erogenesisCGI

RANDOM TRIVIA!

Warning, this is a long ass post! It's a VERY casual post, basically the same kind of rambling session you'll experience at 2am in a pub with me, so if you want, find some time, grab a beer (or wine, I recommend red) and let me sweep you away into the life of some eccentric artist from Africa

This Journal is about:

- how the Millerstreet Randomness set came to be...

- how I used my art to deal with things I was going through

- some of the hidden motivations behind some renders

- what I modeled for this set

- Insights into the girls' thoughts and motivations during the Randomness set

- some questions for you at the end about what you're most proud of

Throughout the drama of 2020 (and for me 2021) I think we all needed to push ourselves extra hard to keep going, didn't we? For me, my online sessions have kept me going, forced me to persist, think of new things, jokes, comebacks, ideas, naughtiness. In 2020 that resulted in a crazy online session called "The Millerstreet Photoshoot" that ended up in four comics (three of which are currently getting finished)... and now the Millerstreet Randomness set in 2021 and it is still ongoing. I will soon (ish) begin wrapping this set up as my new comics near completion.

The thing about making these sets is that a lot goes on behind the scenes as well as in the scene itself that some of you might not see or pick up on. Some of these things are fun technical details, or story details to be revealed in future comics and I think I might sometimes betray my eagerness to tell the secret story behind the Disco Dragon set. But in short, I've been fantasizing about a director's commentary for the Randomness set, and so without further ado:

(if you see dots throughout this post, it's to help maintain the formatting. DA formatting is not entirely 100%)

COMMENTARY

The whole set actually started off with these five pictures of the Beckett sisters. One of them contains some character info about the Beckett sisters, like Maria's and Laila's character studies. These pix of Xtina and Rachel are directly inspired from those typical sister selfies you'll see on their facebook or in their photo albums, made one bored afternoon, pulling faces, holding the camera up high, etc.

I was right in the middle of setting up the other three Millerstreet Photoshoot comics when I got the news that my mom was seriously ill and I heard I had to fly down to Malawi a few times. Because the Photoshoot comics were improvised, mostly unplanned and also erotically experimental (especially Impetus), I knew this was going to be a massive challenge to focus on them with all that going on with my family. I needed something cute and light-hearted to keep my mind in creative mode and still keep in contact with you guys. I literally thought: I'm going to do the most random shit in the world. And since I still had the Beckett's selfie scene already set up, I thought I might as well carry on with that. Just university girls being bored with a camera one afternoon...

That picture of Laila hanging off the water pipes is based a real photo from 2001 of one of my housemates doing the same. As some of you already know, the Millerstreet flat is based on the student flat I used to live in with a bunch of girls back in my University years. The pipes along the bottom were for the heating (not in the Millerstreet) but the ones along the top I still have no idea. Water maybe?

BTW the Millersteet name comes from "Meullerstraat" on which the girl Lali is based on used to live when she was studying in South Africa. The street name of my flat translated to English would have been "Abattoir Street" which didn't feel right for these comics haha.

I then started to experiment a lot with photoshop filters and photo effects to get the feel of old film cameras, or even lomography, with vignette, bleed, a narrow 35mm lens, over-exposure, under-exposure, over-saturated, under-saturated, out of focus, the feel of spontaneity or a voyeuristic vibe. Many of these pictures are also based on antics and photos from my past! Like Lali with the cigar and the rifle, it is a combination of two pictures of the same girl. And it is also based on similar photo sessions I've had with house mates where we just stand and pose in front of a wall and just wear the dumbest stuff, or in their undies with a bottle of Smirnoff... yes boobie flashes too.

The pictures are taken opposite Laila's door, and most of the first set of pictures are in Laila's room.

