Monday 26 August 2013

The dust settles, back to work

While I have your attention, thank you everyone for your replies, emails, comments over here, on Renderotica, on Renderosity, in the forums. I have been very busy doing 100 things at the same time so I might have missed a comment or email or two. 

@ Pirates their downloaders

By the way, eh, if you have a pirated copy of Lali's Bits, then please do not contact me. I know there's this culture out there about sharing and all that, that's fine, but piracy is not sharing, ya? I need to eat and pay my bills at some point. So the next one I will report. Please understand that the management of Renderotica and I are constantly busy finding and nailing pirated versions available on the internet, its hard work, so its kindof weird if you come to me and say hey, what's up? I stole your stuff! its amazing! thanks for the good work. Can you give me some tips??... eehhhh... yeah, what am I to do about that? Imagine someone raping your daughter and saying afterwards: hmm, you have a beautiful daughter. By the way can you hook me up with your other daughter?


Site Admin

ANYWAY, looks like the new Renderotica is finally getting back on track. Still a tonne of bugs but at least the main features are chugging along nicely. I was made Site Admin because I was helping out with all the small announcements and giving suggestions to the management when times were rough. I hope nobody is weirded out with my new title, I'm still the same old Erogenesis, posting a zillion images everywhere, making goofy comments everywhere.







Comic

So now it is gradually back to comic-making for me. In the new comic we go back a few years and meet Lali in university with Julie and Laila. They get up to no good. Now, Laila has pubes so I wanted to make a nice conforming prop for that. With the new 'copy morphs from...' function it has become ridiculously easy to make it. This dude J.Clyde contacted me a while back about this project he wanted to set up, pubes for Lali, and I am using his prop now. I turned it into a conforming prop. Its pretty nifty how it morphs along with the pussy.

I also made a white shirt for Lali that she uses as pyjamas in the comic, open and long and its based on the shirt from Michael Stylin. I made a whole bunch of movement morphs for it. Unfortunately it has been completely re-rigged and re-grouped so I won't work for the original shirt any more.





Lali

I have already started rendering for the comic and I have to hurry now. I have so many plans for Lali is ridiculous. Some people are saying Lali is getting a very unique status and are suggesting I start selling actual comic book versions of her stories and that I could get away with making Lali merchandise. In any case, Lali's world is expanding quite a bit. 

On Renderosity I posted a picture of Lali as a kid with her dad. It is a picture meant for on Lali's apartment wall. I cannot post that here without people raising an eyebrow for obvious reasons. But Simon the Templar came with a very cool idea of making a small innocent extremely non-erotic comic about Lali as a kid, terrorizing her school friends, climbing trees and making the lives of her teachers very difficult! Would be fun, but also tricky. I certainly won't be able to sell it over at Rotica.



Another character

You guys might have seen a bunch of other characters popping up here and there. Let me quickly explain. The redhead who's bum graced the front of Renderotica's new website is called Amanda. She is one of Lali's university friends and will be seen in a future Lali Lite. You've all met the girl that gave you Lali's Bits, the blonde. She's called, eh, Bitsy... hahahaha. She's actually made from Morph++ stuff. All my other girls are custom made in zBrush. Then you've got Sen, the Triplon Warrior. Ok this is way way way into the future, but eventually I'd like to start a comic series on this girl called Sen who is born into a matriarchal world called Triplon, with very barbaric and violent traditions. She doesn't fit in as well as the rest and she goes off to discover why.



I never use DAZ FBMs

Speaking of which, not so long ago I realised that many people use combinations of morph packages for their characters when they kept on asking me what packages I used for my girls (hey, I live in the bush!). I never use those Morph++, Steph or Elite morphs, I do all of it in zBrush. In fact I only bought Steph and Elite just before the release of Lali's Bits to test the compatibility!

The only stuff I use from DAZ is some the facial expressions from the V4 base and from Aiko. And even with my own stuff, I use very specific morphs for certain characters. Lali's smile is a different one from Julie's. And Laila's is also different. 

I recommend everyone to try make their own FBMs if you can, that way your art becomes even more unique, plus, you piss off the pirates. Talent is the one thing they can never steal.

< yeah yeah I know. Dickasaurus Rex haha. Thank you Arcas





3D figures, and coming to terms with Project E

On another note, all those discussions I had with folks over at Rosity, mostly positive, is making me think deep and hard about how I wanna present Project E. The whole thing is, why Project E? I've been thinking and I'm kind of going in this direction: we've got a whole bunch of characters to choose from, and you can go in almost any direction with them. Some have their limitations, like Genesis being stuck to DS, and others are not well supported. Dawn and the Genesis models are too low poly to have any meaning for someone like me, V4 is still going strong and will probably stay like that for a while, Roxie is a good figure, but unfortunately non-existent in the grand scheme of things. 

In short, all are relatively ok but they all seem to be occupying the same niche, to varying degrees. With Genesis, V4 and Dawn, you can create hulks, pixies and elves, aliens... they are perfect for full body actors. But what if you would want a nicely detailed render of a hand, with all the folds and intricate lumps of fat everywhere, or a detailed genital penetration shot, or make a render of a woman twisting her torso around and that this fold in her back shows? How about a real female human being?

I think Project E can be the perfect figure to fill all the gaps. Moderately HiRes, detailed hands, face, gens, toes, torso. I still have to sleep on this though. Making an optional lores version shouldn't be that hard though, I think.



Enemies?

