S. Kind of a shame as they really look like a nice resource.

Do the gels come with Bryce or is that an add on pack?

I think I might try this add on pack for DAZ... Fantasy & Sci Fi Special Effects or this... Particle Effects

and this one looks good too... Fog Tool III

...I also am interested in Fog Tool III since I have ordered Stonemason's Backstreets & the Backstreets by Night light set (which is free). There is also a lighting and scene depth pack (I don't remember the name) which was on the Daz March Madness 72 hr sale list.

Gels in Bryce aren't really preset, they're texture adds to lighting effects. It looks like those tool you put up add the same type of effects into DAZ Studios, so if that's all you're using, it might be the way to go to buy those. I'd say the Particle generator and fog generator are the 2 more important ones there.

I need to look and see what Carrara brings since I just loaded up 5 Pro.

Oh, and thanks for those looks at the damn streets there KK.. I'm not made of monies damnit There actually seems to be quite a few really good resources like that there. Once I get the compy upgraded so it doens't crash at random I'll have to consider looking at those (or designing my own if I feel comfortable)

I already have Backstreets and Backstreets by Night... cool set.

...yeah I thought they'd be really nice for Shadowrun scenes. Stonemason has a lot of really cool stuff. I used a couple of his freebie props in both the Leela and final Violet images. I need to figure out how to alter textures so I can put the LonestarLogo on the floater drone in the Leela image.

BTW began work last night on my namesake. downloaded some nice basic facial morphs, including one Japanese one which works pretty well for her. Used an interesting combo of the Ashley camo pants/shoes, V4 Sports top, and A3 Mitsu Hair (which I was surprised actually works with the V4 figure). Gave her the Daz Big Guns (sans sights) for her six shooters. Still need to find a Stetson for her & figure out how to use some of the other facial textures that also use Photoshop/Gimp for setup. I have one called Geisha Makeup which would be perfect. Also found a really nice skin texture on 'Rosity which takes care of the "plastic" look. With the lighting I added, kind of makes the image look more like it was done in oil paints.

I'm going to do a bit more touch up tonight and upload the prelim of her tomorrow to my DA gallery.

Which skin texture did you use?

The basic Hi res one for V4 is pretty good. I have some good ones for Ogres and Trolls from Character Pack 1 from Daz (orc, troll, ogre, goblin, Uruk, etc. morphs and textures for M3). I just need to get the horns for a troll. The clothing is a little hard to get to fit on anything bulier than the Uruk body morph though. I used the Uruk morph for a D&D ogre I did, so the loincloth would fit.

Might need to geth the Freak model to do trolls. I'm going to get one or two of those effects packs tonight. Maybe add one to m=one of my existing scenes to see how it looks.

I'm wokring on a Render of my namesake too. Not sure where I can find the buckskin shirt, but I think I got the rest of the getup from my Lion Shaman from Missions. I can try to use one of V4's hair styles to do his long gray hair, I guess. I already bought DAZ Big Cat LE to use as his Spirit Guide.

...the vendor of the skint texture I used was SuperBadGirl. Really makes for a nice effect though, kind of reminiscent of the old Post Magazine covers & calendar pinup look.

So far I'm none too happy with my exports for rendering.. I have way too much stuff here though to have to buy more moduls for DAZ

I might have to upgrade Carrara.. I think it does the DAZ transfers better now that they own it.

Gray.. Here's a troll sized FREAK and the horn pack works OK, I'd just like to get some dermal ridges on these things (maybe in HEX)

..quick note: the full Carrara 6 is available for 149$ (104$ Platinum club) through 03/28 Carara3D Express is 25$ (17$ Platinum club) through midnight tonight (MDT?) as part of their 72 hr sale. I just placed an order for Bryce 6 at 27$.Thought about 3D express but after playing around with the demo of C6 that I'd rather save up the money for the full version. Of course this depends on what I can do with the Boolean tools in Bryce.

Looks as if Poser 6 is off the market. Was just on CP and they seem to be pushing just P7 now.

One big challenge I can see are Cyberlimbs. I'm sure that they could be done in Poser or Carrara but I have yet to see any.

I did see one cyber arm in DAZ. Actually though I have a run through on doing composite characters that they published in 3dWorld ish 99. It would probably work for DAZ|Studios as well as it is mostly using the visibility settings and careful positioning.

Nice work, but I think teh dwarf's and troll's arms are wrong, the dwarf ones have to be shorter, teh troll ones longer... I think it would look way more 'realistic'

Here is a new effect I did with the pwGhost plugin to create a pink mana ball...

Street Magic 2

I did a flame with the particle effects plugin too, but I don't have the lighting quite right for it yet.

...With the Short one I had to play a bit with proportions. To simply downsize the overall scale of the figure wouldn't really work. For her I changed the length scale of her legs, chest, and arms then reduced the overall scale by about 10% to 15%. In the game she is 4'10" tall & fairly athletic.

Here she is

The Short One

Unfortunately there were no separate morph targets on the guns other than the general x,y,z scaling.

Thanks! (I think...)

Is that the word you choose to loose... I think my wife hates it already....

Actually, the background is a photo. I thought the homeless guy made the scene.

The other thing I find is the lack of skin textures for males. I found a few on Renderosity.

That is really kicking ass... and all three are together now!

Lighting.. Yea, some day I'll be ready for that.


So what is the suite of editing tools everyone uses and what do they use each tool for?
Oh... and what banks did you guys rob to finance all this stuff?

I got the Freak pack for less than $2 with the coupon from the Daz Premium...

