Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 10
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I use dforce for items like scarves and discarded clothing. I haven’t bought any dforce items intentionally.... I have the one orange quilted goth outfit but haven’t used it. And one of the men’s cargo shorts outfits. Everything else is just women’s wear. So pass.
most men’s clothing is pretty tight fitting. There isn’t a huge need to dforce something that’s already Liberace tight.
My use of dforce is limited to gravitational effects on clothing. I haven’t learned Wind or anything else really.
I haven't tried it yet so I was curious as to what was involved and if it was taking people longer to do renders with it (for setting it up, or for the actual rendering.) I'd hate to see the entire store go the route of dforce items, but that leads me to my next question. Can dforce items be used without dforcing? Do they make sense if dforce isn't used?
For me a lot depends on what you are rendering. There is some additional time involved with dforce specifically because you can’t be certain an item will survive dforce. A lot of what I use it for could be done with providing decent movement morphs to clothing and also providing smoosh morphs to stuff like pillows and bedding.
Dforcing hair I understand is time consuming but I have found discarded clothing and bedding to work fairly quickly.
I actually really really like Dforce....when it works. Dforce clothing is relatively easy to work with and doesn't really take any extra time (usually) to set up in a render. However, if you are doing it on something that doesn't have Dforce, it can be very time consuming at the moment, although as with anything else, the more you do it and understand exactly how it works, the faster it goes. For me, with my going on 3 year old computer, it does add to the render time although it totally depends on what it is. It can be as short as a couple minute for one thing and an hour for another. One of the biggest things I've started doing is hiding everything that is not affected by the dforce. Hair, other clothing props etc. I just turn all the eye icons off. This helps quite a bit for render times as well as memory.
Thanks for the insight. OMG, I just looked at the radar and there's blue and pink coming across Texas, Louisiana, and just beginning in Mississippi! (Snow and ice.)
We're getting ready to head out to that charity that I help (in Christmas) to give them a bedroom suite that we've had for a long time. A mom on dialysis is sleeping on worn lounger cushions on top of a dresser and her 8 year old son sleeps on a crib mattress on the floor, and no one adopted that family for Christmas. We found good deals on bedroom sets for MLK day and decided that's what credit cards are for,to buy furniture LOL. And my son has had that furniture since he was a kid, just using one of the twin beds, so we've gotten our money's worth out of it. I'm also tired of storing the other twin bed in the garage, LOL.
It's in great condition so they'll be really happy. I always had shelf paper down on the desk (built into the twin double decker, which also has drawers on each end) so no glass rings, scratches, etc. They'll get the dresser and media cabinet too. The charity is going to surprise them with it, they don't know it's coming. Wish I could see the mom's face! (And the little boy. I always loved double decker twin beds when I was a kid, particularly the top bunk of course!) We're taking it to the charity warehouse so we'll miss out on the surprise, but that's okay. Gotta run!
Aww, they are going to be so happy! Speaking as someone who has been in a place where you don't know where the next meal comes from, this kind of kindness is always appreciated. We've made sure that as we bettered our own circumstances that we give in whatever way we can. Its a great feeling to be able to something nice for people.
Daz has made it a requirement of dForce clothing in the Daz store to also be conforming.
I assume that requirement is so anyone can use the product, whether or not they want to use dForce.
As Sonja says, the dForce items you purchase are easy to use, as the vendor has already done the hard part; for a "typical" scene anyway. I haven't tried using wind on any of the dForce products. Like many others, I have several but I've only played with the first one I bought.
Hiding literally everything not part of the simulation is really important to keeping the simulation time down. I've even used the Geometry Editor, created Selection Sets, and hid the sets! I also prefer to create a subscene with the bare minimum necessary for the drape. Once I like the results, I save it. Then I create the environment as a new project, and when it's essentially complete, merge the first file with the second. (Priorities was actually five files, though only one used dForce.)
As for rendering time, I'm not seeing any significant increase but my scenes tend to have a lot of objects in them. And I try to do my renders overnight, while I sleep.
And as Sonja also pointed out, there is a learning curve. The more you use dForce on items not specifically sold for use with dForce, the better you'll understand it. The better you understand what the settings are doing, the faster you'll get at using dForce on those items. Most of the time. (I spent the better part of a day trying to get a small plane to drape gracefully over a single breast, to keep the scene I'm currently working on TOS compliant. However, I do think the result was worth the effort.)
Daz continues to work on and update dForce. Things don't explode as often, for example. I've had clothing intersect itself in the current release without causing problems. Such an intersection would create spectacular explosions in the early versions of dForce.
