Category Archives: Random rants

One more spammer caught…

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Well, it seems that a message about spam attracts other spammers. Fortunately you can also report spammers who try to spam through comments at SpamKlacht. And if the spammer or company mentioned by the spammer is located in the Netherlands, then they can take actions against them.

So, let’s display part of the report at the end of this post that I’ve received from SpamKlacht, which happens to be written in Dutch. (Sorry, but maybe Google Translate can help?)

In short, a french website has posted a Dutch message on a blog that’s mostly written in english. It’s likely that the servers from society26.com are hacked and misused to send this kind of spam. These spammers know that forum and blog spam is harder to trace and stop than regular spam by email. They also know that many blogs and forums don’t have very good systems against this kind of spam, although WordPress does an incredible job in stopping them.

What’s more interesting is that this message doesn’t contain an email address, phone number or even a URL to their own site. Most likely, that link would be www.euromovers.nl or that of one of their members. It’s not really helping much, unless people like me decide to look for them by using Google.

What actually happens is that the spammers are smart. They just pick up random texts from the Internet, in this case the About-page from Euromovers, they just shorten some of the paragraphs and use the text as their comment, hoping it somehow makes sense for the forum or blog administrators to let it pass. They know that if an administrator passes one spam message, it’s likely that the spammers account has become whitelisted and thus is allowed to post more comments. When that happens, the spammer will flood the blog or forum with spam.

With WordPress, it’s actually a practical way to bypass the spam filters. Fortunately, even though my site operates under a dutch domain name, its main language is english. As a result, I tend to consider comments in dutch a bit suspicious. But I also learned to just trust it’s spam filter, which hasn’t failed me yet.

The report from SpamKlacht:

U heeft een spam-melding geplaatst op spamklacht.nl, een website van de Autoriteit Consument & Markt. Dit document geeft een samenvatting van uw melding.

Spamklacht gemeld op  : 20-01-2014 09:43
Uw gegevens
Naam  : W.A. ten Brink
Adres  : xxxxxxxxxx
Postcode / plaats  : xxxx xx Amsterdam
Telefoonnummer  : xxxxxxxxxx
Gegevens van het mogelijke spambericht
Bericht ontvangen per  : Social Media, namelijk https://blog.wimtenbrink.nl/
Ontvangen op datum / tijd  : 19-01-2014 13:53
Ontvangen op adres  : Spamfilter heeft het tegengehouden.
Ontvangen van adres  : Verhuisbedrijf Euromovers uit Vlaardingen
Genoemd adres  : marita-cockett@gmail.com Www.solution26.com 87.98.172.16
Onderwerp  : Het betreft een bericht dat in mijn spamfilter van WordPress terecht is gekomen. Het bestaat uit drie delen, te weten de auteur, het bericht en een URL naar het bericht waar de spammer het probeerde te plaatsen.

[Author start]
Www.solution26.com
solution26.com/liens/?page=824
marita-cockett(at)gmail.com
87.98.172.16
[Author eind]

[Bericht start]
…… Verhuisbedrijf Euromovers uit VlaardingenVerhuisbedrijf
Euromovers uit Vlaardingen maakt deel uit van
het internationale netwerk van Euromovers International.
Dit netwerk bestaat uit hoog gekwalificeerde en betrouwbare
verhuisondernemingen in geheel Europa, de VS, Rusland, China, Australië
en Nieuw Zeeland. In Nederland is elk…….Bent u opzoek naar een professioneel
verhuisbedrijf dat werkt met ervaren verhuizers, professionele materialen, zelf vervoer
op maat regelt en werkt met een goede motivatie aan elke klus?
Kies dan voor de Verhuisbeweging, hét ideale verhuisbedrijf van Rotterdam en
omstreken. Wij zijn een erkent verhuisbedrijf dat zich door de jaren heen
heeft bewezen als betrouwbare en professionele verhuizer, daarom hebben wij ook een schadeverzekering gekregen, dus mocht er eventueel schade oplopen tijdens het verhuizen, geen punt!
Onze verzekering dekt de schade en betaald het aan u uit!
[Bericht eind]

One more spammer: Adobe!

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I like to use email aliases for every online subscription and registration I have to fill out. I like this because it allows me to recognise if companies are going to spam me or not. I also make sure that any checkbox for extra mails that is checked will be unchecked. Unfortunately, not all companies care about that.

