When we listen to our Muse and create a piece of art, the process may carry us to unexpected, surprising, and sometimes scary places.

In fact, art has long been used by some therapists to connect with their clients, as well as help them uncover and resolve psychological knots. This is especially true with younger children and those who may have trouble verbally expressing themselves.

Since the deaths of my beloved dogs, I have been on a journey. During this journey of life and self-understanding, I started to see certain themes in my artwork. I think that when we look closely at what we create, we start to understand ourselves better. It is also quite a lot of fun to go back and travel through mental imagery that made it to media. So I invite you to join me in this wonderful expedition. Look at your own artwork, and share with us below what you find. Here are some of the things that I found when I looked.

What a work of art is all about is a sense of delight. Touch here, touch there, delight. It is an appreciation of things as they are and of what one is — which produces an enormous spark. Something happens — clicks — and the poet writes poems, the painter paints pictures, the musician composes music.

~~ [Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, “Artists and Unemployed Samurai” from The Teacup and the Skullcup]

1. Fierce Red-Haired Warriors

I have a whole section in my gallery dedicated to fierce red-haired warriors. They are powerful, confident, bold, strong, independent, gorgeous, fearless, and the opposite of damsels in distress. These strong women save themselves, are comfortable standing alone, and do not need a Conan by their side.

Powerful, confident, bold, strong, independent, gorgeous, fearless, and the opposite of damsels in distress. These strong women save themselves, are comfortable standing alone, and do not need a Conan by their side.

While this may all sound good on the surface, it can also lead to the development of unhealthy aversions and fears if not properly addressed. Attachment to power, strength, independence, and courage, may lead to the aversion of their opposite. In this way, any kind of perceived weakness, dependence, and fear leads to great dissatisfaction. In my pursuit of strength, I forsook gentleness, kindness, compassion, trust in others, and ultimately developed a deep intolerance for fear. Intolerance of fear leads to fear of fear and chronic anxiety.

What happens when strength fails and independence or power is of no help? It is in our conditioning to value these traits. However, blind attachment and direct pursuit often lead to the opposite of what we desire, causing us much suffering. Strength and courage are not about being gorgeous, the color of our hair, what we wear, or carrying a big sword. True strength and courage comes only when we face our deepest weaknesses and fears, and learn to embrace them.

True strength and courage comes only when we face our deepest weaknesses and fears, and learn to embrace them.

2. Duality – The Good and the Bad

The concept of duality – strength and weakness, courage and fear, good and evil, beauty and the beast, winter and summer, life and death, are expressed in many of my images. One of my favorite fantasy artists of all time, Luis Royo, often combines erotic love with the juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, black and white, good and evil.

This concept of duality, strength and weakness, courage and fear, good and evil, beauty and the beast, winter and summer, life and death, are expressed in many of my images.

Duality is pervasive in our upbringing, our learning, and our society. Indeed, it is weaved into the very fabric of our lives, because it is how our mind works. We love greatly, and in so doing, we fear (or want to avoid) the opposite of what we love. We love happiness and fear unhappiness, we love success and fear failure, we love doing the right thing and fear doing the wrong thing, we love being good and fear being bad. Most of all, we greatly love life, and so we fear death. We love being in-love and fear being afraid.

We greatly love life, and so we fear death. We love being in-love and fear being afraid.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with fear, rather, it is the avoidance of the things we fear that causes problems, dissatisfaction, and suffering. For example, we love happiness, so we want to avoid being unhappy. However, happiness does not and cannot last forever. As with all things in reality, it is impermanent. When the feeling of happiness fades and we begin to feel something else, we get dissatisfied. This pushes us even farther away from being happy, which leads to feeling more dissatisfaction and so on, until we spend most of our time feeling dissatisfied at being trapped in a World where happiness is, in fact, impermanent. The more we try to avoid unhappiness and directly pursue happiness, the less happy we become. The more we try to avoid the darkness within us, and directly pursue the light, the more mired we become in darkness.

