What I wish I knew...
Scott Livingston
Posts: 4,344
The more I render, the more I learn. And the more I learn, the more I realize there is to know... :)
So, out of curiosity...
- What are you trying to learn (or what skills are you trying to improve) right now?
- What do you wish you knew, but haven't yet tried to learn?
- Or, what do you know now that you wish you'd known earlier?
Feel free to answer any (or all) of the above...
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Me?
- Learning the Subsurface Shader. Learning Bryce. And trying to improve my lighting skills...always...
- I wish I knew content creation, especially modelling and texturing. But I haven't put much effort into it, yet.
- What I wish I had learned earlier:
- Troubleshooting the Smart Content Pane
- In the Content Library, how a lot of props and figures can be found under Poser Formats but their materials are in DAZ Studio Formats
- In Bryce, that little triangle at the bottom, towards the right side: "Select Options..." And some of the other nearby selection tools.
For me it's...
1. Learning how to get facial expressions correct and not too scary.
2. Body posing.
3. Lighting.
4. Modelling. Hexagon just crashed on me for the last time. I'm done with it, and DAZ's credibility just took a hit.
For me, hmm, I guess I am trying to improve my modelling skills and texturing. I invested a bit into some tools to help with that and I am progressing nicely. Faster than I originally thought. Not a pro status that's for sure but good enough to give a few freebies away here and there.
Joint controlled morphs and morph controlled morphs
Creating Joint Controlled Morphs
Fairly straightforward to create the morphs and setup, but its a little time consuming though,
That's a bit out of date so I won't use that one there's no property editor any more it's call property Hierarchy
and is done a totally different way, no docs yet!
There's only one thing I really want to learn right now. How to get better skin results in Luxus without breaking it. I'm not even joking.
I have some absolute horror stories with my material settings trying to work with skin, and I have absolutely no idea what is causing them. Even trying to copy the Reality material settings verbatim has given some ghoulishly glowing figures when working through Luxus. Most of the renders you'll see from me using it were just leaving Luxus to its own automatic conversions and only tweaking the other remaining materials. Bizarrely, this only happens on figures, never the hair or other attributes in the scene.
I'm tempted to post my material settings in the Luxus thread to try and get some solutions, or at least some fresh ideas to try out. Skin is probably one of the trickiest materials no matter what render engine you use, but it would be nice to know I'm on the right track at least.
I bought Silo because of reading about that problem. Doesn't happen with everyone but it happens enough that it gets mentioned. I haven't tried Silo yet, so that is on my "to do" list. Sorry to hear you had that happen :(
What I learned that some other folks didn't know either (cause I asked) was that when in the light view, you are moving the light and not the view. I kept wondering why my lighting changed when I went back to Perspective view! Everyone kept mentioning the viewport and perspective view, top view, etc- but it just happened that I never found posts about the lights view and that they MOVED the light.
I've just started experimenting with cameras and I wish I'd taken the plunge earlier.
I always struggle with lighting so that's a major area for study in the future. Also dformers, clothing handles and the fearsome Hexagon.
One thing I discovered the hard way: close the eyes by about 30%. Wide open eyes give a zombie like stare.
I would honestly recommend looking at tutorials on drawing poeple.
http://warrenlouw.deviantart.com/art/IFX-Strike-A-Pose-163076761
I know that sounds odd but once you learn how to observe human movement you can better recreate it in 3D. And you wont need any special tools to do it either. I only use the node selection tool and the Parameters Tab in DS and it works perfectly.
How or why? For the latter, the ability to have a script (such as a material preset) run when an identically named Poser file is run was not in DS1 - I think it came in early in DS2) - so initially the DS materials had to be in the DS content library but .daz scenes files were not often used for the base models, because people were still learning their way around DS or in some cases because the DS files were created by someone other than the original content creator.
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As for what I want to learn, all sorts - I have a stack of useful applications I don't really know how to work with beyond a very surface level.
I want to learn how to steal Richard's knowledge while he sleeps.
Oops, did I say that out loud? Haha, just kidding, there's nothing strange with your pillow, you'll get used to the lumpiness.
For me, it's really picking up something I started studying back when DS3 was first released. Writing Renderman shaders. The last week or two I've been reading theory papers from university researchers and ACM published work. Slow going as the math gets very complicated, and the authors often assume that you already are well versed in advanced math concepts (and especially the symbols that they use for things).
How or why? For the latter, the ability to have a script (such as a material preset) run when an identically named Poser file is run was not in DS1 - I think it came in early in DS2) - so initially the DS materials had to be in the DS content library but .daz scenes files were not often used for the base models, because people were still learning their way around DS or in some cases because the DS files were created by someone other than the original content creator.
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As for what I want to learn, all sorts - I have a stack of useful applications I don't really know how to work with beyond a very surface level.
By "how," I only meant "the fact that." As in, it would have been good to learn that fact earlier than I did. Thanks for the explanation, though! :)
That's a bit out of date so I won't use that one there's no property editor any more it's call property Hierarchy
and is done a totally different way, no docs yet!
JCMs/MCMs/the Property Hierarchy is high on my list of "things I wish I knew," also. I was actually thinking "I should learn how to use the Property Editor" when they went and changed it! :lol:
Luxus and Lux materials as well, though I'm gradually making progress there.
Focusing on three things at the moment....
-- Content Creation (Working on rigging and final packaging.)
-- UV Mapping and Texturing
-- Learning zBrush for the first time
On going studies continue with...
-- modo and other 3D packages, including DAZ Studio. (Damned if I don't want to learn it all... modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering, animation, etc. Oh, for another life! My primary love, though, is modeling.)
Outside of the digital world...
