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(Edited March 27, extra pictures, shortened or removed some redundant paragraphs.)

Hey, welcome to another rambling session of mine. The previous session was about Composition ! Go check that out if you haven't already. This time it is about imperfection and how it might relate to you and your 3D CGI. Once again I am not a trained academic at this stuff. This is all tricks and techniques and theory I taught and thought up either myself or from videos and books. My opinions about this could change as I myself am also always learning.

Do not take any of what I say as some kind of judgement of you and/or your work, we all learn from each other's mistakes, and so you can do from mine. In the end, we're all free to choose how we want to express ourselves. This is just my take on things.

Also, this is truly a rambling session. Normally I take out way more time to plan these kinds of things, but because we're all stuck at home now, I'm speeding these things along. Forgive me if it's a bit jumbled.

And speaking of which, I hope everyone is safe! Like I said a week ago, I don't want to keep going on about the pandemic gripping the world. I want you to be able to come here and forget about all of it, be entertained, inspired. But still, I hope you're all good. For those interested, here's a little playlist of uplifting videos about people goofing around in quarantine.

Anyway, onwards!!!

Rules in comic-making?
Making an erotic 3D CGI comic can be quite a complicated process, with many things to think about... depending on who you are, of course. You might prefer to keep things simple, but if you're like me... lol... with me it can be like: a story, plot, theme? Whose's story is it? What is the goal? How much sex? How much story? How does the sex and story work? designing unique characters? What clothes do they wear? designing a unique environment, related to the characters? make my own props, buy them? Which vendor is good? light placement, camera placement? self-management (forcing yourself to actually make the damn thing), making sure the comic is as good as you imagined it would be, maybe change it to improve it? are the textures ok? are the renders convincing enough? are the expressions convincing? etc etc bla bla...

Making a CGI comic from home is basically like pretending to be a Hollywood studio by yourself. You're doing everything yourself! So much you can forget or get lost in. Storytelling, directing, cinematography, acting... (I will make a journal about this process at some point, HOW to make a comic!) So sometimes you need to set up some guidelines or rules to keep you from forgetting stuff.

I will start from the beginning and share with you some basic rules about how I make even just one render.

Simulating a bit of reality... but how much?Because 3D CGI comics can be a lot of work, some 3D CGI artists like to keep things minimal and I don't blame them. The more figures and props you have in your scene, the slower your scene becomes to work in, and the more likely it is that you might screw up somewhere. So there are certain rules I subject myself to, to help me remember things to maintain the world that I've created. The most important one is: imperfection.

Deliberate chaos
So, like I mentioned in my previous rambling , people always seek order and patterns in the world around us, we're always comparing and matching things, we see rabbits in the clouds and faces on Mars, it might be the reason for Deja vu, we're always trying to connect things. But for the most part, we expect chaos, since the universe is chaotic, with here and there hints of order, like gravity, or things moving in a straight line. If there's anything too straight, too clean, too perfect, or repetitive... we WILL find it. And if we find it in art, it will break the spell...

...unless that was intended. Cartoons like Toy Story, or even hand drawn ones, all have this look throughout the production, and therefore it doesn't show up anymore. You're already in the zone of cartoon and therefore you can get on with the story... but now there will be more pressure on the acting, expressions and dialog. If the image is no big deal to look at, then something else must be so interesting so that the image is not as big of a deal.

My work lies somewhere in the middle of realistic and cartoony. I know I can achieve way more realistic by using renderers like Octane or if I ever use DAZ Studio, Iray. But with Firefly, for now, I can achieve a certain level of cartoony realism, making the renders still compelling enough to by themselves be entertaining, and also compliment the characters and their stories. It's a balance that we can choose to make. Think about all the comics that have entertained you in your life, how many of those were hand-drawn? They weren't exactly realistic, were they? Yet, they were still entertaining. With 3D CGI this combination is also possible, but you need to make sure that whatever style you choose, that it still holds. You can see in the simplistic Hoodwinked, even it was rendered with a potato, all their clothing, hair, props, and expressions still worked well. And the story was still entertaining despite the plastic look of the movie.

The renderer doesn't matter, it's the consistency and the story.

So, if you choose realism, or some measure of it, you need to replicate chaos deliberately, so that it doesn't distract you and blends into the background... yet feels convincing if you choose to look at it. No matter how OCD we are, and no matter how attached we are to our smooth-skinned barbies, we might have to deliberately mess things up to make it 'real'... unless you're ok with the sterile cartoony look. This is all highly subjective of course, but for me, a fantasy becomes more thrilling if it can exist within the realm of possibility.

Dirt, grunge, wear and tearALL props and items in my renders have some kind of grunge texture attached to them to break surfaces that are too perfect. RAW CGI has a tendency to look sterile and plastic, while reality is messy and imperfect. Go to some table in your house and take a look at the surface. Unless you're a NASA scientist, or your table is brand new, or if you spend a LOT of time polishing your surfaces with fine sandpaper and wax polish, your table will be either scratched, chipped, dirty, dusty, stained, bumpy, have fluff on it, be fading off to the sides, even if only slightly. By default all CGI tables are NASA-designed super tables with a surreal spotless finish, and many artists just load that into their scenes and render without thinking. That is an immersion killer straight away. Even if you mean to have an immaculate table like this in your scene, or even if you have a minimalist scene (check the hospital scene below), I would still somehow find a way to rough it up a bit. The same applies to clothing, vehicles, furniture, and even people to some extent.

And even though it's barely visible, most surfaces in this set with Lucette has a slight grunge texture to it.

