Cement Lover's request WIP 01

Well, I'm not dead; thanks for asking.

Any who, I've started working on another scene, which is part of Cement Lover's request. Should have it done soon after I setup a couple things in the scene you see above.

Medusa WIP 16 update

Small update with experimental lights using Lux Render 0.6.1. It seems to fix some of the problems I was having and performs better than it was.

Medusa WIP 16

Minor updates, just adding some fullsized renders to the blog. I'm still experimenting with the vector arrows as lights. It works, but I think I need to set them as real objects and not duplicated ones as Lux Render seems to have issues with them.

Minor update, if anyone is still watching...

I went and modeled the armbands and I am also experimenting with Lux Render for better rendering results. Next, I'm going to model a more accurate snake from the Soul Eater series that the character uses.

Also, I got an update for one of the game characters I wrote up for that long winded RPG I've been working on. 1 (technically 3, if you include Maya and Rad) full designs done, several more to go.

Benisato Dress release!

It's not much, but I managed to pack together an outfit I made recently for other Poser users to play with. More info can be seen on it over at My DA Gallery or on my ShareCG Page.

Other than that, not much else to report. Well, other than my Lux Render experiments which are still in process.

Medusa WIP 13?

Well, I'm still going at it, trying to better refine the render. This time, I exported everything from Poser back into Blender, then used an external rendering app named LuxRender for betting lighting and overall render finish. The end result that you see above took 33 hours to do. Oy!


For the most part, many of the materials and textures I had used previously for Medusa Final v.2 were not imported into Blender, which leaves me having to recreate them manually twice -- once for Blender and once for LuxRender as they don't seem to communicate properly amongst one another. The other odd thing I noticed is that while LuxRender takes forever to get a scene rendered, it took almost the same length of time to render this particular image (initially 14 hours or so) as it did with Poser 7 and it did not scream at me for somehow passing the theoretical memory limit as it used much less memory. Though, if I passed my installed memory for any reason, the LuxRender UI would crash as it loaded the scene. I guess I should report that to the devs. :shrug:

Anyway, depending on how much my modeling skills come to be in the near future, I may as well go ahead and replace Miki 2 with a custom model of Medusa. For now, I'm going to end up just modeling my own custom snake like the one she has in the series.

So, I'm still working on it, and hope to have some better results in the future!

Medusa Final v.2

Version two of the previous render, now with better hair, textures (hair only) and lighting. Also added some effects in Photoshop.

Well, I went back and redid the ponytail and textures for it using Kozaburo's messy Jessi v1 hair textures, then spliced it to match the same hair. I also ended up reworking the hood to to cover the parts that were exposed or coming through. Other than that, better lighing and snake textures.

Medusa Outfit Final... Somewhat WIP 11

Well, I've finally managed to get the outfit to a point where it moves decently enough not to destroy the collar and the hood! WOOT! I stayed up almost two days trying to figure out where I was going wrong in Poser 7's cloth room and the book did not help very much. If there's one thing that needs work, it's the manual to the software. Oy...

Anyway, I had to adjust the collar, buttons, and hood to be constrained portions of the mesh since they were always in contact with either the hair or Miki2's head. While I lost some minor detail with the hood not moving a great deal, it kept it from messing up everything in the area and looking like it went through a meat grinder when it touched the hair. I also did the same thing for the thigh portion of the mesh as it saved a TON of time to calculate the dynamic mesh deformations. The tail was set as a soft decoration with the tip being included in the calculations so it wouldn't make contact with anything else.

The hair... well, not much has changed a great deal with the hair other than I managed to use the above techniques to make it move to match the bends of Miki2's body and to come over the outfit without making part of it explode. Later, I hope to have the hair fixed in a manner that looks faithful to the original character's hair. Though, the same could be said about making a fully original piece and render that entirely in Blender.

Let's see... other than that, there are some texture changes for her nails to match up the original character, eye color was altered, and two snakes were added from www.most-digital-creations.com for their Shadow Serpent object as it saved me some time in creating another mesh (I'll have to make a better one that's actually specific to the series though) with altered textures. I wished I could have added Medusa's vector arrows to better show her as a character, but I ran out of time and was really too tired to draw up additional textures. Maybe later... or next time. XD

Anyway, I think that's it for this one. Time for me to get back on schedule.

