Tag Archives: female

Is Electronic Love to Blame?

This piece was a marathon to create. A perpetual artistic labor. Unending. Frustrating. We had remodeled our kitchen and saved a space on the wall for an art piece, complete with it’s own special spotlight. The kitchen had taken over a year to complete and this art piece had to live up to that. It needed to be perfect. Constantly second guessing my creative choices, it took me a year to finish this, sometimes setting it aside, then diving back in to see if I could perfect it. Today I’m finally calling it done and I’m presenting it here hoping I haven’t completely strangled the emotional life out of it.

Some of the initial criteria: It was designed as a large piece, three feet square, so it needed to be extremely detailed. It had to match the modern aesthetic of our new kitchen. Colors needed to be white and gray with a blue accent. It needed to be bright, not the dark moody work I usually gravitate towards. I wanted two characters – an android and a cyborg – in love yet troubled, going through the same ups and downs we all do. …And it needed to be good. That was the most important criteria. It needed to be good.

This is an in-progress test render from early on. As you can see the original composition was wider. The plan was to have the android’s right arm on her waist and she would be gently touching his metal fingers.

What to wear and what hair? I obsessed over endless choices.

I tried many skin textures for the girl. I wanted to get the softness just right so it would contrast nicely with the hard metal of the android.

Maybe she should be an alien? Blue is the accent color so it makes sense. OK, maybe it’s too dark…

Angry robot face changed to gentle face. I needed to get some humanity in this android.

I eventually decided the girl needed bare shoulders to clearly see the cybernetic arm connection. I wanted it to be clear that she was human and only her arm was mechanical. This is also the reason I decided to ditch the idea of “space girl” type clothing which tends to be aggressive and hard. She needed to be soft, the soft spot between the hard metal of her arm and the android.

I finally decided to go with this “cold shoulder” dress. When I was working to make it blue, I changed the original cloth to a knit fabric because my wife CAT is a knitter. That just made sense to me.

Eventually I realized that I had set the camera too far away, and moved in closer. This always happens. It’s always better after I move in. It’s just part of my process I guess.

Adjusting for the new composition, I tried moving the robots right hand up to her shoulder. It ended up too creepy though. Trying to get the sharp metal fingers to show some sensitivity was proving difficult. It also fouled up the clean skin / machine connection I wanted for her cybernetic arm. I eventually moved the android’s right hand behind her back out of sight and concentrated on getting the left hand in the correct position. It took me three tries to get the left arm to look relaxed and gentle.

I also spent a tremendous amount of time trying to get the android fingers positioned just right so that they didn’t look like they were gouging the girl’s arm, yet at the same time, catching the light in a nice way. Skin against machine was becoming a major theme apparently. Same with the cybernetic fingers and her lips. I actually moved the camera and lengthened the girl’s neck at one point so you could see more of her mouth.

Then, of course I second guessed myself and pulled the shot back to re-visit the original concept of the hand around the waist. Worked on that for awhile but thankfully came to my senses. Maybe I’ll revisit this wider shot if I do a different version with a vertical aspect ratio.

I only needed three lights to illuminate the scene. A key from the front doing most of the work. A hair light from the top that was also doubling as a fill light. And a spot on the gray background plane. I created another tiny plane just out of frame above the android to cut down the reflection on his white bald head.

The final Iray render took about two hours at 10800 x 10800 resolution. I was surprised. That’s very fast. I’ve had renders at this resolution go ten hours or more. I’m guessing the plain background and the overall brightness of the scene helped.

Color correcting in Lightroom I tried to bring out the hardness of the machine and the softness of the skin.

I lightened up the girl’s eyes and obsessed over everything for quite some time. Overall I brightened everything up and made it punch as much as possible.

While color correcting I noticed a bizarre reflection coming off one of the poorly formed low-rez “screws” on the cybernetic arm. It had something to do with the normal map which wasn’t doing much on this surface. The screws were created with the displacement map. Not sure what was going on.

Anyway, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it in DAZ Studio without changing the character of the rest of the arm surface so I just used the spot remover in lightroom.

So what do you think? Did I over think it and create something stilted? Or did I continually refine it and make it great? I can’t tell anymore.

Next step: print it and see what it looks like on the wall…

Created in DAZ Studio 4.12
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom

Despair

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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

I Reveal My Innermost Self

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While I was working on a previous art piece called Quirky Girl, I stumbled through a wormhole and accidentally created this:

I stopped everything and rendered it out immediately! Enjoy!

I Reveal My Innermost Self

Created in DAZ Studio 4.11
Rendered with Iray
Color Correction in Lightroom

Figures used:
HPFK Lenora for Star 2.0 and Aiko 7
System 50 for G3F
Classic Bob Hair for G3+8F

Quirky Girl

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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

Science Remembers

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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

Don’t Dream It, Be It

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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

Aiko 6 and 7 Comparison

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Aiko 6 is one of my favorite DAZ character models. I’ve been waiting for some time for Aiko 7 to come out and yesterday was the day. Here is a quick comparison render.

As I expected they changed the character’s proportions and made her more realistic. This is a trend at Daz with the new models. I think it’s a mistake especially with characters that have a toon, or in this case, anime flavor. It bleeds the style out of the models and makes them bland. What’s the point of CGI without a little artistic flare? If you want realism just take a photograph.

I do like the new eyes. Aiko 6’s eyes look droopy sometimes, like here:

Of course if the new model were exactly the same then it wouldn’t be new. Also, you can always change the proportions of any model so it’s not too hard to dial the anime back. What do you think?

Who Are You?

