DollsArtCats

 It's been a bumpy few months, Stripey passed away on November 23rd 2021; and I miss her a lot. She required a lot of nursing at the end, so I stopped blogging, and then kind of fell out of the habit--Covid has also given me some eye and other problems that are ongoing, but hopefully will resolve over time. Meanwhile I have downsized the enormous crowd of dolls--I was sort of aiming for 20 dolls total, but we seem stuck at 35 ..or so :D I'm hoping this year, maybe in the fall, things will have stabilized enough for covid that doll meets will happen again, I miss them! Meanwhile I plan this year to sort through the boxes of doll things and match up clothes and accessories with the correct doll, because stuff has gotten scattered all around over time, as dolls have come and gone. I also need to do my picture inventory for 2022! Work has also been very busy, I work with a wonderful work partner who keeps me more or less focused and on deadline, and we have been turning in store it...

  Among other things, I have been trying to learn materials in Poser 12; things are a little different than in previous versions..I think a little better, though there is one option that I miss, and that was a little script that got rid of any slots that you weren't using, which made it just cleaner and neater to set up materials. And of course the best way to learn is by doing, so I am justifying my habit of buying little trailer and house models for Poser and redecorating. They certainly take up less space than real doll houses. This is another Meshbox trailer model, called "Granny's Trailer", and boy, does Granny like pink. Here is the inside of the kitchen/living area: I bought the chihuahua off of TurboSquid (with points!) and he was not really optimized for Poser scale. This is what he looked like when I first loaded him: It took me a minute to find him because I was looking under the trailer with a spotlight, trying to figure out why he wasn't at the usual ...

  It's harder than it looks.

  (Click to enlarge). That is a great price for the IoS body, I kind of need one-- though I may wait and see if I can find a second-hand one later for my A2 head. Sales page: https://www.dollios.com/product/class70-body-only/279/category/118/display/1/ They have a lovely new angel, Uriel, and a new, smexier version of Sezz available as a head. Meanwhile, I made a Kleenex box :D Fear my box modelling skills!

  It doesn't look like much, but I managed to make the ground and make it the right size and color it :D I still need to make a plot for the back and the sides, and figure out some trees...these are just .png trees that I stuck down until I can model a real one. I made the background in Terragen, quite a while ago.

My cat would do this for tuna. I am making progress on the fairy wings: They now have a bit of bump to them...

...in bathing suits. :D I still don't know how to model clothing but I did make some clonky wings--they do flap though, and I like the texture. The pretty backdrop is one I use a lot, it's by Susan Justice (sveva on Renderosity).

Apparently they have one hot dog and they are too close to the water :D That body texture is the texture I have been working on; I did the swimsuit texture as well-- though there are some things I would change on the suit, the fit in the back and in the inseam is..odd. The figure is Renderosity's La Femme and the hair is a model by Fabiana Kofman (FKDesigns).

Yes, I am still wrestling with this purse--but now pieces don't fall off when you try to move it in a scene, and it doesn't load twice the size of the woman who is supposed to be carrying it--so progress is being made. It still doesn't open, that turns out to be quite complicated, but I am still learning :D

https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/613563991635181568/kaijuno-sosuperawesome-miniatures-by Meanwhile, I have made purse number 5. They are slowly getting better. It's just a prop right now, I don't know yet how to morph the chain so that it moves. In theory there is a way to make it open as well, but I will have to read to see how it works (so it doesn't leave the clasp in midair ;) )

It looks boxy and dumb right now, but I managed to model something with a lot of parts, and map all of the parts, and then load all the parts into Daz Studio, assemble the parts and actually SAVE THE PARTS so I can share it. I just need to put the real final textures on it. While I did manage to map every part, I did not do such a professional job on it that I know exactly what items on the map correspond with the model, so I have to figure that out as I paint it. But I learned all kinds of tricks and tips making it! Including if you are going to make something for a Daz Studio human figure to use, you should probably put it next to the figure early in the building process-- because when I first imported the BeeBike into Studio, the woman here could have put it in her pocket :D *yes, I know she has no shoes. I have shoes, but I was afraid I would crash the file if I added yet more polygons at that point.

