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La Femme and La Fake (G8F)'s side by side head comparions.
Here it is with a converted texture. (Map Transfer from V5 UV, since it was similar enough regarding eyebrow position, to G3F UV.) The eyes are from Fan Ling. Her eyelashes are big because this dial-spin contains 30% Teen Josie's head.
I am not done. I still have to figure out how I will covert the limbs and the torso. I must replace her lips. La Femme has thin lips compared to V4 and the Genesis gals.
Here, a proper artistic render with my version of La Femme. DAZ Galleries link [x].
The way her face texture transfered over, the eyebrows lined up perfectly with Kayleyss' Aurore G3F/G8F. (Actually, the way her eyebrows are so arched and curved is what make her look silly to me. So this not exact transfer is an improvement based on my tastes.) The eyes are also from Aurore. Not sure if I'll convert her makeups. After all, I got them from the base figure and they are pretty basic. I could always use the LIE makeups or Diffuse Overlay makeups from other characters.
As for the limbs and torso, I only edited the part of her upper chest and breast textures onto a donor skin, in this case, Anagord's Lydia for V7. I did nothing with the limbs, since there's nothing particularly unique about them that's worth the effort.
And of course, the bar stool I always use. XD
Somewhat seasonal render. Hameleon's Kaitana for G8F but I mostly just wanted to use Linday's dForce Virgin hair. Almost looks like mine when I don't apply any of that coconut hair moisturizing cream I use. It gets so poofy. XD DAZ Galleries link [x].
In my opinion, this character looks way better with dark curly/wvay hair than blond straight hair.
I am so glad you posted these draft images!
I wondered how the "Thistle mouth" setting would look upon less toony characters and here you did just that in draft mode allowing us to see it far more clearly.
I looks great!, near perfect for, say, Lt. M'Ress from Star Trek (the 1973 animated series).
Funny you mention the ThunderCats. I daresay this "test" right here looks far more felinoid than the ThunderCats ever did. To me, they looked far more like eleves on steroids ready to go to an 80s "glam rock" concert. Very little "cat-like" about them.
Sincerely,
Bill
@Redfern the first Sphinx looked like she could be a ThunderCat, to me. She just needs the face texture redone so the nose would be the same color as the rest of the face.
I wish there was a similar Thisle mouth morph for the males. Now that the accompanying tom cat morphs are out. (I could always try to transfer it.) I've not gotten those or the Oso3D cats yet. But I think they will all blend together well with the rest of the G8 kitties, if these previous tests are proof of anything.
This was an attempt to covert DeviousDolls' Frankie Von Stein for V4 and Genesis' green skin into the G3F/G8F UV because I need an actual green skin to use.
However, in this example. I attempted to mix the solid green skin I got from Frankie with Monsters Bride for G8F, hence the stitches. The skin just looks so horribly cracked because I applied the green diffuse texture over Bride's maps and bumps. I think the head shape I used for this was Olympia 8 Head 50%, Zelara 8 Head 25%, and Teen Josie 8 Head 25%.
Something happened with the eyes, so I ended up replacing them with Raiya's Look At Me eye props, that had come with her characters. (I believe RY Kian for G8M was the last one. The other characters after that do not mention this in their description.) I like these eye props because if the eye morph is messed up, I just swap it out with these other eyes. A lot of characters I tried to transfer had such messed up eyes. -_-'
I did this render of Penny 8. She's pretty, but it's a shame that she came with such ugly skin. This skin is from TaliDesade's Mei Head Morph for Genesis 8 from deviantART which includes a skin too. She is using Victoria 8's eyebrows. Here is the DAZ Galleries link [x]
I have no idea how I made that sepia vignette effect. It happened in render. I know I did use a spotlight, so that's probably it. I love this hair. Might need to pick up the other dForce/strand hairs that Linday has. I don't like the dForce cloths hairs because my laptop is too weak for them, but it sims these strand ones just fine.
