Colm Jackson new character releases - what is that texture style?
daveso
Posts: 7,024
in The Commons
I've noticed the newer Colm Jackson character releases appear more like an illustration style , not realism oriented. Am i right there or is it just the way the promos are rendered?
Example: CJ Anya For Genesis 9 | Daz 3D The last 4 or 5 have been this style.
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Just looks like a combination of lighting and some post work to me
I got into a little trouble the last time I went here, so I will try to keep it tactful and say that I personally find it nearly impossible to tell what the figure will actually look like in my renders from the images on a typical store page for a CJ character. It's something about the way they're lit. I have used Lynx in several stories at ths point and I have not yet once managed to do a render of her that bears the slightest resemblance to any of the images on her store page.
Edit: This may not have always been the case with his store pages, but it goes back as far as Ash Nuin, whom I use all the time (she's the base for one of my regular recurring characters). Aiisha, on the other hand, who may be one of my favorite characters of all time, looks exactly the way she does in her store renders. So go figure. I don't know what he started doing differently or why he started to do it.
perhaps he's developing a new lighting rig. I just tried lighting and rendering Anya a few ways and she looks nothing like the promo pics, which is fine for me actually.
LOL I just checked the link to the character ... Xena lives lol
In fact my very first reaction the day it came on sale was "Oh, we're doing Lucy Lawless, are we?"
(It's a pretty good figure, and I don't want to sound like I'm knocking CJ, I own and love a lot of his stuff. But I already have a bunch of figures I could plausibly make into Xena if I needed that kind of thing.)
Yeah, it just looks like a color grade to me.
You may take a look at this little post processing YouTube series Colm Jackson did with Jay Verluis.
It's post processing. I had renders with similar style done with Photoshop.
This is why I think Mousso and Bluejaunte have best promotional renders. IMO. Characters posed in neutral soft lightning on empty neutral background might not be an eyecandy, but it's a precise showcase of how the character model and textures look.
I like seeing BOTH actual renders (that I might be ble to replicate myself - after all that's why I bought the character!) as well as some polished post-worked images, but agree that there should be AT LEAST one set of renders showing the actual product. I've seen some products that only have post-production images and they might be completely awesome, but make it hard to know what you are getting with your purchase. Conversely there are some vendors that do such basic, poor renders that one wonders how they ever make a sale. <shrug>
thanks. I'll check that out.
Xena's 2nd daughter :)
Too bad G9 not for me (nor converting) and no G8 avail. More atypical great character.
I like Colm's work overall a lot, from way back in RDNA days.
As a start, in a photo editor, try raising both Brightness and Contrast in a jpg file after rendering. See where that takes you. Then try changing the frequency color of the light. NOT the color of the picture, but the color of the lighting itself (frequency) towards what's called Blue Light. I think the sharpness of the figure looks like it's been increased. Most likely it's a combination of all four, and maybe something else.
A program called GIMP is free.
So I played around for a few minutes with the image you posted, but I can't attach a picture. Brightness, contrast, and sharpness have definitely been adjusted. Those are the starting point, try it and see. Other things have been done, but those three are for certain! Start there and play around with the picture adjustments.
But Robin Tunney didn't play Xena
Colm Jackson is a brilliant dude! Love his characters. Heck of a photog too.
This is the problem with the vast majority of PA model releases. A lot of models are lit in a way that often makes their skin look paler or whatever their look is, only to buy it and render it and have a ruddy, or reddish tint, skin is way darker than the promo image, etc. As a matter of fact, most 8.1 models were also this way. The first time I loaded in Vic 8.1, her skin had a really reddish tint to it and looked way darker than her promo images, as a prime example. It really is severe, sometimes. You can try to alter the translucency of their skin, and transmitted color, but it can only go so far without ruining everything.