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Description
Sorry for the double post, I just noticed that the amount of entries below is limited, so I had to split stuff.

This is a collection of posts concerning working with DAZ3D Studio (in combination with some basic post work) to create and optimize characters. It's not a series of tutorials, rather a collection of concepts, work pipelines and tips and overall rantings on art and stuff. But you can certainly add or ask your tips, questions or details to matters concerned. If you don't use DAZ3D Studio (which is free, but you'll want to buy content at some time), it may give you some idea, whether this suite may be useful to you.

Finally under the comment you'll find a lot of folks from the DAZ and 3D community here which are a really nice (if sometimes weird) crowd, if you're interested in the topic, check out their works (also in my favourites).

Given how cumbersome it can be to find Journal Entries on Deviant Art, I decided to put the recent Creative Process posts under a single entry in the gallery. I can just update this post when I add new entries. I'd still prefer comments to a single journal entry to go there instead of this post, but I'll not have the DeviantArt Gestapo at your throat if you do otherwise.

Part 7: A Bards Tale.

Creative Process, Part VII.*A Bards Tale*This is no tutorial on character design. Please give your written consent to sponsor me via Patreon down below and I’ll think about it. Joke aside, just some rambling on the topic.Myriam and Inez came to be in white on black, not vice versa.Written on an Intel 80386 system, state of the art in 1991 (except for the rare 486, which had the luxury of a mathematical coprocessor) with the editor doubling as word processing software of an obscure database programming language called ADAD9. I had never written any stories until then, except for translating some dozens of pages of the first Star Wars (Episode IV) Novel into German language and creating campaigns for D&D. I did not care or had even heard of creative writing or fan fiction (something I don’t really understand to this day).But I had a real library of guides and books on how to create adventures for characters (players) with free choices of their own. I was an avid reader of DRAGON™ Magazine (who remembers Roger E. Moore?) and there was lots of stuff how to make your usual fantasy stuff- Go from A to B, kill C and rescue D actually fun and exciting. Who knows the original D&D manuals? Not the later watered down stuff? Yes. In the end you were going for immortality, no less. Think big!Mental Note: You might find more help for setting up a good story in the RPG world. Why? Because people doing campaigns have to be good both at preparing, managing and improvising their yarn. More, they get immediate feedback from the audience. There are of tips, sources, and examples for genres without any literary snobbism attached. I recommend.I had been an avid reader (I could read the same book again and again, I don’t even know how often I read LOTR). It had never occurred to me to write a story. But at some point I noticed that I had more fun imagining what the NPC’s would do in my campaign world than what the actual players did (who cared mostly about loot and XP). Throwing pearls to the sows, as we say over here… So out of a sudden a couple of people, two young girls and a mysterious student of archaeology in a boarding school in France, and two guys and an enigmatic young woman travelling through the same area, just two millennia earlier, came into being. Apart from a fascination for ancient Rome, I really don’t remember how I came up with this. There was no plot, just a brutal twist right at the start, and then I simply followed their adventures, as I do to this day. << ...why is she always mentioning my textures? Take off that excuse for a dress first...>>And even though I had actually drawn a lot when I was younger, both technical items as well as persons, it never occurred to me to draw my characters – they were defined by the written word. This may seem strange in our visually focused culture of today, but back then a sentence could still say more than a thousand pictures.I’d like to emphasize this. Of course, I made the mistake a lot of people still to today, even goaded to this by so called character designers that randomly generate persons with a plethora of characteristics from their blood type to the shape of their nasal by-products. So I actually created what amounted to character sheets in the role playing tradition for them. But I quickly learned that the best and deepest way to describe someone is by seeing (not describing) them through the eyes of another person, and to be partial to the emotions and impressions this interaction evokes – or which are reflected back to form a picture of the person that has the narrative focus.That is still valid for me even in 3D. The image of the person must evoke the impression and reaction, even the feelings that are part of the narrative. This comes first. I still fail hard, and I’m rarely satisfied with my work, but nevertheless.Yes in writing there are visual descriptions like hair or eye colour as simple examples. But without any emotional resonance and story significance, arbitrary visual parameters are completely lifeless, exchangeable and worst of all, forgettable. This is what a lot of character design of recent visual fiction does fail at – a character is not cool because he looks the part, but you connect certain attributes to the outfit and looks, reversely. Astonishing to me is how often even commercial, expensive, professional media nowadays seem to be oblivious of that fact, but what do I know, maybe they just love to torture the audience for kicks.And because the written word has a much easier time at entering the emotions and impressions a person experiences, and is also more capable at telling stories than any movie even with the most outrageous special effects, thus characters should be foremost created by the word and not vice versa.