Her eyes are from Mousso's Macarena. The pants are from Powerage's Desdemone REMIX. Then I applied a combination of Mec4D's and Fisty & Darc's Iray shaders to the rest to unify my kitbashing. I also threw in a left stocking from an Aeon Soul set. I don't remember which one, but I wanted to cover up that hole on the inner thighs of the pants.
This is the free Naomi for G8F head morph by Adam Thwaites at his site, Most-Digital-Creations. In this test render, I have used Latonya 8's skin on her.
I think her shape benefits a lot from HD morphs. Here I used bluejaunte's Misumi HD details with 30% of Ellithia 8's Older HD head morph. I'm currently unsure about actually rendering this scene. Not too happy with it. Though I might use the character, as is, in another render.
This is Asher HD for Genesis 8 Male by Mousso. He's wearing dForce MoonAge Outfit for G8M. The hair is the one that comes with InTheFlesh's Vergil for G8M, but I tried making it black, except that somehow I made it look a bit salt 'n' pepper by accident.
Haven't been rendering because I've been busy gaming. Glad I finally got a Nintendo Switch for myself (as an early birthday gift) right before the precautions got tightened. This curved my hobby expenses last month, not that it bothered me. XD
I wanted to render Min Joon, the one character I wanted the most from Leading Male Morph Collection 2 for Genesis 8 Male(s). DAZ Galleries Link [x]
Here is a quick render (two renders, one with the background and one without, but combined in GIMP) of Alawa 8. Like Kala 8, this is yet another brown character who is brown because the translucency is at 60% or more (default is 90%). If I lowered it, she'd be as pale as Mei Lin. To me, this is very disappointing, since I tend to use lower translucency levels.
The hat is from Versa Hat and Pony Tail for G8F. Her hair is also from this set, but I added in the dForce Hair Elyssa Ponytail for G8F too for more thickness. (Color matched with ColorWerks Extreme.) Her outfit and bottled water is dForce Homebody for G8F. Background is just the Shaded Haven that comes free with DS, but with the default Iray concrete shaders applied. The lights and HDRI are from Mee HD for G8F.
Another thing Alawa and Kala have in common is that they are two of the prettiest G8F base characters I've seen, but were given very unflattering promo images. (I don't have Dasan 8, because I don't really render a lot of old guys. Though I could've just grabbed him and applied the Growing Up Teen preset on him to make him younger. I've done that to Edward 8 to age him down a bit.)
Here is a quick attempt and render of the "young" Edward 8. I used iSourceTextures' Trajan HD skin for both since it looked a bit similar to me, but smoother and more blemished. The "regular" Edward 8 has Edward 8's normals and HD dialed in for more detail.
This "Young" Edward 8 is basically 70% Edward 8 + Older Teen Growing Up preset. However, I scaled him up tp 100%, lowered the Youth Morph to 14.5%, Youth Head Proportion changed to 77%. As for the HD, I used Nix 8's HD and Nix 8's normals. There were other slight changes, but I don't remember. I did have to scale the regular Edward render because they didn't quite line up. There could be other morphs I can dial in, to get a better likeness, but this was close-enough.
Hi. This is a quick "self-portrait" render with my avatar wearing an Aeon Soul outfit, plus Ronen (with Alexander's skin) thrown in to fill in the negative space.
Here is a 3/4 re-render of the scene to show that I look different at an angle. And yes, I'm using Alawa 8's skin at 0.45 translucency. I might need to edit the bumps, but it was surprising that this skin's tone was almost the same color as mine, and the eyebrows were similar. I guess I might replace the Joanna skin I've been using. XD
I haven't been rendering, but I stumbled this .GIF on Tumblr and I recognized it as JoeQuick's Killer Shark for Genesis.
Y'all can say all you want about which G8F is the most beautiful, but you'll never top this type of compliment in regards to the shape's craftmanship.
