Category:

Digital art

Playing with Terragen: the Jungfrau Massif

by Diane Duane February 13, 2020

I’ve been using Planetside Software’s Terragen program/app for cover work and concept art for a long while, with varying levels of success. (Mostly having to do more with my own learning curve than any inherent problem with the software.) Terragen is a high-end tool used by professional film production companies and digital artists all over the place, and is both insanely powerful and fairly challenging to get to grips with. To see what someone really adept can do with it, check out — as an example — the Terragen-based Paramount 100th Anniversary logo animation. Clouds and atmospheric effects have always been one of Terragen’s strongest suits: they get beautifully shown off in that clip.

…Anyway, this particular piece of digital art goes back to cover work I was doing ten years or so ago, on the initial ebook editions of Raetian Tales: A Wind from the South. As I now have much better equipment to work with, a lot of these early files are getting re-rendered at much higher resolutions than were available to me then.

This one’s a particular favorite in that creating it involves using actual terrain data derived from aerial or (in some cases) space-based radar. Pictured here, under some midsummer dawn, is the Jungfrau Massif — the three-mountain group whose downsloping south sides meet in what the Swiss call Konkordiaplatz or Place de la Concorde. These three massive snowfields give birth to the Aletschgletscher: one of the world’s great glaciers and a UNESCO World Heritage site. (…While it lasts. Climate change is already eating away at its magnificence.)

The Swiss national mapping service has made digital elevation model (DEM) terrain data openly available for those who might want to use it. Since some parts of RT:AWFTS take place near the Aletsch (or indeed in it…) and in the neighborhood of the Jungfrau, I made it my business to glom onto the digital data as quickly as I could and started playing around with it. The bare terrain comes courtesy of the Swiss: the snow is added using a “clip file” — kind of a Terragen plugin.

I’m storing this image here (and the link to the page where it can be seen at full size) so that I can find it quickly, as right now my graphics collection is in a state of flux. Many thousands of images in various states of processing have piled up over the years, to the point where it’s become necessary to develop an tagged, cross-indexed, opus-number-based management system for them before I can’t find anything any more. That work is starting now, so every now and then some favorite image will pop up here. Just so people know…

February 13, 2020

Carmela and Sunspark: it probably had to happen

Creative process Crossing the streams Digital art Ebooks Direct Middle Kingdoms meta Young Wizards meta

At the Ebooks Direct “office”: A chance meeting

by Diane Duane February 9, 2020

(“…as we say in Middle-Earth.”)

So I was setting up some promo art for an ebook sale that’s going to be offered on Tumblr only. Nothing fancy. The Ebooks Direct “office”. Various characters. Paused the render in the middle to handle some minor lighting and design issues.

And realized abruptly that I have way, way more serious things to worry about than lighting.

I have put Carmela Rodriguez (in however meta a sense) in the same space as Sunspark.

…This could get dangerous very quickly. In fact, both these universes may have already been significantly destabilized, and we may all already be doomed.

Consider it. One of these two beings is the young woman who, having just barely discovered that alien species exist, more or less immediately both ruthlessly snubbed a visiting alien prince and (you could make a case) started dating a shrub. This is the same young woman who derailed a potentially galactically destabilizing invasion of a vital infrastructural transport facility with only her wits, a sidearm and a half-kilo bar of Valrhona chocolate. The young woman who quietly incorporated the planet Earth to entitle it to Galactic safe-haven legislation that would protect it from interstellar aggressors. This is the young woman who shot the Lone Power point-blank and then snickered and said “Oops.” …A bold person. Decisive. Increasingly addicted to thinking outside the box, at least partly for the delights of continuing to freak out her wizardly little brother.

The other of them is a shape-changing, gender-fluid, nearly-immortal creature of potentially-devastating destructive power (their mental shorthand for their name is a fucking CME, for Goddess’s sake) whose major characteristics are an insatiable curiosity about human beings and their doings — particularly the ones associated with relationships — and a rather flexible sense of the permanence (or otherwise) of death. A dangerous person. Fun-loving. Always open to something new. And routinely hot to (ahem) trot.

…And their two universes both have viable worldgating systems.

It’s therefore a fair guess that it would be only a matter of time before they met, as both universes in question seem to have a tendency to solve for (shall we say) maximum drama. All it takes is an afternoon in the office when one of them has turned up to inquire where the hell is the shiny new space armor she was promised, and for the other lot to be passing through to discuss, I don’t know, the theoretically upcoming Middle Kingdoms cookbook or some damn thing. And they run into one another and introductions are made.

My only point of certainty on this is that, knowing her past history, Carmela would instantly rev up her flirting engine and get busy. Once they got over the initial shock, Sunspark would be completely charmed. The whole initial interaction would most likely look a lot like Rapunzel’s rapprochement with Maximus in Tangled. And Thoth only knows what would happen after that.

