What The Hell?

A big problem with writing novels as a hobby is that the first question people ask is, “Have you been published yet?” If you haven't, you can spend as much time as you like explaining how you write for the intrinsic love of it, and it still won't matter. You still end up sounding like a loser. A big problem with using Daz or Poser as a hobby is that most people don't know what you're talking about. And there's no easy way to describe the activity or even an agreed term for it. Some use “3D modelling”, which sounds too much like something done by men with beards who hang around Games Workshop. Others prefer “rendering”, conjuring up visions of a particularly gruesome process carried out in abattoirs. I favour “computer aided art,” rather pompous but that never holds me back. Or more usually, “that kind of, you know, drawing thing I do on my computer.”

And what the hell is it anyway? Well, rendering takes place initially on a virtual three dimensional canvas. Things are loaded onto this canvas. Each has various dials attached which determine various aspects of their being. In this sense, it is literally drawing by numbers. There are three basic types of said 'things.' The cameras control what is seen, generally called Point of View. (POV; and not to be confused with that distressing BBC programme once hosted by Anne Robinson.) You can make them move up and down, side to side, focus in and pan back, whirl around to look from any angle. The lights, obviously, determine how something is illuminated, and what angles, how brightly, in what shades and the strength of the shadows. And the objects are basically everything which makes up your image.

Objects can be whatever size you choose, whatever dimensions. Unless you are a design genius you tend to buy or crib a lot of the more complex ones already built. But you can fashion some from the basic cubes and spheres which come with Daz. Objects can also be placed anywhere you want, one factor making the process tricky. Gravity and solidity have no meaning in this universe. If you aren't careful you get a chair sticking through the floor or hovering half a foot above it. The simpler objects are, in themselves, static. Others are made up of separate parts which can also be manipulated. Perhaps the most complex, and also the starting point of many images, is the human body.

The Daz male and female bodies, called for some reason Michael and Vicky, are split into numerous components – neck, head, feet etc. The versions I grew up with had fifty five different parts though the latest have slightly less, inexplicably choosing to combine thighs and buttocks. You cannot actually split them up. But you can bend each one, twist it, move it from side to side. You can alter the dimensions and choose from a range of basic body types. (Which, inevitably, leads to many teenage artists selecting the biggest knockers possible for their female models). As for the faces... There are a fantastic number of ways in which expressions can be altered. The latest Vicky model has six preset ones: Happy, Sad, Afraid, Disgusted, Angry and Surprised. Presumably Daz considers these to be the basic emotions of humanity. But you can vary these in any number of ways or build your own expression from scratch. Facial features, from the temples to the chin, can also be manipulated at will. Interestingly, the figures start as a classical model of beauty. Each change you make will leave them a little bit uglier. This has to be something to be applauded.

Perhaps I have exaggerated the complexity of the whole exercise. But this is what, for example, the Michael model looks like when you first load it:

(Leaves added for modesty, though in fact they are hiding nothing. Michael is essentially a neuter and if you want genitalia, they have to be stuck on as an extra object.)
It is remarkably difficult to get him to lose all that stiffness, to adopt a posture at all natural. If you want him to, say, hold a mobile phone then you have to place it exactly right in his palm, get all his fingers curved so they are touching the phone without actually shoved into it. Then swing his shoulder and forearm up so the phone is somewhere near his head, a surprisingly tricky task. Then figure out what his other arm, the one not really doing anything, should look like. It isn't drawing properly. It is much easier. But you have to learn some of the same skills to turn a vague idea inside your head into a precise image. And along the way, rather a lot of different parts of the body. I now know what a lacrimal is, for example, and that there really are more muscles in the arm than there needs to be.

The other main part of an object is the surface colour; the texture, as it called. Unless you want the picture to look like it belongs in a children's colouring book, the texture for many objects has to be quite complex too. It is usually an image file done on something like Paintshop and then applied to the object. And the contours have to be exactly right too, otherwise you get weird white gaps appearing everywhere. You can control how opaque the model is too, how glossy it will be. And its reflective qualities, something called refraction, something else called displacement. And so on, until you start wanting to add a physics degree to the art and biology ones you have already had to get. Either that or you just wing it and hope for the best.

Finally, when you have all the objects positioned perfectly, when they are all coloured in right, when the camera angle is correct and the lights are gleaming... You hit Render. This turns the three dimensional model into a two dimensional image. More importantly, into a file which can be read quickly by any other computer in the world, rather than the 0.0001% which also have Daz installed. Or even something which can be printed out, if you are feeling quaint.

Then you peer at your render and finds it look rather different to spectacular figure which you first dreamed. So you go back to Daz, fiddle around with the dials again, bite your lip somewhat; and hit Render again. Then study the amended image, sigh some more, fiddle some more. And so the long night wears on; and so your youth slips away.