I decided to go for a simple Daz Studio scene that just focused on the character and hair. After rendering all my light layers in Iray and putting everything together in Photoshop, I got the more colorful image on the left (below).

Left – More colorful cyborg girl fantasy art from my usual Photoshop post-work process. Right – Unsaturated version of the cyborg girl image achieved with an adjustment layer and blending effects in Photoshop.

Creating an Un-Saturated Image

I add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set the Saturation value to -100.

The initial image seemed a bit too colorful, so I wanted to see how the image would look in gray-scale (unsaturated). To do this, I add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in Photoshop (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation), after my completed image. I set the Saturation value to -100.

After adding my adjustment layer, I get the cyborg girl gray-scale image below. Unfortunately, it looks a bit drab without any color at all.

Gray-scale cyborg girl fantasy art image.

Using Photoshop Blending Mode to Get More Color

We can change our layer blending mode by going to the drop-down menu at the top of our layer’s tab.

To get some interesting effects, I started playing around with different blending modes for my Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. We can change our layer blending mode by going to the drop-down menu at the top of our layer’s tab (see right). When I set the blending mode to Darken, I get the cool effect below.

Cyborg girl sci-fi fantasy image with blending mode set to “Darken” for our Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

If I set blending mode to Lighten, I get a different color effect.

Cyborg girl sci-fi fantasy image with blending mode set to “Lighten” for our Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Final Cyborg Girl Image

I finally settled on the Lighter Color blending mode, which is mainly unsaturated with strong blue highlights. After some further sharpening and contrast adjustment, I get my final image.

This was a fun exercise to see the different Photoshop blending mode effects. However, note that the results will be highly dependent on the colors of the original image.

Cyborg girl sci-fi fantasy image with blending mode set to “Lighter Color” for our Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Currently, there are two options that I know of for transforming previous skins into Base Female (G3F/G8F) UV maps.

1. Blacksmith3D’s Texture Transformer together with their add-on packs.
2. Various Legacy UV products by Cayman Studios.

I use Blacksmith3D’s Texture Transformer because it transforms the actual texture maps, allowing me to combine textures from different generation characters. In contrast, Legacy UVs work by adding new geograft areas. Note though that while I have had good success with BTT, it does not work on all textures.

Here, I highlight some of my favorite skins from Victoria 4 until now.

Best Fantasy Women Skins, 3D-Art

1. FWSA Dayanara HD

Dayanara has two main skin options – natural and snake skin. Both are fantastic, especially the snake skin version which has great detail, scales, and is very distinctive. Below are both the natural and snake versions of the skin, side by side. Natural-skin is on the left and snake-skin is on the right.

FWSA Dayanara has two main skin options – natural and snake skin.

This very impressive character by Fred Winkler Art and Sabby is one of my all time favorites. I still use her skin textures today and my most popular image on the Daz gallery features Dayanara.

This very impressive character by Fred Winkler Art and Sabby is one of my all time favorites.

2. MDD Shimmer for V4.2

Another fantasy skin that I use very frequently is Shimmer by Maddelirium. She is a Victoria 4 character but I transferred the texture over to Base Female UV (G3F/G8F) and have been using it with various G3F and G8F morphs. It consistently produces results that I am very happy with. For example, the image below uses Shimmer texture with TW Ktarya G8F morph.

Dragon lady portrait
with MDD Shimmer texture and G8F morph.

The cool tattoo designs, displacement maps, and striking colors make this skin unique and arresting, whether in a portrait close-up or a more zoomed out pin-up. Next, we have Victoria 8 with Shimmer skin in a classic pin-up image, and wearing the superb Bootleggers 2 high boots.

Victoria 8 wearing the Shimmer skin in a classic pin-up image and wearing the superb Bootleggers 2 high boots.

With the G3F UV Swap or G8F UV Swap products by SloshWerks, I am also able to use this transformed texture on G3M and G8M. The following image features a G3M character wearing MDD’s Shimmer skin with the adorable Daz Squirrel on his shoulder.

With the G3F UV Swap or G8F UV Swap products by SloshWerks, I am also able to use this transformed V4 texture on G3M and G8M.

Maddelirium’s Fire and Water as well as Earth and Air elemental skins are also fantastic. In fact, if you like fantasy skins as I do, definitely take a look at her store at Renderosity.

MDD Fire skin on G3F character. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

3. Tigerlily

Tigerlily has always caught my eye, but before I was able to get her, Genesis 3 and Iray were released. That got me very busy for a long while, and I never got around to getting this very striking cat girl. It wasn’t until this last PA sale that I finally saw her, got her, and I am very happy that I did!

In the image below, I have G8F wearing the Tigerlily skin with the LY Moxie Sparks morph. Her hair is Ktarya Hair for G8F.

Adorable fantasy cat girl pin-up . G8F with Tigerlily skin rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

I am a big fan of cat girls, so will definitely be doing many more renders with this amazing skin texture.

4. Aunrae the Dark Elf

Of course, no fantasy character-list is complete without a dark elf. My current favorite is Aunrae by Hinky Punk. She has wonderful skin detail and a great variety of colors and face tattoo options. Our fierce dark elf girl (below) is also wearing awesome claws from the Eagle-Guard Armor as well as the NightQueen Hair.

G3F character using Aunrae’s dark elf skin texture. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

I also like the results on G8F. Definitely a skin that I keep coming back to again and again. Works well as both a bad-ass dark elf (above), or a more smiley, happy dark elf (below).

G8F character using Aunrae’s dark elf skin texture. Fantasy art rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

5. FWSA La Llorona and Muneca HD Bundle

Last but not least, we have the zombie girl. This bundle by Fred Winkler Art and Sabby has a large variety of skin options. My favorite is probably the face with stitches and different skin patches from the La Llorona creepy options. It is highly distinctive and while it can be scary/creepy, it can also be sexy/dangerous or sad/vulnerable.

Sexy and dangerous zombie girl using the stitches and patches skin from the La Llorona creepy options. Rendered in Daz Studio Iray.

A more sad and vulnerable zombie girl with her teddy bear. Rendered using Daz Studio-3Delight.

The more minimalist skin with dark tear-streaks around the eyes and stitches on the lips is another excellent option. It is not as striking as the previous skin, but works well in a larger variety of contexts.

Lonely zombie girl sitting with cats. Here we use the more minimalist skin with dark tear-streaks around the eyes and stitches on the lips. Rendered in Daz Studio – 3Delight.

What Are Your Favorite Fantasy Skins?

Are any of the skins above in your favorite’s list too? What is your list of best fantasy women skins? What are those character skins that you end up using again and again? Hope you will share some of your choices with us in the comments section below! 😀

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.