I just came across these old renders on my Picasa account and thought I’d upload them here.

They are from around the time Carrara 6 Pro was released and it was my aim to create realistic dynamic hair for the Millennium Horse model.

Sadly all my work was lost after my old pc gave up the ghost but I thought I’d share these images and my thoughts with you anyway.

What I learned was that it took an awful lot of work to prepare the MilHorse model for use with dynamic hair in the first place as it has three seperate polygon meshes

for the mane, left, right and upper, each of which are made up of three separate layers. Then there are the many boned strands of the forelock to contend with.

I had to select and remove all of the mane, forelock, tail and fetlock hair polygons in a modelling program, saving out the horse obj to a new file. Then I had to edit a copy of the MilHorse cr2 file so that it pointed to the new now hairless mesh. Still with me? Then I had to hack the new hairless cr2 as all the morph targets were now unusable so they all had to be removed as did all of the bones for the forelock…. Next I used an app to try to recreate all of the morphs in the horse, this was only partially successful and if I attempt it again I will need the time and patience to do it manually.

Now a had a hairless boned horse model that worked in Carrara. The hair itself was not that hard to make just fiddly. I found that I got the most realistic renders by plugging the horses coat texture map into the dynamic hair’s material but found that animation was way too unpredictable no matter what settings I tried….

Millennium Horse Carrara Hair Experiment 001

Millennium Horse Carrara Hair Experiment 002

Millennium Horse Carrara Hair Experiment 003

Millennium Horse Carrara Hair Experiment 004

Millennium Horse Carrara Hair Experiment 005

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvT6n1dYBcc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Daz Studio basic edition has alway been free but its bigger siblings, Daz Studio Advanced and Daz Studio Pro have always have had a hefty price tag. Well now for a time limited period you can download Daz Studio 4 Pro (the most extensive version) for free.

Download Daz Studio 4 Pro, Hexagon 2.5 and Bryce 7 Pro now for free here!

This super duper deal from Daz3d also includes Bryce 7 Pro and Hexagon 2.5, all three of these application would normally set you back a whopping $829.85 so that’s quite a deal there for the budget consious digital artist.

I have been using Daz Studio since it was first released and purchased the Daz Studio 3 Advanced when it was released and loved all the added options that it gave me but with current finances being what they are I didn’t upgrade when version 4 was released, sticking with DS 3 Advanced and DS 4 Basic all the while wishing I could justify the upgrade cost.

I already own Bryce 7 Pro and Hexagon 2.5 (which I LOVE) but have “bought” another copy of both with this free give away so that I can legally install them on my daughters computer and teach her how to use them. On adding them to my shopping basket there was a message that you have to me signed up to Daz3d’s newsletter to get the special and as I have been for years I just signed in and the items in my shopping basket then showed up as $0.00 – happy days!

Zbrush users will be very happy to know that GoZ for Daz Studio is also included along with the Daz Studio 4 Pro software suite.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFRUVZHW_hw

Well it seems I am being blown away by free software yet again this week!

I have just stumbled upon a forum link to EscapeEmotions.com, owned by Peter Blaskovic. This website has the most awesome online free painting application that lets you paint with fractals.

I have just spent the last hour happily doodling away trying out all of the different settings and wishing my new tablet was here!

There is a desktop application version of Flame Painter with a lot more options available for only 14.90 EUR * 18.90 USD * 12.90 GPB, I will be buying this bargain program to support the fantastic work by this generous artist.

Pictured here are a few doodles I have made so far with the online version, please bare in mind these are only rough doodles and me just having a bit of fun

here's one I made earlier

I downloaded this free program a few weeks ago and have been blown away by how easy it is to get started and just create without having to learn a complicated interface and tools.

The interface is minimalist (is that even a word!) and can even be hidden using the tab key (windows, don’t know on anything else). You start off with a sphere and you then use the tools to sculpt detailed models from scratch. It is the most I have ever come to modeling with actual clay in real life.

You can download Sculptris at the ZBrush forum here, Pixologic, the owners of ZBrush bought Sculptris from it’s creator but are keeping it a free program, at least for now.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculptris

An introduction to Sculptris by CG Tuts+

Forum for Sculptris with tips and hints drpetter.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=sculptris

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and here’s wishing you all a happy new year for 2011!

Well I’ve finished up a new composite image, entitled Red Gold. It was rendered in Poser 6 with the scenery painted in Photoshop. I also painted the horses mane and tail in Photoshop and blended the horse with the background.