Medusa Outfit WIP 10

Well, I found out what was keeping the outfit from working as a dynamic cloth in Poser, mainly the lack of polygons and trying to add parts of it as constrained groups during the simulation tests. Though, I can't seem to keep the buttons from turning into malleable cloth like the rest of the outfit, so I may end up having to separate them to keep them from moving. Also added the finger and toe nail textures to Miki 2.

Other notes: Seems as if no matter what setting I have enabled during the cloth simulation, the hood tends to go through the collar from time to time. On the other hand, since they are all pretty much the same color, it's barely noticeable. The hair textures are pretty much botched and need to be redone along with the UVs. Also, I need to choose a pose that does not force the hood to move so it stays in place and have it collide with the hair so it covers it as well. Oddly enough, doing that tends to result in many ugly messes as it touches the hair mesh, so I'm not sure what to do to cover the area. I also noticed that since the mesh was also colliding with the floor, it seemed to have pushed through her knee, but it was hard to tell prior to creating the render. Oy... I'll need to adjust the post to avoid that in the future.

Next up, better texture maps for the hair and either some of Medusa's tattoos for the arms or some sort of snake prop with dots!

Medusa Outfit WIP 09

Well... I finished the outfit and figured out what I had done wrong with the UV textures without help. Sigh...

Anyway, this is pretty much the finished model. I found that the UV map was altered by mistake when I went to add a texture to a newly edited section on her outfit and Blender went crazy and shifted the points. I ended up having to rework each section's UV maps, materials, and textures to get everything working. The next problem is that this is the render from within Poser 7 and it doesn't import the model and display it like it does in Blender; which is why it looks a bit rough. Then again, on export, the total filesize for the .obj files are only... around a total of 150kb give or take. They're pretty small, and in being so they do not work at all in Poser 7's cloth room. I guess it needs more polygons now.

So... until I can figure out how to get the clothes to move like cloth, this might as well be the last batch of work in progress shots. And I still need to make the hair transparent mapped so it doesn't look like it's one solid piece.

Medusa Outfit WIP 08

Well, this is the latest work in progress for the Medusa Gorgon outfit I've been working on. Yeah, it's been a while and I know I've been slow with it, but meh...

Anyway, I moved the tail up to the appropriated length, changed the hair and tweaked the hood. For the most part, I'm almost done; but, when I was working on the UV mapping for the textures, the entire UV map somehow moved or removed itself and left the parts that I needed textured -- the button and hood -- ended misaligned or the textures no longer show up as I had intended for them. Does anyone know what I did wrong and how to fix it? I ask as whatever happened, it's keeping me from resetting the UV texture mapping or even seeing the vertecies while trying to edit them in the UV editor window. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Medusa Outfit WIP 07

After trying diligently and loosing a ton of time with the hair, I said screw it and modeled only the parts that will be visible after I finish working on her hood.

Oy...

Also started working on her hair textures. Sadly, I thought it would be harder to do.

Medusa Outfit WIP 06

Redid her hair again, this time with a better reference.

Medusa Outfit WIP 05

More work done. This time, I went ahead and redid the hair using flat polygon extrusions instead of a full out box look that was not working. Not sure if it looks much better at this point, but I did manage to get the UV's setup and might experiment with the hair textures sometime later.

Medusa Outfit WIP 04

Well, this is the 4th TIME I've tried to submit this work in progress submission to DA, but it doesn't seem to want to take! I don't know what the hell is going on, but I'll try again. Pisses me off that it took that long to do. Anyway...

I've started on Medusa's hair, obviously prior to creating her hood and morph. For the most part, it's proving to be a bit more difficult to do than I had initially realized and finding a decent hair modeling tutorial for blender, or ANY modeling app, has also proved to be difficult. So, I've went ahead and started working on it the same way I've already done, extruding and moving the verticies into position. It seems that it's working, but I don't know. I'll let you guys be the judge of that.

So, what do you think? :? And does anyone have any suggestions on how to proceed?

Medusa Outfit WIP 03

Relatively minor update, with a collar and buttons! Next up, Medusa's hair, then the hood!

Medusa Outfit WIP 02

Added the tail! Though, it looks like it's a bit low.

