Lighting the Noir Look

Found another great video that discusses the art of lighting comics in Poser. Even though this is an older video (it uses Poser 9, and the old duplicate-figure-then-flip-normals" trick to get an outline), the lighting tips are VERY good.

This is definitely worth checking out!

Daz Studio: Noir Shaders

Below is a very interesting video tutorial on how to use shaders to achieve the high-contrast Sin City look used by Frank Miller. For those of you not really into 3D, shaders provide the texturing information that provide information about color, reflectiveness, transparency and stuff like that.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDLx0ER6aP8

This requires the use of the Visual Style Shaders by DraagonStorm and TheNathanParable. I will be experimenting with these shortly.

CCN #114 Christmas Cover

Wow! How has (almost) half the year sped by already? I just recalled that a while back I promised that I'd post the cover I created for the Christmas issue of the Collectors' Club Newsletter.

CCN #114 Cover: The Front & Back View

The cover is a front and back view of a hectic, odd Christmas scene. For those of you into details like this, it was done in Daz Studio 4.8 with Iray. I actually modeled the candles and candle holders that are on the tree (and used instances for the first time to replicate about 20 of them). I did the modeling in Strata 3D ver 7.

The entire scene was so complex that it actually took about 48 hours or rendering to get a decent, high-resolution image. Post work was done in Photoshop.

By the way, a tip of the (Santa) hat to Alan Sissom for giving me the idea to do a front-and-back scene. I sent him a different image, and when I told him it was done in 3D, he asked if I could also show what was behind him. I thought it was a brilliant idea and started the task of updating it for Christmas, and showing what was going on behind the scenes, so to speak.