(Do I hear an out howl of armies of character designers, but *expletive deleted*, yes, that’s what I think. Hey, I don’t say that I’m good at it. But I stand on my soapbox on that topic, anyway. )Problem is of course you can’t force it. Usually at the beginning, you’ll be more descriptive with some physical attributes, but from a writing perspective, this is for yourself and should be edited down as much as possible later on. Here is one of the first few direct descriptions from the 1995 file, and while it is cheesy, it’s a rare point in one of the first key scenes of the story and the reader has only a very superficial image until now:That being said she looked pretty good, but it was also apparent in this lack of outfit that she was quite athletic for a girl. That she wasn't wearing shoulder pads and the size of her upper arms and some other things wasn't due to baby fat. And the dark eyes in the dark face with the high cheekbones actually glowed; so far this expression had always seemed a little strange to her. You could literally see how her mind was working. Miriam saw herself reflected in them, her light blonde hair, where Inez's was auburn. She had never understood why girls dyed their hair blonde. Inez's hair seemed much prettier to her, and when she looked at her she could never see enough of the shimmering, intensive hue, against her own her slim shape, a pale rose mouth and the sea-grey eyes….Still you probably need to give the reader some starting clues, of course, but usually they should create their own image while going along. For the context, Myriam just caught Inez coming back from some nightly excursion in a pretty ruffled state. It gives a decent impression of both of them, and also imagine both girls confronting each other intimately, hiding their individual embarrassment, at a loss what to say and what to think. Another mental note: In a few lines of character interaction there is a lot of information in and in between the lines that would (and will) make for some hard work to put into a picture correctly. Words can condense the relevant visual information in a way that no compression algorithm could do. Admittedly this works differently for people. Some folks ARE absolutely visually oriented, some have no visual imagination whatsoever and have to rely on reference all the time, some work well on music, and on it goes. My reasoning depends on a background of stories dependant on personal relations. The relevant parts of visual design depend a lot on the genre – a pretty obvious example would be the Superhero style, where the super powers also result in a very pointed, emphasized physiognomy that serves to underline the dominant character traits. If you create a classic superhero style character and use it in a realistic, relation-issue driven romance type stuff, well, let’s say you have to be good at it. (Btw… Inez hair colour changed. This IS old.)That old file already contains most of the seed for the story and even though I’ve changed a lot since then, the nucleus of the events and the characters were pretty much fixed by then, and they never changed. Never ever. They got more intricate, mature from a descriptive point of view, but they did not change.I know all of the writing lore of today is about the development of the protagonists (I avoid the word heroes, because they no longer qualify for that term) about their weaknesses that makes them accessible to the readers and how they, by evolving and coming to terms (not even overcoming them) their weaknesses, they meet their goals in the story.Crap. Crap. Crap. When I hear those people try to construct evidence of this so termed development revelation they squirm and weasel around to defend their ideology. Head over to YT and check out. Sorry to say so. But crap. That’s not even what is called ‘Bildungsroman’ in German, the navel-gazing of a self-proclaimed intellectual elite with dubious claim to the title. No, I don’t like Nietzsche, either, thank you for mentioning.I’ve been accused of making my characters to powerful (You know who you are, lol). In a way they are like the heroes and gods from the classics – they are bound and defined by what they are. They know it, and their failings and dilemmas are not from lack of power or knowledge, but from the fact that there are times when all the power in the world can not alter “La condition humaine” and the relations, love and conflicts between people, groups and individuals. In contrary, it makes the tragedy of the human state even more poignant.