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PLANTS

E-ON‘S PLANTFACTORY

FRANK LITTLE

BRITTA JACOBS ISSUE 66 | MARCH 2022

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 Front Cover:

Detail from ―Bottle

Biomes‖ by
Clayton Sjoerdsma
of Canada, made
in Blender. See
the Gallery section
this issue for his
full picture.

THE PLANTS ISSUE

CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
―― 09

ALIEN 3D
PLANTS
―― 36

RYZOM
―― 40

BACK ISSUES
―― 50 INTERVIEWS
CONTESTS ―― 08 ―― 22 ―― 56
―― 55 DANIEL SEEBACHER FRANK LITTLE BRITTA JACOBS
GALLERY We talk with Daniel Frank carefully designs Britta Jacobs makes her
Seebacher about the and hand-crafts his work with Vue high in the
―― 76
amazing plants that can amazing alien plants, and Swiss mountains, while
IMAGINARIUM be made with e-on‘s is now also making their also exploring the new AI
unique PlantFactory. symbiotic creatures. art generating tools.
―― 90
PLANTFACTORY | VUE MAYA | MUDBOX VUE | AI ART TOOLS

―PlantFactory‘s [node ―Early on I gathered ―To me AI machines are a

based] workflow allows to
create any model which
exhibits self-repeating, so
called ‗fractal‘ patterns
and structures, which
mostly happen to occur in
nature, and especially in
plants. … Everything is
happening through [node]
parameters only.‖
photos for textures, but
for the most part I‘ve
switched to Substance. I
sometimes use Megascans
as well — a fantastic
service, though I limit how
I use it. It‘s important to
me that I model what I
can, when it‘s meant to be
5a unique creation.‖
fascinating and inspiring
way of creating art, and I
look at them as another
tool. They can help when
your muse is sleeping or
as something relaxing to
play with. … I love to
paint over landscapes in
Artbreeder, add elements
to the story I see.‖
 MAGAZINE PODCAST
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workshops for digital artists.
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Credits for pictures, from top left: ―Seed of Snow‖ (Vue) by Britta Jacobs (Vue); ―BioMars Pods‖ (Mandelbulb3D) by
Mutinate; ―City of Dreams‖ (Vue) by Britta Jacobs. Britta is interviewed in this issue of your free magazine.

Paul Bussey David Haden

Editor-in-Chief, Conferences Editor and magazine layout
paul@digitalartlive.com david@digitalartlive.com

Copyright © 2022 Digital Art LIVE. Published in the United Kingdom. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of
the publisher. No copyright claim is made by the publisher regarding any artwork or writing made by those featured in this magazine.

6
 EDITOR’S LETTER
WELCOME...
―
Welcome to our ‗Plants‘ themed issue, in
which we look at the making of digital
3D plants with great software such as
PlantFactory, and also the digital depiction of
plants as they might exist on alien planets or
even in some weird fantasy greenhouse.
The ‗strange plant‘ sub-genre first flowered in
the 1890s, in stories by H.G. Wells and a few
others. Later tales offered conventional jungle
horrors and few unmemorable ‗plant men‘ alien
races, including one on John Carter‘s Barsoom.
It was the H.P. Lovecraft circle who mostly kept
the idea of science-fiction plants and sentient
alien jungles alive, with especially vivid 1930s
tales by Clark Ashton Smith and a few others.
As war broke out Lovecraft‘s best-friend Frank
Belknap Long began his boys‘ series ‗John
Carstairs, Curator of the Interplanetary
Botanical Gardens‘, a uneven but very inventive
mash-up of plant sci-fi with detective/horror.
After the war many over-grown or irradiated
plants appeared in U.S. jungle and monster
comics. Into this unpromising soil was planted
the famous The Day of the Triffids (1951). Few
other novels followed its lead, and its quality
raised the bar so high that mere strangling
jungle-vines and hypnotic orchids had a hard
time thereafter. 1970s screens saw a few
greenhouse monsters, such as the pods in The
Body Snatchers or the ―Seeds of Death‖ Doctor
Who six-parter, while 1970s U.S. comics such
as Swamp-Thing, Man-Thing, and Morlock 2001
proved that ‗plant man-monsters‘ had appeal
for boys. The fine 1980s TV Triffids series could
have revived the concept, but then… the
comedy muppet-plant in Little Shop of Horrors
made the whole idea rather laughable.
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/3DArtDirect
7
So ‗strange plants‘ in science-fiction were
always rather limited, except in their apparent
ambition to rule the world. But the same can‘t
be said of real plants, which really are ‗taking
over‘. There is 30% more green vegetation on
the planet than in the late 1980s, and across all
ecosystems. The overall rate of increase is
being sustained at around 5% per decade.
Thankfully they‘re not turning into triffids!
There is of course no danger of our 3D digital
plants turning into venom-spitting beanstalks or
sinister spreaders of mind-bending pollens,
though in your imagination you can make them
as wild as you like. Or as beautiful. Let‘s not
forget the beauty. Artists might think of the
beauty of the ‗greenhouse dome‘ on a colony-
ship, and also its precious glowing seed-bank,
making the long journey through the interstellar
night. Back on earth, there seem plenty of
visual possibilities in an eco-future powered by
our incredible new human/plant engineering.
Think of new buildings ‗grown‘ onto a 3D
printed frame rather than built. The new vertical
hydroponic farms. Seaweed aquaculture
ranches along Africa‘s vast coastline. Fungi
farms underground, in which gene-spliced fungi
make the world‘s new medicines. A chain of bio-
parks oases, carved out at the edge of the
greening Sahara and tirelessly tended by robot
gardeners. Or a bio-lab on a terraforming Mars,
in which the colonists breed tough self-seeding
plants that are both hardy and beautiful.
DAVID HADEN
Editor of Digital Art Live magazine
david@digitalartlive.com
RSS: https://digitalartlive.com/feed/
PLANTFACTORY
We‘re pleased to be able to talk with e-on‘s expert
Daniel Seebacher about their PlantFactory software
and its many possibilities. Can the software also make
amazing science-fiction plants? Read on and find out...

DAL: Daniel, welcome to Digital Art Live

magazine. Thanks for taking time to do an
interview about the unique and very capable
plant modeller software from e-on software,
called PlantFactory.
DS: Hi, thanks for having me. I am happy to
be back at Digital Art Live.
DAL: Great. Ok, now to start… not all our
readers are familiar with PlantFactory. The
name of the software is fairly self-explanatory
I think — it‘s a quick and relatively easy way
of crafting and generating realistic 3D plants.
But how would you describe the software to a
3D-savvy non-user, briefly?
DS: PlantFactory is a procedural modelling
software for quickly creating complex, organic
models through a network of connected nodes.
A node is a building-block that generates a
certain 3D primitive shape, for example a
cylinder. You then edit the parameters of this
node to shape that primitive into any shape
you want, for example into a tree trunk or a
branch. Because everything is happening
through parameters only, and not through
classical modelling approaches such as
creating loop cuts and extrusions manually,
the process is non-destructive. You can always
go back, change a setting and the software will
recompute the model.
By then connecting up the multiple nodes —
which means primitive 3D shapes — in a node
graph, you eventually assemble the complete
model. Whenever you connect one node to
another one, you can ‗clone‘ the generated
primitive mesh and generate as many copies
of it as you need. For example, you would
create one node for the trunk and one node for
all the branches growing out from the trunk.
8
 Picture: ―Northern Red
oak in Fall — closeup‖.
PlantFactory.

DANIEL
SEEBACHER

PARIS, FRANCE

PLANTFACTORY |
PLANTCATALOG |
VUE

WEB

9
When you then connect the branch node to the
trunk node, you can instruct PlantFactory to
create dozens of branch copies that grow from
the trunk.
DAL: I see. So the user is not having to craft
each individual branch shape…
DS: Then... by editing the parameters of just
one branch node, all branch copies then update
automatically. And because each parameter
can have a random variation assigned to it,
each branch can be automatically randomized
within the range the artist allows for a
completely unique, organic model.
DAL: Thanks. That‘s very succinct. So, that
makes it easy to create something like a tree
with a few nodes. Join them together, add a
little random variation. Great. Ok… now let‘s
talk about you for a moment though, please, as
I think that some readers will be curious about
what your role with PlantFactory at e-on is and
what that involves?
MB: Yes, sure. I work at e-on software /
Bentley Systems as Product Marketing
Specialist. This is a hybrid role encompassing
two distinctively different area. On the one
hand it involves the classic Marketing Manager
tasks such as sending newsletters, website
maintenance, marketing campaigns, content
marketing, working closely with the sales
department and more. On the other hand it
means Product Engineering and Product
Evangelist tasks such as creating tutorials,
specifying new features for VUE & PlantFactory
together with the developers, beta testing and
content creation.
DAL: Wow, quite a workload…
MB: Yes, basically I am involved in many
different areas, which keeps the job
challenging, but also exciting. Recently, I also
learned database-driven Web development
techniques, so that I could code our new
Learning Center and get it up and running.
DAL: Yes I saw that come online recently. It
came up in search and I added it to my special
Google CSE that‘s for hobbyist 3D sites of the
Poser / DAZ / Vue type. Learning Center looks
very nice, with a good range of short videos.
10
Ok, so your explanation was very clear in terms
of your role, thanks. I should add that I know
Vue 2016 fairly well, but I‘m not familiar with
PlantFactory other than by seeing videos of it in
action. Thus some of my questions are going to
be what many readers in a similar situation
might ask.
Such as… it‘s not just garden plants the
software can make? It‘s trees, grasses, crops,
fruits, mushrooms… and presumably the
software can also model other biological
structures? Spores, viruses? What‘s the full
range, in terms of emulating nature?
DS: In a nutshell, PlantFactory‘s workflow
allows to create any model which exhibits self-
repeating, so called ‗fractal‘ patterns and
structures, which mostly happen to occur in
nature, especially in plants. But some users
have modelled amazing non-organic objects as
well, for example fences, chains and more.
DAL: I see. So it‘s highly flexible, and not just
constrained to the more conventional plants.
Ok, let‘s turn now more to the user-groups for
this unique software. 3D creatives are one set
of users, we know. But I would assume it‘s now
even of use to traditional botanical artists? I
mean… if they can model down to the level of
things that might not show on a photograph?
So, an example — let‘s say they have a photo
of the Lesser-spotted Pangolian Tree-Creeping
Vine, from 30 feet away growing high in a tree.
Which was the closest the photographer could
get in the middle of dark and steaming
Pangolian rain-forest. But they also have a
precise scientific diagram of the very rare seed
and pressed-flowers of that plant, which were
taken to a museum in 1867… so then they
could bring those together to craft a more
complete 3D model from which they then make
their fine traditional-style illustration? That sort
of thing?
DS: Theoretically, there‘s no limit how detailed
a PlantFactory model can get. You can just
chain node-after-node for maximum flexibility.
But as always with 3D, you will eventually
reach a point where you will have to find the
sweet spot between detail vs. performance.
 ―Theoretically, there‘s no limit how detailed a
PlantFactory model can get. You can just chain
node-after-node for maximum flexibility.‖

Pictures:
PlantFactory UI.
Dandelion creation,
and Frederic Bec
making a flowering
Saguaro Carnegiea
Gigantea cactus.
11
12
Pictures: PlantFactory
official demo pictures
from 2016 R3.