Laila's guitar is based on a Jackson Kelly design (of which I have two, one self-made). I made that guitar in 2014 I think, but I borrowed a neck from the Gibson Explorer. Laila is actually playing an E-power chord, a very metal chord played on distorted guitars (some say the power chord was invented by Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath who could only play power chords because the tip of two of his fingers were chopped off in a factory accident). She carries on playing in later pictures.

The bit where Maria came wondering in looking like Jack Sparrow with a drawn on moustache and a bottle of Gin was also based on a real event. There was a ninja pirates party and while preparing, the girl that Maria is based on, indeed dressed up like a pirate, found a bottle of gin and pretended to be all swanky and cool and started chugging it... but having never tasted gin before she immediately spat it out lol. I was actually the one dressed as Jack Sparrow, she was more a ship mate with an eye patch etc.

After that I noticed that there were quite a few comments regarding her moustache, that it was throwing some of you off. I will confess that I was a bit puzzled as some of you like dick girls, but maybe facial hair is a step too far haha. So I got Laila to step in and smudge it up. Weirdly, I do find it a bit sexy, somehow. It has a bit of that French resistance under-cover vibe... if that makes ANY sense. Again, it is based on the girl that Maria is inspired from, she had that moustache painted on during the ninja-pirates party (note the Brandy label crossed out and replaced with Rum).

The wallpaper picture (below) of all the girls on the bed is supposed to represent a ship or a boat with Julie as the mast with a sail, I think most of you got that, but did you see that Rachel is the figurehead, Laila is rowing, Xtina dual-wielding is the broadside cannons, Lali is the chase gun (forward facing) and Maria obviously the captain.

Then I had my first trip to Malawi which was a massive pain in the ass because of quarantine and testing and all that nonsense. For the two weeks I visited Malawi I had to spend another two weeks in the Netherlands in 'quarantine' before being able to head back to the UK. So I decided to bring along one of my PCs so that I could at least carry on rendering something.

The trip was exhausting, unlike the thousands of flights I've had around the world. Empty airports, loads of paperwork and hundreds of pounds of certificates, tests, etc, doom and gllom mindsets, insecurity about lockdowns, everyone still in panic mode, chaos at security half the time... and I even managed to forget my laptop at security because of the chaos (which I eventually did get back when I returned). Weirdly in Africa (Addis Ababa) everything was business as usual. Addis was ram-packed and flights going everywhere around the world. My oldest sister joined me on the flight and we had a lot of fun, got properly plastered.

In the first renders I made in Malawi you can see I was a little somber, but they did turn out quite nice, or not?

But quickly thereafter, I began to cheer up. Even though my mom was basically just dying, her positive, defiant and care-free attitude absolutely inspired me. We dug out old projector slides and music records, and I got to play on our old grand piano* again, which is why I was inspired to make the piano pictures! One of our favorite records as kids was 'Great Balls of Fire' by Jerry Lee Lewis and the movie with Dennis Quaid.

* that grand piano, falling to pieces, is an OLD OLD Steinway, and apparently came from the very same assembly line as the pianos on the Titanic!

And then of course there was the European Football Cup!! It was supposed to be in 2020 but because of the pandemic it was moved up to 2021. My mom being an ardent football fan had her whole bed decorated in Orange, the color of the Dutch football team. We watched every game together. And so, I also had to make a few footie pics!

Footie is what the English call football sometimes. In America ya'll call it soccer. The word soccer comes from the name "Association football" I think. The Dutch were eliminated early unfortunately, but England did get quite far... and as you all know, Xtina is an ardent footie fan!

After two weeks quarantining in the Netherlands, meeting with old girlfriends mostly, I headed back to the UK. This series was a lot of help to me because I mind was in total limbo. I had seen and experienced way too much in the space of a few weeks, and I was pretty freaking worn out. This series kept me going, forced me to stay with it. So I got creative, and decided to spice it up a little: Laila started snogging other girls, poking them... (Laila is pretty much always the one that takes the first step), Xtina got a wig, make-up...