It seems, and I might / hope to be wrong, that I might have made some enemies somewhere by being a wee tad too outspoken about Dawn. Now I don't know if it is because I was critical about Dawn, or if it is because I announced that I wouldn't be supporting her, or if they revere her too much. I hope I can put an end to it with this story:

First of all, because I don't support Dawn, or have negative opinions of her, doesn't mean that Dawn is a shit figure. I have different requirements for my figures, Dawn is not suited for that. Like they say, she has clearly been developed for a PG13 audience (tits?), and on top of that, she's till in development. Plus, she's ugly haha. However, I will probably use Dawn as a background model. 

Outside of Dawn, the only reason I made Lali's Bits for V4 is because I wanted a good functioning 3D figure for my comics. Back in 2011 V4 seemed to be the only figure available to me that was up to the task. Now that I have her, there's no point for me to bother with any other figure, unless someone comes out with something truly different. The rigs and meshes of Dawn, Roxie and V6 are very similar. Adopting any of these 3D figures would just mean that I spend months and months on fixing her hips and rigging the prop on her and the result will be no different than my Lali System now. In fact even less so because some are very low poly. So why bother waste all that time if I can do it now with my V4? 

Having said that, Project E should be worth that effort, because she'll have things that all the other figures don't. 

8 comments:

  1. I wouldn't worry about the haters. I think a big part of it is there was SO MUCH BLOODY HYPE surrounding her release, a lot of developers jumped on board, and now they're invested both financially and emotionally. The want and need her to be all that and a ham sandwich. Along comes a guy like you (or me) saying, "Meh. She ain't that spectacular". It's that whole 'someone is wrong on the internet' syndrome. They see a detractor as someone out to take away the money they think they're going to make. But really, as far as you and your projects are concerned, does it really matter? Figures like Dawn are suited for pretty renders of Victorian women wandering in a garden, maybe a sci-fi scene. People who make that kind of thing aren't buying Lali's Bits. Piss them off all you like, I doubt it will affect your bottom line.

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    1. hehehe very true, good point, although there are quite a bunch of brave souls attempting to have sex with dawn over at Rotica. I seriously wish the one that will make gens for Dawn luck. There is fuck all polys down there. I keep on looking back to confirm because I just can't believe it. One might get away with SubDv tech but, hm, I wonder.

      Victorian women? with a quarterback like that?

      Anyway for the record I had forgotten about Dawn already, its just that I heard from here about these 'insulted' few. That's never fun, but then again, its kindof their problem. To be honest, I feel it is very quiet concerning Dawn I was expecting way more renders.

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    2. I've seen a few of those renders over at 'rotica, I got a snicker out of them. Not that some of them weren't good with a reasonable amount of effort put into them, but they struck me as similar to those kids that put a massive wing and loud exhaust on a Toyota Camry. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. It wasn't meant for that.

      DarkSeal made a DawnPlus package for her, but it is the least detailed package I've ever seen him make. Mere divot for a pussy, no asshole at all. I personally wouldn't have bothered, but from the money standpoint I can't blame him because someone or many someones will buy it.

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    3. haha "a massive wing and loud exhaust on a Toyota Camry" - yep!

      Yeah kudos to DarkSeal. But he has shitloads of experience and could make that shit in a day. I think if I tried I'll just disappoint people. Options are limited with Dawn that any Erogenesis Bits for Dawn will suck compared to Lali's V4 bits. Anal options are nihil. V4 was hard enough with the polys I had to play with.

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    4. I think you did a great job with the ass. In practice it works way better than any anal prop. Kudos!

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  2. Having been fortunate enough to openly follow your progress since I first purchased your comics before Christmas, and semi-lurking before that I simply cannot respect pirating knowing how much you've struggled with this.

    In some ways you and I are a like in that we're very passionate full of energy with what we do, and sometimes that can come off as showing off, or bragging too much, but its all part of the fun.
    I've been a bit over the top on Dawn, but frankly I'm let down that so many can gather behind a model that really doesn't offer much of anything drastically new or groundbreaking in terms of recreating as close as possible to a human likeness.
    That's one of the best renders of Dawn I've seen. I don't particularly like her face's choppy complexion that does not match a photo-realistic approach. If you're standing 5 feet away you shouldn't be able to see a hard contrasting splotchy face that looks like a peach.
    To show that I'm fair in critique - Those pubes don't quite look natural enough in my opinion. Might need to look a bit more weave crackly look.
    http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/333667/333667,1299248361,1/stock-photo-branches-of-dead-tree-72439948.jpg

    BTW, I spent all night looking for a loose over sized jersy shirt that could hang off one shoulder on a woman...couldn't find any, sooooo that means make it myself. No one's done the one sleeve hangs off the side.
    http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/17600000/Flashdance-flashdance-17692639-346-550.jpg

    Anyways, awesome works.


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    1. Thanks for your words Nf. Yeah the creative process for me is definitely part showing off, but also part taking in the feedback. When people say they are inspired and say that something you do is amazing, that is an awesome feeling and just makes me wanna do more and more, and better and better.

      I've read that quite a number were put off by her face, myself included. Its something that can be morphed away but if the base model has a face that just isn't doing it for you, hmm, it becomes hard to play with her.

      Yeah the pubes, this was his prototype and I also think it needs some work. He's already got more models but I need to contact him on it. I remember his newer ones look a lot more natural.

      Concerning the jersey shirt, try this: take any old shirt from Poser, export it with seams welded. Re-import it, make it bigger, drape it sideways over your model in the cloth room (give it a few trials) export the model again, then re-import it again, fitness room, bit of joint rigging, voila. Oh shit, you've got PP2012 still. Hm.

      Send me the result I can rig it for you...

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    2. Thanks for the offer. Quite tempting, but I'm trying a series of morphs first. You already have the shirt for Laili, similar but I want it to drap a bit more.

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Hey, because of a sudden influx of spam, I need to moderate comments from now on, unfortunately. I'll try find a work-around in the meanwhile. Cheers!