13
Because of the hierarchical nature — no pun
intended — of trees or other plants, each tiny
detail you create at a high level in the
hierarchy will increase the computation times
and polygon count exponentially, because it is
multiplied by all nodes that come before it. For
example, if you wanted to model a fine layer of
hairs on the underside of a leaf, just adding
three hairs to the leaf node could make your
polygon counts explode. Because these three
hairs would be repeated across the thousands
of leaves that you might have in your tree. So
to get back to the original question, yes,
PlantFactory is capable of an incredible amount
of detail. But in practical terms, you will have
to make compromises for performance
reasons.
DAL: I see. So they might not want to try to
model all of a plant in full micro-detail all at
once. Especially a big Lesser-spotted Pangolian
Tree-Creeper. /Laughter/ Staying with
botanical artists for a moment, can
PlantFactory do the sort of sliced cross-section
illustration you might see in a botanical book?
DS: Unfortunately, no. The 3D meshes are
hollow by default. Cross-sections require you to
model the whole content inside of an enclosed
14
volume. This is not something you can do in a
procedural modelling application. I mean, you
can always fake a cross section with textures,
but this would probably not look very pleasing.
What you can do, though, is modelling certain
self-repeating details within the cross-section
using PlantFactory, exporting the mesh and
then assembling it with other shapes in your
target application for the final illustration.
DAL: I see. Thanks. What other scientific uses
of PlantFactory have you come across?
DS: We have a customer, Daniel Hengst, who
is a professional artist both in the digital and
traditional sense. He created an exhibition
called ―Blooming Love‖ in collaboration with the
European Platform for Digital Humanism
(EMAP/EMARE) that merged both ‗real-world‘
exhibition items — such as images and
exponats [i.e. exhibits of the type shown in
museums] with VR technologies. The visitors
could interact with virtual plants in a virtual
greenhouse, and understand the effects and
importance plants have on and for our planet.
The VR experience was created with
PlantFactory, Blender and the Unity game-
engine based on anthropological and botanical
research papers.
DAL: Wonderful. Some of our readers will be
wondering if sees use among those who model
for alien ecosystems, or prehistoric flora, or
even those who imagine the flora and fauna of
imagined ‗alternate evolutionary paths‘?
DS: Certainly, yes. While most of our
customers come from real-world projects
where they need photorealistic 3D plants that
resemble nature as closely as possible, there
are many incredibly creative individuals in the
hobbyist community as well. They create all
sorts of sci-fi and fantasy content with
PlantFactory.
Two names that come to my mind immediately
are Britta Jacobs and Benny Govaerts, who
both design outstanding organic models. In fact
your readers can see artworks in this article
that were done by Britta, who by the way
might be a familiar face to the Digital Art Live
Community — because she presented VUE
webinars with Paul Bussey in the past.
DAL: Indeed. Great, yes, and we actually have
an interview with her later in the magazine.
Ok, so… that‘s some of the specialist users
covered. But who are the main users? Is there
even a core market for PlantFactory, or is it
more of a scattering of niche markets?
Pictures: A Dwarf Perwinkle
demo in PlantFactory. A
Black Poplar (Populus Nigra)
growing to maturity, an
official PlantCatalog demo.
15
DS: The core market of PlantFactory is
environment creation, both in VFX and real-
time pipelines, sometimes also in what‘s called
‗archviz‘ — architectural visualization.
Environment creation itself is a niche within the
3D industry, a specialized sub-discipline.
DAL: Thanks. And that brings me to
PlantCatalog, a library of pre-made plant
models. Can you tell us more about it?
DS: Sure. PlantCatalog is a standalone
procedural plant library that our in-house
botanist Frederic Bec designs with the
PlantFactory software. You do not need to have
PlantFactory or VUE to use the content, but the
plants are of course compatible with both. They
can be used both within VUE as procedural files
and within any other 3D application as baked
polygon meshes, with or without wind
animation. If you have PlantFactory, you can
open the plant files inside the software and see
how they were made. It‘s a good learning
opportunity. If you don‘t have PlantFactory,
you can use the included PlantCatalog Exporter
software to open the procedural plant files, edit
any available parameters, generate new
variations, and then export the plant to any 3D
format of your choice.
DAL: Great. How do these models differ from
other plant collections and how many species?
DS: There are a couple of key differences: first,
all plants are botanically accurate, something
you won‘t find often. While the average 3D
artist does not care too much about accuracy, it
becomes important for architectural, simulation
and infrastructure projects. This is where you
can trace the project back to our parent
company Bentley Systems who operates in
these industries and uses PlantFactory and
PlantCatalog plants within their projects as
well.
Second, when you buy other plant models, you
get only a few static 3D objects in a couple of
variations. If you need more than these
variations or you‘d prefer another 3D format,
you‘re out of luck. Some vendors offer the
original scene file as an additional purchase
option from the vegetation software they used
for modelling, but this still requires you to own
the software to export more variations.
Because PlantCatalog ships with the
aforementioned PlantCatalog Exporter software
— and also free plugins for a number of 3D
applications — we supply the original
procedural *.tpf Plantfactory file format for the
plant instead of pre-exported meshes. You
open the plant with the Exporter, then generate
as many variations as you need… and then
export them to 3D formats of your choice.
You‘re not limited to just a few pre-exported
objects.
DAL: Very useful. So, if the user needed a
specific sub-species it‘s done in a few tweaks…
DS: And third, PlantFactory has a powerful
preset system that we are using heavily for our
PlantCatalog plants. You can build maturity,
health and season functionalities into a plant
and make these parameters available as
sliders, as well as any additional controls you
designed. For example, you can offer a control
for switching between different colors of a
flower, pruning branches, enabling or disabling
fruits, controlling the density of branches and
much more. If you‘re familiar with Substance
Materials, it‘s basically the same thing, only for
plant models.
16
DAL: Yes, I was going to ask about that. It‘s
very impressive that age, heath, seasonal
colouring, fruiting and so on can be added in
PlantFactory. And now also with PlantCatalog.
DS: So, all PlantCatalog plants come with an
extensive set of published parameters that
allow you to totally customize a plant, as well
as dozens of preset shapes that were created
with these parameters. Yes, including seasonal
variations, young and old trees, also tree
stumps, forest and open field versions and
much more. Basically, with one model, you get
hundreds of sub-models within the same file.
Currently, there are 121 species available in
the PlantCatalog library with new species being
added throughout each year. But to give you
an example, the white willow (Salix alba) from
the latest update alone includes over 200
presets! So in reality, the 120 species
correspond to thousands of individual models
and plant stages.
DAL: Excellent. Ok, to come back to the user
who might be just starting out with
PlantFactory. Are there any simpler real-world
plants which have become a ‗go to‘ starting
base for modelling in PlantFactory — meaning
‗simple plants which work especially well as a
starting point‘, for then creatively crafting a
‗more inventive‘ plant design? If so, what are
they?
DS: This is difficult to do because plants are so
varied in shape, which means that it‘s often not
easy to transfer one plant type to another.
What you can do though is to create your own
library of building blocks, ‗components‘ as they
are called in PlantFactory and use these as a
starting point. For example, you might want to
save out a few different branch shapes with
specific arrangements and growth patterns as
components. Then, you can add them to any
new scene from the content browser and have
a basic branching setup with a single click.
DAL: Ah, I see. So it‘s about building blocks,
rather than start with any one simpler species.
Have you thought of including specifically sci-fi
and steampunk plants? Perhaps something
fairly simple, along the lines of three sets of
‗starter bases‘ in fantasy / sci-fi / steampunk?
 Simple nodes chains can create a
fairly complex sci-fi / steampunk
tree, as seen above.

Pictures: Three examples of the

more inventive uses of the
PlantFactory. Top: Vladimire
Chopine‘s Steampunk tree,
complete with metal root casings
and rings. Above and right:
Artworks by Britta Jacobs, plants
made in Plantfactory. See Britta‘s
interview later in this issue.
17
DS: Not really, because again, where would
you start? Since sci-fi and steampunk plants do
not resemble any real-world species (and even
if they do, each real-world species is unique)
and when you start a new project, you always
begin with primitive geometric shapes such as
cylinders and planes anyways. The art style
and look of the plant develops organically as
you construct the plant structure and it‘s not
something you could begin with when setting
up a new project.
DAL: I see. Yes, I was thinking of one of the
trees by Vladimire Chopin that I purchased for
Vue 2016 [see previous page]. He had a sort
of a repeating iron-collar structure on his
steampunk trees, and I guess I was thinking of
a small library of those, done as presets.
What is the most unusual thing you‘ve ever
‗seen‘ made with the PlantFactory, and were
you surprised by it?
DS: PlantFactory has been used for all sorts of
different geometries, such as rocks and cliffs,
simple furniture and abstract fractal designs.
Coming back to Benny Govaerts whom I
mentioned earlier, Benny does incredible,
mesmerizing shapes that sometimes remind
me of mandalas. He creates them with math
functions, trigonometric rules and more.
Personally, I am not a math guy at all and
could never achieve such patterns. Hence, I am
always humbled and amazed to see what
Benny produces. It‘s awe-inspiring.
DAL: I know that PlantFactory can export
VUE .vob files. But how tightly does
PlantFactory integrate with Vue, and in what
ways?
DS: PlantFactory plants are loaded in their
native procedural *.tpf file format in VUE.
When you load them as a separate object, you
have access to all published parameters
including, maturity, health and season — if
available for the loaded plant — and you can
generate new variations.
You can also send the plant object back to
PlantFactory directly from within VUE to make
temporary changes to its internal node network
for this particular object in the scene.
18
DAL: And load them into a Vue EcoSystem?
DS: When you use PlantFactory plants in
EcoSystems, you can set the number of
generated plant variations and the geometry
quality. Plants that are further away will use a
lower LOD mesh. Of course, all plants, whether
they are in an EcoSystem or a standalone
object, react to scene-wide wind and breeze.
DAL: Great. Ok, now many readers will be
wondering what‘s new. PlantFactory has been
available for a while now. For those who have
not looked at it for a few years, what are the
five biggest improvements to PlantFactory
during the past three years, would you say?
DS: We have deepened the export and
integration capabilities tremendously. There are
now plugins for 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, Maya
and Unreal Engine 4 which can load the
procedural plants directly in those applications
and create native shaders for a variety of
render engines, among them Arnold, Redshift,
V-Ray and Renderman. We also developed
connectors and live sync for NVIDIA‘s new
Omniverse collaboration platform that allow
you to edit a plant in PlantFactory and see the
changes update in Omniverse in real-time.
Within PlantFactory itself, there are lots of new
nodes, advanced randomness dependency
parameters, better vertex normal editing for
real-time pipelines and many workflow and UI
improvements, both smaller and bigger.
DAL: I see. Oh and another thing that some of
our readers may be wondering. Transparency-
mapped leaves, or geometry mesh leaves?
Trans-mapped leaves don‘t ‗play nicely‘ with
comic-book lineart in Poser 11, for instance.
DS: For big trees, especially when you plan to
use them in a real-time project such as in
Unreal Engine or Unity, you will have to create
complex shapes with textures and alpha maps,
because polygon count would become an issue
quickly. It is true that rendering overlapping
transparencies is always very costly, also when
rendering an image in a render engine. But it
boils down again to the compromise of quality
vs. resources.
Picture: ―Nanena Dreaming‖ by
Britta Jacobs. With PlantFactory.
19
Modelling complex leaf shapes with round lobes
and more on a huge mature tree is
unfortunately not an option. But when you
have a smaller tree or things like grasses and
flowers, going with real 3D geometry will
improve rendering performance tremendously
without eating up too many resources.
DAL: I see. Yes, I recently did a big test-survey
for VisNews to see what 3D trees in my
runtime look good in lineart rendering — in
terms of leaves — and only came up with six or
seven that had leaves that looked good in that
mode. So it‘s obviously a trade-off that many
3D creators don‘t feel able to make. Merlin,
Stonemason, not many others.
Ok, so we‘re nearing the end of the interview
time here. Let‘s look at the future. What are
you working on with PlantFactory in 2022 and
going forward? And are there any specific ‗peek
into the future of features‘ hints for our
interested readers?
DS: We are focusing on improving the node
editing workflow through easier connection
methods, search functionalities, grouping and
more… and adding much requested real-time
features. These include support for cutting out
meshes from [texture] atlas maps, storing and
editing vertex colors and computing lightmap
UVs. PlantFactory has a specific node category
called ‗Loop nodes‘ which allow you to build a
repeatable loop into the node graph. With the
next release, you will be able to nest those
loops for even more amazing plant structures
with minimum effort.
DAL: Sounds good, and some real-time too.
You mentioned the wealth of export options a
while ago. Any advances on the exporting?
DS: Making seasonal, growth and health
animations exportable from PlantFactory is also
an ongoing effort. Currently, you can export a
PlantFactory plant only at a certain plant stage,
but you cannot export a full timelapse
animation.
DAL: Ah, I see. Yes, a full animation would be
impressive. Very useful for museums and
botanical hothouses and suchlike too, as they
move to add some VR to show the lifecycle.
20
DS: But implementing this is not trivial,
because not many 3D formats support
―morphing‖ geometry and those who do might
not support materials (Alembic, for example).
At the same time, we need to solve how to
potentially export thousands of changing
seasonal leaves for each frame of an animation
without actually creating thousands of textures
upon export. So this is a long-term feature that
we‘ve been working on already for quite a
while.
DAL: Interesting. Perhaps some trained video-
frame in-betweening AI could be used there, at
a guess, after the video export? Which ‗knows‘
how to ‗take‘ one image into another.
Ok, so that about wraps it up for the interview.
We wish you well with the development, and
readers can find out more at the links below,
and see the software in action on YouTube and
see if it‘s something that will interest them.
Daniel, many thanks again for this interview.
DS: You‘re welcome, thanks for the
opportunity.
More info about PlantFactory:
https://info.e-onsoftware.com/
plantfactory/overview
More info about PlantCatalog:
https://info.e-onsoftware.com/
plantcatalog/browse
See also this short ‗First Steps in
PlantFactory‘ free official training
video, dating from 2019:
https://info.e-onsoftware.com/learning-center/
first_steps_in_plantfactory
Readers can also learn more about
Vue and the PlantFactory from Digital
Art Live‘s indexed recorded webinars.
Pictures: Ponytail Palm (Beaucarnea Recurvata)
seen in various natural seasonal states. Vue demo.
―PlantFactory plants are loaded in their
native procedural *.tpf file format in VUE.
When you load them as a separate object,
you have access to maturity, health and
season — if available for the plant — and
21
can generate new variations. PlantFactory
plants in EcoSystems can set the number
of generated plant variations and the
geometry quality. Plants that are further
away will use a lower LOD mesh.‖
FRANK
LITTLE
With Maya and Mudbox, Frank Little crafts
superb alien plants, and also creates
beautiful settings and lighting for them.

