Beyond the Screenshot

There is a point familiar to anyone who has spent enough time creating inside 3DXChat. At first, the possibilities seem almost endless. There are rooms to discover, worlds to build, clothes to combine, poses to try and countless corners in which to place a camera. Then, eventually, you begin to notice the boundaries.

For MariaStar, those boundaries became an invitation.

A familiar face to followers of 3DX photography, Maria began on the other side of the camera, working as a model for photographers around the community. Since then, she has gradually developed a visual style of her own, combining screenshots from 3DXChat with conventional image editing and, increasingly, generative AI.

The result is something that sometimes resembles virtual photography, sometimes digital art and sometimes a frame taken from a film that does not actually exist. Yet throughout all of it, Maria insists on keeping one thing intact: the woman in the picture should still be Maria.

From Chathouse to 3DX

Maria, who is from Greece, arrived in 3DX in May 2023 together with several friends from another virtual community, Chathouse. What initially appeared to be another place to spend time together soon turned out to be considerably larger than she had expected.

“I quickly realised that 3DXChat was a much bigger world than I had expected, with amazing rooms, beaches, events and, of course, a huge community.”

Photography provided a natural way into that world. Maria already had an interest in photography and art, alongside a particular fascination with history and mythology, and she soon found herself modelling for established photographers within the community.

She names Jerome, Smirky Phoenix, Mystix, Betty Testen, xOwl and Paikan among the photographers whose work influenced her. Rather than simply appearing in front of their cameras, she paid attention to what happened behind them.

“Each of them has a very distinctive style and a different way of approaching photography. I always tried to observe how they worked, learn from their ideas and techniques, and hopefully one day get closer to their level.”

It was an education in virtual photography: finding the right location, pose, angle, light and composition, and understanding how different photographers could take the same virtual environment and see something completely different in it.

Eventually, Maria wanted to experiment herself.

Together with a friend, she began developing projects around particular ideas rather than simply posing for individual photographs. Some drew from everyday life; others were adventurous or sensual. Her interests in history, mythology and cinema inevitably found their way into the pictures as well.

But the more ideas they had, the more often they ran into the same problem.

Finding the Edges of the Virtual World

3DX gives photographers an enormous studio to work in. Its community of builders has created everything from beaches and nightclubs to cities, historical settings and fantasy worlds. Its avatars can dance, embrace, fight, flirt, relax and pose.

They can only, however, do the things the game allows them to do.

“The photographer and I were constantly looking for new poses and new settings within the 3DXChat environment. It’s a very large virtual world with a lot to explore, but eventually you reach a point where you start repeating more or less the same poses in similar-looking environments and backgrounds.”

For a photographer interested primarily in documenting 3DX, that may simply be part of the medium. For Maria, whose ideas were increasingly beginning with a scene or story rather than with an available pose, it became frustrating.

During the past year, she began experimenting seriously with AI.

It offered an intriguing possibility. Instead of asking what picture can I make with the poses and locations available to me?, she could begin with what picture do I actually want to make?

There was, however, a catch.

Keeping Maria in the Picture

It would be relatively easy to type a description of a beautiful woman into an image generator and let the machine invent somebody new. Maria is deliberately trying to do something more difficult.

Her images begin in 3DXChat.

“I take screenshots from the game and use them in an AI editor, sometimes combining two or even three images, together with the right prompt to achieve the result I have in mind.”

For most of that work she uses Mage.Space, an AI image and video platform, before moving into tools such as Picsart for lighting adjustments or Photoshop when more detailed corrections are needed.

The AI is there to change what surrounds Maria, what she is doing and what the camera can see, not to replace her.

That distinction matters to her.

“I use the #3DXChat hashtag on all my posts because I want to keep my avatar from the game and build on her, rather than simply creating images of a random AI-generated girl.”

Anyone who has experimented with generative image tools will recognise the problem. Ask an AI to alter a pose, costume, location or composition and it may helpfully alter the face as well. Feed the result back through another generation and the person can drift further still. A few iterations later, the character who went into the process may bear only a passing resemblance to the one who comes out.

Maria has spent considerable time developing a workflow that resists that drift.

“It’s actually quite challenging, because AI loves to change the character’s appearance. After a lot of experimentation, trial and error, I found a workflow that works for me. My goal is for Maria to remain recognisable while still being able to exist in scenes that would be difficult or impossible to create inside 3DXChat alone.”

That makes the relationship between 3DX and AI in her work rather more interesting than a simple before-and-after transformation. One provides the character and identity; the other enlarges the stage on which that character can perform.

When a Photograph Becomes a Story

That larger stage has also changed what Maria wants to create.

