Category Archives: CGI

We Are the Dreamers of the Dream (sky grid update)

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After my first experience making a puzzle I decided to update the artwork before printing another test puzzle.  I always thought the sky was a little plain in this piece especially since the sky reflected in the chrome sphere has a planet and clouds.  The plain blue at the top was also more difficult to piece together as a puzzle.  To give it some detail I decided to put a grid across the entire sky.  I think thematically this new grid shows that the image reflected in the sphere is actually a future dream.  The actual metaverse environment isn’t built yet.

I actually went all the way back into DAZ Studio to place the grid in 3D space and re-render the entire scene from the beginning.  I also took the chance to re-adjust the camera slightly to give more room around the edge of the frame for print bleed.  Final color correction is also slightly different.  If you’re re-doing it anyway, why not fix the things that bug you?

I also took the opportunity to fix another problem that I previously didn’t know how to fix and which has driven me insane since I first rendered the image.  In the original you’ll notice that the left armpit of her “space samurai” outfit is screwed up.

That’s because the clothing mesh is getting confused between the arm and the torso which are colliding.  I was able to grab the clothing mesh with a DAZ Studio plugin and pull it back toward the torso.  I actually had to stretch it quite a ways into the center of the character like a rubber band to get this small area to look better.

These changes were relatively small but I think they make a big difference.  Can’t wait to see this new version printed out.

Created in DAZ Studio 4.22
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Capture One

Jigsaw Puzzle Art

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When I was a kid I had a few jigsaw puzzles that were in cans – Batman, Superman, and the Six Million Dollar Man.  One day my wife CAT and I cracked open one of the cans and started “puzzeling.”

The first two were easy.  They only had 80 pieces and were made for little kids.  The 6 Million Dollar Man puzzle was different.  It was 200 pieces.  That took a bit longer, especially all the rocks.

What was supposed to be a lark turned into an enjoyable, relaxing time together for a few days.  All we needed now was another puzzle, but what?

The New Puzzle

I decided to try printing my own artwork as a puzzle.  I didn’t tell CAT because I wanted it to be a surprise.

First I needed to find a printing service that could make the puzzle.  One thing that was important to me was to preserve the integrity of my art.  I didn’t want to crop the picture just to fit the shape of a puzzle. I also wanted high quality printing and a professional presentation that had a box with a picture.  After a week of research online (there’s a million places that do this kind of thing) I settled on createjigsawpuzzles.com.  I didn’t know anything about them but they had a large selection of sizes and options.

What’s in a picture?

Next… Which of my artwork to choose?  I knew something like this…

…would be an absolute nightmare as a puzzle!  I didn’t want to go thru the torture of piecing together solid color backgrounds.  I needed something with more overall detail.  I considered this:

…and even this:

…but finally settled on this:

…because the background had several different distinct areas.

Choices

I decided to make an 18″ x 24″ puzzle because that was a 3×4 aspect ratio, same as the image.

There were quite a few options on the order page, several types of cardboard, printing and surface finishes.  I selected something called Eska premium cardboard for the backing, which is made from recovered paper.

I wasn’t sure whether to get a gloss or matte finish on the pieces.  I went back and forth on this for awhile.  I finally went with gloss because the ground in the image is black and gloss would increase the contrast overall.

In my research I found that the most popular puzzle size was 1000 pieces.  As beginners, that’s kind of scary.  Neither of us had ever done a jigsaw puzzle that large before.  I thought we might be able to handle 500 pieces however.  That’s only two and a half times the Six Million Dollar Man puzzle.

I selected a custom box option which meant I had to download a template, design the box from scratch in Adobe Illustrator, and upload the result.  That took an extra day.  I made the box simple with just a large picture on the top and clean text on the side.

Finally I uploaded all my artwork and finished the order.  Then I waited.

The Waiting

It took a week for the puzzle to be made.  Then it had to ship from the factory in Dongguan, China (near Hong Kong) all the way to New York. I had already been working on it for several weeks and I was anxious to see it.  When I got the tracking number on a Friday the estimated delivery was Monday, only three days later.  …From the other side of the planet??  I didn’t believe that estimate, but I hoped it was true!

I started obsessively refreshing the UPS tracking page every few hours all weekend.  The package left China at 2 AM Saturday morning.  It stopped in Anchorage, Alaska (USA!) Saturday afternoon.  It arrived in Louisville, Kentucky (East coast!) the next day in time for Sunday brunch.  Then it landed in Newark, NJ (Local airport!) on Sunday evening!  The rest of the journey was by truck though.  Would it really arrive at my house in less than 24 hours?

