Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Aye well, I'm just still at the stage of prodding and poking the controls and seeing what happens. I'm happy to get anything. I usually prefer plastic like materials or anistropic metals - glass would be nice too... But you know, I keep getting distracted making models. Here's some recipes to try out. (A bakers dozen, so if you reject the partially Topmod one, I still don't get hanged).
Wings 3D project - wings things with loops - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - wings things with loops 2 - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - wings things with loops 3 - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - wings mobius cluster recipe - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D/Topmod project - double cross mobius - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - compact mobius pair - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - wrapped torus knot - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - twisted mobius cube interlocking shape thing* - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - another twisted looped cube thing - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - interlinked mobius loops another way or three - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - interlocking torus knots - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - chain link torus knots - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - interlocking mobius torus knot - by David Brinnen
Adam, thank you for your answers, but isn't there a certain satisfaction with making your own models, even if they are just simple curious little shapes? How about this one? A single loop going around four times, paired up so that the spars pass in through the holes left by the previous and the next spar... so it forms a pair of strips that is in fact just one mobius strip passing around itself...
Undoubtedly there is... I simply have yet to find a modelling program I get along with. Most them end up with my bloodpressure near critical. ^_^;;
The only thing I've ever done anything "cool" with is Sculptris, but even that frustrates me. I know what I want it to do but at times getting it to do that seems to be a challenge.
Is this a rorschach test? I see a Half Life headcrab. :P
Ah, well when it comes to modeling I'm a bit lazy, I like the computer to do all the work while I sit back and ponder the abstract relationships between the shapes and the spaces around them. Have you tried Wings 3D? It's free! And... it's quick. Like all software it does somethings well and others... not so well, but what it does well, it does quickly and without much fuss...
I made this this morning before work - if I sound a bit groggy it's because I'd not had enough coffee.
Wings 3D project - 36 section chain link loop - by David Brinnen
Wings 3D project - 32 section twisted chain link loop - by David Brinnen
This is Octane. Lovely Octane. I wonder how well DS talks to Octane? Anyone tried the plugin?
Is this a rorschach test? I see a Half Life headcrab. :P
Rorschach you say?
Bryce 5 minute scene project - random inkblot generator - a tutorial by David Brinnen
Yeah, I've tried Wings, but it's probably been 2 or more years. I should try it again I suppose.
Interesting thread.
I'd like to participate a bit if you allow me
Here are some experiments I made quite a few month ago. I was experimenting with surface and displacement shader
There are 3 cubes on the first one
On the second, there is Suzanne, a sphere, a cube and a polyedral volume
The advantage of Octane over the other renderers is spectral light and pathtracing (not counting on GPU renders which cuts time) and it's material database which give users less fiddling with shaders. I don't know for Bryce yet, but for 3delight and other renderman engines, the problem with SSS is that the ray is blocked when encountering any geometry. That is one of the reasons to the difficulty to get beautifull SSS effects with such renderers
Interesting results indeed Takeo.Kensei, I am impressed with DS's displacement particularly since Bryce's does not work. On the question of Octane, if displacement is used in DS and then plugin is used, I wonder how that is handled, because as far as I can tell, Octane does not yet support displacement - it probably will - Otoy seem keen on developing their engine, but not right now.
Oh, in celebration of my 200th youtube tutorial. And my 7th DS render...
Wings 3D project - two part twisted woven cube - by David Brinnen
Adam, I don't recommend you start with this tutorial. It's a bit tricky all around.
Render's DS, Bryce and Octane respectively.
Hmm... Loving all this, glad the hint got you over the hump David. Might need Wings myself now. Do not think I've looked at it in a very long time. I'm so seeing a perfect DNA helix in my future.
I don't know for displacement in octane, I guess any displacement wil be unused. I guess it would slow down the rendering a lot so having it not implemented may be a strategic choice ( I dont have it, just tested the demo once.)
I didn't know that displacement didn't work in bryce. Is the feature broken or did it never work?
