3D Rendered Muscle Women

By Greycat20:  Legions of female muscle fans enjoy photos and movies of real life female body builders. But there are limits to how muscular an actual human form can be. To satisfy the demand for fantasy female muscular forms which are far more extreme than any actual woman can be, a number of art forms have sprung up.

Some of these art forms are non electronic in nature - paintings and sketches of women with fabulously muscular physiques. Other imagery of incredibly muscled women falls into the category of morphed and photoshopped images, which take actual images of real life muscular women and enhance their musculature into the realm of the fantastic.

And yet another category of enhanced female muscle art is that of 3D Muscle Women renders. This article will briefly go over the current landscape of rendered fem-muscle, its history, and will use a simple example to illustrate the workflow for making a female muscle render.

Rendering for the Masses
Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) is the term used for the creation of imagery using computer wireframe models. So unlike the altering of an actual photograph done with Photoshop for example, CGI involves generating an image completely from scratch in the virtual world. Rather than using a real life camera, with CGI the image creator is using virtual cameras, virtual lighting, and wireframe models to create a purely computer generated image.

Initially rendered CGI imagery was the playground of the rich, as both the software and hardware to do rendering was prohibitively expensive. But the endless possibilities of CGI came within reach of the masses with the introduction of a software package called Poser around the year 2000.

Poser was priced for a few hundred dollars and made it possible for amateur users to create computer generated imagery on a hobbyist's budget.

Many vendors of content for Poser sprang up, selling wireframe mesh models of buildings, animals, vehicles, and most importantly for the female muscle fan, women. Initially the wireframe models were low resolution, consisting of only small numbers of polygons, and looked somewhat blocky. But as time went on the models became more and more detailed and realistic, with higher and higher number of polygons.

Victoria 3 and She Freak
For the muscle women / amazon enthusiast, an important milestone was reached when a company named Daz 3D released two products to be used with Poser that made it possible to create reasonably high detailed renders of super muscular women.

In 2003, Daz 3D began selling a very popular human female wireframe model named Victoria 3. Vicki 3 was an immediate superstar and hit with Poser fans because of her highly detailed curves and realistic look.

Soon after, Daz 3D released an add-on product for Victoria 3 called She Freak. The She Freak kit augmented Vicki 3's standard female curves into a super muscular form. And the Poser software made it easy for the user to select how muscular they wanted Vicki 3 plus She Freak to be, with the sliding of the mouse. Want a moderately muscled female? Slide the bar just a bit. Want a hyper muscled hulking mountain of a woman? Slide the bar to its maximum setting.

For many years Victoria 3 plus the She Freak addon were used by countless female muscle 3D hobbyists to generate loads of muscle women renders that showed up on websites such as www.deviantart.com and in comics and on paysites.

An Even Cheaper Way to Start Rendering: Daz Studio
For female muscle fans who wanted to try their hand at rendering with an absolute minimum of cash outlay, a welcome development occurred with the release of Daz Studio.

As mentioned above, Poser was the first software package to bring CGI into the realm of affordability, being priced at only a couple of hundred dollars. And it is a powerful package that remains in use by many people today (as of this writing, the most recent release of the software is Poser 8).

But the company Daz 3D, which had released many wireframe models for Poser including Victoria 3, realized that the price point of Poser was still keeping some hobbyists from getting into the rendering game. Daz 3D was making a living selling content for Poser, and to expand the market of potential customers they decided to create a software product compatible with Poser that would be free of charge to acquire.

That product is called Daz Studio. The basic version of Daz Studio is free of charge to download, and is for the most part completely compatible with all content that can be used in Poser. There are some advanced features that Poser has which Daz Studio doesn't (which is why there is still a healthy and thriving market for purchasing Poser), but for the hobbyist who wants to get into rendering on the cheap and start creating content with a minimum of investment, Daz Studio provides a fantastic way to do that.

Current State of the Art : Victoria 4 and She Freak 4
As of this writing, the most popular wireframe models in use for creating female muscle renders are Victoria 4 and an addon product named She Freak 4. The basic versions of these two products are available completely free of charge from http://www.daz3d.com

Victoria 4 is a high resolution wireframe model of a human female. And She Freak 4 is an addon that allows modification of Victoria 4's form to be highly muscled.

Here are a couple of screenshots that show the workflow in Daz Studio of creating a rendered image of a muscle woman using Victoria 4 and She Freak 4:

Jumping Off Points for Learning More
I've provided a very high level overview of 3D rendering of muscle women using products like Poser and Daz Studio. I'll conclude by mentioning some places where you can learn more.

There are many 3D Muscle Women Artists on Deviant Art who have free galleries that exhibit various styles of the 3D Muscle Woman rendered form. Tigersan, Angel Uriel, Stone 3D, Robtbo, Grisse and Freedom 981 are a few of the many 3D Female Muscle artists out there that you can take a look at to get a feel for what 3D rendered muscle woman art is like.

While this article focused on Poser and Daz Studio, I should mention that there are many other products out there that can be also used for female muscle 3D rendering, including Cinema 4D, Maya, and 3D Studio Max.

If you want to start trying your hand at creating 3D rendered muscle women, I did write an article back in 2008 that you may find worth perusing.

And finally I'll give a shameless plug for my own deviant art page http://grycat20.deviantart.com/ and my website Strong and Stacked

Note: article written in 2010, so newer information may be available.