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+1
and great covers
Looks fantastic! You've done a really good job at making all the covers cohesive as well. Can't wait to read the next one!
The cover looks great! I think you've got the branding nailed down. It looks very cohesive across all three books. :)
Thank you, all! I found that building a template for a series is a huge time saver. I also make a big moodboard with mockups for all the books in the series to see how they look together.
That also helped me determine that this cover had to be mainly black and white (especially with the chessboard.) Any additional colors really took away from it. The next one in the series, Playing with Fire, has a lot of reds, yellow, oranges, and, of course, flames. That one might take me a while, LOL.
Your covers keep getting better and better, lady!
Ha ha, thanks!
I haven't been here in an age. This year has been so totally crazy. Haven't opened DAZ much, not even the store, but the new Filament and Octane add-ons looked fun, so I started playing. And what better way to test Octane than to throw my favorite, ancient characters at it?
Here's V3 in the Blue Moods Dress and the Aslan Court set. Spellcaster poses, V3 Hi Def mats, and Embrace V3 hair. Default materials on everything, auto-converted. I had to mess with the lipstick and nail polish to get it to show right. I really love the results and the render was so fast! I put my usual postwork on.
Test #2: Sebastian for M6. This is my "Hugh" that I use for my Black Kat series. I've tried to update him to G8 several times and failed. He is who he is- an M6. I'm thrilled with how he turned out in Octane! I had bought the RedSpec Octane shaders for him ages ago, thinking someday I'd spring for it. Never did, and the shaders no longer work in this version- but they're not needed. The autoconvert does a great job. I used the Octane Render kit to make his Fraser Hair a bit shinier. His eyes are from another M6 character. No tweaks to anything. Backdrop here is ancient. Postwork added, but neither image needed much.
I recently updated my Kat & Mouse cover too. I think this looks much better. What a difference simple tweaks can make (I made him bigger and taller, shoved her back a bit.) This was in Iray. I still can't seem to get away from that Marquis for M4 outfit. I need to get back to learning Marvelous Designer so he can have more magician clothes! LOL
Good to see you back! I think a few of us went MIA for a while as life got busy.
Good to see you too, KnittingMommy!
One more experiment, then I have to get back to other things. I decided to install the latest DAZ and the Octane plugin on my old computer, since many of my old content and scenes are on that one. Then I dug out a M3/V3 scene I did a while ago in Iray (with postwork.)
I had shaded their skins manually with Anagenesis 3. Looked great in Iray, but Octane didn't like that so well. I hunted down the old 3Delight textures and put them back on so that Octane would convert them right. The results were pretty good. A four-minute render and no strain on that older computer (it has an Intel Celeron processor and an older GeForce card with 2GB.) I think Octane may be a good way to handle older hardware AND older figures.
I really like how this turned out, though I'd love to figure out why his eyebrows disappeared. The character is an old freebie I found on ShareCG (Pride Guy 2007.) The hairs also aren't as thick, but look pretty good with default conversion. I changed AS Luna's skin to a V3 HiRes. The original one didn't convert as well. There were strange marks around the eyelash and eyelid area. Wasn't going to do any postwork, but had to resize the image so I went ahead and did a little. These files are HUGE when they come out of Octane! I'm still a n00b with this render engine, and there are tons of settings. Plenty of playing to do!
Interesting note: Just from playing so far, it seems that Filament handles Iray well, where Octane seems to do better converting 3Delight. I did use Filament to preview this render and it worked well on some materials and not so well on others. I love the new toys!
Looks good. I haven't played with the Octane stuff yet. Downloaded stuff but haven't installed yet.
Hey gal, welcome back! Missed you. :) Don't be a stranger.
It's my first time in this thread. I know it's from years ago, but the first line...
... made me laugh out loud. The desperate self-deception of every single member here!
Some nice work here, I love your romance novel aesthetic!
LOL- yes! Best intentions, but who are we kidding? We love buying 3D stuff!
Whipped up something for tomorrow's newsletter. REALLY happy with how this turned out. This is Jared, one of my twin energy shifters. He's the louder, wilder of the two, and yes he does wear an Elvis costume in the 2nd book (Kat & Mouse.)
This is my dear buddy DarwinMishap's Iain for M7, wearing the Legends Outfit by the wonderfully talented Aave Nainan, Destiny's Garden & IDG Designs. Still one of my favorite clothing pieces in the entire store. They did an amazing job on it! Lighting is UltraGenesis and Marshian Rim Light Rig. Hair is Jonas for G3M with some Sloshworks shaders. He's also sporting some Supernatural Brows and Redz's OMG Body Hair (which also works great on G8M, by the way.)
I'll be doing monthly profiles of my Supers and eventually my Rogues for my Black Kat series website, so there's plenty more to come. At some point I have to get back to modeling clothes too. Hugh needs some for an upcoming book cover and I can't find anything close in the store. Should be an adventure!
I just saw your newsletter. I'm a subscriber. :) Looks good! I'm very curious about what an energy shifter is though.
Thanks! I hope you enjoyed the newsletter. Merry Catmas! LOL
Energy shifters- my Supers (and Rogues) have elemental powers. I use the term "shifter" a little differently than some urban fantasy authors. They aren't transforming into something (like wolf shifters, etc.) They are transforming and/or manipulating that element and wielding it as a weapon or tool. So an energy shifter can manipulate energy, a fire shifter manipulates fire, a light shifter, like Hugh, can tranform light into illusion.
So Jared is an energy shifter who can absorb energy and study it. He has a gift with inanimate objects, like machines. He uses this ability to unlock their secrets and can hack into almost anything. He can also absorb the powers of others of his kind (both Supers and Rogues) and use those against them. Makes for some fun battle scenes!
Been a while! I've been working and homeschooling while continuing to write and publish books. I have 4 Black Kat books out and two on pre-order at all major eBookstores. (They're available in print, too.)
Here are the latest covers for Books 4-6, as always with DAZ and Photoshop. I've tapped a lot of generations for this series. Whatever works best for each character is my motto.
Latest cover done! Getting there, slowly but surely. I used stuff from M4 on up for this one.
The cover(s) look really great!
That is a beautiful cover. Love it!
Thank you! I'm really happy with it and can't wait to write it. It's one of my favorite stories in the series.
Made a few minor tweaks. I think it's a go!
That's a great image and a great cover. The use of the sword for the two letters "I" is a really clever touch.
Thank you, MoreTN! A friend suggested using the sword in place of the I's and it was the perfect finishing touch. I love how it turned out. Now the challenge is, creating the next cover and getting it to look this good. I'm excited though. I never know how they're going to turn out. The end is always a fun surprise!