Oh, look! A BOGO sale! And it's good for up to 10 orders.
What was that I was just saying about being a good girl? Scratch that.
I would like to point out, a number of the qualifying 2017 "new releases" are also in catalogs of current featured artists at 40% off. Add another new release to your cart to change that to 50% off. I used two of this week's PC+ items to trigger the higher discounts. Total orders today? "Only" four. Two of those were for older "new releases" in my wishlist, but two were for items that were already sitting in my cart, waiting for a better offer...
ETA: Make that five orders! I've been on the fence about getting Darwin's Gigi now, or waiting until she went on sale. Then it occurred to me, Gigi was the main reason I bought Charlotte... I think. Anyway, got Gigi and a secret garden to render her in.
Thanks for the tip, L'Adair. I was looking at it and the BOGO items aren't all that great, and the qualifying discounts get expensive quick... but if I could shave 50% off two qualifying products, there are probably some items in the BOGO that might be worth it.
A lot of it is jacked up in price right now, though - look at the historical data and you can see it dropping down to a point where waiting for the next big sale might be better than buying two qualifying items you don't really want or need, even at 50% off.
So... I picked up the Summer Luxury Yacht bundle... and it is mammoth. For no particular reason, I did this render - using the Subdragon LE and a Gen1 figure mostly to give a sense of the scale of the yacth. It is also super detailed... lots of props. No stateroom or cabins, though... which seems a significant oversight.
On DForce... If you've ever wanted clothes to drap on furniture or the floor, or a blanket or towel to drape over someone - it works very well for that.
In the past it seems like you had choices of Dynamic items that never worked, or Poser items that didn't work in DAZ, or specific poses and morphed items that worked with the one pose, with the one intended character, like Jepe and I13's stuff.
Now, it is easy to take a plane, add a shader preset, add the gemoetry, and drape it over whatever you had in mind. I've got a pretty powerful i7 with a GeForce 1070 GPU... I imagine on a less powerful machine it could be a frustrating wait.
I have so much stuff now, I simply won't buy one thing to get something else free unless I really want one or the other. So here's what I bought, along with what I got for free:
1) Expression Mixer, already in my cart; and Sea Life Pack 1, because you never know when you'll need a little sea life. And that bundle has 10 items of things I didn't have something like.
2) Celestia for Genesis 3 and 8 Female, already in my cart; and Hiro 5, because I have some other freebies that work with him.
3) Vintage Vanity Accessories, on my wishlist, Lady of the Land for Genesis 3 Females (PC+); and Genesis Supersuit, which has been in and out of my cart too many times to count.
4) Shearling Outfit for Genesis 3 Female(s), on my wishlist, Essential Iray Shaders (PC+), because I consider any Iray shaders from JGreenlees a good investment; and Pretorian for Genesis, (I'm going to see how well it works with dForce.)
5) Gigi for Charlotte 8; and Secret Garden Repose.
And that's it. (I had a devil of a time coming up with one more item from the legacy list to go with Gigi.)
So what all did the rest of you pick up? (Besides the yacht, @donovancolbert...)
WELL CRUD!!! I just bought the Hooligan Muscle Car last night and missed the chance to get a free item
After looking at the freebies though I guess I didn't miss much. But a freebie is a freebie. I will have to remember it for the next order if it is still going on.
I've done some experimentation with dForce when it came out - got a few explosions, got a few successes. I'd like to play with it more, but I seem to have hit some kind of inspirational wall with Studio at the moment (which is probably partly the result of the disappointment of the video card that didn't happen), so I'm exploring Blender a bit more and having fun with that instead.
Last September, back in thread 9, @Novica shared her formula for adding a bit of metallicity into the skin settings. It took a bit to find the post, but I thought I'd give it a try on my latest project...
My gal came out looking like she'd had a date with Goldfinger!
Novica, is that supposed to be: Metallicity at 0.098 ?
@ladair I'll go back and look at that post. Maybe I saved the scene.
BTW, freezing rain and sleet now. Snow arriving in about two hours. Pensacola getting snow twice in two months is NOT normal.
Yep, .098 And the Metallic Flakes Density was .23 not .25, but that won't make a huge difference. I'll change it though.
And what's wrong with a Goldfinger Gal?
I've added this under TIP: Metallicity on the References post, I can't change that post as the thread is closed, so I'll repost it here and change the link to the next post instead.
Brenna for Ophelia 7 SwimWear for Genesis 3 Female(s) Audrey Hair for Genesis 3 Female(s) Premium Portrait Poses-Wall
This is using that Premium Portrait Poses- Wall pose, walls, and lighting. I moved one of the lights and changed the brightness (use Surface pane) You get one long rectangle mesh light to the side, and one torus (ring).
