Tag: learning

Techwarrior #6 coming soon!

Techwarrior #6 is coming soon! It’s more than half done and fans of this series will find this long-awaited book worth the wait. With 11 renders to go (as of the writing of this article) a release date isn’t formally set, but a safe bet could be later this month!

If the cover is any hint, you can also bet the art inside is knockout quality with an impressive story to match as the quality of both has only improved with each book.

So, with this book on the verge of release, which series gets the next in line? Usually, Dream Angel has the next book in line and this one would be #25. Yet, it takes longer in production for its 24 page count. Techwarrior has 12 pages and takes less time. So, perhaps Techwarrior #7 could be next in line? Let’s explore the art more in depth to explore why it takes so long.

Taking a good look at how the art is created, you’ll find that characters look like you could reach out and touch them. This is largely because of the render engine called “Iray.” With the right materials applied to the surfaces in the scene, it renders in a photo realistic way. This makes it appear as if someone really is in the scene with a camera. So that reach out and touch feeling adds to the engrossing reading experience.

You’ll also notice the lighting in the cover scene for Techwarrior #6. It uses what’s called “light emitting surfaces.” While these tend to slow down rendering speeds, they provide breathtaking light that adds very impressive effects to the scene. Look carefully at that cover.

You’ll see that’s Sensei attacking the girl (I can’t say who she is without spoiling the story for those who haven’t read it!) and his attack casts a subtle light on her face. It’s a light emitting surface. You’ll see things like this that help add to the quality and beauty of the books found on this site.

You’ll also notice as you look through the shop and see the different book covers, not all of them seem to share this quality. Well, that comes from learning over time. There’s an artistic evolution to be seen with all the books with the latest one always having the top of the line skill being put to the best use possible at the time.

No, not knocking the older books. Just noting that at the time of their creation and release, they were top of the artistic skill line and more has been learned since. That said, you’ll get greater enjoyment out of these books – artistically – by enjoying the evolution.

So, which series do you think should get the next book in line? Dream Angel #25? Techwarrior #7? Cast your vote in the comments below!

The ups and downs of HDRI

The ups and downs of HDRI might as well be a roller coaster. Permit me to share a story.

For the longest time, I thought I couldn’t use the fancy new render engine DAZ rolled out with 4.8: Iray. I longed to play with the photo realistic render engine, but having an AMD video card instead of the NVidia the specs called for, I thought I couldn’t.

Fast forward to just before Christmas 2016 and DAZ 4.9. I made a curious discovery about the list of installed stuff in the install manager: a public beta build of DAZ 4.9. So, I tracked it down among my programs and opened it. Played with it some and got curious about the render settings. What should my curiosity behold, but that NVidia Iray was available to play with!

So, I explored, dabbled and started tracking down tutorials. Fast forward again to about mid March 2017. After multiple not-so-good attempts at making my own HDRIs with Carrara. I still have trouble with the lighting in that one. I was exploring a favorite group for 3D artists on Facebook and stumbled across an image that could be rotated 360 degrees. To go with it, a youtube tutorial video on how the trick was done!

Well, again, I dabbled and played. Made a neat city 360 followed by a scene from Techwarrior #5 and put them on Facebook to a very receptive reaction. I realized I could convert that city 360 to an HDRI and use it as a background for renders. Well, you won’t catch me using 3Delight anymore! Scenes with an HDRI background render very quickly even on my older computer and they look amazing!

HDRIs are wonderful as both light and background, but – and this is the downside – they take a long time to render! Smaller size and resolution just won’t work with these bad boys. The ratio suggested in that tutorial was 2 to 1 with a size of about 4000 by 2000 pixels. Be ready for a long wait unless you’re able to despeckle and sharpen effectively in Photoshop. Here’s what I mean:

Not the greatest picture I’ll admit, but this one’s been at it 14 hours and it’s still pretty grainy.

Personally, I set the render time to 24 hours so it would have plenty of time to render as cleanly as possible. Know how many seconds that is? 86,400 seconds! Now, as I’ve pointed out on Facebook, once this is rendered, it can be used time and again as a background and light source without bogging down the scene I’m trying to render. So, when it comes down to brass tacks, the occasional 24 hour render like this isn’t too horrible, right?

