All articles and tutorials addressing digital art. This includes 3D art using DAZ Studio, Blender and the like. Also looks at 2D applications such as Photoshop and GIMP etc.
Anyone who has followed me on Twitter knows that my sister-in-law Kylie is very clever and has written an App for Apple phones that lets users create check lists for all sorts of projects from moving house, organising a party and so on. The App is called Check It Plus and it is very cool. Anyway, Kylie asks me if I might design the graphic for an ad to go
Hi folks, This post will be very similar to my post about making an opacity map. So if you have read that post then you only need to skim this for salient differences. Just to make it slightly different I have also added an incredibly small flaw into the hair by way of a slight wave. I did this because nothing is truly straight in nature. So our goal is
Hi folks, the purpose of today’s post is to document my testing of the hair opacity map that I created in my last post. I am doing so in Blender cycles and I will be assigning the hair texture and the opacity map to a bezier curve. Huh! A Bezier curve! Yep. At the end of my post, I shall place a link to a great Youtube tutorial called “How
Purpose In the first post of this series, I made a simple hair texture, demonstrating how similar hair textures can be created in Photoshop, GIMP and Paint.NET. In this post, I shall show how to make a simple hair opacity map using these three applications. It’s remarkably similar. NOTE: In this tutorial, I do not intend to implement the texture in a 3D application, simply to make it. What is an opacity
Hi folks, I was unable to do much door work this week until today. Mostly I worked on the door itself. This meant painting the actual door texture based loosely on the reference picture. So here is the reference picture: And here is the texture I painted in Photoshop: I tried to make it look “used” and also admit to tracing a little bit :) I then turned it into a
NOTE: a bit of a technical one today. So now I had a proof of concept design and had commenced a bit of trial work on it. Thing is, I always believe in self-critique. I sat down and looked at what I had done so far and whether it was correct. I noticed a few things, listed in the diagram below: I also decided that I wanted the bottom of
In my previous post in this series, I had unwrapped each of my objects, ready to texture them. Then I had an epiphany: if procedural textures exist, then does a brick one exist? OK – I’ll put that into plain English for the non-modelers or new modelers braving this post. A procedural texture is basically an image that has been created by writing a computer program instead of drawing it
Due to illness, I have not achieved as much as I had hoped. Also note, this post talks a bit about technical 3D modeling issues, but I have tried to make it accessible to my non-technical readers who may be interested in starting to model. The first thing that I have done is set the pivot point on each object within my model. This is not something that I have done
Despite sore eyes, a couple of weeks ago I made a Zebra poster for one of my daughter’s friends. He had expressed great delight at my art works and had a birthday approaching. I asked him what he wanted and he told me that he wanted me to make him a black and white poster of a zebra. As I am having a good-eye day, I thought that I would
Following excellent feedback I have tried to make the dragon’s textures bumpier. I did this by painting textures by hand on the previous image using Photoshop. Alas I really could not get drool that satisfied me. How have I done? Greg 0
Hi folks, A big thanks to the people who provided feedback on my digital work “Upon the Battlements”. I have thought deeply about those comments and also about my own feelings on the work. So here is my second attempt :) Notice the mountains and the sky have been changed. (i.e. no more mountains and a clear sky) Feedback appreciated. :) Greg 0
Hi folks, Have to keep today’s post brief as my eyes are aching a bit and have become quite blurry. Probably over worked them on the weekend with the piece of art that I am about to discuss. Last week a good deal came from DAZ where I could buy a model dragon for some ridiculously small amount if I first bought a new product. So I did. Me being
My twelve year old daughter is trying to write her own fantasy novel So she came to me to design some artwork for its cover. “What do you want on the cover?” I asked. “A fairy fighting a demon in front of Sparkle City.” “What does the fairy look like?” She pondered for a while. “Fairy wings, blue clothes and blond hair.” “The demon?” “Um… leathery wings and black clothes.”
Spent the day working on the text-book. Should have a draft ready for my publisher in about a fortnight. This evening, after the eyes had recovered, I thought I would have a go at modelling a younger version of my wife using DAZ Studio. The feature image at the top is one of my early drafts (the face is too fat). Below is where I am at now, rendered with Iray.
Hi all, spent much of last week writing my textbook. But on Saturday started experimenting with Collision detection and character morphing in DAZ Studio. I had no intention of actually making a publishable picture, but somehow got pulled in to doing so. Ended up taking the entire weekend, most of which was fiddling with light sources (believe it or not – my original purpose having been satisfied within the hour). Here is the
A 3D model is usually made up on different components. If it is a figure, then perhaps the creator will have head, torso, legs and arms components (or even many more). If a motor vehicle, then maybe a chassis, windows, wheels and so on. Most objects are made up of components. Scene creators frequently use multiple models (figures, architecture, vehicles, props, etc) to establish a scene. In doing so, they
Today was one of those days where I felt busy but did not really accomplish much. So I’ve decided to inflect my day upon you, my precious readers. let’s see… Renderosity Mustakettu85 introduced me in a comment to Renderosity. On the slim chance that you don’t know what Renderosity is, it’s a web marketplace for 3D models and such. To use it you need to register. They have a Freestuff part, so
The purpose of this post is to show the outcomes of using intermediary applications to try to move figures from Adobe Fuse into DAZ Studio. It will probably be deadly boring for most of you. LOL Hypothesis If Adobe Fuse will not successfully export into a format that DAZ Studio will read, then maybe another application can be used as a form of translator between the two applications. Trials Test 1:
Hi folks, This is just a bit more experimentation and I thought you may want to tag along. So in my last post I created a character in Adobe Fuse and failed to import it into DAZ Studio. However documentation suggested that I could import it into the 3D functionality of Adobe Photoshop. I looked around YouTube and found this good tutorial by Victoria Pavlov. So I thought that I
Hi all, Today I take a quick look at Adobe’s 3D character creation tool Fuse and how well it integrates with DAZ Studio. Brief answer: it doesn’t. First let me say that I am an Adobe fan. I love Photoshop and Premier and everything that can be done with them. When I saw Fuse appear in my CC app list I straight away wanted to find out what it was.