I'm trying to make this character based on Phoenix1966's Sean. (He's actually, half-Sean and half-RY Kian, with some other morphs thrown in.) Not happy with his body. He's supposed to have a stylized physique where he looks muscular and long/lanky at the same time. I was going to post it earlier but I don't get on my laptop much.
I might have to look for another skin. I don't quite like the foot tan lines. It doesn't fit the character I'm trying to recreate. Other than that, the skin tone and the eyebrows were perfect.
Finally, got around to using the dForce Sea Salt for G3F and G8F. I'm pleasantly surprised because it looked like an "updated" version of a V4 hair I use for my character. (The V4 hair in question is Neftis3D's Angelissa Hair Set. It doesn't look good in Iray, at least how I tried to convert it, because it rendered out very thin.)
This is a test render I did in the default Iray set up, with the default hair color. The only gripe I have is that it takes a long time to simulate compared to other SBH dForce hairs. It seems to render faster than the other SBHs I have, so I'll forgive this.
Here is she is again, but with ColorWerks Extreme.
Looking back at my early Iray renders with her, she's improved a lot in appearance. Especially, after I found a good skin for her. I more or less kept her head shape the same...she looks awkward in the Viewport but renders nicely. I'm tempted to redo her body, since I have a better selection of shapes.
This character was originally intended to be like those fetish pin up characters I still see on deviantART, except that her proportions were meant to look more "normal" because she's chubby. That's the main problem I found with these characters, besides the rigid posing which still happens because the artists aren't taking the time to tweak poses. Most of the time, artists make these types of characters skinny and it doesn't look right because if some lady is going to have a huge rack and an equally large caboose, she's got to be big too to balance it out. Since this character is a nerd, she's just chubby and very curvy. (She could've been beefy too. I think I experimented with that once.) My fun with her is seeing how she'd fit in the clothes I have in my Library. She's too big and they get stretched out. I need to learn how to make my own UVs for outfits to solve the stretching problems, but I'm the type of person who has too many hobbies, so I probably won't do it anytime soon. XD
Back to this guy, I tweaked him some more. Not really going to do much with his face, though I made his cheeks more sunken, because it's supposed to get obstructed by his beard (this is from JoeQuick's Toon Dad for G8M.)
Not sure if I should bother with recreating him exactly in DS. (As in, looking for the most accurate skin and hair, outfit, etc) Because I planned to use this shaping preset as a drawing reference, where I'm only limited by drawing skill, not what I have in my Library. XD
Been busy doing other stuff, like taking care of my sick mom, but I think I'm back. I'm trying to perfect my avatar, at least skin-wise. This is my avatar with Alawa 8's skin again, but I used Altern8 (Olympia 8 B setting with the face mask removed, since the Olympia 8 settings keep trying to apply the Diffuse Overlay brows). I think I either have to add in my own blush or use the transmitting setting. It's too late to test things out right now, since a lot had taken up my time earlier. Perhaps another day.
DForce didn't want to work, something about a kernel, so I dressed up my avatar in some non-dForce items. The face looks too solid colored. My cheeks tend to be naturally blushed. (Somehow captured it well with the Ronen render I did previously. Nut the skin lacked detail, in my opinion.) Also, these weren't Alawa's eyes, they're from Aurore.
TL;DR - I'm still trying to find good skin settings for my avatar. But I think I'll stick to using different skins, depending on what looks good with the scene or lighting.
Hair used is AprilYSH's Addison Hair for G3F and G8F. All of them are using Alawa 8's eyebrows. I really want to figure out a way to blend/balance all three settings as a single preset. There's things I like and dislike about each skin, but IDK how I could easily get what I like from each to make the most ideal setting. Part of my fun with this hobby is experimenting as well as illustrating (whether it be thinking up a good shot for the scene I set up or editing textures with GIMP.)
I purchased Aeon Soul's Everday 2 "Get Dressed" Poses and Clothes, along with the Cyberpunk textures because I wanted that $10 store credit and the Sporty textures. I didn't have time to render today, but I managed to set up a scene. I do like the basic clothes included in the set.
