How does the whole digital art thing work?

I’ve gotten some DM questions from friends asking around the mechanics of how the graphics program I’m using works so here’s an example. I call it OPF – Old People Fucking. This may, or may not look like anyone you know having a 3 way.

So the program is DAZ 3D Studio 4.21. What you get with the base program and it’s recommended add ons are a few environments (environments are things like the house, the beach background), props (like the furniture, clothes etc) and some ‘people’. These are basic figures. I’ve been using their Generation 9 figures as they’re the most customizable.

You create the image by adding in the scenery you want, the people, add clothes to them. Pose them by selecting a body part and using dials to move the part how you want it to move. There are several hundred per figure so you can change expressions etc. Before you do that, you can ‘morph’ the figure – make it a man or a woman, change the body size and shape and you can basically sculpt the features into whatever or whomever you want. I'm a bit of an artist so I like trying to create characters that look like actual people I know. Sort of like doing a portrait.

You can save these characters once you’ve created them so you don’t have to do it over again every time. You can age them. You pick hair, eyes, skin tone etc. I’ve spent way too much money on this stupid thing but I can afford it and it’s fun. Once you have your characters created, you pose them. Once you’ve posed them you decide what the finished image is going to look like – you basically position a virtual camera and then add lighting. Once you’ve got it how you want it, you ‘render’ the image. The computer takes a picture if you will and then it fills in all the realistic details. When you’re posing, you’ve basically got ‘comic book’ level of detail shown. When it renders, it goes to an insane level of detail to the point they look sorta real. The more detail, the more time a render takes. Mine take an hour on average. Some longer. The more people in it, the longer it takes. The Woods set and the Alien lab sets take the most time to render. Lots going on in them. You can see that the mid-mod furnishings in this one are neat looking but a little artificial. That allows the image to render quicker. Glossy plastics and metals render quicker than organics and cloth. Hair takes forever.

So here’s the OPF scene. Same scene, 3 different camera angles. I’ll I’ve done from image to image is change the camera angle and adjust the lighting to go with it. I’ve reposed the woman’s head as well. That’s it.

So creative process – I think of what I want my people to do. Pose them as realistically as possible and then decide which composition looks best, set the shot up – camera and lighting - and render.