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I like your use of diffuse sunlight through the tree leaves, contrasted to the ambient light of the woods surrounding it. The elven architecture seems reminiscent of Dreamworks' "The Time Machine."
What sort of system are you using? How many verts does the scene incorporate?
Thanks! The original render ( http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/2877/P240/#293083 ) was done on a basic notebook computer with an AMD dual core and 8 gigs of RAM. Since I've got the scene built already, I probably should do some new renders with my newer computer.
Building the scene in Blender took many hours because the mcjTeleblender script does a mediocre job at material conversion. I had to make materials from scratch, eliminate duplicates (another annoyance of the script) and link to all the textures that come with the product. I added subdivision and displacement, so the scene comes in pretty heavy. In the end, despite my efforts at creative lighting, I was disappointed with the overall look that Cycles gave the scene. I've noticed that Cycles renders often look 'flat' imo. And I'm tired of the fake CG look that tries to be 'real' but never quite succeeds. That's where Corel Painter comes in. I'm trying to ease myself back into 2d art with elements of CG for those things I can't quite draw convincingly. Hey, ya gotta start somewhere!
"Hey, ya gotta start somewhere!"
I heard THAT! I use Twisted Brush most of the time and am messing with Gimp. Without the input from all you folks, I'd be lost in CG artwork, other than what you call "fake." The work I showed was also produced on a laptop, albeit with 4 GB RAM and an Intel Dual Core. I recently bought an Intel Dual Core 3.0 Ghz CPU and just ordered an Intel LGA755 board with 4 DDR2 slots, so capable of the 8Gb RAM, although I only have 6 Gb on hand. I know my bottleneck is really the XP32 OS. Next year I'll upgrade to W7 64, probably pro. Without that, it's tough to access the whole system efficiently.
As for MCJTeleblender, these are the reasons I've decided it's time to break new CG ground in programming. Learning Blender and DS4.5, as well as my own CAD clone, have shown me the direction to go with it all. The need, mostly, to get it all to work with Blender has me pursuing Python. Have you checked out FreeCAD?
Hey, Doc! I've kind of got too much to learn as it is without adding yet another program to the mix. ;)
I'm considering Carrara at the moment if I can figure out a way to use it to get more versatility out of my DAZ content. I can convert environments to Blender pretty well, but dealing with characters is much more work. Either I rebuild around the Genesis geometry in Blender, or I do my posing in DS and export objs to make shape keys in Blender. Either way, not a whole lot of fun. But learning Cararra means time spent on yet another program! Argg! :)
I either want to create cartoonish animations (acting) and/or illustrative paintings. The acting/posing/animation aspect would hopefully make more vibrant illustrative art. I want to focus as much as possible on the creative aspects of a final image and not get more bogged down in coding and technicalities than is absolutely necessary. There's only so much one person can do without a Hollywood production team and budget.
"There’s only so much one person can do without a Hollywood production team and budget."
Couldn't say it better.
One has to find ways to budget their time if they are doing art for art's sake or simply as a free-lance creator. I haven't learned rigging in DS. I have done some rigging in Blender. Like both of them, even Poser leaves something to be desired. If you think learning software is a workload, try writing some. If I have 8 or 10 hours a day for 4 months I can write a pretty decent tool, but I usually have so much other work to do that it ends up taking over a year to get to a place where I can use it efficiently. Double that if I want to really perfect it. Triple if I want to make it compatible with other software.
Sounds like we both need one of Calvin's transmogrofier boxes ;) Then we can have ten clones do our work while we supervise...
Genuine Intel DG35EC MicroATX mATX Intel G35 Express Chipset DDR2 SDRAM LGA775 Desktop DT Motherboard Compatible Part Numbers: DG35EC, BTEC320015CS
This is what I'm getting. Any thoughts on this board? How has DAZ come along with Hex? I've been wanting to get it if for no other reason that I've received quite a bit of support here and it has been helpful. I've been thinking about Carrera as well. My question, since I use Blender and DS in conjunction, would wonder if that board with a Duo Core 3.0 Ghz CPU would enhance the resolution of my morphs. It's very useful to create my basic figure in DS then use Blender's plethora of sculpting and vert/face editing to get the shape I want. That's why I asked about the basic mesh in another thread. I see this as a real asset because it has dynamic hair. What I think Blender has the capability of doing is scientific illustration and animation.
Edited for content DRC
I downloaded o litle dog, Here render in blender
Awww, how cute is that!
I got that little dog too! Cute!
Here is a new render of the Elven Treehouse in Blender 2.69 using the same scene I set up earlier this year. I added a new character, too.