The pictures below are older renders, and you can see that I've tried to give everything a rough edge, everything needs to blend into the scene, either conforming to the figures or all the items in the scene having a bit of a rough appearance. But look at Xtina's panties, they're not conforming that well, and it's stuff like that that can take the spell away. Same with the red pillow on Lali's bed, and her boxers, they're too perfect, too 3D. The rest has a rough edge to it, even the wall has a grunge texture.

CornersThis might be a nit pick, but in some renders it really shows. CGI has a tendency to have very sharp corners... like microscopically sharp corners. Look at your table again, and look at the edges. It's not sharp is it? The closer you look at the edge, the more rounded it becomes. Now that you've seen it, if you step away from the table, you won't be able to unsee that edge, isn't it? Thankfully many vendors are being more mindful of this and round off these edges with something called chamfering. I've been doing it more and more with my props and it does LOADS to help with realism.

Relax the colorsTry to avoid bright vivid colors in these kinds of scenes as well. Take any random photograph and throw it into photoshop. Now play with the saturation. You can see that the colors can get a LOT more vivid. Only use bright colors for things like sports cars, sports items, clothing, kitchen items, toys, and perhaps weird designer furniture. But even with those items, the colors will never be as pure in a photograph. Unless we lived in the 1980's, most colors must all be kinda faded or desaturated. If you look at all of the girls' rooms, even though they're colorful, none of them have like bright neon-like colors. It's all kind of desaturated, or some shade of pastel.

SHADOWS DAMMIT!!!Also, and this might also have other reasons, but I see people being scared of having deep shadows in their scenes. I'm not sure if this is because of wanting every part of the scene perfectly lit, or if they're not using their renderers to the max. But the scene doesn't have to be perfectly lit, just put lights where you'd expect lights to be. Shadows are extremely important. Look at the shadow between Lail's drumset, it's pretty dark isn't it? There's no need for light to ever come there. With two lights, Laila's room is adequately lit up. In the still life with the clutter on the table, look at the deep dark color around the envelope, the pistols, the nail polish, etc... yet everything is still clear, and it's a bright picture.

Perfectly imperfect: an exampleAllow me to take you through a series of renders to explain a lot of what I said above. I will also touch upon some things I mentioned in my other Rambling Session about composition.

Most of you will know the living room in the Millerstreet student housing apartment that the girls live in. I'm going to take that as an example of how to make it perfectly imperfect.

Let's strip it down completely and rebuild it.

There are a lot of things in this image that I can talk about that even some artists keep doing even when they use professional renderers. Let's talk about the lighting. I see this style of lighting a lot, and it doesn't make much sense relating to the scene, as in, the lighting seems to have nothing to do with the scene. Some artists (even popular ones that use hella expensive renderers) put a huge light off to the side and pretty much ignore the actual light props they themselves have built into the scene.

Those (picture above)... why not use them?

So we've put lights on the actual light props. But now the shadows are somehow weak (picture above). Most 3D CGI packages have an option to dial shadows from 0 to 1. Weakening the shadows might be ok for technical illustrations, but not for artistic stuff. That dial should be locked firmly at 1, or 100% or whatever the dial maximum is. Some artists just leave out shadows altogether, or forget to check the shadows option on one light, which then bathes the entire scene in light through the walls of another room, which is physically impossible, and therefore unrealistic. Check all your shadows.

Shadows fixed. But hm, the scene looks dead (picture above). That shadow on the ceiling is really dark. Shading in corners seem sharp. Not natural. Light bounces around doesn't it? This might be hard for some artists to immediately see, but Indirect Lighting (IDL) solves this. In other applications it might be called global illumination or something. Not sure. But see below what happens:

IDL applied. Notice how the light bouncing around from the floor is hitting the ceiling now.
(the blotches on the back wall at the sink are artefacts from low quality setting. I rendered this very fast)
Ok now we can start troubleshooting the textures.
- Everything looks flat, plastic. The couches look like rubber, looks very Poser, everything looks sterile. People live here right? It could just be a clean apartment, but those couches look like cheap plastic. I've never owned a couch like that, let alone seen one.
- Floor texture is too large for the floor. I see this a LOT (I sometimes screw up with this too). Textures that don't suit the scene, too large or (even worse) stretched so that you can see the pixellation.

- I roughed up some surfaces with a bump map. The walls, couches, glass even. Simply adding some bumpiness to rough them up works wonders.
- I also toned down the specularity on the walls and couches.
- and also making the colors a little dull.
- Added Sub-Surface Scatter (SSS) to the lampshade so the light shines through.
- Added reflections to glass, kitchen top and cupboards.
- Added displacement on the carpet.
- Added grunge maps to everything, incl glass, walls
- Added tiles to the ceiling, and a grunge map.
Now for the finishing touches:

Basically adding textures and clutter.
- Note the slight blotchiness of the carpet and the ceiling
- Note the wear and tear on the single-seater. These are students that live off hand-me-downs.
- The wallpaper in the hallway it tearing off.
- upper reaches of the walls are dirty...

Now for some Postwork:

Nope, postwork is not cheating. This 'no postwork' thing is for render-sports, for avid renderer fans, or for advertising renderers. You can do it if you really want, but you don't need to feel compelled to. No postwork is like a a film photographer swearing against dark rooms; like a traditional pencil artists insisting that they don't use an eraser, or a writer insisting on publishing the first draft without editing it. It's a bit of a sport that only serves to show off what the renderer itself can do, or how well you can master the renderer. Professional photographers often shoot 2 stops darker than the camera reads so that the photo doesn't wash out. They then post-work it in Photoshop. Renderers also often render darker. Postwork is perfectly ok. This does not have to be a sport, this is art. But that's your choice.

