Welcome to Dartanbeck.com!
We're going to delve into an exciting adventure of filmmaking purely from CG (computer generated) elements, but maybe with a touch of stock footage shot in-camera? We'll see.
I'm sure that most of this will also be valuable toward making still images as well, but my main goal is to put it all in motion.
Appreciation for Your Support!
In honor of the Wonderful People who enjoy what I do enough to offer support, This Appreciation Page is For You!
For those who have asked to remain anonymous, I have not included you in there. If you'd like to be included, I'd Love to!
Anonymous or otherwise, I really appreciate your Support - and All of it goes Directly into what I'm working on at that time, so it's a Huge benefit. Thank You So Much!!!
Every opportunity I get to make improvements is a delightful boon and helps push everything forward!
I've put more work into this early WIP of Dartanbeck 8 than I've put into any other completed Datan character previously.
Check out the new Dartanbeck 8 page to learn about what I've been doing to build and test this cool new character!
Rosie 8.23 Rocks!!!
There's a lot going on with the development of Rose 8.23 and what will become her surroundings.
Starting all over again has me knee deep in learning new stuff - which is a real Blast!!!
I try to come back often and report about the new goings on with Rosie 8, so go ahead and check back when you can.
New tools for Daz Studio, new design ideas, experiments with the whole 'pressing forward' thing - this is certainly the best version of Rosie to date!
There's a little blurb on Rosie below, but if you want to see what's going on, you'll want to go to her page.
...but first:
A new Kit Bash for you...
Finally getting my hands on Kibaretto's Beautiful Astromaster starship, I really wanted something different for its interior. The new supplemental Cockpit kit is Gorgeous. It really is. But it doesn't really fit with the look of any of the interiors I'd like to use for other parts of the ship. I already knew what I wanted, so it went together like a dream!
One of my very first purchases at Daz 3d, when I bought Carrara, was Kibaretto's Command - Starship Interior Solution.
This has been my favorite starship bridge to date, although I do like many others as well.
I could tell before getting Astromaster that it was going to be considerably smaller than the Massive Commander, so I was thinking I'd use the Geometry Editor to carve parts away and move stuff around a bit. You know... having fun with a good ol' kit bash!
I think my life has changed permanently now. MeshGrabber is such a blessing for Daz Studio. I can't thank ManFriday enough for creating this amazing tool!
I'm usually using MeshGrabber on cloth and making corrections to hair simulations - which it's amazing for, by the way - but this time I had to be careful... symmetrical.
I took my time making my selections. Having two starships overlapping each other doesn't make selection processes easier. The really nice falloff adjustments for how the rest of the mesh behaves is fantastic. Several smoothing options for the falloff range too. Sweet.
Commander has these really cool corridors that lead out of the bridge deeper into our imagination - one on each side and another in the center. Above that center doorway is a balcony leading to the lift - again... imagination time.
The main fuselage fit pretty darned nice right away, but the rear corners by those corridors stuck out just too far, so I trimmed them back a touch with Geometry Editor, but the cool Sci-Fi décor was able to stay - all of it!
Those three rear corridors are pretty long (Commander is an amazing setup!!!) so that was my first attack zone for MeshGrabber. Going back and forth with the falloff, I was able to shrink those corridors right down, which gives a really nice dimension to the Astro. Still a work-in-progress, the lift will take us up and out the airlock (which I'll have to make) and down to the lower deck.
It's my plan to use Petipet's Sci-Fi interiors (various collections) to stage events in other parts of the ship. Being three times larger now, AstroMaster (now Astro Commander) has some room for breathing. We can stage some long distance adventures with this thing - and so we shall!
Another early purchase of mine was Kibaretto's Star Carrier, which is equally as amazing. It's a massive launch bay, but there are all kinds of nooks and crannies throughout that are fully detailed and beautiful - perfect for staging nearly anything.
Rounding out the image is The DigiVault's Stardomes, which I've performed some Iray magic to. Check this out:
In the Surfaces pane, click the main texture map to see where it is in the list, then select None for Diffuse, and set the color to black.
Now load that map into the following: Translucency Color (first set Translucency Weight to 1.0), Gloss Color (probably don't need that one) and in Emission Color.
Load a nice HDRI into Iray's Dome (I use JoeLeGecko's HDRI Photoshoot) and then blast the Emission Luminosity with a few extra zeros to bring up those levels until you get a good match for your Dome. I didn't make the dome visible in render, but I'm sure you could. It would certainly add to the background.
The Digivault's Stardomes have some really nice options. I'm really glad I grabbed it.
Then I did my color grading, motion blur and signature using Project Dogwaffle Howler. My goto for artistic 2D!
HDRI Photoshoot, by Joelegecko, is the lighting solution you see on most of my work over the past couple of years. He's a master, that's for sure. He's the one who does some of the best promo art we see at Daz 3d.
