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You've really been coming along nicely learning to use DS. I do enjoy watching how you approach things in DS versus how you do things in Carrara.
Thank you, Vyusur, IceDragonArt, and KnittingMommy.
Project for G8M Villain
I am slowly learning a workflow for projects with Daz Studio. The surfaces pane is still a struggle, but I am slowly getting used to MorphLoaderPro. Repitition with MorphLoaderPro will help. So next, I plan to make a custom FBM for the genesis 8 male that includes changes in limb proportions. I've successfully done this once before for an earlier genesis. The A-pose of G8M may cause a slight wrinkle. I will be following this video tutorial by SickleYield.
My previous project for G2M using similar techniques is summarized here. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2373941/#Comment_2373941
This time I hope to do it in a new folder that is capable of being shared as a freebie. Forum regular MDO2010 provided the summary that I wil be relying on for preparing the file structure.
My plan will be to try to create an FBM for a custom melodramatic villain character for G8M, and then create some conforming clothes for the ba$t@ard. Here are some classic villains. Just when I thought the aqualine nose was standard, Voldomort has no nose. Tall and thin? No, Boris from Rocky and Bullwinkle is short and fat. However, I kind of feel inspired by Basel Rathbone and Peter Cushing, so a tall and thin villain is the order of the day - subject to my changing whims.
I used the methods for the flower face on the previous page to create a full body morph for G8M. Here is a comparison of the results for the body and for the heads of my FBM and the default G8M. Maybe you can see that the limbs are longer in proportion to the body, that the nose is more aqualine, the cheekbones more prominent, but that the cheeks themselves are sunken slightly? I only did very slight adjustments to the waist and limbs to make thinner, as the lengthening of the limbs tends to make appear thinner without much other adjustment. And his lips are thinner. Villainous!
Creating and saving the Studio morph asset and character preset
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The following is largely based on SickleYield's video linked above. The basic workflow is to load the saved morph using morphloader pro, use the joint editor to make sure the skeleton adjusts to the new morp proportions, and then use ERC freeze to make sure that the new skeleton is limited to when the new morph is used. Then save the morph as a morph asset, and the adjusted figure as a character preset (which can be replaced with revised materials subsequently).
I am going to provide the more detailed screenshots in this thread in case I forget.
- Recall that the morph was saed to a new content directory. Have to add that directory to the content pane in order to later distribute.
- Open an empty Daz Stuio scene. Open the content pane. Click on the menu in upper right corner of content pane to select the content manager
- Highlight the Daz Studio format and the ADD button will become active
- Add the folder that contains the content folder that goes with your working files
- Then load the default Genesis 8 Male
- select G8M in scene tab and use EDIT : Figure : Morph Loader Pro
- morphloader pro menu ,
- make sure units correct, in this case Carrara
- navigate to obj file in its location in new directory
- morph loader menu appears, click to expand, notice that the name of the morph matches saved name of obj morph
- in menu, can change name of morph
- use property group to change the location of morph from morph loader pro to Actor : FBM
- Click accept and then Studio confirms that the morph was successful
- you can now find the new morph in the parameters tab
- dial to one to confirm that it works - however, the skeleton is still wrong
- to fix the skeleton, click the bone editor tool in the top menu. Can now see that the skeleton does not match the mophed mesh
The next steps to adjust the skeleton and freeze ERC require some right clicks. Make sure the bone editor tool is still active in top menu
- right click in viewport and chose ADJUT RIGGING TO SHAPE
- a tree-list of the bones should appear. All will be checked, hich is fine because I changed thescale of all the bones.
- Click accept and the skeleton will adjust all the bones to scale to the new mesh proportions
The next steps require changing the morph properties itself in the parameters tab.
- right click on the name of the morph in the parameters tab
- choose edit mode
- right click AGAIN on the morph name and choose ERC freeze
- another menu appears
- in this case, accept the defult settings of his ERC freeze menu (click accept)
- now if adjjust the morph slider, the skeleton will adjust as well. I did a test at morph at 50%
- return morph to 1 (100%)
- File : Save As : Support Asset : Morph Asset - this will bring up a menu
- I used Diomede as the vendor name and SnideVillain as the product name
- Navigate menu tree to put checkmark by corresponding morph for FBM SnideVillain
- Click Accept to save the morph
- Started a new scee and confimed that the morph is available as an FBM under actor
- I then saved as a character preset. File : Save As : Character and navigated to my new content directory
and here is the FBM in Daz Studio with Michael 8 shaders and some G8M content
Just catching up on this thread. I saw you didn't get much response to your other thread and I think that is because for this purpose, the camera doesn't matter too much.
