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Description
Dressed with ceremonial simplicity, the man from the distant north pledged his life and his sword to her. For all the strangeness of his ways and his words, he had proved himself a man of honor. She accepted his words with the same pleasure and gravity that he put into them. Years later, when this oath was legend, it would be described as full of pageantry and celebration. But in this moment there was only the two of them, forging a bond that would shape an empire.

Poser, Photoshop
---

Hello, and thank you so much for taking the time to view my work.

This is another image made to show off my Essential Materials 02. I would say it originally began life that way, but it originally began life as a random render of my dark skin material and Dawn. I came across it again recently, and decided to make it into a material showcase. I had had a lion next to Dawn, but it just wasn't on par with her in terms of realism and general quality. So I deleted it, then added more and more props to the scene. It was still too empty, and I felt like she needed to be looking at something in particular (she was looking off into the distance). Well, by this point, the image reminded me of BrandonSPilcher 's work. And I liked the idea of her looking down at someone much bigger than her. So I brought in The Freak (the original, from version 3 DAZ figures) to play the role of the exploring northern warrior Brandon likes to bring to ancient Kemet. Unfortunately, I have very little male clothing, and less for any version of the Freak. So he's a bit more under-dressed than I wanted. But yet again, I spent _way_ more time on this than I should have, so I didn't make him any clothes. I did, however, finally make myself a universal wrinkle map. I often use procedurals for that, but I wanted something that used UV coordinates instead of Cartesian.

That skirt Dawn's wearing was originally a conformer for V4 that I edited into a dynamic skirt for Dawn. I used some material trickery to give it a whole new transmap so I could make it fade to transparent. I love noded materials.

Everything in this image but Dawn is pretty old. It ranges from early in V4's life to some of the first items in the Platinum Club. Interestingly, other than texture map size and figure rigging, its weaknesses are just as common in modern content as content from then. So very few people set up either their material zones or their maps to account for all the materials they want. I have a whole lot of content, old and new, that mixes two totally different types of materials without any way to treat them differently. Metal, lacquer, linen, and silk shouldn't all use the same shader. I did my best here, but I could only do so much without making lots and lots of masks. A problem I keep encountering. So if you make content, please, please, _please_ think about the material, not just the texture. If you want to layer totally different materials (porcelain and gold leaf, rhinestones and velvet, etc.), please either use separate geometry, separate material zones, or masks so that people like me at least have the option of handling their shading differently.

I used my SSS Reflect material on the Freak's skin to see how it worked, and I think it came out pretty well.

Like the previous image, I've postworked this a bit to help it pop. A lot less than previous one, though. I just used a levels adjustment layer, a desaturated and auto-leveled layer, and a saturation adjustment layer. I also did a tiny bit of touching up to The Freak's shoulder. I did most of its fixing with the Morph Tool, but there was just a tiny bit I found more convenient to fix with Liquify. I wish the Morph Tool had an equivalent to Blender's "grab" in sculpting mode.

EM 02 Materials: Reflective, SSS Plain, SSS Reflect, Metal, Reflective Satin, Leather, Feather
Credits:
Dawn, Dawn Starter Morphs - HiveWire3D
V4 Starlet Dress - DAZ3D
Treasures of Egypt - Moyra (DAZ3D)
The Freak, The Freak: Morphs and Maps, Temple of the Pharaohs, Pharaohs of the Sun for V4, Treasures of Egypt2 - DAZ3D
Andre - AlantiStyle (Rendo)
Freak_Kilt - mapps (Rendo, free)
Hercules Pack for The Freak - Lourdes (DAZ3D)
Tate's Environment Sphere - (Tate)
Free "Warrior Helmet" prop

Description
Dressed with ceremonial simplicity, the man from the distant north pledged his life and his sword to her. For all the strangeness of his ways and his words, he had proved himself a man of honor. She accepted his words with the same pleasure and gravity that he put into them. Years later, when this oath was legend, it would be described as full of pageantry and celebration. But in this moment there was only the two of them, forging a bond that would shape an empire.

Poser, Photoshop
---

Hello, and thank you so much for taking the time to view my work.

This is another image made to show off my Essential Materials 02. I would say it originally began life that way, but it originally began life as a random render of my dark skin material and Dawn. I came across it again recently, and decided to make it into a material showcase. I had had a lion next to Dawn, but it just wasn't on par with her in terms of realism and general quality. So I deleted it, then added more and more props to the scene. It was still too empty, and I felt like she needed to be looking at something in particular (she was looking off into the distance). Well, by this point, the image reminded me of BrandonSPilcher 's work. And I liked the idea of her looking down at someone much bigger than her. So I brought in The Freak (the original, from version 3 DAZ figures) to play the role of the exploring northern warrior Brandon likes to bring to ancient Kemet. Unfortunately, I have very little male clothing, and less for any version of the Freak. So he's a bit more under-dressed than I wanted. But yet again, I spent _way_ more time on this than I should have, so I didn't make him any clothes. I did, however, finally make myself a universal wrinkle map. I often use procedurals for that, but I wanted something that used UV coordinates instead of Cartesian.

That skirt Dawn's wearing was originally a conformer for V4 that I edited into a dynamic skirt for Dawn. I used some material trickery to give it a whole new transmap so I could make it fade to transparent. I love noded materials.

Everything in this image but Dawn is pretty old. It ranges from early in V4's life to some of the first items in the Platinum Club. Interestingly, other than texture map size and figure rigging, its weaknesses are just as common in modern content as content from then. So very few people set up either their material zones or their maps to account for all the materials they want. I have a whole lot of content, old and new, that mixes two totally different types of materials without any way to treat them differently. Metal, lacquer, linen, and silk shouldn't all use the same shader. I did my best here, but I could only do so much without making lots and lots of masks. A problem I keep encountering. So if you make content, please, please, _please_ think about the material, not just the texture. If you want to layer totally different materials (porcelain and gold leaf, rhinestones and velvet, etc.), please either use separate geometry, separate material zones, or masks so that people like me at least have the option of handling their shading differently.

I used my SSS Reflect material on the Freak's skin to see how it worked, and I think it came out pretty well.

Like the previous image, I've postworked this a bit to help it pop. A lot less than previous one, though. I just used a levels adjustment layer, a desaturated and auto-leveled layer, and a saturation adjustment layer. I also did a tiny bit of touching up to The Freak's shoulder. I did most of its fixing with the Morph Tool, but there was just a tiny bit I found more convenient to fix with Liquify. I wish the Morph Tool had an equivalent to Blender's "grab" in sculpting mode.

EM 02 Materials: Reflective, SSS Plain, SSS Reflect, Metal, Reflective Satin, Leather, Feather
Credits:
Dawn, Dawn Starter Morphs - HiveWire3D
V4 Starlet Dress - DAZ3D
Treasures of Egypt - Moyra (DAZ3D)
The Freak, The Freak: Morphs and Maps, Temple of the Pharaohs, Pharaohs of the Sun for V4, Treasures of Egypt2 - DAZ3D
Andre - AlantiStyle (Rendo)
Freak_Kilt - mapps (Rendo, free)
Hercules Pack for The Freak - Lourdes (DAZ3D)
Tate's Environment Sphere - (Tate)
Free "Warrior Helmet" prop