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D to the J to the P-O-N-3.
And ain't no other pony drop the bass like me.

So like I said in my Spitfire pic, I initially wanted to try out anthro ponies with everyone's favorite DJ. Once I got the basics of posing down, I decided to go back to that idea. But believe it or not, this picture of the lovely Vinyl Scratch probably took the longest of any pic I've done so far. Whereas all the pics I've posted up till now took about a couple hours to finish, I was working on this particular pic for 2-3 days. Part of that time was me looking for assets to use here as well as juggling my SFM time with real life responsibilities. But the biggest reason for the lengthy time to create this pic was me being trapped by my own ambition.

Whenever I set out to create something involving 3D work, whether it's a pre rendered scene in Poser or a photoshoot in Second Life, what I do is I brainstorm several different ideas, and then pick the one that I like the best. I then usually decide to enhance or spruce up the idea with some additional details (such as an extra model or prop).

Sometimes though I get so caught up in adding these extra little details that they literally cause the entire project to come crashing down.

This nearly suffered that fate.

First I set about putting together the body double for Vinyl. I decided to again turn to LordAardvark's ME3 models, using a "stripper Asari" outfit because it did seem like something Vinyl would wear on the job (and also came with piercings and glowsticks).

Skinning was all at once easier and tricker this time around. Because the clothing is bodygrouped, this meant I just had to alter the skin texture. I did this by grayscaling the original texture, then adding on another layer colored in Vinyl's coat color as an overlay. The end result was a texture that had defined muscles and other body parts, but was also very close to Vinyl's coat color. In fact it has a slight yellowish tint, but it's not drastic enough to be noticeable. Not to mention the lighting conditions here make it all but invisible. (And for an added bit of irony, word of God says that Vinyl's coat color is in fact a very pale yellow instead of pure white).

Her cutie marks were a bitch to skin. Due to how the texture was laid out, it was a long process of trial and error. Not only did I have to position the marks just right, but I had to make them the right side so they wouldn't be warped. The final result I came up with still has a tiny bit of warping, but it still fits into my goal of "not perfect, but good enough."

Since I noticed a lot of anthro SFM pics don't have the cutie marks skinned, I may do a tutorial in the future of how to skin them.

Once I had Vinyl's body double built, I started to think about the setting of the pic. I decided I wanted to have a scene where Vinyl was working the turntables in a club. It would allow me to play around with some fun poses, props, and maps, not to mention some interesting lighting.

Then I decided to add in some extra details. After thinking it over some more I elected to make it look like a full blown rave, with anthro versions of Colgate (aka Minuette) and Lyra on stripper poles off to the side of Vinyl's booth. The foreground would also be populated by various models from other Source games, and this would give the feel of a proper rave.

And that's where the problems began.

First I had trouble finding a model for Colgate that was rigged for SFM. I eventually found a filly-sized model. It's not exactly what I wanted, but it had to do. (I do play on using Colgate in the future, so if anyone knows where I can find an adult sized SFM rigged model, let me know).

Then I had to skin the body doubles for Colgate and Lyra. It took me some time to decide on models I wanted to use, I elected to use two different models for the sake of diversity. But skinning proved complicated as well: overlaying their coat colors over the grayscaled skin textures resulted in the colors being too light. So I just made the skin textures the coat colors, with no details.

Eventually I got the body doubles rigged. But then the problems continued when I tried putting everything together in SFM.

First I couldn't find a proper "nightclub" map, and the ones that I did find had texture or model errors that I could not fix.

Then Colgate's textures would not render properly, with her showing up all in black.

And my biggest problem is that when I tried to load the map, the ponies, their body doubles, and a couple other props I wanted to use in the scene, SFM repeatedly ran out of memory and crashed.

In short, this project was becoming frustrating, and I wasn't having fun.

I was about to give up on the project and start something else, when I thought about just why I was having trouble and I came to a realization: the pic was literally too big to handle.