*Whoa that was a long melodramatic retrospective. Sorry folks. Have a look on how the visual design progressed:*The very first picture I ever posted here on DA was Mary Jane in high key. This is one of those cases were things fall into place on their own. Unintentionally she became the prototype and base model for Myriam – and I tried hard to get away from her, buying a couple of Genesis 8 models I thought would come closer.But somehow with one single picture the issue had been decided. In the end I converted the skin and shape to Genesis 8. You can’t work against the character.I also started to work on Skadi, Rakans predecessor. Yet Skadi, who is from a stock related to the Ainu, does not resemble Inez, even less than Skythe does. << this is a Starfoil, dammit, NOT a katana (which isn't due for at least 10.000 years >>But I did not feel comfortable to tackle Inez and Myriam for years. I felt I still lacked the skills. So I worked on hidden prototypes, something that is called an Erlkönig (Erl-King) in German.I created Maralah for Witchwinter, who, while part of a completely different story and world is still close to Inez in character – more than Rakan/Skythe, all things considered. They’re both misfits – they don’t fit in maybe because they have a potential of freedom that invokes fear in others, leading to rejection. Since there was some stuff on character design in the title (somewhere) here some thoughts on that part.I created Maralah on the Genesis3 Inola model from Brahann, specifically on the skin. It’s not on par with some of the latest skin textures, but it has a lot of character, i.e. faults, dark or rough patches. It looks, well, used. This later got me into trouble when adapting it for a younger person, but do like it a lot. It went through numerous changes but the current Genesis 8 version of Inez still uses this skin.Note: I love the possibilities to transfer materials, shapes, wearables and hair between the different Genesis lines (including Victoria 4) AND genders. Add dForce to old clothes! You'll need to work a bit at times or get a conversion tool, but it makes for an almost limitless library of stuff, and you can reuse the often much cheaper (on sales or PC+) older products. The other problem was the hair. Everybody working with 3D and DAZ specifically will know that hair in 3D is a big issue. It usually looks natural (if at all) only in limited poses, and/or it can use tremendous amounts of resources. A single set of hair with single strands or high Subdivision can easily use more memory and computing power than everything else in the scene.In this case I wanted a greasy, rough look to the hair, more of a mane than the product of some fashions of society. The only hair that fit the bill was the Wet Warrior Hair. Since essentially all character assets in DAZ are unisex, the only problem was the fact that it was… well… male. Meaning the hairline certainly showed some signs of receding that looked unnatural on a woman. I tried two other ‘wet’ hairsets, and then I had an idea – I simply put more than one set of hair on the character.This may sound like a contradiction in terms of resource use. But I actually could use relatively low-quality hair to create a full, dense, very customizable set of hair. I could raise transparency and it still remained full, but with a softer, more delicate feel. I’ve done this with every major character from then on. Even if I duplicate the same hair, I can create a finer look by slightly changing the morphs and raising transparency a bit. Another option is increasing the horizontal tiling of the textures. Note: Use several hair sets. Or the same twice. A good thing with the normal (not strand based) hair is that the textures (and shaders) are pretty much exchangeable. This gives you a lot of possibilities to experiment with the density and colours. Another tip: If the scalp texture has problems (specifically clipping errors, leading to strange lines and cracks), you can add a displacement map (white picture will do) and try to offset the scalp slightly, either in or out. So I know you all secretly want to know something completely different. I mean what’s this with these (insert adjective, depending on taste) young ladies? Allright I've kept you long enough.Don’t they, well, shag, and with whom? Fanfiction seems to be circling around this item, at its very core. And I have to admit, being much younger back when I started the story, I certainly thought that would happen.There was actually an episode where they come upon some erotic memories stored, as it seems, in a book, with the two girls quarrelling about reliving the experiences. They were not amused. It was a lot of trouble. The book and the connected events have long since disappeared, but the fight they go into is still a major turning point of the story. In the end I let the characters decide. A (real) quarter of a century ago.They weren’t much interested. Well, they were at times, but certainly not at doing it for the pleasure of the reader. Rakan (Skythe) did not care either way, admittedly, but she’s a pretty straightforward character (among straightforward characters), not known for making a fuzz of things, including that. Which made it unsuited for storytelling, except for folklore and practical jokes.I’ll give you an example, Mago recalling some events from his youth, visiting Rome again:That’s how the day had started, with an oppressive heat and a restless wind from