One of them is Adobe, well-known from it’s PFD reader but I also happen to use Adobe Lightroom, which requires an online registration. Which I had to fill in, else I would not be able to use the software properly. Okay, so I did. And I used an alias.

Today, I received an unreadable email because the images inside are blocked by my mail reader.  They seem to have given or sold my address to kieseentablet.nl who likes to spam many people with all kinds of garbage. I think they’re trying to sell me a DVD box in this message, but I’m not sure and don’t want to know. Viewing those images would mean that my mail reader has to contact their servers with a special code, and that code will validate my address.

I have reported it to SpamKlacht and I hope they will take action against this spammer and against Adobe. Adobe is just as guilty for not keeping my address safe. They violated my privacy by sharing that address with others.

I will show the headers of this email, though. And I hope most spam-filters will pick this up and add this spammer to the blacklist. They should blacklist Adobe too, in my opinion, because this pisses me off! I expect some small internet-companies will leak my address but Adobe is supposed to be a serious, big international company. They just don’t care about their customers, that is clear…

Delivered-To: xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx
Received: by 10.50.173.36 with SMTP id bh4csp113728igc;
        Mon, 13 Jan 2014 00:38:24 -0800 (PST)
X-Received: by 10.194.104.66 with SMTP id gc2mr1505781wjb.75.1389602303789;
        Mon, 13 Jan 2014 00:38:23 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: <bnc-24-data_sendout_1389545845_715_57-74@bounce.kieseentablet.nl>
Received: from mta2.parfumvandaag-mail.nl (mta2.parfumvandaag-mail.nl. [178.32.7.217])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTP id md15si7043232wic.62.2014.01.13.00.38.23
        for <xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx>;
        Mon, 13 Jan 2014 00:38:23 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of bnc-24-data_sendout_1389545845_715_57-74@bounce.kieseentablet.nl designates 178.32.7.217 as permitted sender) client-ip=178.32.7.217;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
       spf=pass (google.com: domain of bnc-24-data_sendout_1389545845_715_57-74@bounce.kieseentablet.nl designates 178.32.7.217 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=bnc-24-data_sendout_1389545845_715_57-74@bounce.kieseentablet.nl;
       dkim=pass header.i=@kieseentablet.nl;
       dmarc=pass (p=REJECT dis=NONE) header.from=kieseentablet.nl
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1])
    by mta2.parfumvandaag-mail.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 16895163B348
    for <xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx>; Mon, 13 Jan 2014 09:38:23 +0100 (CET)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=kieseentablet.nl;
    s=default; t=1389602303; bh=Z5MpxKWITtojtkQ1ghnUMKSgLY4=;
    h=From:Reply-To:Subject:List-Unsubscribe:To:Date;
    b=o30KntUOp1TaT2j506DJmyK7Ak0hC2iWnPtEk+hDr6apIyYZyP3C1km805OO9c0Tb
     XnmzMnoyYn4XjgiFCStU2qKXZurqGGnr5dy2+J0b62I1dyHSISEVwvb2rfYW+3KRrX
     /dlIBtWM5mxPu7pencyad+BB8b9N+1coafAi6J/8=
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
 boundary="=_cc78254c8040f1935d8f257c8e3ed1ee"
From: "Welkomstgeschenken Kies een Tablet" <nieuwsbrief@kieseentablet.nl>
Reply-To: leden@kieseentablet.nl
Subject: U ontvangt de complete Penoza DVD box
List-Unsubscribe: ,<mailto:unsubscribe_data_sendout_29865@bounce.kieseentablet.nl?subject=unsubscribe_29865>
X-Slip-uID: 2011425
X-Slip-active: N
X-BeverlyMail-Recipient: xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx
To: xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2014 08:38:23 +0000
X-BeverlyMail-MTA: 74
Message-ID: <1389602303-567845345AB@kieseentablet.nl>

2014…

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And thus ends the year 2013. A year that held a lot of changes for me. My former employer had financial problems resulting in me and a few colleagues becoming former employees. I’ve had an accident in which I injured my back which is still troubling me. My previous computer started having troubles and the hard disk crashed.

But also some good news. I bought an iPad, I bought a new, expensive laptop from Alienware. And I replaced my desktop with an expensive Alienware laptop.