Negatives:
I tried to have two characters in the scene, but Cycles is a memory hog. The scene as rendered practically maxed out my 8 gigs of RAM. With the second character in the scene, the computer ran into swap space on the hard drive and slowed my system to a crawl. In retrospect, though, I think the composition with just the one character turned out better.
Even using high resolution textures and 'realistic' shaders (diffuse, glossy, bump, transparency), the straight render looks flat and uninteresting. If you think it looks great as it is, then check out the post processed image here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/18613/P1230/#473111 In my humble opinion, post processing considerably improved things and saved what would have been a wasted six hours of render time. Yes, not only is Cycles a memory hog, but to get a reasonably noise free image at 2400 x 1800 (the original resolution) still took a long time with my quad core i7 running at over 3 GHz.
Positives:
At the very least with Cycles, lighting is pretty intuitive. Full global illumination and ambient occlusion are built in and work with any combination of shaders.
Scene navigation in Blender is superior to DAZ Studio. It takes a lot fewer mouse clicks to get things where I want them. I also don't have to deal with that annoying viewport feature in DS that highlights everything where my mouse pointer hovers. Of course, this is just personal preference.
That annoying feature of DAZ can be changed by changing tools. I usually have mine set on "spot render" to prevent the highlighting.
That annoying feature of DAZ can be changed by changing tools. I usually have mine set on "spot render" to prevent the highlighting.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by using the "spot render" tool. How do you place and pose a character in a scene while using the "spot render" tool?
I tried blender and didn't care for the UI, I stopped memorizing keyboard shortcuts back in the VisiCalc days. But Hexagon is killing me, it crashed all the time now. So I decided to make an effort to learn Belender shortcuts, give it a try. So unintuituve that I decided to try using a trick I've used for learning foreign language vocabulary, might help others.
There is a free "flash card" program called Anki, do a search and you'll find it. You can create cards and it will step you through your deck over twenty minutes daily. It's smart enough to figure out which ones you've gotten good at and show them less often, it shows the ones you stumble on more often. I hope that after a week I'll have the basic commands down and then I'll step through some tutorials.
...I think I just need to scrape/save up the funds for Modo.
I don't find navigating the Blender workspace anywhere near as simple as Daz what with all the constant keyboard input requried to make camera moves.
...and yes I often keep the spot render tool on as well.
Being able to simply "turn off" the auto selection of items in a scene is something I mentioned in the Daz 5 suggestion thread
I tried the demo to Modo a couple of times. Seemed pretty cool, but I couldn't figure it out within the short trial period. Similar thing happened with Houdini FX. I once 'borrowed' a full version of Maya 2010. Lovely documentation and quite usable interface. I didn't, and still don't, have the kind of money to make that kind of investment.
If all you need is a modelling tool, Silo is on sale from Smith Micro for about a hundred bucks or so. I think Steam also has a version of Silo available. That might be a much better option than Hexagon for those who just want to model props and such.
...I've considered Silo but there are signs it could be on its way to becoming "abandonware" (I already feel Hexagon has gone that route). I need something that is more stable in all ways (including future updates, bug fixes, and support). I tried the Modo 301 demo years ago and really liked it's UI (and I was pretty new to 3D back then). True didn't get to do much in the short trial period.
Yeah, Maya is pretty much out for me as well unless I win the Lotto, however I always thought it was more geared towards animation and not just modelling.
Modo is a stretch as well, however, as I was able to get up enough to build my current system (about the same amount as the price for 701), it might be doable, once I have a more steady income again.
Besides props I also look to do clothing, vehicles, and structures which are more complex and need a more robust application.
@Kyoto : I don't know if it is good at modeling but you still have Carrara as an option. And you'll have a DAZ compatible environment
About Blender Navigation especially on a notebook (I also use mine but I have an integrated Numpad, so no problem for me there)
I think you should customize your blender. First thing is to eventually emulate the numeric pad User preference => Input => emulate numpad (check on the left)
There are also some addons that might help you. You just need to download the scripts and put them in a subfolder => blender\2.69\scripts\addons_contrib
you can have some 3D navigation helper on the left panel
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/3D_Navigation
A pie menu that can call many functions.I called the one for view navigation in the screenshot
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Pie_Menu
And finally a guy made an addon to get some 3DSmax feel in blender
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?306867-BMax-Tools-or-how-I-left-3ds-Max-)
And for people Using Cycles, you could check the Color management panel and use compositing nodes in the Node editor to change the look of your renders. Example Below
@ Takeo,
I've done a fair amount of playing with the compositor, and it does indeed have some tools to help 'fix' poor renders. Of course, there's quite a lot more to it than that, since it can also combine CG and live footage for SFX. Then again, if the end result is a single image, one is probably better off using a dedicated image manipulation program.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by using the "spot render" tool. How do you place and pose a character in a scene while using the "spot render" tool?
