2021 Gallery Pictures of the Week
This is a transition picture used in Hopepunk city. This is the 4th or 5th incarnation of this picture, but this is the one that made the game. 
One of the last things I did graphically before releasing the beta was revamp the pictures in Maya’s office. Before this, it was represented by basically a single picture. Maya’s T-shirt is dynamic, which is computer simulated draped cloth. Setting up dynamic clothing is annoyingly complicated in Poser. It is easier in Daz Studio with dForce, but dynamic cloth in Poser looks a lot better animated. Of course I’m not creating animations here so not a big advantage. 
A second picture from the Dating Ariane section of Hopepunk City, this is dinner at the Drive-N-Dine with much better lighting.
There are two obvious references back to Date Ariane. One is the blue dress, the very blue dress you buy Ariane to get the “Devil in the Blue Dress” achievement. The second are the poses. I basically use almost the same poses here at the poses used in the backyard barbecue scene in Date Ariane. I do not use the eat/drink/talk/compliment mechanic here as by the time you go on this date, you and Ariane have established a friendship already, but I use the same poses in a conversation relative to the plot of the game. 
Bonus image from the same rendering session: 
Playing with IBL again, this is a background taken underwater. But instead of putting Ariane in scuba gear, I thought I’d just create a surreal image for your enjoyment. 
I’ve been busy working on finishing up Hopepunk City, which I hope to release this fall. I only have about a dozen scenes left. The good news is that I did over 200 new renders for those scenes. The bad news is none are good “Pic of the Week” pics, because they are either boring, or too spoilery to be released. Luckily I also did this one. Set in a liberal leaning future, I am setting the portrayal of gender equality as a goal. One of the things that comes up in gender equality discussions is things like, “What are we going to do have unisex bathrooms, showers and changing rooms?”, and my answer is “Sure why not?” 
Many of my games had sci-fi elements, like the weather control in SITA, and the Dodo sanctuary in AiP. This is the weird sci-fi scene of Hopepunk City. There are also robot police and other normal sci-fi tropes, but what goes on here is weird (hint: Futurama did it.) 
My pictures of the week on arianeb.com lag a month behind Patreon, so this weeks picture is from Strip Crazy Eights, which came out a month ago. This is a rare image that pops up on the game if you have the PC or Mac version, and if you set the background to building lobby, and if you play as a female, and if you turn on where everybody loses clothes if there are 4 draws in a row. Buy the game today!
This is my latest IBL created image. You are probably wanting to know who the couple is. These are the new player avatars for Hopepunk City. The game will allow you to pick one of three origins, the player character from Date Ariane and Something’s In The Air, the player character from Ariane in Paradise, or a new character all together. To represent yourself, you can be the male or female avatar from Ariane in Paradise, or you can be one of these people. 
Ariane and Rachel are hitchhiking across the desert. Where they going? I don’t know, “Burning Man” happens about this time of year. If you are wondering why this looks so realistic, I played with a Poser script called EZDome that uses IBL files (360 degree photos) to create accurate background and lighting for putting your CGI model in the photo. Hollywood does this all the time for green screen work. It works by creating a 360 degree dome. You can click on the background to locate where the sun is, and it will position a “sun” light at the perfectly matched angle. The next step is not automated, I add a second HDR light using the accompanying jpg of the 360 image for the “color”. It creates 360 degree light that matches the image. The result, if done right, is a render that looks like Ariane is standing at the exact place the background was taken. You can render at any angle and the light will perfectly match the background. It is just a matter of finding the perfect angle to render from. 
This is an image of a minor character in Hopepunk City, my upcoming game. She is a delivery girl, but I could not help dressing her like my favorite delivery boy from Futurama. Hopepunk City is set in the near future where many jobs are replaced by robots. You can see one such robot reflected on the side of the van. 
You might have seen my teaser trailer for Hopepunk City I posted a month ago. Up to that point I was doing the game in Poser 11 firefly graphics, because I spent over a year making it that way and it felt like too much work to upgrade it all to Poser 12 Superfly. Well I did it anyways. 
As you can see, the differences are major. The top one has better lighting, more realism, and most importantly it is prettier. Aesthetically pleasing is the most important thing in my art philosophy.
This is a picture of a character from Ariane in Paradise, who also appears in Hopepunk City. If you don’t recognize her it is understandable, but it is the female avatar player character. Between the posed hair, the big eyelashes, and the Poser 12 Superfly render, it is easy not to recognize her. 
Over a year ago I posted this picture which was based on this series of pictures online. My original intent was to use it as a starting point for a scene in Hopepunk City, my upcoming game. Finally got around to creating the scene, and with a little help from a Poser 12 upgrade, I created a much more interesting picture. 
I’m sharing with you a picture from a scene I am working on. Rachel is meeting with a client who is a nude model, an “only fans / cam girl” type of nude model, and wants to do an outdoor photo shoot, but between logistics and security, they are stuck in Rachel’s studio. Rachel sets up projection screens and spotlights to approximate sunshine. The interesting thing here is that the green background in this pictures was shot with a digital camera literally about 10 yards from my new house I moved into, in a tree covered vacant lot adjacent to the property. Looking forward to see the colors change as the months pass. 
Finishing up test renders for a Date Ariane Remastered with some nudity. For naked Ariane I am experimenting with a “weight mapped” version of Victoria 4.2 called Sasha-16. Weight mapping was something introduced in Poser 11 to make it easier to pose figures so that joints like shoulders, elbows and knees look instantly natural, something that Daz Studio doesn’t have yet. Daz3D who owns Victoria 4.2 has authorized an official plugin to add weight mapping to the figure for use in Poser 11, and that has led to Sasha-16 which adds a host of features, but you need to own Victoria 4.2 to use them. The problem is that Vicky 4 clothing doesn’t work on Sasha-16, even when you copy the morphs. My solution is to have two Arianes, one in generic Vicky when clothed and one in Sasha-16 when not clothed.
