Never Forget

by on March 27, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Never Forget that three years ago we put a stake into the heart of one of the greatest economic booms we have had in my lifetime. Fifteen Days to Stop the Spread. To lower the curve. To save lives. It had many names in time. Never Forget that some States still have not opened back up again. While those States that did are booming. But we are still dealing with a supply chain in tatters, and dozens of other major issues. Bank failures. Increasing health problems and crime rates. Never Forget the world we had three years ago. It was taken away from us by government lockdowns and mandates, not by a new virus from China. Never Forget.

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Jasmine Art

by on March 26, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

AI Art is interesting. I have been rendering my own stuff on my machines for a decade now. I can customize exactly what I want, and then get it. It takes a lot of time twisting dials and then hitting render and hoping it works out though. It probably took me between a week and a month to get my Jasmine model to exactly how I liked it. AI Art takes out the hours, days, or more of preparation time, and replaces it with a scattergun approach. I spent a few minutes putting in some text prompts saying what I was looking for, and asked the AI engine to give me some samples. Night Cafe Studio sent me around a hundred, and I sorted them down to one that I liked. Jasmine looks like she is done with someone’s crap. Probably Jack. Jack can be a pain in the butt.

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Jasmine Art

by on March 25, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The AI art craze is changing the art world. Even artists who used to do “traditional” 3D rendering have shifted over to using AI art. It just so happens that a computer rig built for high end renders can also run an AI art installation in local. Instead of spending minutes or hours twisting the dials to get just the right look, can now put in some text prompts and generate a few dozen possible shots in a matter of minutes, all via your own computer’s graphics card. My rig can’t do that, but free AI render sites are available. I run hundreds of sample renders while writing, narrow them down to a few dozen that I actually like, and then pick one or three to use as final reference pics. This is Jasmine gone anime via the dezgo dot com everything anime 4.0 engine.

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Jasmine Art

by on March 24, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I have a pair of low end rendering rigs at my house. Cheap video cards, with a heavy helping of RAM and large hard drives to give them room to work. I use them to render character shots and scenes. Lighting, camera angles, and posing often takes me hours to get right. I spend a few minutes moving things around, hit render, and go do something else. Come back in an hour to see if I got it right. Repeat until I’m happy with the scene. Then I hit a long run 4 or 8-hour render to bring it out in full detail. The better rig can do it in 3 or 4, the lesser rig in 8 or 10 hours. The key is, I can get a near 1 for 1 ratio of renders I like with this practice. Here are Jack and Jasmine, rendered in DAZ Studio. They are Out of Time and Space.

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Jasmine Art

by on March 23, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

DAZ Studio launched eighteen years ago, promising that non-artistic types could render images on fairly low-end systems. I tried it back then, but 3D modeling was still in its infancy, and my results were rather meh. I came back some years later when I saw that technology had improved. I was writing and publishing stories by then, and I wanted to use it to create character references. Jasmine was one of the first characters I created, by combining various free or cheap character models, skins, hair, eyes, and clothing. This model dates back to 2014, making her my oldest model still in use. I nailed her look early, and have never felt a need to improve it since. This is Jasmine, created and rendered in DAZ Studio.

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