The trick is a simple one, but only available in Iray. Setup a scene with lights but without characters if you want it to be a background HDRI – the one in that picture is a dungeon lit only by fire – and add a camera in the center of it. Go into the camera’s parameters and pick on the lens type. Set it to spherical. Then go into render settings and set the size ratio to 2 to 1 and the pixels to 4000 by 2000. For my 4-year-old laptop, there’s no acceleration from the video card, so I setup the render time at 24 hours or the 86,400 seconds I mentioned before. From there, hit render and walk away for the duration of the render.

It’ll take its time rendering considering the size and and how complicated the scene is, but when it’s done finally, it can be converted to an HDRI and used as a background/light source without being so slow with characters. So, it balances out, wouldn’t you say?

Expect bugs and glitches…

This site’s had something – nobody knows exactly what – go wrong recently and while it’s being fixed, expect some bugs and glitches. No, there’s no problems with security and the store still works, the problem has been largely related to updating things on the management side and uploading images.

Explains why Techwarrior #5 and Techwarrior #1-5 don’t have product images yet, doesn’t it? Not to worry, Techwarrior and Dream Angel are teamed up to squash the bugs and glitches as quickly as possible, but if you should find yourself having trouble with the site – i.e. error messages appear instead of the page you want, simply wait a minute or so and refresh the page. It simply means something’s not quite working just yet.

On to better news now! Techwarrior #1-5 will soon be in print! The proof copies are expected to arrive April 7th. So, for fans of printed books, you’ll be happy when the link to this one’s announced. It’s a 60 page full color collection of all 5 books together. The price? Well, preliminary estimates seem to put it at about $5-6. Not bad, huh?

Even Dream Angel might be getting some collection books. Early price estimates there are higher, but that goes with the higher page count, too. Hers would be trade paperback size and much thicker. However, first her artwork and story need… updating.

There’s nothing wrong with the currently released Dream Angel books, so don’t get me wrong there at all. The simple fact is that Techwarrior #5 was greeted with more interest for its Iray rendering style. It’s also been mentioned that there’s some holes in the early parts of Dream Angel’s story that could be filled. Nothing too major, but some additional details would be beneficial. So, the script is seeing some updating and the artwork is soon to follow.

What’s that mean for newer books? Well, it means the series is getting a light reboot. Not a complete one, just enough to fill in those holes. So, 23 books are going to see new art, giving books that are still being written plenty of time to be completed.

The most difficult books to update might be Dream Angel #1-6, as these were initially done in Poser with a lot more Photoshop work than recent books. Dream Angel #1 2nd edition has some complete DAZ Studio scenes, but only some as it, too, had more Photoshop work as well. For some scenes, also, starting from scratch might also be better.

First thing’s first, however, will be bringing this site back to 100% and that means manually uploading necessary files. So, be patient and look forward to more excitement once it’s back to normal.

Using 3D to make comic books part 4

Using 3D to make comic books, as I’ve said, is quite the challenge. There’s a lot to take into consideration and I’ve only scratched the surface so far with these little postings. It’s definitely recommended you read parts 1, 2 and 3 before this one.

Okay, you’ve rendered awesome scenes, put them together in Comic Life and made them into a cool book. Now what? Well, this is actually the hardest part: getting it to sell. See, 3D is more widely used for porn comics, which makes it tougher to sell to other people. Add in the common complaints about it that I’ve read about and you’re going to find a lot of very harsh critics that won’t even give you a fair chance.

What are those common complaints? One is “stiff, lifeless figures.” Well, this one is harsh on rookies with the medium. Unless you are a fast learner especially with lights, cameras and textures, figures are going to look awkward while you’re learning. The same can be said of hand drawn characters, too though!

Ask for comments to learn from and ignore the ones that are blatant put-downs. You’ll probably be asked if you modeled the characters yourself. Odds are, you didn’t but don’t let that bother you! You’re still learning! So am I! So is anyone that can call themselves an artist. If they claim to be a master and don’t think there’s anything left to learn, they’re never going to grow as an artist and their work will go stale.

Another complaint is stiff clothes. On this one, I’m willing to agree, but only to a point. If you’re like me, your computer’s limits are where you have to draw the line. Realistic cloth simulation is possible and looks incredible, but uses an unbelievable amount of power from the computer!

