Nataani for Dusk

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

It's possible QAV can help with the "sales pitch" as it were. I'm not good with that sort of thing either.

Me either...

My husband, although a very, very good carpenter nowadays, spent about eight years stuck in Retail Hell as a Radio Shack employee. A lot of his paycheck depended on his ability to up-sell, or to sell higher end items like cell phones and cell phone plans. I had occasion to see him work more than once back then - I swear he could sell ocean front property in the middle of Arizona to someone and make them think they were getting the boat to go with it.

I will probably pick his brain for wording and help putting the sales pitch together. He talks every so often about wanting to help with all of this if I need it (he's actually been watching Nataani's progress through the test renders).

I'll see if he wants to ante up when it comes time to doing that part of things.

 

[Miss B]

Oh the pure salesman, now there's the perfect person to help.

 

[sanbie]

I fall down miserably when it comes to promo images and the spiel...I suck at it to be mild! lol

 

[Pendraia]

Definitely the right person for the job...

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Alright. I've gotten the LIE presets finished. They seem to work fine on my end so far. I'll do the hard test on them insofar as loading onto other Dusk characters, and then Dawn/Luna loading to see how much fiddling the girls might need to use these.... but I'll do those tomorrow.

Screenshot of the LIE presets folder... 26 in all to play with.

And I am calling that a night. I'll get more done on this tomorrow. LOL

 

[Pendraia]

Sounds like you have two sets there...the character Nataani and also a set of dirt overlays.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Sounds like you have two sets there...the character Nataani and also a set of dirt overlays.

Maybe? I suppose if you go by numbers of files, sure. But the overlays were really meant to be used with Nataani's dirty skin. I only ended up doing them as LIE presets to avoid an insanely large download on the texture files. It cost less in terms of HD space, to do it this way. 26 mud splatters, times 2 torso maps, and 6 face maps, and one leg map, and one arm maps, if I'm NOT counting the mapped dirty skin versions...

I included the dirt overlays on the off-chance that folks might want to use the LIE presets with other Dusk characters (yes, that means people can apply the dirty skin to Nataani either by loading skin MATs or by loading the LIE presets), as well as to cater to the folks who might only want the much lighter dirty skin effect and don't want all the mud splatters on the skin. But the LIE presets were not ever intended to stand on their own, really. They are not hard to do; each one took me longer to render a thumbnail than it did to set up the overlay and save the preset.

Of course the overlays could be used with character sets other than Nataani. But I kind of see that as just a little bonus; if I had laid out texture maps for every possible combination of splatters, you all would have strung me up by my braids when you saw the size of the textures folder.

 

[Pendraia]

However you want to work it Seliah...just seems like you have put a lot of work into this set and it's like two sets in one. In the end it comes down to how you want to do it.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

However you want to work it Seliah...just seems like you have put a lot of work into this set and it's like two sets in one. In the end it comes down to how you want to do it.

I will think on it. It could technically be released as an add-on, I suppose. Not sure. I was initially intending to just bundle it all together, but I'll see. QA might want to split it up also... heck, I don't even have a clue what sort of price tag to put on this thing, but I don't want it out of reach, cost-wise, for people, so I may break it up for cost purposes. I suppose if I go through and set up all the LIE presets specifically to work with the girls as well so that people don't have to fiddle with the LIE editor to fit them properly, the overlays could come out as a separate item.

I will think on it a bit more. Nothing's written in stone yet, in terms of what comes out together or doesn't. I'm still finishing it up; got a couple more poses left to re-build, and putting the finishing touches on the up-close/portrait bump settings. It also still has to go through Beta. So there's time yet on figuring out what to pack into it and whether or not anything should be split off into separate products.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

You might go through what you've posted here and find you've already written your teaser description in your explanations of what/who Nataani is. At first 300 characters might seem daunting (it was to me), but the next thing I knew, I had more than 300 characters and then had to trim, and trim, and trim. I think the biggest challenge for me was writing teaser descriptions for the five Nouvelle Aube products so they all had the same feel.

 

[Alisa]

I will think on it. It could technically be released as an add-on, I suppose. Not sure. I was initially intending to just bundle it all together, but I'll see. QA might want to split it up also... heck, I don't even have a clue what sort of price tag to put on this thing, but I don't want it out of reach, cost-wise, for people, so I may break it up for cost purposes. I suppose if I go through and set up all the LIE presets specifically to work with the girls as well so that people don't have to fiddle with the LIE editor to fit them properly, the overlays could come out as a separate item..

Lisa is great at helping in terms of pricing, once something is submitted...so just jot down that in the notes that you'd like help with pricing.