Then I hit a bit of a creative lull. Things were catching up with me, I was struggling with finding motivation to work on my comics, my mother was deteriorating fast, my family was stressed... and didn't know how to end the series... so I pulled a trick I learned from the past when dealing with creative blocks, roll with that. What does one do when you don't know what to do? Sit, look through your phone, look back at pictures... annoy others...

Around this time I started to play Fallout 4 again. Now just a little backstory, back in 2011 before I got into 3D comics, I had just finished a project helping law enforcement protecting Black Rhinos. I then needed to take a break and figure out what to do with my life. I decided to take it easy and just do nothing for a few months, live off my savings and let inspiration come to me naturally... which it did, weirdly. I played a LOT of Fallout New Vegas. The thing with Fallout games is that they're very open-world and also allow to to modify the game to all heck using mods. You can either download mods, or make your own (if you're good at programming and modeling).

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There's also a sizable modding community dedicated at making naughty mods for Fallout games, like naked chicks and even sexual encounters, to put it mildly. I also started making my own mods, with my own models and textures. I used zBrush and Poser for this at times. This gradually lead me to start rendering things in Poser, which, in part, lead me to find Renderotica... and the rest is history. So Fallout has always had a special place in my heart, and has also helped me relax, get new ideas, experiment with other story concepts, etc etc. My future comic concept 'Eden Wars' is directly inspired by Fallout 4. Many of Lali's weapons are ripped from fallout mods too.

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All this lead directly to the idea of trying out some animating and then the poetry night. I was trying out some animating in Fallout, making scripts to simplify it, when I thought I'd try it in Poser too. Those same scripts seem to work too (albeit adjusted for python). Now I had already been making scripts to help me with animating, so these scripts just helped in that regard. And speaking of which, it looks like I can start taking the whole animating thing a little more seriously now that DA has relaxed it's rules regarding sexual explicit content! So I am very very seriously contemplating making sex animations soon. It's still a LOT of work though, and I also need to see if people are comfortable spending cash here in DA.

(BTW don't ask me for those scripts. They are HIGHLY specialized, NOT user friendly, and it would take months for me to explain how they work)

Poetry Night?

So why the hell did I come up with poetry night and not a massive orgy on the balcony with the neighbors invited? Well I was already busy with three threesomes! lol, and I liked the challenge of trying to make something as quaint and wholesome as a poetry night erotic

But the real reason was a combination of remembering that the girl that Lali is based on also loves poetry, and a group of characters in Fallout called the Atom Cats, whom are preparing for poetry night in the game (but never get to it haha). Also, when I was still madly in love with "proto Lali", I wrote 105 poems for her. Yes I was head over heels...

Modelling stuff

So when poetry night got discussed in the series, that's when the series also started taking on a bit more of a story form. Halloween was also around the corner and it seemed like a fun thing to combine. This was also when my girlfriend and I made pancakes for ourselves and so I decided to throw that in there too, just for fun. I had to model actual morphable pancakes and the syrup bottle as well as the syrup splodge. I also had to model the gas fire, the mobile speakers and the cables, and the folding papers in their hands.

Secret culture of the girls

Although my poetry skills are not the best, it was still fun to try it out... and the girls are also not master poets either. What I also like about doing the poetry night is that it also shows a side of these girls that I haven't had the chance to show much of yet.

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Some of you might have noticed a note on their pin board that they sometimes watch street theater. And have you also noticed that they have quite an extensive collection of props and wigs? They also take part in it too. This side of them is one of those thing I've been dying to show in future comics, and it's mostly Lali's doing. Lali's dream world character "Mad Lali" also has to do with this, and is loosely inspired by the movie "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" where you can see a kind of street theater in action.

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The whole poetry night was also an opportunity to provide more character development for these girls, hinting at past adventures that I have planned for comics... and to see them snogging each other of course, sit on each other, pester each other... and perhaps more because the night is not over yet!