the mountains and a quarrel. Skythe was - difficult. Or, more specifically, Mago found it rather difficult to be, well, in love, with someone for whom the word promiscuity had to be invented in case it did not exist. Mago remembered how she lay there, in all the white, between white marble and white curtains, her wonderful body on the white linen and her hair like a pool of black ink. There was a fairly loud and unpleasant scene, different points of view and hurt feelings. In between, the guy the dispute was about was trying to make himself known. After all, it was his bedroom."Wake up! Hey! We had a plan!""What's wrong?" The guy stared at Mago glassy-eyed. He was probably still drunk. Skythe didn't even bother to look up."Go away." Something like that was grumbling from the sheets."Assuming I really don't care who you take a ride upon." Mago tried to control his jealousy."That I don't give a shit. Do you remember that we had an appointment? A while ago. With Lucius to meet that Armenian. You just ran away yesterday.""Mhhmpfff. Go alone. Like - right now!""I want you to get up now and come with me." Mago picked up her things from the floor and threw them on the bed. "Get dressed."You might as well try to order a force of nature around, but it wasn't half as dangerous. Skythe sat up and Mago felt the very panic of people facing Medusa. At the sight of her sheer anger, he would have preferred to turn to stone. This - wrong - moment the Roman stallion sought to get involved in the conversation. His timing was better in bed."What's up, Hercules? Got cheated by your bitch?"The bitch wasn't in the mood for a group discussion and slapped him. Mago watched in frustration."At what point did I talk to him? I - what!?"Lucius, who was guarding the door and pretending not to be there, suddenly started to laugh out loud."You are completely nuts. Both of you. Mago!""What?!""YOU have to knock out the guy's teeth. Not Skythe. Next time get down to business faster."The handsome heir of some certainly important patrician house was lying motionless next to Skythe and oozed blood on the pillow. She looked at the miserable heap with disgust."Men ..." Skythe threw back the covers and sat up, a new born, angry goddess at the beginning of the world, the face hidden beneath hair shimmering in the morning sun, the tips of her toes with a hint of reluctance on the cold marble, and there was no doubt, not the slightest doubt, that the presence of ordinary mortals was not welcome once she looked up.Mago gave up on sorting his now completely confused feelings, grabbed Lucius, who stared at the naked woman quite unabashedly, and dragged him into the hallway behind him. Together they brushed off the alarmed servants. Skythe reappeared soon after, in her worn-out clothes and with dishevelled hair, very sleepy and human and pouting. Ignoring the exaggerated groans of her former host, they set off.You see? Fun, but rather awkward when it comes to, err, sensual stuff and things. Sorry audience. Overall… not really. And when they started to show a certain interest, it was completely unexpected for me. Think I’m naïve? Well it was long ago.You know what is strange? In all this huge project that has expanded in time and space almost to infinity, which may be fantasy, sci-fi, horror, all of it, so many things fell into place without me planning it, that it is actually creepy. I think, though, that is as it should be. If you write a story and this does not happen, something is wrong.The whole point of the story was apparent on the first few pages- (Which is a good thing, creative writing says, damn it) - but this never occurred to me until much later. The pictures are already up, let’s see if you’re quicker and if not, I’m not handing out spoilers.Glad to have this topic cornered. They do, as anybody, but it’s not that kind of story. So back to writing and creating characters.Close to the turn of the millennium, after some hiatus due to work and studying, my writing picked up speed. I understood that not only writing was fun, I was taking it seriously. Oh and then there was Xena, Warrior Princess, the television series. I did not care about it for quite a while, but at one point it occurred to me that there was almost precisely the same thing going on as in my story. It came as a shock. (Maybe I should write faster, I outdate my ideas, it seems). Pleasant one, though. I’m rambling. Again. So cut it short.Their appearance changed. Inez was actually red-haired at the start, and much more the mediterranean type. But this was not important. The relation of the characters was. And the characters were defined by the first few sentences, they defined themselves through what they did, and everything arbitrary had little persistence. Today (if I find time that is) I almost always define stuff through writing scenes or fragments of events. Only then I may put this into the huge timeline library. That’s my creative writing tip, so to speak. Let them act, don’t bother with intentions, fears and motivations and all that theoretical crap. If you give them a little space, either these show or the character is a stillbirth. If you just construct them into a character he/she will remain just that. A construct. Go watch Netflix.Oh and next time you can follow my ventures into DIGITAL ART! Did I mention I tried to draw long ago..?