Right now I just use Photoshop and DAZ,with a few new plugins I got yesterday. Like particle effects. I just got a nice bonus from work, so I didn't have to robe a bank. Plus I get alot of the $1.99 stuff for being in the Platinum Club.

I'm using the creature morphs on Michael instead of the Freak. They look pretty cool. Creature Morph: Ogre head, Uruk body.

I only use DAZ.

Yea.. That $1.99 stuff is pretty addictive as well... Kinda like a small fix..

That looks pretty good.. Gonna have to find time to play with that as well..

Subscribe to 3dWorld, awesome mag with lots of Freebies! I got Carrara 5 pro last month, Bryce 5.5 has been there free before (though I just paid for Bryce 6 when it was on sale for cheap [coupon code from 3dWorld].. which is how I got into the Plat club...) Got Hex when it was 20$ to Plat members. Blender is Open Source style free, Photoshop I use for other stuff, so it was an investment. Also look for the PLE (personal learning editions) versions of some software, they often offer cheap upgrades from it. If you can also get to know they professors at a local college who teach 3d design and they happen to like to give you their freebie copies of software the companies send them, more power to you

...well I have a lot of ceramic shards on the floor from a broken piggy-wiggy...

Currently I am using Daz and Gimp (works pretty much like Photoshop does layers and can create PSD files but doesn't come with the 700+$ price tag).

I have just ordered Bryce 6.1 (27.99$ unfortunately that sale is over) I am also considering Carrara 6 as I test drove C6 a month ago & found it to be a pretty powerful tool (will definitely need that memory upgrade) However Bryce has a Boolean function that can be used to create objects as well.

...yeah the 1.99$ price is highly intoxicating particularly when both basic and accompanying texture sets in a series are all the same price (like with the Fantasy Morphing Dress and Sensibility series). The March Madness sale isn't making things any easier either (must...not...order...Catgirl...suit).

I am disappointed that SmithMicro appears to have gone "Microsquish" and suddenly none of the major vendors seem to be selling P6 anymore. I have the P7 demo and really like the concept of the different "design rooms" (which P6 also has). Just not sure I want to lay out 250$ especially if D|S is starting to include more Poser-like functions of its own (though they need to be careful about putting too many bells & whistles in, already there have been numerous issues with 2.0 cropping up). Definitely want fully legit licensed copies of my software as I do intend to publish so I'm not keen about going on eBay or Craig's list.

Ok, here are two more characters of mine: Tank and Book

Tank looks a little like Bono. What model did you use for his jacket ,and what texture is his beard from? I need a good jacket for the ganger, Scrimp from our campaign.

Here is a more complete version of my render of the gang from the Puyallups III campaign...

Ramses, Sam, and Spades

Ramses has his pince-nez glasses, and umbrella, and Sam has jeans, a more realistic gun rig, and her mother's locket. Spades' player wanted to loose the assault rifle, since he's a Face. I also added a dark blue distant light to make it look more like night time.

I need to find an armored duster model for Sam yet, and make a black texture for her jeans, and this pic should be about done.

Decided that I was going to spend some time outside D|S tonight and learn a few things in Hex. Its going to take a bit of work to get used to the "sculpting" tools. I might have to play around a bit with this tomorrow though and see what else I can do that'd be nifty... get things more complex.

"Glassed" scuplture of nessie, or something like that.

...Redjack: pretty nice. Did you use a photo for the backdrop? Some of the structures reflected in the windows exhibit some interesting architectural features.

The one difficulty I had trying to use a photo backdrop was matching the lighting/shading on the characters to that of the overall scene. I imagine one could take the backdoor approach and run the photo through Photoshop (or similar) first and apply the right effects to better match it to the characters using various layers and filters. That is something I need to experiment with.

Gray: I like the the update. The lighting is better the bumbie Ramses is carrying is a nice touch (after all this is Seattle). Curious, did you use Victoria or Aiko for Sam? The face shape looks much more like Aiko's.

Caine: Pretty nice. reminds me of glass I made from Volcanic ash (had a lot of that laying around after Mt St Helen's blew its top 28 years ago). I'll be doing a lot of the same getting used to the tools in Bryce this weekend.

Really?

Tank has the M3 Alligator Coat Set (with the included MAT Leather Coat). The beard is from 'Michael 3 Millennium Beard'. That includes about every beard you could want to use.

That keeps improving! What clothes are you using for Spade? And what set does Sam's belt come from?


Here is another I've been working on. My elven, hermetic mage: Nix

All three of my current renders use photos for the backdrops. Non altered photos, actually. The one in Atreus' picture is from someone's European vacation. The other two I photographed myself.


I feel I've just lucked out so far... But soon I will need to start playing with lighting...

Yeah just a little bit. At least I think he looks like Bono. Guess I need to buy Millenium Beard. Ramses has Long Beard for M3, with the long part hidden. His glasses and umbrella are freebies from Renderosity.

Spades has pants and shoes from the M3 3 Piece Suit, and the leather jacket and turtleneck is from a set called Leather Jacket for M3. His face is a morph and texture called Griffin. Soykaf likes it so I didn't customize it at all.

Sam's gunbelt is the only one for women that I've found that fits well over pants. It's from Shadow Dancer for V4. The old double holster was from Hi-Fantasy Treasure Hunter, which is a Tomb Raider clone from Renderosity. Liek most of them it's made to wear over shorts. Sam has the Action Hair from that set. Her locket is from a freebie called Celtic Heart for V3, so it does not fit V4 very well until you modify it. You need to raise it and move it back or else it looks like it's embedded in her skin. I need to find a good duster that fits v4.