I've said before I wouldn't waste another word on J.T., my cute lookin' but to all intents and purposes a useless oversized abacus that likes to think it is a computer, but sadly - it ain't.  So I won't. I'll  get a stiff drink and  sulk in the back garden instead, while the poor sap recovers from the umpteenth crash on a hair render.  If J.T. can't handle even a barebones, stripped-down-to-its-boxer-shorts DS4 you can download for free, with a simplest, crudest, faked, pretend daylight, section by section,  then I'm screwed. Fucked. Shafted. Buggered.  Been had a very wicked way with and not even given a box of cheap chocolates for my troubles. Every which way - and then some more. I'm stuck with a computer  that was not intended to  come within 100 metres of a 3D application, stuck   until the end of this year, when, after all the bills get cleared, all the taxes and duties on this shit or that given to whatever government body wants to squeeze it out of us, the business rents, the kids' one-off for this or that (dammit, why do they have so many 'one-offs' that seem to be specifically designed with just one purpose in mind - to turn your pockets inside out, with the tumbleweeds rolling slowly over the dusty wasteland?) I might  finally get to the top of the cap-in-the-hand queue and get the machine I need - and not the one we just happen to have some spare change lying around for.

The chap that was looking after The Runt during its last days (before the sick laptop gave up the fight and left for the Great Intel Hunting Grounds in the sky) has offered me his copy of a rather swish, delicious piece of software. Fabiano has started his  modelling module on his games designer course, and - probably out his guilty conscience (he is the one I originally bought  The Runt  of), decided to gift me with some of the goodies he got thanks to his student discount.

Needless to say - I can't use it. I can't even fucking instal the single blasted item,  about the only thing my PC has compatible with all that posh stuff is - its case. Ha-ha. Very funny.

So, while I'm trying to eke out each pixel after pixel from the whimpering J.T., here are some random questions.

1. Do  3D renders HAVE  to be photo-realistic? Where does it say so? What if I don't want the image to replicate a  photograph - because if I wanted a photograph - I'd take P.'s Canon  with a couple of memory cards and  spend the afternoon taking - well - photographs? This is not a question whether the artist  knows how to replicate the reality-identical early afternoon sunlight reflecting in a reality-identical way of the photo-realistic  red oak wooden flooring - but whether they WANT to.

2. How to get a DS 3Delight to behave like the 'real', standalone 3Delight? And render like one?

3. How to get Octane  and Maxwell to play nicely with stuff exported from  3D applications that are NOT 'the industry standard'?

4. Nox renderer - yes or no? Anyone tried it yet?

5.  How to get SSS  - but without SSS?

6.  What's the simplest and quickest way of simulating a human figure as if it were made of water rising seamlessly as sea wave, almost melting into the body of the ocean, and ending in a face and limbs taking shape out of the foam? Playing around with shaders didn't do the trick, and though my gut feeling is to fumble about with the transparency maps, J.T. would hear none of it.  No Photoshop painting, please, if I could paint, I wouldn't bang my head against the wall  trying to figure this out.

7. Why does the importing of .obj files from one to another application  lose its materials/textures, though they are all nicely compiled in the correct folder?

8. How to  fake believable water caustics/ water refection ripples on the walls - without true caustics (and without cheating in Photoshop)?

9. Just because something is a free application - does it also mean it doesn't have to have a fucking manual?

10  Why Maxers render cars and bathrooms and living rooms, Vuers  - riverbanks with the shrubbery, Poserers/Dazzers do  people? How about if Maxers try their hand at a good-lookin' guy/gal for a change,  Vuers at a swanky bathroom and their version of the ubiquitous Audi R8 (hell, even I have one lying round somewhere on my hard drive), and Poserers/Dazzers at a tranquil  sunset waterscape? Or is everybody happy to be keeping their trade secrets close to their chest and happy to stay in their preferred comfort zone?

11. Mass-appeal, going commercial and your personal vision - something sells,  you know it's crap, you knocked it up in no time and piled cliche upon cliche until you vomited. At what point the tacky and cheap conveyer-belt stuff stops being crap just because enough people said so and/or bought  into it?

12.  Who decided that what  will really sell me the new shower gel is  the  10 seconds of an airbrushed-within-inches-of-its-life badly acted soft-core porn  taking place in an all- glass  paneled lift of some luxury office building that can exist only in the art director's imagination? In the ones I'm familiar with, you'd be landing on teh ground floor wiping her lipstick  off your belly button and tucking your shirt sleeves in, while all the floors full of employees  stare with that frozen, jaw-dropped expression  on their faces,  expecting to  get a photocopy of the close-up of your arse taken from gazillion CCTV cameras on their desk first thing tomorrow morning. OK, I'm laboring the point here. Maybe it's just me, but all I can think of when such idiocy pops up is not the brand of the product, but  "Unprotected sex with a total stranger - you  idiotic twat ... no condom - no brain..."

