Agent Maya Issue Five Production Post Two

After some adjustments to the various render settings, I remembered the render time setting (in seconds) and set it at two hours, fixing the time issues I was experiencing. Sometimes wrapping my head around the differences between 3Delight and iray takes a few tries before I realize the tutorials I've read gave me the answers, but they've just sunk in too well!

So now I've got nearly two pages of renders complete with more scenes set or needing to be. Everything looks great so far; I'm happy with the texture rendering and ease of creation of lighting rigs out of simple objects for fantastic new effects.

There's a lot of work ahead—and I'm glad I upgraded to finally bring my imagination through to the final renders.

Issue 5 Production Post One

Now that I've settled the transfer from Daz 4.7 to 4.8 (with some minor annoyances still in effect, unfortunately), I posted my first render for Issue Five a couple weeks back, under the new iray engine in Daz 4.8. While I think it looked better than good (or at least better than the 3Delight engine), I had to tweak some settings to get a second render image with less grain and a decent enough light source to be usable. However the speed I have hoped for is still elusive—right now the render time is still nine hours plus for a reduced image size of 5000x3750, nearly half the size I used to do at 9000x6750. So, now I need to research this and see what setting or lighting or some other unknown is keeping the speed at the multiple-hour tortoise range.

Saying all this, I am pleased with the render quality I'm getting with iray. 3Delight looked great, in my opinion, with graduated shadows and light, but not so good in either extreme (washed out in brightness or bizarre over-saturated darks). In this issue there will be many scenes in near darkness with some bright lights punctuating here or there, so I'm looking forward to seeing what iray gives me in the pursuit of closer to photoreal.

More To Come

Issue 5.5 Production Post Four

Renders for Issue 5.5 are complete, and I'll begin panel assembly for the five pages soon. It turned out to be an interesting exercise in short-length comics—a topic I've covered earlier—and I'd like to explore the format again, maybe next year, certainly after I've completed post-production on Issue 5. And looking at the complexity of the next issue, I'll need to marshal all my resources towards that goal first.

And the reason I haven't been posting as much is that I've made the jump to DAZ 4.8, with the new iray render engine. This involves a bunch of new adjustments that I won't go into much detail here, other than business as I've been doing it changes a bit. Once I get used to how the new renderer works and redo some assets to work with the new paradigm, I should be getting better and faster renders—which is essential as I get more sophistication and ambition built into the storytelling.

Stay tuned.

Issue 5.5 Production Post Three

Chugging along on Issue 5.5—I've rendered out a space scene with a neat new model I've put a lot of work into the past couple of weeks. I've also worked on a lighting setup for better spacescape renders, which will be quite important for Issue 5 in a few months.

In the non-comic department, I've been thinking about the future of what I want to do to supplement my income, since it's been tough to get any sales in a crowded and/or hard-to-publicize market like self-publishing. Having published two books and four comics, and done the soup-to-nuts work on them, I find creating and designing book covers a nice blend of illustration and graphic design, both of which are big interests of mine. I'm currently in bookselling, and have been for nearly twenty years, but find the retail reality soul-deadening after so many cycles of worry and dread about the health of the sector. I'd like to get into the book creation/production side of the field which would be more of the philosophy of do what you love while also making money at it. Ideally I'd want an online cover-design business (short of making gobs of mad cash by writing my own stuff, but anyway…); in the next few years I hope to work my way toward that.

Issue 5.5 Production Post Two

Issue 5.5 has taken a bit longer to put into production, but I have two pages rendered and several sets waiting. The big hurdle has been the framing scenes, involving many characters that can bog down the whole works just by sheer file size and rendering requirements. A month from now I plan on completing production and getting into post.

Then the big one awaits…Issue 5. If you've bought Issue 4, Maya and the Don of Venus (and if you haven't, head over there now!) then you have an inkling of the dread our characters face: the Mercury Tower. This last issue in the first season of Agent Maya will pit our heroine against her greatest threat yet—Yukyo Kopek and the tortured souls entombed inside that ghostly building….

JauntWorld Is Now On Behance

Quick post to let everyone know that I am now a member of Behance. You can see some samples of AGENT MAYA on there, plus other examples of recent work by me.

Thanks and enjoy.