This image was created for the E-On Software 3D Character Rendering Challenge. It made it into the top 12 finalists, out of 107 entries. Winners were announced (it didn't win) so I can now post this here.

Baton Major, petal-throwing pixies, pixie-carrying dwarf, and first two cavalry in the middle-ground are all imported, updated with Vue shaders, and rendered in this Vue scene. Background crowds were rendered separately and placed on alpha planes which were then incorporated into dynamic ecosystems. No postwork. Depth of Field was made using Camera Blur (hybrid 2.5) inside Vue. Numerous texture maps were reworked in Photoshop, before being updated with Vue shaders and applied to the models inside of Vue.

Software: Poser Pro (setup) rendered in Vue.

Products Used --
Baton Major: Victoria4, Apteromata, AcherontiaAtropos, Lana(skin), Piper(morphs), Elite(morphs), DistinctiveFeatures(morphs), Bettine(eyes), BettinesSekrets(refmap), TwinFairHair, BelleArumHair(ornaments), TheSea(old, sleeves), A3OperaMask(batons), VictorianInnocence, VICircus, VIJester, HibiscusJewelry(anklet), BattleMagePoses(mixedpose), FreeAerySoulPoses.

Middle-Ground Figures: Victoria4, ForestJewels, HeliosHair, Stephanie4(morphs), Grace(morphs), Amy(skin, darkened with SkinVue), V4Creature(morphs), PixieDust, DarkAdaption, Michael4, Freak4, M4Creature(morphs), DigitalCurlz, Jeremy(skin, darkened with SkinVue), LeonDiCastilgia, LeonEstates, Sol, Rob, M4Wildenlander, RicardiHair, WildBrotherhood, MilHorse, LnLHorseTextures1-2, MillenniumHorseUnicornPoses1, DMsCourageRealm, DMsLegends.

Scene: Amenesis, CyclopeanConstructionKit, PetalStorm, SkinVue, Old Wood, World Matters StoneWalls Vol 1.

Crowds: Michael4, Sol, Rob, M4Wildenlander, RicardiHair, WildBrotherhood, MilHorse, LnLHorseTextures1-2, MillenniumHorseUnicornPoses1, DMsCourageRealm, DMsLegends, Victoria4, Sensibility, CharmingSensibility, ElegantSensibility, SensibilityUnimeshFits, Lana, Marie, Grace, Piper, V4Centurion(sandals), GlynHair, WetHairMale, Slicer, SlicerTextures, DMsDawnBreaker, Homme3, DigitalCurlz, WynerHair, SurrealWynter, Wyntertide.

I'll add more products as I remember them.

This scene really was a labor of love. Everywhere I felt I could get away with it, I used Vue fabric shaders I'd created from scratch (using procedurals) rather than materials based on texture maps. The dwarf pants and the straps on the pixie's dresses are examples of this. This paid off in the end: my last copy of the file only took nine minutes to save, where earlier versions took fifteen. The foreground baton major has subsurface scattering applied to all of her fabric materials, whereas each of the other figures use slightly ambient or luminous textures.

Initially, the toughest part of her costume was the fact that very few of those items she's wearing are meant to work together. I actually ended up cannibalizing the jester corset -and- armbands, using only certain parts and deleting un-needed meshes after splitting the meshes apart in Vue. The batons had a similar treatment in Poser before being imported into Vue -- they used to be elements of an opera mask. You can't see the other sleeve at all, but her sleeves are dynamic cloth from the original TheSea set by Fabiana. They were exported/imported as OBJs to maintain their appearance, before being imported into Vue, and then had their materials remade from scratch.

This was my first time using SkinVue and, while its idiosyncracies left me very frustrated at times, it looks just plain lovely! I did end up adding a couple extra colored lights to the baton major in the foreground (golden fill and blue rim) rather than fuss with SkinVue at the last minute. Thank goodness for Vue's ability to dictate what lights affect which objects -- it kept her skirt from getting blasted with rim lighting! All characters in the scene had SkinVue applied in their own individual scene files, then those files were merged with the main scene to put it all together.

I purposefully chose a blue, cloud-filled sky and made it an afternoon atmosphere with golden light throwing long shadows, because I wanted to showcase Vue's beautiful atmospheric effects and create the sense of the figures moving forward in the scene. Placing architecture pieces in an unseen area off the camera to the viewer's left was done to darken up the background crowds, leaving the foreground highlighted, and also to break up the figures shadows on the road.

If any piece of artwork I've created could be said to show everything I've ever learned in school or on my own, it would be this.

Edit: Almost forgot to add -- early days and late nights of my entire summer break to create this, mostly because I had to teach myself how to do so many new things. So... easily 60 hours to make, probably more.