Tag Archives: Daz render

March 14, 2026 · 1:19 pm

The Early Renders of Tim Zaytsev

Meet Tim Zaytsev, the Legion Spore’s external organic operating system!

(Tim would cringe so hard at that. The Legion Spore, and its successor the Manticore, are airships made from the bodies of shapeshifters forced to merge with technology. In theory, the resulting ships are supposed to be a blank slate. Instead, memories of the people who were tied into the ship cause destructive glitches, which Tim has been hired to find and purge).

Once, many years ago (because I’ve been combing through my old newsletters to find stuff I think is interesting enough to yoink and place here in this blog) I took a shot at using Daz Studio to create a figure who would represent Tim from The Glitch Saga. This was still pretty early in my attempts to use Daz Studio, and my asset library was a bit smaller to work with, so it took a few tries before I successfully made a design I was truly happy with.

I wanted to tie the render in with a quote from the book, so I picked a snippet from Spirits of a Glitch, the third book of the series.

Tim is dealing with the Manticore (who has a much harsher personality than the airship you see in Whispers in the Code):

So easily distracted. Surely you see the flaw?

I groan in exasperation. “Where is this other glitch?” Right now there’s nothing but an arrogant machine who keeps messing with my attempts to correctly program it.

The vessel sighs. The glitch belongs to our external organic operating system.

“You don’t have a—”

You, Master Zaytsev. You are our external organic operating system.

A render of a young man looking nervously over his shoulder.

I wasn’t quite happy with this render… I wanted to switch the hair to something closer to how I pictured Tim’s hair, and I wanted to make him look a bit younger (I’m aiming for 18-19 years old).

(Also, I’m absolutely terrible at judging age in real life, let alone in renders).

Later, I took another shot at Tim’s design. For this version, I changed the hair I was using (I was thrilled that the hair I wanted to use for him went on sale almost immediately when I started eyeing it), and I did some work to his facial structure to make him look a bit younger.

A close-up portrait of a somber young man looking off camera.

There were still a few tweaks I wanted to do before calling it final (the back of his jaw/cheek was still too sunken in and the hair wasn’t quite sitting properly around his forehead), but overall, I was pretty happy with this variation.

I’m pretty sure I made a few more adjustments later, but I don’t think I have a fully rendered image with those adjustments. So, for today, we’ll focus on the early renders of the Legion Spore’s external organic operating system. 😉

* * *

Read the tragic downfall of Tim Zaytsev as he navigates the perils of the Legion Spore…

* * *

Happy reading and writing!

An Early Plant Beast Render

Many, many Distant Horizon Universe newsletters ago, back in early 2019, I had a poll for which Distant Horizon beast subscribers would like to see me try to render in Daz.

Keyword being “try” to render, because I was still learning the program and uh… even my drawn attempts to create beasties hadn’t been that great.

At the time, I had a lot fewer assets to work with, and a lot less practice with morphing the figure’s features to get the desired look.

Anyway, with a lot of Photoshop post-processing…

This was my take on a plant beast “candid shot” caught in the wild by a rebel photographer.

The image was inspired by this section from Distant Horizon, where Jenna sees a picture of a plant beast for the first time:

The image had been taken in a jungle, with thick ferns and tall trees spiraling around the frame. It focused on a vaguely humanoid creature. Thick, woody vines wrapped around its hands, twined across its shoulders, and curled around its collarbone. The vines rested loose against its bare chest. The creature—male—was naked, with pale, green-tinted skin and a thicker brow. Like the beast we’d seen in the security feed, this one had cat-like eyes and pointed ears.

Anyway, there you have it!

First attempt to create a Distant Horizon beast in Daz.

Should I give it another go sometime, try a then and now?

* * *

Discover what the Camaraderie doesn’t want the Community to know exists in the Distant Horizon…

Book Cover for Distant Horizon, with a gold title. A young woman faces a sterile white hallway with faces in the doors. She has vines around her arms.

Book cover for Fractured Skies with gold text. A young woman in a coat faces a wintery, pink-tinted forest. She has vines around her arms.

* * *

Happy reading and writing!

Meet Siklana – The Wishing Blade Series

I’ve been having a bit of fun learning Daz, a 3D modeling program. Long story short, the base program is free, but you can buy additional assets–clothes, hair, facial morphs, etc–that allow you to customize your characters.

It’s fun, because it’s been giving me freedom to create characters from my stories that I can pose and light without searching through endless stock photos. (There are other limitations compared to photomanipulation, and avoiding the uncanny valley is tricky, but each type of art has its trade-off).

A few weeks ago I grabbed a bundle on sale for face and body morphs, and it’s been giving me a lot of room to tweak characters how I picture them.

The first character I completed (face, anyway), is Siklana Covonilayno from The Wishing Blade series.

Siklana Covonilayno

SBibbPhoto - Siklana from The Wishing Blade Series

Siklana is Toranih’s sister. While Siklana plays a fairly minor role in the first two books (Magic’s Stealing and The Shadow War), she has her own point of view and plays a major role in book three… Magebane.

Excerpt from Magebane:

After Shalant paid for a room at the nearest inn, Siklana and Daernan left their horses with the local stable girl and went upstairs to a small, square bedroom that offered little privacy. Mid-afternoon sunlight filtered through a window’s canvas covering. Shalant ordered them to unpack anything important from their saddlebags into the room so he could ward the area for protection.

“Perhaps we could ward the stable instead?” Siklana suggested. The cramped room hardly had enough space for all the books and scrolls stashed in her mare’s saddlebags.

Shalant glanced up from tucking a bag of dry goods into the corner beside his bed. “The stable hand wouldn’t be able to tend to the horses.” He pushed the bag aside, stood, and then dusted his knees of dirt. The smoke from Ashan had brought a thin layer of soot to everything in town.

Siklana shared a nervous glance with Daernan. The mage would find out about the books eventually. “I doubt we can fit all your word magic scrolls.”

Shalant turned around, puzzled. “Word magic scrolls? What are you…” His sentence trailed, and from the flicker of his eyes to the door, Siklana suspected he was using scrying ribbons to see what was in those bags. He gave her an incredulous glare. “You brought my library?”

She smiled sheepishly. “The books might help us find a way to bring Toranih back from the shadow realm. Besides, if Ashan has been overrun by Lord Menchtoteale, do you really want him finding your books? Imagine what Isahna could do with them.”

“You brought my library,” Shalant repeated, as if the notion couldn’t register in his brain.

She nodded. “Obviously I couldn’t take everything, but I tried to grab the ones that looked useful. There are still a few things left in your attic.”

SBibbPhoto - Siklana Full Body Render

This is a full-body render using only image-based lighting (IBL).

It’s the first test run of Siklana’s 3D model with her new outfit (trying to find something that reasonably fit her character, which I didn’t initially have). I need to find and fit shoes for her, too, but this is a start.

I’m still learning Daz, so more work needs to be done, but it should give an idea of her character. 🙂

Interested in seeing the development process? Let me know. I have some notes on the process, and I’d be happy to go more into it if anyone is curious.