This set has over twenty HDRI and their mirror, so some 46 or 48 HDRI altogether. There are a lot of HDRI packs out there, and I have quite a few. When it comes to rendering my characters (using an alpha (invisible) background for compositing over backplates layering in other elements along the way) I always use this.
That dark blue and red from my Rosie 2023 Demo was almost always number 21 and its mirrored version. Rotate the dark to the front and let the light seep in over each shoulder - red contrasting to blue. Fun! I love number 21!!!
The medieval video that followed almost exclusively used 22. Right now Rosie 8 is enjoying quite a few, but her Base scene is set up with number 10, rotated to have a subtle bit of sunshine coming in from behind her on one side with a cool blue center, and a sunrise pink over the other shoulder.
It's really fun because rotating the dome around gives a limitless supply of excellent character lighting - like my new starship! :)
Site Highlights
Daz 3D Human History
Daz 3D Bundles
Animal Kingdom - Daz 3D
PC+ (Daz +) Experience
PC+ (Daz +) Cloth Frenzy!
Thanks Daz 3D!!!
Carrara Zone
Carrara Info
Carrara CG Workshop
Daz Studio
Daz 3D Character Packs
Daz 3D Bundles
Bryce
My Downloads Section
Action VFX!
Free OctaneRender
History of Carrara
Carrara Plugins
A Digital Art Live Experience
Now Available at Daz 3d - a Special new educational course that I've been anxious to share with everyone.
Paul Bussey, from Digital Art Live, offered an amazing opportunity for me to tell my story of how I've unlocked the key to a super-easy approach to animating in Daz Studio - something that a majority of animators consider to be nearly impossible, and for good reason. Daz Studio is set up differently than traditional animating software, making it feeling clunky, even unfriendly to folks who are used to animating.
Well such a thing is difficult to tell in a few words or even a single article here on the site. It's something that needs to be seen, worked through, demonstrated.
Paul's offer is just that. He loves seeing other artist's work and he has a wonderful drive at helping artists learn new skills to better themselves at what they want to do. In that, we are both incredibly similar, for those are my goals as well!
It's really cool to have people around who do nothing but create new miraculous wonders for the rest of the world to enjoy.
Alvin Bémar is one of those people.
With FLUIDOS II for Daz Studio, we have liquid, fire and smoke simulations within studio. Highly configurable to get incredible results.
Then, among his other fun creations he comes up with PARSIS: A Particles System, Gescon: Constructive Solid Geometry for Daz Studio, AB Greebles Generator(!!!), and his Thickener Plugin.
Latest up is his amazing Fisio: Physics Simulator and he's just released the above video for a Soft Body Addon! Really looking forward to this stuff!!! Bravo Alvin! Thanks for all you do!!!
Woah... I thought I'd have to wait another year for this, but...
...here she is!!!
She still needs the Genesis 9 Essential Shapes Bundle in order to function properly, at which time finishing touches will also be made, but I think the look is right. She's ready to take on the world!
Wow. I am stunned that this is happening right now.
Check out my page for Rosie 9 for more information about her.
There's a Lot more here. Check out the navigation menus at the top of each page - there's a lot of fun to be had here. Make yourself at Home!
Plenty of experiments going on learning micro-movements of the face using a new FACS system.
Genesis 3 & 8 Face Controls provides a facial puppet rig used to manipulate all of the FACS (Facial Action Coding System) intricacies. We'll learn how I took this further by developing my own Animorphs specifically for FACS and expressions.
What Happened on Odysseon Station?
Take a fun walk through the idea of letting a content collection hobby fulfill the needs of a story!
Story Driven Through Content - Odysseon Station Collection
Nearly complete, between deep Daz + Sales and the help of my readers, I now have a tremendous Odysseon Station collection.
It's really fun to see how each additional piece to the collection can make the storytelling That Much Easier - and More Fun!!!
Some friends of mine are conducting a PD Howler course at the time of this writing, and I'm in the class. What a Blast!!!
Tiffanie conducted the first two weeks, which we've just finished. Philip will take over for the remaining two weeks. What a great way to do it. Both of them use Howler in entirely different ways and both are excellent at teaching the software.
I actually look forward to getting homework, doing it, and then doing a bunch more stuff.
We didn't even get to the animation part yet, but I couldn't resist. Tiffanie has a way of teaching me new features and tools that get me excited to add to my workflow - which is usually doing visual effects on my animations.
Let it Snow!
Philip took us on a journey through many of the incredible animation and 3D capabilities of PD Howler 2023, and gave us a glimpse of the soon to be released PD Howler 2024.
He showed some really cool techniques for adding falling snow to an animation along with animating filters and filters that are designed specifically for animations. PD Howler is packed with both options, plus a timeline editor with nearly every filter available, my pal - the Brush Keyframer, 3D Designer, PuppyRay render engine, and a whole lot more.
This little short was a lot of fun to create - all compositing and effects are done in Project Dogwaffle Howler 2023. The editing and titling was done, this time, using Corel's wonderful VideoStudio Pro, which also automated the music per my selections to the length of the project. Really cool! VideoStudio Pro also has a really nice separate Screen Capture app that I use for my tutorials and demonstrations.
