CyberTidings 17W07: Character Naming and modo 601

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The Name Of My Happy-Christmas-Character


It's decided: The name of my »Happy-Christmas-Character« is now set to

Chloe

Thank you very much to all who participated.

Here's the outcome of the poll as of today around 12:15 CEST:

Poll: Name My Happy-Christmas-Character by TheInflater

I have to admit »Chloe« was not my own preferred name. I would have loved to see her named »Cleo« or »Daria« ... the names which are on the last places in the poll. Well, well, you do not always get what you want.

Anyway: I am going to produce some new pictures with her in the near future. Pictures of »Chloe«. :)


modo 601 Once Again And Hair Rendering


Last week I was going to create a new scene for a story I have in my head. This involves not only the creation of the place - living room with chairs and lamps - but also a new doll-character who plays a »prominent« (*cough* *cough*) role in this scene.

I was looking through the various hair models which I bought over the years (up until now roughly 80 for »Victoria 4«) and went for very classy hair which resembles the feeling of the 50's. Then I started rendering in modo ... and the hair looked AWFUL: You can clearly see every strain and the hairline looked so very bad. As opposed to like the hair looked in Poser renders.

I had this problem with a lot of hairs which were transferred from Poser to modo. But I wasn't able to nail the problem. So I decided to investigate very deeply into the problem. And I spent - now it comes - two whole work days in investigating. Yes, two days with rendering, refining, re-rendering and re-re-rendering again and again and again and again.

But I was able to nail down the problem to two factors: »Global Illumination« in modo and bad transparency maps in the hair model. Don't get me wrong: I love the hair model. But it turned out a model designed good enough to render in Poser is BY FAR not good enough to render in modo. So by using PhotoShop I made a new transmap and it instantly looked way better. Problem #2 solved.

Problem #1 was a bit harder to solve: The bad flat look of a all hair strains. A posting in the modo-forum over at »TheFoundry« (the guys who make modo) directed me to the right way: Skip Global Illumination for the hair and light the hair - and only the hair - using direct light sources. Yes, it is possible to »group« elements in a scene to be lighted completely independently. This is a big advantage to Poser and for example Carrara. Using this »trick« I was able to get a descent looking hair. Not as good as I liked it to be, but good looking for making my twisted little images again.

Did I say I LOVE modo once before? ;P
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I'm a little surprised that Luna came in a close third. But then, I figured that some people would get the pun. (Luna = (ba)lloon a)