Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 9
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Me too. I haven't purchased the product because I think it's a bit too complicated for me at this stage of my experience (inexperience) with Daz, but I'd love to know how it works.
Thanks, Novica! I modeled that thread after the wonderfully organized way you do them. It's a bit of work keeping that index up, but it's nice to be able to find stuff quickly. Happy to chime in on M4/V4. I'm deep diving into dynamic clothing (most of it for Gen 4) and now none of the newer conforming stuff looks right to me. I want to drape everything! LOL
@llynara I'm working on the first post of the thread right now, I'm putting Kerya's thread about the older gals, and your sets, in the first post so folks can find them faster. I PMd you about unrelated question not relating to Daz, related to your kiddos.
Sounds good!
Geezus, we're already on page two! That took what, half a day?
I tried to say that in my message, but I see it got typoed into "grayslake".
LOL, what I love is the iphone. I look at what gets sent and those automatic "fix the typos" get me every time. Work is wirk, love is live, horse is house. I ride my house! (My hiney isn't THAT big!)
I think the challenge with making your own billboard characters will be the time involved. One buys a product such as this to save time. But by the time you add lots of figures, render them, and make their own masks and billboards how much time have you actually saved? I still think the product is cool, but for me each billboard will take a while to setup and render... And then make a mask put them in the diffiuse channel and save it. Yeah, you only have to do it once, but... Hmmm..
I'm steadily working my way through my V4 library, convertin them to G2F, and then up to G3F at some point. Do you want me to post the V4 stuff here? Maybe I should start a separate post just for V4 and M4 clothing showcases? That way everyone can chime in if they want? Let me know if anyone is interested and I will set up this weekend. If not, you can find some of them on my thread lol.
Here's what's really scary. Even with the orange banner I only spend $6 bucks because I pretty much have everything I am interested in. I am not sure how I feel about V8 and Generation 4. I can't afford to dive into a new generation.
So Sonja, to be clear- we do have to go V4>G2>G3 then? I thought so, but wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a product that did that. (And oh, how I am SO sad about the GenX2 product line ending with Ralf's passing, and of course the loss of Ralf personally. The transferring of Genesis 3 morphs to Genesis 4) I don't know if anything was already in the works about that with the coming of Genesis 4. I have made the decision to put my funds into Genesis 3 and sets, can't really afford to keep buying just to showcase things. (Love doing that but I have enough to last for years, frankly.) So hopefully everyone who moves on to Genesis 4, whenever that is, will help showcase those. I'll probably pick up the base figures/utilities, depending on what changes have been made and whether the Genesis 3 stuff will work with it (like Genesis 2 does with Genesis 3. We get wonky feet stuff, but some of the hair and clothes work well.)
I was exchanging a few tips with Llynara, and I mentioned this tip from a couple years ago- remember to "Flip Floors." Use your floors as walls and as portrait/people closeup renders. Some of your wood floors and tile patterned floors make great walls and portrait backdrops. I even increased the bump/displacement on one a long time ago, and it made a neat ledge for the person to sit on. It had a square pattern, with large stones on the inside of the square, and she sat on it perfectly. Quite fun. So, flip your floors!
@icedragonart I think a separate thread would be GREAT!!! That way they won't be interspersed with all the other things we're doing, the thread can really clip along at a fast pace. I'll link it in the first post with the other two "oldie" references. Super idea!
I can't beIeive how quickly your thread is progressing! Page 2 already! I only have 32 pages in my thread in use.
I don't have the first product, but I do have the Mask and Multipass Toolbox. It works with 4.9, but the renderer needs to be 3Delight, and the object(s) you want to create a mask for must have 3DL materials/shaders. Although, you can get an interesting effect running it in Iray with Iray materials. Just not a true mask. You can do some nice silhouette effects in Iray by turning off all the lights, with Draw Dome off, and nothing around the object. But if you need a mask for part of something, you'll need 3Delight all the way. Here are a couple of masks I made, one before switching everything to 3Delight, and the other with 3Delight.
With Iray:
With 3Delight:
For the most part yes. Depends on what you are doing. If you want to save them as a preset for the next generation that has all of the morphs intact instead of just autofittin then yes, you will need to go in order. Same for poses if anyone wanted to know lol. When using the pose converters you have to move up one generation then use the next utility for the next generation. I am very sad to hear that he passed as well although I didn't know him personally. And will also miss his utilities as well. Just so sad...
Okay I will get a thread started and reserve the top several posts to put links as well. I may be a bit hit or miss as my son is getting married on the 1st of July (was supposed to be NEXT year, they told us 2 weeks ago they were moving it up. 5 weeks to plan a wedding is nuts. Thankfully, they want simple, rustic and she already has a dress.) And no, no grandbabies in sight, she got accepted to grad school in S. Carolina and they have to move beginning of August.
@serenenight LOL...well, I have my chatty moments. I'm in "on" mode tonight. I truly appreciate everyone popping in and talking. BTW, going to do some more of the DT gals to compare them. I did put one in Sloshwerk's bathroom! Edit- oh, neat. I'm going to show her using only the lights from that bathroom, in a closeup portrait. Double use from that set, the lights are good for portraits.
And your thread is chocked full of RENDERS. And stunning ones. I'm more chit chat, interspersed with renders (and thanks everyone for helping.)