Lastly, and a little off topic, but maybe also something that stems from wanting everything to be perfectly in view, like said in the previous Rambling Session , there seems to be a prevalence for Poser/DS artists to want to have the camera super far away from the scene instead of in the scene. Here's an example:

Lit from an awkward direction (and not using the scene light props), and then the camera from some location where no human is likely to be, and basically requires the room to be HUGE! For me to achieve this shot, I had to delete the polygons from the front of the girls' flat and put the camera way outside over where the street would be. This is what I mean with killing the immersion, people will instinctively know that there's something off with that viewpoint, even if they cannot describe it. You're almost creating a doll-house effect. If that's what you're intending, then fine, but if you want immersion, you need to avoid things like this. Put the camera IN the room with the subjects... or somewhere where you'd expect an actual camera, like a CCTV camera, or a sport photographer set up at the side of a football pitch.
:thumb:
Again, this is my style of doing things. I prefer trying to emulate photography, or even what the actual eye can see. It's an easy way to get just that little bit more realism in your renders, I believe.

Repetitiveness in posingBelow is a recent test render of a scene in the Disco Dragon 4. As you can see there's a lot of figures posed differently, it gives a convincing feel of chaos on the dance floor. But how long did it take you to see the repeated pose? That immediately snaps you out of the scene, didn't it? It reminds you that you're looking at a Poser/CGI scene, and the artist used the same pose on a few characters. I think I changed it in the actual comic but I cannot remember.

Now a lot of Poser/DS artists have the tendency to start making excuses (including me ), like for example here you could say: "oh but they're performing the same dance." But we humans are so good at noticing patterns that we can tell the difference between a similar pose and an exact copy. The poses of the girls in the front rows are all slightly varies, but the pose of the girl in the back is an exact copy of the girl in the middle front. THIS is what I mean with repetitiveness.

What is the problem with repeated poses? Humans don't sit still. They just don't, even if they're tied up. Only if they're in deep sleep, or unconscious, or dead, do they lie perfectly still. Does this mean that you have to keep posing your characters ALL the time in a comic? Not really.

A trick in 3D CGI comics is that you can change the camera angle, or position while the character(s) remain in the same pose. Moving a camera will break the continuity and if they had actually moved a bit, you wouldn't notice it anyway. This trick alleviates you from having to change all their poses and is less work. But this trick doesn't always work. If the pose is a simple relaxed stand, like an idle stand, or relaxed sit, you can get away with it. But, if the pose is a very specific one, like a dynamic pose where you expect the next move to be drastically different, like walking, dancing, people WILL notice. It will end up looking like you've just moved a few statues around. People have an uncanny ability to see in 3D, even if they don't realize it, and they will spot a repeated pose quite easily, especially if it's a very specific one.

Below you can see everyone looking at Xtina. They're all in a relaxed stance. You wouldn't expect them to be moving much in the next frame, except for slight movements like breathing, blinking, arms holding mobile phones, and the natural sway of balancing on two legs. If I make all those poses, but then move the camera, all those tiny details would be lost anyway. So you don't really need to make them.

Below is the next picture and you can see the camera has moved down and closer to the girls. Maria, Lali and Laila haven't moved. But Julie's head and eyes have moved, as well as Xtina's arm and head eyes. Heads pretty much always move, especially the eyes and lips. The girls' looking away from the camera don't need their eyes moving, but the girls looking at the camera absolutely do.

Look as all the character's movements in the 82-97 in the Press Conference / House Tour series, especially Julie in the background, everyone is always moving, even if only slightly.

But what if you keep the camera still, like on a tripod? Yeah, then you're going to have to move them... the WHOLE time!
Pictures 35-46 from the same Press Conference / House Tour series are a good example of that. It's not easy to do, and not entirely perfect, but it's better than making the girls look like inert statues.

And when I make my girls move in a scene, like walking or running, I make sure that the next pose is actually 'the next step' or just a different walk pose.
Here's an example of the girls walking. Note how Lali's and Maria's legs have swapped poses.

Here's an example of a kick when swimming as Lali swims past.

Here's an example of the girls climbing over stuff. Note, none of their poses are the same, or repeated.

So, as you can see, there's LOTS I can cover regarding imperfection. To break it down, I focus on the following:

Add dirt / stains, bumps... everywhere!!!...even if only slight. Mirrors, tables, cars, guns, walls even. Ever single surface in my renders has some kind of feint grunge texture incorporated into it. Nothing, not even latex, is entirely one color.
Look at the bumpines of the posters behind Laila, and the roughed up centers of the drumskins.

Look at the slight greasiness of the shiny metal of the taps, you can also see a little on the speakers.

Make things reflect... imperfectlyEverything reflects light, and this can be achieved with actual reflections and indirect lighting. Shine a torch (flashlight) in a dark room at something dark, the room will stay relatively dark. Now take a white sheet of paper and put it in front of the torch, see how the room lights up. This is indirect lighting (or IDL). some apps call it differently, but the mechanism is the same.

The effect is very subtle but you can see it between the wall and Lali's left thigh. Her skin is reflecting light onto the wall. Every single item in a scene reflects light, you simply cannot leave this effect out if you want realism.

Note the blue shadows, that is because of the sky. Without IDL, you would simply not be able to see the text on the sign post. Would you believe me if I said this scene has just ONE light?

Then also add actual reflections in your scene. But to make all your assets reflective will kill your render time dead. So be selective of this. Anything that is flat and simple, give it reflection, even if it is at it's lowest quality. Tables, furniture, lamps, wooden floors, pianos, fingernails, eye surfaces, etc. And don't make the reflections too perfect, add a grunge layer to the reflection. Your coffee table is not the Hubble Telescope mirror. Skin doesn't need to be reflective unless wet.