Duality – Beauty and the Beast.

If we are brave enough to look below the surface of duality, however, we eventually see that duality is mind-made. Based on culture, learning, and inherited brain wiring, our mind categorizes phenomenon into good, bad, and don’t care. This is very good news because new research in neuroplasticity show that our brains are highly adaptable and with training, we can change our brain wiring, update learned thoughts, and modify old habits.

Our brains are highly adaptable and with training, we can change our brain wiring, update learned thoughts, and change old habits.

In my journey of self, I have found a very simple rule that helps me to transcend duality and reduce suffering. It is simply this:

To always face my fears.

I face my fear by leaning into my fear and embracing the very thing that I am afraid of. This is also known as exposure therapy. When we avoid the things that we fear, we become controlled by our fear, and cause it to grow in intensity and scope. When we face our fear, we weaken its grip on us and diminish its power.

When we avoid the things that we fear, we become controlled by our fear and cause it to grow in intensity and scope. When we face our fear, we weaken its grip on us and diminish its power.

There were some that found the image above so disturbing that it got removed from my Daz Gallery.

There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.
~~[Ajahn Chah]

3. Lots of Furry Friends

While my fierce warriors do not need a Conan, they are often travelling with or enjoying the company of furry and not-so-furry animals. Animals have always been a great comfort to me, especially dogs. Dogs can sense, hear, or smell our emotions much better than people can. They seem to have a natural ability to be happy in the moment, even when experiencing difficult circumstances. Dogs appear emotionally liberated in a way that people usually are not.

While my fierce warriors do not need a Conan, they are often travelling with or enjoying the company of furry and not-so-furry animals.

I trust animals a lot more than I trust people, most likely due to my childhood. My parents divorced when I was quite young, and they both have many issues. Childhood was very unstable, restrictive, and full of poor decisions. As a result, I learned to rely on my own choices rather than the advice or dictates of others. This is perhaps a good lesson to learn, but it came at the price of not trusting others and being quite bitter about life.

In truth, everyone loves, wants to be loved, and wants to do the right thing. However, fear of not being loved and not doing the right thing, often leads to unskillful action because we try to protect ourselves from emotional pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, and other similar perceived threats.

I trust animals a lot more than I trust people, most likely due to my childhood.

The deepest emotional pain I have felt though, was when I lost my beloved dogs. No person has ever made me feel this kind of pain. The deep pain was because of the deep love I feel for them. They are gone now, but I still love them very much and will likely do so for the rest of my life. Therefore, I will also feel the pain, but together with it, there is the wonderful feeling of unconditional love.

After going through this type of grief, it is easier to embrace everyday annoyances from people, and be less bothered by them. It is easier to put the pain caused by my parents into a healthier context. Sure, I still feel these emotions, but they no longer hold the power of being a real threat. Pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, are all part of my emotional landscape. If I can embrace them, I will be liberated to feel any emotion, to think any thought, to recall any memory, and to love broadly and freely. For all this, I just need to do one thing – always face my fears.

“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”
~~[Ralph Waldo Emerson]

Deep pain comes from deep love. With loss, I will feel the pain, but together with it there is the wonderful feeling of unconditional love.

In this article, I highlight my favorite fantasy art environments, talk about why I like them, and how they help to enhance my images.

Top 6 Fantasy Art Environments for Daz Studio

1. Skies of iRadiance – High Sky HDRI Bundle for Iray

This set is extremely useful. In many of my renders, I want to just render sky in the background without having to worry about other elements in the HDR image such as houses or buildings, which may not fit well into my fantasy art scene. At other times, I may use a modeled external environment for my backdrop, where a good sky backdrop is also needed. Indoor scenes with windows also benefit from a sky environment map.

Skies of iRadiance – High Sky HDRI Bundle for Iray.