13. And, of course, back to the beginning - would accepting the Fabiano's guilty conscience offer be wrong?


Back to work now.

listening to: [link]

I come to DA when I need to hit the 'creative idle and coffee-break' button - to have a quick catch up with a few good buddies, empty my inbox and browse more-less aimlessly  through random news, journals, forums and galleries. And since for past few days I've been working on a personal project that happens to be so emotionally draining that I have to get up and leave it alone after  ten minutes and do something else for several hours just to be able to face the next ten minute slot, my aimless drifting through various art communities increased proportionally.

When you just observe and watch quietly from the sides, pretty soon you start spotting patterns. It can be anything - ideas, concepts, arguments, styles, debates, divisions, you name it , the overwhelming 'us' and 'them' thread that seems to run right across the board, regardless what one looks at - 'professionals' vs 'hobbyists', 'traditional 'vs 'digital', 'high-end' vs 'low-end', 'modelers' vs 'renderers', 'my little ponies' vs 'zombie-fetishists', 'big-boobied Amazon women'  vs Grimmy/Ichi-or-'insert-your-favourite-slash-combo porn - whatever.  It seems that once someone stakes up their patch in any of the groups turning it into 'us', the basic rules of civilized conduct, tolerance and common sense run for the hills, the misconceptions  turn to prejudices, and  snowball out of control before one can finish typing their user name.
There is 'good stuff' and 'bad stuff' - and it almost NEVER corresponds to our own niche tastes, regardless how loud we can shout about it.

I have no tent to pitch in any particular corner of the muddy camping site and out a few very few personal mottoes I stick to, this one  comes at the very top:
"Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins.". So - here' s my random 'moccasin collection',  in no particular order.

1. 'Photo-manipulation is inferior/easier to do than the 'proper photography''
Really? Are you absolutely sure? Have you tried to do it yourself? Do you know what it takes (and how long) to create a good photo-manipulation, slaving over brushes, layers, masks , compositing and hand-painting the lot if necessary, creating a different mood, re-lighting the lot? No? So - where do you get this idea ?

2. 'Beginners should be separated from us advanced lot, they are bringing the whole site down'
So, let me get this clear... you were born with a brush in one hand, and a canvass  with 'Night Watch'  Mark Two  that would make Rembrandt bawl his eyes out  in the other? Even  Beethoven had to start form somewhere - and it wasn't the Ninth. Young, aspiring artists should be given all the support, guidance and encouragement - because  we have all been in their shoes (unless, of course, you were the one-off  who could wipe the floor with Van Gogh and Caravaggio before you stopped soling you nappies).
The point is -  vast majority of the oft-derided and mocked amateurs and beginners would love to get better - but they don't know  the first how to go about it . So here's my suggestion - be generous and supportive in your talent and skill, show the places where they can learn the basics, offer sound and constructive advice, pick a noob and mentor them, help them grow, learn and develop so they are no longer groping in the dark, and what do you know - pretty soon you'll have less and less cookie-cutter amazonian women/manga-bishies with shaky grasp of anatomy/winged everything/traced stuff and more and more quality stuff you'd be less inclined to turn your professional nose at. Everybody wins, right?  Or is being an evangelical purist stuck up one's own arse so much more pleasant  and satisfying an option?

3. ' All nudity is artistic'
No, it isn't. I have absolutely no beef with porn - I'm glad it was there while I was teenager. However - once I grew out of the eight grade and got to play with the real people,  the novelty wore off. Porn is a pure utility, a functional  work that serves a very defined and clear purpose. Unlike erotic art, it aspires to no message, it probes no emotional depths , asks no profound questions of the human condition  -   it is what it is, and it does what it's aimed to do effectively and without the need to dress it up in something that it is not. One of the defining features of porn, actually, is its honesty - please, don't take it away by tarting it up as a 'work of art' (or in that case everyone with a set of genitals could rightfully claim to be an 'artist'. Sorry to break it to you, folks, but having a pair of balls or a p**sy doesn't automatically turn us into junior Robert Mapplethorpes .)

4. 'There's no such thing as erotic art, it's all porn'
Wrong again. Some of the most sublime, inspiring and sensual works of art were unashamedly erotic, celebrating human body both clothed and naked - and without a  box of Kleenex in sight.  