This week is more tinkering around with doing a remaster of Date Ariane. Since last week I showed off a potential new main outfit, I thought I’d show a potential new “little black dress”. This one is dynamically draped over Ariane (one of the things Poser does better than Daz Studio), but it is harder to set up than DForce, which is the Daz Studio equivalent. Alas this particular dynamic dress is a little too short. 
In between moving in real life, I found a potential new home for Ariane, for the Date Ariane Remastered project. It is a furnished home which renders really well in Cycles Superfly, which is what I plan to use for all the Remastered pictures. First thing I did is paint the walls red, and replaced the generic landscape with the traditional Diane and Cupid picture. Also had to bring back the white sofa as it is a very versatile prop. I’m experimenting with fashion as well, high waist pants and crop tops are in right now, so I’m trying that, but this project is still on the back burner, just having fun for now. 
Saw a picture on line of a nude model eating pizza, and decided that could be a Rachel picture, so I reconstructed it for you here. This is my first original render made with Poser 12 Superfly on my new computer with an RTX 3080 card. Renders look amazingly sharp and fast taking maybe a minute to render at Ultra OptiX quality. 
I made a series of “happy” character pics. This is the last. A hot tub party! There is a little depth of field happening here so Mia and Rachel look slightly out of focus, but not enough to blur them, just soften their looks. These pictures will show up in Hopepunk City as transitional scenes. The ones with nudity like this one will be in the later part of the game.
I was reminded that April 22 is “Earth Day” and wanted to do something with that theme. Then in my e-mail I got a newsletter from Poser that includes a nice tribute to a 3D artist named Dinoraul, who recently passed away. I loved his modeling of historic animals and they are of very high quality, but didn’t get a chance to purchase any until I came up with the Dodo plot in Ariane in Paradise. So I thought Earth Day and Dinoraul tribute, I should release the dodo selfie from AiP. When I pulled it up and took a closer look I found that the shadows around the feet were off. Pulling up the image in Poser, Ariane and the Player Character are actually hovering over the ground. So this week’s picture is a corrected re-rendering as well as a tribute. 
Feeling down, I decided to make some random pictures of my characters having fun. This is my favorite. I added some depth blur on this one with focus on Mia in the middle making Rachel and Ariane slightly blurry, but not as blurry as the background. Love the dog looking in. 
I’ve decided that my next project after Hopepunk City is Date Ariane Remastered. A lot of the games in this genre have been using cycles rendering and other technologies to make pictures look better and better, and I think it is time to do the same for Date Ariane. Full 1920×1080 renders mostly in superfly when possible, plus both male and female avatars and an interface similar to Ariane in Paradise. This is an early image. 
I felt the need to do some pictures with the characters happy and having fun. This one may or may not make it in the game, but I had fun doing it, and it looks like the girls are having fun too. 
This week’s pic of the week is one I made for a scene in the next game “Hopepunk City”. Ariane is talking to an old friend at a public pool. Some of you might recognize the friend (hint, she changed appearances throughout the years). I wrote and illustrated a whole scene (about 8 pics total), and thought this would be the best to share.
This week I spent the week setting up a new set inspired by “Cyberpunk” and “Times Square” with lights and huge lit up advertisements. It is also a red light district type of place with burlesque, strip clubs and brothels are all sort of congregated in one place. It is also elaborately decorated with elements from all four games spread out on the busy set.
And then for the “Pic of the Week” I put Ariane and Rachel in front blocking of most of it. Don’t worry it will show up a few times in the next game.
I’ve been so busy working on the next game all week, so I thought I’d take a picture from the game I am working on.
This is the beginning of a scene where Rachel offers to take your photo. You can see on the wall her modeling pics on the left and her photography pics on the right.
This is a test image inspired by “John Carter and the Princess of Mars” using Ariane playing Dejah Thoris. The character is canonically naked except jewelry, which of course was changed in the Disney version. The creature on the right is a 3D creature I have with six limbs, but looks nothing like a Martian described in the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. 
This week’s picture comes from the new game Hopepunk City. This is a new character, but uses a model I used before in Something’s In The Air as one of the supermodels Rachel worked with in the magazine layout. I like the mostly teal blue look of the picture which is why I picked it as a picture of the week.
February, I have been doing re-renders of different games. This week it is Ariane in Paradise’s turn. The original game picture is set in mid afternoon, I changed it to dusk. The original was rendered in Superfly, this is Firefly. The superfly original looked like a photo, this looks like a painting.
Ariane also looked smaller and wore shoes to be consistent with the picture series in the game. No need to follow that protocol for single pictures.
Continuing my pattern of new renders of game pictures, I thought with the record cold weather I would re-render this ice skating scene from Rachel Meets Ariane.
Besides moving the characters closer together from the original, and zooming in a bit, I also changed the render engine to superfly.
To get scenes designed to render in Firefly to render in Superfly, you have to change the materials. The trees and pond an ground came with materials for both FF and SF, so that was easy, and I use a script to change skin textures to SF. I used a generic red velvet texture on Rachel’s jacket, and a generic black leather texture on Ariane’s jacket. I also adjusted the light to work with SF and this is the result.
I decided to continue to take game images and re-render them in different ways. This is “outsideclub2” from Something’s In The Air, but I changed the lighting and opened up the aperture, causing the background to blur, then took the newly rendered image and did some color correction. The result is a really striking picture of Rachel in classic model mode. 
This is a new image from the latest release of Date Ariane which has an option for a topless barbecue. Game available for sale at arianeb.com
I really like the lighting and Ariane’s mischievous smile in this picture.