Red Gold by Angela D. Taylor 2010

I started off in Photoshop with some of my own brushes which I created by rendering clouds in Carrara against a solid black background and capturing the resulting renders into brushes in Photoshop. I then remembered Ron’s awesome water brushes that I saw on sale at Daz3d and dropped them in my shopping cart, and thought I’d snag his beautiful cloud brushes at the same time.

Bare untouched render

This image here to the right is the raw render, straight from Poser. It is the Millennium Horse from Daz3d with some of my custom morphs and one of my new realistic textures.

Whilst I usually love getting down to painting in Photoshop when I have the time this was and unusually frustrating experience as my trusty old graphics tablet (a cheap xp-pen) is playing up and Photoshop kept loosing the connection with it! Number one must have item now on my to buy list is a Wacom Intuos, after my wedding and new car that is!

I just thought that it would be nice for people who have used some of my textures and custom horse characters to meet one of our real life “models”, the adorable Ronnie.

Ron is my daughter’s pony and we have owned him since he was only two years old. He is a Welsh Pony of Cob Type otherwise known as a Welsh Section C, the smaller version of the world famous British native breed, the Welsh Cob.

He is the most loving, gentle, intelligent but spirited pony that I have ever known, he is strong enough to carry an adult (indeed my fiancée rides him!) and calm enough around children for my young nephews and niece to spend hours cuddling, riding and grooming him.

Round other horses he is a different “person” altogether, Ron was gelded just before we bought him at two and still thinks that he is a stallion! He is the definite boss over our other two horses and doesn’t seem to know that he is tiny (only 13.2hh) compared to them….

Several of my textures are based on Ronnie in his summer, spring and winter coats, his colour changes dramatically depending on the seasons, he is a lovely dappled rich bay in summer, much paler in winter and his spring coat, my favourite, is very dark and glossy with his dapples sharply defined.

View Full Album

Dark bay texture based on my own thoroughbred mare

LFG MH MATS 001.jpg

LFG-Graft-Horse-MK-IV-002.jpg

lfg-pretty-pony.jpg

chestnut_mil_horse_002 (web).jpg

karina_001 (web).jpg

coloured_cob_001.jpg

Doc4.jpg

close up of Scout's head

Scout, a paint horse texture and morph

mh textures 2010 001.jpg

jan_08_0021.jpg

Palomino texture very detailed

Buckskin texture

another palomino texture for the milhorse

A very detailed and realistic bay texture and my welsh section c pony (welsh pony of cob type) morph

A very detailed and realistic bay texture and my welsh section c pony (welsh pony of cob type) morph

Nov-04-photo-drop-001_2.jpg

A glossy sooty bay texture for the Daz3d Millennium horse 3d model, this is also a custom morph made by myself.

Another render of my glossy sooty bay texture for the Daz3d Millennium horse 3d model

Another bay tobanio texture

My draft horse morph

Sports Horse Morph with Black Texture and a slightly heavier body than previous Sports Horse, not sure yet which one I like best, any comments?

Sports Horse Morph and Sooty Bay Texture for the MilHorse

Two Brothers.Daz mil horse with custom morphs and my glossy sooty bay texture, rendered in Carrara, colours adjusted and glow added in Picasa 3

These are a selection of my texture work for the mil horse model (Millennium Horse) by Daz3d.

Well today whilst waiting for a render to finish, I checked out Daz3d’s news letter and couldn’t resist when I saw that Predatron has a new LoRez Horse model out!

I bought it straight away and really like it, it doesn’t have many morphs (as of yet *wink*) but is ideal for the job for which it is designed, animation and for rendering scenes with multiple horses in which the Millennium Horse would grind most systems down to a halt!

A nice surprise is that most of my P4 horse, charger and Heavy Horse poses will work on this model, although the fetlocks need the rotations adjusting slightly, but a welcome addition to my render kit.

I’m still working on finishing up my Millennium Horse texture packages but couldn’t resist seeing how this horse will look with one of my photorealistic textures….. One thing that I have found so far is that the UVs are very nicely done, well laid out and so far minimal texture warping, so a big thumbs up there too This render is how I’m getting along with it so far…

BTW i counted 23 coat textures that came with the LoRez horse package! They are hand painted, not photo based, but they are very detailed and very well done, hats off to Predatron!