Daz Authors, Illustrators, et al... Showcase Your Rendered Covers/Illustrations Here
L'Adair
Posts: 9,479
Since I started dabbling with 3D and DAZ Studio, I've discovered there are a lot of authors and illustrators in this community. Novica started a thread to talk about our books and discuss strategies, like Instagram, for marketing our work. I thought it would be nice to also showcase our 3D work.
Personally, I'd love to see the "before and after" of your book covers: before you add your text, and after you add it. And if there was a lot of post work, the raw render, as well. Illustrations are welcome, too, of course.
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To get things started, I'll post my cover for Ambient Light.
As I'm stuck using CPU only on my computer, I rendered the scene in sections and used the script in Photoshop to "Load Files into Stack..." which placed each section in the correct alignment with the other sections. The final image was much larger than portrayed here and gave me a lot of flexibility in finding the sweet spot of just how much of her face and his hand to show. That's the image on the left.
The image in the middle is the finished image without text, and the one on the right is the finished image with text.
I used the image created for the eBook on the paperback cover as well, though I had to make some changes with the front cover of the paperback having different dimensions.
For the back cover, I needed something dark that wouldn't interfere with the text, and to keep the dark theme of a thriller going. I decided on a dark moonlit forest scens ss there is a scene in the book where the protaganist is running through a forested area with only the moon to light her way. To get what I wanted, I ended up rendering the forest and the moon separately, then putting them together in Photoshop. I ended up using a stock image to get the additional stars in the sky.
The back cover, renders and composited image:
And the finished cover:
I've put a link to this thread too. I don't have any covers to show because I'm still writing my book. But what a fun idea!
Thank you.
I don't write, but I know someone who does ... :) Also, still to my amazement he uses some of my stuff for his covers. He has also used art by Szark. Instead of spamming the thread with images I'll just post a link to his site. We will be going to Wyntercon again this year and as a special for this year (he did a 'cheapie' "All Your Banners Are Dust" last year) he plans a 'book' of A4 size that has stories inspired by some of my art, along with said art - needless to say that is making me grin like the proverbial loon! ;)
There's some really nice art on those pages. Thanks for sharing the link!
My series covers all feature a girl running or walking, and framed in some kind of doorway. So that was the basic brief. At some point in the book, the characters are on a ship that sinks, and I was somewhat inspired by some scenes from the movie Life of Pi.
I scratch-built a corridor section in Carrara, using basic box modelling for a single bulkhead. This was duplicated several times to get the length, and cylinders of varying sizes added for pipes and ducts. A fairly simple rusty paint texture was added and moved around on each piece to make it look less repetitive. Another box and flattened cylinder to represent the ship's side. The bulkhead lights I filched from my Hemlock Folly set. The water was an ocean primitive, scaled to look big and sloshy, and tilted on an angle to give the impression that the corridor was tipping over. The girl was Stephanie 6, and the outfit was http://www.daz3d.com/prison-clothes-and-scrubs-for-genesis-2-female-s by @Oskarsson retextured with 'slave' stencilled on the back. (in the book, the slave mark was a facial tattoo, but that wasn't going to work here). The sky and moon were added in post.
For the back cover, I used http://www.daz3d.com/secluded-shoreline by @FirstBastion Again retextured, to look like black volcanic sand. Stephanie 6 again, and Young Teen Julie for the second figure. The prison outfit was further distressed.
Very nice! If I'd seen this in my local bookstore, I'd never have known the cover art was 3D.
Well done.
And thanks for sharing.
Hi, I've not had much time for forums and such for a long while but I've tried to keep up my project for book covers. I have a view to perhaps entering the premade book cover market with something a little different, my interest is in trying to imitate the pulpy mass market paperbacks - mostly I'm focusing on horror (so I'm not sure how much I can post here) but I've started looking at doing some mystery novels as well. I use Poser 11 Pro, along with GIMP, PSE8, PostWorkShop3, InkScape, and ArtRage4
Here are some recent examples. The first two were largely post-worked in PSE8 from simple Poser renders - though the second made use of some multi pass layers (in particular the depth map which I used as a layer mask). The third is a combination of two renders, one taken into ArtRage for painting, while the second was a simple line render with a little postwork.
I use DAZ 3D to model and render a reference image I used to make this mock cover (not a real book). I am working on several stories, and I build storyboards using DAZ. It's really helpful!
Wow! That really is outstanding!
These are really nice. I'm a big fan of the fifties - early sixties paperback cover design aesthetic and you've done a great job on recreating it. Of course, if I was an author BUYING a cover for my book, I don't know how interested I'd be in a cover that makes my book look already old, beaten and consigned to the retail pile, so you might want to roll back on the aging effects. :) .
Hi. Not to fear, if I do try to sell anything, the wear and tear will be a display option - particularly for print books, they can get beaten up all by themselves:)
For now though, I'm just having a bit of fun.
This is the cover for one of my books. Actually this was the reason, I started with Daz. I couldn't find any picture for this story so I had to do it myself. Unfortunately, since then I spend more time on rendering and postwork than I do for writing. But it is so much fun. :)
Cool work there!
This is a cover I am presently painting. I created the tree on the right and the lycan in Zbrush. They were both rendered in ZBrush and composited into the background I began to paint and now I'm doing all the detail work.
That is looking outstanding, Chris! The cover for book 1 was stellar, but I think this one is even better! BTW, I ended up getting the first book way back when you mentioned doing the cover in the book cover thread. Great book, can't wait to get book 2!
Wow Chris. That Lycan and the whole cover is awesome. This is my newest for the children's book I'm working on. Making use of the plushies.
If anyone has any suggestions fr improvements I'm willing to listen.
Just did the cover for this. The inside is other's people work.
Another comic book cover... I added my web info after to use as a demo, not on the original cover.
This is a Book Cover I did for a physiologist, using daz products.
I used a sliver g2f character, a swarm hair and Holes room 2019 hotel room render in Iray and put together in Photoshop
you can find the book on Amazon. Don;t ask me if the books any good . I don't read em I just make the cover art as I get work order for them..lol