DAL: Frank, welcome back to Digital Art

Live magazine. Our last interview with you
was back in the ―Eco-futures‖ issue in 2017
(#21). Then you still had about nine
months of education left, for a new career,
and then you were set to move into a new
career as a product designer and visualiser.
How have the last five years been for you?
FL: Like many people, my life has been
complicated since the pandemic hit. I‘m a
single parent to a nine year old, and this as
well as taking care of my elderly parents —
my father sadly passed in the midst of
Covid — has put some of my goals on hold
for the time being. There are obviously
other ways it affected me, and like most
people it‘s proved more difficult to find my
way back to normalcy, but with Omicron
fading it does seem like we‘ll all be able to
move on soon. As things seem to finally be
returning to some semblance of normal I‘m
hoping to get back out there.
DAL: Wow, sorry to hear of your loss. Yes,
it‘s been a difficult time for many. But,
Picture: ―Farewell the day‖.
hopefully effectively over now. Ok, looking
Maya, Mudbox, Substance.
at your portfolios, you‘ve evidently done
quite a bit of service work for big clients. The final design ideas were eventually refined in-
Who are the clients you‘ve been most house, but it was an interesting experience. I
pleased to work with, in the last few years? also worked with Maglite and did several renders
FL: I worked briefly with a company called for a variety of flashlights. The commercial my
Opkix on a charging station for their partner and I eventually made was up in Times
wearable cameras, that was called the Egg. Square
22 for a time, which was a bit surreal.
 FRANK LITTLE

USA

MAYA | MUDBOX |
SUBSTANCE

WEB

DAL: Sounds good. And Maglite is a big name
in the USA, I believe. Congratulations. Have
you had to change software at all, so as to
cater for clients?
FL: I haven‘t changed my software. Though, as
23
I look to move forward, I might do so. My
familiarity with Maya — and the other
programs I use in my pipeline — has made me
reluctant to do so... though there are definitely
alternatives — such as Fusion.
DAL: I see. And recently you‘ve been working
to make personal work to design and render
some amazing sci-fi plants, as people can see
here in the accompanying pictures. What were
your starting inspirations for this new series of
plant renders?
FL: I‘ve always had a fascination with
variations on a theme, and I wanted to create
plants/fungus-like organisms that would
showcase that. I‘ve also focused lately on
ideas regarding symbiosis, especially the idea
of organisms that require another organism to
survive and to live upon. As to the inspiration
for the individual plant models, more often
than not it begins with something simple that
exists in the real world but changed in some
way, and then I build from there. Other times
I couldn‘t really say where the idea came from,
and very often those are the most interesting.
DAL: Many of the new plants have something
of ‗the blackberry‘ about them? Is there a local
inspiration there, perhaps a big blackberry-
bush field were you go picking in the late
summer? Or a childhood fascination with the
wild fruit?
FL: While I do have a vivid memory of picking
blackberries with my grandfather, in my long
ago summers in Virginia. In truth the origin of
these ideas comes from a procedural program
called Xfrog that I used in my earliest renders
— back when I was still using the Bryce
software. I wanted to make plants that were
both realistic and alien, and Xfrog was what I
used before I began learning polygonal
modeling with Maya. I started taking those
procedural models and remaking them in Maya,
and it just evolved from there.
DAL: I see. Yes, Xfrog was plants, rather than
frogs, which rather confused many beginners in
3D. In fact, I say ‗was‘... but they‘re still
around. What was the Autodesk Maya
workflow, including Mudbox — oh, for our
readers, I should say that Mudbox is
Autodesk‘s equivalent to ZBrush — in crafting
the shapes and assemblages for the plants?
FL: In regard to ‗colonial fungoids‘ as I call
them — and which as you said resembled
blackberries — most start as a half-sphere.
24
These I duplicate and place in various ways —
sometimes as a shaft, sometimes a sphere,
etc. Then I combine the meshes into groups
and import them into Mudbox for sculpting.
The same process is used for most of my
models, depending on what amount of detail is
needed.
DAL: I see. Mudbox is a software that we don‘t
see many interviewees using. What do you
most like about Autodesk Mudbox, and why?
FL: The single greatest benefit to Mudbox is the
user interface. I have only dabbled a little in
ZBrush, and I suspect it may be the superior
program in many ways, but it‘s also difficult to
use when you‘re used to the more standardized
workflows of Maya, Mudbox, etc.
DAL: I see, yes that would be a key advantage.
The interface is also a key selling point for the
other key ZBrush competitor 3DCoat 2021. And
now that Blender has announced they‘re also
moving in to eat ZBrush‘s lunch, then having
the familiar Blender interface will be another
advantage for those who know Blender. You
can see why ZBrush was sold to Maxon
recently.
But you also used Substance Designer for the
materials, rather than relying on off-the-shelf
materials, I think? That‘s interesting. Did you
gather photos from local nature and suchlike,
or were the textures entirely generative? Or a
mix of the two.
FL: Early on I relied on gathering photos for
textures, but for the most part I‘ve switched to
using Substance exclusively. I do sometimes
use Megascans Mixer as well.
DAL: I see. Where do the Megascans come into
the workflow? Just for the grounds and cliff-
walls and small grass and things like that?
FL: Megascans is a fantastic service. Their
library of assets and textures has become
integral to my work, though I limit how I use it.
Because it‘s important to me that I model what
I can, especially when it‘s meant to be a unique
creation. As such I use megascans for rocks,
tree branches and ground planes for the most
part, but also for simple vegetation like grasses
and small plants.
Picture: ―Pillar‖. Maya,
Mudbox, Substance.

25
26
 Pictures: ―Serpents of
the Old World‖;
―Serpent in the
Meadow‖. Maya,
Mudbox, Substance.

27
Sometimes I graft megascans onto models I
make in Maya, as I did with my picture entitled
―Dragons of Loralekh‖ [seen below].
DAL: It certainly look great in the finals
renders. And the lighting on the final renders is
very good, very convincing. What lighting
setup and render-engine did you use for final
production?
FL: I use Arnold for the renders and a simple
skydome light incorporating an HDRi.
Sometimes I add other lights, of course, but
more often than not I keep it simple. The only
issue with HDRi‘s, is the background image
itself. Sometimes the depth of focus (DOF) is
enough to obscure what would seem out of
place, but other times I have to make sure that
there is nothing anachronistic. Like telephone
poles, and suchlike.
DAL: So there‘s very little that‘s ‗off the shelf‘?

―We‘ve kind of let things run wild

in the back yard recently, which I
really enjoy.‖

28
FL: Yes, it‘s important to me that I model the
majority of my creations. The only time I use
‗off the shelf‘ assets is if I think I can use
Megascans plants to enhance an existing
model, and then only sparingly.
DAL: Excellent. Have you thought of also doing
insets into the renders — scientific cross
sections, and explanatory notes with pointers,
with pointers and labels. Kind of like the record
photos from a scientific expedition?
29
FL: I have, though more often than not I think
that they are better suited to being mysterious.
That being said, I would never limit myself if I
thought I could do something interesting in
that manner, and many of my early sketches
incorporate little factoids that explain how each
organism works.
DAL: I see. Does Vue still play a part in your
creativity? Do you still have a working Vue 8?
Or have you moved on?
Picture: ―Dragons of
Loralekh‖. Maya,
Mudbox, Megascans.
FL: I have thought about playing with Vue again. But the enormous render
times often remind me why I prefer Maya.
DAL: Yes, I recall the long render times. But a lot of that render-time problem
was fixed by the time of Vue 2016 R5, and I believe it has also been
incrementally improved since then with the new subscription version of Vue.
Which I don‘t have, having stuck with 2016. Another way of speeding things
up is to render with some minimal clouds and then blend in a real sky as a
Photoshop layer. That speeds things up a lot, I find.
FL: I have a copy still and might eventually go back to it, as the aesthetic I
achieved with it is different from that of Maya. And I would love to use the
models I‘ve made recently there.

―I‘ve always focused on plants/fungus, and now I

want to shift my focus a bit to fantasy/alien
animals that would inhabit this world I‘ve been
making. The newest series of pictures give my
plants and fungi a symbiotic relationship with one
of the new creatures.‖

DAL: Great. I believe they have quite a long trial for the latest version. Ok,
moving away from digital nature for a moment. What‘s the world of 3D
product design like these days? Where is it in 2022, in terms of what it
requires and uses? And what are the emerging demands — I‘m thinking
thinks like… maybe a freelancer needing to be able to also offer a little UI,
kiosk design awareness, VR/AR friendly files, colour swop-out capabilities at
the client end, etc.
FL: I‘d be lying if I said I had any real insight to offer at the moment, being
that the pandemic put much of my career goals on hold. I will say that one
thing I doubt has changed is the need to how at least some knowledge in all
those things you mentioned above. I found that the offers I was getting were
extremely varied, and it always pays to be flexible.
DAL: I see, thanks. What three good tips would you give to someone wanting
to start in product design. Such as things you‘ve learned, or pitfalls you‘ve
spotted people falling into, in the last five years?
FL: As with any modeling endeavor, good references are the most important
thing to have. If those aren‘t available it‘s crucial to ask as many questions
as you can, when the opportunity is there. Also to take notes ‗in the moment‘.
Second to that is flexibility; a client will likely have new ideas the moment
after they‘ve given you their initial expectations, and it‘s important to be
ready to accommodate those new ideas. The final thing I‘d suggest is that,
even though it might seem trivial, saving incrementally and in different
locations can save the day if your files get corrupted or lost.
DAL: Yes, there are various plugins that can do that I believe, when the
software itself doesn‘t have that capability. ‗Save Incremental‘ for Photoshop,
for instance. Which is for sale over on ArtStation Marketplace I think.
30
 Picture: ―Untitled‖.
Maya, Mudbox,
Substance.

31
Pictures: From top
left: ―The Bonetree‖;
―11‖; ―Sundrowned in
Ialdammer‖; Dreams
and Texures‖. All
made with Maya,
Mudbox, Substance.

