Gabrella: Update 16

Published by

atcDave

January 23, 2026

Our next order of business involved heading to the Windspear Hills to look into a monster infestation… we were led to believe.

We’d been set-up horribly. We killed a number of beasts who proved to be paladins covered in illusions, from Keldorn’s own order. One of them was Ajantis, the eager young paladin had traveled with us for a period. He had made me nervous because I feared he was smitten with me. The grief and shame are nearly overwhelming. [SeeDream]

We met with a Garren Windspear, former lord of these lands, who reported loosing his title when he was framed in a similar manner. He offered to travel to Athkatla and talk with the Radiant Heart, he still had friends there and could make things right. We set out to get to the bottom of this, and find one Lord Jierdan Firkraag.

We saw a group of young men fighting Gnolls, we jumped in to help while Keldorn cast a Detect Evil. They were ALL evil.

The men we’d “rescued” thought they were clever in their threats against us. I swear, werewolves are as arrogant as vampires. With even less actual power to merit it. It’s almost sad to battle such hapless foes. *[SeeDream]*

We soon located a large abandoned temple/cave complex. It was actually inhabited by all sorts of vile evil. We smashed it all.
Throughout, we could hear the grumbles of a large beast.

*It was hardly surprising when we did finally encounter Firkraag. He had some conflict with my father, my real father Gorion, from many years back. He still wore a nasty scar from that encounter.* *[DALLE]*

This was a full team sort of battle. Aerie and Imoen dispelling his magic defenses as the rest of us tore him to pieces.

We traveled back to the castle next, for a little down time.

Minsc is still there training new guardsmen. He honestly seems to enjoy the work. But Minsc can be rash, I expect one day he’ll hear some child lost a favorite toy and he’ll set off on a great adventure to find it. *[SeeDream]*

*I sat down with Nalia for a few hours as she explained a lot about the business and administration of the De-Arnise lands.* *[SeeDream]*

*Aerie and Imoen spent some time playing with their less used spells. [SeeDream]*

Then we set off to settle the problems in the Umar Hills. We had previously learned of a ruined Temple not far from town, that we now returned to explore.

*It was a creepy and shadowy sort of place. [DALLE-3]*

*Literally a shadowy sort of place. [SeeDream]*

The ancient Temple of Amaunator had been taken over by a shadow lord of some sort. We ended the threat and restored the Temple’s holiness.

Finally, we were able to return to Athkatla to take care of some business. We now have student mages working at the Planar Sphere who need some attention. And we needed to visit Cromwell for some commission work. We had two sets of Dragon Scales, let’s see what he can do with them…

*“Does this clash? Red is such a strong look, I’m not sure if its me?”* *[DALLE]*

In the Temple District we met a madman of some sort.

*“Wait, that’s not right? I think that’s blasphemous?”* *[SeeDream]*

*“I mean, we need to look into this! If what he says is somehow legitimate that’s one thing. But I think there’s something horribly wrong here!”*
*“umhuh, um… at the very least he shouldn’t be going out looking like that.”* *[SeeDream]*

This took us into the sewers under the temples. We found this whole cult had sprung up around something very evil.

This proved to be one of the most disgusting adventures we’ve been on, at least since the Underdark. We returned home and burned all our clothes. Armor was soaked in boiling oil.

*****

I find myself leaning more heavily on SeeDream. It is a little more involved sometimes, but by generating generic images of the characters (and a Beholder!) it can build complicated images much faster. It still falls down on action sequences. Look above, I think the Dragon and Gabby is much more exciting as an action render than the shadows or beholder.
But for characters, especially multiple characters, SeeDream is much better. Mostly. Oddly DALLE has a very easy time with Skie. While SeeDream is better for Bull and Keldorn.

On many of these I constructed DALLE and SeeDream renders side by side and simply chose the one I prefered.

*Action renders are always sort of low percentage. Here we have fire-breathing Gabby vs the Dragon. [DALLE]*

*But SeeDream has no idea how to frame the scene. This is a “face-off”!*

*For some reason, I think Skie actually comes out well with both renderers [SeeDream].*

*For now I’ve dumped the pale bluish glow from Keldorn’s mithral armor. Too often its too much! [SeeDream]*

6 responses to “Gabrella: Update 16”

Zeno

January 24, 2026

Some nice stuff here. Minsc’s training scene came out very well, and the DALLE render of Gabriella and the dragon is fantastic!

I love how much easier it is to get consistent characters with SeeDream – without sacrificing much in constructing the rest of the image. And the ability to get around the filters and achieve things like explosions that make DALLE give you the sad dog is fantastic!

And fire-breathing Gabriella is awesome! Show that big lug how its really done!

I’ve been experimenting a lot more with SeeDream as well. My latest episode of Jasper (not yet posted) uses it heavily. I’m even starting to figure out how to coax good action out of it. The secret for me has been to render all the characters I went in the scene doing essentially what I want them to be doing individually in DALLE, and then use those images as references to generate the final SeeDream image. I suspect this would have helped with your “face-off”. If you had used a reference image of Gabriella from behind then I think it would have been much more likely to have her facing the way you wanted in the composite image.

LikeLiked by 1 person

Reply
1. atcDave
  
  January 24, 2026
  
  yeah I’m mostly really liking SeeDream. Although it does seem to do best when we feed it several simple renders and use it to combine them up. I’ve done that a few times now, generating images for SeeDream. Like the Beholder fight, was Keldorn and the Beholder from SeeDream, Imoen from my own OpenArt model. All combined together. And yet it’s still missing something. The elements don’t combine right into a cohesive whole. I’m not sure why. Some is scale, the Beholder is too small. But it all looks sort of pasted together and not like they’re all there together?
  
  I’ll keep trying and learning. It’s obviously a powerful tool. Maybe too much tool for this simple caveman!
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  1. Zeno
    
    January 24, 2026
    
    I think part of the “pasted on” effect is a mismatch between source/character style and SeeDream image style. So part of it is getting that “look” consistent across all elements. I’m looking for a good explanation of what all you can do with the reference images. If you could specify style and background from reference – or even composition – I think that would help.
    
    I did some set piece battle shots for my latest episode. We’ll see how those come out.
    
    LikeLike
  2. atcDave
    
    January 24, 2026
    
    I’ll look forward to seeing what you do!
    
    I think I get the style thing, in that case the Beholder itself is radically different in look from the two humans. But of course, it must be. Its fantastical while the people are people. I think movie special effects often work as many “real world” sort of cues as they can into their fantastical subjects (from how they move, to shadows on them, and made by them).
    I suppose the setting is also fantastical.
    But I’m no artist and am a little baffled by what exactly to fix.
    
    LikeLike
  3. Zeno
    
    January 24, 2026
    
    Here’s a reference I found for building prompts in SeeDream – including being able to use reference images for things like style. It looks like you can even take an existing image you have generated, feed it back in, and tell it what you want changed.
    
    https://docs.byteplus.com/en/docs/ModelArk/1829186
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
  4. atcDave
    
    January 24, 2026
    
    oh wow! That is really useful!
    
    LikeLike

DavesGaming