SturmB

So here it is at the end of 2013.  I haven't posted anything since the middle of 2011 and it's been even longer since I posted any artwork.  What happened?  Life.

I won't state everything that has happened to me since that time, as that would increase the length of this post tenfold.  And I already have a bad habit of writing several paragraphs whenever I post something.  Instead, I'll just explain what's going on right now and what I plan to do for the future.

Wow, it's really been almost a year since my last post…  No fanfare, I just want to ask the 3D community a question: Is Daz Studio 4 worth getting?

For those of us who like to create 3D scenes and, in particular, scenes with attractive women as the focus, there's always been three main options: Poser, DAZ Studio, and Everything Else.  The latter consists of the big, expensive software packages like 3DS Max, Maya, Lightwave, C4D, etc.  Since those packages are more general-purpose, they are usually used by professionals more than hobbyists.  The first two are for getting a character set up with a costume, props, set, lighting, and cameras as quickly as possible.  Naturally, this makes for many renders that look very similar, especially to those who don't spend much time customizing things.

That said, I do like the simplicity of setting things up in Poser and DAZ Studio, but I really like the output of renderers like V-Ray and Maxwell, which are used with 3DS Max and Maya.  Yes, I want to pursue a career in this field, so I need to be familiar with these pro-level tools.  If you've browsed my gallery, you might have come across a couple of test renders where I exported a scene from Poser/DAZ Studio into 3DS Max and tried rendering there.  The results were somewhat encouraging, though still a little problematic.  This is something I intend to work on when I've got more time.

But I digress…  My big question right now is whether or not to start using DAZ Studio 4 in place of DS3.  To give this question a bit more context:

My situation right now is that I built a new computer over a year ago with fresh installations of everything.  I saved my "Downloads" folder from my Poser 8 installation before I changed computers so that I could integrated into my new PC, since I have a metric ton of downloaded Daz stuff in there that I do NOT want to spend an entire day re-installing.  I now have Poser Pro 2010 and have put that Downloads folder in there, but haven't really played with it yet.

I also tried re-installing DAZ Studio 3 on this new computer a few months ago.  It works, but having it import all of the old Poser content makes it nearly impossible to navigate.  On top of that, I also know that SOME packages (such as the Victoria 4 stuff) have separate installations just for DS3.  It doesn't seem as easy to copy over a single folder from an earlier DS3 installation and drop it into a newer DS3 installation, as it was with Poser's "Downloads" folder.

Enter DAZ Studio 4.  I have now just "purchased" it (it's free until the end of July), but I've been reading up on its system of using new "Genesis"-based models.  I'm sure I could still use V4 and such with DS4, but the Genesis models seem so much easier to use.  I could have DS4 convert clothing over from V4, but then all the morphs are gone, from what I've seen.

So, yeah, it's a conundrum for me.  There's more things that worry me about DS4 and Genesis, but I think I've hit the major ones.  I'd really like to hear from other fellow DS/Poser users to get there thoughts on this.

For years now, I've found it somewhat fascinating to see people commemorate a "pageview" milestone on their site by creating a work of art with a "Thanks!" and a number that represents how many times their site has been viewed (as presumably "hits," not "uniques").

It began when my only source of futa and other erotic anime imagery was from Japanese sites. I couldn't read a thing on those sites, but I greatly enjoyed the artwork, so I sort of taught myself how to navigate them. I learned the tricks such as reading the status bar to know if a link was taking me to the artist's gallery, seeing a line of text with "18" in it and clicking the link that says "hai" instead of "iie". Many images were of girls in poses with big smiles, maybe waving or giving a thumbs-up, with "10,000" (or "20,000" or whatever other big number) written in different ways.

I was originally confused by those images with the numbers because, of course, I can't read Japanese. Then I discovered that many of them had "Thanks!" or something similar written in English on them, so I deduced that it must have something to do with the hits to their sites.

Flash forward fifteen years. I now see many artist pages here on dA with the same sort of commemoration images. I used to be amazed that someone would create a wonderful piece of art, then destroy it by writing a big "Thank you!" and a hit number on it. Since then, however, I've come to realize that many people don't consider their hobby as work, but as something they love doing, so they don't mind making an image with such writing on it. Many times, it is even integrated into the image itself, as a part of it, such as having a happy character sitting on a three-dimensionally extruded "50,000."

In any case, the point of all this rambling and reminiscing is that I recently discovered that my own humble page here on dA has surpassed 11,000 views. Does this mean I am obligated to create an image (or render, in my case) commemorating the event? Or create one retroactively for the 10,000 mark? Wait for the 15,000 or 20,000 landmark? Or just not bother at all.

I'm afraid my works here, while I do enjoy creating them, are not exactly a passion for me anymore. I just don't have the time to crank them out the way I used to, especially on top of my work, night classes, and studying, as well as other hobbies and PC gaming that I want to do.

Perhaps I will make one for the next milestone. But for now I will just say: Thank you, to everyone who has visited my little art repository here. It's nice to know that over 11,000 people are as twisted as I am to enjoy the stuff I create. It certainly can't be for my ramblings here. ;~)

Thanks to all 11,000 of you!

So as you can see, I'm not quite dead yet. I've had computer issue after computer issue. I still haven't gotten Poser or Daz Studio installed in this latest iteration of Pantera (which is, by the way, the name of my primary gaming & rendering computer), but I've had time to play with 3ds Max and Vray.

I also have messed around with Maxwell Render, but I've decided that one takes far too long to output a decent render. Yeah, it's physically accurate and the renders it creates, once you wait long enough, do look phenomenal, but it just isn't worth the time necessary to make it noise-free.

I'm still learning Vray, but I'm becoming more comfortable with it by the day and I'm enjoying the various tutorials and books I'm reading on the subject. I'll eventually get around to Poser & Daz Studio and, thus, rendering my girls again, but until I get the real desire for it, I'm going to keep honing my skills in Max & Vray.

I recently had to flush-n-fill my system (that's tech-speak for "wiped my hard drive and re-installed a fresh copy of Windows), but I haven't yet installed Daz Studio and stuff since then.

I probably will do so soon, as I've been getting some requests to put up more renders.  Okay, it was just one request by one person.  And it was just a casual inquiry more than a request, but still!  Knowing that just one person is interested in seeing more from me is enough to make me do a double-take and desire to get back into rendering.

One of the reasons I have trouble with making more renders is because I can never get my renders to look the way I want them to.  I really want something that looks as close to photorealism as possible, but I never can seem to get my renders to look like anything other than that--renders.  Maybe if I export the scene after I've gotten it set up to 3DS Max.  It's renderer is more powerful, so perhaps I can make my scenes look better in that.  We'll see.