It is true that I can add a 2D sky later on in postwork, but using a HDR sky as my environment map will produce consistent lighting, shadows, and reflections.

Alternatively, I may use a skydome prop and make the surface emissive. However, a HDR image is still best because it has a much larger range of values, and can provide us with higher contrast lighting.

Another fun thing that I do with this package is render different sky layers, and then combine them in postwork. This allows me to create interesting sky colors and patterns. For example, the image above uses a combination of DTSol-NightTimeE from Skies of iRadiance – Night Sky HDRIs for Iray, and DTSol-SunsetL from Skies of iRadiance – Sunset HDRIs for Iray.

I use this package with many of the sets that I describe below.

Fantasy art background rendered using Skies of iRadiance – High Sky HDRI Bundle for Iray.

2. Neitherhenge

This environment is arresting, flexible, and unique, with glowing fantasy letters that provide us with great color and lighting opportunities. There are great textures included with this set including bump, specular, and displacement maps. In addition, there is also an ambient map for the glowing letters, so that I can set
the proper parts to be emissive in Iray.

This is not an Iray ready scene, so I had to manually assign some of these textures and increase the bump to make things work well in Iray. However, after I set things up once, I can save it out as a material preset for future use. The fantasy image below shows an Iray render of the Neitherhenge environment.

This environment is arresting, flexible, and unique, with glowing fantasy letters that provide us with great color and lighting opportunities.

In addition to Neitherhenge, Orestes Graphics has many more marvelous environments that I frequently use in my images. Many of them share the same qualities of being arresting and unique, with a strong fantasy theme. My two other favorites are Sacelleum of Corlyk and Realm of Krystillum.

Fantasy art with a sad warrior woman and Sacelleum of Corlyk as the backdrop. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray, postwork in Photoshop.

3. DM’s Enchanted Hill

Of course, any discussion of fantasy environments must include the works of Danie and Marforno. They have a wide variety of fantasy environments including beautiful nature scenes with large mushrooms, a boot house, superb open-air fantasy structures, Gothic indoor scenes, and much more. In addition, each scene usually comes with a set of superb poses, such as only this talented duo can produce.

It is difficult to pick a favorite from such a high quality store, but the one that I have used most often is probably DM’s Enchanted Hill.

Fantasy art environment created with DM’s Enchanted Hill. 3Delight render, postwork in Photoshop.

Used one of the flute playing poses from DM’s Enchanted Hill.

This product comes with several premade scenes, so we can get started with just a few clicks. However, there are also a variety of well-made props that we can put together in any way we want, to create a unique scene. For Iray, I just apply the Uber shader to all scene surfaces.

The accompanying poses are terrific, and I have used the flute playing presets in many of my fantasy compositions.

Fantasy art environment created using DM’s Enchanted Hill. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

4. Easy Environments Road to Hell

This is a light-weight environment that loads fast and renders fast. It is especially appropriate for spooky scenes, but I also use it in more general night-time scenes. The set comes with a very versatile floor terrain that has a flat road surrounded by a more craggy/rocky landscape. The flat part is great for posing our figure, while the rocky area makes it interesting, and helps it to naturally meld with the background sky.

There are various tree props that adds to the spooky feel of the scene.

3Delight render with Easy Environments Road to Hell as the backdrop. Postwork in Photoshop.

The trees and dark terrain give the scene tension, and help make foreground elements stand-out. In the Red Riding Hood image below, this dark scene not only makes the red of her outfit pop, but also lends the composition some drama. In Iray, I apply the Uber Shader to all surfaces and then make the base color darker.

Flipmode has other cool Easy Environments products, but I use this one most frequently. My next favorite is Easy Environments: Snowy Mountains which comes with Iray materials and render settings.

The darker environment and trees make the foreground figure pop, and adds some drama to the composition.