I pose and place using the parameters tab, using the scene tab to select the parts I want. Idk, it's just my preference.
...as I understand Carrara's modelling tools are only vertex not polygon based.
I know that one can save and import a Carrara model as a .obj to import into other programmes (like Daz Studio) but not sure if it retains the UV map or if Carrara has the ability to perform UV unwrapping so texture templates can be created. I just sent this question to the Carrara forums
The reason why I am set on Modo over Blender is I can start working with it out "of the box" instead of having to mess around with customisation and setup of such a complex and for myself, difficult to comprehend UI first.
Basically as I mentioned all I need are the modelling, sculpting, and UV mapping/unwrapping functions as I have other tools I can used for texturing, rigging and rendering and at this stage of the game, no where near into tackling animation,so I don't need those functions cluttering up and confusing the workspace.
What interested me most in Modo was the incredibly fast renderer which looks to be very high quality. The materials and textures are handled in a very different way than what I've seen before. That's not a bad thing, just something to learn. Another benefit, from what I've heard anyway, is that all the tools are complete and polished to work as expected, which is something Blender has never really achieved. I don't understand why some of these companies don't just sell licenses to previous versions at a discount. That's something Smith Micro does, and it's a great way to get into a software line-up without the big price of the latest versions.
...the best I ever heard Modo go for was years ago when it was offered for something like 450$ on some kind of special deal.
At the time the full retail price was 899$. Now it's 1,495$.
The issue with Blender is there is apparently a core of users who have pull in the community, have worked with Blender for years, and don't want the tools and UI to be "polished", because it would require changing work habits. Therefore, it's interface will most likely remain cumbersome and cryptic, scaring away potential new users for years to come.
If a community doesn't attract new members, it doesn't grow, and if it doesn't grow, it stagnates.
@daveleitz68 : You should go and have a look at some Blender gallery like http://blenderartists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?27-Forum-Gallery and see if people there can't do what they want with Blender and if it really has poor rendering capabilities. As I often say it, the problem lies at 99% behind the keyboard (no offense intended here)
@Kyoto : The problem is not people not wanting Blender's UI to change. It will change but not in the naive way that Andrew presented (He recognized that himself ). There are a lot of ongoing discussions thread about UI change in the Blender community. There is a also a document with some thoughts about the UI made by Brecht (one of the Dev) http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Brecht/UI . So it is not as if nobody wants it to change, as the UI has always been a subject of change since the 2.5x series (there was a GSOC about that last year) . But there won't be a tradeoff of useability/functionality for getting more new users.Penalizing the existing user base against new users is a nonsense.
Thread at BA http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?298932-Blender-UI-Mockups-and-Ideas-Requested
You can't really take Andrew's proposal seriously if you know a bit Blender and that the UI is not something thrown up like that from nowhere. There are reasons behind that. Even if most users agree that Blender's UI has some flaws and is not perfect (like any software), it is not as if it is really "broken". My personal grief is more about features than UI. And Blender is not going to clone the UI of any other big name, there is no reason for that. It has it's own way. I've seen a lot of people coming from pro software packages who invested the time and effort into learning Blender saying that once they knew how it works, working with Blender is far more quicker and easier than in these ¨Pro Packages. The difference between Blender and paid package is that they are used in Industry. That is why people take the time to learn them because they eventually can get a job. See Zbrush. I have tried it once and the UI is not what I'd call intuitive. But people use it because of what you can do with it. Not because it is "intuitive" and beginner friendly
There is no software that is "intuitive" which anybody can master in 2 min sitting in front of the keyboard. I remember having spent a lot of time learning 3DS with a book. And when I tried Maya a few years ago I couldn't do anything good after an hour in front of it. Same goes with Blender.
I personally don't think Blender is going to die anytime soon like some other open source project. As long as features are developed, and it offers professional tools for free, it will continue to live. If you look at some other Open source package, you see that it is the only one that can compete with pro software. The reason why software are abandoned is when there is no more development or if they are unstable
If you go for Modo, I hope that it works for you; but which ever one you pick, I doubt it will be easy.
...as I may have mentioned, I worked with the trial version of Modo301 years ago and by far, found it's UI was much more "polished" (to use daveleitz68's description) than Blender's the moment I opened the application for the first time. Agreed, any new software will present it's own unique learning curve. To use a motoring analogy, I found the "curve" of Modo's interface to be easier to negotiate than Blender's, allowing me to actually begin tackling (in my view) the more important learning curve, that of 3D modelling, within less than a week's time. With Blender, I had yet to get past the first screen with the cube after more than a month and found myself doing a lot of backtracking and feeling I was going about in circles, instead of moving forward.