Even the concrete floor is reflecting:

Add clutter where one expects clutterDesk, bathroom, cupboard, shelves, kitchen... last night's dinner. This should speak for itself...

Always keep the characters moving...like mentioned above, even if only slightly, especially if the camera is standing still. Humans never sit still. If you let the viewer notice that they're CGI dolls that don't move, the spell is broken. Even if the camera moves, an exact copy of a pose can still be noticed. It will kill the immersion instantly.

Try make expressions asymmetricHumans are simply not robots. Doesn't always have to be, but it really helps.

Vary expressions as much as possible. Do NOT repeat the same expression within the next several frames, especially when they're talking. I see a lot of artists (even professional ones) have like one expression for when they're talking. It basically makes them look stuck in that expression. Make them say shhh and la and hmm and eee, for example. And again, make the lips move more to the right or left. Lali speaks to the left.

Try and mimic the words to their expressionsLike what I said above, but also if they say 'you' don't let their face say 'me'. Go by the last work in their speech bubble.

Make expressions and poses as subtle and casual as possiblePeople are lazy, they won't strike a catwalk pose while having a chat over the phone, for example. Try to avoid pin-up poses unless your girls are actually deliberately posing. For the rest, keep it casual:

Keep the eyes busyHuman eyes (as well as all creatures actually) are always darting around, looking at everything and everyone. Look as any series of mine and keep track of all the girls. Their eyes are moving pretty much all the time.

Keep the camera movingLike I mentioned above, it breaks the pattern of repetitive scenes and creates an illusion of natural movement... unless it's fixed, like on a tripod.

Check up on each character ... every 5 frames, even characters not in the center of attention. Ask yourself, what would they be doing in the background? Characters like Laila get bored easily and will do something funny, or set fire to something just to see what people will say.

Pics from Webcam Update , UK Trip and Pool Party .

Make your characters imperfect tooNot everyone needs to be socially savvy, or a bimbo, or a team-player. One or two is enough. Often the rebels are the interesting ones, and will give the others a reason to respond. The only real bimbo in my group is Lali. The rest are slightly more reserved or sneaky or off in their own world, or perhaps even entirely oblivious. How boring would the interaction be between Xtina and Lali if Xtina would just say yes to everything Lali wants... would Lali even bother then? Not everyone will have the same mindset, even if they all have naughty thoughts (they're only humans), they might all have different ideas about it. Just having a group of wish-fulfilment girls might be fun at first, but you'll be able to see the person behind the curtain of the puppet-show after a while. Of course there are gradations to this, as my girls are also to some extent stylized wish-fulfilment girls, but I try to hide it behind the way they interact with their world.

Let characters do their own thingThis ties into what I said before (like with Laila), but sometimes an opportunity will arise in a story and if you know your characters well enough, you can just see that they wouldn't let it go. Lali,Laila and Christina are those types of characters that can break with the plot and just go do their own thing. It sounds metaphysical but for me it's a reality I work with. It's also the reason why the Disco dragon series is so long: I was literally nudging Lali and Xtina's characters in the right direction and then realizing that Xtina would sabotage it here and there. So, let characters screw your plans up, only fun can come of it.

Don't let them conform so easilyor it will have that typical porno movie vibe and all your believability will go out the window. This is more of a personal thing. It's one of the reasons I haven't bothered with porn movies for years. Anything so easily given away cannot be worth much. No woman in her right mind will just concede to sex, there must be a really good reason for it, and the more you make it part of the story, the more real the sex becomes. I know that the idea of porn movies is that they gloss over all the build up and chit-chat and git busy immediately, but I feel it takes away the element of seduction entirely, which IMO is probably as exciting as the sex itself. Even Lali with how naughty she is, always needs some proper reason or purpose for having sex with someone. This can be anything to seeing a hot Persian photographer to trying to convince Christina that joining in an orgy is fun. Make them really need it, or convince them that they need it, give the sex purpose, make it a challenge. It makes the sex so much more fun IMO.

This is MY WAY of doing things, you don't need to do thisSo I've just shared a lot of ideas on how I look at 3D CGI comics. I'm always a bit worried that I come across as judgmental over other people's work. It's a natural part of being an artist I think, you see others do something, you either want to do it too, or not. And nobody is perfect... and everyone has their own style. Whatever works. I've seen artists with very primitive render styles tell extremely fun stories, and I've seen artists that can mimic photographs make very boring renders. If that's what works for you, then keep going down that road...

What do you want? And for who?And that brings me to my next point: none of this is an exact science, and it entirely depends on what you like seeing or perhaps more importantly, what your fans / viewers like seeing. And what balance are you striking between your vision, your workflow, and their wishes. Without realizing it, many people might pick up on imperfections in your work while you might be blind to it. If you work very hard on something, you might overlook some obvious errors. This is why you NEED to listen to your fans / viewers and take criticism. That doesn't mean you need to accept everything they say, you might just prefer a different style, or it just works better for you. The question is, can you accept not attracting new fans because of your chosen style?

Example 1: even though I can technically very easily do it, I'm not into futagirls or anal sex, and I accept that I am missing out on a large customer base because of it. There are many other artists that do the futagirl / anal sex thing to perfection, but I offer different things.

Example 2: back in 2013 I was told that Lali's eyes were too big. At first I didn't see it, but later I realized they might be right. So I changed that. Around the same time, when CODE 10 came out, I was also told that my style was far too scruffy. Like all artists I resisted, but I did listen and cleaned my work up.

ConclusionAnyhow, I hope this was interesting. If you're not a renderer then this might all seem like drivel to you. Hopefully the renders were entertaining Let me know what you thought of it, and perhaps also let me know if you have any particular things you'd like a rambling session over.

Stay safe everyone, stay creative, and stay naughty!!