5. 'Fan-art is inferior to 'proper art''
It takes as long and as much skill  and care to paint Uchiha Sasuke as it does to paint  something that just popped out in your head. Don't believe me? C'mon - give it a go. Anyone who has ever wrestled with Sesshomaru's or Sephiroth's hair will tell you that the amount of hours spent cursing runs into days and sometimes weeks. Not to mention that a fanartist faces a very critical and often capricious and picky fan-community  who are spoiled for choice and have a very clear ideas about how they like their favourite characters to be seen.

6. 'Too many pictures of big-boobied women'
You mean - not skillfully done pics of well-endowed ladies - otherwise I'd pass on the complaint with great relish to Messers Royo and Vallejo, and see what their thoughts would be on the issue of scantily-clad Amazonian goddesses.Then I'd politely ask them to return their royalty cheques - retroactive.

7  'Digital painting is inferior to traditional painting'
Have you tried it? Does the digital painting process perhaps involve a completely different theory of colour? Composition? Maybe a good eye somehow magically appears only when a Wacom tablet is placed at least a hundred metres from the room in which creative process takes place?

8. '3D is easy, it is inferior to painting/photography'
Have you tried your hand in 3D? Would you like to try? It takes hours and hours and hours  and hours of hard slogging to do a decent 3D work - as long and with as much skill as it takes to paint a decent picture. Sometimes even longer. There's no 'erase' button ('undo' option is very limited), and as a 3D artist you are constrained by more factors than just your imagination or the level of skill. Just to light the 3D scene can be a teeth-pulling experience (I've recently watched in awe someone trying to create a semblance of soft body dynamics and  setting up  the indirect lighting with accurate caustics and the rest of the works in DAZ -  if that ain't a bitch, then I don't know what is.)

9. 'Amateurs should not be allowed to display their work alongside the industry professionals, they should be segregated and kept in their own play-pen '
You are a professional, right? You are head-and-shoulders above the tinkering Great Unwashed  of the Amateur Realm, the quality differences should be clear for all to see - your professional and artistic pride surely can't suffer by being side by side with someone's eager but  awkward doodles? Are the hobbyists/enthusiasts/self-taught doodlers taking your jobs away from you? Do you sit at the dole office waiting for your forty-odd quid a week because some Wacom/pencil/Poser-happy-Mum-of-three stole that perfect Hollywood blockbuster job right under your nose?  'Coz if she did - my hat goes off to her - good on you, Mrs Smith, you go, girl!
Also see '2' above.

10. 'People who use pre-made content in their 3D are inferior to those who model every triangle form scratch'
Not even the most inept  low/mid-end 3D software user just drags and drops and renders after they played with their new toy for more than a few months - even the greenest amongst the noobs soon gets bored of the drag and drop approach - every single one of them and they gradually start modifying/changing things until they eventually change the stuff so much it completely overhauls the original design. And - believe it or not - that takes time and skill, too. Not to mention that the financial cost of even the humblest of shopping sprees with Vue/Max/Maya/DAZ/Poser/C4D/Carrara content providers must be eye-watering.
It takes much more than just drag-and-drop to visualize the scene, compose, pose, light, render and turn out a decent result. You can have the most hyper-realistically modeled-from-scratch interior, complete with the fruit fly in the banana bowl, but it will still - even with its flawless VRay natural daylight - look no more appealing or engaging than a page from an Ikea catalogue.  It is very, very rare that one person excels both in technical modelling aspect as they do in the actual emotional content. It takes a lot of talent, time and skill to model - but it takes a lot of talent, time and skill to create a scene that you'd want to hang on your wall.

11. 'Poser/DS users produce crap/their software is inferior/their skills are beyond par/they shouldn't be called artists'
Creating a piece of art in a particular software doesn't automatically determine its quality. There are some stunning works produced by people working with low/mid-end applications that are either free or cost  a fraction of any flagship software by Maxon or Autodesk.  As it happens, very few enthusiasts can afford a three-grand program, with the few-grand-worth of hardware that goes with it. They also have less time to work on their 3D prowess  than someone who's job is to get paid to create something with all those expensive toys - when you take all of that into account, it is only natural you have nowhere near as many power-users amongst the enthusiast as you get amongst the professionals. Ergo - the quality is not the same. However, when you compare like-for-like, the best of the enthusiasts on low/mid-end applications holds its own easily with the best of the rest.

