A bit more glam -- actually, testing transparencies and reflections. Nice!

Just one fresh render today ... because it turns out I have computer problems. All the mickey-mouse I was getting in the last few days, with DAZ crashing to the desktop on a long render -- well now it's worse! The crashes are coming just a few minutes into each attempted render, with raytracing turned OFF; and sometimes DAZ freezes so badly, it gridlocks the whole system to the point where the old standby of ctrl+alt+del doesn't work. The only thing that works is to hit the power button and force a restart. The problem with that is, as any PC user knows, multiple "abnormal terminations" bust up the integrity of the system. They get brain dead faster than you can say, "How much does a new PC cost these days?"

So I might vanish off your radar for a couple of days, while Dave does unspeakable things to this system and tries to breathe new life into it!

In the meantime, since I can't seem to get a render for love or money, I took an old, old shot which is actually fairly boring by the standards of what I'm doing now, and reworked it:

the 2019 repaint...

This shot was not raytraced originally, because I couldn't do that at all! This was done long before I got my upgrades last year, which allowed me to do some rayracing. So what you're seeing here is actually a 2D/3D hybrid ... it's the old 3D shot used as a canvas on which an enormous amount of digital painting was done. Almost every pixel has been painted ... I invite you to click on this, see the art at full size, and enjoy the difference! The work was done in GIMP (the .abr brush work), and in Micrographx (the skin tones) and in Irfanview (the color balancing).

I'd love to say, "join me tomorrow for something special," but I think this machine is going to be dismembered and all over the floor tomorrow! Like the man said in the movie, "I'll be back."

Jade, 11 April