This is the way I view how "intuitive" an application is. Learning and mastering a process like 3D modelling is a difficult enough task. The last thing I need is an interface and tools that seem to get more in the way than help me to reach that goal.
Unfortunately I did not have 899$ burning a hole in my pocket so the experience was alas, a short lived one.
As to those who come from different software platforms, they already have the knowledge and experience with concepts and processes like modelling and animation. In effect they are already ahead in the game compared to a newcomer who approaches Blender to learn say, modelling for the first time.
However, I see where this is all heading. Blender's development is basically there for those who already "passed the test" and/or have used it for years while newomers be d***ed. New users can bring fresh new ideas and a new outlook to the table. Discouraging them by sending such a message is, well, sad to say the very least.
My two Zloty's worth on the whole subject.
@daveleitz68 : You should go and have a look at some Blender gallery like http://blenderartists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?27-Forum-Gallery and see if people there can’t do what they want with Blender and if it really has poor rendering capabilities. As I often say it, the problem lies at 99% behind the keyboard (no offense intended here)
Hey Takeo,
My comments with respects to Modo were not meant to denigrate Blender. However, it's a fact that Cycles is incomplete. Blender Internal, while capable in experienced hands, is almost abandoned as far as development. The Game Engine, which I think of as the third renderer in Blender, needs work to bring it up to date. That said, I'm still a Blender user. I have no problems finding my way around the interface. I know that development is ongoing, and future versions of Blender will address many current problems.
Some of my animation using Blender:
https://vimeo.com/user19091117
I also participate in discussions sometimes on Blender Artists. I do agree with you that art is created by the person, not the software. A painter may find that he or she prefers some brands of paints and brushes over others. Yet, most people who see a finished work of art rarely care about how it was made.
I'm still learning Zbrush, but I gonna try Blender when masterize Zb...maybe in 2098 and I'm being positive XD
@daveleitz68 : Sorry for misunderstanding I thought you didn't know what cycles can do. I know what you mean or I hope I do. If you mean, that there are a lot of features or plugin that need to be further polished, I' do agree. But as for Cycles surface nodes, I think everything needed is pretty much there. Most materials are doable with all the present nodes. Add OSL to the mix and you can get pretty much anything if you can code shaders. Some features could be added, like OpenCL support or new nodes but what is already there is pretty much decent to work with
What I think is missing is some real time preview of the composite nodes, an official material database, and of course waiting for a final build of Volume rendering. What I saw till now is very promising. But there are a lot of work to do and not enough coders I guess.
The Blender internal engine is not bad even if it is old. One of the force of blender is that you have a load of possibilities for external renderering. See screenshot below. these are only free renderers. There are also commercial packages like octane, maxwell, thea render, vray, indigo etc...
If you don't like cycles, you're not exactly what I'd call limited. For the lightning you can add some features like IES Lightning or the SIBL plugin for HDR environment
I don't really think Blender lacks of tool in that field
As for the game engine, I barely tried it. And if wanting to try some game engine I guess there are some others that are more capable than Blender (UDK, Cryengine Ogre etc..). The advantage of blender is that you don't have to export anything to test the game engine with your model. So it is a good base if you just want to test some GLSL shaders
@ Kyoto : I don't see the same message as you concerning Blender. Blender is not a tool for 3D beginners and it never claimed to be.
There is a possibility that some individuals would make a fork of Blender in order to make a beginner friendly interface As an open project it is open for the community to make it happen. Nobody prevents that. I've seen one thread in BA but don't know if it will lead anywhere http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?313401-Check-out-my-Andrew-Price-fixing-Blender-Build!
What Blender bring is a set of high level tools at no cost for people wanting to do some serious 3D without having to spend big money on expensive software. The no cost is what you can call '3D for everyone'. Nobody said it was going to be effortless.
As I see it, what mainly disorient newcomers is the right mouse selection. You could invert that in the preferences but you lose some functionality . So it is not that a good idea. I've seen some better idea to address that; one of them being to have a welcome screen for beginners which will guide in the first step in navigating in Blender with sample scenes and so on.
Whatever will come out, I didn't see a rejection to the change. I only see rejection on becoming the tool for noobs in 3D which can't give Blender the respect in the 3D industry it aims for.
