After George Floyd was killed and a week of protesting around the world, this was how I felt. I created a TikTok video where the camera cranes down from a fire escape and eventually tilts up on this character. You can see the video here: Despair on TikTok
After a bit of re-adjusting in DAZ Studio I came up with this high rez still version of the final frame. I rendered it at 10000 x 7500 pixels so I could print it out big and hang it on the wall.
Shadow areas take a long time to render in Iray, especially if the canvas is large. With two Titan RTX graphic cards continuously screaming at 79 degrees Celsius, this image took fourteen hours to render. Not the longest render I’ve ever done (that would be 48 hours) but still a good exercise for my new computer workstation.
Color correction in lightroom was relatively simple, essentially just brightening up everything so it pops and so all the shadow areas don’t print out too dark.
Created in DAZ Studio 4.12
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
update: 100,000 views in 90 days on YouTube! Not bad. Lots of comments on the video though. Here are answers to some of the most common questions:
The car is dual motor (AWD) with the extend range battery, auto pilot, and 19 inch wheels.
We stopped in Binghamton twice to charge up. It took about twenty minutes each time. The first time was when the battery was lower the cost was $8.64. The second time on the way back it was $3.60. (When your battery is relatively full the charging goes much slower.) You don’t need a credit card. The charger recognizes your car and bills your Tesla account directly. The price shows up on the screen inside the car. 6:47
We were following the Roscoe super charger construction for a long time. The only information on the Tesla page for completion was “forth quarter 2018.” Since it was the end of the year and we were stopping anyway we gave it a shot.
The video was mostly shot with a sony a6000 with a sony ecm-xyst1m mic on top. Some of it was shot with a GoPro when the sony batteries died.
This piece started off as a study of volumetric light. I wanted to practice creating an atmosphere in a large open space. I was also determined to make some art with a male figure instead of always using females. I ended up doing none of that! Hurtling down the creative path I diverged several times and ended up with an extreme close up of a toon anime girl. That’s the way it goes sometimes.
The base shape is a toon doll like character that was designed to be goth with lots of “broken china doll” features.
I tried some of the “broken” materials as well as the gothic makeup on the character but eventually moved on to other materials from elsewhere. One of those experiments lead to a happy accident and created a bizarre horrifying variation which ultimately became a completely new piece of art. …But that’s a post for another day.
For this piece I eventually layered a more human material across the mesh and found these interesting eyes that look like they were made of brush bristles. They appeared realistic and fake at the same time. I wanted those eyes to be the focus.
I set up a simple layout with the camera close on the face and only one light on the character. I spent a lot of time working on the quirky expression because I knew that would be where the emotion came from.
Even though the shot is essentially flat, I set up a limited depth of field on the camera anyway. The effect is subtle – the hair in the back, the neck, and the ears are a little soft – but I think it gives it a little something.
Color correction in lightroom was fairly straightforward. I bumped up the saturation of the blue channel to bring out the eyes. Simple.
Quirky Girl
Created in DAZ Studio 4.11
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
HPFK Lenora for Star 2.0 and Aiko 7
Tamara Character and Hair for G3F
Classic Bob Hair for G3+8F
It’s the future and everyone is bald (of course.) Heads are bigger because brains are smarter and dreams are infinite. This is a simple portrait from the day after tomorrow.
A girl, a camera, and a wall were all I needed to create this piece. …and lights. I needed lights too.
I threw a blue/green spot on the back wall to match her costume and eyes. The limited color pallet made her face pop.
At one point I tried changing the background and put her on the bridge of a spaceship but it ended up too busy so I scrapped it.
All it needed was minor color correction in lightroom. Not much at all. The final is essentially what was rendered out of DAZ studio.
What do you think? Is this our future?
Science Remembers
Created in DAZ Studio 4.11
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
Brenna for Ophelia 7
Sci-Fi Lieutenant Outfit for G3F
Wicked Fantasy Morphs for G3F
My eternal quest for the perfect CGI avatar continues. I’ve grown tired of my current avatar artwork. People think it’s a picture of me and I have to explain that it’s CGI. I need something that doesn’t look human. Perhaps something creepy…
What to do?
Mannequins and faceless people have always freaked me out ever since I was young. I attribute that to this scene from Star Trek…
…and the Anything People on Sesame Street.
A freaky “no face” avatar would be cool and no one would think it was supposed to be me. Perfect!
Building a Mannequin
I started with a faceless character model I had and I replaced the skin like surface with a different shader. I experimented with many, many different surfaces trying to find something cool.
I tried cloth, wood, metal, rock, plastic, glass, grunge, paint, rubber, wax, anything I could think of.
I tried to avoid chrome because I had done that several times in the past but in the end I caved, because I really liked this particular dusty anodized aluminum surface.
I posed the figure tipping his hat with a 1960s fedora. I wanted him to be creepy and friendly at the same time. A sloppy overcoat and loose necktie seemed to fit so I added that too.
Give that man a hand
The fingers of the alien no-face character were creepy long, which looks OK but I like to make everything difficult so I decided to try and replace the hand with one that was human sized.