32
33
Looking back at your inventive hand sketches
for strange plants — which we showed in issue
#21 — and your recent 3D plants, you
obviously have a great talent for organic
designs. I imagine that will be in demand in
the near future, with many high-end retail
products looking and feeling more ‗organic‘ and
some quite heavily nature-inspired. Do you see
a crossover between your plant design and
retail product design, now and into the future?
FL: If I could segway these designs into
something of that nature, then I would jump at
the chance. Recently I was gifted with a 3D
printer, and I‘ve thought to use it to 3D print
some of my models and see if I might find a
way in which to sell them.
I would also love to use some in film or TV if
the opportunity presented itself.
DAL: Great. Well, there‘s also the Avatar movie
series coming up, and I should think that with
— what is it, five mega-movies — that they‘ll
be bringing in good alien plant and ecosystem
designers by the truckload.
Oh, yes, there was something else I was going
to ask. Is there a regular publication that tracks
trends in eco-design and new ‗inspired by
nature‘ products? I‘m not aware of one, but I
wonder if you‘d encountered one during the last
few years?
FL: I am not aware of one, though I would be
interested as well. Maybe someone reading
this will be able to let us both in on that.
DAL: Let‘s hope so. I know there‘s occasionally
an architectural magazine in that line, a special
issue sort of thing. But I couldn‘t find anything
more regular. What‘s your home garden like
these days? Does it have a selection of curious
and unusual plants in it? A cool tree-house?
Strange micro-creatures?
FL: We‘ve kind of let things run wild recently,
which I really enjoy. When you step out into
the back yard there‘s a wall of bougainvillea,
and if you follow it up it tangles its way into the
tree and then over the fence into our
neighbors‘ yard. The succulents I brought
when I moved back home have broken their
pots and are now rooted.
There are no hidden critters in the backyard —
though it occurs to me I could give the
dinosaur toys, that my daughter has grown up
with, a home out there. I did put a model T-
Rex dinosaur skeleton among the bushes of our
front yard.
DAL: Great. That sounds fun. And what sort of
studio work and rendering setup do you have
now? Back in 2017 it was you perched at a
small desk in the corner of your daughter‘s
room, I think?
FL: The old set up is still there, but I now also
have a laptop I use for most of my work.
Usually the desktop is just what I do my final
renders on, which then allows me to work on
the next project on my laptop.
DAL: Good. A useful setup. What are you
working on or planning at the moment?
FL: I‘ve always focused on plants / fungi, and
now I want to shift my focus a bit to animals,
or more precisely, fantasy / alien animals that
would inhabit this world I‘ve been making. The
newest series of pictures are variations on a
creature I‘ve been working on, and at the
moment I‘m working on a fourth in the series.
This time I want to take those other ideas,
those plants and fungi, and give them a
symbiotic relationship with one of the new
creatures.
DAL: Nice idea. Ok, Frank, many thanks for this
follow-up interview after five years, and we
wish you well in the future.
FL: Thank you as well.
Frank Little (‗FCLittle‘) is online at:
https://www.fclittle.com/
https://www.deviantart.com/fclittle/
gallery/all
https://www.artstation.com/fclittle76
Pictures: Rendering of the Storybots, now a major
Netflix property. Frank‘s product design rendering
for the lightweight Opkix One, an HD digital video-
camera that is wearable for hands-free pictures.
34
 ―I also worked with Maglite and did several renders for a variety of
flashlights. The commercial my partner and I eventually made was up in
Times Square for a time, which was a bit surreal.‖

35
3D ALIEN
PLANTS SURVEY
Got your 3D greenhouse ready for the springtime? We present
a short survey of royalty-free 3D ‗alien planet‘ type plants that
are available for the Poser and DAZ Studio software.

In just nine months, cinema audiences will be
munching popcorn in front of the shiny new
megamovie Avatar 2. This is apparently set to
be the first of a string of gazillion-dollar annual
sequels. Whatever you may have thought of
the first Avatar movie‘s clunky plot, the forest
eco-system visualisation was undeniably
superb and a triumph of VFX. Thus most people
will be expecting more of the same, perhaps
much more, at Christmas 2022.
But you may be surprised to learn that
Hollywood is not longer alone in having an
Avatar-like range of 3D plants, with which to
create a convincing alien planet scene.
Hobbyist users now have many options for
such plants, as well as good atmospherics and
relatively quick high-quality rendering.
In this survey we identify the main makers of
affordable 3D ‗alien plants‘ content, and we
also give you the exact titles of their relevant
paid packs on the DAZ Store and Renderosity.
‗Are there also freebies?‘ some may wonder.
Yes, if you search you‘ll find a few older
freebies at places such as Renderosity
freestuff. A name to look out for is ModuleOne
who offers Bryce/.3DS plants. Spacebones also
has one useful Bryce plant. Also find the giant
carnivourous jungle-plants of Ancestorsrelic,
especially his magnificent ‗Hydravora‘. All these
above are commercial use. Also to be found in
various places online are more or less
whimsical faery mushrooms for Poser and DAZ,
which might be adapted to suit some needs.
36
Those with the skills can of course make their
own alien type plants, in tools such as DAZ
Hexagon and E-on‘s PlantFactory, and Digital
Art Live has in-depth training webinars
available on both of these.
Where to put your 3D alien plants once you
have them in your runtime? Well, to go with
the plants there are now various science-fiction
botanical gardens, bio-containment labs, and
suchlike. Various other 3D sci-fi structures
could easly be adapted to become greehouse
domes of various kinds. We don‘t cover those
here, but you‘ll find them if you go looking.
There are also now a large number of earthly
greenhouses, if you‘re planning more of a
weird ‗Sherlock Holmes and the Greenhouse of
Madness‘ type of steampunk scene or story.
You‘ll also find various underwater and
prehistoric ‗dinosaur‘ flora. While earth corals
and suchlike may be a bit too easily
recognised, many prehistoric plants and tree-
ferns seem a bit more alien looking to most
people. They also have the advantage of being
convincingly big, and could thus suit the far
distance of an otherwise very alien scene.
Lastly, don‘t forget the atmospherics. If you
have Vue that‘s of course no problem, but for
DAZ and Poser a bit of ground-fog and depth
fog will go a long way to making a scene more
convincing. Even in a dry landscape scene, a
bit of alien atmospherics could work wonders.
●
 JEPE
DAZ Studio
Jepe has created two series of his fascinating
alien plants, these being very suited to the
type of low-gravity alien planet where plants
might have to hold themselves up by the use
of helium envelopes in their structure. As such,
some are very alien looking indeed and some
may even look a little too whimsical for some
‗hard sci-fi‘ tastes.
But we like them and you‘ll find them under
the name of Jepe‘s WonderPlantZ and
WonderPlantZ2 on the DAZ Store. Note that
Jepe‘s latest WonderPlantZ2 pack has to be
searched for on the store — it doesn‘t currently
show up in Jepe‘s store listing.
His plants are perhaps especially suited for
scenes featuring a sort of ‗pastel and aetherial‘
looking alien being. Some would even suit a
more surreal Dali-esque type of fantasy world
or dream-sequence, especially if re-textured
for a more ‗candy and sugar-coated‘ look.
If you get both packs you‘ll have 20 alien
plants. It‘s fairly easy to change their visual
impressions, with a range of presets and top-
coats for the materials.
Jepe was interviewed in Digital Art Live issue
#20, and talks about making the first pack.
37
PETIPET
DAZ Studio
3D content maker Petipet has made and
continues to make a large and superb science-
fiction series of 3D content, featuring many
offworld futuristic colony buildings and
vehicles. Given all this fine content, there is of
course also a need for matching flora and
planetary landscapes.
Petipet ably provided the plants with his first
Alien Plants pack. In this pack he offered a
very nice range of such plants and also
mushrooms, with many textures and colours.
This was one of the first big ‗alien plants‘ packs
to become available for DAZ Studio, in 2014.
Later he went on the create and sell a range of
different plantet terrain types, all with
matching alien flora and presets.
These later packs include the ice-world Planet
Irida, the dry Autumnal world Planet Edesa,
the flower-world Planet Selena, and the new
water-world Planet Gaya. There is also a
somewhat Avatar-like purple Planet Glise,
which was followed by a sandy desert version
of the same terrain called Planet Glise 2.
Definitely a maker to watch on the DAZ Store,
if you want alien plants.
 RDNA XenoFlora
Poser materials
RDNA XenoFlora is an old double-pack of ten
jungle-type alien plants, still on sale. They
have perfectly good geometry and nice
texturing. Admittedly you may need to tweak
the textures in order to get them looking really
good in newer render engines. See also the
matching Xeno-Temple by another maker.
OSKARSSON
DAZ Studio
Veteran content maker Oskarsson has several
newer items of interest. Including the tidal
rock-pool Elsewhere, which could be paired
with his new science-fiction Isles of Light pack.
He also has the curious new and unusual Magic
Fields Forever pack, which would serve as an
interesting backdrop for some sort of an alien
‗bubble-world‘ with Jepe-type plants (see
previous page for details of Jepe‘s content).
38
ORESTES
DAZ Studio and Poser
Orestes has a range of inventive alien plants in
three Alien Botanicals packs on the DAZ Store,
and the first such pack should have textures
that work with Poser. Packs 2 and 3 are iRay.
He also has underwater plants packs in his
Gardens of Poseidon series, and a range of
alien landscapes.
SICKLEYEILD
DAZ Studio
SickleYeild has made some great ‗alien triffid
like‘ man-eater plants in the recent SY
Mutants of Chzor and Eggs and Cocoons for
Singers of Chzor packs. See also the dForce
Nets and Webs, and dForce Ropes, Vines and
Tubes for draping across plant scenes, and
Swift Steam and a couple of others for
rendering forest ground fog and suchlike.
 GENDRAGON3D
DAZ Studio
Gendragon3D worked with JeffersonAF to
create a My Aliens Plants for iRay pack which
has a more toony vibe to many of the other
alien plants seen in this survey. Which may be
exactly what you're looking for, especially if
you‘re making lineart comics using 3D. There
are 17 plants in total.
POISEN
Poser
Fabulously inventive, veteran Poser content
maker Poisen has a range of packs you'll want
to consider, such as: Eyeball Garden 1 & 2; the
Myco-Z series of weird mushrooms; ThornZ;
SwizzlerZ; Mawz (seen above); OverGrowth;
and the Badlands series. Excellent for big dry
thorny forests. Most of these also come as
static .OBJs and so can easily be taken to other
software. John has an moister
39
TRAVELER
Poser
RDNA veteran Traveler made the superb
Organix: CoCoon with opening morph, and the
useful and flexible Organix: Orb Stalks. See
also the ForestPrimeEvil 2—MegaPack for more
of a dinosaur-age vibe. The Tropical Corals and
fantasy Heavy Vines may also interest.
SWIDHELM
Poser, Vue
Swidhelm has two packs on the Renderosity
store as Swidhelms Alien Flora, which are
supplied as Vue ecosystems for quickly
applying your strange flora in the Vue
landscape software. Also included are Vue-
native .VOB prop files and also .OBJs for other
software. The first pack is for a dryer type of
landscape, and the other is for a somewhat
in-depth type of terrain.
interview in our sister-title VisNews #10.
RYZOM
We‘re pleased to present another pick
of the amazing Ryzom concept-art.

With thanks also to Nevrax and Winch Gate.

40
Most if not all of the superb
concept designs selected for this
Ryzom concept art gallery were by
‗Garcia‘, who we believe was
Patrice Garcia.
He later worked on concepts for
big science-fiction movies such as
The Fifth Element and Valerian.
https://www.artstation.com/garcia
41
42
Created for one of the most ambitious sci-fi PC
videogames of the 2000s, the Ryzom concept artwork is
now under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike,
courtesy of developers Nevrax and the game‗s later
owners Winch Gate. The game was crafted by indie
production studio Nevrax from 2000, and then released
for the PC in 2004.
43
But two years later Nevrax went under. The game‘s
ambition was such that the Free Software Foundation
offered $60,000 for it. Then in 2010 new owners Winch
Gate kindly released all 3D assets as a 13Gb download,
and later all the concept art. The archives continue to be a
great learning resource and source of freely re-usable
design ideas under Creative Commons.
44
45
46
47
48
49
INDEX
HAVE you missed out on an issue of
our free magazine? Please enjoy
this new handy double-page index
of our past issues, and check if
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our previous title 3D
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Inset: Issue 28 (‘Future Oceans‘ issue) cover art by Artur Rosa.