The New Girls

At some point I felt I needed to introduce some new characters to spice things up a bit... Laila needed a new challenge basically. The new girls, Gemma and Alexandra, were characters I had been working on for a while in secret, and they're based on two girls I met in Malawi during the 'Lake of Stars' festival. The girl Gemma was inspired by was from Namibia, and Alexandra was from the Netherland I think. They were in a band that performed there, I hung out with them briefly and they were very fun to get to know! I think I might stick with Gemma's Namibian background here, as Namibia is also known for inspiring people to study geology (Gemma studies Geology along with Annabella), I did fieldwork there as well back in 2006.

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However it looks like Xtina might have found a friend, it seems they might have something in common.

Power play

So some of you might have noticed that there's a little bit of power play going on in the house. No I'm not talking about Xtina saying she's the boss she's totally not lol, she's too busy with her own things to give a crap about domestic hierarchy. I'm talking between Maria and Alexandra. Did you notice?

It's not a vicious rivalry but more of a subtle sizing up of one another. When Alexandra walks into the room with Gemma and Annabella, she's quiet and observing. Laila is immediately intrigued. Of course Alexandra sees Laila sitting on Maria while Maria's hand is planted firmly on Laila's leg and later couldn't have missed that Laila and Maria were touching hands while Laila was cuddling Lali, which is why she later asks if it was okay that she kissed Laila.

Alexandra figured out that Maria was the dominant one of the house (yes, its not Lali. Lali is just a brat and is more about manipulating people than taking control. In the Disco Dragon she's not really controlling anyone, she's just playing three-dimensional chess. She likes to see how people respond to things). Maria is always somewhat aloof, always takes on Lali, but also has a need to want to protect or care for her friends, like protecting Xtina from Lali in the Disco Dragon.

Alexandra observed this quite well because I think Maria immediately noticed how intrigued Laila was when Alexandra walked in. Maria probably also knows it took a mountain of energy for Laila to restrain herself (note her feet and her sideways glances) and comforts her. What I haven't gotten around to yet with my comics is that Laila is sometimes so driven by compulsion, and also just blindly does anything Lali says, that it gets her into trouble. You can see this a little in the Disco Dragon when Lali asks Laila to keep the roadies busy for a moment, Laila doesn't question it for a second and just does it.

Laila cuddling Lali like that also has to do with dealing with her massive compulsion to check out Alexandra up close, but is perhaps a little intimidated by Alexandra that is stiffly maintaining a cross-legged pose in front of her, just smiling politely. Lali is Laila's source of comfort and stability, if you can believe it. Maria touching hands with her is Maria basically signalling to her that she is aware of it... which is why she tells Laila to help her to get the chair. Then when she passes Alexandra, Laila briefly contemplates what she can do, leans in for a sniff, and gets noticed, slightly breaking the ice and getting a reaction from Alexandra. This gives Laila some more ideas. Laila and Maria probably secretly made a plan when they were away getting the chair.

So why is Laila so different, almost shy, in this series whereas in the Millerstreet Photoshoot she was flat out brazen? Can you guess?

Snogging in 3D

Which brings me to some of the spicy moments in this series thusfar, the kissing. As some of you 3D artists will know, making characters kiss is horrendously complicated. My trick is first of all to make sure the base figure has the right set of morphs to support the movement of lips, basically EVERY F*CKING MORPH YOU CAN IMAGINE! Lips are extremely pliable, so they'll need to morph in any direction possible. My erogirl figure has 9 ghost bones around her lips as well as a stupid amount of morphs to support any movement. The next step is to basically study kissing people and then go from there. These images actually took hours and hours of work to get aligned properly. I did get faster the more I did it, but yeah, it requires a lot of focus!! This also applies to sex scenes with the vagina, which is also incredibly pliable. The erogirl has over 16 or more ghost bones as well as morphs to help me get a perfect fit for whatever... well... goes in (this is also why my sex comics take LONG to make)

I could try make a tutorial in future but it's not that much different from what I just said up there.

