I scored a bunch of really cool stuff during DAZ’s PC Anniversary last October. Even though I’ve had the props since October, I actually didn’t start playing around with them until December. So some of these renders have been a long-time coming.

The PC Anniversary Bundle 3 included 8 cool racing props: the Yamaki FDR2 Fusion bike, Yamaki GTX-R car, the Yamaki Cargo truck, Yamaki Victory lane, the Yamaki Grid Girls, as well as some textures.

Normally all that stuff would cost you $111.60, but with a Platinum Club membership you’d get it for $19.92. That’s why the PC Anniversary Bundle at $5.99 was such a ridiculous deal.

The deal however, wasn’t without it’s “gotchas”. The Yamaki Grid Girls is just a series of materials and actually required Wicked Footwear and Wicked Dance Fevah. So that was another $8.71 I had to spend, but I also got that on sale back in December. Still, a small investment in order to take advantage of over $100 worth of assets is still a good deal.

I started out with a few Stephanie 5s and dressed them up in the Wicked Footwear and Wicked Dance Fevah. I then applied both Grid Girl outfits and gave them a test render.


I then dropped in two of the Fusion bikes and gave them each a different material.

Rather than spend hours trying to pose them perfectly on the bikes, I picked up the Yamaki Show Poses pack.


I then started dropping in all the elements from the bundle: Victory Lane, the Cargo truck, and the GTX-R.



Another test render. That’s going to look pretty cool, but it needs more girls!



I then dropped in a few more Stephanies along with some Genesis 2s. I dressed them up in the Wicked Dance Fevah outfits and started to play around with some textures.



I also gave them the umbrellas that came with the Victory Lane set.



The vivid colors look kind of cool, but I guess if they’re going to be a teammate, then their outfits should match. I started to pair them up and give them similar outfits.





I also needed some spectators, so I dropped in a bunch of Michaels and Victorias and gave them all some outfits.



I thought it would be cool to throw some kids in the crowd too, so I added a few more figures in and morphed them into kids.



I then gave it another test render. Now it’s starting to look like something, but I need to fill in the background with something.



I added the Big Bill Truck and Trailer and moved them into position. I then added a sky dome to fill the rest of the space. I set it for night so that I could add a bunch of colored lights and headlights on the bikes. Finally, I moved all the spectators into position. I also made some additional changes to their outfits, and moved some of the teammates around.



I then gave it another render after adding some red, blue, and purple lights.



After a few more tweaks to the lights, as well as the depth of field on the camera, I had the look I was going for. I then took the final render into Pixelmator and started adding some lens flares and bokeh effects. It’s hard to pick out the subtle details on an image shrunk down to 620x348, but the native 2560x1440 image looks amazing!



It looks so go, and the characters came out so nice, that it would be a shame to call this one done. Each pair or riders could very well be a render of its own. With that, I saved my project as a new file and started to work on individual renders for each pair or riders. I moved the camera into position, retweaked the depth of field and the lights, and deleted everything else that was out-of-view.



It looks awesome.



However, it needs a little more skin, and I wasn’t happy with cutting their feet off, so I gave them a black sports bra, changed the lights, the camera, and set the sky dome to day.



I then ran it again. Now that looks good! I really like how bright and vivid the colors are.



I then took it into Pixelmator and added a ton of lens flares, bokeh, star shines, and haze.



Moving right along, I duplicated my original file and did the same for team 2.



I even went as far as moving the spectators around too for a totally different look.



Again, into Pixelmator it went for a ton of after-effects.



Lastly, team 3. Again, I moved the spectators around and retweaked the lights.



This might be my favorite one.



Finally, some more after-effects.



I’m really happy with the way that these three renders came out. Dare I say it, but I might like them better than the original group shot!