An unnecessarily deep analysis of Ramon's Christa & more

[justarandomguy]

Ha, get it? Because of the "A bad day for a roman woman" thing?
...okay I know where the door is...

Jokes aside, I've made a lot of progress, way faster than I expected.
There are still some things I want to polish in blender, but that's a topic I will talk about later.
For now, the idea isn't to be too historically accurate, since I know little to nothing of roman times history (sorry ), to compensate that, it's basically a project with the challenge of taking a beloved actress that recorded indoors with little lightning into an outside scenario with the power of blender, photoshop, a comically meticulous watch of The passion of the christa frame by frame and the little free time left.
Hope this works and makes some dreams come true. More to come next week (hopefully).
Stay tuned!

 

[mp5stab]

Interesting choice to dive right into blender. Have you considered making a 3d model?

 

[justarandomguy]

Interesting choice to dive right into blender. Have you considered making a 3d model?

I had to learn maya not too long ago, I have like little more than a year and a half of experience (mostly modeling and a little of textures), but holy crap is that an expensive software (and sometimes really confusing). I jumped into blender and I'm loving it (bless blender). It wasn't too hard to switch to blender, heck, I even find blender to be way superior.
About 3D modeling, I can deal with almost anything except humans, humans are pretty stressful and the line between the uncanny valley and a good model is pretty thin. I'm trying to learn realistic human modeling, but I doubt I will master that.
On this project, it's a mix of a lot of things, the pngs (with and without photoshop manips) and models, both made by me and from the internet.
To be fair, 80% of it is from the internet, if I tried to do everything myself, I would finish this by mid 2024.
The thing is, I found it to be a pain to find the image assets to make manips fit what I have in mind, so I decided to overcomplicate things by making a landscape in blender, that way I can keep continuity and not burn my mind with fitting perspectives with photoshop. Sadly, with my current knowledge I still have to burn my head with fitting people pngs.

 

[mp5stab]

I started on a similar trajectory as you did, so I hold out much more hope for your eventual pivot to 3d than I do for the folks using premade daz dolls. That being said, right now, daz is still hard to beat for the "good enough" look. It's not really an artists tool (although plenty of excellent artists try to make assets for daz studio), but with decent iray support, and the ability to pose a decent off-the-shelf human model, daz was my choice over video game engines, or having the painstakingly sculpt my own characters in blender. Although, now I do sculpt my own characters, I just retopo them to the daz base mesh, genesis 8, 8.1, or 9, but I don't have to worry about texturing, rigging, topology, hair, or any of that. Eventually we'll see some moves made with AI that will match the best photoshop/3d work, but realistically, someone with a backing in both with be the best at "AI" art. Anyways, sorry that this was all Greek. I can tell that you have the passion for creating!

 

[Frank Petrexa]

You folks ought to take up quantum physics or general relativity. It sounds like it would be a lot easier.

 

[justarandomguy]

I started on a similar trajectory as you did, so I hold out much more hope for your eventual pivot to 3d than I do for the folks using premade daz dolls. That being said, right now, daz is still hard to beat for the "good enough" look. It's not really an artists tool (although plenty of excellent artists try to make assets for daz studio), but with decent iray support, and the ability to pose a decent off-the-shelf human model, daz was my choice over video game engines, or having the painstakingly sculpt my own characters in blender. Although, now I do sculpt my own characters, I just retopo them to the daz base mesh, genesis 8, 8.1, or 9, but I don't have to worry about texturing, rigging, topology, hair, or any of that. Eventually we'll see some moves made with AI that will match the best photoshop/3d work, but realistically, someone with a backing in both with be the best at "AI" art. Anyways, sorry that this was all Greek. I can tell that you have the passion for creating!

Let's see if I continue a 3D "career".

I can tell that you have the passion for creating!

Thanks!

 

[justarandomguy]

Man it feels bad to not be able to make a lot of progress, but at least I made another test that will be really helpful
Feedback is welcome

The trick here is that I got and modified a 3D model of a tunic and I played with photoshop and rendering the tunic to make Bruna look like she's wearing a tunic from the time.
And, why not, also test lightning for night time.

