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JoePingleton — Ice Queen
#polarbear #snowowl #snowqueen #nataliedormer #joepingleton #irayrender #dazstudiopro410
Published: 2018-01-01 02:58:40 +0000 UTC; Views: 8302; Favourites: 486; Downloads: 99
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Description
Experimenting with creating a custom skin texture from "MRL Mutations" in DAZ Studio and Iray. no post workRelated content
Comments: 182
Thank you,
I am hoping that this year I will stop just making random experiments and try to create some sort of narrative. I am just not much of a writer. I like the concept phase of plotting and character development more than the nut and bolts of dialog. When I was young I always wanted to be a comic strip cartoonist, but couldn't come up with a funny story every day. So I just drew funny characters
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I know the feeling, but how does the saying go, every journey begins with a single step.
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I wish I could have a friend that's a polar bear or most any other animal and have this kind of relationship with it becasue having human beings for friends simply is usually way more work and effort than it's worth. I LOVE friends and helping others but today this country has no idea what being a friend is all about. NO.......it's NOT ALL ABOUT what I can do for you or how much money can I loan you that never EVER gets paid back, or all the rest of the stupid foolish things people are into today.
Great work in this image yuo created. I wish I had your talent.
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Thank you, I have a feeling polar bears would eat me if they could
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Thank you for all you kindness and encouragement
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Nice! Great work on the model's face and expression. You can see the arrogance and condescendence just drooling from her face. Awesome artwork!
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Thank you, "Margie for G3F" has such a great face and the expression is a preset. It really captures Natalie Dormer's quirky expressions
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DUDE! This is great. I really love it. You even managed to work in an owl. 
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Thank you, it started as creating a custom skin texture from "MRL Mutations" lava texture, then I added that sky from "Iray Worlds-Plus" and the landscape. A snow owl and a polar bear are always a fun addition
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Oh man, I just added the MRL Mutations to my wish list. I've never seen that before. It looks awesome.
Seeing the lava version & realizing what you've done in creating a custom texture I can say that you did a great job. That only makes this pic cooler in my opinion. Very nice job.
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Superb Joe love everything about this
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Thank you, it all started out as a test to create a icy skin texture and then I got carried away
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You're welcomed, It turned out fantastic
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Gorgeous!! 
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Thank you, The crown was the part that bugged me the most. It didn't seem to want to look like it was in her hair
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I think it settled well, but can see where you might have had that problem.
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That all looks great. One of the things that stands out to me the most (next to the amazing ice skin) is her expression. That thing with her lips is a tiny little detail, but it makes a big difference.
There's a ton of good stuff in this; I don't know how much of it was all designed to work together, but you made things work together as if they belonged with eachother all along. The snow owl and the bear along with her hand on the bear; the funky crown/plant with bark the same color as her ice blue skin; the lens flare/glare of the sun in the background; the ice veins/growths from the forest maiden outfit.
There is a lot more than you just taking high quality products that are part of a set, adding them all into the same scene, then picking a camera angle. There's nothing wrong with doing that, but you go a lot further than that.
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Thank you for the kind words and encouragement
It all started by trying to make an ice version "MRL Mutations" skin textures. The expression is part of "Margie for G3F" presets and captures Natalie dormer's quirky smirk. I did a lot of kit bashing and merging of elements to try to get the ice branches on her to cover up the naughty bits. Then the owl and polar bear seemed to be needed to give her a sense that she commanded animals. I kept adding stuff until it seemed like something original and unique.
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That is far and away the best character expression preset I've seen; I figured it came as part of a dedicated expressions set.
I can only guess the amount of fiddling required to get her "decent" looking when starting off with an outfit that doesn't include a bottom to it.
I am also impressed by how fast you pull these things off. You put out in a day stuff that would take me a week.
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Thank you for the kind words. I find expressions are the hardest thing to get right. They usually are the first thing that tells me its a render and ruins the realism. Even this one bugs me because her eyes aren't right, but they were not part of the preset. I forgot to do anything with them.
