Hay There

Well, this is certainly a 180 from yesterday, and that was intentional. I wanted to do something fun, and this idea came to me after a quick flip through my “notebook of ideas”. I’m not sure what inspired me to create this other than I just wanted to do something fun and lighthearted. It could have in part been inspired by all of the old Westerns I’ve been watching lately including a few that take place on ranches. My dad loves old Westerns and has been watching them on repeat almost exclusively when he gets to watch TV. On the rare occasions that I take breaks and go to my room with the TV in it, I either watch an old Western or something from the MCU… which is basically to the 21st Century what the Old Western genre was to the 20th Century. Hmm… maybe I’ll make something MCU inspired next. Who knows? I certainly don’t know yet.

I rendered this in Poser 12 Superfly with a single “sun” light and an ambient skydome. I used Poser’s depth of field to give the scene some realistic depth because otherwise it looks too shallow and flat. By the way, here’s a quick tip in case you buy those Hay Bales that I used in this piece. They come with an extra zip called “Texture Extras” or something like that and it includes normals maps. Use them!! They really add a fantastic level of detail to the hay bales that won’t be there otherwise. Also, use at least a subdivision level of 1 if you plan to use them in the foreground like I have here. I also put a slight displacement map/value on the foreground bale as well but most of that texture is from the normals map. In postwork, I didn’t like where her hair model met her scalp, so I painted a new hairline for her using some brushes and a few layers of different matching hair color shades. I think it turned out quite well all things considering. I then used a single Photoshop action to play with the coloring. After that, I took the image into Lightroom where all the color and contrast magic happened. After that it was back into Photoshop to add my logo and that was that.

Most of these items are available from the Renderosity Marketplace (unless otherwise noted):

• D9S Fiona for La Femme by Dream9Studios
• Flame Hair by Prae
• Dynamic Blouse for La Femme by ShaaraMuse3D
• Hay Rolls by ShaaraMuse3D
• Flinks Skies 2: Modern Skies by Flink
• Country Time for La Femme by RPublishing
• DAZ Barn, DAZ Silo and Water Pump, DAZ Tractor F9N (Daz3D)
• RDNA Terradome 2 (Formally at RuntimeDNA)