In short, this series like most others is just an excuse for me to test stuff out, experiment with characters, content, modeling and render techniques, But it's also a way for me to keep my knives sharp when my head is distracted because of lots and lots of emotional kicks to the stomach. Things are going way way better and recently I discovered that I was still slowing myself down with habits that I formed while dealing with the emotional stuff. I developed a coping mechanism of watching youtube videos which now is not applicable anymore since things are okay again. I literally had to switch off my phone and disconnect my internet to realize how addicted I was. I was subconsciously reaching for my phone every 5 minutes. The instant I did that, my creativity flooded back, it was silly. Trust me, if you want to be creative, isolate yourself from the world for some time... like rigorously. That is tough to do these days, but since I was born and raised in Africa where internet was as scarce as water and electricity sometimes, I know that it works this way. Let me put it this way: WILSOOOOON!!!!!!

So hereby I also want to thank everyone who has patiently stuck it out with me over the last year or more on Deviant Art. I know I am super slow at the moment, but I promise you, the comics I'm working on are very very sexy! Thanks once again!

Oh and one more thing: I'm super proud of the fridge

edit: actually, you know what, there are some things I am quite proud of in this series. Like for example Annabella's poses in the office chair when listening to Julie's poem. It changes up three-four times. For some reason I am very proud of those poses. I'm also happy with Gemma poses sitting on her hands. Of course the kissing worked out quite well, the tongue bite, and I'm quite chuffed with the dancing poses between Rachel and Laila.

If you're a 3D artist like me, which poses are you proud of? Or which scene or render are you most proud of?

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Many of my characters are in part inspired by my girlfriend, who is quite a unique chick! Xtina's nerdiness, Laila's shortness curse and quirkiness, and Lali's overt naughty ideas all pretty much come from my girlfriend with whom I've been for 8 years now. I cannot share too much about her background for privacy reasons but what I can say is that she started out much like me, an airhead, a dreamer, that just wanted to play and draw pictures, hopeless at school but then motivated to turn things around because of people not having much faith in her...

... she fought her way through the ranks with pure determination and finally landed a job at a AAA Gaming Studio! They just released their newest game on which she intimately contributed: Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga!

I could not be more proud!

We're getting drunk tonight!

Hey you wonderful people. This is just to let you know that I'll be away from my render stations for about ten days starting today. I have a bunch of pics of Maria finishing her poem ready to post but I'll probably only be able to post them tomorrow or the day after (I'll try post them today, but might not have time).

As some of you might remember, I went to Africa this June because of a sick family member. You might also have noticed that I've been a bit withdrawn the last few months. Usually I try keep you all out of these kinds of things as you come here to feel happy and not to feel sad. But I think I need to be open with you guys, for you've been amazing all this time. Sadly, my mom passed away last night after a long battle with cancer. She went peacefully and painlessly and all my sisters were there. Unfortunately it went so fast that I wasn't able to make it in time, but it was ok. My mom and I were very close and although I am sad and I will miss the old girl, both my mom and I were at peace with it. In fact, my whole family has never been so peaceful and understanding. Never-the-less, I'm very relieved that her suffering is over, I hope she's in a better place now.

Don't be sad for me, for everything I do is an ode to the joy of life, and my mom had an amazing one. My mom is the reason I am a raging optimist, and I inherited her love for laughter, jokes and her confidence. My mom would be the crazy old lady that would walk around a festival full of young people and get on with all of them. She didn't give a crap. She loved what I did, she is the reason I was able to become who I am today. I will be leaving today to be with my family, and we're going to have fun in her name. Her spirit lives in us, in me... but damn, I will miss her.

Guys, check you around soon! I will keep up with everything here, and I'll be be back to rendering fun stuff around the 14th. And thank you for being so patient.

Much love!

