Cover Story Full text from 3D Artist issue #38 page 6 article, "Cover Story" By Cecilia Ziemer

The cover image involves a collaboration of 3D apps and people. It started with an idea by editor Bill Allen, who also did the final compositing and effects work in Photoshop 3 [note]. The renderings were done in Poser 4 using a near-stock female child figure and a tweak.
___ Tweaker is a Poser figure that first saw the light of day in Organica as a small model with a large polygon count. Then it went to Ray Dream Studio 5.0.2 for decimation, mapping, and breaking into separate parts. Last, it was imported into Poser 3 as a new figure, given prop eyeballs, and animated. A flight of tweaks appeared in the "BVH 'Flocking'" article last issue.
___ I animated the young human to step forward, turn, and speed the critter (parented to the right hand) away, with keyframes at first, middle, and last frames. I used a photographers' trick of taking pictures just before or after the transition frames (these rendering frames were later nailed down as keyframes of their own). The first (back) and middle poses rendered twice each for solid and colored wireframe images.

An all purpose crackle finish
The crackle texture on the tweak is a Painter 3D Gradient/Colorburst preset with a Crackle paper texture (Effects/Apply Surface Texture Using/Paper with the light control set at a sharp angle. Since this makes an extreme "bump," a separate bump map isn't necessary for Poser and Bryce mapping-anything to keep file sizes down!

That crackle finish was the foundation for the background texture on pages 12 and 13.
___ Cecilia Ziemer is a classically trained artist who works with numerous apps including Poser, Bryce, and 3DS Max. She also is an Assistant Editor for 3D Artist. This is her third cover since 3DA#23 [see also 3DA issues #23 and #29].

Compositing note: There were six Poser 4 rendering passes from Cecilia Ziemer to bring together in Photoshop 3 to form the final image used for the cover. These steps included blending the solid and wireframe renderings, placing distance layers (5% black) to give the background figures some separation, creating and importing a circular rainbow from Illustrator 7, and adding motion and glow effects for the departing tweak.--B.A.

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Revised: 26 Oct 99
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