For one of our weeks of homework, we had to (1) color grade an image and also (2) fix an image. I did both to the same project, but they can be separate too. Here's an older render that I always liked. I wanted to update it with the Rosie character the way she is today. Well there's a removal tool in Project Dogwaffle that really works slick! I remember when it was first introduced, but never took the time to try it.
Wow! It's really cool!
Finished homework image
New Animations & Simulations Demo Videos!
A new video of incomplete scenes and test renders. This is getting to be a lot of fun to do!
Right when I was really getting going in Daz Studio with animations, I visited the forums where I saw that somebody asked if they cool use Daz Studio for making animations and the only answers that came up were saying "No, better to export to Blender", "No, export to Unreal"... that sort of thing.
I couldn't believe that this was the only sort of message left for the original poster to try and digest - or simply turn away knowing that animation is not possible in Studio!
So I switched gears for a bit and made up a bunch of scenes to go with the character renders I was doing at the time - and having a blast with, and brought it all into DaVinci Resolve and composited everything together using Fusion within. That's a Cyberpunk video below.
In doing so I realized that I really need to get some practice at Fusion and all of the tools! So I think I may do a bunch more of these fun movies. It doesn't bother me that I'm not entirely up-to-par with everything. I enjoy seeing my own blunders and learning from it.
All new Rosie! All New Reel!
dForce - Proof Pudding!
We're about to get underway with the next phase of this project - Seriously adding Daz Studio into our animating and rendering workflow.
It's been an exciting time for me, learning how to animate in such an odd way, yet doing it in the interface that allows us to make our own custom tools to help... I have an entirely different outlook on Daz Studio now.
I liked using it before, but only as a set of tools to help make things compatible with Carrara.
Now I've opened it up and explored rendering in OctaneRender and Iray, grabbed some useful plugins and scripts, discovered ways to animate without relying solely on aniMate 2 alone, simulating using both VWD and dForce and in the process made a whole new cast of characters that I like more than ever.
The above image is the new Rosie 7 and her new aniMate compatible car in a new Iray Cyberpunk environment.
*** If you're looking for the old Home page, I have it saved HERE. I will be further cleaning up this Home page to keep folks informed of new happenings with the site.
This next adventure is going to be a Fun one... so Buckle Up!!! DAZ Zone is about to get Serious!!!
Test using iReal Animated Ocean Water System to have real water flowing down this stream.
The test was a big success!
Now we can see it in action in the video above!!!
I just wanted to pop in and let everyone know that new pages are going to be coming soon about the results of this whole adventure and some new videos that help show off the new techniques.
Simply log into the Daz 3d forums and send a PM to Dartanbeck with the code
While you're at it, go ahead and ask me a question about my workflow or techniques, products, anything! Always happy to help!
Support for this site goes directly into more creative workflows, animations and articles
A very special and warm Thank You to those who help!
I love and appreciate you all!!! Thank You!!!
Appreciation for Your Support!
In honor of the Wonderful People who enjoy what I do enough to offer support, This Appreciation Page is For You!
For those who have asked to remain anonymous, I have not included you in there. If you'd like to be included, I'd Love to!
Anonymous or otherwise, I really appreciate your Support - and All of it goes Directly into what I'm working on at that time, so it's a Huge benefit. Thank You So Much!!!
Every opportunity I get to make improvements is a delightful boon and helps push everything forward!
*** If you're looking for the old Home page, I have it saved HERE. I will be further cleaning up this Home page to keep folks informed of new happenings with the site.
This next adventure is going to be a Fun one... so Buckle Up!!! ;)
MORE TO COME SOON!!! MORE TO COME SOON!!! MORE TO COME SOON!!!
Please Help Support My Cause!
(or not... your choice!)
Feeling generous? Perhaps a little Kind Hearted?
Drop by Daz 3d and buy me a Gift Card!
It's the Best Gift EVER!!!
After purchase, simply PM Dartanbeck at Daz 3d with the code
Thanks in Advance! Dartanbeck
Ever want to turn your 3D creations into something tangible? Something useful or even a cool action figure for the desk?
We have a new thread in the Carrara forum all about making this happen!
We also have CREALITY, bringing 3D Printing to us at incredibly reasonable prices!
They even offer upgraded kits!
CREALITY excels at selling 3D Printers for less than $300 USD, and we're talkin' about the famous Ender 3, not the bargain basement brands that just become a big ol' household paperweight!
Use the Gizmo on the left (or the following links) to filter between the following:
* Blacksmith 3D * Daz Studio * Poser * Reality * Reallusion * Sixus 1
...and Have Fun Learning New Skills and Techniques!!! :)
Philip Staiger of Project Dogwaffle (makers of PD Howler) uses Power Director to create his energetic and fun tutorial and demonstration videos!
and support this site at the same time!!! :) Thanks!!! :)