Using 3D to make comic books part 3

STOP! Before you read part 3 of Using 3D to make comic books, you should read part 1 and part 2! If you’ve read them already, do feel free to continue reading!

Using 3D to make comics scenes rendered on my tablet while still out and about means I can pull the render into GIMP if I need to do post work, too. Literally, my work can go with me anywhere. Sure, the tablet can’t do everything the computer can, but it does a nice job of getting things started for the computer, which saves some time. Then I’m able to open the file in the computer and pick up where I left off while I was out.

Okay, that’s putting together the scene and making sure it’s a real eye pleaser, what about making it into a comic book? I wouldn’t doubt there’s other programs out there, but Manga Studio served me well for a long time before I discovered Comic Life. Now, you’ll notice all these programs have no links attached. I’m not affiliated with them, merely recommending them.

For my purposes, I wish I could combine the two into one program, but that seems quite unlikely. Manga Studio is indeed meant for hand-drawn comics and especially manga with a staggering array of tools and goodies for that purpose. I especially loved its layers palette, but it had its shortcomings for me, as well.

When I found Comic Life, I was struggling to create extended dialogue balloons in particular with Manga Studio. I didn’t have the expensive version of the program and couldn’t afford to get it anyway. I’d found a trial version of it and thought I might be able to setup my 3D scenes inside it, but found nothing for importing my own 3D models and accessories and its library limited to what it came with.

Comic Life offered the dialogue balloons I wanted and a nice assortment of other tools. It’s proven to be more intended for importing images and even fixing them in the program, which suited me far better as a 3D artist. I could just drag and drop my renders into the panel frames and if they needed fixing, I could do it right there without any headaches.

Using 3D to make comic books part 2

Using 3D to make comic books, for a beginner, DAZ Studio is a good one. It’s free, it’s not too difficult to handle until you start getting into the more advanced features, but for setting up and lighting a scene, it’s excellent for learning. Personally, I dove in with Poser 7.

Poser’s good, but I found myself often having trouble using it despite having a book to guide me. Other programs offer more heavy-duty features for making props, clothing, hair and other things, but as they get fancier, they get more expensive.

A leading complaint against using 3D I’ve often mentioned is that 3D figures and clothes look stiff and lifeless. You’ll be confronted by this, so be ready for it. I’ve begun to counteract it by making things more dynamic. Dynamic meaning realistic simulation of cloth in particular.

The other half of that complaint likely has to do with the lighting of the actor and its textures. That would mean it’s wise to pay close attention to the lighting of the scene when you do renders.

Just like pencil and paper, you need to pay close attention to even the smallest details in your renders as these are actually more noticeable in 3D unless you use depth of field to blur out the boo-boos in the background. What about the boo-boos of the character?

Some don’t like to be posed certain ways and can even poke through their clothes despite fixes. Well, post work is useful if you just can’t get the 3D to behave the way you want it to. The GIMP is an excellent freebie image editor that’s lightweight and easy on the computer.

One thing that’s been extremely handy for me is the ability to render scenes even on my little 2-in-1 Windows 10 tablet. Taking my library on the go and setting up characters, or even scenes has been a heavy-duty time saver, but it just doesn’t have the power of the computer.

That means I need programs that aren’t resource intense. DAZ and GIMP are a spectacular combination for this. Unless I setup a heavily complicated scene, my little tablet can render it. If I do setup a heavily complicated scene, I can save it to render on the computer.

 

 

Using 3D to make comic books Part 1

Using 3D to make comic books is a challenge in many ways, but don’t let that discourage you. If you love 3D and love the idea of making comic books, nothing should deter you from it.

Let’s look at some harsh realities to be sure you’re determined to follow this path. First of all, the comic book market is cut throat. These fans in general are hard core about how comics are written and drawn. Plenty of them just aren’t ready to accept comics rendered using 3D software.

If you’re like me, your hand drawings aren’t bad, but just not up to industry standards for some reason or another. My shortcomings include proportion and shading along with perspective and foreshortening. My drawings are good, but not impressive in the comic book world, yet I love making them. The solution to my problem became using 3D software to make up the artistic difference. This led to a whole new set of problems, though.