-- I'm teaching myself fine wood carving. (Realistic carvings of imaginary people, creatures, and things in the round... not caricatures per se. Building on my experience as a carpenter and furniture maker.)
The word for today is perhaps "Ambitious". ;-) :-P
I try not to set myself up for too much, my attention gets scattered so much that I usually end up with tons of projects going on at one time.
But this is what I have in the works,
-- Lighting, I have the hang of portrait lighting but when it comes to scenes I am still lost.
-- Rendering, Daz has this render engine that just perplexes me and if I could only get the gist of it I would really go far with Genesis.
-- Modeling, okay so I have tons of drawings and ideas for things but after trying my hand with some of the modeling programs I am lost
-- Making skin textures
Nope...they are speaking some foreign language to most math 'geeks' too...probably the only ones that truly understand it, without needing some sort of translation are those with a background in optical physics or optics.
I decided to settle for a minor in math, when I was looking at a differential equation that the prof said should take between 9 and 12 hrs to solve and said..."why am I doing this?" (DiffEq was the dividing line between a major in math and a minor...I dropped it in heartbeat and was satisfied with my minor...)
-Zbrush. Everyone who uses this thing and says Blender is a difficult interface deserves a kick, in my opinion. I'm glad there are so many tutorials! I'm learning to use it, but I'll always be less comfortable with programs that push me away from the base polygons (at least until we reach the day when poly count is no longer meaningful).
-Seamless texturing in BlackSmith3D/RealityPaint. I just haven't had time to commit to really learning to composite with this thing, but I feel it can do a lot more.
-Krita. It has some capability the GIMP does not have, like handling 32 bit float on textures, but I haven't put in the time on this yet either.
I am a 100% scatter brain. I'm happy to know the few things I do know about Daz Studio. But things I need to know better..
Cameras, I never used Real life cameras so setting up DS or other cameras are beyond my scope.
Lighting, I can muddle through and get semi okay lighting mostly but often I fail and load a preset.
To SLOW DOWN, any render worth doing is going to take time to set up, time in will equal quality out. See above.
Things I am working on but still need to know are... Rigging, not Figures just props. I started a simple project a few months ago that has turned unto a bigger than I planned project. Doors that open and close properly from Dials (and Windows as well) are still things I'm working on.
Texturing, is another thing that looks so easy for props, until you start doing it. Getting some detail in your textures so your mesh count stays low is much harder than the PA's make it look. After this project opened my eyes to what I did not know from what I thought I knew, I respect the PA's much more than I did in the past.
I wish I knew...
How to keep my CMS's products and categories from constantly crashing and corrupting. Seriously, I've got no problem with either DS3A or DS4.6 on my older computer, but my new render monster seems to lose everything constantly. Both machines are quad core i7s running Windows 7 Ultimate, so the main difference is that the new one has DS installed on an SSD.
Beyond that, I'm trying to figure out how to handle multiple collisions on a single figure. I know DS can make geometry shells, but I'll be damned if I've ever found any documentation beyond "Yes, it has it."
Oh, and I also wish I knew why only a few vendors supply facial expressions for Genesis on sliders. Is it really that much harder to make them that way?
I'm always trying to improve my modeling and texturing skills. And every time I looks through a tutorial on any 3D application I always come back to my good old Cheetah3D (Mac OS X only) which still is the modeler that my mind seems to like the best. And I always tty to improve poses, expressions and lighting, you can never say you have mastered those.
I wish I've learned more about shader mixer and shader building. I have so many ideas but my brain rails into FilterForge thinking and then I derail the shader mixer ;-)
I really wish that I had taken the time when I started to understand the difference between Poser and DS materials and how to fix that. I struggled with that for a fair amount of time in the beginning, which was what kept my renders from being successful. Lighting is another area where it took some time.
But I'm probably excused, I didn't even know a new user forum existed back then.
Nope...they are speaking some foreign language to most math 'geeks' too...probably the only ones that truly understand it, without needing some sort of translation are those with a background in optical physics or optics.
I decided to settle for a minor in math, when I was looking at a differential equation that the prof said should take between 9 and 12 hrs to solve and said..."why am I doing this?" (DiffEq was the dividing line between a major in math and a minor...I dropped it in heartbeat and was satisfied with my minor...)
I call this expert's syndrome - the subconcious assumption that because something is obvious to an expert it must be obvious to everyone else as well. The Visual Basic for Applications manual for Corel Photopaint is completely incomprehensible to anyone except an expert in VBA. Sadly, some of the PAs here at DAZ are prone to it and I've also seen it in some Renderosity products. An honourable exception is the Lotus Gown bundle at RuntimeDNA. This comes with two PDF manuals, one 23 pages and the other 24!
My girls also have that blank stare but I don't mind they're usually cranky anyway.
Lighting is always a hard task to accomplish-sometimes you get it sometimes you don't.
Shaders-I'm crap at getting that perfect high shine.
I wished I knew what I was buying in the beginning-I have clothing for everyone but only a few base characters.
Most of all I'm very grateful to have a community behind me that offers their knowledge so freely...that's rare.
Hope to return the favor one day
For a total beginner I've managed to come up with some ok work in a short amount of time.
Daz has kept my spirits high through a crappy time in my life
So much still left to learn!
I wish I knew what every single dial, button and menu option would do within DAZ...
The render setup, especially the Luxus Setup, those dials are Incomprehensible and there are so many of them.
Things I'm getting better at: I finally found I fairly good explination of the shader settings which I printing out and taped to the side of my computer. It's not perfect, but combined with some of the new cameras coming out I'm finally getting consistant results with different figures looking the same style in the same picture. It's not even a realistic style, but I want all the people and object to look drawn in the same way. I love the Luxus for individual pictures, but don't use it for tooning.