I have been trying a trick to speed things up. I render everything at double the final size and with "Rendering Quality Enabled" off. That way I can use very few iterations (usually less than 100) Then when I output the final image at half size it gets rid of most of the "fireflies". It seems counter intuitive to render larger and less iterations with "Rendering Quality Enabled" off, but I saw this tip on a DAZ Artist Facebook page and it really speeds things up. I have also been using Iray sections to mask out anything off camera so that it's not spending time processing things that don't get rendered. I am also amazed on how much the ghost light's speed up rendering (though I didn't use them in this, only sunlight)
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Her eyes look fine to me, though there is a good chance they would look funny at a higher resolution.
I was actually referring to your set-up/planning time. The doublesize/half size thing is something I use sometimes, but the vast majority of my time is spent positioning models, repositioning, adding, then re-repositioning, then starting all over because I don't like how it feels, etc, and I usually spend 8+ hours trying to find/fit/kitbash an outfit that I am happy with for a character. Of course that was back during Summer vacation when I had nothing to do but play on my computer or go outside, but still. I am a fiddly, undecisive perfectionist. If I have 30 hours to waste, it can work out in my favor and let me pull things that would normally require a lot more purchased products. The rest of the time though, it means spending all day with little to show for it.
"What did you do today?" "I spent 6 hours picking out a dress for a character that I eventually decided not to include in the render because I couldn't find a hairstyle that fit her personality."
You churn out things with thought and creativity in them on a daily basis. It helps a lot that you use some amazing products and hardware that can handle it, but I have seen many artists who simply throw models/props/effects onto the screen and hit 'render' because they haven't yet moved beyond that, and you are NOT one of them. As I said, you put thought into your work. I would not put you on the level of, say, (of course, who is?) but you regularly make amazing images in large part because of how you put things together, and with an incredible amount of variety in your subject matter and atmosphere. Which is another amazing thing about your work. You have skeleton armies at war, goofy single character portraits, renders of wonderful scenery, dramatic images (like the one with the child being taken from their parents by sci-fi soldiers), sexy portraits, creepy morbid fantasy things, etc. From squirrels to ninjas to Cthuhlu rendezvousing with its mistress, you do things well and you do them tastefully.
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My only trick is that I gave up planning long ago. When I started my daily experiments I set out to just do what every comes to mind with no forethought and try to spend only 1 to 2 hours on a piece and let the results be what they are. Most don't work out very good, but I always learn something that spawns other ideas. The ones that don't work are what keeps the creative juices flowing, always trying to not make that mistake again. Since these are for my own pleasure I can do what I want. Sometimes I will revisit the experiment and refine the work if someone shows interest in it or want a larger version. But most of the time I let them go and move on to the next experiment. This process has also leads to images that I could never have thought of in advance. All of my most popular images fall into this category. The one's I agonize over are hardly liked and the ones that take no time are the ones everyone likes. I can never tell what's going to work and what isn't. Though this doesn't keep me from being in awe of all the great artists who seem to put a lot of thought and craft into each piece.
My day job of designing for clients has taught me that things always change and to not do a final until the client is happy with the prototypes. I have sold very little 3D art. My clients have no interest in the 3D art I create. The industry thinks of DAZ Studio as a hobbyist tool and that makes sense to them because it doesn't fit into their established work flow. These creative experiments are a way to leave all the corporate BS behind and just enjoy the creative process. After over 1,000 experiments I have started to discovered what works for me and what doesn't.
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Giving myself a small time limit sounds like a good idea, instead of working on it until I can't improve it anymore. There's still a lot of reasons why my stuff will take longer than it should, but those are things I will have to either figure out on my own or just accept.
And yeah, I have noticed that your daily experiments have evolved from where they start off. They began as good and grew into great
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Outstanding work as always!
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wonderful. I need such a queen for my renders too
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Thank you, It was fun creating a custom skin texture from "MRL Mutations" lava texture
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I take this opportunity to wish you a happy new year
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Thank you for the kindness my friend
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Wonderful and great work, well done
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Thank you, Something chilly seemed appropriate
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I like her modern look. Great work.
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Thank you, I did a lot kit bashing to try to make her look unique
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