Part 6: Forest scenery setup.

Creative Process Part VIForest Scenery setup example - A little side track into the forest, so to speak.

Please note that you can find the other entries here:
As I wrote before, landscape is just another character in the image and there are similarities and differences to setting up a useful (i.e. reusable) and resource friendly scenery.
In this case I felt I had to update my trusty old forest set from Andrey, since it was not really optimized for Iray and it could become a bit heavy on render time. Since Andrey put out a new beautiful Fir tree set, I decide to create a new forest scenery.
Also I wanted to be able to reuse it for different kinds of forest, so I could economize on reusable parts, like backdrop, atmosphere, ground, camera setups and lighting, the latter arguably being the most time consuming.
There are a number of forest sets around, but I was not satisfied, especially Harpwood Trail which relies a bit too much on instancing for

Parts 1-5 here:

DAZ3D Studio and Logo is obviously owned by DAZ Productions, Inc.

Description
Sorry for the double post, I just noticed that the amount of entries below is limited, so I had to split stuff.

This is a collection of posts concerning working with DAZ3D Studio (in combination with some basic post work) to create and optimize characters. It's not a series of tutorials, rather a collection of concepts, work pipelines and tips and overall rantings on art and stuff. But you can certainly add or ask your tips, questions or details to matters concerned. If you don't use DAZ3D Studio (which is free, but you'll want to buy content at some time), it may give you some idea, whether this suite may be useful to you.

Finally under the comment you'll find a lot of folks from the DAZ and 3D community here which are a really nice (if sometimes weird) crowd, if you're interested in the topic, check out their works (also in my favourites).

Given how cumbersome it can be to find Journal Entries on Deviant Art, I decided to put the recent Creative Process posts under a single entry in the gallery. I can just update this post when I add new entries. I'd still prefer comments to a single journal entry to go there instead of this post, but I'll not have the DeviantArt Gestapo at your throat if you do otherwise.

Part 7: A Bards Tale.