I found a new job but unfortunately my back caused too much trouble so I had to quit again. For now, I just have to wait until my back is healed again.

I started fitness, to train the muscles in my back and I managed to lose some weight. I’ve changed my diet and am drinking more water and much less cola.

I’m walking more with my dogs, have started to read some books and am studying some interesting topics. I’m spending more time on electronics too just to expand my knowledge and to better understand what it is when I’m writing code. Because code is still abstract while the electrons moving through hardware is the real, physical world.

Amazing how electrons translate the keys I press on my keyboard into letters on the screen. It seems so simple but I’m starting to become awed by the whole complexity behind it all. I always knew it involved quite a few parts but I start to realize how many parts are actually involved in this all.

I’ve created more artwork in Poser and Vue and I have to say that my skills are improving. Still not very good but I’m happy enough about it all. Still, when looking at the images I’ve created this year I have to admit it’s less than earlier years. Better quality, higher resolutions, but less images. And the amount of clothes in my art also went down.

I’ve done a few new things, quit a few other things and when I look back, I realize that this has been a very busy year for me.

And now I wonder what next year will bring. Next year, which happens to be about 15 minutes in the future. There’s one thing I do know, listening to all the fireworks outside… It will start with a bang…

To all who read this:

Happy New Year!

One week of spam…

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Yesterday, I posted about comment spam in blogs. Today, I’m going to mention a few topics of spam messages I’ve received in just one week. Ti begin, I’ve received an email from the “Microsoft Partner Awareness Team” who doesn’t seem to have a Microsoft mail account but some address in Nicaragua. The topic is “Confirm Receipt” and in it they tell me that they celebrate some 30th anniversary and as a result, this team is giving away £1,864,000.00GBP to six lucky recipients. And I’m one of them and need to reply with name, address, telephone number, email address and nationality. A nice example of phishing.

Next, a message about Canadian Pharmacy Online, where I don’t need prescriptions. Well, I don’t need these drugs either.

And a message from “WhatsApp Messaging Service” notifying me about a new voicemail, even though I don’t have a WhatsApp account for this specific email address. Since the sender is from Russia, I’m not interested in listening. Even though they’ve sent me this message twice…

The next one is a very good one, since it’s from the Google+ Team and uses mail-noreply@googlemail.com as address. Seems legit, doesn’t it? Too bad Google Mail happens to be the same as GMail, so the spammer is using this free service to pretend to be Google. The attached PDF promises £ 950.000 to me as an award and all I have to do is fill in a form with name, address, telephone number, nationality, birth date, gender, occupation and email address. Definitely phishing!

Of course, most phishing emails will promise huge rewards to people, as the one I’ve received from Italy. Some investors have 375 million euro which they want to give away. These huge amounts just make it very clear it’s just fake.

Then some more pharmacy messages and other offers for all kinds of medicines and certain ‘blue pills’. Of course, this kind of spam is also very popular, apparently because one in a million people still decide to buy their drugs this way…

But there are more ways than offering money or selling drugs. I also received a spam message with a pretty woman in bikini. Her name is Valeriya and she lives in Russia and is rather shy at first. And she wants to be pen pals with me. Oh, my… Dating spam! Another trick to get people to offer personal details or even to trick them into sending money to this pretty girl. Or maybe just a fat guy who pretends to be a pretty girl, since that’s more common. Still, even if this girl was real, chances are that she’s just out to steal your wallet and everything else you have. By the way, Irina also wants to chat with me. She enjoys hiking and pottery.

Then an email in the German language offering me a method to win at roulette in some online casinos. Ah, the old gambling site spam. Fits with the other spam message which is written in Dutch and offers me a chance to win the jackpot. They even promise me 100 euro as a bonus when I subscribe. Or the one where they’ll give me 20 free lottery tickets while they claim I’ve officially subscribed to their mailing lists in the past. (Which I never did, since the specific account that received the spam isn’t used to subscribe to anything.)

Then some message which advises me which stocks I should buy on the stock market, since they’re about to become valuable. Sure, for the person who is selling them right now! If plenty of people start bidding, the price will go up from nearly worthless to a few pennies per stock. If they then manage to sell a million stocks, it’s easy money with a huge profit, in a way that’s mostly legal.

