I just discovered, completely by accident, that I had a $28.00 gift certificate to DAZ’s store. I don’t visit their website/storefront very often because I’m not interested in 98% of their catalog, which consists of 3D people models and props for their flagship software, DAZ Studio. I was looking for updates to Carrara 8 (the software I use to render most of my promo shots and instructions), and logged into my account to check my downloads, and there it was, a gift certificate for 28 bucks.
I didn’t think there was going to be anything I would actually want to buy with that unexpected windfall, but I was pleasantly surprised to find 2 packages of HDR images, for image-based lighting in Carrara, at $9.95 each. Some of ’em are kinda neat:
I normally hide the HDR backdrops with a solid color or a composited background image, but I left them visible in the images above so you could see how the colors and brightness of a particular HDR image contributes to the lighting on the model itself.
Edit: Oh, I forgot–I mentioned in a comment on another post that I wanted to reproduce a certain photo of a Mi-24 Hind gunship. I first saw this photo in, I think, an issue of Soldier of Fortune when I was a kid, and I was quite taken with the photo. I found it on Google Image Search:
And this is my take on it with the Despoiler:
That's pretty cool man, you should insert an LEV into a Nam jungle! 8)
For DAZ, unless you want to do various versions of Victoria 4 soft-core, there isn't a lot. They do have some nice Photoshop brushes. Not enamored of their textures, as I tend to make mine from photos I took (all my Egyptian and Meso-American, for example).
I do recommend DAZ studio, though, for building scenes (and the price is right).
Love the different lighting shots and that despoiler is pretty scary coming through the clouds on that shot. Ouch for whoever is on the ground.
WW8: I don't have any jungles handy, but that's a good idea.
Glenn: I don't need DAZ Studio–I already have Carrara for scene management and rendering. 🙂
EO: That was a fun shoot to do! If I had an extra 12 hours in the day, I'd love to do some sort of "photo book" for the Uppity Robots line. Like, an ersatz coffee table book dealie full of big renders covering the whole backstory from the start of the Sixteen Hour War.
That would be awesome! I can see the caption for that one. "Uh oh, this is gonna hurt!!!"
Uh oh. Now I want to do it. Because I want to justify installing a render farm. "Honey, we have a Grid license and an empty shelf, we might as well make the most of it, and I know where I can get 10 quad-core mini-towers cheap. What's with the rolling pin? Put that down, you're scaring me."