Btw, congrats on your skill with Bryce. I knew it has a good render engine from the few tests I made but lurking in Bryce forum some times, I saw some of your renders and discovered It is far better than what I expected. I'll really explore Bryce one day
Edit* Looking good, David. When do the DS classes start then? I'll go get a note book.
Occasionally I drop in and have a look at the 3Delight manual. This thing makes the LuxRender wiki look like kindergarten arts class http://www.3delight.com/en/uploads/docs/3delight/3delight_40.html#SEC170
I'll have to take a look around in a rib file when using ubersurface or age of armour's base and have a see how it compares with what's in the manual. Seems 3Delight can do very good SSS. Well you only have to look at the promo images or the manual for age of armour's shader base to catch a glimpse. http://www.daz3d.com/subsurface-shader-base
Don't forget the gummy too! www.daz3d.com/subsurface-gummy-plastic-shaders
if you make sure to apply separate materials to each object in Wings3D, even if they end up welded in DS, the Surface editor in DS will still see separate material zones even though the Scene list only shows 2 objects.
Jaderail, Wings I heartily recommend, it has a lean stripped back interface that somehow does everything you need without filling up all the available space. If you want DNA, that would be relatively easy. Show me what you are looking for and I will see what I can figure out.
Takeo. Displacement is badly broken in Bryce. :( What we really needed was normal mapping to improve compatibility over the DS bridge. What would be really cool would be parallax mapping. What does work nicely indeed is an-isotropic effects and the HDRI lighting handling is very good and pathfinding rendering (TA mode) very good - render times are comparable with DS for high fidelity rendering it seems.
Jim, I'm a way from being in a position to know what I'm doing. Thanks for the links. So much to learn and playing with Octane is very very absorbing.
Rareth, Thanks for the tips!
OK here is render number 8. Another wings shape. So we have DS, practical Bryce and lovely Octane.
I was able to use Horo's Anteroom HDRI for both Bryce and Octane, hopefully Horo will figure out how to port his into DS soon and we can have a look at that. I don't know what the current state of IBL handling is in DS but the last time we looked a year ago, the system was bugged. Horo's looking again now. Hopefully the new versions have brought fixes for this along with them... we will see.
David, I know you're just starting to find your way about. I'm just astonished by the pace of your development with the program. It just goes to show what one can accomplish with a bit of focus. Admittedly you do come to DS with a lot of knowledge on the topic in general, but even then... My development with my various programs has faltered as of late. Blogging and hardware have kept me out of the programs for the best part of the last two or three months.
You can use UberEnvironment 2 to get IBL in DS. Won't accept HDR though. You will need to convert the image to .tiff, jpg, or png. All of Omnifreaker's tools, such as UberEnvironment are incredibly under documented, but if you have any questions I should be able to help some.UE, particularly the GI bounce mode was one of the elements I did a good deal of study on in the recent past.
Thank you Jim for the words of encouragement and the offer of help. I'll pass those onto Horo - I think he has your email and he can relate to you the tale of IBL in DS. As for progress, it depends on real world work, if I have plenty of work I have to put the hobby to one side to get it done, otherwise if work is thin on the ground, no money, so I stay in and tinker on the computer.
@jimzombie - I know, the HDRI in DS needs to be 96-bit TIFF and the environment map can be jpg or png. What bugs me is that the HDRI and environment map are not mapped in synch - though they move in synch. Also, in UE2 the env map is mapped on the outside of the env sphere and the camera is inside, which means that the env map must be mirrored.
There are work-arounds to this, which I haven't discovered yet - except of preparing the HDRI and LDRI to match. What also irritates me is that the light generated is not consistent. Using the same test HDRI with one single light works fine in Bryce and Octane, but not in DS (and Carrara).
Since some folks expressed an interest in the shape.
Wings 3D project - icosahedron twisted loop - by David Brinnen
A quick Octane render for speed. Busy day it seems.
I always suspected that the IBL and env map didn't match up. I rarely use it that way, and I suspect this was one of the reasons. Maybe DAZ could be convinced to fix it?
What is the issue you are having with the additional light? I'm not quite following.
Another nice render David. Looks like one of those never ending puzzles that I can never quite get.