To do that I had to add another entire human sized figure and position the hand in the same place, grabbing the hat. It took awhile but I got it into position. Then I “turned off” (made invisible) the rest of that human character. For the no-face character I turned off the hand. The sleeve of the jacket was just long enough to hide the fact that the arm and hand didn’t meet exactly correctly. Everything came together when I layered the same aluminum shader on the human hand.
Dramatic Light
The lighting was difficult because of the reflective metal on the face. I ended up with a lot more spotlights than usual for a simple head shot just to get the reflections right. There are seven spot lights on the character and one blue spot on the background, which is just a gray wall panel.
After rendering it out I pumped up the color a little in Lightroom…
…and uploaded the avatar to Facebook.
Unfortunately I saw almost immediately that you couldn’t tell what the picture was at very small sizes. It was the high contrast lighting, the same problem I had before on my first CGI avatar. It looked fine at larger sizes but when it was super tiny the bright shine of the face looked like an unrecognizable white blob on a blue background.
Flat Light
I went back into DAZ Studio and tried to even out the lighting. The best way was to set up a few more lights to fill in the dark spots. I didn’t like it as much when I was done but I rendered it out anyway just to test it on facebook. This is the “flat light” version.It worked better at small sizes as you can see but still not as well as other avatars I’ve created. Humans are programed to recognize faces easily, which is why facebook can make their avatars so small. I’m asking people to recognize “no face” so I guess that’s more difficult.
So it sort of works at the tiny sizes and doesn’t look as good as it could at larger sizes. I guess that makes this avatar attempt a bit of a failure. I still like it though, so I’m going to keep it for a time before I try again. I can also upload the first version to other sites that don’t have such small avatars. What do you think?
Created in DAZ Studio 4.9
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
The Slim Man for Genesis 3 Male
Mec4d PBS Shaders vol.3 for Iray
Amazing Hat
Eldritch Seeker
I’ve been wanting to do an abstract piece for some time. I love the way this came out. I’ll definitely be doing more art like this in the future.
There’s not much to say about this piece. It’s pretty straight forward. The light is from the HDMI which is essentially a gradient with a bright spot that becomes the “sun.” The gradient did create a very slight banding across the sky and I had to bring the piece into photoshop to add some noise to try and smooth it out. That was the only postwork I did in Photoshop. You can still see the banding a bit but it’s much better than it was. You can see the grain actual size behind the mountain in the color correction image if you click to embiggen it.
I tried to make the ground look like ice by playing with the Metallic Flakes Weight setting in the Surfaces tab. All in all I’m very happy with this one.
Created in DAZ Studio 4.9
Rendered with Iray
Minor post in Photoshop
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
Blank Boi
Planet X-3
Mec4d PBS Shaders vol.2 for Iray
Wireframe and Hologram Shaders
This piece started out as a test for some new models that I purchased but I liked the way it looked so I finished it into something a bit more than a test. Unfortunately it ended up as a character just standing there, which I try to avoid. I like more of a story, more action, but this is what it is. I do like the curve of the ship in the background. I suppose that’s something.
This is an early version with different hair and environment. You can also see that the stomach panal on the suit is a lighter color. In the final composition I thought it distracted from the face so I darkened the texture map so that it was closer to the rest of the suit.
I eventually decided she was a pilot so I put her in a hanger bay with a shuttle. I spent a tremendous amount of time going back and forth deciding if the shuttle doors should be open or closed. I even thought of putting another character inside the ship at one point but I wasn’t able to made that work.
I don’t have much to say about this wire frame screen shot other than it looks cool!
I think I left the bottom too dark when I initially did the color correction. I went back later and brightened it up a bit. The original render is 8000×8000 and the light on the skin looks fabulous at native resolution. Very pleased with how the face came out. (click to embiggen)
Created in DAZ Studio 4.9
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
Aiko 7
StarSlayer outfit for G3F
Shuttlestar
Sci-Fi Hanger A
After using my new CGI profile picture on facebook for awhile I started to dislike it. It looked mean, especially at small sizes. Part of the reason I think was the contrasty film-noir lighting. I thought I would try something a little different with softer light. I also turned the face to the side similar to my original photo that I used for years. This is what I came up with.
I started to dislike it as soon as I uploaded it. I thought the face looking away from the text had an aloof quality. I turned things around, used a longer lens so the face wouldn’t be so distorted, and gave him some hair. This is my newest avatar.
I’ve been using it on facebook for about a day now. So far I like it. I’ll upload it to other social media sites and live with it for awhile.
Created in DAZ Studio 4.9
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom
Figures used:
FWSA Aiden HD for Michael 7
Awesome Fantasy Eyes
After George Floyd was killed and a week of protesting around the world, this was how I felt. I created a TikTok video where the camera cranes down from a fire escape and eventually tilts up on this character. You can see the video here: Despair on TikTok 
Color correction in lightroom was relatively simple, essentially just brightening up everything so it pops and so all the shadow areas don’t print out too dark.
Created in DAZ Studio 4.12
