...OK here's a more Sr related pic. The Short One Finally in appropriate attire.

That looks great!

Alright, back into the Shadowrun saddle (That last renders very nice KK)

http://doctaotsu.deviantart.com/art/Steel-Lynx-WIP-92942257

Here's my take on the Steel Lynx. It's a very rough WIP and I'll be completely rebuilding it with the proportions I've blocked out (still want to tweak a number of things, but I think it's a good general shape). Learned quite a few tricks building this rough model so I have high hopes for the rigged "hero" version I hope to build next.

Of course this implies I'm going to learn XSI's rigging engine which is probably going to be a bit a of an ordeal.

I also have some WIP's from a flying ship thingy I built from a friend's campaign if you're interested.

...thanks all. The hair is still a default (A3 Mitsu Hair) until I can find a good single long ponytail (or make one in Poser). That's one basic hairstyle sorely missing for V4.

...Doc, that looks pretty good. Yeah the higher end modelling tools do a wonderful job, just that they are out of my budget. However, I am testing the Carrara 6.5 Beta which has some improvements in this department.

Yeah, the professional grade gear is pretty steep. Softimage just eliminated their Foundation license program so you're looking at ~2k to get their cheapest product. At least their licenses don't go tits up after a year. I'm not even bothering to save up for 3DS or Maya because... come on, I have to drop 2k+ EACH YEAR to be able to use your product? Boo stupid licenses.

But yeah XSI is probably about twice as much gun as your regular hobbyist modeler needs. It's just that Hexagon was crashing so often and so erratically that I was in serious danger of throwing my computer out my fourth floor window. That and it seems like the company that makes it just seems to have... abandoned it. But whatever, I'm over it. It's also nice to push a button and switch between modeling, rigging, rendering/texturing, and simulating. No need to export and import, it's nice.

But yeah, it has what you said in another thread "Mt. Learning Curve" and that curve is more like a wall for the first couple of oh... miles.

...wohah waitaminute! You dropped 3 grand on a modelleing tool? That is definitely waaaaaay beyond my means, like that's nearly 5 mos rent.

Only twice as much gun? For nearly 60 times what I paid to get Hexagon (54$ on a PC sale)? Shoot At that price I would expect it to clean the flat, wash the dishes, feed the cat, launder the clothes, do the weekly market run, and make my morning coffee as well.

...however I just DL'd TrueSpace 7.6 complete with manuals and tutorials for free on the advice of my company's IS director who is also heavily into 3D CG.

Whoa! Whoa! No no! I dropped $500 on XSI Foundation about a week before they d/c'ed that particular license.

Okay I'm under selling xsi it's a billion times better than hex because:
A.) Doesn't crash when I look at it funny.
B.) Does EXACTLY what I tell it to. And nothing more.
C.) Gives me percise control over virtually every aspect of creation. Do you like bevel? How much would you like to bevel? How far would you like to bevel? Would you like to bevel a bunch of times? Would you like to bevel and then tell the beveled lines to take on a hard edge? Would you like to bevel on a Tuesday? Would your love life be better if it was beveled? And so on. That's just the bevel command. Everything single tool is like this. I can split an edge and tell it exactly where I want further edges to be split.
D.) The most insane undo function I have ever seen. This alone will ensure I never go back to hex. Unless you specifically tell XSI to forget, it will remember every single operation you perform in a given scene. Let me give you an example:
You create a cube.
You subdivide the cube once along each axis.
Delete half the cube, clone it, and symmetrize it.
You grab a face and move it around a couple of times.
You extrude a couple times off the face.
You move the face around a couple more times.
You do another 6 hours of work.

