Kach and the view from Demon Lodge (click for full size).
... in Chapter One of Exode....
The planet Hemmal has a long history of human habitation, but an even longer existence prior to the arrival of humans. Before humans were first brought to the planet, it was almost entirely a world of water and aquatic life. Located in a crowded part of the galactic core, Hemmal has periodically been irradiated by supernovae, disrupting the evolution of complex land animals.
Regardless of the supernovae, Hemmal has deep oceans and most of its continents are submerged: only the highest mountain ranges were above sea level when the pek arrived. A thousand space elevators were installed and they began the process of lifting water from the ocean into orbit. Swarms of nanorobotic devices penetrated the crust of Hemmal and sped up the planet's rate of tectonic flow and orogenesis, creating additional land and some dramatic mountain ranges, including Pelis Kel, where the planet's Buld population resides.
Parthney, Kach and Bakeko (rendered by DAZ Studio).
Artificial lifeforms, the pek, worked to terraform Hemmal for about six million years before the first arrival of humans on the planet. As mentioned previously, the original human inhabitants are known to the Buld as "Prelands" and my need to create a distinctive near-alien appearance for the Prelands was my main motivation for experimenting with Daz Studio 4.5.
Humans are the only form of life that has been introduced to Hemmal from Earth. However, those regions of Hemmal where humans live have been decorated with artificial lifeforms that resemble plants from Earth.
The Buld Clan originated as the group that serves as crew on a fleet of spaceships, most of which travel between the human-populated planets near the core of our galaxy. These spaceships cannot move at speeds above that of light, so trips between stars takes many years. The Buld were provided with artificial life pets that can take the form of small dogs, cats and other mammals. The non-biological pets are very clean and do not actually have hair, although they do have simulated whiskers.
The Buld who now live on Hemmal originated from the crew of a spaceship, and they brought their pets to Hemmal. At the start of Exode, Parthney and his cat, Bakeko, have been living at Demon Lodge for almost a year. Kach arrives at the Lodge for a visit, having heard that there is a strange experimental musician in residence. Kach is amazed to discover that Parthney is "false"; biologically a human male. The Buld are hermaphroditic, but they occasionally mutate and a child will revert to a human phenotype that is essentially identical to the humans of Earth.
Kach has been hiding the fact that she is false and is biologically female. Phenotypically Kach is not easy to distinguish from a typical Buld hermaphrodite. As a male, Parthney is obviously false and has never tried to conceal his biological nature. Kach and Parthney lack the special chromosome that makes the "true" Buld hermaphroditic and good hosts for nanites. Normally two Buld brains have a type of unconscious social recognition and resonance provided by communicating nanites in their brains (high density nanite regions shown in yellow, image to the right).
Upon meeting, Kach and Parthney feel a connection with each other due to the similar, if low density, distribution of nanites in their brains. Of course, Kach has never seen a human male before. Due to circumstances beyond his control, Parthney is soon on his way to Earth and he does not see Kach again for 15 years.
I tried using the animation feature of Daz Studio 4.5. If anything, the situation for documenting the Daz Studio software has gotten worse over the past 5 years...for the earlier version of DAZ that I used previously there was a partial reference manual....with DAZ 4 if you are lucky you can find an old tutorial on a topic for some previous version of the software (usually for Windows with features that are different than what is in the Mac version). I have a real talent for crashing Daz with my animations, something that has not changed from 5 years ago. I made about 6 seconds of animation; most of it I just recorded in the animation preview mode. Look carefully at the video (below) and you can see one second (30 frames) of rendered animation that took my poor Macintosh 26 hours to render. I used the "built in" walking animation, which apparently is just a temporary tease feature in the "free" version and actually costs $60.00.
Exode is under construction; collaborating authors are welcome.
__________________ Note: I later decided that sophisticated teleportation technology is available to the pek, making it much easier to remove "excess" water from Hemmal and expose the planet's continents.
Five years ago I played around with Daz Studio and made a few simple animations (example; also, a green screenexample). The header image for this blog is derived from a Daz Studio rendered scene. I recently downloaded Daz Studio 4.5 and Bryce 7 so that I could find out if there has been much of a change in the rendering software during the past 5 years.
Pelis Kel mountains rendered by Bryce 7, Regina the bothet rendered by Daz Studio.
Muchlo with facial nanites morphed to Buld appearance.
After a quick try of Daz Studio 4.5 and Bryce 7, I don't see many changes from the v3 & v5 that I used previously. Even though my two core processor is driven by Daz Studio at "190%", it still takes a loooong time to render such images on my 6 year-old Mac. Daz is now available in a 64 bit version for newer machines.
My main motivation for taking a new look at Daz is that I've decided that for the story Exode, the pek will be visually distinctive so as to clearly distinguish them from humans. I've been playing around with Daz in an attempt to identify a simple alteration to normal human facial features that I can use to make the pek have unique appearance. The pek are a form of artificial life, what we might call robots. Although the pek on Hemmal normally use a slightly non-human facial structure, they do have facial-nanite implants that allow them to change their appearance, and they can take on a normal human appearance under special circumstances.
Muchlo with facial nanites morphed to pek appearance.
In fact, those pek who function as bothets are in a special category. Since bothets are intended to be visually appealing to humans and can serve as surrogate mothers, they can't appear too freakishly non-human. Muchlo is another pek who travels with Kach and visits Parthney at Demon Lodge. In the images above, Regina and Muchlo have taken on the appearance of a normal human, which for Demon Lodge, means the appearance of a typical Buld.
The Buld are a small minority group. The majority of humans on Hemmal are Prelands. One of the biological features of Prelands is that they only have one set of teeth, the 20 primary teeth. As adults, their jaws retain juvenile features and they almost never speak (they communicate "telepathically" using nanites that are integrated into their brains). On Hemmal, the pek who live among the Buld typically adopt the Preland facial features: the reduced, child-like jaw and distinctive blue eyes.
Typically, the pek shift towards a more Buld-like appearance when they are interacting with Buld who are, due to long acquaintance, perfectly aware that a particular individual is a pek. When first interacting with newly-met Buld, pek shift their appearance towards the classic Preland facial features so as to make obvious their identity as pek. These shifts in pek appearance are so carefully and slowly done that the Buld seldom notice them.
The Buld reside in one small region of Hemmal, the mountainous Pelis Kel area, and they almost never interact with actual Prelands. The Buld and Prelands have a kind of symbiotic relationship. In fact, the Buld originally came to Hemmal in order to study the Prelands.
Muchlo has a special reason for adopting the Buld facial appearance. Kach is a false Buld and she conceals her unusual biological nature. She has demanded that Muchlo pretend to be her human companion. In the first chapter of Exode, Kach is playing a trick on Parthney, which offends Muchlo's sense of proper behavior. Muchlo reveals to Parthney the fact that Muchlo is actually a pek and warns him that Kach has a secret, the nature of which is not revealed immediately (it will not be revealed until Parthney has spent 15 years living on Earth). Thus, the secret that is revealed in chapter one of Exode is Muchlo's Secret.
____________________________________________________________________ Ultrarender looks nice. I did a 30 frame render in Daz Studio 4.5 that took my iMac 26 hours. I've posted the video in my next blog post.