Really any relatively modern (the past decade or so) digital camera will work for taking photos to use as textures. You can even use the camera in any recent (the last 5-6 years, possibly more) cell phone if you want. They are all more than sufficient for this purpose. For the specific goal of making textures, technique is more important than tools.
The important thing is to avoid "baking in" shadows, highlights, reflections, and perspective distortion. Try to take your photos on a generally bright, but slightly overcast, day so the lighting is as even as possible acrosss the surface.
Take your photo as "flat" as you can so there is minimal distortion. Stand a little further away and use a longer focal length/higher zoom if you have the option and have your camera as close to perpendicular to the surface as possible.
You are just trying to capture the color/diffuse with the picture and will want to create any other texture maps you need (bump, normal, glossiness/specular/roughness, etc.) separately.
Mark - thank you. I used your guide to set up my file structure for hopefully creating some Daz Studio freebies. Slowly starting to get the hang of it.
Starting Process for Custom Face Texture Map
Now that I have the custom head shape for my villain, I hope to get to work on a villainous face map. I plan to use Carrara's 3D paint to identify the major hills and other contour lines of this shape and then get to work on an appropriate texture map in my image editor program. The most important features to me in this case are the changes in the cheekbones, hollows for the sunken cheeks, change in the width of the nose bridge, and the lowering and more prominent eyebrow line. To help me keep track of these features in my mage editor, I used Carrara's 3D paint to create 2 grayscale maps. One uses white to identiy features that stick out or upwards so that would be expected to get sunlight at noon, and uses black to the underside of features. The second is just an outline of major features.
- I opened Carrara and loaded Misty's Gensis 8 Male character and applied my custom villainous morph, thin lips and all
- I then used the3D paint tool in the upper left, as per flower face in previous posts. I created a new layer by duplicating the background layer and renaming it
- I chose a mid gray for the base color so that I could paint white for prominence and black for recess on my new layer
- I saved the layer i psd format to be used in my image editor
- I repeated the process of new layer, paint, and save for contour lines
Now, with additional maps for features and contour lines, I can bring the result in my image editor.
- I opened my image editor and loaded the default genesis 8 maleface map
- I then added layers for my heightmap and contour lines.
- I lowered the opacity of my maps so that you can see them superimposed.
Villains texture maps still to come, but this should help me get started.
Creating Some Skin Tiles for the Color Channel from Procedural Shaders
My next task is to make some tiles for the base skin textures. I need at least three for the base. For example, the upward facing areas of prominent features need some more color, and the downward facing features need less. To make some tiles for the color channel, I inserted a plane in my modeling program. I then used color gradients and mixers to try to create some tiny randomness to the color variation. I then created different tiles by varying the amount of red, white, and olive in the radients and subsyrface scattering. I also used a multiply with the cellular procedural in the shininess channel to try to get addtional tiny variation.
Next - I will to create some tiny micro variations in grayscales for the other texture channels.
Here are some examples of sample color tiles created from procedural shaders. And then I've loaded the tiles and the contour maps in my image editor.
Your villain morph turned out great, and I am finding your texture adventure very interesting. I'm trying to learn to texture models from photographs and started out using photoshop and uv's but am debating switching over to blacksmith 3d, as being able to paint directly over seems would make like so much eaiser. lol
Thanks, deathbycanon
When I get done, the hyper-realism folks will find my end result horrifying, I am sure. But that is OK because he is supposed to be a villain anyway. LOL. This weekend I will work on some of the other shader elements like highlights, etc. Obviously, I am not a character artist, but I have to start somewhere. Photo reference pics are much better, but there is the rights issue if I don't produce them myself. I do have a few photo references that I can use as a supplement.
On the topic of painting directly on the model, I highly recommend picking and using whichever program you like that has the feature. For example, if I wanted to put a tattoo on my villain's left cheek that said "Villain", I could use Carrara 3D paint to put it exactly where I want without guessing. It is always an estimate in Photoshop or Gimp, and might be distorted. There ar much, much better 3D paint programs than Carrara so use what you like. It is better to think of a program like Blacksmith working with Gimp or Photoshop in a joint workflow than as predominantly one or the other.