:D (Big Grin) — Description
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(Edited March 27, extra pictures, shortened or removed some redundant paragraphs.)

Hey, welcome to another rambling session of mine. The previous session was about Composition ! Go check that out if you haven't already. This time it is about imperfection and how it might relate to you and your 3D CGI. Once again I am not a trained academic at this stuff. This is all tricks and techniques and theory I taught and thought up either myself or from videos and books. My opinions about this could change as I myself am also always learning.

Do not take any of what I say as some kind of judgement of you and/or your work, we all learn from each other's mistakes, and so you can do from mine. In the end, we're all free to choose how we want to express ourselves. This is just my take on things.

Also, this is truly a rambling session. Normally I take out way more time to plan these kinds of things, but because we're all stuck at home now, I'm speeding these things along. Forgive me if it's a bit jumbled.

And speaking of which, I hope everyone is safe! Like I said a week ago, I don't want to keep going on about the pandemic gripping the world. I want you to be able to come here and forget about all of it, be entertained, inspired. But still, I hope you're all good. For those interested, here's a little playlist of uplifting videos about people goofing around in quarantine.

Anyway, onwards!!!

Rules in comic-making?
Making an erotic 3D CGI comic can be quite a complicated process, with many things to think about... depending on who you are, of course. You might prefer to keep things simple, but if you're like me... lol... with me it can be like: a story, plot, theme? Whose's story is it? What is the goal? How much sex? How much story? How does the sex and story work? designing unique characters? What clothes do they wear? designing a unique environment, related to the characters? make my own props, buy them? Which vendor is good? light placement, camera placement? self-management (forcing yourself to actually make the damn thing), making sure the comic is as good as you imagined it would be, maybe change it to improve it? are the textures ok? are the renders convincing enough? are the expressions convincing? etc etc bla bla...

Making a CGI comic from home is basically like pretending to be a Hollywood studio by yourself. You're doing everything yourself! So much you can forget or get lost in. Storytelling, directing, cinematography, acting... (I will make a journal about this process at some point, HOW to make a comic!) So sometimes you need to set up some guidelines or rules to keep you from forgetting stuff.

I will start from the beginning and share with you some basic rules about how I make even just one render.

Simulating a bit of reality... but how much?Because 3D CGI comics can be a lot of work, some 3D CGI artists like to keep things minimal and I don't blame them. The more figures and props you have in your scene, the slower your scene becomes to work in, and the more likely it is that you might screw up somewhere. So there are certain rules I subject myself to, to help me remember things to maintain the world that I've created. The most important one is: imperfection.

Deliberate chaos
So, like I mentioned in my previous rambling , people always seek order and patterns in the world around us, we're always comparing and matching things, we see rabbits in the clouds and faces on Mars, it might be the reason for Deja vu, we're always trying to connect things. But for the most part, we expect chaos, since the universe is chaotic, with here and there hints of order, like gravity, or things moving in a straight line. If there's anything too straight, too clean, too perfect, or repetitive... we WILL find it. And if we find it in art, it will break the spell...

...unless that was intended. Cartoons like Toy Story, or even hand drawn ones, all have this look throughout the production, and therefore it doesn't show up anymore. You're already in the zone of cartoon and therefore you can get on with the story... but now there will be more pressure on the acting, expressions and dialog. If the image is no big deal to look at, then something else must be so interesting so that the image is not as big of a deal.

My work lies somewhere in the middle of realistic and cartoony. I know I can achieve way more realistic by using renderers like Octane or if I ever use DAZ Studio, Iray. But with Firefly, for now, I can achieve a certain level of cartoony realism, making the renders still compelling enough to by themselves be entertaining, and also compliment the characters and their stories. It's a balance that we can choose to make. Think about all the comics that have entertained you in your life, how many of those were hand-drawn? They weren't exactly realistic, were they? Yet, they were still entertaining. With 3D CGI this combination is also possible, but you need to make sure that whatever style you choose, that it still holds. You can see in the simplistic Hoodwinked, even it was rendered with a potato, all their clothing, hair, props, and expressions still worked well. And the story was still entertaining despite the plastic look of the movie.

The renderer doesn't matter, it's the consistency and the story.

So, if you choose realism, or some measure of it, you need to replicate chaos deliberately, so that it doesn't distract you and blends into the background... yet feels convincing if you choose to look at it. No matter how OCD we are, and no matter how attached we are to our smooth-skinned barbies, we might have to deliberately mess things up to make it 'real'... unless you're ok with the sterile cartoony look. This is all highly subjective of course, but for me, a fantasy becomes more thrilling if it can exist within the realm of possibility.

Dirt, grunge, wear and tearALL props and items in my renders have some kind of grunge texture attached to them to break surfaces that are too perfect. RAW CGI has a tendency to look sterile and plastic, while reality is messy and imperfect. Go to some table in your house and take a look at the surface. Unless you're a NASA scientist, or your table is brand new, or if you spend a LOT of time polishing your surfaces with fine sandpaper and wax polish, your table will be either scratched, chipped, dirty, dusty, stained, bumpy, have fluff on it, be fading off to the sides, even if only slightly. By default all CGI tables are NASA-designed super tables with a surreal spotless finish, and many artists just load that into their scenes and render without thinking. That is an immersion killer straight away. Even if you mean to have an immaculate table like this in your scene, or even if you have a minimalist scene (check the hospital scene below), I would still somehow find a way to rough it up a bit. The same applies to clothing, vehicles, furniture, and even people to some extent.

And even though it's barely visible, most surfaces in this set with Lucette has a slight grunge texture to it.