The next morning at 4 AM the package was sorting at the local UPS facility.  …And “out for delivery” on the local truck at 10:20 AM!!  I couldn’t believe it!

In anticipation of its arrival “by 7 PM,” I changed the picture that was hanging on the wall in the kitchen where we do our puzzles.  I put up a large metal print of the same artwork that’s on the puzzle.  I still didn’t tell CAT what was going on though.  I just said I wanted to look at something different.

It’s Here!

The package arrived around six PM and I sat CAT down at the kitchen table and handed her the puzzle box.  She was surprised.  It looked great, very professional.

The box came shrink wrapped in plastic, just like a store bought puzzle.  It was a nice matte white and the picture on top was sharp.  The pieces inside were in a plastic bag.

The Eska cardboard backing on the pieces was thick and stiff. These were nice puzzle pieces.  The printing was excellent, sharp and bright, in some ways better than my large metal print hanging on the wall.

Assembly

As we started putting the puzzle together I separated the blue sky pieces and put them in bowls.  We figured that the sky would be the hardest and best left until last.

Over the next few days we spent a few minutes in the evening piecing different sections together.

The figure came together first.   The pieces interlocked well and while slightly loose, didn’t pull apart when you slid the sections around.

Things progressed smoothly from section to section.  It was coming together nicely.  The image looked really good.

I always put my name on my artwork that I post online, but never on things I print. For this puzzle I decided to add my name to the plain black pieces at the bottom to add extra detail.  It helped.

CAT took a picture of our progress and posted it to facebook.

As I expected, the separate sections of the background made everything easier.  The mountains and horizon fell into place relatively early.  The grid pattern on the ground acted as a gradient to help place most of those pieces.  At the very bottom the thick white lines were easy to assemble with only a few solid black pieces between them.

The Blue Pieces

All that was left at this point was the dreaded plain blue sky.  There’s a slight gradient which helped a little bit but it was still the most difficult part and took the longest.  Basically you had to find the pieces by shape.

This area was a good test of the puzzle cut though.  The company website said all the pieces were unique and we found this to be true.  If it was the wrong piece it didn’t fit… and we tried a lot of wrong pieces 🙂

Done!

I wish I could get a better picture of the final puzzle.  Because it’s glossy it’s hard to light without reflections, and side lighting just brings out the puzzle lines.  It really looks great in person.  The printing is very sharp.  The grid lines on the ground are visibly distinct all the way to the horizon.  The colors are great.

I’m very pleased.  I think I might print another one and try the matte finish just to see how different it is.  I also want to pick out a few more of my art pieces and make more puzzles.  Maybe we’ll even try one with 1000 pieces!

Is Electronic Love to Blame? (16×9)

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I’ve worked on this CGI scene longer than any other.  I’ve spent years obsessing about every detail.  I’m sure I’ve sucked the life out of it many times.  I hope there’s still something good left in it but I can’t tell anymore.  The only thing I can do is to let it go and put it out there hoping there’s still some life in it.

This is the second iteration of this piece.  The first one, which you can read all about here, was square, with a grey background, and a different dress.  I also added a pierced heart necklace to this new wide version.  Those are the big differences.  There are tons of other small changes.

So, why a new version?  Because I wasn’t satisfied with the old one.  (Actually I grew to hate it.)  For some reason this piece is an ongoing obsession.  Even now I’m looking at the image above and wondering if the background is too dark, contemplating changing it again before posting this blog post.  But I’m not going to.  I have to let this one go and be done with it.  Next step is to print it on metal like I’ve done with several of my other pieces and see how it comes out.  If it needs tweaking after that, then I will, but for now, it’s done!

Color correction this time is in Capture One.  I abandoned Lightroom a few years ago.  I’m not interested in paying a subscription for my professional software.  Buying a perpetual license for Capture One is actually more money but it’s worth it.  If at some point I decide I can’t afford to upgrade anymore I won’t lose access to all my images and all the work I’ve done on them.  Don’t ever let a company and their tools act as gatekeeper to your work.  — I’m also liking the color correction controls a bit better in Capture One, thought Lightroom wasn’t bad.

Created in DAZ Studio 4.22
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Capture One

White Ring

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After creating my Red Ring CGI piece and having trouble with it being quite dim, I went back and changed a few things in the original project and re-rendered with a white ring of light.  I wanted this version to be different, not in silhouette, so I added an extra light to shine on the robot as well.

The robot is actually the same color as in the Red Ring image, except that I made the surface less glossy.  I also added a robot head with one circular eye.

Created in DAZ Studio 4.21
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Capture One

Is This The Life We Really Want?

