Time for my first render of the new year. Let's make it something really special!

I started out with Kenzie for Mei Lin and dropped in a triplet of DAZ Dragon 3s. I scaled them way down to younglings and gave them all a few different morphs so they'd all appear to be different kinds of dragons.



I then started to pair them with Mei Lin.





When I was finally happy with the way that they were posed, I gave Mei Lin some hair and a test render.



Of course, the bikini is just there as a placeholder for now. I often partially dress my characters while they're in the works just in case the kids (or my wife for that matter) walk in while I'm running a render.

Not bad. Time to start on the background. I dropped in some land and sky props.



I then gave it a spin until I was happy with the placement.



It needed more stuff, so I dropped in some rocks. I then scaled them on the Z axis until they looked like rock spikes coming out of the ground. I made the rest of the rocks float in mid air. It's a magical, mysterious sort of place with unnatural rock formations and floating rocks!



I then gave it a rest render. One thing that was immediately apparent was the fact that Mei Lin appeared to float above the ground, This is despite the fact that her feet are firmly planted on the ground. I know it doesn't look it, but her feet are actually partially submerged in the sand. I was afraid that this would become a problem later on.



I decided to push on and see what became of it. I tweaked my lights and the depth-of-field.



I also dropped in a lot more rocks.



I gave it one more render, but it was even worse. The detail on the ground is so lacking that it's just too blurry to look like it's right under her feet. The only way to overcome it would be to put something in the foreground to cover her feet, or crop them out entirely.



I opted for the later. In any case, I wanted to pull Mei Lin right into the camera. The full pose looks really sexy, but it's not meant to be for this render. I changed my camera's aspect ratio to 16:9 and adjusted my depth-of-field. I also dropped in some dry grass to help fill the foreground.



I also gave all the rocks a slight angle. It definitely makes them look more unnatural and magical. You'll also be able to see that much more detail in Mei Lin when she's pulled right into the camera. Especially on the final render done at 2560 x 1440.



I scattered some bone piles around as well as added a few femurs sticking out of the ground.



I also found her hair to be just a little bit too dark for the scene. I changed the color of her hair. I also gave her some red eyes. Finally, I swapped out the bikini for some raggedy clothes.



Wow! Now that looks awesome. You should see it at 2560 x 1400. The detail is amazing!



I then took it into Pixelmator and had a blast adding some fire, smoke, debris, lens flare, and bokeh.



As awesome as it came out, there was still a part of me that wanted to see the portrait version. I decided to go back and change the aspect ratio to 8x10. I cropped out her legs and gave it another render. This time, I lost the clothes and posed the dragons to cover the naughty bits.



Again, I took the render into Pixelmator and gave it some post work.



I'm really happy with the way that these came out. Hopefully I'm on a roll with these!