At this 6 hour mark you can go back, open up the history folder. Go back to "Create Cube" and delete it, or modify the number of subdivisions (although this is likely to make your end product go insane). Or you can go back to the original move command, the one that now has a huge articulated arm coming out of it? And remove or modify that single move function. If using a tool brought up a dialogue box you can resummon that box and fiddle with modifiers at will, as if you were first using it. I don't know if that's properly conveying how powerful and totally awesome the history log is.
E.) Documentation that doesn't suck. I can open up "Help" and actually expect to find an answer to my question. If I don't know what an option means I can run a search for it and pull up a relevant description, typically with pictures, examples and a brief technical explanation. This is such a change form Hex's "The extrude options allows you to extrude." help files. I love XSI's help files, i wish other companies cared enough to make help files as thorough and useful as they do.

Honestly i think I should probably learn Blender at some point. I've seen people put out some very nice results out of it. I just hear that the learning curve is more like a learning TRIAL OF TEARS AND FIRE.

Hm... Truespace, looks pretty cool

...so then Foundation is just the modelling tool I take it. Didn't stick around on the site too long as the hotspot I was at was closing soon.

OK that is a bit more reaonable, though 500$ would still be a nice chunk of Zloty's towards the workstation I am considering. It does sound like an incredible tool (and the results you posted are far and above what I could do). I like the full Undo function, sounds a lot like the one Gimp and Inkscape have which also includes an Undo History function.

The fact it has a built in Help resource as opposed to having to be online (my one big strike against most of Daz software & Blender) is a huge benefit. Unfortunately since, as you mentioned, the license situation has changed to an annual renewal, I will probably never pick XSI up. This was what steered me from Autocad software as well (spend 3900$ and then another 1000 - 2000$ per year - heck I can join a nice country club for that though I totally suck at golf )

I'd give Blender a wait & see. Last I remember there was word of a new update in the works which (hopefully) will be more intuitive. Seems you already have one heck of a tool to work with already anyway that is a lot easier to grasp and a lot more friendly.

Going to install TruSpace tonight and begin going through the tutorials. All the tutorials are on vid so the file is just about as big as the application but I hear they are very good.

Nah, Foundation is everything except a few of the really expensive doodads: Hair, fabric, and extra licenses for render farming. It has the full animation, modelling, compositing, and rendering engine.

But yeah, 2k for software is a bit steep and I've vowed not to upgrade to the full version of XSI 7 (the latest release) until I can actually utilize a fair portion of what it has to offer. Which pains me to be sure but still.

Yeah we'll see. The fact is that there really aren't too many people who use just one program so once I figure some of XSI out i'll need to start branching out.

...did a little more work on the KK pic.

the Short One

And here's another pic:

Shadowrunner picking her target

I used the Yanelis free Stargate prop for the AR windows, with a green color for the rim, and the transparency dialed down to 10%, 40% on the interiour (where I placed the other pictures as skin).

...nice way to depict the AR displays. The low lighting works well without making the scene too dark to discern details.

[addendum]

...have an actual SR related scene with Leela in the works...cute and scary at the same time.

[update]

...well looks as I am going to submit the image to a themed competition on the Daz forums I am unable to post the image publicly elsewhere.

I made six renders for Gen Con. One for each of the team members in the one shots I ran (used the same six in each game). I think they went over real well. Helped the players visualize their characters.

HEY!! You never showed me those

hey all
sorry I havent been on much lately, lifes been, well cruddy, but anywho
I ran across This female option for trolls and such
it works off of the freak
weird
the daz shefreak is more attractive but from what i've seen doesnt have much for options

...OK now she is a bit more impressive. I believe the original She Freak was just a morphform of one of the earlier Vicky models (V3 or maybe even V2). The only thing is she still has a bit too much of a "Wasp Waist" to really pull of a good female troll unless there is a very "generous" waist thickness morph.

I think someone with more modelling and morph spawning savvy than myself needs to get adventuresome and just do a She Troll based off the Daz Troll.

@Redjack: What model did you use for the Fly Spies in the Rigger image? I'm doing a render for a new character of mine (human-looking ork hacker named Glitch) and he uses lots of fly spies.

I haven't posted here in a while, but here is a sample of what I'm working on. Her name is Spike, and she is a Satyr, former Lone Star officer from the Ork Underground pbp starting up (my hacker is also in that game).