I originally wanted the male version but the sale wasn't good and it's still marked as "New" and I can't pick it up..yet. What I didn't like about the original G8F ones were some of the textures. Seems like a pain to download everything with DIM and then delete what I don't like by hand. It's why I still haven't gotten it and unsure if I should.
This is the scene I prepared yesterday and then I tried to play around with the HDRI and the hair shaders, so it would look good. My version of Alice, named "Alessandra" trying on the Everyday 2 Get Dressed with the Sporty textures. DAZ Galleries link [x].
Just so it could "match" I took the Holoflow materials I used for her sleeve and copypasted them on Kanade Hair's bows. XD
This is a second render I did with the same scene setup, but something I feel is more "accurate" when getting dressed. (Though I did have to render it twice because of some poke-through. With and without the Holoflow shorts.)
In both of these renders, I mixed up the morphs designed for the same pose in both shirt and capris, to give it a varied look. However, if you want to do the same, you must make sure that the mixes you use don't exceed 1.00 when they total up, otherwise you'd have to do a lot of adjusting. By the way, Alessandra in these renders is using the default G8F body.
I wanted to draw today, but I also wanted to do 3D art too, if you know what I mean. The simple solution to do both at once is obviously doodling a t-shirt design for a 3D t-shirt. Decided to try it on the Everyday 2 shirt. I wanted to doodle the Detective Pikachu shirt from Pokemon GO. It looks like this on the avatars.
I decided to sketch it real quick in Sculptris using my Intuos drawing tablet. Unfortunately, Sculptris only recognizes the "front" material of the shirt, so my drawing for the front appeared in the back too. (This means that if I want to continue working on this to actually try to make it good, I must use 3DCoat since it can handle all of that.)
Next, I tried to further refine this sketch with Autodesk SketchBook. What I did was overlay the front UVs I generated with UV Mapper on top of the map I made in Sculptris. I think this refined sketch took me like 30 minutes to draw because I'm slow drawing with a tablet. (The main reason I used UV Mapper is because I actually want to try to draw this by hand on paper. So I needed the UV to print out and draw over that by hand, since I have better precision and speed.) Afterwards, I applied this map in Sculptris to see how it looked like.
The back on the refined sketch made me lose it. I will use this as a visual reference because, as it is, it's perfect. And no, I'm not really trying to copy the original exactly. In fact, I want to draw Pikachu more like a toon than the ugly CGI version. (I have my complaints about the "realism" attempted there. Especially, since I know that these artists would never portray a human character, like Ash from the animes, in that exact same "realistic" style because he'd look horrifying.)
At least in the past, I had done a lot of texturing experiments, and the reason that I don't bother to continue with most of them is because I satisfied my desire to texture, even if its incomplete. I have no real motivation to finish because I don't see any interest from others in what I do. Though I do often contemplate completing something, just to mess with people since they'd wonder where I got it from. But that would require me to do more than just the Base Map. XD
Before this shirt, I had ambitious plans to edit a human skin texture to where the person's arm looked scaly but I need to start with something simpler before I could even think of tackling that, since the ambitious plan would require me to edit other textures too.
For the Pikachu shirt, I've drawn it on paper, but haven't had time to scan it.
I'm posting this render here because it was originally supposed to be a quick render using emotionaldream's Ki for G8F freebie character. Except that I substituted Ki's skin for the pale Aurore's skin. Outfit is a the Capriconia Outfit for G2F with shaders. The chest belt and arm straps from Night Spy Outfit for G8F. The shorts from Urban Edgy Outfit G3F.
She has Addison Hair for G3F/G8F. The crown from squarepeg3D's The Phenomenon G8F freebie. And Misumi HD G8F's smile at 100%.