@ Kyoto Kid,
Have you looked at Lightwave 3D? It's going for around the same price as Modo and looks quite capable. They've got a 30 day trial available. Cinema 4D starts at under $1000. I'm not sure what features are excluded at that price point, though. Other than Carrara, I don't know what other full featured 3D suites come in at under $1k.
@ Takeo,
I do appreciate what you're saying. Blender has loads of potential. I'm a fan, but not a 'fanboy.' ;)
I will take issue with your list of potential render engines for Blender. :) How many of those have feature complete exporters that integrate well with the interface? Are the RSL exporters really capable of handling 3Delight in a comprehensive fashion. Does anyone really use Povray any more? Is anyone continuing development on Mitsuba? Appleseed? I have Luxrender, since I sometimes use Luxus, but I never use it for Blender because it is so slow. By comparison, Cycles is way faster than Luxrender if one really needs a path tracer. Because of its speed, I still like BI for animation. If I had my way, I would prefer a more robust GLSL based renderer for animation. (I even know how to fake full frame motion blur in GLSL renders using the VSE.) In my opinion, the future is going to be 'real time' and not pathtracing. :)
...right now, all of those are out of my budget (including Modo)
The most "expensive" application I have is Poser Pro2012 (499$ retail) which I purchased on an upgrade for 125$ (off of Poser8 which I won in a 3D challenge).
I have also Carrara 8.5 Pro (85$ on a special upgrade deal from Daz) so I already have a "full featured" 3D suite. However my attraction to Carrara is the fact it can load pose and even morph Daz figures, has an excellent environmental/terrain generator, and advanced materials lab. I see it's modelling tools more supportive of scene creation within the application.
I don't need another full featured application, I'm looking for one that is primarily dedicated to the task of modelling. So far Modo comes closest to that.
Hexagon? I feel it has pretty much in danger of becoming "abandonware" as Daz has done little to update it over the last five years. It still has serious stability issues as well as needing 64 bit support (which might cure some of the memory ills) and other improvements such as better UV unwrapping and the addition of sculpting tools. However, there is no indication Daz development will be doing anything more with it as all their attention is on their "flagship" Studio application and to a lesser degree Carrara. Furthermore, last month they also started marketing another third party "modelling" (I use the term very loosely) programme called Curvy3D.
Silo? There is similar concern over it's future as well.
So that doesn't leave a whole lot of options for modelling.
It's too bad that Blender wasn't modular in its design. Then I might actually give it another shot as all I would need is the Modelling component and it's tools (Basic Modelling, Sculpting, UV mapping) since I already have other software tools for rendering, rigging, and surfacing.
Carrara is a good app for modeling. It is still being updated and you can get it on sale a couple times a year for a good price.
...one of the things that disorients me is the fact that what I am looking for is not presented when the programme opens. There is the animation timeline and settings on the bottom and rendering settings and information on the right sidebar. Id like to see a menu/sidebar with the various modelling tools, the bottom panel with the basic camera manipulation icons as other software has. To me when the programme, opens it looks slapped together and disorganised with regards to how the basic functions are (and are not) presented. The inconsistency between how parameters are displayed for different operations and tools (as Andrew pointed out) make it confusing as to what scale things are set up on. The lack of pointer driven camera controls (without having to script them) is cumbersome.
Hexagon, for all it's operational and stability flaws, does have one thing going for it, a well thought out, efficient, and clean UI that presents all the primary tools, while not distracting from the job it is required to do or "interfering" with one's workflow. The bottom toobar has all the camera controls, and view options. The sidebar shows has the parameter settings.for the various tools. The upper menu bar has a row of small tabs that activate a narrow toolbar underneath with drop downs for the various tools/modes selected. right clicking on a tool allows a user to add it to a customisable toolbar to fit one's workflow. This upper toolbar could easily be presented on a sidebar as well. In all it still has a very clean uncluttered professional look, is customisable, yet offers a smoother learning curve for newcomers to grasp so they can get on with the job of learning and perfecting their modelling skills without adversely affecting the workflow of more experienced users.
I don't understand why the idea of even a simple basic tab/menu setup is met with such opposition. As I mentioned, it wouldn't change what Blender can already do, it doesn't eliminate the features Blender has, it doesn't replace the hot keys Crikey, even Hexagon has hotkeys which are listed alongside each menu selection as a secondary option for more experienced users (as they should be rather than the primary controls).
All software depends on new users coming on board in order to even have a user base. I don't see how making Blender easier to gasp at the outset (than it currently is) will "compromise" it's image as being a professional level software tool. It doesn't need to be done at a "Daz Studio" or "Poser" level.
By the same token there is nothing that says something has to be Extremely Difficult to understand in order to qualify as being "Serious" or "Professional"