BattleWraith

Yes this is done in Photoshop.

I'm still working on this. Trying to keep my brush strokes a little more prominent and not blend the crap out of them as usual.

Here's the update:
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/39918712/

You're very talented. Nice lines!

Hiya,
Graver getting all creepy made me want to do something creepy too. Here's a quick sketch of Assassin of Thor. Nothing real elaborate but it will be fun to paint:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/39766648/

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*taps paddle on hand*


ok Kitty seee me in my office!

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Kat and I discussed a work that would involve both your characters. So you might want to put the paddle away for the time being.

Or go find a bigger one, she is up to no good in this composition.

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I'm not bothered by my pieces 'sidetsteping crucial challenges of 3d art' because I have no pretentions. I'm not trying to achive anything by way of 3D innovation since I know full well I don't have the time or dedication that current 3D masters have... I'm just wanting to make a cool image, have a little fun, and make another player's character become a little more 'alive'.

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The force is strong in this one!

Dark Jedi,

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I think you've fallen into the same misconceptions about Poser that I encounter pretty much everywhere else; that all one needs to do is open the program, place a few figures, and render a piece without any effort. Unfortunately, that's where most Poser users stop... which is less than halfway. And that's why most Poser images are really quite bad.

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Actually, the first digital art I did was in Poser. I used it to animate a scene from a Medieval Passion Play. I wasn't aware of any bias against the app until I started formal study of 3d animation and came into contact with people working in film, game development, etc.

Mayhem_Infinity,

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Modelling and Posering are two COMPLETELY different things. Right now, i absolutely DESPISE modelling, but i am a masochist, and just about every day i add a few gray hairs to the head by trying to learn more of it. Simply because, I'm tired of spending so much dang money on poser stuff that isn't even what i really want out of an outfit. I have a habit of trying to do everything myself.. which is how i even learned photoshop and php/mysql and html, javascript etc.

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Learning 3d modeling by yourself can be extremely grueling. Feel free to PM me any specific modeling questions you may have. If you're using Cinema 4d, I believe it will read Lightwave objects (.lwo). If so i could send you sample wip files with different stages of progress on different layers.

I'm sorry to be a bonehead about this. I do like Darkjedi's art, as well as other people who use Poser. But I'm primarily a 3d modeler. I create complex digital sculptures out of squares and triangles. A mesh is art or maybe craft depending on your perspective, but it is certainly content. Not a tool. I'm not saying this to boast about l337 modeling skills; I'm saying it as someone who has worked very hard to get a grip on the process.

Poser gives you meshes to use in your artwork. Those meshes were created by other artists. I think Lush's comparison with photography is apt. Poser Art is a collaboration between the artist and the program in a similar way.

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I'm not interested in showing off my l33t modelling skilz and spending 6 months to model and rig a single figure.

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If it did take you that long, which it shouldn't, you'd only have to do it once. Poser saves you that initial effort, but then you're stuck with it's limitations and the stylistic accents it imposes. Of course, someone very accomplished in Photoshop like yourself can make corrections in post anyway, so I guess it's a moot point.

Doug just dump poser please. You're drawings look like you have plenty of artistic ability. Just learn 3d.

There's a technique for doing fur in Lightwave that involves putting a procedural alpha channel over the surface of the mesh. Then you animate a morph target where the entire mesh expands. This animation is done very quickly over the space of one frame, and is set to repeat over and over. Due to the masking from the alpha channel, the resulting deformation looks like fur (it does involve setting the rendered mesh to a very high resolution). You add motion blur to soften the look and make it more fur-like and less spikey. There are most likely similar approaches in Maya and other 3d apps.

You have a nice likeness going so far. Did you use reference?
Your linework to me looks choppy as if you were using small spans of a straightline tool to approximate curves. There are too many control points in a lot of places.

The most significant thing to me is that there's no coherent lighting scheme. Looks like you have lighting coming from the front, the back, and maybe the side. But the shadows contradict the highlights in a lot of places. The shoulder for instance, has a bright vertical highlight running down the back. Then a slightly dimmer one coming down at a slight angle from the front. But then there are these odd wedge shaped shadows in between. The shape of the shadow suggests light coming from directly above. Also the shapes are so sharply defined that they look like they should be the shadows of large welts or something.

The color bone has a very dark, flattening shadow right in the middle of her chest. That bone protrudes out. Unless that area were in complete shadow, the convex part of the bone should be brighter than the flatter areas around it due to the way the roundness of the bone would reflect light.

I hope that makes sense. I'de be more than happy to do a quick paintover to show you what i mean if it doesn't. Nice looking woman, should be a good pic when you're finished.

Through no fault of my own, seems to be working now.

KK thx guys i'll try again later.

Hi,
Today I registered over on DeviantArt. Went through registration, got the emailed link to activate my account. I used the link and I was taken to a welcome page. Two members sent welcome messages.

The problem is that, if I try to do anything I'm redirected to the page where you tell it to send the authorization link to your email address. Hitting it, then going to my email and following the link that was sent just repeats the process. Basically I'm stuck in a registration loop.

Anyone else had this problem and/or have a fix?

These are tracings, correct?

Thanks for the kind words everyone. The pic was done completely in photoshop except for the star pattern, which was created and rendered in Lightwave 3d then brought into photoshop and incorporated into the composition.

Proper lighting is extremely important to making anything look good in 3d. In your image, you have the figure lit a certain way against a background image that was lit differently, so the two are never really going to come across as integrated since they don't share the same lighting setup.

The backround image looks like late afternoon, still bright but with shadows appearing behind the buildings. If I were going to render your image in my 3d app, the first thing I'd do would be to set up a bunch of simple geometric shapes that were lined up with the buildings in the picture. Then I would use planar or frontal projection to map the background on to actual geometry, which would then interact with the lights in your scene.

I would have one spotlight or distant light to simulate the sun. You'd try to position it so that the shadows it produced matched the pre-existing ones in the background image. Then I'd have a skydome or some sort of radiosity setup that would simulate the diffuse light spread through the rest of the sky that was lighting her body.

Finally, I'd have a third light beneath her that simulated the light bounced/reflected back up from the ground below her.

I don't know what kind of lighting solution is available to the application you're using (Poser?) but most programs can at least manage a standard 3 point light setup. If you want to learn more about 3d lighting, Jeremy Birn has an excellent book that explains a tremendous amount.

I'm not a big fan of camping someone's base, but often it becomes necessary to collect bounty. Playing on my stalker, i frequently get a bounty target that will not come out of the area of the drones. Or someone that comes out, then runs back in as soon as they take any damage. If these people were totally impervious to harm, it would make the pvp there much less lucrative.

I really don't mind when heroes camp the villain base in Siren's. A couple stalkers can easily clear them out of that nook in the hospital. Much easier getting bounty that way than running around looking for them in the zone.

Same thing happened to me. The devs kept flipping back and forth about whether spectral terror was useful or not, so i eventually ran out of respecs. If it stays this way, I want a respec too. It's such a ****** that i take the thing on test, it would barely affect white Nemesis minions, then it becomes uber in PvP.

Saying that you, as a controller, do just as well holding without using spectral terror is missing the point. When you cast a hold, it costs you end. And depending on the hold, you may be limited with respect to how many people you can affect.

I've seen Spectral terror cast in a hallway collecting heroes like flypaper. It's a pet that holds AS WELL as an actual controller. Actually it probably holds better, since it has no targeting issues and doesn't worry about getting beat down. It recharges pretty fast as well. In terms of usefulness in a team match, it's way way way better than my PA or phants. That right there should be a tip off that things may be out of whack.