Gold [detail]

Here's a closeup of the previous image, with somewhat more SFW costuming.
Click on the image for an EXTREME closeup (1500x1500.)

Gold

A demo of a "gold" surface setting, using just a "DAZ Studio Default" shader:

This uses a fairly simple recipe:

• Diffuse Color: [ 153, 94, 51 ] at 100% strength. When you use gold paint on a stage prop, a brown undercoat helps it "pop" better, so I figured it might be a good base color here. 8^D*
• Glossiness: 75% -- a medium-sized specular highlight.
• Specular Color: [ 238, 221, 102 ] at 95% strength.  A slightly greenish, desaturated yellow.
• Ambient Color is zeroed out -- don't need any glow-in-the-dark effect here.
• Bump is 100% of a -0.015 to 0.015 range -- fairly gentle. I use a sandy/gritty texture, such as TarmacTiled.jpg by Fran Baker, from her gallery at ShareCG.
• No Displacement or Normal Map.
• Reflection Color: 255, 238, 136 at 91.7% strength.  A desaturated orange-yellow.

Everything else is left at default values.

Lighting for this scene consists of only two lights: one spotlight at 75% intensity, creamy off-white in color, with raytraced shadows, and an UberEnvironment light, for simulated ambient illumination with non-directional occlusion shadows.  A suitable topic for a future post....

The Line-Up [alternate]

Now that's what I call a Magic Mirror...

The Line-Up

Here's a line-up featuring three ladies from the Central Casting department at my studio: Magenta, Susan, and Tracy.  Although I've muddled the measurement function somewhat with the poses, hair, and camera angle, you can get a fair estimate by sighting between the top of each figure and her reflection. On the left, we have the standard Victoria 4 height of about five feet, ten-and-a-half inches. Our cheerful vehicle operator is around five foot seven, while the 1960s-esque blonde bombshell tops out at pretty much exactly five foot nuttin'.

Susan's basic proportions, although obviously dependent on some of the zaftig settings provided by the Morphs++ package, are otherwise remarkably straightforward V4 scaling tweaks.  Overall scale, 90%; hip, 102%; thighs, 87.5%; shins, 91.5%; abdomen, 90%; upper arms, 87%; forearms, 95%. Using Morphs++ again, her head was scaled up by 4 percent, while her feet and hands were scaled down by 2 percent and 4 percent, respectively. If you want to stick with freebies, Les Bentley's "Show Scale Dials V4" should provide what you need. (Just be sure to read his excellent notes.)

Wardrobe Credits:

• Magenta:
  • Evilinnocence's Bra for V4
  • The skirt from Terrymcg's Cosplay Costume 10 (I squished the waistband down a little.)
  • StudioArtVartanian's C-String (not visible from this angle, but a nifty item.)
• Susan:
  • Morphing Glasses (about halfway down that page) by Adam Thwaites
  • Marco's Tied Top for V4
  • Sunny Bikini (well, part of it, anyway) by bucketload3d
• Tracy:
  • SickleYield's Free Wrap Top
  • JoEtzold's S.H.A.D.O. Uniforms ("SD-Pant")

Hair and textures are as credited in their respective original appearances. Although I did expand the bun on Magenta's hair, given the Big Hair proclivities of her companions here...

modpods

This was my first attempt (4th revision) at sculpting some "conforming" clothing, finished in early December. As usual, I've been a bit distracted with other stuff since, but finally got back to genning up some demo pics for the blog.

Connoisseurs of what is, in my humble opinion, the finest erotic science fiction graphic novel on the web will recognize the "re-imagining" [Hollywoodspeak for "blatant remake"] of Lucy Lastique's original costume-- her remarkably convenient ["SPROING!"] Deltiles.

The set is the "Cliffside" mesh by S L F, smoothed slightly, and with a simple planar UV map applied. Its textures are FranOnTheEdge's RustingGreenishPaint for the diffuse channel (tinted a bit), with ConcreteOldLichened as the bump map.


Our model's hair is, once more, by the indispensible Kozaburo -- this is his second Updo, with a texture of my own trial-and-error devising.




Finally, the brilliantly talented Reciecup created the delectable "Doll" skin texture. Again, I applied some tinting-- although the hue was inspired by her other fantasy characters.








I don't suppose there's an amateur photographer alive who could resist using a naturally-occurring frame in the scenery like this...

Hmm.  It does seem a bit dodgy to apply the term "naturally-occurring" to a virtual universe, doesn't it?  But what the heck, it conveys the idea.