I'm so busy IRL. Barely have any time to do my own renders. This was originally supposed to be a quick render with Marcius' Luc. Except that I never really liked his out-of-the-box skin. I almost planned to unistall it and only leave his morph, but for some reason I decided to apply Mousso's Asher HD's material settings over Luc's default skin. Somehow that improved it that I changed my mind about uninstalling it. The eyes are from Mousso's Fan Ling for G8F.
I was also messing around with a freebie expression randomizer script that doesn't seem to work very well with newer versions of DS. (So I can't recommend it, but I like it too much and will continue to use it until it's completely unusable.) I thought this grumpy face was adorable.
This was another render I did of Luc. For some reason the shirt I had used in the previous render didn't want to simulate well, so I used another one because I didn't really want to do a shirtless render with him. Maybe I should try some more Marcius skins with Mousso settings combos and see if I find other nice combinations. I forgot why I decided to render him, but I do use his morphs a lot since its the right combination of big-eyed toon for the mixes I do. (I can say the same about Ade.)
This is yet another project WIP, but I'm trying to see if I could model hair for fan art/cosplay renders. At least my reasoning for attempting this is because there's some hairs that will likely never be made and it's better to make it yourself if you really want it. (The same can be said for just about any other type of art, like drawing, writing, etc.) Personally, I think the most recognizable feature for anime characters is their hair, followed by their clothing. The way I see it, if I could model the hair, then I could kitbash and retexture an approximation of their outfit. However, the hair I'm trying to model is for a videogame character, but the art style of the game is anime. (My ultimate goal is to make this hair morphable, so I could reshape it into other hairstyles and use one model instead of making several.)
I'm attempting to follow Modeling with Littlefox: Hair Collection tutorials. I actually found the tutorial very easy to understand, because it's written in a simple and straightforward way. (I'm even surprised that I read through it so quickly, it didn't feel like a long confusing manual.) The only reason I'm struggling is because I'm using Blender 2.9 instead of Modo. Right now, I'm lost with Blender. The last time I tried to use it was when it was Blender 2.83 and I had no idea what to do that I closed it. (Plus, all the tutorials I found at the time, were for older versions and the one I had was nothing like them.) Blender 2.9, at least for me, feels more user-friendly for someone who barely even knows about 3D.
This is what I managed to do before I called it quits for the day. Rather than create the scalp, as the tutorial instructed because I know I'd struggle, I'm using Fisty's Hair Cap resource. I will see if I can do a little more tomorrow. I'm left with trying to figure out how to subdivide these strips of hair, so I could bend them along the hair cap. (I wasted most of today's free time battling with Blender's view point and figuring out how to position the hair strips against the hair cap. I gave up and moved the hair cap to the origin and found it easier to line up the hair strips where I approximately wanted them.)
Perhaps I should rename this thread "MimicMolly's WIPs & Renders" since all I've been posting are more WIPs than renders. XD
My problem is that I've gotten to the point that I struggle to maintain my focus on most art projects and I can't really go back to them the next day. The motivation just vanishes in an instant and I can't even go back to pick up what I started. What makes it more difficult is that I have a very pragmatic mentality. It's a struggle to convince myself to keep going because the thing that always comes to mind is always, "Nobody wants or cares about what you're doing? You're making too much of an effort for nothing. Just getting some light practice, even if you don't finish it, is enough. Nobody cares, so nobody is expecting it. Besides, even if they did know, they'll be horribly disappointed that you were unable to make it and wasted their time by making them wait for it."
Believe me, I've tried to convince myself that this is just random negativity getting the best of me. But the argument it presents is so good and logical that I have no choice but to ceade because it is absolutely right. Even with my drawing, I'm constantly struggling with this. (It's actually the main reason I started to make illustration/proper portrait renders. I can't even complete a drawing, but at least I can set up a scene that shows a "snapshot" of something and make an illustration. It might not be what my heart yearns for, but I at least satisfied my desire to illustrate something.) If you look through this thread, from beginning to this post, you will see its decline. It started off with illustrations and slowly devolved to a series of countless unfinished projects. Each as random, but somewhat similar, as the last. (The main reason I made this thread in the first place, is to motivate myself to do more with DS. And to keep track of my progress even if it's all just randomness.)