5. Lakeside Folly

This set is gorgeous! It comes with a water prop and three different Iray render settings for day, sunset, and dusk. I especially like how the environment maps were designed so that the sky seamlessly fades into the water on the horizon (with depth of field). Even without the little house, just the water prop and HDR images make this environment a winner.

For example, in the Fantasy Water Angel image below, I just used the water prop and sunset render setting.

In this Fantasy Water Angel image, I just used the water prop and sunset render setting. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray, postwork in Photoshop.

The light setup is also excellent, with several lanterns placed around the little house and small dock, which cast light reflections on the water.

Daz Studio Iray render, postwork in Photoshop.

6. Return To The Enchanted Forest

To wrap things up, we have the amazingly talented Stonemason. His environments are always top-notch, easy to use, and loads well in Daz Studio. Whenever there is a good sale on Stonemason’s store, I always load up my cart!

My favorite is probably The Enchanted Forest and Return to the Enchanted Forest. Both sets are highly detailed, loads quickly, and renders well in Iray with just the Uber Shader applied.

Dryad Fantasy Girl in The Enchanted Forest. Rendered in 3Delight, postwork in Photoshop.

I can also remove some trees to create a more open wooded area. For example, in the image below, I wanted the papa and mama moose to stand out more against a lighter sky background, so I simply removed some of the vegetation.

Girl in a white dress saying goodbye to a baby moose. Rendered in 3Delight, postwork in Photoshop.

More recently, Stonemason has released the Fern Lake Bundle, which contains two beautiful wooded environments specially made for Iray. I will definitely get these when they come back on sale. They look spectacular!

And that is it for our top 6 fantasy art environments. Hope you enjoyed our picks. Feel free to share your favorite environments with us below.

Feel free to share your top fantasy art environments with us below.

My favorite shader packs are –

• Pd Iray Shader Kit 1 by parrotdolphin, for fabrics and PVC.
• Iray Fashion Leathers by Khory, for leather surfaces of an outfit. I also have the Aged Leathers for Iray pack, but I use the Fashion Leathers one more often.
• Mec4d PBS Shaders vol.1 for Iray for metals and plastics. There are also standard metal shaders that come with Daz Studio Pro, but this pack has more options and I like the results from these shaders more. Metal is a common material in fantasy clothing, so I use these shaders very often.
• Ingenious Rock Shaders and Nature Shaders by JGreenlees. These are PC+ Club products, so they are great value for the price. I use these for environment objects, but also for some outfits. They are great for nature outfits and bone parts.

Top 5 Fantasy Women Outfits for Daz Studio and Poser

1. Dark Apocalypse: Vermillion Dawn

Vermillion Dawn outfit fitted on G2F, rendered in 3Delight. Postwork in Photoshop.

This outfit by IgnisSerpentus is one of my all time favorites because it is distinctive, bad-ass, and highly customizable.

There are a bunch of styles for the headgear as well as other morphs to help with fitting. In addition, the skirt has a bunch of wind and movement morphs that allow me to create a more dynamic image.

I have rendered it on both 3Delight as well as Iray, and like the results of both. In the desert hunter girl picture I have it fitted to G2F and rendered in 3Delight. In the two images below, I have it fitted to G3F and rendered in Iray.

Vermillion Dawn outfit fitted to G3F, rendered in Daz Studio Iray. Postwork in Photoshop.

I can use this outfit to create a bad-ass looking demon girl, a desert hunter girl, or a darker scene with shaman girl and her wolf familiar.

Vermillion Dawn outfit fitted to G3F, rendered in Daz Studio Iray. Postwork in Photoshop.

2. Bean Sidhe Outfit

Bean Sidhe Outfit fitted to G2F, rendered in Reality/Lux. Postwork in Photoshop.

This outfit by kaydream is arresting, alluring, easy to fit, and easy to texture. It is one of the most versatile outfits, that I can use in almost any fantasy scene.

I have used it on a demon girl, sorceress, dragon queen, and more. The outfit is conforming, and fits well on G2F and G3F using autofit.

