Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 8
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I clicked on the email notification and when I went, the images weren't there. Probably split second timing. Sometimes when I read posts (several at a time, in most cases) it takes me a bit to get back to it. Those look neat, really opposites. One with the curves and flows, and one that's geometrically sharp.
Bet you didn't know this about Ophelia 7...
Marketing strikes again. Strikes out, that is.
Wanted to share... This is Roads and Rails with some RDNA Joshua Trees and TerraDome 3.
It took about 30 minutes to render. It took an hour or so to set up. TerraDome 3 with an A and B zone brings my i5 32gb with 2GB 750ti to its knees - and until I figured out the preview light in TerraDome 3, I was doing most of the scene setup in a dusk-like haze.
It is kind of cool, but kind of sparse. Maybe if I used some instances and a scatter program I'd be happier... I've got one in my wishlist I just haven't gotten around to purchasing.
Getting Roads and Rails to line up right with the terrain was very difficult. It seems to float and the berm next to the roadway has a gap between it, the landscape beneath it, and the road itself. The morphs are pretty limited... there is winding road, tapered road, road morph for rail crossing, curve mid distance, left or right... humped road, curve distance, left or right. But it isn't in any way conforming or parented. I had to play a lot with rotation on the X axis to get the road buried at the far end but seemingly level with the foreground. It isn't... if you saw the scene from another angle, the road would be floating.
I've got a feeling you could do something a lot like this with Carrara out of the box with the built in tools. Of course, you couldn't use Gen 3 characters in your scene then... but without a powerhouse GPU, you're going to end up doing CPU renders in Studio if you add much more than I've got in the scene here, I'm afraid.
With that said, I do love the possibilities and it does open up Studio to a world of scenes that Studio isn't really designed to do. But it seems like a really expensive proposition to get all of the things necessary to realize the full potential of Terradome 3. You need a lot of different nature props for each different ecosystem, you need some way of instancing them and scattering them naturally, you need things to fill this world... architecture and roads and cars and figures... and once you get all that loaded and all set up... you need a lot of graphics processing power to actually realize that vision as a finished image.
Nvm. I see it in the repost.
Great info. Thanks! I almost got this, but glad I didn't for now. I'll continue to leave it on my wishlist for maybe some day...
I use terradome 3 with a lot of my setups. Mostly the “A” Zone. Unless I’m doing a high shot of the scene then I’ll also add the “B” Zone. Still learning many things about DAZ and how all of this stuff works. So, when I get to new things, I keep digging as I want to learn. But, I have noticed the same things you mentioned in regards to the roads and rails. I’ve also noticed that props placed in certain locations within the environment don’t cast shadows. Not sure where to debug that. I wanted to use the winding road feature to go thru mountain pass but would not work the way I thought it should. It would be nice to be to use other roads with the curved road so that the direction it takes is noticeable. But so far I like it and the possiblities can be endless.
I like how that turned out. I'm not sure I'd call those wrong buttons. Playing with buttons and seeing what happens can never be wrong. ;)
With a Carrara landscapes and a custom road made from primitives and shaders, you would have far more granular control over the curves and bends and elevation of the road - but the learning curve is a LOT steeper - and getting to the level where you get photorealistic results at the end of it and not a plasticy, 3D CGI The Sims looking render is a lot more difficult.
If you look at the image above closely, you'll notice that the shadow from the Joshua Tree on the right side of the road doesn't match the shadow on the Joshua tree on the left side of the road, and that the others don't seem to have shadows at all. Probably something I've done wrong in the lighting and environment setup... there must be two different sources of light from two different directions, is my guess. Maybe the headlamp from the camera or I've got a distant light on and the HDRI dome... Again... Studio is designed for portraits and close up work, not expansive landscapes... so the way the lighting falls off isn't always "natural"... sometimes you need to move a light way back and really crank up intensity to get a real outdoor effect. But... using HDRI image alone usually is pretty point-and-shoot.
I love Terradome 3, and if it is on deep sale, it is worth it just for the awesome HDRI domes, which I use all the time in other renders. But if you're getting it with the idea that you'll just set up an actually world outside of the window rather than use a backdrop or cyclorama or background to create scenery... or that you'll make forests and castles and caves and have a whole Skyrim world to pose your characters throughout... That is a little ambitious without a lot of money, time, additional software and processing power.
There are really a couple of plug-ins and pieces of content that should have a minimum requirements and recommended requirements dialog on the sale price. LAMH and Terradome 3 both fall into that category... i5 with 8GB of memory and 750ti 2GB minimum... probably i7, 32GB and Geforce 9xx 8GB GPU or higher, DSLI recommended. :)
It also occured to me that you don't really NEED Terradome 3 to use Roads and Rails. You could create your own primitive based landscapes with shaders and D-Formers, you could use other ground planes and kit-bash. It is really just a morphing road, some road signs, some rocks, and some props... It isn't somehow dependent on Terradome 3... it just compliments the desert southwest environments from Terradome 3.
Thanks for letting us know, new banners have been sent out.
