Art for games

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Bruno

It's, interestingly, the same material as her torso (as are the wings) but it doesn't have a specular map on it like the wings and torso do. Which was an oopsie. You've got a good eye.

Oddly enough, the new render seems to have added the matte to the tail, and lost it on the torso (conveniently, you can switch your view between the two; it's quite obvious if you do). Also, the bikini is now a matte surface (which may be intentional).

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Bruno

While working on the new scene, I did a new render of the succubus. Shows the hair twists around her horns better, and doesn't have the oopsie I made on her wing tips ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerril/5211185767/

Oh, yeah. Now the hair/horn interaction is much more clear! Great work, Bruno!

Originally Posted by Bruno

That will help on both cases, but at the moment your video card itself will be of minimal assistance. If you dink around with the beta builds of LUX (and hand editing your scene files ;) you can get some acceleration off your video card, but currently only in the mode that only works for scenes lit with the sunlight lamp. I tried it with this scene and it went to pieces and sobbed in the corner. Very quickly. But yeah. Didn't work at all. They're working on that, in a disorganized FOSS way ;)

I'm starting to see why your pictures are "small." I'm used to generating pictures at 1280x1024, and, after 8 hours, they're still only at about 1,500 samples/pix, even with only one light source.

Originally Posted by Bruno

That works, but beware that light bounces in LUX, so any lighting that looks fine in 3DLight will probably be too much in LUX, unless your character is floating in empty space.

Ironically, I've gone to using no background on a lot of my character pictures so it doesn't burn through ink when printed.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Helpful, very much so. I have an old AMD 64 dual core at about 1.5 ghz/core. The succubus took 12 hrs to render. The more GRUNT you can throw at it, the better. Fancy brains and operations not so much, trace more rays more faster. The network rendering is a godsend although right now I have to steal time off my husbands PC overnight. I'm buying myself a new tower in the after-Christmas sales (Boxing Day is a lot like Canadian Black Friday) and then I'll have my very own hexacore and my old tower will be a render slave.

Yeah, I may have to see about hooking my laptop up (it's only a dual core) for some extra "oomph!" overnight.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Congrats! Grab it fast, that sale wont last more than a few days.

Just had to wait for my paycheck to clear ;-)

[Bruno]

Helpful tricks to speed up rendering -

Hide all geometry that isn't visible in the scene, and isn't needed to bounce or emit light into the scene.

If you're pretty sure it doesn't need to be glossy, set it to matte when exporting from Reality

In general if you're doing backgroundless or "open geometry" rendering, set Reality to "Outdoor", unless it's all lit by area lights. Even then, try it set to outdoor and see if it collects Tot S/px faster and seems to clear up faster in the first two minutes.

If it's backgroundless, you'll get less benefit from the fancy bounce lighting that contributes to the realism. Because of course normally Light bounces off the floor and stuff.

You can cheat and do both - render to your satisfaction with some scenery to bounce light off of, then delete the scenery and render to a new picture for 2-3 minutes with it set to preserve alpha. Now you've got a nice alpha map on your second picture that you can apply to your (hours long with bounce light) first picture :)

Only takes a few minutes to get a nice clean alpha.

[Mark Skarr]

Here's Aurora after 10 hours of rendering. I'm about to go shopping, so I'll see what she looks like again, in the morning (noon is morning for me).

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

Here's Aurora after 10 hours of rendering. I'm about to go shopping, so I'll see what she looks like again, in the morning (noon is morning for me).

Yep, I definitely still prefer Em's stuff. :)
Somebody give that poor girl a freakin' sandwich!

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Yep, I definitely still prefer Em's stuff. :)
Somebody give that poor girl a freakin' sandwich!

Nah, Aurora doesn't need a sandwich. Jillian, whom I've posted before (and will get a LUX redo when I have time), she needs a sandwich.

[Steamteck]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

Oh, Ironically, I've gone to using no background on a lot of my character pictures so it doesn't burn through ink when printed.

Makes it easier to turn them into counters so it works for me.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Yep, I definitely still prefer Em's stuff. :)
Somebody give that poor girl a freakin' sandwich!

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

Nah, Aurora doesn't need a sandwich. Jillian, whom I've posted before (and will get a LUX redo when I have time), she needs a sandwich.

What can I say? I know there are very slender women in real life, but if I'm making pin up shots, I like to make pin up shots of women with a figure more like mine could be like if I finally got serious about exercising.

Besides which I just can't shake the idea that thin women are less ergonomic ;)

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Bruno

What can I say? I know there are very slender women in real life, but if I'm making pin up shots, I like to make pin up shots of women with a figure more like mine could be like if I finally got serious about exercising.

Besides which I just can't shake the idea that thin women are less ergonomic ;)

One of my gamers asked me how long I've been attracted to "twigs," my response was "never, but I've always liked slender women."

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

One of my gamers asked me how long I've been attracted to "twigs," my response was "never, but I've always liked slender women."

I'd make the distinction between twigs vs slender at where the knees on your models look thicker than their thighs, that makes them too skinny, or they have knobby knees.

Which they don't btw, nice knees, they just need at least another inch around the thighs and biceps, and a half as much on the calves and forearms. Jillian's feet are thicker than her calves and as thick as her thighs. Jillian's wrists are as thick as her biceps, she looks like she'd have trouble leveling that shotgun since she has the arms of a six year old.