While characters, props and sets are consistent and look good, new problems arose. These included lighting, camera angle and composition like in the two images above. How then, to solve this problem? Study, practice, constantly scrounge around for tutorials to learn as much as possible. That’s still pretty much fumbling along in the dark, isn’t it? I’ve found that a good many movies have special features on the DVDs and frequently include featurettes talking about how the movie was made.

Using 3D is similar enough to making a movie that these lessons have been extremely valuable to me. They discuss lighting, camera angles and movement, ways to setup a scene for dramatic actions and all sorts of other related things.
Okay, it doesn’t have to worry about sewing costumes or anything along those lines, but making props, making up the actors, dressing actors, setting up a scene, placing the lights and cameras for the best effect and things like that? Definitely!

So, will it someday be accepted by the comic book industry? Probably. I’ve got a couple how to draw comics books that already discuss using these programs for background elements. I’ve seen others on the market and at the local library that use it for the cover or a photograph, even. It’s a slow transition so far and for 3D artists, it’s not going to be easy. Still want to make your own comics using these programs?

 

What makes 3D so difficult?

What makes 3D so difficult to handle is that it has a very steep learning curve more often than not. I’ve found people that assume because the computer does a lot of the work that 3D isn’t art and it’s lazy to use. Let me assure you: nothing is further from the truth!

True, some programs, like DAZ Studio or even Poser are good for beginners or hobbyists and make setting up a scene reasonably easy to do, but that doesn’t mean the rendered art will be good quality. Like pencil and paper, there’s basic techniques and much more advanced ones. It’s the difference between a stick figure with dots for eyes and a line for a smile and a fully detailed anatomically correct figure that’s nicely lit and realistic.

Anyone can draw a stick figure, but that much higher quality figure with all the details and lighting? That can take years of practice. The very same holds true of 3D art.

First and foremost, it’s very much art. If it isn’t, it shouldn’t be in movies as a special effect since it takes special effects artists to use it for movies. What are they using if it isn’t art? Secondly, it’s constantly changing and improving, so just because some amateur hasn’t yet mastered even the basics isn’t a reason to tell them to use pencil and paper.

Four years ago, I knew next to nothing about 3D art. I posed bald, nude figures in Poser with default lighting and painted hair and clothes in Photoshop. As I learned more, my methods changed. Figures began having clothes and hair, I began experimenting with lights and camera angles.

Being a 3D artist is a lot like being a movie director. You have to be able to work with all the various departments to get the scene just right. Actors, wardrobe, hair, makeup, lights, cameras and other things have to be prepared for the scene to be complete. Finding, creating and effectively rendering the scene elements is more complicated than some might imagine. Even when you think the scene looks the way you want it, it doesn’t mean the final render will have the desired result. That means post work, which can get almost as complicated as setting up the scene in the first place.

The truth is there’s a million ways a scene can go wrong. True, pencil and paper mean you can simply erase the part that’s not the way you want it, but what if it’s already inked? That means hours with white-out or something similar to correct the problem.

Lots of ways to mess up, lots of ways to create incredible art. It’s a matter of time, patience and a lot of practice.

Learning resumes!

Learning resumes? When did it stop? Well, a lesson had to be learned the hard way that did stop my studies briefly this week. Although I’ve been around computers most of my life, apparently, I still don’t know some things about them.

I put my 3D programs and library on an external hard drive I got for Christmas and when I went to switch it from my tablet to the computer, the tablet claimed it was still in use even though nothing was open and using it. The mistake was pulling out the hard drive anyway.

Not long after, I discovered that neither the tablet nor the computer would recognize the hard drive and after doing everything I could to recover it, I finally had to format it. Fortunately, I’ve got a good file recovery program for deleted files and that’s helped restore the lost files. The problem with that is the file structure I had is now gone and to get things back to normal, files will have to be moved around and programs more than likely reinstalled again. As you can imagine, that would in fact slow down my studies a great deal.

Yet, I haven’t been idle while the computer’s been restoring files. This site did go down – likely a faulty plugin update – a couple days ago and that needed to be fixed as well. In the middle of the technology acting up, a bunch of plush figures have been created. They’re waiting for hair, clothes and faces, but they’re ready.