Issue 1 : October 2015 : Future Cities
Issue 2 : November 2015 : Alien
Plants/Creatures.
Issue 3 : December 2015 : ―A Galaxy
Far Away…‖
Issue 4 : January 2016 : Poser 11
Issue 5 : February 2016 : Cosmos
Issue 6 : March 2016 : Cyberhumans
Issue 7 : April 2016 : Future Females
Issue 15 : January 2017 : Mistworlds Issue 29 : May 2018 : Fantasy
Portraits
Issue 16 : Feb 2017 : Future vehicles
(Syd Mead issue) Issue 30 : June 2018 : Alternative
Histories
Issue 17 : March 2017 : Movie magic
Issue 31 : August 2018 : Sci-fi Rocks!
Issue 18 : April 2017 : Vue 2016
(music)
Issue 19 : May/June 2017 : Sci-fi
Issue 32 : Sept 2018 : Design for
comics
Videogames
Issue 20 : July 2017 : Digital clothing
Issue 33 : Oct 2018 : Abstract
Issue 21 : August 2017 : Ecofutures characters

Issue 8 : May 2016 : Mars Issue 22 : September 2017 : Lighting Issue 34 : Nov 2018 : Future Interiors

Issue 9 : June 2016 : Blender
Issue 10 : July 2016 : Steampunk.
Issue 11 : August 2016 : Future
Landscapes
Issue 12 : September 2016 : Second
Skin (tattoos)
Issue 23 : October 2017 : Space Issue 35 : Dec 2018 : Getting Value
exploration for your Art
Issue 24 : November 2017 : Abstracts Issue 36: Jan 2019 : Megacities
Issue 25 : December 2017 : Posing Issue 37 : Dec 2018 : Giant Historical
Creatures
Issue 26 : Jan 2018 : To the skies!
(Sky Captain issue and interview) Issue 38 : Jan 2019 : Super Skin

Issue 13 : October 2016 :
Spacewrecks (TTA)
Issue 14 : Nov/Dec 2016 :
CyberTRONic
Issue 27 : February/March 2018 :
Giant monsters
Issue 28 : April 2018 : Future oceans
50
Issue 39 : Dec 2018 : Deserts in sci-fi
Issue 40 : Jan 2019 : Depicting
Character
Issue 41 July 2019 Issue 42 Aug 2019 Issue 43 Oct 2019 Issue 44 Nov 2019
Moon Comics Real-time Ethereal
● Xin Liu of MIT ● Atomic Robo ● FlowScape ● Adriano Portugal
● Jeremiah Humphries ● Kara, ‗Karafactory‘ ● ‗Crazy-Knife‘ ● Lyndsey Hayes
● Jan van de Klooster ● Ricardo Bresso ● Michelangelo Cellini ● Marcos Alipio
● NASA Moon art ● Best graphic novels ● Jonathan Winbush ● Murilo Francisco
● Index of past issues ● Index of past issues ● Index of past issues ● Index of past issues
● Gallery: ‗Bases and ● Gallery: ‗Comic and ● Gallery: ‗PCs and ● Gallery: ‗Exploring the
outposts‘ cartoon art‘ devices as creatures‘ aetherial‘
● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium

Issue 45 Dec 2019 Issue 46 Feb 2020 Issue 47 March 2020 Issue 48 April 2020
Ancient Gods & Heroes Epic Vistas Software issue The Lost Temple

● Joseph C. Knight ● Adrian Mark Gillespie ● Joel Simon ● Danny Gordon

● Daniel Eskridge, aka ● Gary Tonge ● Virginie C. ● ‗Agura Nata‘
‗Deskridge‘ ● Anaor Karim ● HP Z600 review ● George Pal
● Dani Owergoor ● Gary Haimeng Cao ● Avatar maker survey ● Ryzom art
● Index of past issues ● Index of past issues ● Index of past issues ● Index of past issues
● Recent comics ● Comic strip ● Contests ● Contests
● Gallery: ‗The Mythic‘ ● Gallery: ‗Epic Space‘ ● Gallery: ‗Nic022‘ ● Gallery: Mandelbulb
● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium

SOME OF OUR IN-DEPTH REVIEWS:

Poser Pro 11 Vue 2016 R2 Crossdresser
#4 | January 2016 #18 | April 2017 #44 | November 2019
51
Issue 49 May 2020 Issue 50 July 2020 Issue 51 August 2020 Issue 52 Sept 2020
Mono issue 50th issue Beneath Interface
● Logan Stahl ● For this issue we ● Doug Lefler ● Michael Okuda
● Matt Timson invited all previous ● Bjorn Malmberg ● ‗Spiraloso‘
● ‗Kvacm‘ interviewees to ● Richard Heggen ● Stefan Kraus
● ‗Kooki99‘ contribute a mini- ● Sylvia Ritter ● Review: PzDB
● Expresii 2020 review interview ● Graphic novels survey ● Contests
● Autocolour software ● PhotoLine 22 review ● Gallery: Caves and ● Gallery: Interfaces
● Gallery: ‗Mono‘ ● Gallery: Spaceships underground in digital art
● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium

Issue 53 Nov 2020 Issue 54 Dec 2020 Issue 55 January 2021 Issue 56 March 2021
Hair and fur Elon Battlesuits Atmospherics
● The HiveWire team ● Elon Musk ● Hasraf Dulull ● ‗Kibosh 1‘
● Andrew Krivulya ● Darya Girina ● Pascal Blanche ● John Harris
● AprilYSH ● Ulises Siriczman ● Lucas Savelli ● ‗Hangmoon‘
● Survey of fur-making ● Luca Oleastri ● Survey of the best ● Review of Realistic
tools in 3D and 2D ● Mars habitats recent graphic novels Paint Studio 1.2
● Contests ● Contests ● Group gallery ● Python editing
● Gallery: Hair ● Gallery ● Main gallery ● Main gallery
● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium

SOME OF OUR IN-DEPTH REVIEWS:

HP Z600 Workstation Realistic Paint Studio 1.2 XP-Pen Artist 22 (2nd Gen)
#47 | March 2020 #56 | March 2021 #59 | July 2021
52
 YOUR YOUR YOUR
ART ART ART
HERE? HERE? HERE?

Issue 57 April 2021 Issue 58 May 2021 Issue 59 July 2021 Issue 60 August 2021
Future Transport Fairytale Maps Oceans
● Fred Gambino ● ‗Sir Tancrede‘ ● Herwin Weilink ● Ali Eser
● ‗KuzMich‘ ● ‗Strangefate‘ and (‘Djekspek‘) ● Cliodna Connoree
● Carter Sheppard ‗Roguey‘ ● Glynn Seal ● ‗Exit Mothership‘
● Robo Racers ● David Revoy ● Chris Hunter ● Contests
● Solar Sails ● Contests ● Steffen Brand ● Ryzom gallery
● Go Fly ● Cover art ● XP-Pen review ● Blender to Poser FBX
● Gallery: Transport ● Gallery: Fairytale ● Gallery ● Main Gallery
● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium

COVER YOUR YOUR YOUR

ART ART ART

HERE? HERE? HERE?

Issue 61 Sept 2021 Issue 62 October 2021 Issue 63 Nov 2021 Issue 64 Dec 2021
Postwork The Gothic Orbit Lineart / Moebius
● Vladmir Chopine ● Nicki Webb ● Christopher W. ● Lucian Stanculescu
● Julia Green ● Rick Mosher Bailey ● John Swogger
● ‗SciFiWarships‘ ● Julian Faylona ● Alan E. Baker ● Marcos Bedin
● Postwork tools ● Bob May ● GoMiyazaki ● Amir Zand
● What is a ‗Toon ID‘? ● ‗RobbienArt‘ ● Maxime des Touches ● Kevin R. Valentino
● Gallery: Work by our ● Spooky Software ● Contests ● 3D-to-lineart article
postwork class ● Gallery ● Review: PD Howler ● ‗alchemichael77‘
● Imaginarium ● Imaginarium ● Gallery ● Gallery

Every new issue can be sent for free to
your email address, simply by
subscribing to our mailing-list...
https://digitalartlive.com/
53
Are you interested in being interviewed
in a future issue? Or presenting a new
webinar? Please send the address of
your gallery or store, and we‘ll visit!
paul@digitalartlive.com
 YOUR YOUR YOUR
ART ART ART
HERE? HERE? HERE?

Issue 65 Feb 2022 Issue 66 March 2022 Issue 67 April 2022 Issue 68 May 2022
Fractals Plants Sagan Creatures
● Julius Horsthuis ● PlantFactory
● Paolo Olivari Guerra ● Frank Little
Are you interested in being interviewed
● ‗BatJorge‘ ● Alien Plants survey in a future issue? Or presenting a new
● Marije Berting ● Britta Jacobs webinar? Please send the address of
● Fractal software ● Ryzom Gallery
● G‘MIC 3.0 ● Contests
your gallery or store, and we‘ll visit!
● Contests ● Gallery: Plants
● Gallery: Fractals paul@digitalartlive.com
● Imaginarium

A NOTE ON PDF VIEWERS: 2. Restart the software by loading any issue

of Digital Art Live. Check the View menu to
After a group test, the PDF reader software make sure you are actually in ―Book View‖.
we like is SumatraPDF. This is genuinely
free, and also free of ads, nags and bloat.
It‘s fast, 64-bit, and as secure an option as
any PDF reader can be. The only thing it
lacks is a one-click option to fully set itself
up for magazine reading. Here‘s how:
1. Under Menu | Settings | Options, set
―Book View‖ and ―Fit Page‖, and while you‘re
there you may want to uncheck ‗Updates‘.
3. Now get rid of the ugly gutter (i.e. the
gap in a magazine‘s double-page spread)
via: Top menu | Settings | Advanced
settings. This opens the config file. Simply
change PageSpacing = 4 4 to 0 0 to remove
the gutter between pages. Save the file.

Now restart the software, and you‘re done.

Download SumatraPDF.
54
CONTESTS
We present a selection of creative contests, for your consideration.

The Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation have a new

Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2022, for the
―Author of Tomorrow‖. The competition is open to
young people across the world who have completed
a short piece of adventure writing in English.
While this is not an art or scriptwriting prize, we
think it will appeal to many of our ‗writer of the
future‘ readers interested in writing gripping
adventure stories for comics, animation and movies.
Free to enter. Deadline: 22nd April 2022.
https://www.wilbur-niso-smithfoundation.org/

The Nikon Small World Competition is open to

The Singapore Botanical Gardens has an open
anyone with an interest in ―photography through the
call for entries to its forthcoming ‗Flora of South
microscope‖, and is free to enter. This may interest
East Asia‘ exhibition, a large show organised by
readers inspired by our previous ‗Fractals‘ themed
four major botanical societies in Asia. They say
magazine issue, and who also have access to a
―we are aiming for modern botanical art‖ and
camera-microscope (which we note have come down
they explicitly welcome ―very creative‖ works.
in price remarkably over the last few years). What
Obviously they expect depictions of recognisable
real-world sci-fi fractals can you find, down there in
flowers that are native to South East Asia, and
the microverse? $6,000 in prizes.
these can be shown in situ in their surrounding
ecological niches — but they ask that insects not Free to enter. Deadline: 30th April 2022.
be shown in the pictures you send.
https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/
Deadline for entries: 15th April 2022.
The Adobe Digital Edge Awards seeks UK student
https://www.botanicalartsocietysingapore.com/
team projects that use Adobe Creative Cloud
software to take their university coursework ―to the
New World Digital Art are currently finalising their
next level‖. The key aim is to produce work that
2022 Theme Challenges. NWDA are a large group
―conveys complex information" in an "easy-to-follow
of experienced 3D digital landscape and
format" for others, and your finished work will be
environment/VFX artists working with the likes of
―judged by a professional panel of industry and
Terragen, Vue, and many others. Visit the NWDA
Adobe experts‖.
Challenges archive to see the sort of 3D
landscapes they tend to favour. Free entry. Deadline: 31st May 2022.

https://nwdagroup.com/ https://www.adobe.com/uk/special/landing/student/

Designers and artists interested in bio-art are
invited to propose projects for the Bio Art &
Design (BAD) Award. Three successful applicants
are given the opportunity to fully realize a new
work of art or design that pushes the boundaries
of scientific research and creative expression.
Also keep an eye on the Renderosity and ArtStation
contest pages. Renderosity tends to have lots of
smaller rolling forum contests for Poser and DAZ
Studio users (some with ‗Poser 12 licence‘ prizes),
while ArtStation has bigger but less frequent ones
that expect different creative software to be used.