Just a quick disclaimer: This is not really a tutorial but more an essay on how I use HDRI, it could still be useful though. I am not an academically trained expert at any of this. This is all learned through the years, either from tutorials, books, videos or from other artists. If there's anything that doesn't make sense or is wrong, let me know!

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Also, it's called a rambling session for a reason. I don't want to spend too much time planning and rather just get a whole bunch of stuff out. I've also had a crazy ass week so I hope the whole thing make sense!

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Also, if you see a lot of full stops (periods '.') between my paragraphs, that is because of Deviant Art's new journal editor, it doesn't seem to remember where you prefer to add spaces to format your Journal and make it readable.

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I may have come across as a little dismissive of HDRIs in my previous rambling session about lighting, but I actually use HDRIs almost all the time, just not always in the way that other folks sometimes do. All I actually use HDRI for is for ambient light distribution, because that's what HDRI domes essentially are, a big 'diffuse' light box. So, I only use them for skies, be it an outdoor scene or indoor scene, but still with an actual sun.

For the rest I sometimes use HDRIs of actual scenes for test renders, or once off renders... but again, I never use HDRI alone, always with lights... and that is because... well I'll explain that below. (I will be using examples from Firefly, Superfly and Iray)

What is HDRI?

As mentioned in the previous session, an HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imaging) is just an image with a lot more data than a simple JPEG. Where JPEGs can store data within the range of something like 0-255 (purely regarding intensity), HDRIs can go from 0-10,000 or maybe 0-1,000,000... I'm not sure on the exact numbers but it's a stupid amount.

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So this image then gets mapped onto a spherical object/ball called a skydome or an environment dome, and these can come in actual props you can manipulate in your scene, or they're inbuilt into renderers.

Once the image is loaded onto this skydome, the renderer can use all the light and color information from the loaded image and starts throwing it around the scene in the same way that any glowing object would emit light.

So essentially an HDRI dome is nothing more than a giant colored ball that emits light, and the 360 projected image on a sphere can give you the illusion that your scene is actually in the setting that the HDRI picture was taken in, like a studio, a soccer stadium or a forest. The objects in your actual 3D scene will get basked in the general colors of that image, relative to the distribution of brightness and color of that image.

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(Rotating image to the right: the HDRI is a full 360 image of some kind of location, the color information of which can be used as lighting for your 3D scene. I cannot get the higher quality version to run properly here. Don't know why.)

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What HDRI lighting is good at is making the 3D objects in your scene look like they're a part of the HDRI scene, but only with regards to light distribution.

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Which brings me to what HDRI cannot necessarily do: cast realistic shadows relating to what the HDRI scene is of. This is because HDRI does not have directional data, only brightness. It is by default blurred light. It has relative directional info in the sense that one part of the dome is brighter than the other part, but it cannot tell you what direction the lights in the image are actually focusing their light beams.

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What HDRI also doesn't contain is 3D data of the scene in the image, like the trees in a forest that obstruct the light source and how their shadows are cast on the floor of the image scene. In the image above, you can see when I move a ball towards where a shadow should be, the HDRI simply can't do anything for you. Same with Iray (right). (That btw is a 'smartdome', where the bottom part is flat and mapped to give the illusion that is it a spherical dome in the middle of the scene. The top part is just a normal environment dome. This way you can filter out the bottom half and make it a simple non-emitting material of any HDRI with a ground/floor. DS/Iray has one built in).

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BTW in this session, when I say 'assisted', it means that there are actual lights in the scene mimicking the lights in the HDRI scene. This permits the ambient light from the HDRI, but adds definition to the shadows.

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Using a studio HDRI where you have bright spotlights in the scene without diffuse filters, you can expect pretty sharp shadows, but again the HDRI simply cannot provide that data. Once you place actual lights in the scene, then it makes more sense.