I can't believe I've been away from this thread for so long. I've been pulled in a lot of directions lately, and having to make time for 3D. I know Skin builder 3 hasn't been talked about in here for a while, but I've been using it a lot, (I've got six entries in the competition with another in the works,) and I've come across a problem I thought I'd warn you guys about. SB3 isn't the problem, though. The base Genesis 3 Female that comes with the Starter Essentials is.
The base G3F does not come with Iray materials. If you use her with SB3 to create 3DL materials, she works fine. The problem comes when you apply the Iray Uber Base first and then open SB3. If you use the Skin-Base option, SB3 will create a new set of skin textures and apply them along with the Iray shaders. The same is true regardless of what skin is on the figure, and you won't have any trouble using any or all of the other options.
But if you don't use the Skin-Base option, several of the scripts run into an error and stop working. Specifically, all the makeup options, the Brows, and from the Overlays options, Acne and Stretch Marks, After testing this extensively with the base G3F, I was unable to recreate the problem with any other character, even when I started with their 3DL materials and used the Iray Uber Base to convert them to Iray. Of course, there may well be some G3F characters with the same problem. After I realized the problems was with G3F, I only tested four or five other characters, both Iray and 3DL.
I hope this information will be helpful to you guys. (I've already passed this on to Zev0 via PM.)
No problem, @chohole
"Specifically, all the makeup options, the Brows, and from the Overlays options, Acne and Stretch Marks,"
Ok... NOW I want Skin Builder 3...
At some point I went, "I'm tired of buying the same products, and I don't really use Skin Builder Pro as much as I thought I would..."
But what skin Builder Pro is missing is imperfections. I remember reading about this in the discussion thread... at some point, I forgot about it.
I love this thread.
Won't be online. My mom fell and probably broke her hip. Happened an hour ago so on the way to the hospital. TTYL.
Oh No! I hope she will be OK.
So sorry to hear this. You, your mom, and your family are in my thoughts and prayers.
I hope she is okay. Text if you need to chat or something.
I think it is a great investment I have Skin Builder Pro, and I think this is a much better product.
Top Level navigation is: Settings, Skin, Overlays, Makeup, Brows, Eyes, Lashes, Nails Gen Hair, Utilities
Makeup has options for Blush, Eyeshadows, Eyeliners, and Lips. Eyes have options for Real, Fantasy, and Toon, with Gradient options that blend with any of the three eye bases. Overlays is where you'll find the "imperfections": Skin Detail, (Blotches, Dark Pores, Fine Detail;) Freckles, (Head and body separate, each with Less and More options;) Age Spots,(Head and body, Less and More;) Veins, (one option each for head and body;) Spider Veins, (Head and body, Less and More;) Moles, (Head and body, Less and More;) Acne, (multiple options for Head that don't overlap each other, multiple Body options targeting specific body areas;) Stretch Marks, (Multiple Body options targeting specific body areas;) and Tan Lines. With Tan Lines, you can select either a full body option, or go with separate top and bottom options. (There are eight choices included for each.)
Equally important you can create your own options and add them in. For example, due to a question from @vwrangler and a better solution than the one I came up with, several of us have copied the Freckles into the Color Blend folder for Skin. (Mini-Tutorial) I've also added Age Spots. And I'm in the process of creating more base options for the "Real" Eyes option using the eyes from another merchant resource I licensed.
Did I mention you can save your presets for future use, and don't have to rely on LIE to reload everything each time? It saves your work as a single image per zone, (Arms, Legs, etc.,) so it's as fast to load as any other skin materials.
(Yep. I love this product! Hands down my best 3D investment so far this year.)
Sounds like a major step forward. Skin Builder Pro, and really anything that relies on LIE, has that achilies heel of slow load times ... which makes me want LIE baker... which... is just more money to get to a final solution when it sounds like Skin Builder Pro has already fixed these issues.
If you have V3Digitimes Scene Optimizer, it can act as a convenient LIE baker, too. No need to purchase a separate product.
I keep learning and finding stuff on multiple sites. :-) So, far have been lucky to get things that work relatively well together for a newbie.
I'd say the Sexy Skinz gloves work really well with most renderings.
Sorry to hear this! Thoughts and prayers going your way.
I hope she's alright, many prayers for her.
I hope your mom is okay Novica!
Keeping your family in my thoughts Novica.
Hey Novica, I hope your mother is OK and no bones were broken!
I hope your mom is alright.
Good news, nothing broken! But she is hospitalized, probably for several days. What a way to spend Mother's Day, eh? I got back at 12:30am because I went to her apartment (assisted living) and got stuff for her, then home to let the dogs out, then to hospital. Thanks for the thoughts, appreciate it. You folks just carry on, I'll be posting over in KindredArts commercial thread on the new release. I was a beta tester for the second set of Ghost Lights. Neat product! KA is so cool to work with. We discussed making the boxes as separate zones and now you can use different temperatures and luminance for each side of the cubes. Enjoy! The thread is over in Commons and the product just came out!
Very glad to hear that & I hope that they figure out the best care for your mother.