The pictures below are older renders, and you can see that I've tried to give everything a rough edge, everything needs to blend into the scene, either conforming to the figures or all the items in the scene having a bit of a rough appearance. But look at Xtina's panties, they're not conforming that well, and it's stuff like that that can take the spell away. Same with the red pillow on Lali's bed, and her boxers, they're too perfect, too 3D. The rest has a rough edge to it, even the wall has a grunge texture.

CornersThis might be a nit pick, but in some renders it really shows. CGI has a tendency to have very sharp corners... like microscopically sharp corners. Look at your table again, and look at the edges. It's not sharp is it? The closer you look at the edge, the more rounded it becomes. Now that you've seen it, if you step away from the table, you won't be able to unsee that edge, isn't it? Thankfully many vendors are being more mindful of this and round off these edges with something called chamfering. I've been doing it more and more with my props and it does LOADS to help with realism.

Relax the colorsTry to avoid bright vivid colors in these kinds of scenes as well. Take any random photograph and throw it into photoshop. Now play with the saturation. You can see that the colors can get a LOT more vivid. Only use bright colors for things like sports cars, sports items, clothing, kitchen items, toys, and perhaps weird designer furniture. But even with those items, the colors will never be as pure in a photograph. Unless we lived in the 1980's, most colors must all be kinda faded or desaturated. If you look at all of the girls' rooms, even though they're colorful, none of them have like bright neon-like colors. It's all kind of desaturated, or some shade of pastel.

SHADOWS DAMMIT!!!Also, and this might also have other reasons, but I see people being scared of having deep shadows in their scenes. I'm not sure if this is because of wanting every part of the scene perfectly lit, or if they're not using their renderers to the max. But the scene doesn't have to be perfectly lit, just put lights where you'd expect lights to be. Shadows are extremely important. Look at the shadow between Lail's drumset, it's pretty dark isn't it? There's no need for light to ever come there. With two lights, Laila's room is adequately lit up. In the still life with the clutter on the table, look at the deep dark color around the envelope, the pistols, the nail polish, etc... yet everything is still clear, and it's a bright picture.

Perfectly imperfect: an exampleAllow me to take you through a series of renders to explain a lot of what I said above. I will also touch upon some things I mentioned in my other Rambling Session about composition.

Most of you will know the living room in the Millerstreet student housing apartment that the girls live in. I'm going to take that as an example of how to make it perfectly imperfect.

Let's strip it down completely and rebuild it.

There are a lot of things in this image that I can talk about that even some artists keep doing even when they use professional renderers. Let's talk about the lighting. I see this style of lighting a lot, and it doesn't make much sense relating to the scene, as in, the lighting seems to have nothing to do with the scene. Some artists (even popular ones that use hella expensive renderers) put a huge light off to the side and pretty much ignore the actual light props they themselves have built into the scene.

Those (picture above)... why not use them?

So we've put lights on the actual light props. But now the shadows are somehow weak (picture above). Most 3D CGI packages have an option to dial shadows from 0 to 1. Weakening the shadows might be ok for technical illustrations, but not for artistic stuff. That dial should be locked firmly at 1, or 100% or whatever the dial maximum is. Some artists just leave out shadows altogether, or forget to check the shadows option on one light, which then bathes the entire scene in light through the walls of another room, which is physically impossible, and therefore unrealistic. Check all your shadows.

Shadows fixed. But hm, the scene looks dead (picture above). That shadow on the ceiling is really dark. Shading in corners seem sharp. Not natural. Light bounces around doesn't it? This might be hard for some artists to immediately see, but Indirect Lighting (IDL) solves this. In other applications it might be called global illumination or something. Not sure. But see below what happens:

IDL applied. Notice how the light bouncing around from the floor is hitting the ceiling now.
(the blotches on the back wall at the sink are artefacts from low quality setting. I rendered this very fast)
Ok now we can start troubleshooting the textures.
- Everything looks flat, plastic. The couches look like rubber, looks very Poser, everything looks sterile. People live here right? It could just be a clean apartment, but those couches look like cheap plastic. I've never owned a couch like that, let alone seen one.
- Floor texture is too large for the floor. I see this a LOT (I sometimes screw up with this too). Textures that don't suit the scene, too large or (even worse) stretched so that you can see the pixellation.

- I roughed up some surfaces with a bump map. The walls, couches, glass even. Simply adding some bumpiness to rough them up works wonders.
- I also toned down the specularity on the walls and couches.
- and also making the colors a little dull.
- Added Sub-Surface Scatter (SSS) to the lampshade so the light shines through.
- Added reflections to glass, kitchen top and cupboards.
- Added displacement on the carpet.
- Added grunge maps to everything, incl glass, walls
- Added tiles to the ceiling, and a grunge map.
Now for the finishing touches:

Basically adding textures and clutter.
- Note the slight blotchiness of the carpet and the ceiling
- Note the wear and tear on the single-seater. These are students that live off hand-me-downs.
- The wallpaper in the hallway it tearing off.
- upper reaches of the walls are dirty...

Now for some Postwork:

Nope, postwork is not cheating. This 'no postwork' thing is for render-sports, for avid renderer fans, or for advertising renderers. You can do it if you really want, but you don't need to feel compelled to. No postwork is like a a film photographer swearing against dark rooms; like a traditional pencil artists insisting that they don't use an eraser, or a writer insisting on publishing the first draft without editing it. It's a bit of a sport that only serves to show off what the renderer itself can do, or how well you can master the renderer. Professional photographers often shoot 2 stops darker than the camera reads so that the photo doesn't wash out. They then post-work it in Photoshop. Renderers also often render darker. Postwork is perfectly ok. This does not have to be a sport, this is art. But that's your choice.

