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I needed a new picture for the DAZ 2001 calendar contest. I dunno, I just came up with this. After coming up with a title I liked, I sorta thought up two prequel images, so this is #3.
Poser 4, Vue d'Esprit 4, Photoshop 4
Knight: Michael with armor by Roshigoth, Santa Belt by DAZ, and Xurge's
SteelPROPortions props; Enzo's Braveheart hair by me
(see the
goodies page.) Falconer's glove also by me (and on goodie
page).
Horse: DAZ charger and mane, charger Fantasy Tack. Grey texture
by Daio.
Peregrine: DAZ eagle with Eagle Expansion Pack 1. Jesses from
Falconry gear goodie.
Deer (that you can't see unless you look REAL hard): DAZ buck, with Big Face
Buck pack by me.
These were imported into Vue in two PZ3 files. The first and easiest is the Peregrine, created with EXP1, and dressed in jesses that were morphed and manipulated into position. Pose birdie, save, done.
The knight was more complicated, being one human with
assorted props attatched, hair, and one horse with conforming mane, saddle,
and bridle, which have stirrup and rein figures attatched.
Oy.
But anyway, most of Michael's armor is a figure-with-props
armor figure by Roshigoth. I took the chest piece off and replaced
it with this one by Xurge, because I had the idea I wanted some kind of cloak
deal, or cloth something there, and this fit the bill. The prop had
a 'chainmail' material that I turned red for the cloth. The other red
stuff he is wearing is... well, his skin. For the body skin, I just
took off the texture and used that red I had for the cloth bit. His
head still uses the head texture maps. It ain't fancy, but it
works.
The hair just gloms right on his head. The glove is sized
and positioned, then parented to the left forearm. The figure's hand
and it's bits are turned invisible.
The horse isn't actually posed very much, just the neck, ears and tail. The saddle and all those straps conform, as does the bridle. The reins have to be posed separately. Then the human has to be put in the saddle, and his feet in the stirrups.
Once all that was done, the PZ3 was just imported into Vue and positioned. The armor bits were given reflection maps in Poser, and thus have reflectivity turned on in Vue. The gold trim had to be coloured, however.
After the image was all rendered, I clipped out a part
of the foreground and shrank it down to use as a backdrop in Poser. There,
I loaded several of my Big Face Buck figures, changed to does.... and made
them into a small running herd. No, I ain't gonna tell you where they
are, get out the magnifying glass ;)
I rendered the deer in Poser, without the backdrop, and
used the tiff mask to paste them into the final image, and blend them in
a bit.
MIDGROUND:
I started with a very flattened terrain, and dug a trench
through it for the river. A few other flattened terrains were stacked
around it to make the basic ground. They're all using my "Complex Ground
Cover" material.
On top of those, I loaded the Vue "Distant Forest" vob a couple
of times. This is a hill terrain and and tree-ized terrain that fakes a distant
forest. Some of them are doubled to thicken the trees (the one on the
left is tripled, I believe), with the duplicates slightly offset.
The closer trees are acutal Vue trees, of course. I grew
a couple of each kind, spread them out, and did that scatter bit. Clipped
off a small group to go on the other side of the bank, which is duplicated
here and there to fill in gaps, and add some real tree-ness to the distant
hill/forest.
BACKGROUND:
These are a couple of mountains with my "Whole Mountain" material. Nothing difficult, they're just positioned and scaled and placed.
FOREGROUND:
I stuck this in under the horse and rider, since....
well, in case anybody thought they were just giants standing amongst those
miniature trees, there! I'm glad I did, I think it turned out
well.
The main ground is a plateu terrain, flattened a bit,
and raised up under the horse's hooves. I duplicated this terrain, and dug
the path into the edge. Then the 'inside' terrain became the path,
with a new cobblestone material I've developed, and the 'outside' became
the grass borders.
I dropped a couple rocks into it there on the left, and used a custom rock material I had made. There's a couple of dry grass plants an a dry bush sorta clinging to the edge of the overlook, there. I used a grass clump to cover up the bottom of the rocks, there. There's two clumps on the right, one at the path edge, and one in the middle. There's also a little... what is that plant called? The little weedy grass sticking up thing there in the middle of the path. I was gonna try to sneak a dragonfly onto one of the blades there, but I decided not to press my luck.
The atmosphere is one of Vue 4's presets. I can't remember if it is volumetric or not. I don't think it is. I adjusted the sun position for my composition, and took off that stupid lens flare.
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