Also, the png of this first clothing test.

 

[Alejandro Jay]

Man it feels bad to not be able to make a lot of progress, but at least I made another test that will be really helpful
Feedback is welcome
View attachment 1374397
The trick here is that I got and modified a 3D model of a tunic and I played with photoshop and rendering the tunic to make Bruna look like she's wearing a tunic from the time.
And, why not, also test lightning for night time.
View attachment 1374398
Also, the png of this first clothing test.

this looks really great! I’m assuming you are going to make the whole passion of the christa story starting from the arrest/agony in the garden?

 

[justarandomguy]

this looks really great! I’m assuming you are going to make the whole passion of the christa story starting from the arrest/agony in the garden?

Well... I had in mind to do something losely based of, it would be its own separate story, for mora creative freedom.

 

[Wragg]

Man it feels bad to not be able to make a lot of progress, but at least I made another test that will be really helpful
Feedback is welcome
View attachment 1374397
The trick here is that I got and modified a 3D model of a tunic and I played with photoshop and rendering the tunic to make Bruna look like she's wearing a tunic from the time.
And, why not, also test lightning for night time.
View attachment 1374398
Also, the png of this first clothing test.

Ah, when you start dressing your models, then you are a proper manipulator!

 

[justarandomguy]

Ah, when you start dressing your models, then you are a proper manipulator!

Oh that's nice, thanks!

 

[justarandomguy]

Welp, sometimes it sucks to be a perfectionist, since you keep delaying and delaying, but I want your opinion on this render to test the terrain and trees, thoughts?

 

[Alejandro Jay]

Welp, sometimes it sucks to be a perfectionist, since you keep delaying and delaying, but I want your opinion on this render to test the terrain and trees, thoughts?View attachment 1374651

marvellous! looks like a perfect spot for bruna’s suffering.

 

[Stormy89]

Welp, sometimes it sucks to be a perfectionist, since you keep delaying and delaying, but I want your opinion on this render to test the terrain and trees, thoughts?View attachment 1374651

Superb maybe make town scenery similar to this one

https://www.deviantart.com/riveda1972/art/MMD-DAZ-XPS-Desert-Village-Stage-DL-UPDATED-955946598

 

[justarandomguy]

Superb maybe make town scenery similar to this one

https://www.deviantart.com/riveda1972/art/MMD-DAZ-XPS-Desert-Village-Stage-DL-UPDATED-955946598

You read my mind

 

[Stormy89]

If this had had not many polys in can be used in XPS/XNALara too as long saved as .xps or .obj

 

[justarandomguy]

Well, that's where some tricks came in handy to not make the viewport look like a slideshare, but I'll stop before I start talking in 3D nerd language hahaha

 

[justarandomguy]

So, I wanna add another character to the manips, any tips on where to get the same woman with different poses/faces?

 

[Wragg]

So, I wanna add another character to the manips, any tips on where to get the same woman with different poses/faces?

That is definitely one of the things you need to tell a story. You need models with hundreds of photos available and you need to spend ages downloading them. Then, of course, their hairstyles change, their make up, sometimes their hair colour. Sometimes they go out and get tatted (Select skin near the tat, promote to layer, feather it, and move it over the tat for instant tat removal )

I did a set with hundreds of images (Jasmine), funnily enough the model I used was also called Jasmine (among other names - e,g, Karmen.)



As you see, she repeatedly poses with her right hand in her hair, and she has a tat, but only a small one.

A good thread here is the 'Lovely Ladies Thread' which features a rich variety of moodels and sources. Also

https://www.nudespuri.com/

https://www.elitebabes.com/search/

Good, cost and virus free sites for an introduction to models.

Male characters can be a problem, though.

 

[Stormy89]

So, I wanna add another character to the manips, any tips on where to get the same woman with different poses/faces?

XPS/XNALara olso can be good tool for manips, but sadly limited for video game charachters unlike in DAZ who are custom made(Unless someone port VG char to DAZ)
But in my example i used some nude woman from Witcher 3 game, as already had nice(IMO) nude body and look very generic.
PS Those muscles are normal map from Ciri nude model and ive recolored that woman hair