12. 'Not enough male erotica/male erotica is being discriminated against'
Really? What exactly constitutes 'male erotica'?  Male body? Naked male body? A penis close-up? A close up of an erection? Do we have to set up a special counter - one dick per each damsel without knickers with the camera close enough to count the individual hairs on her freshly done  'brazilian'? A pair of nuts for every muff? One boner for every bush? Would that make everybody happier? See under '3' above.

12. 'Too much male erotica'
Oh, come on... See above.


I could come up with more, but *looking at the time* I'm due to get back to my next ten-minute work slot.

Be happy, kids, play nicely, chill out and celebrate the differences

listening to: [link]

Masha is a  plain, blunt speaking lady hair-breadth away from her fiftieth birthday. That's why we get along so well - I don't have to pussyfoot around her and watch my language, and she can lay into me with all the four-lettered words  she's learnt to say in English.  And when Mashenka pays me a visit, there's a lot of  objectionable language, to my infinite relief and mirth, and everybody else's slack-jawed consternation.
Every so often  I do  a little order for Masha - sometimes it is a one-off personal commission, sometimes a  flyer design for her  class. Masha doesn't pay in hard currency - she diverts a fair amount of business to our studio instead.
The arrangement works like a dream .  Mashenka is the world-class contact maker, she can stop to wash her hands in a loo at the Waterloo station, and five minutes later come out with  a dozen new names and email addresses typed in her iPhone, with a couple of dinner invitations thrown in for good measure. I, on the other hand, couldn't network my way out of a paper-bag if someone held a gun to my head.
Masha waltzed her ample frame into the living room and peered over my shoulder at my computer screen.
"Mishka milyi, why I'm not having my picture done yet?" she purred into my ear.
I growled my way though the smorgasbord of excuses. The laptop dying took a central stage.
"Ah. And what is this?" she pointed at my desktop and pursed her lips.
I bared my teeth at  J.T.,  the desktop that took over from my terminally ill lappy.
"Masha, I need to do  a major rebuild on this old boy before I can do any decent work."
"Ah. So." she frowned. "So no pictures, then, for how many months now?"
I growled again, and showed her the line of pics on the screen, almost every single one of them carrying a big, ballsy  'done with my i7/squillion GB RAM/twelfty-core /virgin milk-cooled/angel-harp playing fuck-Mac' proud comment by the author, slapped straight into my face.
"So, these are cars, kitchens and bathrooms, yes? I thought I asked for three naked ladies. Boobies, not bathrooms, zaichik."
"Yes, but I cannot work on this piece of crap, Mashenka. I need-"
"-you are saying you need something with a bit more o-ho-ho, zaichik, yes?" she winked  and hugged me.
"It's a cock thing. You know, zaichik, this is the problem with men -  brute force and size, no class and finesse. All these people are men, yes?" she tapped the text below the picture on the computer screen.
"Dammit , Mashenka, are you psychic?"
"You never find women boasting how big is their car but how nice it is to park their botties on the back seat, not how  fast they go from this to that speed but how smooooooth they go. Women are about content, men about hardware. We women do things, we are much harder to please. Men just get jealous over each other's pee-pee," she  whispered.
"So you're saying I've fallen  victim to a computer equivalent  of  a bout of wang-wagging?"
Masha nods and smiles sweetly.
"You want  to have a bigger and more powerful machine than those big boys,  or you'll just sulk and won't make pictures, yes? You jealous, zaichik?"
I shake my head  and smile. When Masha makes a point, she makes the point.
"I'll email you the picture file in two weeks ."

I think I'll be back doing some stuff on DA soon.
Doesn't matter - new graphics card or not, more RAM or not,  faster processor or not.
It's all just a cock thing, really.

Listening to: [link]

I had all the good intentions to make a special  greeting card as a thank you to everyone who stumbled upon my pages, faved, watched or just visited and buggered off never to return.  But we all know what is said about good intentions and making plans, don't we...

So, here's a little story instead.


~ Once upon a time, high atop the Sky-Veil Mountains, there lived a young shepherd with his  dog. The shepherd tended to his flock with love and care, watching the ewes lamb through the spring, grazing on a luscious summer pastures, the dog rounding their swell into the warmth of the cliff-side shelter though the rising wind and rain of the autumn.  When the snow and ice of the winter came, the shepherd  played his flute, his dog asleep at his feet, the scent of the pine wood and a hot stew bubbling gently on the fire.