Also added better lighting to so it would be easier to see her tail.

Medusa Outfit WIP 01

Well, I've made some progress in redoing the outfit for Medusa. At this point, I have her clothing down and I just need to work on her collar and hood. After that, I need to figure out how to get her hair done.

And the color I set on the base outfit is so I can see if there were any areas of poke through that were hard to identify when everything was colored the same shade of gray. So, don't worry about that!

I guess I should test to see if it works in Poser 7 before doing anything. :lol:

Any feedback on this and what I'm doing would be VERY helpful! ;)

Modeling updates

As you can see, I've gotten off my lazy bum to create something I had been planning for months! What's odd is that it's actually much better looking after I finished tweaking it in ZBrush, but Poser hates the rigging on it. Meh... I'm still trying to figure out where I messed up in regards to that, but at least I've made progress. Though, what's also silly is that Blender crashed out on me at least a dozen times when I tried to do things related to the underlying model, such as hiding it or using a higher subdivision setting. If anything else, those crashes reinforced several aspects of basic computer use: SAVE, and SAVE OFTEN! If I had headed those words more carefully, it wouldn't have taken me several hours to redo and fix things I had already done! But, I digress.

So, that's it for this update! Later!

Been a while

Ugh... seems like my text editor is conspiring against me! I couldn't even get the original text typed up before it crashed on me while spell checking the document. Major loss, so I'll just retype it to the best of my memory.

Anyway, it's been a while since I've posted much of anything here on my personal blog; two months to be exact. I've also had a thought that no one so much as glimpses at any of my pages (blog, personal website, and DA account), so I don't imagine there being much, if any, sort of response to this depressing drivel.

Moving on - no updates to any of my projects, image requests, or game project. Yup, that's right, no updates! This is really due to nothing more than me either being lazy or depressed, or a combination of both. Plus, everything I've attempted to do lately doesn't work out or has been lost when my external hard drive died - did get a working replacement though. Not that I expect anyone to care... no one reads this anyway.

Did post a couple of images on DA, Sticky-Site and QS Fans a while ago. They're not much and are not related to any of my projects, but you can expect to see them at the end of this posting. Hope whoever reads this enjoys them!

I'm still unemployed as ever and, as a result, have considered taking commissions to fill the money gap. The idea is/was to do some images for people with Poser or do photography shoots for people in my area. The Poser portion seems pretty straight forward and with a nice overhead; but, being that I have yet to sell any of my prints for photography in nearly ten years, I'm having my doubts about photography. Plus, I have yet to really do a photo spread for anyone. So, that entire idea is pretty much up in the are at the moment, but if people are willing to pay, then I could give it a shot.

And, what of my IT troubleshooting, repair, and administration job you ask? Well, it's not so much a job as it is a once in a blue moon deal that people seem to call me up for. Hardly, if ever, do I have any jobs constantly lined up to make a decent income to be considered self-employed. Seems that when I finish, everything is working in such a way that I never get a callback unless it's catastrophic; which is good and bad. You obviously know what it's bad, but the good thing is that I did great work. :) And apparently, having that much experience seems to be a problem in getting a more permanent job anywhere in the town I live in.
Which leads into my other recent problem: getting, but not getting a job selling stuff. Sure, I was called out of the blue due to posting my job information on Career Builder; but, it seems that my resume is probably telling employers that I'm overqualified for many jobs. Case and point with the call I received a couple of weeks ago, this marketing company needed people to fill a position that sells computers for HP. Sure, the job is right up my alley, great part-time hours per week, and with nice pay; yet, even after being pretty much guaranteed a job with this company, I somehow managed to not get it. When I pressed the issue to see what made them think this way, all I got from the recruiter was another guy had more experience since he was already doing the same thing for another company. Okay..? Somehow you want to say that makes sense; but, at the same time, I have salesman experience and an in depth knowledge of computers and how to fix them. Another clue that I should have picked up before was during my interview, the guy mentioned under his breath that I had a LOT of computer experience. AT first, I figured it was a good thing to be acknowledged for and, yet, here I am still unemployed! So, I figure that they were thinking that I would want more money for what I know - which is true, since I did ask about it during the interview - and they went with the cheaper choice. Oh yay... So happy that seems to be working out for them! *Heavy sarcasm*

And so, I'm also playing in a closed beta online MMO which has a pretty wacky NDA contract. Can't say much more than that, other than my computer is totally under spec for the game; but, I do my best to inform the developers what's good and bad about the game. I only wished I could afford a better rig to play it on. Sigh... and a better internet connection.