Creative Process, Part VII.*A Bards Tale*This is no tutorial on character design. Please give your written consent to sponsor me via Patreon down below and I’ll think about it. Joke aside, just some rambling on the topic.Myriam and Inez came to be in white on black, not vice versa.Written on an Intel 80386 system, state of the art in 1991 (except for the rare 486, which had the luxury of a mathematical coprocessor) with the editor doubling as word processing software of an obscure database programming language called ADAD9. I had never written any stories until then, except for translating some dozens of pages of the first Star Wars (Episode IV) Novel into German language and creating campaigns for D&D. I did not care or had even heard of creative writing or fan fiction (something I don’t really understand to this day).But I had a real library of guides and books on how to create adventures for characters (players) with free choices of their own. I was an avid reader of DRAGON™ Magazine (who remembers Roger E. Moore?) and there was lots of stuff how to make your usual fantasy stuff- Go from A to B, kill C and rescue D actually fun and exciting. Who knows the original D&D manuals? Not the later watered down stuff? Yes. In the end you were going for immortality, no less. Think big!Mental Note: You might find more help for setting up a good story in the RPG world. Why? Because people doing campaigns have to be good both at preparing, managing and improvising their yarn. More, they get immediate feedback from the audience. There are of tips, sources, and examples for genres without any literary snobbism attached. I recommend.I had been an avid reader (I could read the same book again and again, I don’t even know how often I read LOTR). It had never occurred to me to write a story. But at some point I noticed that I had more fun imagining what the NPC’s would do in my campaign world than what the actual players did (who cared mostly about loot and XP). Throwing pearls to the sows, as we say over here… So out of a sudden a couple of people, two young girls and a mysterious student of archaeology in a boarding school in France, and two guys and an enigmatic young woman travelling through the same area, just two millennia earlier, came into being. Apart from a fascination for ancient Rome, I really don’t remember how I came up with this. There was no plot, just a brutal twist right at the start, and then I simply followed their adventures, as I do to this day. << ...why is she always mentioning my textures? Take off that excuse for a dress first...>>And even though I had actually drawn a lot when I was younger, both technical items as well as persons, it never occurred to me to draw my characters – they were defined by the written word. This may seem strange in our visually focused culture of today, but back then a sentence could still say more than a thousand pictures.I’d like to emphasize this. Of course, I made the mistake a lot of people still to today, even goaded to this by so called character designers that randomly generate persons with a plethora of characteristics from their blood type to the shape of their nasal by-products. So I actually created what amounted to character sheets in the role playing tradition for them. But I quickly learned that the best and deepest way to describe someone is by seeing (not describing) them through the eyes of another person, and to be partial to the emotions and impressions this interaction evokes – or which are reflected back to form a picture of the person that has the narrative focus.That is still valid for me even in 3D. The image of the person must evoke the impression and reaction, even the feelings that are part of the narrative. This comes first. I still fail hard, and I’m rarely satisfied with my work, but nevertheless.Yes in writing there are visual descriptions like hair or eye colour as simple examples. But without any emotional resonance and story significance, arbitrary visual parameters are completely lifeless, exchangeable and worst of all, forgettable. This is what a lot of character design of recent visual fiction does fail at – a character is not cool because he looks the part, but you connect certain attributes to the outfit and looks, reversely. Astonishing to me is how often even commercial, expensive, professional media nowadays seem to be oblivious of that fact, but what do I know, maybe they just love to torture the audience for kicks.And because the written word has a much easier time at entering the emotions and impressions a person experiences, and is also more capable at telling stories than any movie even with the most outrageous special effects, thus characters should be foremost created by the word and not vice versa.(Do I hear an out howl of armies of character designers, but *expletive deleted*, yes, that’s what I think. Hey, I don’t say that I’m good at it. But I stand on my soapbox on that topic, anyway. )Problem is of course you can’t force it. Usually at the beginning, you’ll be more descriptive with some physical attributes, but from a writing perspective, this is for yourself and should be edited down as much as possible later on. Here is one of the first few direct descriptions from the 1995 file, and while it is cheesy, it’s a rare point in one of the first key scenes of the story and the reader has only a very superficial image until now:That being said she looked pretty good, but it was also apparent in this lack of outfit that she was quite athletic for a girl. That she wasn't wearing shoulder pads and the size of her upper arms and some other things wasn't due to baby fat. And the dark eyes in the dark face with the high cheekbones actually glowed; so far this expression had always seemed a little strange to her. You could literally see how her mind was working. Miriam saw herself reflected in them, her light blonde hair, where Inez's was auburn. She had never understood why girls dyed their hair blonde. Inez's hair seemed much prettier to her, and when she looked at her she could never see enough of the shimmering, intensive hue, against her own her slim shape, a pale rose mouth and the sea-grey eyes….Still you probably need to give the reader some starting clues, of course, but usually they should create their own image while going along. For the context, Myriam just caught Inez coming back from some nightly excursion in a pretty ruffled state. It gives a decent impression of both of them, and also imagine both girls confronting each other intimately, hiding their individual embarrassment, at a loss what to say and what to think. Another mental note: In a few lines of character interaction there is a lot of information in and in between the lines that would (and will) make for some hard work to put into a picture correctly. Words can condense the relevant visual information in a way that no compression algorithm could do. Admittedly this works differently for people. Some folks ARE absolutely visually oriented, some have no visual imagination whatsoever and have