And sometimes you receive an email that looks just a bit gibberish, yet makes you curious. People tend to reply to those kinds of messages, asking the sender what’s going on here and what they meant by this message. And thus they confirm their email address is correct. And since many people add a signature to their emails, the sender will get to know a bit more about the recipient. If the recipient happens to work for some company and the company adds signatures, then the spammer might have enough information to pretend he’s that employee!

The emails from “USA TODAY News” are also interesting. Sent from an outlook.com address, it provides me information about losing weight. Apparently I’ve subscribed to their newsletter too (NOT!) and I can unsubscribe and thus confirm the correctness of my email address. Strangely enough, the unsubscribe link points to a Russian website. USA Today seems to be in Russia?

In short, I have three email accounts on my domain and an infinite number of aliases on my domain and a few other domains. I also have two old GMail accounts that I barely use but in total, I receive about 20 spam messages per day over all accounts, which Google nicely detects and filters for me. They’re annoying but Google takes much of the annoyance away. Handy, because I also receive about 60 to 100 legitimate emails per day, mostly from mailing lists.

All these spam messages were easily detected by Google and you can wonder if spam is really as profitable as it seems. But it’s the magic of big numbers that’s in the favor of spammers. If they’re sending one million messages, and only one percent reads the message then it’s still read by ten thousand people. If only one percent of those are responding with some information then they’ve collected the information of 100 people. And if one percent of those fall for their traps and the spammers earns a few thousands of euro’s then they’ve probably made a nice profit.

Basically, people should not respond to spam. They should recognise what spam looks like, which is why I’ve written this post. Do not even open spam just to check the contents since your mail reader might already offer spammers with some information. I am a trained professional and I know what I’m doing when I check spam. My browser is set up in a secure way, my antivirus software is always up-to-date and I am really careful with spam messages and I avoid mail readers that might send information back to the sender. Then again, I have more than 20 years of experience dealing with malware, viruses and spam. Don’t expect that you can do that even someone with 20 years of experience tries to avoid! Because I think education is important but I would have preferred to throw away all those messages without even a single look!

And another stupid spammer…

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Many people complain about all the spam in their mailboxes but when you’re running a blog, forum or even a simple contact page where visitors can leave messages, you can still receive spam in some other forms. With Facebook and Twitter, for example, you might get invitations by people you don’t even know. With LinkedIn, this is a bit more difficult but it still has people attempting to connect to you so they can make all kinds of “interesting” offers to you.

But today I’ve received a comment spam on my post called “Dealing with deadlines” and it started like this:

{I have|I’ve} been {surfing|browsing} online more than {three|3|2|4} hours today,
yet I never found any interesting article like yours.
{It’s|It is} pretty worth enough for me. {In
my opinion|Personally|In my view},if all {webmasters|site owners|website owners|web
owners} and bloggers made good content as you did, the {internet|net|web} will be {much more|a
lot more} useful than ever before.|
I {couldn’t|could not} {resist|refrain from} commenting.
{Very well|Perfectly|Well|Exceptionally well} written!|
{I will|I’ll} {right away|immediately} {take hold of|grab|clutch|grasp|seize|snatch} your {rss|rssfeed} as I {can not|can’t} {in finding|find|to find}
your {email|e-mail} subscription {link|hyperlink} or {newsletter|e-newsletter} service.
Do {you have|you’ve} any? {Please|Kindly} {allow|permit|let} me {realize|recognize|understand|recognise|know}
{so that|in order that} I {may just|may|could} subscribe.

Well, that’s an interesting comment. (Full text here…) Basically, this is a script file that’s used by spammers to create random comments for blogs and forums. And normally, spammers will just use a selection of words and sentences from these script files to generate something a visitor might have written. And the many variants make it harder to detect as spam. Unless you’re giving the master script, of course, like this stupid spammer has done.

If I would allow this message, someone with a Canadian IP address (142.4.208.160) would be able to add more comment spams on my blog and might even flood fill it with spam, once they got their first approval. Of course, the spammer also used an email account (augustuscolangelo@freenet.de) from the German provider called Freenet and they have been used many times by spammers. They’ve taken steps to prevent spammers to send mass emails but that doesn’t stop spammers from doing comment spams like this one.