And the joke is that I didn’t even see this happening. I started setting up the scene and rendered it once and moved the two of them closer together, strictly to get them more toward the center of the shot… and it was already too late. A little closer. Yeah. Closer than that. Friendly, direct look. Head up. Keep the mane out of the way, they wouldn’t want to set her hair on fire…

…And then when I was looking at this rough render I started wondering why Freelorn’s eyes weren’t pointing quite where they should have been. He was meant to be looking at Nita as she explains something about Carmela’s sidearm to him. But he’s not: he’s sort of halfway looking at Herewiss, and the expression is the kind of, “What? What is it?” look you give someone close who’s reacting to something in an unexpected way, and you’re trying to find out why. But Herewiss’s attention is entirely elsewhere than on any discussion of sidearms, because he’s watching that happen across the table. (And finding it amusing. Damn the perceptive s.o.b.! Dusty’s always seeing these things before I do.)

Herewiss’s pose is imperfect in angle and lighting, as it wasn’t originally meant to be shared.
Aaah, who cares.

…Whatever that is. They look like they’ve already reached at least the “Do you want to go out for coffee?” stage. What the next stage looks like, don’t ask me. I just work here.

(headclutch) Now I’m wondering if this galaxy’s going to wind up with a new Empress or something. And in which universe. (Or if in both…)

February 9, 2020

from Tales of the Five #3: "The Discussion"

Daz 3D Digital art Middle Kingdoms Writing process

Crossing the streams

by Diane Duane December 16, 2019

So lately I’ve been working on what ought to be (REALLY ought to be, this is running later than it should have) the last 20,000 words or so of the next in the “Tales of the Five” short novels: this one being #3, The Librarian. The phrase “short novels” is relative here: TOTF3 will top out at around 80K and change, just a little longer than TOTF2: The Landlady.

Anyway, as so often happens with one of these operations, I’ve been holding hostage what looks like the most fun part of it until the rest of the work has been well advanced, if not completed. And in this case, that means the Hot Gay Sex Scene.

I mean, let’s get real here; for me, Herewiss and Freelorn are the core of this fictional universe. Without the two answers to the question I asked my mom when I was about six, “Why can’t a prince rescue another prince?”, there wouldn’t be a Middle Kingdoms series. So Lorn and Dusty hold a special spot for me… not least the one established in The Door Into Fire when Herewiss’s dad yelled up the stairs to them, “What are you doing?” and the answer came back, “We’re fucking!” (Some meta from the characters regarding that and other issues can be found here.)

So the time has at last rolled around to deal with the after-”happily-ever-after” version of that scene. And it’s been a bit of a balancing act, as the last sex scene involving both of these characters happened “out of shot”, with the doors shut, the mid-series ones were either similar to that or simply inferred, and the ones in the first book were conducted pretty much with the lights turned out. Now, of course, these works not having to deal with editorial at a traditional publisher, it’s possible to let everybody off the leash a little bit. Yet there are also matters of style to consider: this work needs to be tonally of a piece with earlier works (and with The Door Into Starlight, when it materializes). So, as I say: a balancing act.

Something that’s been helpful of late is a work tool I didn’t have in previous years: digital art. I can’t draw… but I can see things in my head, and the computer can draw them. (Some of this art appears on the MiddleKingdoms.com website and on its Instagram.) My preferred tool is Daz Studio, especially since the Daz 3D platform is the source of male and female figures who (especially in the case of the males) look almost exactly like the main MK characters as I’ve imagined them for the guts of forty years. Anyway, these days when I get stuck on a scene or a piece of written business, I can take a break and spend a day or so imagining it graphically, and usually the problem at the prose end of things will break during that process. And afterwards I’ve got art, too! So everybody wins. It counts as crossing the streams a bit, I guess, creatively speaking, but generally this approach seems to work.

One tactic I’ve also been exploiting here, as regards the Hot Gay Sex scene, is the Sneaking Up On It By Stages approach, where you deal with what happens before the sex, or after, and then go forward or back as necessary. (I am really, really restraining myself here from using more loaded idioms.) In previous days this has taken the form of art that’s appeared elsewhere on my Tumblr or over at Pillowfort or wherever. (The more-finished version of this lead-in scene, during which Freelorn is explaining to Herewiss about how he has to go away on sort of a mystical business trip with the [peculiarly] good friend who killed him during the War, and how Herewiss can’t come, appears at the top of this post.)

But now at the prose end I’m getting into the thick of it (oh Goddess, this is going to wind up sounding like some kind of bad lube ad, isn’t it…) and it’s time to get into the heads of the characters actually doing eeeeet. Which means designing the art that’s going to help me think about the ins and outs (WHY AM I EVEN TRYING TO AVOID THE DOUBLE ENTENDRES NOW) of what happens in that bed.