In the middle of all this, an idea for a one-shot comic was found. I’ll be working that idea out and coming up with the necessary designs so when my 3D library’s back to normal, I can possibly start that into production.

I bet you’re thinking “Wow, what a mess!” Well, it’s simple enough to say it goes with the territory I’ve chosen. Computers do have a bad habit of messing up, but that’s what backups are good for, right? Even when things go haywire, I’m not idle.

First lesson of the new year!

Happy New Year again! The first lesson of the new year is an incredibly exciting one! For the longest time, scenes have taken quite a while to render, even using DAZ’s less complicated render engine, 3Delight. I made some fantastic scenes that would take up to 10 hours to render mostly because background elements were so complicated. I’ve been trying to find a solution to that problem for a long time, and having discovered it finally, I’ll share my technique with you.

Why would I want to reveal this secret new technique that solves the problem of slow render times because of complicated backgrounds? Well, they say “In teaching you will learn” so I’m going to teach the technique and see if I learn something in the teaching as well.

Let’s say you’ve got this really awesome scene in DAZ. A great background, characters in cool poses, lights and a cool camera angle, but… it’s slower than molasses in January rendering, right? 10, 12 hours and it’s at what? 80%? Especially with Iray. Iray’s definitely heavy-duty, but the renders are impressive, too, right? Take it from someone with an older computer, those long render times are murder on the system and what if DAZ decides to crash mid-render? You’d really want to scream, right? I know I would! Well, what if you could still have an awesome scene, but far less complicated? I can’t say this’ll work for any scene, but it’ll help if you want to do a sweeping mountain vista or broad city.

So, what’s this mysterious secret? I’m coming to that, bear with me a moment. Like you, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been mid-render on a fabulous scene when DAZ suddenly decided to crash. Worse, after the crash, the program has a hard time opening the file again because it’s so large and complex. Lesson learned: complex scenes might look great, but they’re horribly harsh on the machine trying to render them! Let’s solve that problem together, shall we?

Let’s take a cool city for example. You’ve setup the building props, skydome and anything else you want. That alone is pretty complicated, right? Don’t add those characters yet! Instead, pick the center of your scene and put a level camera in it. You’ll probably want a simple lighting setup, too. Me, I used a basic 3 point light setup, but you can get fancier if you’d like.

I found out the hard way that a 30 frame rotation image series seems to be too many images to line up smoothly, but for my experiment, it served me well. So, render an image series with that camera in a full 360 degree rotation. Probably using fewer than 30 frames. Best to use the Y rotate parameter so you can control the rotation and don’t get any wild rotations. The view cube and similar tools tend to do that, I’ve noticed.

Got that image series rendered? Good! Let’s pop into Photoshop and play with its photo merge. You want it to create a panorama. I’m not going to go into detail on the settings this time, but once the panorama’s created and saved, I put an online image converter to good use. Converting the TIF I made in Photoshop to an HDR for DAZ to use.

Back in DAZ, with Iray on, we hit up the render settings and change the HDR to the one we just made. Presto! Awesome scene is now an HDR background and won’t slow down the render anymore! Instead, characters can be added and render much faster for not having those extra props in the way!

As you can see, my HDRI experiment has some problems, but still works nicely anyway. Solving those problems is next on the agenda and hopefully, once they’re solved, book rendering will be much more realistic and considerably faster. Going back to the self-imposed schedule for releases I had last year, I should be rendering Dream Angel #31 this month. Unfortunately, Dream Angel #24 is next in line, so this new technique should enable me to catch up fast.

Now, if you figure out ways to improve on this new HDRI technique, please don’t hesitate to share! My experimental HDRI turned out misaligned and squished because the technique is new to me. If you figure out how many frames for the image series to render, for instance, don’t hesitate to comment with it!

I’m very well aware that there are some incredible scenes (Stonemason makes some very impressive ones that are high quality, but they’re high poly and tough on the machine trying to render) on the DAZ site, but they’re very hefty on the computer’s resources for rendering, especially in Iray. This technique is to help ease that burden, so let’s help each other out and learn from the basics I’ve taught here. What I’ve shared will get you a basic and quite rough HDRI. Help me fine-tune the technique so it’ll benefit many!