Deadline: 15th March 2022. https://www.renderosity.com/ and https://

www.artstation.com/
https://www.badaward.nl/open-call
55
 BRITTA
JACOBS
We visit the high Swiss mountains to talk
again with Britta Jacobs (‗Mermaidine‘)
about her work with Vue and new AI art
tools, and her love of the natural world.

DAL: Britta, welcome. We‘re pleased to have an
expert Vue artist here, for our ―digital nature‖
themed issue. Are you still living in your
childhood village, high in the Alps of Europe?
BJ: Yes, I am. After some years in Germany I
came back with my husband to take care of my
parents and I stayed. It is a wonderful little
village with a marvelous view to the mountains,
where the only sounds in summer nights are the
bells of the sheep and cows, and the cicadas in
the flowery summer meadows.
DAL: Super. And still finding inspiration from
atmosphere, cloudscapes and landscapes,
plants?
BJ: Indeed. As often as I can I take a walk. The
older I get the more the change of seasons —
56
 BRITTA JACOBS

SWITZERLAND

VUE | POSER |
GENERATIVE AI
ART SOFTWARE

WEB

Picture: ―At The Well‖. Vue and PlantFactory.

with the different view of the landscape and DAL: Great. How was the pandemic, up there?
plants — fascinate me. I have always been
BJ: It's been a strange two years, with a
someone who — like my father — sees figures
disease with inhuman traits which have
or animals in clouds or in ice formations or in a
weighed heavily on me. Because it mainly hits
single dried leaf. The macro landscapes right
the people who couldn‘t defend themselves like
next to my feet, or the details of plants and
old people and children, and caused them
flowers fascinate me too. So they get captured
immense suffering that wasn‘t necessary. But
in shots, which my husband calls ‗the typical
for me it was also a time to re-learn.
Britta shots‘. 57
I learned how to deal with difficult situations
without denying myself. I have various
possibilities to express myself through art, and
that has helped me and others. And I‘ve
learned to pay even more attention to the
simple, everlasting real things out in nature,
and to find joy and support among them. And
I‘ve tried to convey these simple truths to
others, and thus show a way out of despair and
depression that they might be able to walk too.
I've tried to balance things out by giving people
— who didn‘t expect it — a little joy. The
surprise and the smile of joy were just as much
a pleasure for me.
DAL: Sounds great. Ok, it seems a bit dry now
to go on to talk about the software. But… would
you tell readers a little about how you got
started in making digital pictures, please. Did
you go straight to Vue, or was there some
intermediate software like Bryce?
BJ: It was straight to Vue — I think about 17
years ago — and my sister's ‗fault‘. She is eight
years younger than me and had the
opportunity to study art and design. She was
the one who recommended Vue to me when I
asked her: ‗How can I create landscapes with
the computer?‘. I started with Vue d‘Esprit 4
or 5, I think, and got hooked instantly.
DAL: I see. Thanks. How did you then first set
about developing your digital skills in Vue?
BJ: First by just playing around and
experimenting — I am so not the ‗handbook
reading type‘. By experimenting I also found
out how to model in Vue itself, something
which I still do today, because especially for
architecture it is a lot easier for me than in
other programs. Other programs definitely
have more possibilities to do that, but also
have a steeper learning curve for me.
DAL: Interesting. Were there any resources or
people you found that especially helped you
back then, to take it to the next level?
BJ: The tutorials by Vladimir Chopine helped
me get to know a wide variety possibilities.
And also gave me some new ideas. There was
also the PDF guide by Chipp Walters, who had
some really neat ideas for modelling in Vue.
58
And of course the then-available tutorials and
‗making of‘‘s at Cornucopia. As time went by I
found useful programs for adding interesting
objects to my pictures such as Poser and DAZ
for people and animals. Sculptris for doing my
own plants and objects. Incendia for creating
3D fractals, which find their use in a lot of sci-fi
themed works I did and do.
When E-on‘s PlantFactory software came out
this took my experimental work in modelling to
a whole new level.
When I met my now best companion in
creativity, Susann Houndsville, some years
ago, we found pleasure in creating together
and learning from each other. Because she was
more fit in really good modelling in ZBrush and
apt in learning to rig and animate – and I more
in composition and creating landscapes with
Vue. And we had, and have the same
sometimes, a little bizarre and playful trait to
create and the same weird humor. So we had,
and have, great dialogs about god and the
world which result in creating things together
like examples of one legged creatures for the
planet system Susann created, and where I got
my own planet! She is the more experimental
mind and got me and others, like Aron Kamolz
and Christian Zuppinger, to take part in the
creation of our first and so far only film: a
commercial of the Tourist Association Ari Moon
shown at the FedCon Germany 2019 in Bonn. I
learned a lot new things in this project, from
rendering animations over adding music and
speaking texts. The Vue landscapes and some
of the plants and animals and even one
animation were my creations.
First it was about making pure pictures in Vue,
with add-ons done in other programs. But
when the first creative AI programs came out, I
started also to take those AI generated pictures
as background or parts of objects. For instance,
an AI generated portrait in a Vue-modeled
frame for renders in Vue.
DAL: I see. What is your general workflow in
making a picture in 2022, would you say? Do
you now start with a visualised idea and rough
sketch, or an empty scene and ‗load and play‘?
Picture: ―Deep Forest Magic‖. Vue, Sculptris.
59
BJ: Depends… but overall it is mainly ‗load and
play‘. Sometimes I have a picture in my head
or a screenshot captured, and which I want to
recreate. Example pictures there would be the
―Wandering Monk‖ or ―All Hallows Eve‖, where I
wanted to create a themed render. Other times
I just want to texture a new creation in
Incendia, Sculptris or PlantFactory in Vue and a
picture is born out of it. This so happened for
instance with ―Music of the Universe‖, where
the instrument is made in PlantFactory, with
―Reipus Sancturay‖ where the guarded way and
some plants are PlantFactory, ―Sisters on a
Stroll‖ where the spindels are Incendia and the
plants PlantFactory, ―The Wanderer and the
Arriving shell-ships‖, where the shell-ships are
Incendia again, ―Rare Fruits‖, where again a
PlantFactory creation was the nucleus, ―Riding
the Pulce d‘aqua‖, where the creature is a
combination out of an ZBrush experiment,
combined with and Incendia fractal and a
Sculptris add-on.
Same again with the ―old tree‖ picture [seen
right] where the old tree was created in
Sculptris and ―At the well, where an experiment
in PlantFactory was the nucleus.
Or sometimes I got a new freebie or bought
something interesting new objects like for the
pictures ―Robofish‘s Hatching‖ or ―City of
Dreams‖.
DAL: Yes, really good freebies always seem to
be a good spur to making a new picture.
BJ: Another way I get inspiration is from a
fellow artist like for the picture ―The Greenman
and his Friends‖, where a picture from ‗Girsih
Gr‘ on ArtStation was the inspiration.
DAL: Interesting. How has that workflow
changed from when you started out?
BJ: It has changed in the variety of objects I
have to inspire me for another picture. And it
has changed in that I now add landscapes
created in Artbreeder into my renders or I add
pictures from Pixabay as a combination later
on. An example for that is ―Moonchild‖ where
the picture was rendered in Vue and a clouds
photo from Pixabay was layered in and painted
over in postwork.
60
DAL: I see. Yes, laying in photo-clouds later
can save a whole lot of render time in Vue. The
secret there is to have a few rendered clouds,
and the kind of sky gradient and colours in Vue
you want for the end cloud-layered picture.
What is the favorite picture in your gallery, and
why is it special for you? Or, alternatively,
which picture has brought you the most
attention over the years?
BJ: I have several favorite but from the most
recent it is ―Shrooms Blue Hour‖ because of
blue being my favorite color and the special
light in this one and the overall serenity of it.
For me it is fascinating that the pictures with
most attention are quite different depending on
the platform. So for Artstation it was and is the
―Temple of the Universe‖ (https://
www.artstation.com/artwork/KRWDB) and for
DeviantArt it is not a Vue render, but a
landscape created in Artbreeder I called ―First
Snow‖ (https://www.deviantart.com/
mermaidine/art/First-snow-895567192)
DAL: I see. What version of Vue are you using?
Have you kept pace with the subscription
version, or did you go with 2016 and stick with
2016 with the final patch? Or perhaps
something before that?
BJ: I am still on Vue 2016 and no, I haven‘t
kept pace with the subscription because
subscription models generally are not mine and
I do not like the new interface. I have though
taken notice of new and interesting possibilities
for texturing or cloud creation which are
appealing to me too. But all the content I have
and have created I can use with Vue 2016 R6
anytime I want, and I can come back to old
renders and change them.
DAL: I see. Yes, that backwards compatibility is
a key factor. Now, in whatever version, Vue
has a very nice balance between ‗artistic‘ and
‗believable‘. I‘m not sure if that was intended
by the makers or just where it ended up, but it
does. Other landscape software wants to be
super-real, often painfully and in-artistically so.
They can sometimes seem to be more for
geologists than artists. Vue is for artists. But
the user does need to find that line ‗between
artistic and realistic‘ and then walk it.
 Picture: ―Old tree‖. Vue.

61
62
 Pictures: ―Bramble Dream‖;
―Octopusses‘ Kindergarden‖;
63
and ―The Seed of Snow‖.
How have you found ways to handle that
‗between artistic and realistic‘ tension in Vue,
over the years?
BJ: Oh, Vue is very capable of both, realistic
and fairytale or dreamlike, which I haven‘t
found to the same extent in other software.
This is what gives me — a playful artist with no
favorite subject — so many possibilities to
express myself, something I do not get in any
other software. Vue has a lighting and
atmospheric setting, which is very special and
makes it possible to create a dreamlike
impression in a very appealing unique way.
This is something, which in my humble option
changed a bit with the subscription model and
later versions. I find the newer renders, that
have been made in Vue since the switch to
subscription, to be more realistic but also
‗colder‘ and it may be, that it was developed
that way or that it has to do with the topic of
the renders, which are now preferably designed
for realistic subjects.
DAL: I see. What are your favorite ‗go-to‘
Atmospheres and Ecosystems in Vue 2016?
BJ: Hmm, that depends on the subject,
because the atmosphere is the last thing I add.
I have a special atmosphere for creation of a
scene, which is a standard one. To get the
desired look for a finished theme setup, I can
choose from a wide variety for instance the big
pack by Vladimir Chopine, some of Andrea
Horvath‘s creations and a lot of self created
ones.
DAL: What is your favorite ‗digital nature‘ store
content for Vue?
BJ: I love the plant creations by Jan Walther
Schliep (https://www.laubwerk.com/store/)
and Aron Kamolz‘s Beeches (https://
www.artstation.com/aronk/store). Frederic Bec
creates some very awesome plants too which
are brilliantly created and very detailed. I have
some of his from when they were available at
Cornucopia. But as my computer is somewhat
older now, and I have the last non subscription
Vue version, it is difficult to handle the many
polygons they come with… or I cannot load
them at all.
64
DAL: I see. Thanks. You also have E-on‘s Plant
Factory, now ‗PlantFactory‘. What do you think
of it? We have Daniel from E-on also in this
issue, talking about PlantFactory. If you use it
a lot, what is the most interesting thing you
managed to produce with it?
BJ: Yes, I have the last non-subscription
Professional version which I won in a picture
contest from E-on. I love this software too, as
you can model fascinating plants, real or
fantasy and create gears, spirals or walkways
or fences or even a corpus for a blockhouse.
And it was Benny Govaerts who showed my
some really nice tricks there. For instance he
showed me how to make a blockhouse body in
Plant Factory which resulted in a nice
Blockhouse model finished in Vue.
DAL: Brilliant. How do you feel about Vue now,
overall — especially in terms of the state of the
community after the tragic loss of Cornucopia?
BJ: Well, to me it is somewhat sad, because
Vue had a very active hobbyist community,
which was left behind with the switch to the
subscription model. I see now and then new
people coming to the Facebook groups, but all
in all it is mainly the old ones and a lot of them
with old versions which are still active. But I
guess this was to expect, as Cornucopia was
the heart and soul of the community. Tempi
passati.
DAL: Yes, though I guess it had its upsides in
one way… in that Quadspinner gave away all
their superb content and books for Vue. Which
is all still there for free at their repository and a
very nice starter package for anyone
considering Vue as a picture-maker. And I
guess we should be grateful that Vue is still
there, ‗in the game‘ and interfacing nicely with
Poser. Have you seen any other upsides?
BJ: I am happy for this richness which
Quadspinner, and also Vladimir Chopine, gave
freely. To me Vue is still the most beloved
program.
DAL: Right. And for me especially so because it
interfaces so sweetly and easily with a saved
Poser scene.
Picture: ―Rare Fruits‖, Vue and PlantFactory.
65
Picture: ―Hello My Friend‖;
and ―Riding the Pulcedaqua‖,
Vue and PlantFactory.