Lastly, and a little off topic, but maybe also something that stems from wanting everything to be perfectly in view, like said in the previous Rambling Session , there seems to be a prevalence for Poser/DS artists to want to have the camera super far away from the scene instead of in the scene. Here's an example:

Lit from an awkward direction (and not using the scene light props), and then the camera from some location where no human is likely to be, and basically requires the room to be HUGE! For me to achieve this shot, I had to delete the polygons from the front of the girls' flat and put the camera way outside over where the street would be. This is what I mean with killing the immersion, people will instinctively know that there's something off with that viewpoint, even if they cannot describe it. You're almost creating a doll-house effect. If that's what you're intending, then fine, but if you want immersion, you need to avoid things like this. Put the camera IN the room with the subjects... or somewhere where you'd expect an actual camera, like a CCTV camera, or a sport photographer set up at the side of a football pitch.
:thumb:
Again, this is my style of doing things. I prefer trying to emulate photography, or even what the actual eye can see. It's an easy way to get just that little bit more realism in your renders, I believe.

Repetitiveness in posingBelow is a recent test render of a scene in the Disco Dragon 4. As you can see there's a lot of figures posed differently, it gives a convincing feel of chaos on the dance floor. But how long did it take you to see the repeated pose? That immediately snaps you out of the scene, didn't it? It reminds you that you're looking at a Poser/CGI scene, and the artist used the same pose on a few characters. I think I changed it in the actual comic but I cannot remember.

Now a lot of Poser/DS artists have the tendency to start making excuses (including me ), like for example here you could say: "oh but they're performing the same dance." But we humans are so good at noticing patterns that we can tell the difference between a similar pose and an exact copy. The poses of the girls in the front rows are all slightly varies, but the pose of the girl in the back is an exact copy of the girl in the middle front. THIS is what I mean with repetitiveness.

What is the problem with repeated poses? Humans don't sit still. They just don't, even if they're tied up. Only if they're in deep sleep, or unconscious, or dead, do they lie perfectly still. Does this mean that you have to keep posing your characters ALL the time in a comic? Not really.

A trick in 3D CGI comics is that you can change the camera angle, or position while the character(s) remain in the same pose. Moving a camera will break the continuity and if they had actually moved a bit, you wouldn't notice it anyway. This trick alleviates you from having to change all their poses and is less work. But this trick doesn't always work. If the pose is a simple relaxed stand, like an idle stand, or relaxed sit, you can get away with it. But, if the pose is a very specific one, like a dynamic pose where you expect the next move to be drastically different, like walking, dancing, people WILL notice. It will end up looking like you've just moved a few statues around. People have an uncanny ability to see in 3D, even if they don't realize it, and they will spot a repeated pose quite easily, especially if it's a very specific one.

Below you can see everyone looking at Xtina. They're all in a relaxed stance. You wouldn't expect them to be moving much in the next frame, except for slight movements like breathing, blinking, arms holding mobile phones, and the natural sway of balancing on two legs. If I make all those poses, but then move the camera, all those tiny details would be lost anyway. So you don't really need to make them.

Below is the next picture and you can see the camera has moved down and closer to the girls. Maria, Lali and Laila haven't moved. But Julie's head and eyes have moved, as well as Xtina's arm and head eyes. Heads pretty much always move, especially the eyes and lips. The girls' looking away from the camera don't need their eyes moving, but the girls looking at the camera absolutely do.

Look as all the character's movements in the 82-97 in the Press Conference / House Tour series, especially Julie in the background, everyone is always moving, even if only slightly.

But what if you keep the camera still, like on a tripod? Yeah, then you're going to have to move them... the WHOLE time!
Pictures 35-46 from the same Press Conference / House Tour series are a good example of that. It's not easy to do, and not entirely perfect, but it's better than making the girls look like inert statues.

And when I make my girls move in a scene, like walking or running, I make sure that the next pose is actually 'the next step' or just a different walk pose.
Here's an example of the girls walking. Note how Lali's and Maria's legs have swapped poses.

Here's an example of a kick when swimming as Lali swims past.

Here's an example of the girls climbing over stuff. Note, none of their poses are the same, or repeated.

So, as you can see, there's LOTS I can cover regarding imperfection. To break it down, I focus on the following:

Add dirt / stains, bumps... everywhere!!!...even if only slight. Mirrors, tables, cars, guns, walls even. Ever single surface in my renders has some kind of feint grunge texture incorporated into it. Nothing, not even latex, is entirely one color.
Look at the bumpines of the posters behind Laila, and the roughed up centers of the drumskins.

Look at the slight greasiness of the shiny metal of the taps, you can also see a little on the speakers.

Make things reflect... imperfectlyEverything reflects light, and this can be achieved with actual reflections and indirect lighting. Shine a torch (flashlight) in a dark room at something dark, the room will stay relatively dark. Now take a white sheet of paper and put it in front of the torch, see how the room lights up. This is indirect lighting (or IDL). some apps call it differently, but the mechanism is the same.

The effect is very subtle but you can see it between the wall and Lali's left thigh. Her skin is reflecting light onto the wall. Every single item in a scene reflects light, you simply cannot leave this effect out if you want realism.

Note the blue shadows, that is because of the sky. Without IDL, you would simply not be able to see the text on the sign post. Would you believe me if I said this scene has just ONE light?

Then also add actual reflections in your scene. But to make all your assets reflective will kill your render time dead. So be selective of this. Anything that is flat and simple, give it reflection, even if it is at it's lowest quality. Tables, furniture, lamps, wooden floors, pianos, fingernails, eye surfaces, etc. And don't make the reflections too perfect, add a grunge layer to the reflection. Your coffee table is not the Hubble Telescope mirror. Skin doesn't need to be reflective unless wet.