to rely on reference all the time, some work well on music, and on it goes. My reasoning depends on a background of stories dependant on personal relations. The relevant parts of visual design depend a lot on the genre – a pretty obvious example would be the Superhero style, where the super powers also result in a very pointed, emphasized physiognomy that serves to underline the dominant character traits. If you create a classic superhero style character and use it in a realistic, relation-issue driven romance type stuff, well, let’s say you have to be good at it. (Btw… Inez hair colour changed. This IS old.)That old file already contains most of the seed for the story and even though I’ve changed a lot since then, the nucleus of the events and the characters were pretty much fixed by then, and they never changed. Never ever. They got more intricate, mature from a descriptive point of view, but they did not change.I know all of the writing lore of today is about the development of the protagonists (I avoid the word heroes, because they no longer qualify for that term) about their weaknesses that makes them accessible to the readers and how they, by evolving and coming to terms (not even overcoming them) their weaknesses, they meet their goals in the story.Crap. Crap. Crap. When I hear those people try to construct evidence of this so termed development revelation they squirm and weasel around to defend their ideology. Head over to YT and check out. Sorry to say so. But crap. That’s not even what is called ‘Bildungsroman’ in German, the navel-gazing of a self-proclaimed intellectual elite with dubious claim to the title. No, I don’t like Nietzsche, either, thank you for mentioning.I’ve been accused of making my characters to powerful (You know who you are, lol). In a way they are like the heroes and gods from the classics – they are bound and defined by what they are. They know it, and their failings and dilemmas are not from lack of power or knowledge, but from the fact that there are times when all the power in the world can not alter “La condition humaine” and the relations, love and conflicts between people, groups and individuals. In contrary, it makes the tragedy of the human state even more poignant.*Whoa that was a long melodramatic retrospective. Sorry folks. Have a look on how the visual design progressed:*The very first picture I ever posted here on DA was Mary Jane in high key. This is one of those cases were things fall into place on their own. Unintentionally she became the prototype and base model for Myriam – and I tried hard to get away from her, buying a couple of Genesis 8 models I thought would come closer.But somehow with one single picture the issue had been decided. In the end I converted the skin and shape to Genesis 8. You can’t work against the character.I also started to work on Skadi, Rakans predecessor. Yet Skadi, who is from a stock related to the Ainu, does not resemble Inez, even less than Skythe does. << this is a Starfoil, dammit, NOT a katana (which isn't due for at least 10.000 years >>But I did not feel comfortable to tackle Inez and Myriam for years. I felt I still lacked the skills. So I worked on hidden prototypes, something that is called an Erlkönig (Erl-King) in German.I created Maralah for Witchwinter, who, while part of a completely different story and world is still close to Inez in character – more than Rakan/Skythe, all things considered. They’re both misfits – they don’t fit in maybe because they have a potential of freedom that invokes fear in others, leading to rejection. Since there was some stuff on character design in the title (somewhere) here some thoughts on that part.I created Maralah on the Genesis3 Inola model from Brahann, specifically on the skin. It’s not on par with some of the latest skin textures, but it has a lot of character, i.e. faults, dark or rough patches. It looks, well, used. This later got me into trouble when adapting it for a younger person, but do like it a lot. It went through numerous changes but the current Genesis 8 version of Inez still uses this skin.Note: I love the possibilities to transfer materials, shapes, wearables and hair between the different Genesis lines (including Victoria 4) AND genders. Add dForce to old clothes! You'll need to work a bit at times or get a conversion tool, but it makes for an almost limitless library of stuff, and you can reuse the often much cheaper (on sales or PC+) older products. The other problem was the hair. Everybody working with 3D and DAZ specifically will know that hair in 3D is a big issue. It usually looks natural (if at all) only in limited poses, and/or it can use tremendous amounts of resources. A single set of hair with single strands or high Subdivision can easily use more memory and computing power than everything else in the scene.In this case I wanted a greasy, rough look to the hair, more of a mane than the product of some fashions of society. The only hair that fit the bill was the Wet Warrior Hair. Since essentially all character assets in DAZ are unisex, the only problem was the fact that it was… well… male. Meaning the hairline certainly showed some signs of receding that looked unnatural on a woman. I tried two other ‘wet’ hairsets, and then I had an idea – I simply put more than one set of hair on the character.This may sound like a contradiction in terms of resource use. But I actually could use relatively low-quality hair to create a full, dense, very customizable set of hair. I could raise transparency and it still remained full, but with a softer, more delicate feel. I’ve done this with every major character from then on. Even if I duplicate the same hair, I can create a finer look by slightly changing the morphs and raising transparency a bit. Another option is increasing the horizontal tiling of the textures. Note: Use several hair sets. Or the same twice. A good thing with the normal (not strand based) hair is that the textures (and shaders) are pretty much exchangeable. This gives you a lot of possibilities to experiment with the density and colours. Another tip: If the scalp texture has problems (specifically clipping errors, leading to strange lines and cracks), you can add a displacement map (white picture will do) and try to offset the scalp slightly, either in or out. So I know you all secretly want to know something completely different. I mean what’s this with these (insert adjective, depending on taste) young ladies? Allright I've kept you long enough.Don’t they, well, shag, and with whom? Fanfiction seems to be circling around this item, at its very core. And I have to admit, being much younger back when I started the story, I certainly thought that would happen.There was actually an episode where they come upon some erotic memories stored, as it seems, in a book, with the two girls quarrelling about reliving the experiences. They were not amused. It was a lot of trouble. The book and the connected events have long since disappeared, but the fight they go into is still a major turning point