66
67
OK, turning now to other software. You‘ve
recently been working a lot with the new ‗AI
assistant‘ art-tools such as ArtBreeder and
Dream by Wombo. What did you first think
about those, when you tried them out?
BJ: Yes, I was with Artbreeder nearly from the
beginning and it fascinated me to see what
possibilities this program has and what
inspirations came from just playing around. I
have hundreds of portraits, landscapes, covers
and ‗biological combinations‘ from Artbreeder,
which are waiting to be painted over or finished
for another piece of art. Artbreeder is
recreational for me too, when my muse is
sleeping and I just want to play and see what
comes out.
The second one I found is Deepdreamgenerator
where you can combine pictures in a different
way to Artbreeder, so you get a different mood
or some intricate details into a photo or render.
To me Deepdreamgenerator is better to use on
photos than on render.
The third and newest one is Wombo.art —
Dream by Wombo — which has another
approach as it creates pictures in different
styles out of words and sentences with up to
100 letters. This one got me hooked instantly
just for curiosity and I found it fascinating what
an AI can create out of text. So by now there
are also hundreds of ‗Wombos‘ populating my
hard drive.
DAL: Yes, it‘s great fun. It‘ll be interesting to
see how they develop it. It seems to be two
guys out of MIT, and one wonders if they‘ll try
to earn from it themselves or sell it on. So have
you settled on any preferred strategies when
working with AI-driven tools? Either in terms of
getting them to do something akin to what you
want them to. Or at the other end, ways to
take their ‗starting seed‘ — that‘s maybe kind
of gnarly and weird looking — and have it
flower into a picture?
BJ: Both, depending which we are talking
about, because each of the three I use has a
different approach. I love to paint over some of
the landscapes created in Artbreeder, add
elements to the story I see and maybe give
them one of my ‗storybuds‘ to go with them.
68
Examples of this painting over are ―Starwells
Magic‖, ―Blue Lantern Cavern‖ or ―Pilgrimage to
the White Star‖. Some of those will be
published in the next ‗storybuds‘ book of mine,
which will be the fourth of this series.
DAL: Have you experimented with the video-
based AI art tools yet, or do you plan to?
BJ: So as I understand it, this is creating videos
or rather diashows from text for business and
marketing purposes? This I have only had a
look at this, but not tried so far.
DAL: No, I was thinking more of AI that
interpolates between two images. Kind of
‗guesses what the missing frames would look
like‘, and thus allows the creation of an
animation from two similar still images. Or
which overlays a more or less convincing hand-
painted look, that‘s not like some cheesy old
Photoshop filter? There‘s also colourising and
‗animated eyes and smiles‘ on portraits. And
then there are various other possibilities within
animations and AI.
BJ: I see. What I have tried is a possibility
https://www.myheritage.ch/deep-nostalgia has
‗three videos for free‘ and without registration.
You upload your portrait and it gets animated. I
uploaded a portrait created in Artbreeder and
animated it and it looked quite good. You can
take a look here: https://www.artstation.com/
artwork/aYJ2Z0
Artbreeder, by the way, also has the possibility
to morph different portraits or landscapes into
each other and create a video from it. This I
have tried too but not deepened the experience
so far.
DAL: Interesting, thanks. Where would you like
AI-assisted art to go, or perhaps to end up in
terms of general acceptance?
BJ: To me AI machines are a fascinating and
inspiring way of creating art and I look at them
as another tool. As I mentioned above, they
can help when your muse is sleeping or just be
something relaxing to play with. I do not think
they will substitute the creative human mind,
because one cannot replace individual life
experiences and artistic creativity with a
logarithm or a program.
―To me AI machines are a fascinating and inspiring way
of creating art and I look at them as another tool. As I
mentioned above, they can help when your muse is
sleeping or just be something relaxing to play with.‖

Picture: ―The Dreamer‖, overleaf is ―Temple of the Universe‖.

Followed by ―The Greenman and his Friends‖, Vue.
69
DAL: Yes, true. But I fear that the awful NFT
thing will get all tangled up in the public mind
with AI generated art, and thus put back AI art
by 10 years. Still, that may leave longer for it
to bubble under and mature, so perhaps that‘s
a good thing in the long-run. Of course, the
AI‘s may have ideas of their own! /Laughter/
What are your opinions on the ‗AI Robots Will
Take Over the World!‘ worries? Do you see
them usurping artists?
BJ: I do not think this will happen in near
future. And well, art and styles have always
been something, which had their time and
circumstances to be neglected or hyped. This
NTF thing — which I admit I do not fully
understand — to me is something which will
‗have its moment‘ but for too many people still
is something eerie and not tangible. Like with
Bitcoin, most people still have a healthy
skepticism about things that defy the normal
senses and are only understandable to a tech-
savvy.
As for AI machines as such, which can create
printable pictures you can hold in your hand,
are not. They give you the possibility to play or
be inspired to create something out of it with
your very own imagination and skills. And
furthermore art forms which are handmade and
independent from computers and energy will
never get out of fashion, for you only need your
hands and a creative mind.
DAL: Yes, just a few sticks and mud and some
flower-petals can still work wonders, as they
still do near me in the Peak District well-
dressing ceremonies each springtime. Have you
ever done any physical generative art?
Perhaps as simple as ink-blot folded-paper art,
or as complex as making lines in the ground for
ice to follow and then seeing what they look
like they next morning after the snow and ice
have formed?
BJ: I have done drawings and paintings — as a
younger person — and sometimes created
miniature gardens out of natural materials. I
have experimented with ‗land art‘, such as
recreating the shadow of a tree on the ground
with sand and stones, which stays until the
next day and matches again at the same hour.
70
But the ideas you gave me above I will
certainly keep in mind for future experiments.
And in some way I have experimented in this
direction with the ceramics I make — for
instance in Raku technique using hair to burn
patterns on the surface of them or using a flour
water mix to color items naturally. Or I
experiment with ceramics in the capsule fire,
where natural materials such as moss, ash,
copper and salt or other elements are applied
to achieve certain colors, which are determined
by chance by the fire itself. I also worked with
wire for creating sculpture but this nowadays is
too painful for my hands.
DAL: Yes, I remember that. Wire mesh is a
very difficult material, and can be vicious.
Which it‘s designed to be, of course — it‘s not
meant to be an art material. What aspect of
nature would you most like to emulate in digital
form, which you haven‘t yet attempted?
BJ: I would like to create a landscape or part of
landscapes with the exact elevation data from
around here where I live or other interesting
parts of the world. I have tried this but it
seems to be quite difficult and not necessarily
very precise in the result.
DAL: Yes, a key problem is the tiny
‗tidelines‘ (aka ‗stair-steps‘, ‗zippers‘) in the
mesh, that are the artifacts of the satellite
scanning beams. We really need an AI that will
remove those, smoothing them without making
the landscape go all soft and mushy. AI up-
scaling of greyscale heightmaps doesn‘t work.
BJ: Also photogrammetry is something I would
like to try for myself in future.
DAL: Yes, that‘s another field that‘s rapidly
advancing and also coming down in price and
slotting AI into the workflow. But back to
graphics… what software other than Vue do you
find useful? Have you explored G‘MIC for
instance?
BJ: Oh, I have quite a variety of software, I am
working with. I have never tried G‘MIC so far.
To be honest I did not even know there existed
something like that, for Gimp too.
DAL: I think you‘ll be pleasantly surprised. I
think it‘s been for the Gimp for a while now.
71
72
73
But that has caused G‘MIC to really take off has
been that it‘s now also now a standard .8BF
Photoshop plugin, so can work with any
software that supports that. And of course,
being free helps. But… we were also talking
about other software?
―Vue is very capable of
realistic and fairytale or
dreamlike, which I haven‘t
found to the same extent in
other software. This is what
gives me — a playful artist
— so many possibilities to
express myself, something I
do not get in any other
software.‖
BJ: Yes, as for the other software… for creating
objects for Vue, other than in Vue itself, there
are Sculptris, ZBrush for plants and monsters,
Groboto and Incendia for fractals, for people
and animals I use DAZ and Poser and export
items for use in Vue. For creating terrains I use
Gaea or WorldMachine and JS-Placement.
PlantFactory for plants and other objects.
Blender for objects with special structures —
but there I am in the ‗experimenting mode‘
still. Sometimes Acropora, a still available free
procedural voxel modeler.
DAL: Yes, voxel modellers are another thing
that has caught my eye recently. There are
several nice free ones, and they‘re moving
forward in a nice way. Actuially we hope to
have a magazine issue on that general sort of
style later in 2022.
BJ: For postwork I mainly use Paintshop Pro,
which has a lot of filters coming with it. I got
the free version of Nik collection, where I
mainly use the filters of Color Effex pro. I
sometimes use the Flood filter by Flaming Pear.
DAL: Yes, both good ones. Flood 2 is a good
adjunct to Vue if an artist does a lot of big wide
lake/ocean type scenes.
BJ: I also use Dynamic AutoPainter 6, which
has a lot of painting and sketching filters.
DAL: Ah yes, DAP is another fine tool. The guy
who made that recently coded several new bits
of innovative software which are worth looking
at. One for writers, which is beyond our remit
here. But also a very nice $45 one that‘s for
vectorizing and then quickly styling the vector
lines with new styles. Works nicely with pure
lineart from Poser, once you wrangle the
workflow. I recently did a demo for that and
pinned down the workflow in in our sister
titleVisNews #28.
Ok, back to the final questions… what are you
working on at present, or what themes do you
feel ‗coming through‘ in your digital work?
BJ: At the moment I have a very strong
wombo.art affinity and try to create pictures
which are conveying emotions, fascinating
phenomena of nature or spiritual or
philosophical themes. I think this is due to all
the unrest around the world at the moment.
With my art I try to find a way to get an inner
stability and spiritual structure to be prepared
for whatever comes my way and share some of
my findings for others to ponder. So my latest
work is ―Yield and prevail‖ created in
Wombo.art and combined with a portrait of
Mahatma Ghandi and the following text:
―Nothing in the world is more yielding and
gentle than water. Yet it has no equal for
conquering the hard and tough. The flexible
can overcome the unbending, the soft can
overcome the hard, the yielding will prevail‖.
DAL: Wonderful. Britta, we wish you well with
that, and many thanks for this interview.
BJ: Thanks a lot for giving me the chance to be
part of Digital Art Live magazine again.
Britta Jacobs (aka ‗Mermaidine‘) is
online at:
https://www.artstation.com/
vuesionary
https://www.deviantart.com/
mermaidine/
74
Pictures: ―Controlling the
Water", and ―City of
Dreams‖ Vue, DAZ Studio.

75
GALLERY

76
Picture: ―Bottle Biomes‖ by Clayton Sjoerdsma of Canada. Made in
Blender. This was Clayon's first attempt at using Blender‘s geometry
nodes, a powerful tool. Everything was modelled and textured in Blender,
rendered in Cycles, with post done in Photoshop.

