Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
If you ever want to do print through Amazon, they are now offerring physical prints of your digital works (I think they print per order, and then deduct the cost from the sale) so paper copy will always be in stock.
Discouragement is a sign of strong desire :)
Not sure what the exact issues were with that character, but consider putting him aside for a bit and work on a different one. Or perhaps put together some concepts for set pieces, or work on the script. Or just make a bunch of images of a character you're already really happy with, remind yourself that you're better at this than a single experience indicated. You're right, it will pass, but it may pass faster with some of those strategies. I'm sure any of us would be happy to critique the character you'd been working on if you want to share. no pressure though.
Looks pretty good, the story's got me intrigued :) The style reminds me of one I've seen before (But don't ask where as I don't remember)
The only thing is, I would have comnined the balloons into one of those single multi-balloon thingies, just so that there was only a single tail durring Bishop's rant.
*edit*
had to finish my thought
Yeah, they do that. I used them for my other book, Ninja Mouse: Haiku. But their color printing services are more expensive that Lightning Source (the printer I used for Gates of Dawn). Amazon also doesn't have a hardback option. For someone making a black and white comic, Amazon would definitely be the go-to choice though. Their printing service is called Create Space, for those curious.
But for color, their costs are prohibitive. Gates of Dawn, for example, is 8 x 10 and perfect bound, which makes it a bit more premium than a standard comic (which is now usually $3.99 for 22 pages of content). It's also 60 pages of content. So it makes sense to sell it for more than a standard comic. Since I'm nobody, $8.95 seems reasonable. But to sell a color copy through Amazon, I'd have list it for for like 13 or 14 dollars for it to make any kind of financial sense to produce. But it's not worth 13 or 14 dollars, you know? Hopefully printing prices will continue to fall and I can just use Amazon for everything.
Done. Plz check your PM's.
-MJ
Wasnt looking for the Klingon Homeworld persay, but looking for background renders like that. That way i dont have purchase, build, or render that set myself.
-MJ
So you want a render to use as background? Not a problem, let me know what you'd like. that image took about an hour to throw together.
Here is the bugger who gave me so much trouble last night. Made a lot of progress. Still not 100% satisfied but it's much better. Tried that Threshold technique on this one, Let me know what you think.
Removed
Sorry,I can never figure out how to reply to PMs. I have most of Stonemason's Sci-fi stuff, and a bunch of other sci-fi sets, mostly interiors. Not sure if that's what you're looking for. Sounds like Greycat may have more what you're looking for.
I wouldn't be willing to do them for free, but it seems like it'd be more cost effective to just buy the sets and render them unless you're hardware limited? Let me know if things don't pan out with Greycat. Maybe PM me your email address and we communicate that way?
@tkdrobert
Cool character. The action pose came out especially well. The threshold tool got you some nice blacks in that one. The one on the right seems to suffer mostly from the pose...like he's in an unopened action figure pose.
Sorry if I missed this elsewhere, but you're rendering in 3Delight, right? if so, consider investing the AOA Advanced light sets, and Dimension Theory's set of presets for those lights. If you have some more interesting lighting going on the original render, you may get some more dynamic blacks and cool color variation. I know I just recently recommended against investing in more tools, but they're extremely useful lights. If you want to make comics that look hand drawn, I don't think you necessarily need to become a lighting master, and the AOA lights are an excellent go to. (Sorry, Age of Armor is the vendor name).
Also, I think the characters hair should match the beard color. Not sure that I'm really keen on his eyebrows either. You might think about removing them and hand drawing them. You could just color over them with the skin tone in final filtered image then draw simple lines, or remove them from the original texture in photoshop so they wouldn't be there when you render to begin with.
The yellow piping on the leg doesn't seem to fit, and the stark white belt buckle and metal bits on this boots stand out a bit too much in my opinion.
Replied. Please check ur PM's.
-MJ
Thanks for sharing! The script is excellent. You've really captured the relationship between the characters well with few words and panels.The male's naration is extremely efficient in my opinion as well, we get a good idea of his character through concise word choice.
Fun side projects are great, huh? Freeing and all that.
I do think the gutters are too large, and the word balloons are a bit template-y, for what it's worth. Can you change the opacity of the balloons in Comic Life?That might blend them into the art a bit better.
"Figured since I've been posting in here perhaps I should attach some samples from one of my recent projects, the Gates of Dawn. All of the characters are either G2M or G2F. Happy to hear any feedback or answer any questions.
Edit: should have made it clear at first, but these pages are not consecutive."
OH MAN! you nailed that drawn look. I thought it was drawn until I went back and read the note you added. Well done. I would love a one-click solution to pull that off. lol
I have all the shaders (including Will Timmins) to make the cartoon look and I have all the filters in photoshop.
I just never use them. I also got some graphitti apps in my phone that are awesome too.
Still, the only thing I wanted but never got was whatever that technique was ( that was really popular for a while) - that turned images into MOVIE POSTERS.
Whenever some did a "tutorial" it always ended with "They do something like this and experiment further" it's like no one ever figured it out.
It always involved 100 steps in photoshop and never looked like the movie posters. lol
And I know it wasn't that complicated because I saw the effect used in some janky places, so I know it was easier that those 'How To' articles make it seem.
I don't think reverse-engineering-it works.