Spike

Robo-Wasp


My turn. Where did the arms come from?

Cyber-Arm for V3

It took 6 deformers (3 for each arm) to get Victoria 4's arms (with body builder morph) to fit into the top section of V3's cyber arms. I hid the lower 2/3 of her arms, but there needed to be a stump to connect to.

The V3 arms are still kind of expensive, but get these while they are still on sale:

M3 CyberArm

I have been doing more Fantasy renders than Shadowrun ones lately since I am trying to finish illustrating my campaign chronicle these days. Here's a link to a thread with some of them.

...so just how do you get DFormers to work properly? My brain hurts too much from pounding my head against the wall.

Thought about these, but the M3 ones while less expensive, don't look as "Shadowrun-ny" as the V3 ones do.

Here's another pic I did today:

On an island floating in the air

...impressive. I took a tour of your D&D gallery and some really nice images there.

OK, the contest I entered on the Daz forum is over and the winners announced (myself being one of them). Once I know everything is all nice and official, I will post a link to the pic. The theme of the contest was Escape Into Dystopia: Where Would You Hide?

I thought it was fitting.

Nice!

The D&D gallery is limited to 60 pictures, whic is why I didn't update it yet with the latest bunch of pictures from this week I posted to the thread - I'll have to start dropping pictures. It's also cutting the sizes down (to 100K I think). I'll have to get the stuff uploaded to Renderosity.

Instead fo trying to force one deformer to do all the work, I used three on each arm. As soon as it started to skew the shape beyond anything recognizable, I'd back off slightly and add a new deformer.

First I hid the arms, forearms, and hands. Then I stretched the shoulders to fit into the socket of the cyberarms, and used 2 more deformers to compress them down to the diameter of the V3 sized arms. It took about two hours of trial and error.

Congrats on the DAZ Contest.

I usually just use morphs and size dials of body parts in DAZ, that covers a lot of shape changes already.

Astrally projecting

Here is my first attempt at some cutsom tattoos for the Freak.

Chinese style tattoos

Those look good!

That is freaking awesome.

I concur, extremely well done!

...nice effect. I have pwGhost but with raytracing it's like pouring molasses into the CPU during renders.


...excellent effect. did you use the Layered Texture Editor (that's how I did the trademark facial makeup for the Short One) or Decal Master, or just Postwork?

OK, now that everything is said and done, here is the picture...

I Won't Let Them Hurt You

Click on the image for the full size. As I mentioned in the DA comments. the theme of the challenge couldn't have been better. One of the parameters was that the image had to work as a desktop background, hence the size and proportions. Sort of Shadowrun even though the scene takes place in Zagreb during the occupation. Though only 16 years old Leela is already a veteran of the war, however, deep down she is still a scared and lonely little girl.

I don't use raytraced shadows, but deep shadows. Makes rendering much faster.

Here's a Duel in the cellar, a scene from last week's session.

...while a pain in the butt render-wise, raytracing does make for higher quality shadows and really brings out the translucency of elements like hair and skin.


...nicely done. The action flows very well.

Thanks. And yes, raytracing does get better results, but with deep shadows I can render pictures with 8 characters in a few minutes. That's more important to me given my time constraints.

Yes, very nice scene. I must really be turning into a DAZ geek, I even recognize a lot of the models, like the JeanZ.

Lighting is definitely something I want to work on. I usually do a simple set up with 2-4 global lights, one of which casts shadows. Sometimes I use a spotlight instead of casting shadows with a global light.

Here is a scene I just did of Sam, my character from Redjack's campaign, with my new motorcycle model, Road Eagle, from Renderosity.

A Girl and Her Bike...

It's pretty typical of most of my lighting setups, but I definitely want to learn how to do more complex lighting.

Good picture. Did you think of using a street background or similar motive?

Lightwise, I usually use a spotlight for shadows, and a distant light from another angle to soften it up some.

