Gray Lady - Lighting Variation

And for contrast, a different IBL setup:

Gray Lady

As hinted in my previous image post, here's a Gray Lady skin texture with better detail:

It's based on the bump map textures that were included with the Girl 4 variant of Victoria 4. The conventional wisdom is that you're NOT supposed to make a bump map by desaturating a skin texture to black and white, but that's apparently exactly what they did. Worked out well for my purposes, though. And it has more details-- freckles, etc.-- than the final Girl 4 skintone maps did. Yay!

A fisheye shot of the wacky environment emulated by the image-based lighting used above:

Future Shot

I encountered an old lighting test scene from about three years ago, and decided to tidy it up for a post. I'm not sure why Robust Future Lady is standing in front of those curved sheets of plastic, or what the floaty heat lamp is for, but evidently she's just made a prediction regarding the trajectory of that shot she's holding in her right hand.

This is also an early version of a fairly neutral gray complexion, suitable for receiving illumination effects. I've since found a nifty alternative hidden within one of the first characters I obtained from DAZ...

2013 Noir Jam

Stumpy

Jaxtraw was trying to figure out what was going on with the proportions in his sketch of two wrestlers, so I called in two lightly-customized Vicki 4 figures (one-quarter The Girl 4, mostly) and attempted to recreate the poses-- an interesting, but also slow and painstaking process. The conversation came around to what constitutes "stumpy" proportions, so naturally this joke came to mind:

Click on the image to zoom in (960x1440.)

And here's a different camera angle, to show more of the story. These are standard DAZ Studio renders, using the 3Delight engine. One distant light for the setting sun, with UberEnvironment providing the ambient occlusion illumination. There's also an area light behind the big drumhead thing, emulating the light that would be expected to bounce off it in this setup.

Click on the image to zoom in (960x1440.)

Two freebie props used here deserve special mention. The Super Torus from Morphography appears three times-- a wonderfully adaptable item. And the out-of-focus blob in the background (covering the seam between the sky backdrop and the ground plane) is an instance of the aptly-named Versatile Tentacle by Tempest.

A Peppermint Scheme

The pinup trend continues...

Click on the image to zoom in (1000x1600.)

A remarkably standard Victoria 4, with AprilYSH's Portia hair in a peppermint-candy color scheme. While this hairstyle didn't work well for the previous character, it looked too darned cute here not to render.

WIP: Another Angle

A view from another camera angle. I'm not sure why Blochi sometimes includes individually recognizable humans in his backgrounds, but to be on the safe side, I went Magritte on the skateboarder. Also a bit Vandaleyes, if you zoom in (800x1600.)

Again, the background & lighting are derived from Blochi's "Etnies Skatepark" Smart IBL set.

WIP: New Character

Work-In-Progress: a study of a new character.
Click on the image to zoom in (600x1600.)

Background & lighting are derived from Blochi's "Etnies Skatepark" Smart IBL set.

Susan and her Herdbeast

Susan and her trusty companion relax in the sunshine.
Click on the image to zoom in (1500x1500.)