@ladair Oooh, thanks for showing. Now, brilliant question- what do we do with masks? You photoshop pros and other mask experts give us some tips?
I can see how this could be a lot of work. Helps me appreciate the addons more, I think.
Since we have the rights to any renders we make using Daz products, I would think a number of us could make and share images to be used for billboards. I was interested in the product for making big city scenes, as even setting and posing low-rez figures takes quite some time.
i think it might also be useful for things like spaceships, planes, birds etc too. Those objects could be quite distant and look good.
My original idea was hordes of tiny creatures or just business people walking about or even fleeing from the latest alien menace.
I'm going to have to dig into my runtime to find poses suited for regular people. Just finding a lot of walking and not sexy walking poses is a bit of a challenge.
Well... back in February 2015, I was one of the lucky thousand who received the 3D print of Vicky. There was a contest element, where we could win a prize for using the 3D print in an image and posting it on social media. You couldn't create your own version of her, you had to use a photo of the actual print! I entered 14 time, I think, 8 of which were 3Delight renders. (This was just before the 4.8 Beta came out, with Iray.) I used masks a lot on those. I actually had the winning render, too. Here's the winning image:
Child's Play
Here is a close-up detail of the child holding the 3D Print, (sorry for the quality, the original image was only 1500 x 1500 and I made it 3k x 3k to get these.)
And here is the same close-up with the actual standin I created to get reasonably correct shadows.
I created masks with Masks and Multipass Toolbox: I removed the standin, positioned the photo over her hand in approximately the same position, (with the background masked out,) and used a layer with just her forearm and hand over the photo of Vicky, created by applying a mask. With a bit of touch up, I had the girl holding the print, complete with shadows on the steps from the guns, and one below her from the base.
Of course there was lots of other work, but that's a quick bit showing what we can do with masks.
If you need help getting started with using masks in Photoshop, I'll be happy to help. Just let me know.
We can start a list- I probably won't do links though as that would take too much time and you can just scroll through poses in Content Library and see if you have them anyway. They'd be in the same order as what I have.
Um, I'm not sure if it's my computer just needing rebooting, although I had done that the day before- but the bathroom took a long time to render and using those lights for this portrait took a whopping 45 minutes! (for me, it takes about 8-10 minutes usually. I've done Agent Hair before and the time wasn't significant.)
Here's DT- Ana for Genesis 3 Female(s) I also bought Yurika and had Cindy Note that Ana looks older than in the promos- see the shadow/line under her eye closest to us? I like that.
Okay, another weekend, another Render The Vendor. I was surfing my threads (while I'm working on my first post) and haven't done a lot of Khory lately, so she's our pick to showcase. Anything you've got or can do, strut your stuff! I'm going to go ahead and do a different light setup for Ana (back to Ghost Lights and Pro-Studio, I want to see the render time on that Agent Hair and see if it's the bathroom lights or the hair.) Then I'll take a peek at what I have from Khory. I'm also going to list casual poses. Whew.
That bathroom is still in my cart, so I'm just guessing here. Is there any light coming in via the window? That can slow down a render a lot, and is what the Architectural Sampler is actually for, to speed those renders up. An easy way to shut off the outside light is to set the mode to Scene Only, assuming the sunlight is coming from an HDRI, (if you haven't already done that.) Anyway, it's just a thought I had when I saw you were having issues with the render taking so long. Of course, there can be a lot of reasons for that...
Oh, what Beautiful render, and love the hair! Nice one.
Just discovered a set I don't have "Take a hike poses" I like Feral Fey's poses since she makes poses which are interchangable by gender. Take a hike poses
very nice job on that. Great render.
I admit the interface of the multi-pass tool has always rather annoyed me. I don't find it intuitive to use, and it seems it could be so much easier! I may take you up on that!
Oh dear. Studio is starting up with the valid PostgreSQL could not be established popup. What the heck? When I tried to render Ana using different lights, it had just spun and spun for fifteen minutes when I deleted all of the bathroom and lights/cameras. So I Task Ended it.
So my "Categories" in Content library is gone. How do I find the PostgreSQL thingie and get it working?
When I get ready, I'll definitely be asking you. Thanks so much! I also got the Vicky, with her arm broken and the hand broken that was holding the weapon. I've never seen such piss-poor-packing. Huge bubblewrap and her shoved in the middle of it. The pressure of the bubbles alone, pressing on it, probably broke the arm before it was out the door.
Someone else had a thread in the commons I think about missing his entire content library all of a sudden. Not sure if its the same issue but seems odd to see the two on the same day.
Maybe this might prove helpful? I've had a number of problem with my database, but not that one
https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207812393-PostgreSQL-Connection-Error-and-No-Smart-Content
Found this: (and mine isn't listed at all, so I guess I have to reinstall the studio. For heaven's sake.) EDIT: I turned off the computer completely and restarted it, it's back. Thank goodness.
On the PC, open the Windows Task Manager by pressing 'CTRL+ALT+DEL.' You may need to click 'Windows Task Manager' after you press CTRL+ALT+DEL.
In the Windows Task Manager, find the third tab, 'Services' and choose it. Click on the title of the third column, 'Description,' in order to alphabetize the list. Look through the list for 'DAZ Content Management Service.' If it is not present at all, then you need to uninstall and reinstall DAZ Studio 4, making sure to choose to install the DAZ Content Management Service when asked.