So I made some mistakes on this one but I'm posting it, because I couldn't get that threshold thing to work. It made the render too bright, particulary it made the skin almost white snow. Should I have erased the skin area from the threashold layer? I tried some other solutions but they didn't work to my satisfaction. My lighting probably played a role.
Now the mistakes I made include not shading the belt the way I did the rest of the image. Also there is some poke through on the cape/cowl that I forgot to touch up.
Hey thanks man, glad you liked it. It's nice to hear that a fellow 3D artist thought it was hand drawn at first. Alas, I'd love a one click solution to get my affect too, but it's more like hundreds of clicks. Saving a custom photoshop action was a big time saver but there's still a lot of line drawing by hand at the end.
I have to admit though I'm not quite sure which movie poster effect your referring too. Could you find a link or example by chance? Sounds interesting though.
I think it came out great. Especially Batman's face (the skin part). Catwoman's face came out great too.
Regarding threshold on this particular piece...I'd expect threshold would make the skin white on this render, because there's so much black already. So no mistake there. But rather than erasing the face, I'd recommend opening the original render in photoshop then:
1. Duplicate the layer (right click on the layer for menu, or just CTRL+J)
2. Threshold on the new layer
3. Set threshold layer to multiply
Multiplying a layer will make white transparent.
Edit: the bump texture on the utility belt is a bit strong. Maybe set that to 0 in the surfaces tab before rendering. threshold would pick up less of that detail, unless of course you're going for that.
Also Manga Studio can do threshold also, but it's called binarization there. Edit > Tonal Correction > Binarization
Thank you for ll the knowkedge you are sharing. I really appreciate it.
Another concept.
No problem, happy to help. Shogun has come out the best so far in my opinion.
Sometimes threshold can get a bit rough. Another filter called diffuse can sometimes smooth it out. Filer > Stylize > Diffuse
I noticed you've mostly shared full body images. Consider doing some portraits or torso and up shots so you can experiment how the effects change at different "distances."
Thought I might share some pages from my first project, Ninja mouse: haiku. I used a significantly different process for this, and I thought others may mind it useful.
It might be hard to tell, but Ninja Mouse is a genesis figure with an extreme custom morph I made in Zbrush. I removed all texture maps from all of the content after loading, so I just rendered a plain grey figure without any lighting.
Then I ran a threshold, or maybe it was posterize, in Photoshop. This gave me very clean black lines. I then colored everything by hand in Manga Studio. For anyone wanting to try that method, search for how to set a reference layer in MS and the color flats stage can be done in a flash. basically duplicate the line art layer, set the top layer to multiply and make it a reference layer. Then select the lower layer and use the paint bucket tool to fill in the line art.
For those interested, Ninja mouse is also available on ComiXology, Kindles, Nook, etc... and in paperback and hardback from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Final results are very impressive, very well done! I love the style and character.
-- Walt Sterdan
Very cool. I love the 2nd picture the most. Cleaned my sword a few days ago.
I'm trying to find a good example, but that was years ago. Now all I'm finding are the ultra-saturated-cartoony ones.
It was the look of a movie poster, where it looks painted, but isn't.
It looked like this....
But it wasn't a painting. It was "in" for a while and all sorts of album art and mixtapes featured that look.
What aspect ratio do you use when making a comic book cover?
Who, me?
1) I use the "Letter Size" and then
2) customize the pixel width to be 2,500 and let the Daz rendering editor ratio-out the width. (I think 32XX-something)
3) I then open that image in photoshop and change the DPI to 300 and then bring the much larger image into the Page Template I created.
4) The template is a generic 8+1/2 X 11 page with a bleed marker (A red outline to show safe area and cutoff) so I know when objects are close to the edge of the page.
--------------
Before I started my new series, I studied the old ones, I already printed and saw png files. I had no idea whay that was the final format so I went back to Jpegs in the pdfs. It wasn't until I went to start the print process that I saw KA-BLAM uses pngs and that's why I was saving in that format. It was probably their print template for bleed and safe areas.
Not sure what aspect ration this would be and don't feel like doing the math, but American comics are generally 6.625 in x 10.25 inches. I normally work in 8 x 10, or 4800 x 6000 at 600 DPI.
I created a custom template in Manga Studio with a 7.25 x 10.5 canvas at 600 DPI,with a finish size of 6.625 x 10.25 and an inner border of 6.25 and 9.75. Make usre you have the manga draft settings box checked when you create the new file so you can get all of the options.
EDIT: Sorry in case it was unclear...those aren't the settings I use to make 8 x 10 work. Those should be good settings if you're looking to do standard american comic book work.
I'm trying to do a render in DAZ that I won't have to adjust when I bring it into Comic Life. However, the concept I was working on last night needs a revamp. I liked it when I first made it (alien) but when I finished post-work on it, not so much.
tkdrobert,
Didn’t say you purchased CSP? Here’s my settings for a 8 ½ x 11 sheet.
Are you bringing it into Comic Life to filter, or were you wondering what dimensions to render in DS so you wouldn't have to have to crop or resize it? If the latter, I'd recommend rendering 1875 X 2925. That would give 300 DPI at the dimensions in my above comment, which is suitable for printing. If your rig can handle it, double that 3750 x 5850 for 600 dpi. If you don't care about printing, you could keep that aspect ration and render much smaller.
I have Comic Life, but I don't have anything positive to say about, so I can't offer any tips about the filtering processes there.