[MachineGunBallet]

OK… this is called "Pursuit" its my version of an old Shadowrun image, DMZ (Downtown Militarized Zone).

It took 48 hours to render with all the light sources. In fact since my PC was wheezing with the difficulty of this render and the fact that I wanted to sleep at night, I had to upgrade my PC with a water cooler.

As always, this is desktop sized. (Gotta use these renders for something...)

[Shadowjack]

Nicely done!

[Helping Bear]

The picture may have taken you some time, but I must say it was worth it, for this is a very well done picture. Very colorful, and many good details. Good work!

[CanRay]

Very nice pic!

But, really, a .38?  Come on, get a real pistol! 

[MachineGunBallet]

Very nice pic!

But, really, a .38?  Come on, get a real pistol! 

I do have bigger guns, but it begins to stretch believability (fireballs aside) that she could hold it out, and you know, aim.

"This just in!  Motorcycle chase through the DMZ tonight.  Heavy gun fire was reported, but fortunately no one was hit..."

[CanRay]

"It's not the bullet with your name on it that you have to worry about, it's the one addressed 'To Whom It May Concern'." 

[Novocrane]

If one wanted to look into making their own works like this, what would you suggest looking at? (with minimum / average / stupid amounts of money being thrown at it?)

[Reiper]

If one wanted to look into making their own works like this, what would you suggest looking at? (with minimum / average / stupid amounts of money being thrown at it?)

I use Poser Pro, but its crazy expensive (I got it for $20 due to a fluke).

DAZ3D is free, and you actually get Genesis for free too (a basic character). And you can find a pretty good amount of free content off of ShareCG.com and a few other sites.

To get Daz3d, just go to daz3d.com register and its under the freebies. I think it has bryce for free too still, which is a really good program for if you do more scenic renders.

This was my character I was going to use. It isn't as fancy as the OP's though (very nicely done btw) but I'm still on my learning curve. Took me about 2 hours to render, but I can't go too high resolution or my computer runs out of memory during the render (upgrading to 16 or 32 gigs soon).

[MachineGunBallet]

If one wanted to look into making their own works like this, what would you suggest looking at? (with minimum / average / stupid amounts of money being thrown at it?)

First, how good is your PC.  My PC was $2500 last year.  Its pretty fast without being specialized for rendering.  Speed and memory will dictate what you can do.  This render took 6.5GB, 98% CPU loading all 4 cores for 48 hours, on a 3.8Ghz i2700 with fast fast fast 16GB of ram.

I use Daz 3d.  Its free, and it works.
http://www.daz3d.com/

I use Reality 2.5 for rendering exclusively. (I wouldn't start there if I was you.)
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/reality-2-for-daz-studio/92598

I've only been doing this for 2 years.  (I do this mostly out of curiosity.) You can see a lot of my recent work here;
http://fluffybush.deviantart.com/


The industry doesn't make its money from software.  Software is relatively low volume. Most of your money gets tied up in Models. (Characters, Clothing, Scenes, Props)  There are probably $100 to $150 of stuff in that render.

Background city is Urban Future 4 by Stonemason (his models are extremely well detailed).
http://www.daz3d.com/stonemason
Girl's Hair is Desire by Alfaseed. (His stuff is the best, and he provides lots of morphs, for things like wind in hair.)
http://www.runtimedna.com/AlfaSeed/
Bike and girl's outfit, Raven at Daz.
http://www.daz3d.com/dark-raven-bundle
One car was this one;
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/thunderbolt/77704/
The other was;
http://www.daz3d.com/skyrider
The fireball was;
http://www.daz3d.com/shadowcaster-spellribbons

FYI, Naughty Bits can be found at Renderotica...

My feeling is that should think about how much you want to spend and what your interest really is.  I'm kind of ADD so my interests are all over the place.  Some people thrive on just doing portraits, and yet others like doing one off dioramas.

I was thinking of doing a digital comic based on my scooby render.  The gang, all cybered up, and mentally messed up.

[Xzylvador]

You learned that in 2 years?
Geez man, I tried it for a while and just gave up completely. You've got talent.

