Read Issue 4 of Digital Art Live

Welcome to Issue 4

This issue is centred on rendering and examines rendering options in Poser and DAZ Studio, including the Reality plugin which can be used for both. Under the bonnet, the algorithms and techniques for rendering are complex. They deal with at least sixteen visible types of features in a scene. Everything from shading, texture mapping, caustics, reflection, diffraction, transparency, shadows, indirect illumination, depth of field to motion blur and more—there’s a lot of work to be done by the engines involved!

Imagine trying to trace every single particle of light in a scene—it would be well night impossible. So some more practical modelling techniques have been invented with less cost to processing time; ray casting, ray tracing, rasterization and radiosity. With these methods in mind, software can even use a mix of these methods to provide an effective solution to rendering.

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So our hats off to those who have worked on these algorithms over the years. One of the oldest rendered 3D animations was back in 1972, by Ed Catmull and Fred Parke—an absolute pioneer of 3D technology. Catmull was eventually one of the founders of Pixar. The animation was of a 3D hand (based on measurements of Ed Catmull’s hand) and face and was later used in the 1976 sci-fi film Futureworld (sequel to Westworld). The animated film by Catmull was surprisingly realistic for it’s day. As well as Futureworld benefiting from his work, some of the other first films benefiting were Superman, Star Wars and Tron.

Thresholds now have been crossed where rendered 3D animations have grossed more than one million dollars in a feature length CGI production, the first was Toy Story 3 in 2010. In 2015, the motion capture technique allowed in the re-creation of a deceased actor (Paul Walker in Furious 7).

So for the hobbyist, photo-realism for character scenes is now very much with us, thanks to what’s available for both Poser and DAZ Studio.

In this issue:-

CHARLES TAYLOR

Digital Art LIVE interviews the Product Manager for Poser at Smith Micro, about the amazing new Poser 11 software.

SMITH MICRO | POSER

“Right now, the GPU option is only for NVIDIA CUDA cards, and we’re hoping that as Cycles’ development continues, that we’ll be able to add support for ATI graphics cards as well.”

ADRIANO DI PIERRO

Digital Art LIVE interviews ‘Laticis’ about Octane for DAZ Studio, building a beast of a rendering PC, fibermesh hair and more.

DAZ STUDIO | OCTANE

“I am fixated on ZBrush Fibermesh — and not only for hair … My whole journey to hair started with some eyebrows for the wizard image, and it escalated from there.”

PAULO CICCONE

Digital Art LIVE interviews Paolo about his Reality rendering plugin for Poser and DAZ Studio, and the new 4.1 and 4.2 versions.

POSER & DAZ | REALITY

“Reality can render in the background. You can go back to Poser or DAZ Studio, continue working on the scene, or even start a new scene.”