There was some interest from DAZ for the issue at the time but no following up.
There are issues with the light generated by the HDRI. I put up tests I made yestersay in the thread (#37).
David, I've been gobsmaked by what you've done in Bryce and its great to see what you can do in Studio. I'd love to see you dabble with Luxus settings, as Octane is a bit pricey.
Think I'd give Wing3d a try, after seeing you amazing renders.
Thank you for your kind remarks. But really I'm over dabbled at the moment. I've got so much to learn! DS, Octane and Wings 3D. I seem to be making steady progress with Wings - it all makes sense with Wings, what you do has an immediate effect, that really helps. The same is true for Octane too - there's a lot to be said for instant feedback. DS is proving more opaque. So really, I dare not add anything else to the list. I did consider Luxus and any number of other render engines, but Octane won me over with its light. Even with the graphics card, it wasn't as much as Bryce 5.0 was when it hit the shelves. Admittedly, all you get is a render engine, it's pretty bare bones, you need to build everything up from scratch, it's elemental, but for light - worth it in my view.
So... I've been preoccupied with Wings 3D. Mostly thanks to Topmod being so blessedly unstable in my clumsy paws. Here's where I am so far in this project. Next up materials I think... or lighting. That's the challenge.
DS_render10, a Bryce styalised render and lovely Octane. DS is still doing it's best to break my spirit, today it trapped my head in a cage and filled it with hungry rats. But I'm still battling along. Here I tried my hand at DOF, but I really can't detect the results. So maybe I missed a control.
Edit. The uploaded decided to change the order. So it's now Bryce, DS and Octane. How odd.
OK I can see now why DS users might struggle with the Bryce material lab and DTE. The DS shader mixer is exceedingly verbose by comparison and looks like it has the potential to be ultra flexible. I thought I might be able to just take a crack at it and get something out of it, but in the end I crumbled and watched a couple of tutorials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCTScRsv2_A and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etQxetv4c1Y if you are curious where I got my strategy from.
So well, this is my first attempt at some material built from scratch. In the shader mixer it looks like a bit of a monster. This could be done in the Bryce DTE in about a two inch square of the screen. Different approach. Octane too is far more compact than this. Bryce I suppose is the most opaque till you get a feel for what you are doing, DS is going to be easier to learn and more obviously adaptable but I suspect it will prove far less fluid because of the sprawling interface. We will see... early days yet.
I managed this in about an hour and an half and with only minimal bouts of frustration and despair. I almost experienced a twinge of pleasure when I found out what variable P was. Wish I had access to that in Bryce!
Oh my, I spoke too soon. Glass! Well, that brought things to a grinding halt. So is there some issue with rendering glass in DS or is it my approach that's all wrong I wonder... While DS number crunched what I'd given it. Chronic digestion it seems, I spat out a five minute Bryce render - using a "glassy" special effect material. And also here's an Octane render. I think it's pretty clear which is which, but if in doubt, the images are named appropriately.
All three renders utilise Horo's Anteroom HDRI in some way to create either light or a specular response of some kind.
Node based editing is the new standard for shaders in most render engines now from what I've seen. While nodes can be a learning curve and have some unintuitive naming conventions, DS seems to be more so compared to other programs. Filter Forge 4.0's main new feature is the ability to group a set of nodes and the collapse them so blocks of nodes, like formulas can be reused and the resulting view can be simplified.
As a side note, I personally believe programming will go this route eventually also, with the only people writing 'code' for the most part being people who create the nodes.... want a db connector, or an xml parser, just drop in a node...
I do good glass settings with basic shaders as I find you don't need to make things any more complicated than necessary (most sets I do with Art Collab (with my name on or not) just have basic glass settings)
Like this all done with the basic DS settings.
Greetings,
They've been trying for a while now. Still no luck making anything more complicated than a simple CRUD database app. On the other hand, there's a legion of VB programmers who don't do anything fundamentally more complicated than that, so I suppose it's been successful to that extent.Shader Mixing, thats like the dark arts to me. Runs away and hides.