Also interesting is the fact that the spammer added a link to foot-en-direct-gratuit.sixsigmadss.com (Links to main site, not the spammers blog) which happens to be some blog on the site of an Indian company called “Six Sigma”. I wonder if this company even knows about this blog, that’s written in French. I guess they don’t know about it, but that their DNS information has been hijacked. Or maybe their servers are hacked.

So, what I like to do is visit RobTex to collect more information about what I’ve found. So far, it’s an interesting international spammer. Mail in Germany, spamming from Canada with a web server that’s owned by a company in India. RobTex tells me the shared host they use for the site is Enzu in the USA, which provides cloud services and more. They also use the DNS services of GoDaddy which does confuse me a bit. Why not use the DNS servers of Enzu?

Well, some further research tells me why. While Six Sigma uses GoDaddy as their host, the spammers have instead used Enzu to create their own website, which makes them appear legitimate. They’ve also moved the regular site to Enzu, and are probably redirecting visitors from there to the original website. (Or Six Sigma is supporting the spammer, which is also an option. I just don’t want to accuse them of this crime.) When I visit the Six Sigma website, it does seem as if someone has taken over control over their site. Much of it looks disabled, as if the hacker is just misusing the site for their own purposes. It looks like it’s been taken over two days ago by the hacker, yet they did not detect the hack at this moment. I hope they will be able to fix this fast, though.

Of course, there’s an even bigger risk here. Since the spammer seems to have hijacked their home site, he can play a man-in-the-middle attack. Every customer of them who enters their credentials to log in will tell this hacker about their credentials too. This is a serious thing. Spammers are often trying to do more than just send spam. They will try to collect more information to allow them to hack even more accounts.

There are a few things here that worry me. First of all, this Indian company that doesn’t seem to realize their site is hacked. Also, GoDaddy, who is supposed to be their host, isn’t hosting their main site. Also, Enzu doesn’t seem to realize that they’re hosting a site for an Indian company that uses the French language for a blog that seems filled with random articles from French/Canadian news sites. You could wonder if hosting companies should be able to check if strange things are happening to the accounts of their customers.

Yeah, I think you can blame hosting companies for all the spam on the Internet, simply because they’re not pro-active when suspicious changes are made to the accounts of their clients. If hosting companies take more care in selecting their clients, validating any account changes and don’t even tell their customers when their accounts seem to be hacked, then spam will just continue to cause problems.

Continue reading →

Stuff on my desk…

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Well, I’m a software Developer, specializing in back-end code and proficient in Delphi, C#, C++, ASP.NET, XML-based technologies, HTML and a bunch more. And my back injury still isn’t over so I have to take it easy. So, here’s my “playroom” for my daily exercises. 🙂

DSC04615So, what does a Software Developer have on his desk?

  1. A document holder, attached to my desk. Very practical.
  2. Yes, it’s a whiteboard! With lots of magnets to hold important notes and a lot of writings of upcoming appointments.
  3. An Einstein action figure! Why? Because I’m a Nerd, that’s why!
  4. My Alienware Desktop with 32 GB RAM and 6 cores.
  5. Main monitor with 1920×1200 resolution, which I can also use to watch television.
  6. My Alienware Laptop. Yes, it fits on my desk, nicely on top of a cooler.
  7. My second monitor with 1920×1200 resolution. And some artwork of mine visible.
  8. Those are books. For all you young ones, those are the analog eBooks that people used in the past. Some people still use them.
  9. A mini-tripod for my camera.
  10. A landline phone. Wireless, of course. (Oh, the irony…)
  11. My Android tablet below a piece of cloth that covers my desktop when it’s not used.
  12. A HP Laserjet 100 color MFP, which I use to print, copy and scan occasionally.
  13. My mobile phone in a phone holder.
  14. A simple standard to keep all the little things from my desk. Also puts my monitor more at eye-level. I have two of those.
  15. A bottle of water. Behind it, you can see my Pebble watch, an iPod, an iPad and a Windows 8 RT tablet plus a Bluetooth keyboard.
  16. A stack of external hard disks. Remember to back up often!
  17. A pen holder for those office supplies most people just steal from work. (But I bought these!)

