We got an early start on the day with a vampire hunt. Returning to Bodhi’s lair in the main graveyard of Athkatla, we met up with Drizzt and a few of his friends. Then all of us entered ready for trouble. And we found it. The lair had been repopulated with the bloodsuckers. We came prepared with Holy Water and plenty of stakes. We killed eight on the upper level, and going down the stairs we found another half dozen with Bodhi herself leading the fight.

Bodhi came at us for an epic battle.`
Soon, Bodhi was the only foe left standing.
She couldn’t win, and was staked with her whole vile brood.
Imoen felt immediate peace come over her as whatever Irenicus had stolen, given to Bodhi, returned to Imoen in a rush.

It was barely lunchtime when we exited the tomb, and were met by an exhausted messenger rushing up to us, Lord Roenall had returned with an army intending to take d’Arnise Castle for himself. We rode hard back home and arrived just as our forces joined battle. We gathered a rear guard and met Lord Roenall and his bodyguard force as they arrived at the Castle gates. After the way our day started, this fight was pure anti-climax. But it was hugely important to the troops we’d been training, it was their first fight as a military force and they’d carried the day.

“I’d like to congratulate whoever found those dashing surcoats for all of you! But even more, you all did well today. I’m proud of how you protected our homes and each other…”
“Do you know what you accomplished today Psyche? By right of arms, you’ve earned the title for this land. If its okay by you, I’d like to be the first to publicly introduce the new Baron and Baroness.” “Yes of course Nalia, and you will always have a home here.”

*****

Readers familiar with renders done by Zeno at “zenosziggurat.com” will recognize I again used much of his work for the fight against Bodhi. I am in awe of how he gets action portrayed. So I took some of his cues and mixed them with my party and style. This is sort of a testimony to what the AI can do, it produces stunning results when you actually know what to tell it!
That said, some of the Bodhi scenes were still maddening. For starters, I was averaging only a single render for every two or three generations. That means around 90% of results were being kicked out by the filter. Of those that were showing up, well it was determined not to show Diomedes in his armor! I was using “Bronze hoplite armor with blue crest on helmet” as I usually do. But it only was depicting the segmented skirt and helmet. No doubt, I got some really good Diomedes beefcake out of it. I did eventually realize, in keeping things brief, I’d left “embossed owl motif on chest” out. I had room to add it back so I did. And suddenly we got armor! Oof.
[Moving on to Psyche, it decided she had to have a hat. Seriously, the first dozen results I could actually see ALL had hats! And I mean the ridiculous Harry Potter sort of things. Psyche will not wear a pointed hat! The second render of her went long enough, I finally just decided to crop it out. You can still see the brim, but at least no point!]
I left that last up just to document my struggles here, but I did finally get a render I wanted and have replaced the offender. I’ll have to remember to call Psyche a sorcerer and NOT a wizard!

There remains two, fairly lengthy, sub-adventures before the pursuit of Irenicus will resume…

3 responses to “Psyche: Update 32”

  1. Zeno Avatar

    That is a pretty familiar Bohdi… though I don’t remember her having raven wings in any of my renders… Even the death scenes seem to have translated pretty well to your photo-style.

    I was getting a decent kick-rate with the Bohdi scenes as well. That combo of tags just has a high likelihood of kicking off either the “too much skin” filter, the “too much blood/violence” filter, or even both at once. Its not what you explicitly asked for, but since both are in the realm of variance you get a lot of kicks.

    Sometimes adding detail like “owl-embossed” makes its suddenly “remember” a feature that it was forgetting before. You can use that sometimes by over-describing something it is forgetting. But sometimes its just not clear why something is happening. I was having a horrible time with it dropping the skin color on Big Jim 50-60% of the time.. But late in the IWD run I finally realized that it just didn’t always know what to do with “olive” skin. Sometimes it thinks it means “colored like a green olive”. Sometimes it thinks it means “colored like somebody from southern europe”. Call it gray-green or something and *poof* back to 90% success rate.

    I wonder what it was about the tags that made it keep giving Psyche the pointy hat? Do you say “wizard” or “witch” in there somewhere? I usually avoid that – or use “sorceress”. Just because the other bring in so many other trope-features.

    The castle scenes look fantastic!

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    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      I expected to get rejects for exactly the reasons you mention, but wow it was a lot! It was funny with the Diomedes renders, it just wouldn’t put a shirt on him! Oh and his eyes were glowing like Bodhi’s. I often leave out the “clean shaven” part when I describe the helmet, but I had the idea that “Clean shaven” might humanize him? Make him not undead? It worked, the glowing eyes went away.
      Same sort of thing with the owl design. Yeah, I thought maybe if I told it to put something on the armor it would suddenly remember the armor. As you say, that worked.

      And errr, yes. I’ve been calling Psyche a wizard, and usually do her clothes as “purple wizard robes with gold trim”. I figured that was more clear than “mage”, and witch would never occur to me for Psyche! Shoot, I’ll have to remember to switch that to sorcerer.

      I was pretty happy with the castle scenes, those came much more quickly too! Only complaint, this Nalia looks a bit different than her previous renders. I’m thinking I changed something and now can’t find what I did. Dang! But a small thing I think.

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    2. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      I replaced the two of Psyche and Bodhi. That change in description made a big difference, the hat went away!

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