SnowSultan

I'm doing some pretty simple lighting tests with different characters, and thought I could make it a little more fun for those who like my female fighting images. I've also been sorting my reference/fighting photo collection and I have 2,715 'random' images that I just gathered online over the years, rather than from a specific creator (like the ten thousand I have from Footmode and Sleeperkid's World, lol).

If you'd like to participate, just leave a comment with a random number between 1 and 2715 and I'll collect those images and either randomly choose one to use as reference for a simple fight scene, or maybe I can post thumbnails and you can vote on those finalists.

Can't promise anything, but a good result might show up and inspire me to make something half-way decent.

In other news, I'm putting a lot of time into learning Blender and slowly working on the giantess commissions. Apologies for not having much to show lately, (especially for Smacky fans), but I absolutely plan on making new art with her when I feel I've improved enough. She's my most important creation and I want to be able to do her justice.

Thanks as always for visiting!

I've been asking myself why I put off making new images if I own more content than ever, have ideas I'd like to try to illustrate, and have an audience that would probably like to see me make more stuff, and the answer usually comes back to "I really don't want to mess with the lighting". Even after 26 years of doing this, I still find it unpredictable and difficult to get results that I'm ultimately happy with.

I'm interested in hearing how other 3D artists deal with it, and what your steps might be in setting your lighting up. I would imagine that a reasonable workflow would be to assemble your scene, establish any emissive lights first, like ceiling lights, lamps, glowing screens, etc, and then if necessary, add an HDRI to create the global lighting, usually made visible by camera culling or removing an interior wall, and lowered enough to allow the emissive lights to be seen. If you're doing an outdoor scene, use an environmental setup with a sun or ambient light, then add gobos if needed and scene lights where necessary to either fill in areas that are not illuminated enough or for effects like rim lighting. This all sounds like it makes sense when I plan it in my mind, and most tutorials I've watched recommend similar methods, but it almost always results in images that don't look very interesting to me. Do you have different workflows that give you more reliable results?

First, a few updates. I'm in the process of returning Character Creator and am going to focus more on DAZ Studio again (with some Blender here and there). CC is especially useful if you're going to be sending characters to Unreal Engine or use in real-time rendering situations, but I think DAZ characters are still better for actual rendering and realism. DAZ Studio having a good bridge to Zbrush and - if you can get it set up properly, which is easier said than done - the Substance Painter image importer script does take some of the pain out of using additional programs with it. I'm not sure about the Blender bridge(s) yet, but I don't think most DAZ Studio users need CC unless they're going to be working a lot with UE.

I'm still working on commissions (and probably will be for the rest of my life, this is what I get for not being able to say no, haha), but I still have ideas for unrelated pics that I'd like to make. I've had requests for modern bad girls getting beaten up by Sahmika or other heroes, and I think those might be fun to make without worrying too much about a plot or world building. I've already done it a few times with stuff like Blonde Bop and No Funny Business, but since @Shabazik, @dangerfan, @Alexx-C, @hexnspiel, @Zakoholic, and so many others have their own female henchwomen organizations, maybe I need one too.

A few months ago, I was reading some political story that used the word "ballyhoo", but my cursor was blocking the first letters and for a split second, I read it as "bellyhoo". It's dumb, but later I started thinking that "Bellyhoo" might be a cute name for some group of bad girl entertainers, dancers, strippers, and other sexy female enemies who wear midriff-revealing outfits. I haven't come up with anything better since (not that I've really thought much about it since either), but if you guys like that idea, I might try making some sample members for some of my upcoming test renders. Thought maybe modern versions of Vincent (the giantess slayer) and Sahmika (with or without afro) could be the heroes who fight them, and I could finally use some of the modern environments and clothing I've been getting from DAZ. I have a lot of random lingerie and accessories that I think could give the henchwomen individual looks rather than a standard uniform or outfit like most others use. It's not like I don't have enough to do now, but I feel like I'm spending way more time learning and testing things than making any new art these days, and that sort of content does seem like the kind of stuff most of my watchers might like.

Anyway, let me know if you have any thoughts. I'm not quitting Fae and Flaeme or anything, this would just be stuff to make for practice and for when I need a break after falling asleep during another Blender pivot point tutorial. Thanks as always for visiting!

I made what I guess is a tolerable eye shader setup for Genesis 9 in Blender (click image for larger version), but I haven't tested it with many different colors yet. Blue eyes make the reflections hard to see, but that's probably normal when the eyes are lighter. I looked for other setups online, but it's difficult because everyone is using different eye models. Many just modeled their own eyes from scratch and have different materials for each eye part, so I couldn't get much information from them. Genesis 9 doesn't even divide the eye textures into the iris, pupil, and sclera now, (it uses LIE overlays to mix them up), so I can't use any nodes like Hue/Sat or Multiply to adjust one particular element.