Also, I have found that by showing my attempts in detail, a few of the really experienced artists sometimes pop in and say, "Yo, forum folks, don't do what Diomede is doing! OMG, texture creation (or whatever) would be so much simpler and more accurate if you did (whatever) instead..."
Thanks for the information Diomede, I'm downloading the trial version of blacksmith 3d so I can check it out. I have gobs of photos of people, and own the copyrights so that part isn't an issue for me. I used facegen and photoshop together to do some texture mapping already but it was just face work and I'm ready to expand to the whole body. The last time I tried to show a texture map it was deleted and I was told I couldn't do it. It was from a photo I owned created in facegen and photoshop. They said unless it was my own I couldn't show it? I thought it was my own, but maybe because it was using the G3 uv's? I don't know, I'm very confused about some of the rules in that regards.
I have an older version of Blacksmith.
I have some full reference photos. Most are from 3dsk. For anyone interested, that site does have some free reference photos in addition to their purchase ones.
EDIT: Here is a test render of just changing the default shape and default color map of G8M head. All other settings for shaders and lights are at default.
Here is a video tutorial on converting reference photos to diffuse maps
Hair - the receding hairline of evil! - will be asking for help
I own Look at My Hair (LAMH) but don't know how to use it. I want to create the following hair style for use with Daz Studio. The following uses Carrara dynamic hair. Ignore the skin, eye, lips, and other shaders. Is there a good written or screenshot tutorial for the LAMH product?
Few Extra Details - Morph - Skin
- Decided to make another base G3M face morph, this time to add a few villainous details. I decided he needs baggy eyes and a slight age wrinkle from the nostril to base of cheek
- Also, I happen to own one of Forbidden Whisper's merchant skin resources, so will mention that. I can use it under the layers of my skin tiles as a reference.
Using a procedural shader to render a grayscale map for use as the base for a bump or a micro-shininess map. I combined cellular and marble to drive the color mixer.
Taking a break from the villain to do a pull for the next RRRR. The theme is They are Back.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/198056/rrrr-the-re-ba-ack-render-contest#latest
To participate, select 4 random items from your content list (more if you've played before and have been winning). Then use those four items (and any others you want) to render and finish an image fitting the theme. Not all month's have themes. There are two categories, Best and Funniest. To get my product list, I opened DIM and went to my installed column. I checked them all by clicking the box next to "Product" at the top of the column. I then right-clicked next to the word Product. I used the pop menu to export the selected items to a CSV file. You can limit your items to be pulled by sorting your DIM list and only checking hat yo want eligible, bu I included everything. I then copied the list to a spreadsheet so the rows are numbered. I used athe website random.org for random number generators to get my four.
I have to remember that the closing date is October 29, not October 31!!!!! Last time I screwed up theclosing date and did not get mine in. Here is my first pull. It appears that I will have to have a car bursting through a wall, but maybe I can think of an alternative to that cliche (happy to use another cliche).
RRRR They Are Back Pull #1 Sept/Oct 2017
2073 Eloquent Venues The Restaurant Props DS
2500 Futucar
1406 Dark Heart for Genesis 2 Female(s)
3347 K Warrior for Genesis 2 Male(s)
There is a manual for LAMH, I *think* its on his website but it may be in the manual download of the product. I can't remember where I found it, its been awhile. I know I printed the whole thing off for ease of access. Which, of course, I can't remember what I did with it lol. I can't look at the moment I'm at work.
Thanks.
I found a thread that leads to important information on the LAMH plugin. Not only the manual, but also some installation issues and other info from Alessandro.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/747972/
Snow White and the 7 Line Dancers
Just feeling silly and saw that the Platinum Club theme is 7 this month.
Not really. I have never found any step by step tutorials for creating a hair from start to finish. There is the little bit I did with my Sadie character. And, that's just a sort of follow me as I fumble through it type of thing, not a real tutorial. The lack of really good tutorials is one of the reasons I posted everything I did with that new hair. It was the first time I had created a hair from scratch. I started working on a tutorial in LAMH to create a hair and a beard and mustache set. Unfortunately, I can only do it in Windows because LAMH stopped working in Linux. Since I hardly ever go into the Windows partition unless I'm actually working on a tutorial, it keeps getting put off. Once things settle down, I hope to get back to the LAMH tutorials.
Most of the information I did have for LAMH came from AM's YouTube channel. He does have several good videos for using LAMH and they are worth checking out.
Your RRR pull actually looks like a decent pull. Good luck. :)