I made these in Wings, and while they look a little like gummi bears here, I learned a lot and I have ideas for other mineral/crystal things. These are now freebies for Poser on the Renderosity Freestuff pages, and they will work in older versions of Poser, not just Poser 11/Superfly. I've been having a lot of fun modeling now, I still make a ton of mistakes but at least I understand how to fix them the next time :D

Poserworld was an online marketplace for poser-format models; when Smith Micro lost interest in Poser, it kind of kicked the stuffing out of a lot of side marketplaces for the add-on models. Renderosity bought Poser this year and immediately went about fixing a lot of things, updating it and added La Femme as the default figure that comes with the program.                                               (That is a prop scone from a tea set I have :D)  I use both Daz and Poser-- and I have to say I use Daz because the base program is free, and I already have a lot of the content; but in many ways Poser is a better, more stable program that runs in a cleaner, more compact way. I have a computer dedicated to Daz Studio because the damn thing wouldn't run on anything less than a Nvidia900 series card, and it would really like one of the Nvidia10 series. Poser runs ...

I spent today messing around with Renderosity's new Poser girl; I made a new set of eyes for her and I am working on a skin that renders a little faster than the default (you can see the face looks more finished than the neck--the body has a lot of fancy procedural shaders that take time, though they look nice. I kind of like the caterpillar brows :D

Iplehouse has a new Creaa girl up --when they first came out I found them a bit creepy, but Leah is just cute and elfin, with her little ears. For some reason I did not realize that the Creaa's were tallish and slim--here are the measurements, they are like slim msd dolls: There are a ton of new clothes for her at Iplehouse as well, it looks like they had fun making clothes for her. Here is a longer shot of her: Aww, what a sweetie! Meanwhile here I have been painting shoes and test rendering them. I did these today--the model is amazing, it's by Arren and Anagord: It's the Shellie heels from Renderosity.com, and I just hid the distinctive chain that runs around it, because there are already a ton of textures for these shoes with the chain, so I am making some without the chain. The heels are translucent in my version. The digital doll who has been modelling these is also named Leah, and she never falls over (though strangely I have had wig problems with he...

Maybe she is a Time Lord :D This is the most toylike of all the Thrones and one of the most fun. It's up for sale now at Renderosity, but I am having a little trouble letting go--I keep thinking of new patterns and styles for it, including custom ones for friends. But I have other things I need to finish, so I need to multitask. Also do laundry. :D

This is where all my time has gone--look at this shiny thing :D There is even some wear on the "seat velvet", so I am learning stuff as I go along. The set is almost ready--I am doing promo renders and I have found some flaws now that I am rendering at larger sizes, but once those are fixed, the set goes to the testers-- and then hopefully on sale. I also have fixed the washing machine. It was getting slower and slower to fill on the cold water side, and the plumber said there was a filter at the end of the hose that was probably clogged. A really simple fix--except that the plumbing in the house is so fragile any unscrewing of hoses has to be done very, very carefully (when shut off, the cold water valve on the wall leaks, and the shutoff handle is crusty with rust. If the handle broke off, it would be another call to the plumber, and all the house water would have to be shut off.) So I got the hose off, and the filter was a mess--some of the washer inside the hose had ...

It doesn't look like 8 hours of work, but I put 3 different seat cushions on there, before I found the right "ribbon and tidepool" look that I wanted. The coral reef material on the back is from Filter Forge, a program that makes tiling procedural materials you can tinker with. It's actually a lot of fun just to play with, but it makes some amazing materials too. The underlying model is by Andy Boys and it's rendered in Poser Pro 2012.

This is not my model, I am just texturing it; and it is so nice to work on someone else's high poly creation! The arms' texture is all computer generated, the back of the chair is a Filter Forge created fractal put into a jpg and applied to the seat. Poser is actually very fun to texture in, because you can mix and match hundreds of things--or just paint a texture and plug it in. This one is mostly painted-- and then I went nuts with the Displacement setting for the seat: (This was my first attempt, below..hehe!) The backs of the chairs are looking good: I still have more to go this week but it's not a chore at all--this model is pretty cooperative! (And in case you need your own Supervillain name, go here!) http://supervillain.namegeneratorfun.com/

See these beautiful things? I wanted to make them, not as baked goods , but as a 3d model. How hard could they be? They are a simple shape and last year, when I first downloaded Wings, I made a decent candle with the same kind of translucency. It turns out that it is harder than it looks--rendering "white" in 3d is really difficult for some reason. my first attempt looked like the Ark of the Covenant: I didn't worry about it because the first time you use a template, there are always strange places and things you miss. So here is the next one. A bit dry looking: Hmm, not too white either. How about some translucency and more white? Oh look, a nightlight! Dammit so much, lets try some yellow instead to tone it down-- I can't believe it's not butter. Maybe more translucency? Some Ambiance? WHOO RADIOACTIVE BUTTER!....so more fiddling and a new texture map (no 4): ...better, but still a little glowy and also not even close to the original colo...