Which meant, to start with, designing the bedroom – in this case, the royal chambers in Kynall castle in the Arlene capital city of Prydon. Earlier attempts at this were unsatisfactory in that the set I was using was too crude. So instead I pulled out a set that’s a little more modern and aged it backwards. It was originally just a three-sided set, so to complete it I wound up stealing pieces from other digital sets and indulging in some electronic kit-bashing. Then, of course, the set had to be dressed. Nice windows. Better floors. Furniture. (The bed’s not optimal but it’s OK.) Books. Lamps. Personal effects. Linens. And finally, of course, the characters. (I should mention here, if there was any question, that it’s entirely likely that no one but me will ever see this work: it’s primarily for my reference. But while making it I’m likely to find some piece of character business that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.)

Getting the characters into the bed? No problem. It’s positioning that becomes absolutely key. A fraction of a degree’s worth of bend or flex in the wrong direction can render everything hopelessly wooden or unnatural. Hands in particular are so vital: a pinky put wrong can destroy everything. And as for facial expressions… these are probably most vital of all, depending on context. And changes in lighting, or very minor changes in position, can completely alter what a moment before looked perfectly executed.

So… they’re in the bed, and the search has begun for the perfect position, the perfect expressions, to communicate the realities of lovemaking between two now-powerful but still quite vulnerable men who know for a fact (because the Goddess told them so) that they and the other people they love the most dearly are essentially living on borrowed time; and one of them’s about to go away on a business trip that may be nothing in particular, something not-routine but necessary… or may kill him. Or not. Who knows? Why borrow trouble and imagine what may not happen? Yet still. This might be the last time. And there’s no way to tell.

…And so to bed. All this thinking, and the consideration of positions, actions, dialogue, character, is going on in the back of the writer’s brain. While in the front, other business is being handled. Lighting. Making the damn pillows stay where they’re put. Moving the lights around for best chiaroscuro. …In the foreground work, Herewiss is pretty much where he needs to be, and now we’re hunting expressions. Move a limb or a torso, wait for the rendering engine to show you how it looks in real light. Move it again, wait again. And again. Again. Again.

One time Herewiss’s head looks like this.

Mmh, yeah, that one at least suggests that whatever’s going on south of his waist, he’s enjoying it. Mouth still probably needs work. But meanwhile, okay, good – let’s turn his head a little more into the light and see how that works.

Whoops, hit an extra control there, hope I haven’t twisted his head completely out of shape. Screen goes black. Wait for the render engine to do its thing. Turn away for a second, turn back… and find this.

…WUT.

My own character is giving me the stink-eye. WTF.

Nothing to do but laugh like anything as the internal dialogue instantly unrolls (and the whole nature of the artwork in progress changes in my head as a result, but that can’t be helped.)

HEREWISS: Excuse me, but can you please hurry up with this? We are trying to have sex here.

FREELORN: (o.s.) Emphasis on the trying.

HEREWISS: Do you know how distracting this is? Imagine if whoever made your universe was watching you do it with your spouse.

DD: Okay, there’s an image I didn’t need. And indeed a whole concept.

FREELORN: Is all this really necessary? Just smash us together any old way and let us get on with it.

HEREWISS: Yes, there’s a phrase, isn’t there? “NOW KISS.”

FREELORN: Trust me, I know where his bits are! I’ve known for forty years.

HEREWISS: I can safely say the same. In fact it’s kind of impossible to miss them.

FREELORN: (grins, blushes) Flatterer.

HEREWISS: Still the truth. And anyway, you love it.

FREELORN: (attempts expression of becoming modesty) What? I’m as She made me.

DD: From both of us, you’re welcome.

FREELORN: (breaks down laughing)

HEREWISS: Don’t encourage him. Anyway, come on, stand back and let me get him sorted out.

DD: (snickering) Can you even hear yourself.

FREELORN: Whether he can or not, you may as well. He’s been sorting me out ever since we met.

DD: This is absolutely not how I imagined this evening going.

FREELORN: Me either, so please let’s get on with it, can we? This man has not had an orgasm since 1992.

DD: (collapses in helpless laughter)

HEREWISS: On-set, anyway. It’s really not the same.

DD: Fine. Fine. Meantime, it’s late. Can I finish this piece of work first, please?

HEREWISS: My King?

FREELORN: (graciously) I give you leave. …Especially the leaving kind of leave, if you take my meaning.

DD: (shakes head) (saves file) If you two were smart, maybe you wouldn’t get so salty with your creator.

HEREWISS: As if we’re even slightly worried.

FREELORN: You love us too much to do us wrong.

DD (resigned): You smug SOBs.

HEREWISS: Go to bed. We promise not to look.

DD: (snickers and does as she’s told)

above: “Excuse Me, We’re Trying To Have Sex Here”

December 16, 2019