TIP: Using Metallicity and Metallic Flakes
What I'd like to show you is the addition of metallicity to your characters to change skin sheen. It helps if characters' skin is a bit flat, without highlights. Even those who aren't may benefit from a little more pizazz when lit. Metallicity to the rescue. To be more specific- a teeny, tiny, miniscule addition of it. Here is a few settings to get you started and you can play around with them from there:
Metallicity at .098
Glossy Reflectivity .80
Glossy Roughness .50
Base Bump 1.34
Metallic Flakes Weight .0010 PUT THIS IN FIRST, then the rest of the menu will open up.
Metallic Flakes Size .00070
Metallic Flakes Strength .35
Metallic Flakes Density .23
EDIT: The metallic additions will probably darken your skins and make them a bit blue. Here's more fine tuning to add even more realism- and the link showing it in action. Click HERE. It will show you the suggestions listed below, as applied to a character.
1. Look at the Tranlucency Weight setting. Whatever it is, lower it and se how you like it. This offsets the darkening of the metallicity. The translucency is .45 on many characters, lower it to .34
2. Next, the Dual Lobe Specular is usually 0. Try .010
3. The Dual Lobe Specular Weight, try .010 with the Reflectivity- from .50 (depending on other settings the vendor uses) to .77 (I start high and then go lower, but the one's I've tried do great at .77 IMO)
4. The metallicity / translucency / dual lobe may darken / change skin tones to more blue, so in the SSS Reflectance Tint, do MINISCULE color changes. Try 255 / 242 / 239 to correct blue skin tones. It's a really, really light whitish pink, barely noticeable but makes a big difference.
5. Make sure Glossy Reflectivity is at 1.00 Turn down your Glossy Roughness a couple tenths. (Many are .50 so turn that down to .48)
6. Last, increase your Saturation 1.15 to 1.28 to bring color back into your person. (Saturation is in the Render pane, in Tone Mapping.)
The characters below do NOT have these newest edits.
So open each in a separate window and click back and forth for the first four. The first one is the default skin, the second is mine with the metallicity and metallic flakes, etc (for the portrait one, and the first standing pose.) Then the last two are with the metallicity and fine tuning. I like a more "sweaty" skin for outdoor people, but even indoors- some of the characters seem a bit "dry." It will all depend on your lighting too.
Default
With Metallicity
Before and After
Afters
Wow the skins look fab with metallicity added. I’ll be using this tip. Thank you,
@worldsedge You're welcome. I just checked, that was with just the default Iray lighting. I did allude to it in the post, but your lighting will make a HUGE difference so far as the reflections. I'd try increasing the bumps before lowering the metallicity or flakes, etc.
You can probably make some really cool aliens with metallicity and changing the skin color to blue, green, etc.
I haven't messed with changing the materials via editors, EDIT: this product is in the studio already. Why is it for sale?
Oh, ICK. It is raining heavily but just seconds ago started changing into pellets of ice. It's really cool though, to hear it "pinging" off the concrete around the pool. The Pensacola folks were smart- they cancelled the schools YESTERDAY for today. I always hated it when in the Midwest, we had to wait until the morning OF school to find out if it was a no-go or not. And there were times it should have been closed and wasn't, we'd get to school, then they would close early. Much better weather detection systems now though. I think they got caught off guard with additional incoming weather that they can predict now.
My neighbor has a hose running on a tree to create an ice tree. But that's risky, limbs can break with that much weight because it's not natural.
I haven't found anything in the BOGO sale yet. @ladair you got some fun stuff!
Oh hey, talk about cool. Be sure and look at all the thumbnails on this one. Look at the eyebrow shapes, and all the options this character has. Snuck by me the first time. CC Lily for Genesis 8 Female Kudos to @changelingChick for an innovative character!
And an outfit that I actually like because it is a bit out of the box. Felicity Outfit for Genesis 8 Female also has a unique purse, and I like the soles on the shoes. Look at the sitting down thumbnail, the dress looks really nice. These are both in featured stores. Oh, how funny. What are the chances? I picked this outfit by @amaranth and then for the gallery image of the character I like (next paragraph) the artist is amaranth! Here's a gallery done by the artist.
Another one in ChangelingChick's store is CC Cillian. Look at this gallery pic by @amaranth and perhaps give it a thumbs up/ comment if you like it. Also @glenwebb has this gallery image. Ciara is really funky, look at the different thumbs to see the skins.
