Nina vs. Anna Gangbang pt.1 (technotes & thoughts)

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*Thoughts / ideas:
I've had the idea for quite some time. Wanted to make something featuring the two sisters, either beating each other up senseless over some guy while he watches in horror or going down on each other, that kind of theme, but it wasn't going to be a gangbang. The gangbang idea came because I'd wanted to try a crowd scene in D/S. My last one was done in Poser7, it was a lot of hardwork.
I thought since this was my last render on this machine before I upgraded it, I'd give it a grand exit by making this a crowd scene.
This project took about a month to complete. I usually didn't have more than 2 hours daily to work on it.

*Composition:
Done entirely in DAZ Studio 2.2. Took me around 10-15 hours to compose the scene, experiment with the lighting as well as textures. It wasn't bad, not once did the program crash, but it did gradually slow down to a crawl as the number of figures increased. The way to remedy it was to turn off visibility on any figure that I wasn't working on. The file takes about 1-1.5 hour to load and 30 minutes to save in the end. The latest version of D/S is undoubtedly the most stable version from my experience.

*Rendering:
I thought it would take me at least half a day to render but it ended up taking 3 days! Well, the rendering process itself took only about an hour actually... which was very surprising, with so many figures on screen at one time, I'd expected to make a few separate renders and combine them later in postwork. Poser would either have refused the rendering job right off the bat on my machine or crashed in mid-render, but D/S took it like a brisk walk on a sunny afternoon. Until the slap in the face came.

I'm sure it was a memory problem. D/S did okay completing the render, but I got an error message saying "unable to save render to blablabla..." when it had finished rendering. I couldn't even use "save last render" - that function became disabled. So basically it was wasted. Well, if at first you don't succeed, what do you do? You try again... differently of course.

This is where D/S crashed a number of times, leaving me no other choice but to close and reload the scene again and again. So it's an hour of loading, another hour of rendering... crash... close program, open program, load the scene... wait an hour... tweak-tweak... render... wait another hour... oh it still wouldn't save, try again... f@#k! it crashed again, so I gotta do it all over again. This vicious cycle continued for 3 days, if I didn't have to go to work and feed my household, maybe it wouldn't have been that long. I was so frustrated but I wasn't gonna give up.

I even thought, maybe I should postpone it until after I've upgraded my PC, but nah... Did I try reducing the render size? Of course I did, but I didn't want to go below 3500px. I started with 4000px, because I just knew this particular project would require a lot of postwork, so I needed a lot of room for error.

Then I don't know what happened on that fateful day, I was just about to give in and reduce the render size further to 3000px... but no lower, I'd even decided to do separate renders with fewer figures and combine them later in postwork. But on that fateful render, the condition must've been right... it successfully rendered and saved the file!!! I was ecstatic, I must've tweaked the right thing. But what the f@#$ was it??? Who cares?! At least I won't have to go through that ordeal anymore.

*Postwork:
It's divided into 2 stages, stage one is fixing the final render, smoothing out jagged edges, correcting the figures' body proportions, and reshaping them if necessary; enhancing the lighting and color tones. Stage one took about maybe 6 hours.
Then stage two is where the fun begins. Drawing the costumes on the two girls, giving each individual special treatment so that everyone is unique. The trick is to make the two sisters, Nina and Anna, being the stars of the show, stand out among the sea of guys. I wanted each guy to be noticeable too, but not so much that they blend with the two girls, or too less that they blend with the background. stage 2 took me probably about 10 hours... just can't rush these things.

*Notes on the Williams' costumes:
Yes, yes I know... all you Tekken fans, Nina usually wears a pair of combat boots, not high heels. I originally had her wearing boots, tried different kinds too, but boots made her look tough and just somehow not fit well with the theme. She is supposed to be a tough character, I wanted to convey that but at the same time I wanted her to still look feminine. So I went with the high-heel boots, she did wear those in at least one of the Tekken instalments, but I forgot which one. Her arm protectors/sleeves always change in design with each game, this one is based on the ones she wore in Tekken 4 minus the gloves. I didn't think I should give her anything else to wear (lol) as she should be identifiable enough by Tekken players this way.
Anna's costume is based on her Tekken 6 costume. She always wore gloves for her primary costume, but in the older games they look like they're made out of velvety material. I chose the fishnet with floral design from her latest costume because it was challenging to do; the same also with her panty hose.
I wanted to include her trademark 'qipao' (chinese dress) also, but really there was just no more room, it would only make the scene look very busy. Well, at least I wanted to include her ribbon just to add in the familiar factor. Plus it's so cute, I love it on womens qipao, kimono or yukata.

Except for their shoes, every article of the Williams sisters' clothing are hand-painted in CS2. Oh, also the jade necklace that the 2nd guy from the left is wearing, that's not a prop, that's added in postwork.

new pc, but

Upgraded my PC, finally...
But, but I ended up having to reinstall Windows again because some programs suddenly stopped working. Tried everything I could think of to remedy the situation, but it looks like the only sure way is to install fresh. Such a hassle.

I sort of expected it though, and it's perhaps a good idea too installing fresh Windows onto a new configuration.

Anyway, it's gonna be sometime before I'm gonna be up and running again.

Thank God I have my external harddrive and laptop... also am I glad I didn't save all my work files on my desktop PC. If I lost my current project my boss would have my head for sure.

I'll write them notes on my latest work soon.

It's finally done! (Nina&Anna part 1)

Yeah, my latest work. Starring Nina and Anna Williams from the Tekken series.
Took me a month to finish it...
It's finally done, and posted it successfuly.
Two actually, I decided to post 2 versions of it, the partially nude and fully nude versions.
I put in lots of hours in drawing their costumes but I like the nude version as well.

It's my last render on this machine.
I'm having it upgraded sometime this week (yaaay, finally!).

I thought I'd do something big with it before upgrading, really push its capabilities to their limits.
I've always wanted to try a crowd scene with DAZ Studio. A few times it did go beyond its limits and boy what a pain when that happened.

Can't wait to see what I'll be able to do when my machine's upgraded. I think for what I have in store for part 2, I'm gonna need a hell of a lot of computing power.

I already have a few more render ideas, but I just want to take a break now.

Intro

Hi, call me Kikuchi.

Some of you must've arrived here from seeing my works on Renderotica.
and the rest of you... should (lol)
Thank you for all your kind words, praises and votes.
I've received a lot of questions surrounding Poser, DAZ Studio, etc and Postworking. Some of you even suggested that I write about my projects in a blog, so here it is.

Please note that I'm no expert in those programs. I do have a lot of experience working with them, that's what I can share with you. I have been forced to dwelve into the technical stuff, mainly because I like taking on big challenges even when I had my old, slow PC. I've had to tweak settings, compromize and try out different things, and achieved successfully what some artists claim to be impossible even on high-end machines.

Let me tell you something, nothing is impossible when it comes to creation, if you're passionate enough about what you do. There are always ways to make things work, you just have to have the patience to find it and determination to finish what you started. I'm sure George Lucas and Thomas Edison would agree.

This blog is intended to share some of the frustration, confusion, fatigue from working with the aforementioned programs, as well as discoveries, technical workaround, and of course the joy and satisfaction when the work is finished. A lot of times the results don't exactly turn out the way I originally picture them in my mind, but they're always better. And I only display my work if I myself am satisfied with it.

So be seeing you, happy rendering and viewing.