I need help picking Alessandro_AM assets to buy (LAMH, bears)

heathermaydavies

Hi! Long story short, I am looking to buy a specific set of assets for a specific purpose. I want to make some renders of bears to use for book covers. These renders will be of bears in poses, sometimes in groups, on transparent backgrounds, to composite in Photoshop later on my covers. These are very simple images to make, so even a newbie like me can do it! 

I am very impressed by Alessandro_AM's work and am wondering which of the packages I should buy, and if LAMH (Look At My Hair) is needed/recommended/compatible to use with these packages.

The packages in question:

Brown Bear by Alessandro_AM is the item I absolutely want to buy: https://www.daz3d.com/brown-bear-by-am

Bear Cubs is an item I am interested in: https://www.daz3d.com/bear-cubs-by-am

Ursus Arctos is another 'adult' bear asset: https://www.daz3d.com/ursus-arctos

LAMH - Look At My Hair: https://www.daz3d.com/look-at-my-hair

Grizzly Bear Action by Don Albert: https://www.daz3d.com/grizzly-bear-action

 

Here are my questions:

1.) Do I need LAMH to use Alessandro's assets? I do not see it listed as a requirement but I saw conflicting info on the forum via search. For instance, Brown Bear is listed as having the colors...

• Brown Bear - Golden Fur - Standard
• Brown Bear - Golden Fur - 3Delight LAMH
• Brown Bear - Golden Fur - Iray Catalyzer

...so does that mean that there's a varient of the fur that's designed for use with LAMH?

2.) Can LAMH be applied to Alessandro's assets to make them look even better? For instance, Bear Cubs doesn't look as good as Brown Bear, so could I improve that asset via LAMH?

3.) What's the learning curve like for LAMH?

4.) Brown Bear and Ursus Arctos are obviously very different assets. Ursus Arctos is older, and the model is different. Is it worth getting Ursus Arctos in addition to Brown Bear, or, if I get Brown Bear, is that asset SO much better than Ursus Arctos that I should skip Ursus Arctos altogether?

5.) Grizzly Bear Action is a set of poses by Don Albert -- not Alessandro. It is listed as working with Ursus Arctos. Would this set of poses also work with Brown Bear or Bear Cubs? Can I apply sets of poses for animals to the animals they're not meant for, and have them work pretty much as expected?

6.) Not to be a jerk, but, the default Bear Cubs images look nowhere nearly as good as Brown Bear (although they do look good, and I understand they are older assets). However, I saw this image of an adult bear and a cub bear on the Brown Bear page: 

https://www.daz3d.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/b/r/brown-bear-by-am-09-daz3d.jpg

This cub looks VERY good! Does anyone know what assets were used to make that cub? Can I apply LAMH to the Bear Cubs assets to make them look like that cub?

7.) Are there any other assets folks recommend I use with the Alessandro_AM Brown Bear asset? Any props? Any HDRIs? This is less a 'technical' question and more a question of personal taste, and I am very open minded and curious!

8.) If I am doing image processing in Photoshop, do I really need to buy premium HDRIs?

L'Adair

@heathermaydavies, I don't know the answers to all your questions. Here's what I do know.

Look At My Hair (LAMH) was developed for the 3Delight render engine. It does not work natively with Iray. If you have a product with an LAMH preset, you can open it in the premium version of LAMH and convert it to fiber mesh fur. If you only have the free player, you can convert the fur to OBJ. Both OBJ fur and fiber mesh fur will render in Iray. Fiber mesh is preferable to OBJ.

The LAMH2Catalyzer currently works only with Catalyzer presets for AM's animals, though the oldest animals, including Ursus Arctos, do not have the Catalyzer presets. I believe the Brown Bear is actually a remake of Ursus Arctos, taking it from a Poser asset to Daz Studio, as well as getting the Catalyzer treatment. AM also says the remake of the Polar Bear is coming soon.

I have the paid version of LAMH, had it for years, and I have never been able to create hair with it. I have used it to modify presets that came with various products I've purchased, and I still consider it a worthwhile investment. However, if you don't need to create hair, you may not need to buy it. You will definitely want the Catalyzer, though.

All four of the bear cubs have been updated with Catalyzer presets. I don't believe the promo images were updated, though. I believe the brown bear cub in the promor image you linked to is the brown bear cub in the bundle, with the Catalyzer preset applied. both are his products, so it stands to reason that's what he used.

My gut says the poses for Ursus Arctos will not work with the Brown Bear.

You're going to need good lighting for rendering your bears. Many of the HDRIs will give very natural lighting, perfect for outdoor renders, (unless your bears are in a zoo setting?) You don't have to render the sky, though, just because you are using it to light the scene. If you set Draw Dome to Off, you get the benefit of the lighting and the convenience of a transparent background, with can be very useful in post work.

There are free to use HDRIs available in a number of places, but if the renders you're doing will be going onto book covers, and those books will be for sale, you'll need the Commercial Use license that comes with the premium, (paid,) HDRIs.

I feel like I've only scratched the surface here. I hope this information is helpful.

Roman_K2

I think the questions are quite valid. A lot depends on how much effort you want to put into such a project.

I've found this stuff challenging -- you have to comb and style the model's "fur" or hair "nodes" if you are using LAMH from scratch or you want to make a blue Smurf or some other furry thing out of a primitive or the Emotiguy -- and I'm tempted to call it an advanced feature, like water or glass or making your own clothing in Hexagon. Apparently there is a new or updated manual for LAMH (that the office gave me a few months back; I confess to not having read it yet)... so my bad I guess.

I bought the oldest bear a few years ago; it's a grizzly if I'm not mistaken, and the LAMH-based, "fur suit" that comes with it seemed ok. You just pose and render. Save as .TIFF files to get the transparency for porting the rendered figures elsewhere. Again, my personal experience has been that LAMH is difficult, but if I remember correctly the grizzly bear was quite doable without LAMH.

Now, the kicker to this is the lighting. Up until now I've not "lit" my bear in any fancy way but I have done extremely subtle figure work with Iray lights. So I would imagine that if an experienced user were to really go to town on the bear and the various fur and lighting options you could really do good stuff. As example there are expensive hair props in the store that come with dedicated Iray materials; sometimes I catch the edges of the hair "just so" with my lights, and it looks like a real fashion shoot but for me the lights seem very hard to control.

For what it's worth here is my 3DL render of the bear. "Sticky Toffee" is the name of my dog; in my original story line the dog would head down to the waterfall when the fish were running, and the bears would share their lunch with him, bla bla. In my case I ended up doing the bear a different way.