There is certainly something to having 2 smaller, less expensive products that then have a value stack to entice folks to get a discount to buy both. Again, something Lisa's very good at helping with!

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

You might go through what you've posted here and find you've already written your teaser description in your explanations of what/who Nataani is. At first 300 characters might seem daunting (it was to me), but the next thing I knew, I had more than 300 characters and then had to trim, and trim, and trim. I think the biggest challenge for me was writing teaser descriptions for the five Nouvelle Aube products so they all had the same feel.

That's a good idea, Satira. It is something I had thought about, at least briefly. I will probably do that. 300 words isn't so hard for me to write normally. It's only hard when I feel like what I'm writing is not genuine, and all sales pitch writing falls into that category for me. Oh, I recognize the need for it. A business is a business. I just stink at it. I'll probably take another sift through the thread when it comes time to do it.

Lisa is great at helping in terms of pricing, once something is submitted...so just jot down that in the notes that you'd like help with pricing.

Thanks. I'll bear that in mind, and I'll most likely do it. I have no clue what something like this really ought to be selling for. I'm not exactly a big vendor here. LOL Sani was the most extensive package I ever bothered to sell, and the only reason he ended up as a sale product is because that was the terms on the merchant resource I used for him; the resulting product had to be for commercial sale only, there was a strict rule on no freebies.

There is certainly something to having 2 smaller, less expensive products that then have a value stack to entice folks to get a discount to buy both. Again, something Lisa's very good at helping with!

It's something I'm thinking about doing, yes. At least with the LIE presets. I don't really want to separate the poses. Those are shipping with his character package for sure. The LIE presets, I am thinking about separating out, mainly for cost factor. I'd like to try and make sure he's not cost prohibitive, and I have to keep reminding myself that we do the value stacks here, where folks can pick and choose the parts they want. LOL

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Next pose finished. This is more of an action pose... they are not all sedentary poses, by any means. Same pose, same lights, three different camera angles...

Back to tidying up the close-up bump settings now.

 

[Miss B]

Nice pose Seliah. I also like the texture of that shirt. ~hint, hint~

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Nice pose Seliah. I also like the texture of that shirt. ~hint, hint~

LOL. That texture is a stock texture that came with Ken's western outfit.

 

[Pendraia]

Nice...love the action pose.

When I suggested more than one product I was thinking of Mariah's product for the MIL4 generation....she did them as a separate package and I think did them separately for the girls and boys plus the kids iirc. I know that she was very kind and gifted me the MBaby3 one. Just wondering if I'm remembering correctly though and it was MIL3 but seem to remember an m4 one.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Nice...love the action pose.

When I suggested more than one product I was thinking of Mariah's product for the MIL4 generation....she did them as a separate package and I think did them separately for the girls and boys plus the kids iirc. I know that she was very kind and gifted me the MBaby3 one. Just wondering if I'm remembering correctly though and it was MIL3 but seem to remember an m4 one.

I think she did both a Mil3 and a Mil4 one. I think.

And yes, I'm thinking something similar here.... if I sit down and set up the overlays to work on a one-click basis for people with Dawn and Luna as well, then I can hold Nataani's LIE presets back, and set it up as a separate item for all three of our figures. I might, maybe, get my hands on Harry's template and play about with giving him some muddy hooves or such, too. I love Harry, and he seems to have quite a following these days, which is great. But I have never seen any horse, anywhere, that was in pristine, 100% sanitary state when they are out running or even in pasture.

But anyway. I am getting a little bit ahead of myself here. I may just hold the LIE presets back and work them up into a more full package for their own release, yes. I think what you mentioned is a good idea... and the salesman of the family here thinks it is also. LOL I'll address it more closely in a little while.

At the moment, I just want to get the rest of Nataani's poses and bump settings finished up so I can get him into Beta.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

So... this is what the bump settings are looking like for the closeup/portrait or high-res renders. I lowered the bump map strength, and deepened the negative bump values just a tiny bit to maintain detail without making his skin look like sandpaper.

Full beard option, Lo Bump utility MAT setting, rendered at 800x800 pixels... I'll do a higher resolution render later (I like to test high-res bumps aroun 1200x1200 or 1600x1600 just to see how they hold up), and depending on the results of that render, these settings might be good for the head MATs for close-up renders...

Note : I have not yet adjusted the body/limbs bumps for close-up renders yet. This was just a face test. Some of the grainy appearance is due to lighting as well... I'm using an AOA spotlight, which I have noticed tends to make some shadows a little grainy, and Nataani is unfortunately, not looking into the "bright side" of the lighting rig here. LOL

 

[Miss B]

I think the the face bump is looking good Seliah.

 

[Lorraine]

Sure is looking good, Seliah