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I’m still trying to make some of my CGI art look like it’s from a motion picture.  What makes something look cinematic?  Color?  Framing?  I’m still not sure.  That’s what I was experimenting with in this portrait – a real person, in a real location, in a movie…  A simple moment from a larger scene.

The setup was simple: face, hair, jacket, background.  I set the camera lens at 100mm, 16×9 aspect ratio and found a good closeup.  I messed with the depth of field quite a bit to get the background soft but not too soft (this isn’t a DSLR movie.)

The green line in this screenshot shows how the camera (on the left) is focused precisely on the nearest eye and the two planes show the narrow depth of field on the face.  The other eye is slightly out f focus.

The blue in the background is the soft blue backlight. I used only three lights, a key light on the face, the back light, and a light in the window.  (And the eyes light up too.)  No fill light.

This screenshot shows how the initial render looked before color correction. It’s quite dark which means it takes longer to render but I liked the quality of light so I went for it.  It took about five and a half hours to render the final file at 10800 x 6075.    I stopped it at 4277 samples and 92 percent convergence even though my minimum is usually 95 percent and/or 5000 samples.  It didn’t look like baking it any more would make a difference.

The whites of the eyes ended up quite dark in the render so I brightened them up in post.  The eyes are a really old product and I don’t think I updated the reflectivity on the sclera quite right to render properly in iray.

I also pulled the background completely black because I thought the muddy dark shapes distracted from the face.

This is the part of the post that I feel I really should evaluate the final result… then I decide not to say anything because I can only see the mistakes.  After a few months not looking at it, I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out if I love it or hate it, but not now…

Created in DAZ Studio 4.21
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Capture One

Red Ring

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The vision in my head:

An intensely bright thin red ring light in the distance, a woman robot in silhouette, on an abstract shiny metal plate surface, hyper realistic, cinematic, dense atmosphere

To manifest that vision I created a floor plane with a metal shader and another black plane as the backdrop.  A simple torus primitive served as the red ring light.

I wanted the red ring to frame the figure and at first I tried placing it way in the distance, but I found that it dipped below the floor plane and I wanted to see the full ring.  Moving it closer and scaling it down created the same composition with the added bonus of shining a strong rim light onto the robot figure.

The shapes in the background are part of an abstract model that actually goes all the way around the landscape.  I found a part I liked and buried it in the fog to create a little texture in the background.

I spent quite some time adjusting the surfaces on the floor and the robot.  The entire scene is lit by the red ring.  The only other light is in the eyes.  The color and reflectivity of the surfaces really determined the quality of the image.  I wanted the floor to be shiny and reflective but not blown out.  I also wanted the robot to be in shadow.  A chrome or white surface didn’t work so the robot is actually shiny metallic dark grey and black.

Ultimately the original render was quite dark.  I felt the quality of the light was more important than the brightness.  I could always brighten it up later.

It took about seven and a half hours to render because of the fog and the dim light.  (Bright light renders a lot faster in Iray.)  I also rendered it at 14400 x 7200 so I could print it four feet wide and hang it on the wall if I really wanted to.  I’m crazy that way…

This screenshot shows the brightness of the original render just as it finished baking for seven hours.

When color correcting I brought the brightness up quite a bit while trying to maintain the quality of the light. The problem was all the detail was in the red channel since all the light was pure red.  This left even a brightened image still dark.  This is all the brightness I could get out of the original color correction:

Later I went back and tried a few other things to brighten it up more.  I figured if I could get the ring to blow out (overexpose) and become white It would still look OK and be much brighter.  My color correction software, Capture One, is quite good and of course that means it doesn’t clip the high end even if you push it quite far.  I tried all sorts of crazy things, experimenting, just to see what the software could do.

When I was screwing around with a black and white version I hit upon something…

I found that if I messed with the top end of the LUMA channel on the CURVES tool and the top end of the RGB channel on the LEVELS tool they interacted and did exactly what I wanted, blowing out the top of the red channel.  (The LUMA channel in the Curves tool somehow only adjusts contrast without changing saturation.  It’s not the same as adjusting the full RGB.)

You can see the way I set both tools at the bottom of this screenshot:

This brightened up the entire image quite a bit and It’s how I created the final color correction.

Created in DAZ Studio 4.21
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Capture One

Music in the Metaverse

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I think my CGI images tend to look better when I have something in closeup.  It avoids the “medium shot of a character just standing there” that I struggle with.  For this piece I started with an extreme close up and added cool robot eyes and dramatic flowing hair.

I also wanted a graphic background, something flat, technical.  I have an ongoing issue with backgrounds.  I get creatively stuck and I don’t know what to put back there.  I end up trying scores of different things and nothing works.