Not really liking this ultra dark main promo as I think it's a bit difficult for buyers to see the product. As it's competing with the other products launched that day, it probably got a bit lost in the shuffle. I'm not sure how I feel about that raincoat, anyone have it that's rendered it?
Going out to see if it's snowing (3:30am)
Notice the disclaimer at the bottom of the description:
I am so thankful I have a computer capable of running the latest DS. For now, anyway.
Nothing at all. If that's the look you're going for. In this case, I was trying for the "hint of sweat" look. With the lighting I'm using, I actually ended up turning down the effect on her face.
I may have some images on this computer from the ice on the tree in my front yard. It was really bad. A lot of people lost trees that year. I had a curly willow I'd planted from a 12" cutting in 2007. to give my office some shade in the afternoons. It was maybe 50-65 feet tall when the storm hit. (Hard to tell while on the ground looking up.) Those trees are brittle because the grow so fast. And every single branch off of the trunk broke. Some fell off completely, and there was a lot of breakage further out from the trunk. We had to cut the whole thing down. It simply wasn't salvagable.
So, I'm going to put "deliberately trying to create an ice tree" in the category of "dumb and dumber"...
Found the folder, but they're all raw images, except for one.
As for the BOGO sale, it's getting harder to find things I think I can use. I'm planning on getting Riversoft Art's latest billboard product, and that qualifies for another free product. I just don't know if I want to spend the time looking!
ETA: Quickly processed some images for you. These are from Feb 2014. One of the tree two days earlier when it was snowing. Looks like Ron's brushes, but no postwork on these. lol... Two more showing the front and back of the tree with a number of limbs on the ground and several more hanging off the trunk. Several more fell before the ice finally melted. (Feel free to show these to your neighbor!)
@ladair Oh, that's really pretty! I've never heard of a curly willow.
Not snowing currently, just about 1/4" or more ice on everything and wind blusterying up to 25mph or more. There shouldn't be any dogs outside but I heard one barking. If I hear it again, I'm really tempted to go leave a nasty note on their car. "You're WARM inside, what IDIOT leaves an animal out in this? Wish it were YOU."
So did you try the correct settings for metallicity on your character?
Yes!!! Shadow, the feral black cat that I feed every day (usually 3:30pm-5:30p in winter, right before it gets dark) was out there in his heated pad tent just now at 4:10am. I have two heavy quilted comforters thrown over two three feet potted plants, it makes a tent underneath, then I have lambswool pads and a heating pad that operates 24 hours without shutting off in the tent. It's on the front porch right by the door, so heat also comes off the brick if it's been a sunny day.
So I gave him another can of heated cat food. I can't touch him at all, but he lets me get within a foot or two the past couple years. So he's got a warm meal and bed, but he does't stay put normally. Maybe he will stay an hour or two since the sun hasn't come up yet and it's so unusual with the ice. He wasn't out there (been checking starting midnight, through 2am-3:30am), so I'm glad he came. Now I can go to bed :) It's not snowing, we missed out on that. Just this yucky ice.
Have you guys rendered the stuff you bought waaaay back in the PA sale? Too many goodies.
It's also called the Corkscrew Willow, as well as "Tortuosa"... And I added some images to my post. Don't want you to miss those!
Forget about leaving a note... just call animal control. Unless they are out in it, walking the dog, they don't deserve the privilege. (IMHO)
Yes. I didn't let my golden girl finish rendering. The first thing I did was try .098 instead of .98, but I had a feeling you'd want to know... She's looking quite beautiful now.
BTW folks, they fixed the (apparently) glitch. The free item was counting as a purchased item and you could get a BOGO item with it. Apparently it only lasted a couple of minutes. I was a good girl and only used it once. I thought it must be a glitch, but they do NOT have it posted that the item has to be a certain price from the page. It does say "buy" though.
I really didn't need anything from the BOGO, I ended up with a Genesis character!
Yeah, missed it...
Not suprised. It was pretty quick. If there's ever a free item in the "must buy" page, check that right away when the store turns over. I caught it a few minutes ago, used it once, really old stuff is showing for me other than things I simply don't want and would never showcase. I've got too many other things from the PA sales that are backlogged to render. Then got told it wasn't working.
I'm surprised it isn't posted. I've noticed a number of recent promos that state, "Qualifying purchase must be over $1"...
One thing's for sure, Daz will have to start including Genesis 2 in the Legacy content, or promos like this one will have no "incentive to buy" for me. Probably true for anyone who's been around here long enough to already have just about everything we actually want from the Genesis era and earlier!