Thursday, September 1, 2011

Michael 4, the new pants, new poses, and all




Still on the "Spirit of Place" theme -- because I rather like this! -- here's our young hero again. The archeology student who's out there in the field, studying a fantastic ruin which just appeared out of the landscape after an amazing storm caused four-meter surges which scoured out a valley that's been silted up for, well, forever. The ruin is seeing the light of day for the first time in 5000 years, right? Right. And there's something so weird about it...

Remember, this is the same ruin you saw in the Winged Avenger post, a little while ago --- remember this:


...and this guy is still around. He's been the sentinel in charge of making sure this ruin was buried, and stayed buried forever ... and if it hadn't been for global warming and climate change, it probably would have. But now it's out in the free air again, and what's more, humans are already here. They're measuring and photographing, taking samples, and generally getting themselves into danger they know nothing about.

Time for our archangel to appear on the scene? Mmmm, that's what I thought, too! So join me tomorrow, when he arrives.

In the meantime, this is actually a study of Michael 's new costume. The pants are a great prop. They're the Sickle Yield Rogue Armory pants, which you can get fro Renderosity and they're both easy to work with, and they render up a treat. They have a variety of textures in the package with the pants model itself, and more morphs than you can shake a stick at. This costume is from the same designer who did the sweats you saw quite a while back, in a Male Glamor Photography exercise:


(Click here to see the rest of this series ... they're, uh, nice!)

And I just got another one of Sickle Yield's M4 costumes: a neat pair of jeans that (at last, somebody did this!) have the morphs supplied for "half on, half off," or "state of undress," that kind of thing. I haven't even had the chance to install this yet, but it's on the agenda for the next few days, so stay with me.

The other item I'm test-driving today is a great new set of poses for M4. It's called Amazing Bodies (also from Renderosity), and the title is accurate. These are tremendous poses, and trouble free. Usually, no matter how good they look on the thumbnails, there's a problem somewhere when you apply a pose, but this pack is one of only a few pose packs that I've found to be "viceless." I'll show you some more of them tomorrow --

Tomorrow, the winged avenger, the archangel guardian of this ruin, is going to join the archeology student, and this promises to be interesting. If you're into this kind of work, the easiest way to achieve this effect is to merge two scenes into one. If you're feeling your way through DAZ, join me tomorrow, and I'll tell all.

And because I knooooow some of you (most of you) are wondering:


Yes, this pose looks beautiful when you click "off" on the costume and leave a glorious CG male nude behind!

That's Michael 4 wearing the Raphael skinmap, but not the Raphael face. That's the Rock Star hair by Neftis Salon (from DAZ), and the set is DM's The Shrine (from Renderosoty). The claw-footed incense burner is from another of DM's sets (Fantasy Visions??). The sky backdrop is a recolorization of the stormy sky I did in Bryce to use as a backdrop for the Steampunk Clock renders back in June. The last time you saw it, it was purple.

And now the brain is busy with images of the scene where the archangel meets the archaeologist! This is going to be interesting...

Jade, 1 September (other side of the dateline, of course)