On my desk there’s another watch somewhere. Plus some 3D glasses for the 3D display of my laptop. You can also find a mirror, an external DVD burner that supports Lightscribe, a calculator, a ruler, lots and lots of cables, my digital camera, a dashboard camera, a bar code scanner, dental floss, pens, some extra hardware, a fish eye camera, a remote control for the light because I’m too lazy to stand up, a remote control for my left monitor, which is also a television and finally: plastic chopsticks! Why chopsticks? Because if you eat chips with your fingers, your fingers become greasy and crumbs will disappear in your keyboard. Chopsticks keep my fingers clean.

 

Alienware Aurora.

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In Dutch, for my Dutch readers. 🙂

Dell heeft tegenwoordig een mooi model desktop computer, te weten de Alienware Aurora. Een heel mooi systeem maar wel een beetje prijzig. Mooi uitrusten met 32 GB aan RAM, twee keer een 2 TB harde schijf en een NVidea Geforce GTX 690 grafische kaart met 4 GB geheugen maken dit systeem al behoorlijk krachtig. Een Intel Core I7-3970x processor erin van 4 GHz levert 6 cores op, wat met behulp van hyperthreading vertaalt naar 12 grafiekjes in de task manager.

Een heel mooi systeem, volgens mij. Maar ik moet nog even afwachten voor ik een eindoordeel kan geven. Mogelijk krijg ik dit systeem aanstaande dinsdag binnen!

Kost wel een arm en een been, maar verder best een stevig systeem en zal zeker mooi staan bij mijn laptop. (Maar weer wel veel lichtjes.)

Time for a new web server…

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Today I’ve received my new computer, which will be used as a Datacenter/web server. It’s an Asus P6-P7H55E and I will install Microsoft Windows 2012 Datacenter on it. It will be used mostly for my personal web experiments but it will be linked to my domain names.

I’m using Windows 2012 simply because I’ve received a license for this operating system as part of my MSDN subscription. It’s not meant to be used as a production server but as a development server, for testing purposes. I’m a Senior Software Developer so its perfect for me. I already upgraded it’s memory to 8 GB and wonder if the 512 GB disk space will be enough. Then again, I have plenty of external hard disks that can be used for extra storage.

It has an Intel Pentium E5800 onboard, which happens to be pretty decent. The system won’t be very powerful but then again, I don’t expect many visitors either. Those who do visit are most likely visiting my sites that are hosted somewhere else, like this blog. But for experimental purposes, it’s great. I hope, since I still need to set it up correctly. 🙂

I won’t be hosting my blog on it. My blog is nicely hosted on WordPress itself. I’m also not going to use it as mail server, since I use Google Apps for that purpose. And no, if I ever create a useful site that attracts hundreds of visitors every month, I’m probably not going to host it on this server either. Just my personal experiments, although these will be accessible from the outside.

The content of this web server won’t be very valuable, since I will do development on my other systems. And important data will also be stored on my other systems. I am considering to change my previous web server to an SQL Server system, almost completely dedicated to maintaining the more important databases on my system. Since my old web server will not be accessible from the outside, it would make my databases a bit more secure, although it also means that I have to keep two computers running continuously.

For now I still have plenty to do. It still sees only 4 GB RAM instead of 12 and it doesn’t seem to know it has a dual-core processor. And the remote desktop services aren’t operating properly yet. Plus, I need to give it a fixed IP address. And then I’ll have to migrate all projects that I consider important. Finally, I’d have to adjust my router to make sure the new web server will be used. And lots and lots more…

For now, I’m busy! Please, do not disturb… 🙂

Creating a nice CGI landscape.

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I want a new background for my desktop system. But it’s a dual-monitor system with two monitors with 1920×1200 resolutions. This means that I have to make a very wide image. So I decided to make a wide landscape image. But I don’t want a bunch of trees, some mountains and water, but also some models inside the image, doing something. So I’ve decided to make it a hunting scene. On one side, Raevin with a dangerous gun who is hunting a Brontotherium on the other side. So I first need to create and pose them in Poser. And to make it easy, I just put them both in a single model. I can split them again once it’s imported in Vue. So, here are the models:

Main charactersOf course, I will make them look at one another in Vue. As I said, I will split it in Vue. Just needed to create a proper pose first.

The next step is starting Vue, set the image to 4800×1500 pixels which is the proper scale for my two monitors. I will have to re-size it later on to 3840×1200 to make it fit perfectly, but the larger resolution will also allow me to cut out part of the image as separate images. But size won’t be enough. I need to pick a proper atmosphere, the flow of the landscape, the trees and grass I want and of course I want to add water since that big monster would look nice with his body partially reflected. It also means adding some small splashes and ripples.