So... other than that, nothing else has been done! I'm a total loser... :(

Anyway, enjoy these images!

Two variations of the same character, only one has a real photo backdrop! These were posted at DA and the later at QSfans.
This last one is actually a re-render of an old piece, not that anyone has seen it anyway. <_<>_> Posted at Sticky-Site.

Ugh... Now Playing part 2

Well, in my previous post, I mentioned that I had a massive hard drive failure with my external. As it now stands, I got a replacement back from Seagate less than a week ago and guess what happened; IT DIED on Memorial Day! Kind of poetic when you think about it.

Yup, it died when I decided to write data to it, giving me a cyclic redundancy error with the application I was using to download data to the drive. Not thinking too much about it (I initially thought that the drive somehow became over heated. WRONG!) I then fired up the software that came with the drive to see if there were any actual errors with the drive and to see if it could fix any of them. Turns out that it had some sort of fault when it was on part of the night as I attempted to download the data in question (around 250+ megs apparently) and the software couldn't do squat about it and blasted the error message stating that it needed to go back to its mothership for repairs/replacement.

As I sat there, miffed over the entire set of events with this blasted drive, I couldn't help but to wonder why this sort of craziness happened. Turns out on Seagate's own support forums and at this blog dating back as far as August 2007 (just about 1 year before I purchased the drive), there have been multiple problems with these drives and others under the same line of FreeAgent products. So, this made me think of why, why in the hell would the drive be built in such a way as to force it to keelover due to heating and cooling problems when making the case properly in the first place would alleviate most of the problems? And, why would Seagate also use a drive in these units that, according to their own acknowledgement, has faulty firmware that can disable the entire drive?

These sorts of questions and issues bothered me greatly as I made plans to somehow get Seagate on the phone the next day (well, this past Tuesday anyway). I even wondered about the reliability of the next drive that they would send me to replace the replacement!

So, after a lengthy call to their tech support and warranty department, they agreed to have it mailed back for a replacement, free of charge. That last bit made me cautious since their website generally states there is normally a charge for shipping, but thankfully that was free as well. I just need to get a shipment label printed and have UPS pick it up.

Now, this time I just hope that the damned thing will work as advertised and for more than 8 months!

---

In other news...

Deviant Art still does not work properly for me after nearly 2 months of issues. The DA admins claim my ISP and/or cache memory in my browsers are to blame for my misfortune and T-Mobile states that the site should load up unless the site is a severe bandwidth hog. Technically, T-Mobile is correct in that assessment since DA has all sorts of random ads, flash, images, web code, and etc. that had problems with my connection up until recently. Though, in my defense, I had enough sense to have an ad/flash/script blocker installed on Firefox to taper off some of that; though, it no longer matters since the site refuses to load for me anymore.

To make matters worse, Google Chrome 2.0 and IE 7 have the same issues and they don't have any plugins that block the ads or craptastic scripts DA spams to through my connection. So, I'm thinking they updated or changed some portion of their web coding and it borks my connection (and maybe others) with it's dial-up bandwidth. Just don't tell the DA admins that, since they could give a fly fuck about users in my situation.

So, without further a due, I might as well begin posting my next several project updates here and on my Fur Affinity page as I'm able. Screw DA and their incompetent customer assistance. I'm just glad I'm not paying for additional services at that site, I'd be even more livid!

Now playing...

Once again, I've managed to neglect my blog... It seems to be a growing habit when I should at least update more than once a month, but I digress.

Anyway, updated the header with a temporary image of one of my favorite characters, Whip from The King of Fighters '99 - XI. It does not seem like much, but I'm attempting to alter my little piece of space to something that fits more of my style and not be so damned awkward looking. Hopefully, I'll have an image of something I'm working on in her place, but until then, Whip will be there to stay.