It is also very easy to shade because the outfit only contains metal and gem/jewel surfaces.

Bean Sidhe Outfit fitted to G3F, rendered in Daz Studio Iray. Postwork in Photoshop.

3. Kali for V4

This sexy fantasy outfit by RDNA Pro, Nightsong, Secretheart, & Littlefox is simply fantastic! It combines both highly poseable fabrics, as well as conforming parts of metal and jewels. I especially love the headdress with its long flowing back veil.

Images that I made with the Kali outfit were the first to get me noticed on the Daz gallery, and they continue to be some of my most popular images.

Kali outfit fitted on G2F, rendered in 3Delight. Postwork in Photoshop.

The one fly in the ointment is that the skirt fabric portion of the outfit has its own bones for controlling movement. These bone pieces will not transfer using regular autofit. The back-veil in the headdress also has its own bones, but we can just parent it to the head of our figure, so it is not an issue. The simplest way to solve this problem is to remove the skirt and add on an underwear bottom.

Alternatively, I have tried adding two versions of the skirt figure. One version I conform to my figure, and the other version I parent to my figure’s hips. I then make the skirt surface invisible in the conformed item and make everything else but the skirt invisible in my parented item. This can work pretty well with simple standing poses, but since the fabric portion of the skirt is only parented, it may collide with the figure depending on pose.

Kali outfit fitted on G2F, rendered in 3Delight, Reality, and LuxRender.

There is also a way to convert and preserve the skirt rigging structure. Here is a very short summary of the steps on how to do this, which I got from Sickleyield’s tutorial.

1. Make sure figure is G2F with no morphs and no poses.
2. Click on the Scene Tab and select the object (e.g. Gown) we want to convert.
3. In Scene Tab options select Edit > Rigging > Convert figure to weight mapping, pick Triax.
4. In Scene Tab options select Assets > Transfer Utility.
5. Source = G2F/CloneV4, Target = Gown/Current (Remember to set to current).
6. Uncheck all except Morphs and Reverse Source Shape from Target, check Add Smoothing.
7. Fit to G2F.
8. Select G2F, then Gown, and do Edit > Rigging > Transfer Rigging (Figure Space).
9. Save as > Support Assets > Figure/Prop.

Kali outfit fitted on G3F, rendered in Daz Studio Iray. Postwork in Photoshop.

4. Fury

First outfit I tried on Victoria 7.

When I first got the Victoria 7 figure, this was the first outfit I tried on her. It is a great looking armor set, with a bad-ass shoulder piece, 9 separate pieces of armor, hair that fits the helmet, and two swords/cleavers.

It has good skin exposure, and is great for fantasy warrior type artwork. It looks even better after applying Mec4d’s metal shaders for Iray.

Fury armor fitted to G3F, with Mec4D Iray metal shaders. Rendered in Iray, postwork in Photoshop.

5. Novariens Holy for V4

Novariens Holy fitted to G2F and textured with leather.

This outfit is distinctive, eye-catching, and very versatile. I have used it on fantasy warriors with dragons, on assassins with guns and explosions, and on a sword carrying angel. I have used it in fantasy art, contemporary pieces, sci-fi scenes, and more. I can texture it with leather, creating a softer, lighter, outfit; or I can texture it with kevlar or similar synthetic material, to create a more solid armor.

Although originally created for V4, it conforms well to G2F and G3F. The outfit accentuates the curves of the body, is sensual, and provocative.

Novariens Holy fitted to G2F (Aiko 6) and textured with leather. Rendered in 3Delight with postwork in Photoshop.

Hope you enjoyed our top 5 fantasy women outfits. In this article, we specifically focused on top Victoria 4 outfits that we have successfully used with G2F, G3F, and Iray. We will deal with Genesis specific fantasy outfits in future articles.

Novariens Holy fitted to G3F and rendered in Daz Studio Iray. Postwork in Photoshop.