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However, in this example we see a studio with black drapes and backdrops, and it is a good example of the limitations of HDRI. The black drapes should be absorbing a lot of the ambient light and you'll mostly see just the light coming from the spots. If the spotlights don't have a diffusion filter before them, the shadows should be very sharp. Yet the HDRI indiscriminately blasts light in all directions, and the results are always relatively diffuse/blurred as if it is a bright room... but it isn't.

Below with Iray, in the last panel I had to lower the emission from the HDRI to balance with the actual spotlights in the scene. The HDRI would interfere with the sharper shadows of the actual spots.

Now of course you might not always want such sharp shadows, better yet, most people love the diffuse filter effect and nearly all DAZ Iray renders will have that same look, but sometime you do want that sharp sunlight effect. For that you cannot rely purely on HDRI lighting. Below are comparisons between diffuse lighting and sharp sunlight, the diffuse lighting what would represent HDRI lighting.

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In other words, while pure HDRI lighting can provide accurate light intensities and color information to use in your scene, it can never provide accurate directional light data and therefore never provide accurate shadows. However, it can give a very nice representation of any ambient light of an HDRI image, because that's is what an HDRI dome essentially is, a big fat diffusion light box. Together with actual lights, you can reconstruct a fairly realistic image, depending on the scene.

However, sometimes you also have an outdoors scene that is partly obscured by a tree canopy overhead, and while the sun is sharp and casts sharp shadows on the ground, the renderer just sees all the light spots in the image and just throws light all around the place, when in actual fact the light is travelling down in a pretty straight line. So an HDRI of such a scene will just have blurry shadows while you have quite sharp shadows all around your subject (especially obvious if you use a 'smartdome'). In this case you have to assist your scene with an actual light to get that shadow, and, depending on the scene, you might even have to limit the exposure of the HDRI as to not blow out your scene with bright light (Iray can do this through the renderer, Fire/Superfly you will need to turn down the ambient dial).

Firefly?

Some folks say that I don't rely on HDRIs as much because Firefly cannot handle it... but this is not really true. It can handle it fairly well, it's just slower and sometimes just needs a bit of assistance to deal with blotches. Below is a scene rendered in Firefly using purely HDRI (an HDR Image mapped onto an sky/environment dome through the ambient channel), and it rendered perhaps twice as slow as a Superfly render. Pure HDRI also makes specular nodes fail and so only reflection nodes work (see the black box).

But the results are okayish, with actual lights assisting, the image does become a little clearer. Below is a comparison between Superfly and Firefly, both assisted with actual sunlight, and the difference is barely noticeable, with exception of the specularity of the black box.

The way I use HDRI

So now, yes I do use HDRI, but only for skydomes, one-off pin-ups or product imaging. Why?

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Although I don't fervently chase after hyper-photorealism, I do try to get a close enough impression of reality so that the 3Dness of my work is not too obvious. I think most of you would be able to tell from miles away that my work is 3D, quite easily... but my goal, like cartoon artists and impressionists, is to immediately capture you with what's going on in the scene, rather than the renderer's abilities.

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I do this firstly through focusing more on the subject than on the quality of the render. But even if you can tell that a scene is 3D rendered, the light should still be convincing enough, or let's say, compelling enough as to either enhance the subject, or give the viewer the illusion that the lighting doesn't matter. So even if my work isn't photorealistic, I do try to stick to reality as much as I can with regards to lighting.

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The Sky

So with regards to HDRI lighting, the only object in our existence that works like an HDRI light dome, is the sky. For the rest it's all fires, bulbs, screens, tubes... etc.

But I still add an actual sunlight to make sure I get proper shadows, and if I need the shadows of tree leaves I either add a real tree in the scene, or I add a prodecural spots filter in the light's material to mimic the mottled effect of the leaves' shadows. This effect can be seen in the render on the right of Sen with the bow.