What I ended up using here was actually a huge Tron like cityscape.  The shapes and lines are actually building size structures seen from the top.  This is what the cityscape looks like normally.

The entire environment is standing on it’s side waaaaaay far away.  I turned on and off different elements depending on what looked good.  It ended up being a real hassle having the background so far away though.  Making adjustments took a long time.  (I went back and figured it out.  it’s 1.8 miles away!  …or 3 kilometers)  I should have scaled down the whole thing and moved it closer.

I named it Music in the Metaverse because the graphic lines in the background ended up looking similar to a music staff.

Created in DAZ Studio 4.20
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Capture One

Can AI draw a Red Ring of Light?

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Recently I was experimenting with the Midjourney AI art engine.  I saw an image in my mind of a robot backlit by a red ring-light.  I typed it up as a prompt:

An intensely bright thin red ring light in the distance, a woman robot in silhouette, on an abstract shiny metal plate surface, hyper realistic, cinematic, dense atmosphere, intense, dramatic, hyper detailed, –ar 2:1 –v 5

I expected to get something like the image above.  That’s not what happened.  For the next hour I tried to get Midjourney to build something even close to what I envisioned. I typed and re-typed the prompt, changing the way I described the image.  Most of the time I couldn’t even get a red light ring.Midjourney kept trying to make a “sun” with a red sky.  There are round portal structures, some even reflecting red light, but almost none of them light up.  The light’s coming from somewhere else.

What I asked for was simple.  Why is this so hard?

I’m guessing it has to do with the data set the AI was trained on.  I bet there aren’t that many images of red light rings in there, maybe none at all.

One of the things that frustrates me about AI art is the way most things turn out looking generic, like everything you’ve seen a million times before.  This makes sense of course, because that’s how it works.  It studies what everything looks like and then create from that.  It’s almost a creation by consensus.  An unusual Red Ring isn’t part of the equation.  I could probably eventually get to what I wanted if I kept trying and perhaps made the prompts much longer describing every detail.  Maybe.

Or I could do what I did and create what I saw in my mind with CGI.

Has this put me off AI art?  No.  Every tool is good at what it’s good at, and it’s not at what it’s not.  I was looking for the edge of what this new tool could do (because that’s where the art is) and I found it.  There’s nothing really interesting right here but there’s a lot more to discover…

We Are the Dreamers of the Dream

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Building the Metaverse to match the real world.

I made this CGI image about a year ago when the Metaverse was the shiny new tech thing.  Most people probably won’t get what it’s about so I’ll explain it, even though David Lynch would probably scold me for doing that.

The grey and chrome sphere are tools that special effects artists use to match 3D computer graphics to real world photography.  If you are shooting a film for example, and part of the scene will be CGI, you shoot a few extra feet of the environment with someone holding a grey and chrome sphere.  The chrome sphere reflects the entire environment and that reflected image can be “unwrapped” and placed as a dome over the CGI so the same light and colors shine on the computer generated elements as in the real scene.  (The chrome ball is actually an old fashioned “poor man’s” way of doing this.  There are 360 degree cameras now that can actually just take a picture of the entire environment right on the set.)

The grey sphere shows the quality of light shining on a specific place in the shot.

This image is about building a computer generated Metaverse that people can walk around in, just like real life.  It’s the dream of constructing a Metaverse as well as the Metaverse as a dreamscape… the birth of a new alternate world.

OK, enough of that…

The main difficulty I had in creating this image stems from the fact that the reflection in the chrome ball is actually the real reflection of the CGI environment.  It’s not a composite.  The mountains actually go all the way around the environment.  The grid floor goes out in all directions.  The “planet” and the “sun” seen in the ball are on the HRDI dome over the scene that is creating the ambient light.  The dome had to be lined up so the “planet” reflected in the sphere correctly.  The mountains had to be rotated in such a way that the peaks behind her and the ones in the chrome ball both looked good.  The main light in the scene is the keylight on the character which can be seen in the chrome sphere as a bright rectangle in the upper left of the sphere.  I could have removed that in post but I left it in because that’s the point.

The metaverse was supposed to be the future of everything.  Facebook even changed their name to Meta.  Now AI is the new thing.  Will the metaverse be created?  Will AI create the metaverse for us?  Who knows…

Created in DAZ Studio 4.20
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Capture One

Invasion!

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It’s been some time since I’ve posted any of my 3D creations.  This is actually something I started several years ago but never finished.  I had trouble with the lighting but it all came together recently when I decided to make it a night invasion.

Created in DAZ Studio 4.21
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Capture One