Latest pre-made for the urban fantasy release in August!

If you're wondering about the hospital wheelchair, see next tweet for a long thread about rendered stock.

Release will be in my Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/554021905306263/

Renders (AKA 3D, computer generated images) are increasingly used for book covers. As far as I know, about 99.99% of these are made using DAZ 3D, a free software for posing characters and creating scenes.

https://www.daz3d.com/ 

The actual props, figures, clothes, etc are typically pre-fabs bought from DAZ's online marketplace.

Those all have to be created using 3D modeling software. Think like digital sculpting.

DAZ is supposed to be relatively easy to learn (I've messed with it a bit but still need to really buckle down).

3D modeling software (ex. Blender) is harder to learn. My "messing about" got a lot further with DAZ.

A render artist who knows a modeling software can make new props or figures from scratch, but it's a lot less difficult and time consuming to buy a pre-fab from the DAZ store. And not everyone making renders knows the modeling software.

Now we get to the question of the wheelchair.

There is exactly one wheelchair in the DAZ store. It is a push wheelchair designed for use in hospital or home recovery scenes, not made explicitly with disabled people in mind.

There's not a whole lot of rendered stock with figures in wheelchairs, but all the stuff I have seen is using that same wheelchair.

I'm bringing this all up because I think it's an interesting example of how there's diversity issues all along the supply chain with book covers and the material to make them.

Renders are great for increasing diverse representation in cover art!

But there's still problems and its not always a magical solution.

I'd talked about that before in the context of fewer PoC characters and stereotype problems, but I didn't talk about the supply chain.

DAZ marketplace > render artist selling stock > cover designers

(most render artists also do cover design, so not always like this)

The end result (diverse book covers) gets impacted by decisions made throughout the chain.

And ultimately, how willing people are to support diverse books and stories. With renders, that especially means supporting indie books and authors.

This thread is brought to you by my friend in disability advocacy asking why she's in a push wheelchair and me being like "huh, I bet it's because that's all available in DAZ."

And sure enough, here's the only DAZ wheelchair: https://www.daz3d.com/push-wheelchair 

Oh -- and please don't take this thread as shade on the render artists using this wheelchair to make stock.

It's all they've got access to and I'm glad that they are making these images! I was so excited to find this set and loved getting to use it in a cover.