3D digital artwork featuring nude and dismembered android inside a dimly-lit vessel suspended in the air by an apparatus attached to his spine. An eerie blue-green glow emanates the back of his skull casting a light upon the ceiling and arms of the apparatus.
"The Awakening" Artwork by Michael J. Collins

The Awakening

I call this one “The Awakening”. Here we see a nude and dismembered android within a dimly-lit vessel suspended in the air by an apparatus attached to his spine. An eerie blue-green glow emanates the back of his skull casting a light upon the ceiling and arms of the apparatus.

I had the idea for this one because I wanted to play around with the new volumetrics in DAZ Studio. Scene credits are as follows:

  • The figure is Parcel by Lexa Kiness (Renderosity) with my (which might as well be my trademark) 50% ectomorph/ 50% mesomorph body proportions dialed-in.

  • Genitals are the marvelous Dicktator3 male genitals by Meipe (Renderotica).

  • The emissive head and upper-torso elements are “Shoulder Implant” from “Cybernetic Neck for Genesis 8 Males” and the “Cybernetic Head for Genesis 8 Males 2”, both by JSchaper, and both available at Renderosity.

  • Hair is Paul Hair for Genesis 8 Males by Propschick (DAZ3D)

  • Android limbs are the fabulous – and free – Plugin Limbs for G8M by the very generous PixelSploiting (DeviantArt).

  • Fog is from SickelYield’s SY Real Fog Iray VDB (DAZ3D).

  • The set is Wired Up Again by coflek-gnorg (Renderosity).

  • Figure and camera poses are mine.

The emissive lights were turned WAY down (to 1500 lumens). They are originally set to 700,000 and 1,000,000 candlepower by default to compensate for the absolute asinine and fucking ridiculous default 13 EV that Studio ships with.

The emissive neck was turned way down to only 1 lumen, but the emissive cyber head elements were jacked up to 1500 lumens. I specifically wanted a bright light to emanate from the back of his head and cast an eerie glow.

The Density Multiplier for the volumetrics was cranked up to 75 and the color set to black so I could capture the light emanating from the back of his head.

Last, the Tone Mapping EV was set to a much more realistic 5, and the render began.

Scene took about 4 minutes to render at 4500 x 3000 with the RTX 3090s and saved out as a TIFF. Postwork in Luminar NEO to adjust the color and light curves, saved out as a PNG. And finally my watermark added in Affinity Photo and saved out as a 95% JPG.

I hope you liked it!