Renderosity
Possibly the largest community of 3D renderers, artists, animators, and add-on creators is found at The Renderosity Digital Art Community, which was started by artists for artists— to help each other learn more about working with digital art, animation, photography, and writing. Currently boasting a membership of over half a million, they host free art galleries, tutorials, forums, and a sizable collection of over 15,000 free items. In addition to their free services, they boast the largest, proven digital art content brokerage system on the internet, with thousands of products available for purchase, including 3D models, high rez textures, costumes, poses, and backgrounds.While they are very well known for Poser content, they also have expansive content available for everything from 3D Studio Max to Lightwave to Vue to Zbrush, all at prices that are quite reasonable, even on micro-budgets. (Because the pricing on the packages we will be looking at in this community can fluctuate, we will no longer try to include price information, but the links to the individual artists page will provide up-to-date pricing. By and large, most of the costumes and models we looked at range between $10 to $20.)
Lillian Hawkins from Renderosity graciously assisted us in getting a nice sampling of some of their most skilled artists and mod-makers for this article.
Aery Soul – Black Lotus & White Rose characters
Most of us can recall seeing the old Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja films in our youth and wishing that we could be such barbarians ourselves. Well, artist Aery Soul is helping make that concept available for filmmakers and animators through some of their new fantasy costumes. We got a chance to play with the Black Lotus costume, a leather strapped outfit designed for the DAZ Victoria 3 model, and the White Rose costume, a delicate leather mage outfit designed for DAZ Victoria 4 model.
Both costumes include weaponry, with Black Lotus coming with dual axes and associated poses, while White Rose includes a mages rod with adjustable flame burst. Black Lotus takes a little experimentation to use properly, but works very nicely even without using Aery Soul’s excellent tutorials. Additionally, it’s photorealistic look allows you to use it either in live-action composited work or in more photorealistic animation. White Rose is a bit more advanced a costume and I recommend that beginners go through Aery Soul’s tutorial on this one. It’s more hand-drawn look makes it ideal for more traditional types of animation, although I have seen that there are some optional expansion textures that give it a more photorealistic look.
To see a complete look at what Aery Soul has available, check out:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=Aery_Soul
Danae – Metropolitan Manhattan and Milan V4
When it comes to photorealism, few artists can rival the creation of Danae. Most of her work is done in creating skin mats and hair for DAZ’s Victoria 3 and Victoria 4. Her newest works of art are the new Metropolitan series, which create photographic skin maps for Victoria 3 (in the Manhattan model) and Victoria 4 (in the Milan V4 model), complete with runway-caliber makeup options from foundation to blush to eyeliner to mascara to lipstick. Both worked extremely well and were quite simple to utilize. For filmmakers who need to blend rendered characters into live action, these models may just be the ticket.
To see the rest of Danae’s offerings, go to:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=danae
Posermatic – Natural Gravity Morphs & Natural Breast System
One of the biggest complaints with 3D rendering programs is how they deal with areas of fat, which is a major issue for filmmakers who may want to blend photo-real models with live action for stunts or other realistic needs. Whether this is in relationship to the form and movement of a woman’s breasts or the form and movement of a man’s beer-belly, fat is not rendered easily by any 3D software. Well, Postermatic has decided to try to assist with realism at least in relationship to the fairer gender. The Gravity Morph system causes the polygons which make up the breasts to behave as though they are made from fat, as opposed to plastic, especially in more well-endowed models. The gravity morph system was very simple to use, providing about 11 presets that can in turn be customized to create the correct look you need.
The Natural Breast System serves to give breasts a more realistic appearance, and provides 70+ dials that can allow for more realistic breast movement in animation. This system is much more precise than the NGM system, and has many more animation abilities, but felt a little overwhelming. While they include a free .PDF describing every channel in depth, I would have liked for them to have had some simple animation presets for the most common sorts of movements.
Both systems are very useful for creating more realistic models, but I wish that these morph channels could be applied to clothes so that clothes could be more easily customized to fit. The Natural Gravity Morphs are available for a number of popular DAZ and Poser models. The Natural Breast System is currently only available for DAZ’s Victoria 3 model.
To see more info, check out Posermatic’s page at: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=Posermatic
Pretty3d – Pretty Base & Base IV base kits;
Hi-Fantasy Cowgirl & Midnight Mist outfits
Pretty3D has an excellent reputation for creating beautiful costumes and more easily animatable base kits for models like Victoria 3 and Victoria 4. The Pretty Base kit for Victoria 3 and Base IV kit for V4 give a more realistic morph setup to the original DAZ models and provide additional controls for breast movement. The Pretty Base utilizes more traditional morph channels for movement, while the Pretty Base IV kit utilizes a magnetic movement control which resembles that utilized in WyrmMaster’s SexySlayer and Millenium Morph system. The advantage of the latter setup is that clothing can be ‘magnetized’ to reform in relation to the size and movement of the Base IV chest size and motion, saving you a lot of time for realistic animation of your models.
Additionally, we had a chance to try out the Hi-Fantasy Cowgirl and Midnight Mist outfits for DAZ’s Victoria 3, which worked very well and looked quite realistic. While the Midnight Mist outfit had somewhat limited options in how many of the Pretty Base morphs were supported, the Hi-Fantasy Cowgirl outfit supported all of the Pretty Base morphs and had nicely customizable hair and tassles for animation purposes.
To see more of what Pretty3d has to offer, check out: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=Pretty3D
Mytilus - Mats for Base IV, Tattoos for Base IV
Mytilus is another artist that is well known for realism, from his skin textures to his poses and original characters. We had a chance to check out the base mat and tattoos he created for Pretty3d’s Base IV. The skin is really professional and the tattoos are very realistic. (Just be aware that while DAZ’s Victoria IV supports the most interchangeable skin elements of any Poser-accessible model to date, it is still limited when it comes to the number of different tattoos you can have on your V4 model at one time.)
Check out the rest of Mytilus’ offerings at:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=mytilus
Tune in next month when we explore some more options to expand and empower Poser for your digital filmmaking and animation needs in the concluding volume of: Posing with Poser!
-JH
