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November 17, 2020 by Paul Leave a Comment

Read Issue 53 of Digital Art Live

Welcome to the “Hair and Fur” themed issue of your free Digital Art Live magazine!

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3D artists have always found hair to be ‘a bit hairy’, as we British say. Meaning it can be tricky stuff, and that popping a nice hairstyle on a figure can slow your render time to a crawl. The trend toward high-poly hair, and facial and body-hair for DAZ Studio, means hair can also gobble up precious RAM.

But now the world is seeing an unexpected benefit of the lockdowns… faster PCs, which can only be a good thing for tough 3D hair. Of course it’s often assumed that ‘nothing much changes for home freelancers’ in a lockdown, and that we just carry on as before. But many are using generous lockdown payouts for the self-employed (recently doubled, here in the UK) to upgrade to the latest PCs. Home office PCs are being swopped for workstations. Workstations are being replaced, and the old one made into a render-box. Employers are also buying new kit for employees forced to work from home. PC sales have consequently been booming. The PC industry now expects to see 300 million new PCs sold in 2021, some 30 million more than usual. All this means that many key PCs in home offices and studios have leapt a decade ahead of where they used to be. The joy of the PC is its easy expandability, and into these whirring purring new PCs will shortly go new graphics-cards and add-in boards with advanced ray-tracing capabilities. Plugged into the new PCs will be new motion-capture and 3D capture devices, draw-on-the-screen monitors, quality HD webcams, faster external drives, and possibly fab creative gear yet to be invented — I’ll take the quick-boil USB tea-maker unit!

All that said, Digital Art Live never forgets the budget hobbyist, and our in-depth survey of fur tools in this issue digs out some old 2D software that can give you quick 3D like fur very easily — and without the need to spend $10,000 on the latest workstation PC.

preview pages

THE HIVEWIRE TEAM

We celebrate the recent launch of the superb Hivewire Tiger, with a big round-table interview with the development team.

3D FIGURE DEVELOPMENT

“I think the biggest challenge was in the Tiger’s mane ruff. We needed it to follow not only movement, but facial morphs as well. It was a painstakingly slow process of adjusting the weight maps point-by-point for each of the mane ruff panels of hair.”

ANDREW KRIVULYA

Andrew is a 3D hair ‘lookdev’ specialist, creating hair for high-end clients in advertising, TV and the movies.

3D HAIR | LOOKDEV

“Powerful PCs add comfort and have made it possible to implement interactive grooming, when — right in the viewport — we can see the result, do clumping, comb the coat or hair. It becomes easier to manage the form and control the entire process.”

“I’m convinced realistic contemporary hairstyles sell the best.  Not overstyled but they must be attractive, if not outright sexy, as on the cover of a magazine.  [But I still] hark back to my RPG roots — giant plaits, improbably long ponytails, overly cute curls.”

APRIL-YSH

April is a leading DAZ Store creator, specialising in making and selling a wide range of ready-made royalty-free 3D hair.

3D HAIR | DAZ STUDIO

“I’m convinced realistic contemporary hairstyles sell the best.  Not overstyled but they must be attractive, if not outright sexy, as on the cover of a magazine.  [But I still] hark back to my RPG roots — giant plaits, improbably long ponytails, overly cute curls.”

Also inside….

OUR LIVE WEBINARS!

VISNEWS

EDITORIAL

CONTESTS

BACK ISSUE INDEX

SURVEY OF 3D & 2D FUR TOOLS

GALLERY

IMAGINARIUM

Excerpt from our interview with Hivewire 3D

See the full interview in issue 53

DAL: Your Big Cat now includes lions, cougars etc. Was the Tiger always on the roadmap for the Big Cat, in due course?

HiveWire: We had a general roadmap when creating our base Big Cat, so that we would be able to morph it into other major breeds. We can’t recall if, at that time, that a tiger was ‘a must’… or more of a hopeful wish. Like suggesting we’ll have to see where this Big Cat will take us, and if customer interest will follow. We do recall that Laurie Prindle had the tiger model in mind, and we wouldn’t be able to carry out such a challenging endeavour without her heavy interest and talent. Saying that, though, we also couldn’t achieve a proper product of this kind without Paul Lessard’s rigging expertise either. It really became a ‘serendipitous trifecta’.

DAL: Good. And I imagine the launch of an iconic Tiger brought a lot of new visitors to the site. What sort of purchaser feedback have you had so far?

HiveWire: Customers and loyal followers of our animal products have been eager to add any new HiveWire animal products to their collections, but our Tiger just seems to be extra special to them. I think it’s a combination of the rareness of the actual tigers in the wild, their natural beauty and uniqueness, and the care we’ve taken to get this right. We believe people can see that. It certainly shows with this gorgeous Tiger. Users tell us it has been worth the wait, and the best tiger available in this market, and with the quality of renders we’re seeing of our Tiger we tend to agree.

DAL: Yes, and a nice price-point too. Have you also had interest from wildlife conservation people, in such a faithfully made and flexible royalty-free 3D model? I’d imagine it might be popular among the Indian conservationists and educationalists, as their nation appears to be doing quite well now with tiger conservation and to have growing tiger populations. So educational outreach will be a part of sustaining that push, and I’d imagine that convincingly bringing ‘a 3D tiger into the classrooms’ could play a part in reaching kids and teens.

HiveWire: Wow, we love your thinking. Wouldn’t that be nice to see such organizations utilizing our Tiger for educational purposes. If it’s happening, we haven’t been made aware of it as of yet. With the accessibility to quality software that is free or at a very low cost, coupled with relatively low-priced 3D content in this market we could see the kids in the classrooms teaching the instructors a thing or two. They could start their own conservation rendering contest featuring our HiveWire Tiger that we’d be happy to sponsor.

DAL: Great idea. What’s the most impressive or interesting use of it that you’re seen, so far?

HiveWire: Well, of course what we see the most of are beautiful renders created by a community of artists that produce some exquisite imagery. It’s actually inspiring and invigorating to view artwork using our Tiger. Laurie Prindle has a new stunning Tiger image she calls “Shere Khan”. Flint Hawk has created multiple Tiger images including Ken Gilliland’s birds and insects, and Lisa Buckalew’s botanicals.

DAL: Ah yes, we interviewed Lisa a while back, and will hope to interview Ken G. in a future issue.
HiveWire: But we certainly can’t leave out a favourite image by Daniel Hicks called “Perils of the Sea” using our new Tiger and female figure Dawn.

 

Filed Under: Magazine Tagged With: Andrew Krivaulya, April YSH, DAZ Studio, Fur, Hair, Hivewire3D, LOOKDEV, Poser

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