One late spring, the shepherd made his way down the mountain, to the village below . People from all over the land flocked to see who would pay more for the snow-white lambs of this shepherd-wizard from the Sky-Veil Mountains, such was their beauty and their gentle nature.
"Oh, my, what a great treasure  you have, young shepherd, that you can bring forth such sweet delight  and grace! There surely can't be a beauty greater than this!"  the people exclaimed and the shepherd thought it good and fair.
He went to the tavern and paid for a roast and a tankard of thick ale, and then he took his flute out of his belt and played.
As the music filled the room, all the men turned to the young man with a flute, their  words stopped a-mid-a-sound, their faces like those of  the babes in their mothers' loving arms.
"Oh, what a great gift you have,  young shepherd, that you can bring  such sweet delight and beauty to the world!" they all proclaimed. "There surely can't be a beauty greater than this!"
And the shepherd thought it good an fair, and he sold all his sheep, and played the flute  in the tavern every night, and people came form  far and away to hear for themselves the magic man from the Sky-Veil Mountains.
One night a man rose from the table and said out loud.
"Thou hast the gift, young man, but the King's piper in The Land Across The Sea is said to  have the swans sighing at his every note, such is the beauty and the grace of his tune. Thou can never beat him."
The shepherd cried out.
"Where is this piper you speak of thus? Take me to him, so I can learn from this man and better him in  tune until the end of days."
And the shepherd took to the sea, and a spring, a summer,  an autumn and a whole winter passed until he knocked on the door of the King's piper and asked to be taken the apprentice.

The years went by, and as the old piper lay dying in the King's castle, he asked the shepherd to play him his favourite tune on the flute. The shepherd played, every note full of   tender longing for the days of joyful youth,  young maid's cheeks blushed with the love that has yet to show its face, the dreams spun like a gold thread in the cold  of  his silver hair. The old man's eyes filled with tears.
"Go, my son. I have nothing to teach you. Your gift  has no peer on this earth, there surely can't be a beauty greater than this."
And the shepherd knew that it was good and fair, though his heart was heavy with sadness.

The years have passed and  kings and queens from far and away came to bow their head  before The Old Man With a Magic Flute, kissing his  frail hand praising the gift that surely had no other to vie for its place.
One day a prince came and listened to the old man playing,  and then he said.
"Thine gift is great Old Man. But on the other side of the Far Far Away,  there's a holy man whose fiddle makes the angels themselves in heaven cry with joy the tears of pearls and gold. Thou can never beat him."
"Where is this saintly fiddler you speak of thus? Take me to him, so I can learn from this man and better him in tune until the end of days."

And the shepherd took his walking stick, bid his tearful goodbye and set out for the long journey.

The shepherd found the fiddler in a cave,  he fell to his knees, kissed the hermit's hand and asked to be taken the apprentice.
The hermit shook his head  and reached out to lift the old man with the flute under his belt.
"You have come  such along way in vain, old man. I have nothing to teach you. All I know is but a pittance, and I am but a humble fiddler to my master."
"Then tell me the name of your master, so I can go to him and learn from his gift, to better him in tune until the end of days!" the shepherd cried out.
"You don't have to go any further, old man," the fiddler smiled, "just lift you head. "
And the old man lifted his gaze to the first soft rays of the rising sun, painting the arc of the rainbow through the last of the dawn rain.
"But.." he whispered.
"Yes, old man. The master of all beauty is  The Sun." the fiddler said softly.
The shepherd stumbled into the light, his heart broken, his soul's yearning a fire raging with the infernal flame.

The shepherd walked all day and at the sundown, he sat at the edge of the cliff and watched the blue of the skies change to amber  and red.
"There's nowhere else to go. There surely can't be a beauty greater than this," he sighed and readied himself to die. He took the flute out of his belt and played the tune form his childhood, for the last time.
The Sun spoke to the old man.
"What a  beautiful tune that is, old man. But why so sorrowful a melody?" The Sun asked.
"I have spent all my life searching to master a beauty that there would be no greater one anywhere in the whole world.  Every time I thought I found it, there was someone who thought it lacking, there was always a master somewhere  that would turn my dream into dust. I failed. It's time to die."
The Sun sighed.
"I know how you feel, old man. My soul is heavy with longing, too, never to be had  while I live."
The old man shook his head in surprise.
"Pray - how? What is it that you, the master of all the life there is on this world, yearn for with so much sadness?"
"I long to be a young shepherd, tending my flock atop the mountain,  watching the sundown , the scarlett and gold giving way to the silver birth of the moonlight sky while I greet the night with a simple tune on my flute..."
                                                                ~~~

For once I've decided to put my dislike for all things mushy and sentimental aside, and just for a brief moment be just a little kid .Enjoy.
[link]

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year everyone.








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