In other news, Deviant Art has once again become the bane of my existence as it refuses to let me check my messages and view any of the artwork and associated artists I have on my watch list. I don't know what sort of beef they have with T-Mobile and slow connections, but they've somehow managed to keep pissing me off with their antics. So, if I ever get around to finishing any work that may be post worthy, they will all be posted here or on Sticky-Site until further notice. That or my other websites, which also need some updating. Bleh...

And for those that did not already know, my external hard drive, with just about everything I've gathered for the last several years - anime (Soul Eater just finished! T_T), games, music (had a ton of game music) , movies, porn, etc. - took quite a hit this past Monday. I was over my brother's home trying to get some updates and finish some downloads for anime along with playing some games on his high definition tv when his silly dog decided to play dash! through the area my equipment was occupying. Needless to say, the dog managed to snag one of the wires to the external drive and send it crashing to the floor. I attempted to rescusitate the drive (lol, sounds so silly now that I think about it. There was no way in hell I could have done it.) to retrieve my data from it, but it was all for naught. And to make matters worse, Seagate would send me a new drive for free (so they say), but charge over $1,700 to recover any data from it. I assume that figure is based on how much actual data the drive can hold, which in my gloriously messed up case is 500 Gigabtyes, and how much time and effort they can somehow manage to squeeze out of my pockets to do anything. Obviously, being broke and unemployeed, I said fuck it and sent it off for a new one. I just hope I can get another one back in exchange.
Sigh... And the thought of tracking down and downloading everything again makes me feel ill to my stomach whenever I think about it. I'll manage somehow.

I'm also trying to keep my spirits up by not thinking about it... Ugh, and it's not working too well.

Oh... and here's a sneak peek on what else I'm trying to work on. It's really nothing more than screen capture of a character I've fallen head over heels for, but you should get the idea of where I'd like the final product to look like! Enjoy!

It's been a while

Yup, it's been several months since I've last posted anything here on my journal. Most of you have probably forgotten about me, and some may have not. Either way, it doesn't really matter, as I'm here now and giving updates.

First off, I've had my birthday and I'm currently 27 years old. Woo... I don't feel much different, but I am older and approaching 30.

Second, my family and I have moved out of our previous residence to one that's much, MUCH more livable and secure. The downside is that during the moving process, I've found that I'm in terrible shape and have begun a pretty brutal workout regimen to at least begin feeling better and stronger. So far, it's working! I just need to get my walk in sometime this afternoon.

Third, my plans in the game design space have been put on hold for the time being. Yeah, yeah, I know what I've said before; but, I've come to the sad realization that most people are not willing to help out someone in my position, regardless of how interesting the concept may be. Plus, I have yet to get any headway on the game engine needed to play the game in the manner I've envisioned.
So, for now, the super large scope game will be placed on hold and a simpler, already planned out game will take it's place until more work can be done with it. Once I've nailed down a couple of specifics, I'm going to get some characters designed and playing with the idea for it. More details to come!

Oh, lastly, I've come to the conclusion that it's best that I at least try to finish some of my outstanding requests and trades that I've somehow accumulated over the years. Some of them are really simple - which may be the reason they were skipped over, lol - and some require some real planning to get right. So, I'm going to be posting quite a few things over in my Deviant Art page and here on my blog as I finish them.

Next, I'm in the process of writing out a short sinking and sticky story/comic. You can see where it's going based off the initial render that sparked the idea below. Enjoy!

ARR! Thar be UPDATES!

I needed to get that out of my system! LOL

Anyway, I'm just letting everyone know what I'm still alive and still working on my projects, hence the quirky title. In this update, I'm posting a work in progress shot of what I'm currently modeling, in this case it's a dress for a request. Obviously, if the file name stays the same as it was while on my computer, you may have a hint at who the dress will end up being for and what it should end up looking like when everything is all said and done. Still need to get the hair done though. I'm not too sure if I'll upload it to my DA account page since it's fairly early in the modeling process, but as it currently stands, it's not a bad start.
Odd thing about modeling this outfit though - it's so much easier to do it in Shade (currently Shade 7.12 LE I believe) with the open/closed curves tool than with other applications I have installed. Really odd, but at the same time so much easier! Now, I just need to worry about how the rest will look like...

Oh, and for those that don't know and still care, my birthday is this Friday! I'll be 27!

Any who, that's it for this update. Stay tuned!