Even the concrete floor is reflecting:

Add clutter where one expects clutterDesk, bathroom, cupboard, shelves, kitchen... last night's dinner. This should speak for itself...

Always keep the characters moving...like mentioned above, even if only slightly, especially if the camera is standing still. Humans never sit still. If you let the viewer notice that they're CGI dolls that don't move, the spell is broken. Even if the camera moves, an exact copy of a pose can still be noticed. It will kill the immersion instantly.

Try make expressions asymmetricHumans are simply not robots. Doesn't always have to be, but it really helps.

Vary expressions as much as possible. Do NOT repeat the same expression within the next several frames, especially when they're talking. I see a lot of artists (even professional ones) have like one expression for when they're talking. It basically makes them look stuck in that expression. Make them say shhh and la and hmm and eee, for example. And again, make the lips move more to the right or left. Lali speaks to the left.

Try and mimic the words to their expressionsLike what I said above, but also if they say 'you' don't let their face say 'me'. Go by the last work in their speech bubble.

Make expressions and poses as subtle and casual as possiblePeople are lazy, they won't strike a catwalk pose while having a chat over the phone, for example. Try to avoid pin-up poses unless your girls are actually deliberately posing. For the rest, keep it casual:

Keep the eyes busyHuman eyes (as well as all creatures actually) are always darting around, looking at everything and everyone. Look as any series of mine and keep track of all the girls. Their eyes are moving pretty much all the time.

Keep the camera movingLike I mentioned above, it breaks the pattern of repetitive scenes and creates an illusion of natural movement... unless it's fixed, like on a tripod.

Check up on each character ... every 5 frames, even characters not in the center of attention. Ask yourself, what would they be doing in the background? Characters like Laila get bored easily and will do something funny, or set fire to something just to see what people will say.

Pics from Webcam Update , UK Trip and Pool Party .

Make your characters imperfect tooNot everyone needs to be socially savvy, or a bimbo, or a team-player. One or two is enough. Often the rebels are the interesting ones, and will give the others a reason to respond. The only real bimbo in my group is Lali. The rest are slightly more reserved or sneaky or off in their own world, or perhaps even entirely oblivious. How boring would the interaction be between Xtina and Lali if Xtina would just say yes to everything Lali wants... would Lali even bother then? Not everyone will have the same mindset, even if they all have naughty thoughts (they're only humans), they might all have different ideas about it. Just having a group of wish-fulfilment girls might be fun at first, but you'll be able to see the person behind the curtain of the puppet-show after a while. Of course there are gradations to this, as my girls are also to some extent stylized wish-fulfilment girls, but I try to hide it behind the way they interact with their world.

Let characters do their own thingThis ties into what I said before (like with Laila), but sometimes an opportunity will arise in a story and if you know your characters well enough, you can just see that they wouldn't let it go. Lali,Laila and Christina are those types of characters that can break with the plot and just go do their own thing. It sounds metaphysical but for me it's a reality I work with. It's also the reason why the Disco dragon series is so long: I was literally nudging Lali and Xtina's characters in the right direction and then realizing that Xtina would sabotage it here and there. So, let characters screw your plans up, only fun can come of it.

Don't let them conform so easilyor it will have that typical porno movie vibe and all your believability will go out the window. This is more of a personal thing. It's one of the reasons I haven't bothered with porn movies for years. Anything so easily given away cannot be worth much. No woman in her right mind will just concede to sex, there must be a really good reason for it, and the more you make it part of the story, the more real the sex becomes. I know that the idea of porn movies is that they gloss over all the build up and chit-chat and git busy immediately, but I feel it takes away the element of seduction entirely, which IMO is probably as exciting as the sex itself. Even Lali with how naughty she is, always needs some proper reason or purpose for having sex with someone. This can be anything to seeing a hot Persian photographer to trying to convince Christina that joining in an orgy is fun. Make them really need it, or convince them that they need it, give the sex purpose, make it a challenge. It makes the sex so much more fun IMO.

This is MY WAY of doing things, you don't need to do thisSo I've just shared a lot of ideas on how I look at 3D CGI comics. I'm always a bit worried that I come across as judgmental over other people's work. It's a natural part of being an artist I think, you see others do something, you either want to do it too, or not. And nobody is perfect... and everyone has their own style. Whatever works. I've seen artists with very primitive render styles tell extremely fun stories, and I've seen artists that can mimic photographs make very boring renders. If that's what works for you, then keep going down that road...

What do you want? And for who?And that brings me to my next point: none of this is an exact science, and it entirely depends on what you like seeing or perhaps more importantly, what your fans / viewers like seeing. And what balance are you striking between your vision, your workflow, and their wishes. Without realizing it, many people might pick up on imperfections in your work while you might be blind to it. If you work very hard on something, you might overlook some obvious errors. This is why you NEED to listen to your fans / viewers and take criticism. That doesn't mean you need to accept everything they say, you might just prefer a different style, or it just works better for you. The question is, can you accept not attracting new fans because of your chosen style?

Example 1: even though I can technically very easily do it, I'm not into futagirls or anal sex, and I accept that I am missing out on a large customer base because of it. There are many other artists that do the futagirl / anal sex thing to perfection, but I offer different things.

Example 2: back in 2013 I was told that Lali's eyes were too big. At first I didn't see it, but later I realized they might be right. So I changed that. Around the same time, when CODE 10 came out, I was also told that my style was far too scruffy. Like all artists I resisted, but I did listen and cleaned my work up.

ConclusionAnyhow, I hope this was interesting. If you're not a renderer then this might all seem like drivel to you. Hopefully the renders were entertaining Let me know what you thought of it, and perhaps also let me know if you have any particular things you'd like a rambling session over.

Stay safe everyone, stay creative, and stay naughty!!