I had made a serious error in judgement.

Did I want the pic to be this big hot rave scene? Yes.

Did it need to be that? No.

I realized that I had invested a huge amount of time focusing on all these extra details on the pic, and I had all but neglected the star: Ms. Vinyl Scratch. I decided to focus on the basics: what was the one image that came to mind when I thought of an anthropomorphic Vinyl?

Her working the turntables.

Once I realized where I had gone wrong, the pic came together very quickly. I just spawned a simple black room, Vinyl, her body double, and a DJ booth prop I found on the workshop. Lyra, Colgate, their body doubles, and all the extra props were now unnecessary and I happily cut them from the project.

(For what it's worth, I do like the idea of Colgate and/or Lyra working the pole, so I will most likely revisit that idea in the future).

So the end result is the pic you see here. Rigging up Vinyl to her body double was pretty simple. I played around with her head size a bit to get the proportions right, and the end result, while not perfect, is satisfactory.

Posing her over the turntable was tricky as I needed a pose that accomplished several things: make it look like she was actually doing something (namely adjusting the sliders and spinning the record), show off her body as much as possible, and still look "plausible", which here means a pose with no obvious clipping issues and/or contorted limbs or joints.

Her facial expression was a bit tricky as well. I wanted to give her an expression that made her look like she was having fun. But due to the lighting of the scene the results didn't look so good, in fact in some instances it looked like she was sneering at her audience. Once again I decided to go back to the basics and I emulated the grin she wore in her first appearance on the show.

While I had just learned that overloading your pic with extra details can literally bring the house down, I still wanted to make it look more like an actual rave. To that end I gave Vinyl some glow rings on her wrists and tail, and a glowstick necklace (which is sadly kind of washed out by the lighting). She also has her headphones which had to be scaled way down in order to fit around the neck of her body double. While it may not be a "realistic' fit for her, it still looks good. All of these models had to be posed manually, so it was a combination of both scaling them to be in proportion, and getting them in position on her model to make them look right.

With the pose and the props figured out, the last thing to do was the lighting. Because the map I used for this pic is literally a big dark room, I had to create all the lights myself as opposed to using pre-baked lighting. There are 4 lights in the picture, one in front of Vinyl, one behind, and two above her.

The two lights facing her are colored blue to provide a "rave-ish" atmosphere, as well as compliment her coat color. The rear light is volumetric to properly highlight Vinyl and again play up the "rave" setting. The lights above her are both tightly focused on her as if they were spotlight shining on her. I played with several different color combinations before settling on a bright green, which looks yellow when mixed with the blue light. This color gives her some highlights, namely on her head, shoulders, thighs, and tail, but it's not so obtuse that it distracts from the picture.

For the ambient occlusion I also played around with different settings, trying to find one that felt just right. I also adjusted the overall lighting of the pic by playing with the tone mapping on the camera settings: I didn't want the pic to be too bright or too dark. The final result was in the middle: not overly bright to wash her out, but still bright enough to feel like a rave.

So after 2-3 days of work and frustration, this picture is finally done. And while I wasn't having a lot of fun for the majority of the time spent, I did have a lot of fun when I figured out what I was doing wrong. I especially love how Vinyl looks, and I plan on using this particular model in the future.

So just in case you skimmed over all that, here's the lessons I learned from this pic:

-How to properly skin a body double.
-How to skin cutie marks.
-More experience with posing.
-More experience with lighting a scene.
-How to "dress" up characters with props or accessories.
-And most importantly: if your idea is giving you a lot of trouble, sometimes the best solution is to simply get a new one.

I'm probably going to take a little break from working on anthros to do some more generic TF2/Pony stuff, but when I return you can expect to see our lovely DJ again, along with some of her friends.

Upvotes at import: 134 | Stars at import: 97
Posted previously at: 2014-11-12T18:17:15 | Posted previously by: HeliosEusebio