[Fabe]

Nice render Machinegun. I'm a Daz users my self ,what lighting did you use?

[Cryonic]

You learned that in 2 years?
Geez man, I tried it for a while and just gave up completely. You've got talent.

That isn't hard with Poser/Daz. You aren't having to make a lot of stuff from scratch because there are tons of modifiers and accessories for the main models. You can rescale the characters to make them as big as the Hulk, or shrink the proportions to turn them into kids. In that same 2 years, schools like the Dave School in Florida teaches people visual arts and they find jobs at places like EA or WETA. Those are the jobs where almost all the assets are built from scratch for each project.

Sorry, this isn't to bash the artist of these posts, just pointing out what can be done/learned in that time scale.

[Reiper]

You learned that in 2 years?
Geez man, I tried it for a while and just gave up completely. You've got talent.

That isn't hard with Poser/Daz. You aren't having to make a lot of stuff from scratch because there are tons of modifiers and accessories for the main models. You can rescale the characters to make them as big as the Hulk, or shrink the proportions to turn them into kids. In that same 2 years, schools like the Dave School in Florida teaches people visual arts and they find jobs at places like EA or WETA. Those are the jobs where almost all the assets are built from scratch for each project.

Sorry, this isn't to bash the artist of these posts, just pointing out what can be done/learned in that time scale.

This, its fairly easy to pick up. DAZ and Poser is mostly plug and play.

You can do a lot of modifications to the models, but you generally don't create your models from scratch (you can with some things but it isn't really needed).

But I do suggest people to try out DAZ if they are into this kind of thing. There is a learning curve but it isn't that bad and there are literally hundreds of step by step tutorials online.

[Fabe]

You learned that in 2 years?
Geez man, I tried it for a while and just gave up completely. You've got talent.

That isn't hard with Poser/Daz. You aren't having to make a lot of stuff from scratch because there are tons of modifiers and accessories for the main models. You can rescale the characters to make them as big as the Hulk, or shrink the proportions to turn them into kids. In that same 2 years, schools like the Dave School in Florida teaches people visual arts and they find jobs at places like EA or WETA. Those are the jobs where almost all the assets are built from scratch for each project.

Sorry, this isn't to bash the artist of these posts, just pointing out what can be done/learned in that time scale.

TI know what you're saying,but that is the nice thing about DAZ/Poser. They're not modeling programs but more like virtual photograph studios where you use premade models to make art.  Of course that doesn't mean its necessarily easy.

[Reiper]

You learned that in 2 years?
Geez man, I tried it for a while and just gave up completely. You've got talent.

That isn't hard with Poser/Daz. You aren't having to make a lot of stuff from scratch because there are tons of modifiers and accessories for the main models. You can rescale the characters to make them as big as the Hulk, or shrink the proportions to turn them into kids. In that same 2 years, schools like the Dave School in Florida teaches people visual arts and they find jobs at places like EA or WETA. Those are the jobs where almost all the assets are built from scratch for each project.

Sorry, this isn't to bash the artist of these posts, just pointing out what can be done/learned in that time scale.

TI know what you're saying,but that is the nice thing about DAZ/Poser. They're not modeling programs but more like virtual photograph studios where you use premade models to make art.  Of course that doesn't mean its necessarily easy.

I know. I've been messing with Poser in my spare time for about six months and I'm still finding nifty things here and there, and am finally getting used to dynamic hair even though long dynamic hair is still giving me a lot more trouble than I want to admit.

I am going to have to learn Daz though simply because it seems Daz is starting to break away from Poser with a lot of its products, and I'm not too thrilled with the importer for Poser.

I'm probably going to start doing renders from scenes from some of the games I'm playing here as long as I can get good enough models for everyone (which ultimately means I need to by creature morph for both Michael and Vikki which is annoying).

But to anyone wanting to try out DAZ, its free, and there are plenty of websites that offer some some varying quality stuff for it (some of it is really high quality, most of it is low to medium). It is addictive though, and its a major resource hog when rendering.