77
―It was the inhuman immensity of this land that He had taken it for granted that a day would
astonished and oppressed him. He knew the come when everywhere an ordered security,
cloudlands were empty of men, the stars were would prevail. But now, he doubted.
specks in an incredible vastness of space; he
This forest was interminable, it had an air of
knew the ocean was enormous and untamable,
being invincible, and Man seemed at best an
but… he had come to think of the land as
infrequent precarious intruder. One travelled for
man‘s. In the atlas, too, the land is man‘s, and
miles, amidst the still, silent struggle of giant
all coloured to show his claim to it — in vivid
trees, of strangulating creepers, of assertive
contrast to the independent blueness of the sea. 78

flowers, everywhere the endless varieties of
birds and insects seemed at home, dwelt
irreplaceably — but man, man at most held a
footing upon resentful clearings, fought weeds,
fought beasts and insects for the barest
foothold, fell a prey to beast, insect and fever,
and was presently carried away. In many
places down the river a man had been
manifestly driven back, and this deserted creek79
Picture: ―Ekibea 42-f‖ by Exphrasis.
or that preserved the name of his casa, and
here and there ruinous white walls and a
shattered tower enforced the lesson.
Who were the real masters?‖
— from the H.G. Wells short story, ―The Empire
of the Ants‖ (1905).
Pictures: ―Day of the
Triffids‖ by McJade of the
UK; ―Growing Mars‖ by
Mutinate of the UK.

80
81
Picture: ―Landscape Painting‖ by WargoSciFi of France.

82
83
 Pictures: ―Green Tea in the Garden‖ and ―Ghost Mushroom‖, both by Purbosky of
Indonesia. Text adapted from a public domain text in the Transactions of the Indiana
Horticultural Society, into a new story fragment from the Dreamlands of H.P. Lovecraft.

A small boy is a curious thing. I remember I was curious. By getting hold of the window sill
when I was a small boy, a being who would with my fingers and placing my toes on the
listen intently at the lip of each green mossy base-board I was able to draw myself up so as
waterwell. I think I was between three and four to see into the cup. There was just one small
years old, going one summer evening with plant, a fungi. It quivered with my breath and
some member of the family to the home of one blushed the evening air with a mauve-blue
of our neighbours, and in my free investigations glow. It was the mythmauve, as now commonly
around the back of this strange place I saw a called. I had never seen one before. I thought
bright green teacup in a window. The cup it the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
appeared to have something growing in it. From that day dated my love of strange fungi.
84
Two years ago I was at the ―Dreamlands Fair‖.
The horticultural quadrangles were a chief
attraction. There were collected the living
wonders from all the Dreamlands. The odd
fantastic xarzura from the perpetual twilight of
the great forests along the Kathos: ponderous
bulbs from the steaming marshes of the tropical
Ilarnek: weird and grotesque cacti from the
sands of Khem and Lirania, and more strange
and curious and wonderful fungi from all
travelled parts than were were ever collected
together in one place, or ever will be again. To
stroll through these exhibits at dusk, when the
luminiferous shapes glow up one by one is to
walk bodily into a still more enchanted region of
dream. And between those two moments, all
the tangling years that lay between that one
simple little fungi in the green teacup and the
great Fair lays the life that has brought me
85 magically to this present time & place.
Pictures: ―Greenhouse‖ by Dapaz of Spain,
made with the fractal software Apophysis;
―Brushwork Study‖ by David Revoy of
France, made with Krita and G‘MIC.
86
87
88
 Pictures:
―Fields of Blue‖
and ―Relic
Theory‖and
―Fleur D‘io‖, all
by Exphrasis
(Geoffrey
Ernault).
Photoshop.
Geoffrey shows
how he works
in digital paint
and Photoshop
in his Building
Coherent
Worlds (2021)
video for the
IAMAG
Masterclasses.

89
Digital Art
LIVE
Game: Mutazione (2019/2021)
A gangling young girl named Kai travels to the strange
and secretive island settlement of Mutazione to visit her
ailing grandfather, Nonno. Kai explores, begins to plant
gardens, eases her way into small-town dramas and
rustic hangouts, and discovers strange flora in the caves
and up in the treetops. Can she nurse her grandfather
back to health, and also discover so much more? This is a
quiet story-adventure videogame that has no combat and
is largely devoid of complex gameplay and story-stopping
puzzling. It can be more like guiding an interactive movie
along. The evocative environments of this unusual
‗gardening game‘ are by the Mutazione Creative Director
Nils Deneken and were beautifully stylised by his team at
Gute Fabrik. The soundtrack, ambient outdoor sounds,
and interface sounds are all excellent. There no voice-
acting in the game, which is probably a good thing in
terms of giving the game a universal appeal.
Available for PC (Windows 7 and up), Mac and Playstation
(2019), and Nintendo and Xbox (2021). Patches and
several DLC expansions were also later released.

Our pick of the most inspirational products and shows. Make your imagination LIVE!

90
 Pictures: With thanks to Gute Fabrick.
91
Videogame: Strange Horticulture
We like the idea of a mystery-detective /
puzzle / shop-keeping game set in the windy
wilds of Cumbria, in the far north of
England. The two brothers who are British
developer Bad Viking have done a fine job of
realising such a game, and it‘s had excellent
reviews. You are the new proprietor of a
shop trading in rare plants. Customers ping
the shop-bell and bring plants for you to
identify. Build up enough reputation, and
you generate ―the will to explore‖. This lets
you go on plant collecting expeditions. Fairly
soon things take a turn for the weird. Cats,
covens, cults and more. As things get wilder
the game‘s neat and logical interface keeps
everything very managable and in view at
any one time. A magnifying glass reveals
close details of your plants. The maps are a
standard RPG-type and legible, and all we
might have changed were the somewhat
unappealing cartoony character faces.
Out now for the Windows PC on Steam.
Book: Weird Plants
At a manageable 160 pages with 110
photographs and 30 superbly painted
illustrations by the author, the book Weird
Plants (2019) is perhaps the best introduction to
the topic and likely to be a great inspiration for
budding digital plant designers. The often rather
horrific real-world plants are organised by
sections as if elements of a horror movie:
Vampires, Killers, Fraudsters, Jailers,
Accomplices, Survivors, and Hitchhikers. These
sections each lead the reader around the world
in search of the weirdest plants, and we also
learn about the eco-systems in which these
specimens are found and which have produced
the weirdness due to evolutionary pressures.
The author and artist is able to draw in his
botanical and travel expertise, being the Head of
Science and Public Engagement at the Oxford
Botanic Garden in the UK.
Available from the publisher, The Kew Royal
Botanic Gardens in London, where you can also
see many weird plants in the flesh.
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Book: Atlas of Poetic Botany
Half non-fiction book, half picture-book, the
acclaimed Atlas of Poetic Botany (2018) is a
128 page hand-drawn collection of plants
from equatorial rainforests which highlights
the bizzare and weird. Here are plants that
pretend to be mushrooms, trees that live
underground to escape fearsome lightning
storms, creepers that dance, trees that
provide their own rain, and lilies that have
leaves as big as parachutes. The author
Francis Halle‘s precise but engaging line
drawings vividly show us a plant world as
strangely alien as that in any science-fiction
story. It is a world often shrouded in deep
rain-forest gloom, to the extent that plant
photography is difficult and unsatisfactory.
The author Halle is a French botanist and
biologist who specializes in tropical
rainforests and tree architectures, but this is
a lively book for the general reader — he
also tells stories about the plants that draw
on plant-collecting history and local folklore.
93
Book: Botany and the Imagination
Well-known nature writer Richard Mabey takes
the reader on a whistle-stop tour of plants and
human imagination, all in his characteristically
lyrical and informative tone. His 2015 book The
Cabaret of Plants: Botany and the Human
Imagination explores plant species which have
challenged our imaginations, awoken wonder,
and generated new possibilities in science and
the arts. Beginning with the first post Ice Age
plants and ancient pagan cults and creation
myths, the cultural significance of plants has
burst upwards, sprouting into forms as various
as all-curing panaceas such as willow bark
(asprin), Newton‘s gravitic apple, or Darwin‘s
little-known interest in carnivorous plants. We
also encounter a wealth of exotic plants such as
the African giant boabab, whose swollen trunks
store thousands of gallons of water, or the night
flowering Amazonian moonflower. While plant
specialists may well know all this already,
Mabey‘s book is a good introduction to the topic
for those encountering it for the first time.
Trees and the Sacred
Opens 8th May 2022 / Norwich, UK
This show at Norwich Cathedral in the UK is a
key chance to see pictures by the new British
tree-painting movement called The
Arborealists. The month-long show will
feature new work on ―trees and their sacred
aspects throughout the culture from ancient
to modern time‖, created by a group inspired
by certain currents in British art that run
from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Ruralists.
Now being planned for summer 2023 is a
further major show by the group, on ‗Ancient
Trees‘. In the meantime, you can also view
their works online.
https://www.arborealists.com/
Pictures, from left, across double-page:
Detail from ―Shadow Tackle‖ by Lara Cobden,
promotional image for ―Trees and the Sacred‖.
A small detail from Sleigh‘s vast fantasy-map
―Ancient Mappe of Fairyland‖ (1918).
Poster for the first Digital Arts Festival, Thailand.
Bird‘s eye view of the Museum of Future in its
landscape garden setting, Dubai.
94
North of Nowhere, West of the Moon
Until 30th May 2022 / Maine, USA
The Osher Map Library has a new exhibition,
―North of Nowhere, West of the Moon: Myth,
Fiction, and Fantasy in Maps‖. This is inspired
by their recent acquisition of Bernard Sleigh‘s
magnificent Edwardian fantasy-work, the six-
foot long map ‗An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland,
Newly Discovered and Set Forth‘ (1918). This
huge map is on show, along with related
thematic maps, books, and ephemera that
reflect whimsy and visionary thinking in maps
and map-making.
Free entry with a timed ticket. The Osher Map
Library is located about 70 miles north of
Boston, USA. A public digital version of the
show should be online by February 2022.
https://oshermaps.org/
A similar but smaller exhibition is ―Mapping
Fiction‖, at the Huntington Botanic Gardens in
California, which aims to explore the way that
authors and map-makers have worked to
survey imaginative and fantasy-worlds created
through fiction. Until 2nd May 2022.
https://www.huntington.org/
First Digital Arts Festival, Thailand
Until 20th March 2022 / Bangkok
We‘re pleased to learn of the first ever Thailand
Digital Arts Festival, featuring a huge 1,300 art
pieces from artists across the nation. The
exhibition is being hailed as opening... ―a new
historic chapter in Thailand‘s rich art history‖
and has the highest government support — the
opening press conference was led by the Vice
Minister of Culture. The show is being staged at
the prestigious ICONSIAM complex and
Charoen Nakhon Hall in Bangkok from 5th-20th
March 2022. As well as a wealth of 2D digital
work, also featured are toys, fashion and music
made using digital production methods. There
is also some animation and performance.
Works by selected artists will also be shown on
screens in towns and cities across Thailand.
This is the first time that Thailand has brought
together the nation‘s digital artists in one
event. A key aim of the event will be to begin
the process of personal networking among
digital artists and producers, in the hope of
kickstarting the process of making Thailand a
leading regional hub for digital arts production.
https://www.iconsiam.com/th/about_us
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Dubai Museum of the Future
Opened 22nd Feb 2022 / Dubai, UAE
Dubai‘s latest mega-building is ‗The Museum of
the Future‘, an unusual ‗silver do-nut‘ building
designed by architects Killa Design. The
exterior gardens are planted with 100 plant
species from around the UAE. Inside the new
Museum has six exhibition floors including
immersive ‗film set‘ like exhibitions depicting
human futures in the year 2072. These focus
on: outer-space resource extraction and ‗solar
power beamed from space‘; ecosystem
stewardship and remote-monitoring of the
earth; and genetic and bio-engineering. The
medieval Arab contributions to astronomy are
represented by an installation in which
astrolabes map the planets of the solar system.
Child visitors have a floor where they can play
at becoming ―future heroes‖. There are smaller
exhibits on near-future technologies that are
set to transform the world by fixing various
problems. Located in the Financial District, it is
also hoped the venue will become an evening
hub for local innovation events and talks.
Entry is said to cost $40, but tickets are
already booked out for months in advance.
https://museumofthefuture.ae/en
Picture: Milky Way
over the NRAO, NEXT ISSUE:
SAGAN
New Mexico. Here
adapted from an
NRAO image by
Jeff Hellerman. Are you interested in being interviewed in a future issue of the
With ―Carl Sagan‖
magazine? Or presenting a webinar for our series? Please send
by HelgeSolver.
Photoshop combo the Web address of your gallery or store, and we‘ll visit!
of the two by
Mutinate. paul@digitalartlive.com
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