50 Shades of Samus

Welcome back one and all, and hey there to new visitors too! Today we’ve got some glamour shots of our favourite Sci-Fi lady, Samus, as she models some of the finer artistic details. We’ve gotten a lot of support and love for how we make our magic of late, so here’s another look at what we do on our side. It’s time to look a little more at the Post-Production Values that are put into each CG. Let’s kick it off with the before picture!

So, here’s our lovely lady, in the flesh and fresh out of the renderer. She’s looking good, no? Well, let us show you what we do to help her look even better!

Now that’s a big improvement! What exactly did we do though? Let’s find out:

- Firstly, we altered the contrast on the whole image, upping the light blue hew to the lighting. This not only makes the scene fit better with the Sci-Fi theme by reducing the amount of drab greys, but also makes the darker blue of the suit stand out too. Same effect occurs with the blonde hair which is heavily contrasted to the blues.

- We completely painted over the stock Daz eyes to make them pop. The cornea, pupil and socket of each have been totally reworked to give more light and expression to the facial features. We also recoloured the cheek blush and smeared the edges to make it look more natural, less rounded.

- Using Photoshop, we brushed some added details and shading to the suit, as can be seen around the knee pads and inner thighs, just to fill out some added depth to her body proportions… it’s the little touches like this that make her all the more sexy, even if you can’t tell just why when looking. We also covered over places of poke through on the clothing, something that usually happens with Nat and Noe’s chest areas, but in this case, it was the holster that needed it.

- Lastly, we blurred the blurred the edges of the laser effect on the weapon’s beam so it also looks more deadly and stands out from the background. Don’t only look at the beautiful lady when she’s got a gun in hand!

Can you feel the love put into each and every render? Well, it’s this kind of effort that turns plain old renders into ambitious productions, and that’s exactly where we aim to be with all our games. It’s steps like these, and never saying “It’s good enough…” that make our CGs pop, even if many of the details go unnoticed during play. It all added to an overall feeling of quality!

Oh, but we’re not done. Fans of the original Samus will be sure to point out by now, that after all the attention to details in the image, we missed a bigger picture detail… she doesn’t wear a matte cotton-esque cat suit, but a metallic glossy bodysuit! We agree, that was a terrible oversight… is this better?

Oh yeah, that’s how you light up a room! Ok, now we have to admit something here… this isn’t post-production at work here. It’s actually our custom shader work (for those not familiar with 3D, that means it’s computed during the render once given specific instructions). Long time fans will have seen our advertisement of our custom shaders on the overview section of our page. We’re super proud of it, enough that we kept the image after the change over to beWilder. This is the power it gives us, completely revamping whole scenes or just parts of outfits…

3D Professionals will know, a lot of math and graphical knowledge is required to create custom shaders. It’s a career specialty of its own. It’s also very expensive to implement, time wise we mean, in both the asset creation and the actual rendering time per use. We use it sparingly… “Great power” and all that!

What’s that? You find it a little hard to believe your eyes? How’s this then…

That’s two identical copies of our lady of the evening together in the Art Engine. And here’s the render of them both, one with the custom shader attached…

Can you believe it now?

Alrighty then… that’s mostly what we have for you today. Before we head into our usual outro status update, we have a bonus post for you backers to check out! This new shader has caused a rather kinky crisis in our team, we can’t decide which we like more, so come on by and let us know your choice in our poll. Right, now we hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the production process. We’ll see you all again tomorrow when AoH’s Round #3 wallpaper kicks off, or if not then, come Monday when we’ll have another interesting post for all! Meanwhile we'll be prepping Nat's 'assets' for her update, and finishing up our much awaited NTR v0.1 content. Until then…

Be Prime and beWilder!