I think I will drop in a street background when I fix the finger poke-through on her shirt. The paper background looks too "studio".

I also think I need to switch back to JeanZ instead of the Flower Power jeans, so she can wear her TreadZ biker boots. I like the look of the worn out jeans, but not at the expense of her boots. I guess I have a project, to make some holes in the JeanZ model.


EDIT: I fixed the poke through and added a street background...

A Girl and Her Bike...

Another Picture of DD.

Looking good, Gray.

DD in a new outfit, going through some files in AR.

Another quick picture from the "Phoenix Rising" campaign.

Very nice image. How did you do the lighting effects on the floater bots?

I did not use Layered Texture Editor or Decal Master for the tattoos. I used Photoshop to apply the tattoo templates to the Freak battle scarred texture, and remapped the new texture to the Freak in DAZ on the Surfaces tab.

I do the same for my tatoo skins.

...Fuchs, the pics of DD are great. I especially like the one of her sorting through the files. Postwork or were all those translucent planes rendered first (that would bring my system to a screeching halt)?

I see you have a few Dystopia sets there. Wonderful for SR settings.

Gray, thanks, that work is very special to me.

The light effects on the floater bots (including the sparks on the one she shot down) were all postworked in Gimp using different flare effects. Very intricate and time consuming but rewarding. For the "wash" of the sensors on the wall and doorway, I placed two narrow focus red spotlights in the front of the floater, one in the "eye" and the other on the smaller IR sensor. I positioned the three laser pinpoints on the wall by using a camera above the floater (yeah, I saw Predator one too many times).

I also placed a narrow spot in the lower sensor that is aimed downward at the threshold.

Having been involved int technical theatre in the past, I really enjoy playing with the lighting system in D|S.

I love a Girl and Her Bike. Did you use the MP Cyclorama for the backdrop? I find it a handy tool when I need to cook up a quick image that wont take an our or two to render. It's tricky to use right however, particularly if you have lost of shadows.

...in that vain, I guess here's "An Elf and her Sports Car" (Leela's girlfriend Tracey Kyle). This is a piece in which I set up an array of ambients and one distant light to simulate a late afternoon with filtered sunlight rather than go with a lighting preset. As I mentioned in the description, I added a bit of lighting and blur effects in postwork to make it look like a paparazzi's photo (I also have a B & W version that looks so "old Hollywood film" like).

Tracey Kyle

Very nice work with the shadows, KK.



I don't do postwork at all, all my pcitures are rendered as they are, just for big group pictures - over 6-8 characters - I usually vertically split the picture up in 2 or three parts, render all, and then combine them.

The files are holographs from Aery Soul's Bioshock set.

...you must have a pretty good machine compared to I. I can't do very much at all with translucency, reflectivity, or fog effects in the render as they tend to kill the process with runtime (D|S) or memory allocation (Carrara) errors. Basically I have one of those Intel integrated cards so the OS and other apps steal memory needed for rendering.

Got to get a totally dedicated system. I have some money put away, but not enough to get the system I need built.

Quad Core (Intel) 2.5 - 2.8 Ghz
nVida GeForce 8800
4Gb RAM
A good MB to support all this and up to 8Gb RAM
minimum 650W PS
.5TB main HDD
300Gb (or thereabouts) Backup HDD
minimum 19" LCD display
64 Bit OS (most likely Vista Premium)
Decent cooling
Local Networking (for file transfers with my Notebook as I do not have net access at home).

Don't need any other bells & whistles like office suites, games, DVD playback, Media/internet connectivity & such. This is to be strictly for 3D CGI so save for a power outage, when I need to do one of those 10 - 15 hr Bryce renders, there's nothing else to get in the way (including me as I still have my notebook as well).

...of course, I have also been looking into UPSs too.

I have a dual core and 2 MB RAM. 2 years old by now.

...prety close to what I have. What kind of Video card/driver?

Not sure. Was one of the best 2 years ago I think, though video cards do nothing for renders, at least that's what I hear from a friend working IT.