So, the atmosphere first. It should be sunny and a bit cloudy, but no real visible clouds. A nice sunset would look great. So I start with this:

Atmosphere

Next, I need to decide where I want the models and have decided to place Raevin on the left, so the prey is on the right. The sunlight from behind will make his shape a bit darker, thus more menacing. The same will be true for Raevin, but I will add a second light on Raevin so she becomes more clear in the image.

But before adding the models, I need to decide on the landscape. I want a few mountains in the background. I also want the animal standing in a lake, so I need water on the right side. But Raevin needs to be on dry land, preferably grassy. So, let’s add some terrain, grass and trees for in the distance.

Plains

It’s still far from perfect but it has a lot of potential  But you will also notice that I have water on the complete foreground, but I want to keep Raevin on dry ground. That makes it a bit complex, but it’s still easily solved. Also, I want to have the animal on top of some rock too, even though that rock would be submerged. It just adds more realism. So, I need to import both now, split them and make some adjustments while placing both on flat rocks. So, let’s first show Raevin in this environment.

Adding RaevinWell, I don’t really want Raevin to hunt this animal. She’s cautious but she has a different target. A lot of improvements are still needed, though. For example, I want some bushes in the image too. But first, that animal… And I have to remember to put a rock beneath his feed and to add splashes because he’s walking through water.

Adding Animal

This is promising to look very nice already. However, trees! I am going to add a third rock, place it behind Raevin and I will add trees to it, so she’s slightly hidden. No good hunter would be on open terrain where any possible prey or dangerous animal could see them…

However, I’ve noticed that the atmosphere seems to degrading with every new preview I render. It seems to be getting brighter and brighter. So I just load the atmosphere again before my next preview. And yes, this could be a bug in Vue, or maybe a problem with my graphics card. I will have to look into that one day. However, for now reloading the atmosphere works just fine, as shown in this preview:

Preview 1The next step is fine-tuning the complete image. Raevin needs to be a bit more shiny, and I don’t like the way her gun looks. So I need to fix her textures, or materials. But the problem is that this image is becoming a bit slow to use, so I will use a trick to speed things up. First, I will save this scene so it’s safe. Then it’s time for a new preview. (I will also add a second light just to highlight Raevin.)

Preview 2

And now it’s starting to look better already. The shiny cybernetic limbs of Raevin are a bit shiny in this preview, but I don’t mind. It adds an extra dimension to the image. It’s time to render this image at its full resolution and highest quality. Considering the amount of objects and reflections in this image, I guess it will take a few hours to finish. First I need to save it and then I’ll start rendering around noon. It will probably take most of the night to finish.

And indeed, the next morning I can see the result. Raevin is really having shining cybernetic limbs, which look very interesting. Not a good thing for a hunter, though. Unfortunately, she seems to be floating a bit above the grass so I might have to adjust that. Maybe I should also change the reflectiveness of her cybernetics. The extra rock with the trees is missing some grass, so I might want to add that too. And the mountains in the background you can see lots and lots of houses. It’s really a lot. It turns the setting away from prehistoric times, which is what I like about it. The brontotherium looks great, though. See for yourself!

Raevin and BrontotheriumUpdate

After considering the above image, I decided that a few details had to be changed. First of all, the background just didn’t look natural enough. The sun is shining very pretty but there are too many houses. Another problem is the shininess of the cybernetic arms and legs, that are too distracting. And there’s a bald spot on the ground where grass is supposed to be.

Rendering a final image is very time-consuming and I knew it would take about a day for the render to be complete. But since I wasn’t happy with the above image, I did render it again with some different details. The scene, lighting and models are still the same, except for the textures of the land and cybernetic limbs. This should be a much better result:

Raevin and BrontotheriumUpdate 2

I’m still not very happy with the final result. Raevin needs to be even lower and she should be aware of the beast that’s about to charge at her. So I turned her around a bit. I also changed some of the bushes in the foreground and added additional plants on the right so the “cameraman” would be hiding behind these.

This minor adjustment resulted in the following image, which is supposed to be the last version:

Raevin and Brontotherium II