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Prints are available on my Deviant Art profile:
http://ericsusch.deviantart.com/art/Who-Are-You-612998410

This is an update of the first CGI image I ever completed in DAZ Studio. Back then I didn’t know how to do lighting so I moved the character into the lights that were already pre-built into the set. This is the original:

It took me days to place the character properly and learn how to aim a camera and render. The image is dark and I’ve grown to hate it as I’ve become more experienced. And so, like George Lucas, I decided to go back and change my earlier work to add new characters and “make it better.”

Back to the Beginning

I loaded up the old project and continued right where I left off. As I re-familiarized myself with everything it became obvious how little I knew at the time. It was interesting to see how I solved problems back then. I’m really deep into all the technical details now and the way I work today isn’t necessarily better, just more complicated. It was surprising.

I knew I wanted to add more light and make everything brighter, but what else? I hate pieces where people just stand there so I added another character for the girl to react to. She’s looking out a doorway so I put a little alien guy there who is startled by her.

I tried many camera angles to get the best interaction of the two characters but eventually decided to keep it wide and head on similar to the original. You need to see the distance between them for it to work. These are some of the test angles.

The last one isn’t bad but you can’t tell the alien is a tiny guy. I think you need to see that to understand he is scared. The middle one’s good too but you don’t get the sense of him coming around the corner.

Straight on wide shot seems the best but I still think it’s boring and too far away. Will have to work on that in another piece. For now it will have to do.

A Brighter Future

If I knew how to use an ambient light back when I originally rendered this scene it would have looked much better. I’m a big fan of the Advanced Ambient Light by Age of Armour. It’s the easiest fill light I’ve ever used and it renders fast. While I was playing around with it, I tried something new. I set three ambient lights in the scene. One was set to light everything overall like I usually do. The other two were placed very close to the characters with the light limited to their immediate area. That gave me the ability to adjust the brightness of each character and the background separately.

It worked out very well. The light from the stairs and the blue back light from the windows were still the main lights but the ambient lights in this configuration allowed for very fine brightness adjustment during the final tweaking. I’m going to use this technique whenever I work in 3Delight.

The Small Stuff Is Always the Hardest

The most difficult part of this re-imagining was actually the back wall. The set had a window that looked like a portal or hatch right where the lines on the floor converge at the back. It drew your eye right past the two characters to the window. I had to eliminate that panel and take a different wall from another part of the set and replace it. The other wall had a larger window that extended behind the corner so it wasn’t as distracting. Finding the right panel to use took some time. Adjusting the glossiness of the window and darkening it with a semi-transparent black plane helped too.

Know Yourself

After struggling with the complexity of Iray for the past year it was a joy to build something in 3Delight again. You forget how simple it is. And that’s the key, isn’t it. Simplicity. Working in this old project, I was surprised how much I was able to do originally with how little I knew. I didn’t have a lot of options – not a lot of knowledge about surfaces, materials, render settings, shaders, UV maps, morphs, or even lights. I didn’t have all those things in my head slowing down my creative process. I just did it whatever way I could figure out in the moment. I’ve forgotten what that’s like.

I encourage everyone to do this at least once. Open up a really old project and see how you used to work. See how you used to think. You may learn something from yourself.

Created in DAZ Studio 4.5 and 4.9
Rendered with 3Delight
Color Correction in Lightroom

Figures used:
Victoria 6
Liquid Halo On Sky 16 for Genesis
Grey Alien for Genesis 3 Female
Sci-Fi Corridor 2013

Color Correction Test

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For most of the films and television shows I’ve worked on the goal of color correction was to make the picture look technically correct and pretty – healthy skin tones, bright colors, maybe a bit “hyper real” but still normal. Anything that degraded the image was bad and needed to be fixed. What I’m trying here is relatively new to me. I want something more stylized for this animation. I’ve thrown in some grain and even a faint hint of scan lines to roughen up the super clean CGI. I’ve also washed out the skin tones in favor of the blue and orange. For comparison here is the original render before color correction. (Click both to embiggen.)

I’ve been using the CC tools in Lightroom for most of my CGI work to date but since this is an animation I’m using the tools in Adobe Premiere. I’m finding it much harder. I love the CC tools in Lightroom. They’re more intuitive than the controls in Premiere or photoshop. I wish Adobe would create Lightroom style CC tools for all their products.

If this were a still image I probably would have gone a lot further with the grunge but it has to work as an animation. It has to look good in motion and on all the other close-ups and wide shots too. I’m pleased with it right now although I’m a little concerned that the grain will be lost when the video is finally compressed and uploaded to youtube. We’ll have to see what happens.

Created in DAZ Studio 4.8
Rendered with 3Delight
Color Correction in Adobe Premiere

Figures used:
Aiko 6
XTech for Genesis 2 Female
Modular Sci-Fi Kit 01 + 02

Animating a Complex Camera Move In DAZ Studio With keyMate and graphMate

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This is the video that goes with my article in the December issue (#18) of DS Creative magazine. My in-depth tutorial was based on this shot. Check out the article on page 72.

I originally developed this shot to test a complex keyframed camera movement in DAZ Studio. So far it looks like the DAZ software will be able to do the kind of animation I want to attempt.

eric susch

scifi · film · animation

Tag Archives: female

Is Electronic Love to Blame?

Despair

I Reveal My Innermost Self

Quirky Girl

Science Remembers

Don’t Dream It, Be It

Aiko 6 and 7 Comparison

Who Are You?

Back to the Beginning

A Brighter Future

The Small Stuff Is Always the Hardest

Know Yourself

Color Correction Test

Animating a Complex Camera Move In DAZ Studio With keyMate and graphMate