I picked up Arki’s OceanQueen dragon on sale recently and had been playing with putting her in various TD2 settings when I came across PeterBob’s fantasy landscape backdrops in the Rendo Freebies. I’ve never rendered over a background image, but when I loaded PeterBob’s “Bad Sea_Sf_blue_star,” I knew the OceanQueen would love to glide over those waves!
To help her blend with the background, I added a few of Flink’s Water FX props in the hopes that it would look like she’s dragging her claw through the top of a wave. I also rendered over a shadow catcher, but with the light source behind the dragon, the shadows aren’t visible in the rendered area. I put a copy of the background image on an HDRI sphere, even though the image isn’t mapped for a sphere, and used that to light the scene using IDL. The coolest thing about rendering over a background is how fast it is, even on pretty high settings!
I’ve got a few more ideas for how to use PeterBob’s backdrops, but now I also want to learn how to make my own fantasy landscapes, so I’m going to give ArtMatic Voyager a try. (It’s Mac only, made by one of the guys who made Bryce.)
Rendered in February 2020 in Poser Pro 11 Firefly at 6000 × 3375 pixels.
SCENE CREDITS: Flink’s Water FX; Bad Sea_Sf_blue_star backdrop by PeterBob.
CHARACTER CREDITS: OceanQueen Dragon by Arki.