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Below is an example of my more recent render of Birsin Kara, which uses the same effect. You can also I doubled the contrast of the forest around her by forcing the intensity of the ambient light to correspond with the info in the image, making the darker parts even darker. The gradient is the boundary between the diffuse ground and the light emitting sky (using a smart dome).

For the rest the HDRI provides the extra distribution of light, such as the reflection of the vapor in the atmosphere, perhaps clouds and if the HDRI is in a forest, then obviusly of the filtering effect of the leaves as well as the reflection of the ground.

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Very local, limited movement

HDRI 360 images are also limiting as you cannot move away from the center that much without the image warping... unless you use a sky, which IRL is so large that you won't be able to tell the difference. It's like driving at night on a straight road, the moon doesn't change position much. Below you can see a collection of images that use a HDRI skydome with a scene.

The island is massive and the skydome is so large that you won't notice any warping when the characters move from one end of the island to the next... in fact it moves with them, but you never notice that. With the tree-climbing scene, the scene is a little smaller because you can see the bushes in the skydome at the back, if the characters move around too much and the camera follows them, the skydome will warp. Same with the car scene, that was a once off scene. In the bus stop scene, you can see the buildings around them in the HDRI, their movement is very limited, which is why I didn't use this scene for the Disco Dragon.

Large or small scenes

Which brings me to the way I set up my scenes, which has comics and stories in mind... and therefore pretty large. Comic stories take the girls all over the place and sometimes I need the freedom to improvise. This means I'm going to be working with actual lights throughout the scene anyway half the time. Working with just an HDRI scene makes that very difficult, especially if its a small scene like an apartment. But for once-off pinups, such scenes can be useful. Below are some examples of small scenes done with just a one HDRI and perhaps the odd prop. In that picture with Lali on the couch, I won't be able to move the camera much or the whole scene will warp horribly.

HDRI Example Scene

So to conclude, let me show you how I put this scene together in Poser.

The idea was simple: using a smart dome (with that flat ground) and then project some forest image onto it.

However I ran into issues because the treeline is closer to Maria, and it warps the trees. (Iray's 'smartdome' has the same issue). The first picture in the gallery shows this.

So I then decided to combine a smartdome with a normal skydome. The I isolate the ground of the smartdome with a gradient mask so that you only see the ground around Maria. Then I added some displacement (to make the leaves appear more 3D), and then in combination with the same HDRI image projected onto a skydome around it, it will appear to blend into each other. Of course the skydome and smartdome need to have the same orientation.

And by the way, when I zoomed out to make a picture of the smartdome, I realized it was my flatdome experiment. The flatdome is the same as a smart dome except flattened so that if i add haze into my scene, it will show up more on the horizon then in the sky above. I use the flatdome in many of Sen's pictures as well as the New Years Boat trip.

Anyway, I added one blurred ambient light above Maria to slightly accentuate the shadows a little. Now because this is Firefly, it does struggle with calculating specularity in strictly IDL scenes so I did assist it with two extra ambient lights with the diffuse entirely as zero, so only the specularity will show (set in the light's material channels). Now if you're working with Superfly or Iray, these extra lights won't be needed, and maybe not even the main light coming from above, because it is a very cloudy day.

Et voila, it is done!

I hope this session was somewhat useful, if not then perhaps entertaining haha.

The next session will either be about how to make comics or making scenes for comics.

edit: Take note that this is just my way of using HDRI and that because I don't regularly use Iray or Octane that I might be missing out on some details. I am certainly not discouraging depending on HDRI lighting. In the end it almost boils down to taste and if you and your viewers are happy with your style of rendering, then that's all that matters. Don't forget that if 25,000 years ago we managed to entertain ourselves with red ocre hand prints and dark stick figures on cave walls and little sexy carvings of fat voluptuous women, then your chosen style of super hitech rendering on a water-cooled RTX 3080 GPU should be okay too lol!!!

Something VERY strange happened to this post, the whole text got deleted somehow.

I'll try find the original text and restore it...