She describes much of her recent work as visual storytelling, and the distinction is important. A modelling photograph can exist entirely by itself: the model, clothing, pose and composition are the subject. A visual story asks the viewer to wonder what happened immediately before the picture and what might happen after it.

“Instead of creating a series of separate images that are mainly focused on the model, I try to create a sequence of scenes where the images connect with each other and tell a small story.”

Those stories can go almost anywhere. Maria has experimented with westerns, comedy, mystery, intrigue and more sensual themes. At other times the premise can be deliberately ordinary: a trip to the gym, a day at work or another small piece of everyday life.

History and mythology are never very far away either.

“Sometimes they’re inspired by a particular period, movie or idea, and sometimes we simply start with a concept and see where our imagination takes us.”

In these projects MariaStar stops being merely the model and becomes an actress of sorts. The virtual avatar is a recurring character who can be transported into different places, periods and genres while retaining the same identity.

AI, in that sense, has not replaced the 3DX element of her photography. It has allowed that element to escape some of its physical restrictions.

Building an Audience

Maria's public portfolio began on Twitter, now X, around two and a half years ago. Initially it served largely as a place to collect and share photographs other people had taken of her.

As her own projects became more ambitious, the account changed with them.

“Over time, the page became a kind of visual diary of Maria’s journey. I could share different ideas, experiments and projects and see how people responded to them.”

That diary has now attracted more than a thousand followers, something Maria is particularly pleased to have achieved organically, without paid promotion or a premium subscription.

More recently she has begun branching out. Her Instagram account concentrates on what she describes as a more elegant, artistic and casual side of Maria, including summer photography, while Patreon has provided somewhere for material that does not necessarily fit comfortably on mainstream social platforms.

Part of that is simply exclusivity, but part of it is artistic freedom.

Some of Maria's work contains nudity, and she points to classical art, ancient sculpture and painting as examples of subjects where the naked body can form part of the visual language rather than simply being included for erotic effect. Increasing restrictions on adult material on mainstream social media consequently make some projects difficult to publish there.

Patreon became an experiment in finding another home for them.

There was no carefully mapped-out social media strategy behind any of this. In Maria's telling, one thing simply kept leading to another.

“I started with modelling, then photography, then Twitter, my own creative projects, AI, and now Instagram and Patreon. Each step has simply opened the door to the next one.”

Inspiration Travelling Through the Community

One name Maria singles out separately is Nadez, whose work Gazette readers may already know.

“She was taking creativity to another level and made me think more seriously about how far I could develop my own work.”

That influence is perhaps another part of the story worth noticing. Creative communities rarely develop in isolation. A builder sees another builder attempting something unexpected. A DJ hears another DJ take a room in a different direction. A photographer notices an unusual composition. Someone experiments, somebody else sees it, and the idea mutates again.

Maria's work sits somewhere along that chain. She began by watching photographers she admired. She modelled for them, learned from them and eventually began experimenting with her own pictures. Seeing other creators push beyond conventional 3DX photography encouraged her to push further still.

Now she is combining techniques from virtual photography, image editing and generative AI into something increasingly her own.

And she is not finished experimenting.

What Comes Next?

Maria has already begun testing the addition of text directly into her images, bringing visual storytelling a little closer to comics, illustrated fiction or cinematic storyboards. Beyond that lies an even larger step: moving pictures.

“I’d also love to eventually create videos based on some of my visual stories. That would be a completely new challenge for me, but I think it could take the whole concept to another level.”

The technology to do that is developing extraordinarily quickly. Whether the result should still be called 3DX photography, AI art, virtual art or something else entirely is probably a question without a particularly useful answer.

What matters more to Maria is the thread connecting it all.

The screenshot still begins in 3DXChat. The character is still MariaStar. The aim is not to ask an AI to invent a different woman, but to take the familiar one beyond the boundaries of the game into poses she cannot normally make, locations she cannot normally visit and stories the software was never designed to tell.

For Maria, that also says something about 3DXChat itself.

“I believe 3DXChat is much more than just a virtual world game and an adult community. For me, it can also be a source of inspiration and a place where something genuinely creative can come to life.”

Perhaps that is the most fitting description of her work. MariaStar began as an avatar standing in front of somebody else's camera. Three years later, she is still recognisably that same avatar.

The world around her has simply become much bigger.

“I would like to sincerely thank The Hidden Circle Gazette for giving me the opportunity to share my work, my ideas and a little of my creative journey with the community. It has been a real pleasure to be part of this interview, and I hope my work might inspire others to explore just how much creativity can grow from the world of 3DXChat.” — MariaStar

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