of the story. In the end I let the characters decide. A (real) quarter of a century ago.They weren’t much interested. Well, they were at times, but certainly not at doing it for the pleasure of the reader. Rakan (Skythe) did not care either way, admittedly, but she’s a pretty straightforward character (among straightforward characters), not known for making a fuzz of things, including that. Which made it unsuited for storytelling, except for folklore and practical jokes.I’ll give you an example, Mago recalling some events from his youth, visiting Rome again:That’s how the day had started, with an oppressive heat and a restless wind from the mountains and a quarrel. Skythe was - difficult. Or, more specifically, Mago found it rather difficult to be, well, in love, with someone for whom the word promiscuity had to be invented in case it did not exist. Mago remembered how she lay there, in all the white, between white marble and white curtains, her wonderful body on the white linen and her hair like a pool of black ink. There was a fairly loud and unpleasant scene, different points of view and hurt feelings. In between, the guy the dispute was about was trying to make himself known. After all, it was his bedroom."Wake up! Hey! We had a plan!""What's wrong?" The guy stared at Mago glassy-eyed. He was probably still drunk. Skythe didn't even bother to look up."Go away." Something like that was grumbling from the sheets."Assuming I really don't care who you take a ride upon." Mago tried to control his jealousy."That I don't give a shit. Do you remember that we had an appointment? A while ago. With Lucius to meet that Armenian. You just ran away yesterday.""Mhhmpfff. Go alone. Like - right now!""I want you to get up now and come with me." Mago picked up her things from the floor and threw them on the bed. "Get dressed."You might as well try to order a force of nature around, but it wasn't half as dangerous. Skythe sat up and Mago felt the very panic of people facing Medusa. At the sight of her sheer anger, he would have preferred to turn to stone. This - wrong - moment the Roman stallion sought to get involved in the conversation. His timing was better in bed."What's up, Hercules? Got cheated by your bitch?"The bitch wasn't in the mood for a group discussion and slapped him. Mago watched in frustration."At what point did I talk to him? I - what!?"Lucius, who was guarding the door and pretending not to be there, suddenly started to laugh out loud."You are completely nuts. Both of you. Mago!""What?!""YOU have to knock out the guy's teeth. Not Skythe. Next time get down to business faster."The handsome heir of some certainly important patrician house was lying motionless next to Skythe and oozed blood on the pillow. She looked at the miserable heap with disgust."Men ..." Skythe threw back the covers and sat up, a new born, angry goddess at the beginning of the world, the face hidden beneath hair shimmering in the morning sun, the tips of her toes with a hint of reluctance on the cold marble, and there was no doubt, not the slightest doubt, that the presence of ordinary mortals was not welcome once she looked up.Mago gave up on sorting his now completely confused feelings, grabbed Lucius, who stared at the naked woman quite unabashedly, and dragged him into the hallway behind him. Together they brushed off the alarmed servants. Skythe reappeared soon after, in her worn-out clothes and with dishevelled hair, very sleepy and human and pouting. Ignoring the exaggerated groans of her former host, they set off.You see? Fun, but rather awkward when it comes to, err, sensual stuff and things. Sorry audience. Overall… not really. And when they started to show a certain interest, it was completely unexpected for me. Think I’m naïve? Well it was long ago.You know what is strange? In all this huge project that has expanded in time and space almost to infinity, which may be fantasy, sci-fi, horror, all of it, so many things fell into place without me planning it, that it is actually creepy. I think, though, that is as it should be. If you write a story and this does not happen, something is wrong.The whole point of the story was apparent on the first few pages- (Which is a good thing, creative writing says, damn it) - but this never occurred to me until much later. The pictures are already up, let’s see if you’re quicker and if not, I’m not handing out spoilers.Glad to have this topic cornered. They do, as anybody, but it’s not that kind of story. So back to writing and creating characters.Close to the turn of the millennium, after some hiatus due to work and studying, my writing picked up speed. I understood that not only writing was fun, I was taking it seriously. Oh and then there was Xena, Warrior Princess, the television series. I did not care about it for quite a while, but at one point it occurred to me that there was almost precisely the same thing going on as in my story. It came as a shock. (Maybe I should write faster, I outdate my ideas, it seems). Pleasant one, though. I’m rambling. Again. So cut it short.Their appearance changed. Inez was actually red-haired at the start, and much more the mediterranean type. But this was not important. The relation of the characters was. And the characters were defined by the first few sentences, they defined themselves through what they did, and everything arbitrary had little persistence. Today (if I find time that is) I almost always define stuff through writing scenes or fragments of events. Only then I may put this into the huge timeline library. That’s my creative writing tip, so to speak. Let them act, don’t bother with intentions, fears and motivations and all that theoretical crap. If you give them a little space, either these show or the character is a stillbirth. If you just construct them into a character he/she will remain just that. A construct. Go watch Netflix.Oh and next time you can follow my ventures into DIGITAL ART! Did I mention I tried to draw long ago..?

Part 6: Forest scenery setup.

Creative Process Part VIForest Scenery setup example - A little side track into the forest, so to speak.

Please note that you can find the other entries here:
As I wrote before, landscape is just another character in the image and there are similarities and differences to setting up a useful (i.e. reusable) and resource friendly scenery.
In this case I felt I had to update my trusty old forest set from Andrey, since it was not really optimized for Iray and it could become a bit heavy on render time. Since Andrey put out a new beautiful Fir tree set, I decide to create a new forest scenery.
Also I wanted to be able to reuse it for different kinds of forest, so I could economize on reusable parts, like backdrop, atmosphere, ground, camera setups and lighting, the latter arguably being the most time consuming.
There are a number of forest sets around, but I was not satisfied, especially Harpwood Trail which relies a bit too much on instancing for

Parts 1-5 here:

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