I'm thinking of making some masks for different body parts like what Character Creator does. For example, the Lips are no longer a separate material, so if you want to make them more shiny without making the rest of the skin shiny as well, you need to use a mask. I have a lot going on right now, but I'll see what I can do.

I'm not entirely sure what to think of Character Creator yet, and I probably won't until version 5 comes out at the end of August. Its SkinGen texture layering tool seems very powerful (it's like LIE, but not slow as molasses and you can randomize element placement), but the CC shape morphs pale in comparison to DAZ's head and body morphs. It makes adding animation presets to figures very easy, but posing is annoying because there don't appear to be any body part rotation limits (correct me if I'm wrong). It has powerful tools to rig static meshes and send figures to various programs, but the lack of any sort of raytracing renderer makes everything look unfinished and amateurish. It's hard to recommend this, not that it's bad, but because it's neither really a companion or a alternative to DAZ Studio, and I don't know yet if it benefits DAZ users enough to be worth the high cost.

I have a feeling that no matter what method you use to get a DAZ figure into Blender (or a CC one for that matter), you're going to need to make manual material adjustments. The official DAZ bridge is very hit-and-miss when it comes to materials (plus it brings over the stupid SSS method), I can barely understand how to even get a figure into Blender using Diffeomorphic, I've heard (and seen) some bad things about that universal skin shader over on Blender Market, and Character Creator sends things to Blender with fully adjustable skin settings - which is great as long as you don't look at the endless pasta bowl node setup it sets up in order to do it.

Will try to keep you updated. Thank you for the nice comments on the skin shader example, I didn't think it was anything special but I'm very glad if it can help anyone out.

I apologize for not posting anything recently, but I've still been extremely busy with art-related stuff. Here's what I've been up to, what I'm doing, and what I have planned.

Giantess Commissions

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At the moment, my focus is on a set of commissions I am doing for viewers that were fans of the giantess-slaying image sets I made for another user a few years ago. I currently have four commissions lined up, one is almost finished, one is on hold while I try to improve my workflows, another is waiting for an item at DAZ to go on sale, and the primary one is a gigantic but enjoyable project from a very generous commissioner who provided a full script with dialogue and narration, detailed worldbuilding, and a backstory for Vincent (the hero), the giantesses that he fights, and other important characters as well. We are likely to work on future projects too, so for those who enjoy seeing a hero slay sexy, evil giant women with a well-placed blade in the belly, you probably won't be disappointed. The commissions have forced me to learn new methods and watch tutorials every day, but the more I work, I'm worried now that Studio cannot create the large custom environments that I need. I started experimenting with Blender again and might try tinkering with Unreal Engine again too.

For those who are more familiar with either of those, is there any real advantage one has over the other in terms of static, high quality rendering? I'd assume Blender can give better results using still rendering in Cycles, but I see a lot of very good renders on Artstation done with UE (not sure how), and UE has many more ready-to-use assets than there are native Blender objects from what I've seen.

Fae and Flaeme

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My own story, Fae and Flaeme, is actually a fairly short story, starting with Sahmika's discovery in the abandoned mining town of Coppermoore and ending with her victory over Kofaevae the Tyrant and the gods granting her wish to always be with her Papa and sister Eri as she battles the underworld throughout the rest of time. I had three additional stories for Sahmika in mind after those events; the one where she has to escort Laventus to fight a gorgon and discovers a plan to bring the reptilian demon lord Galkaga into this world, a World War 2-themed one where she deals with the paranormal (i.e. demonic) plans of the Nazis and eventually has a confrontation with the demon lord Haelharm the Ravager, and a 21st century version of her original story, where she lives in Washington D.C. and gets involved in investigating a conspiracy theory that the president and his staff are demons (which of course turns out to be true; the president being Kofaevae the Tyrant). I haven't written much about any of them though besides a bit of the Laventus story and some silliness when Jakkae and Kisae discover social media in the modern timeline.

Considering the current American political climate, my work with commissioners who may have differing political views than my own, and that I'd prefer not to live the rest of my days in El Salvador or South Sudan, this probably isn't the best time for me to try to go anywhere with the stories. My priority with Fae and Flaeme for now is to continue to work on making the characters look their best in 2D using a combination of AI over 3D and manual drawing.

I'm sorry I don't have anything new to show right now, but believe me, I really am working hard on stuff every day and trying to improve with every new problem that I need to find a solution for.

Thank you very much for reading and for continuing to view my works! (and for those guilty of it, if you're going to favorite half of the stuff in my gallery, can you leave a comment or two? I appreciate it, but I'd appreciate knowing you're not a bot too. )