Speaking of drawing, the biggest argument that tries to convince hobbyist artists not to give up is, "Do it for yourself." But doing it for myself doesn't seem like a justifable argument to me since I'm somehow satisfied with the bare minimum. I know it shouldn't be this way because if I don't challenge myself or attempt something difficult, I'll stagnate as an artist and that's happening right now. (And I hate it.) The reason I bring this up is that I occassionally see threads in the Commons where other users are talking about losing inspiration. None of the advice offered seems to fit with my problems and from what I've learned, my perspective is so radically different from everyone else's [on here] that it's best not to chime in with my personal experience. But, this is just my observations of those who have chosen to post. Perhaps you have similar feelings that you can't quite figure out how to explain. Looking at the galleries and being told to "keep it up" don't seem to help you get out of this rut. Struggling with art is an experience unique to the individual. It's why common remedies to get over such "artist blocks" may not help. The only solution is to figure out why this is happening. So far, I have an idea but I'm not even sure.
Hopefully, I'll be able to continue this modeling project tomorrow. If I have miraculously managed to find focus to write a fanfic of approximately 77,000 words since March, that is still being worked on and few will ever read once complete, I think I could manage to make myself a morphable hair prop to use as a drawing reference when I make a G8F wear it. I have improved so much with my writing since I've started this fanfic WIP (and the others before it), I think I can improve with 3D too. My own philosophy with art is that my "art style" is only good when it can transcend whatever medium I attempt to do something with. (It's also why many of my WIPs have been about texturing. It's the easiest way to incorporate my drawings with my rendering, so I do both at once.)
Sorry for the vent post, but I thought it was okay since it's still on topic (talks about my WIPs) and I've seen others talk about themselves or what they're up to in their own threads, so it seems alright. XD
This was meant to be straightforward, I wanted to mix two of the most attractive G8Ms (Ashan 8 and Dain 8) and see what I would get. But I spent more time than I should messing with the skin settings because nothing looked like I wanted. The result in these renders wasn't what I wanted either, but I have a headache and gave up. His eyes are Aurore's eyes because I like those.
(Used Ashan 8 = 60%. Dain 8 = 60%)
I made him sad because I feel sad too. EDIT: I posted this in the DAZ Galleries too. [x]
The good thing is that I like this combination, particularly for the body, and will use it again in the future...but IDK when.
I'm still trying to model, but I got distracted. XD
A bit of an update regarding my hair project, since I'm in the mood to talk and it's on topic since it's a WIP.
The reason it's taking so long is because I'm learning Blender 2.9 alongside it. Most normal and sane people try to model a chair, and here I am, trying to model a cosplay wig. (Since in my logic, I have plenty of chairs already but not this particular cosplay wig. If I need to make something, it must be something I'm missing.)
Yesterday, my breakthrough came when I figured out how to thicken planes and move vertices. The latter is something I will experiment further because I had an old pet project involving that cute fox backpack from the Renardeau Outfit for Genesis 8 Female(s). I wanted to make shaping morphs for it since I want a variety of animal backpacks, not just the fox. It was easy to do in Sculptris but difficult to adjust the resulting shape in a clean manner. I'll try to see if I can incorporate this to my workflow. But I'm not sure when, since I'm going to be busy with other non-3D stuff tonight.
I decided to grab this freebie, Lady Noir v2 for G3F, except I converted her for G8F. Her skin is Osuine's...what people say the "godtassel girl" has. Hair is by Catherine3678ab.
I have been having some problems with DS lately. It crashed multiple times and shut down my laptop with it. Then, for some reason, my DS layout got reverted to some weird default, but I managed to fix that. I like this character, as a "Stephanie 5" look to her. Maybe I should render them together some day.