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...and More, But I'll keep this Brief ;)
From eerie to awe... these are perfect for anything from dramatic to majestic - take your pick. It's all how we set the lighting and camera angles. The music will help set the mood too!
And these are Excellent for adding really "Real" looking rocks and stones to Any scene. I use these for all sorts of things - especially forgrounds and places for characters to stand. Again, Andrey Pestryakov is really efficient, so these sorts of things can be included right in the Character render - excellent for use when using the massive kits mentioned above to get the backing plate footage!
And I also picked up the more legacy Forest Bundle, which is a Really Great Product! I love it and he's got some really cool videos about using it. Included is the final Forest Elements, which helps to bring the original products up to date with Daz Studio 4.5's advancements. All in all, I enjoy working with this cool set of products!
This video shows the original Promo of The Forest, which helps to show how excellent the product is, but also how less photogenic it is compared to Andrey's newer Iray kits. These sorts of environments still hold a lot of vlaue to me. For instance, it would be perfect for a toon-style forest setting!
Back into Space
I only spent a little extra time this evening working on this - namely adding the LoRez people and tidying up some things - nothing major.
One thing, however, is that I've done a better job optimizing my Stardome from TheDigivault, so that it's emissive light isn't as strong so that the HDRI doesn't have to be turned quite as low - so a little more of the HDRI illumination enters the ship's bridge. So this is done via Translucency on the stardome. I'm still only running the HDRI at .3 intensity, but the affect that it has on the dome isn't nearly as drastic.
The LoRez people will become filler people - not the stars of the show as these images would indicate. I made these cameras to help with placement and setting up their aniBlocks. Yes, they're all going about their duties on the Astro Commander. Astro Commander? Yes.
Instead of opting for the AstroMaster Cockpit, I'm using the Commander star ship bridge, so the Astro had to be scaled up a bit. Quite a bit. Which is what I wanted - a Much larger vessel to allow me to use a bunch of Petipet's Star Ship interiors as the mid ship and lower decks. Now it can hold all that I wanted to use in that regard.
I used Mesh Grabber to help align everything - only having to delete tiny bits of Commander using Geometry Editor. If you look, you can see the Commanders vast hallways leading out the rear of the bridge - one on either side and one that goes beyond the lift, just below Security Officer Gordon, who is So Cool, he's going to be replaced by a Genesis figure. Above him, the lift will take us to one of the ships airlocks. The corridors all meet up nicely in the rear cargo compartment of the ship, thanks to Mesh Grabber and a lot of patience!
One of the big aspects of the newly redesigned Stradome is that the ship is no longer so entirely unlit when viewed from outside. I didn't want it "Lit", but I didn't want it dark either. Using the HDRI that comes with Polish's Cyberpunk Back Alley Bundle turned out really nice. Rotating it gives very different effects - and I can always load in some of my others for more of the excellent maps that come with TheDigivault's Stardome!
Okay, I know what you're thinking... Vulcan, right? Nope. Ciren is actually some sort of Space Elf.
SRB hasn't got his actual name yet, but he's a talented science officer - keeping the Astro Commander in tip-top running condition - with the help of his crew, of course.
...and this is Rosie's Command chair. It's the old legacy Modular Command Chair that was among my first orders at Daz 3d and I still love this thing!
In normal rendering conditions, this will be absent, since Rosie will almost always be rendered separately, and the chair will be with her in her renders. It needs to be here as a placeholder and for external shots, the chair will be visible with a lower resolution Rosie sitting in it.
On behalf of the crew of the Astro Commander, I hope you've enjoyed our litte tour and we look forward to having you back for our next journey amongst the stars!
Wow, I love seeing what you're doing with all the various scenery modles, but the idea of making the Astromaster large enough to hold the larger Kibarreto bridges is brilliant. I love what you've got going on with the starscape, nicely done!
Thank you, Walt! Very much appreciated!
The LoRez people will fade nicely into the backgrounds of scenes once the main high-res actors show up, but I really love the versatility of Predatron's LR folks!
Except for the one Loretta, the rest were all made from LoRez Masked Superhero - because the suit works really well for a starship crew. Then the LoRez MU Workers suit works really well for space as well as for supplemental pilots! :)
When it was on sale, I bought TheDigiVault's Outpost, which really impressed me. So I became a fan. Underside was my next and that one still blows me away! When I got to Stardomes, I was still in Carrara and made a new shader for each of the bazillion texture maps it comes with.
Now in Studio, I used a similar approach to the shaders and it really works nice. Unlike the methods I was using in Carrara, I don't have to put artificial lighting outside the ship to keep it from just being black. Always a challenge to light up a ship without overdoing it. Making the Stardomes translucent, with their own map as the translucency color was a real treat to behold. That same map in emission with very very low luminosity completes it.
And we're off to Explore New Worlds! :)
But first...
I love this!
Real Rosie Approved, Allow me to introduce the very beginnings of Rosie 8
I love how you made the "soft parts" so real.
One issue I have with posing and certainly would with animation is the lack of good IK in DAZ. Don't tell me pins. Pins suck. I know there's a product out there that simulates IK but can't remember the name. Do you use that?
LimbStick, by 3D Universe!!! I'm not entirely sure that's what you meant, but it allows me to have either hand or foot stick to anything I want in the scene. And only for as long as I want it to. So in this one, for example, I left the first and several of the last keyframes from each entire arm and deleted all keyframes in between - all the way through to the fingers. This isn't necessary for LimbStick, but it makes it a lot eaiser.
When she gets to the right position to have her hands plant onto the table, I pose each joint individually except fingers, which I'm just using "Fist" on. I take my time because I only have to do this for this one frame.
Since both hands should stick to the same object, I select one hand, Ctrl select the next hand, and Ctrl select the Table. It has to be in that order.
Now I launch LimbStick, se the time range that her hands should remain on the table, and run it. It's fast. Done.
Then I go back and work out animating the before and after - which is generarally very simple and quick.
So for this to work good, I leave myself a nice amount of empty keyframes between the pose that I don't delete and the pose that I create and then also at the end, so I have an envelope free of keyframes to get the before and after poses worked out. In this case it was only like 30 frames, but those thirty frames are awesome for making it turn out looking right. But I must say, I could have just as easily left it to the TCC created motion between pose and LimbStick.
Also, whatever we 'stick' the hand or foot to can also be animated. So we can use LimbStick as a wonderful means to make all kinds of alterations to our animations!
I Absolutely Love this video. Not only for showing how it works, but if we stay tuned through the whole thing, he patiently guides us through some really cool ideas. Reading between the lines and taking this much further becomes really easy. So if I feel like using LimbStick to do something a bit more advanced, I like to come back and watch this again for inspiration ;)
Limbstick is it. I'll have to look into it. Thanks.
My Pleasure! I'm always happy to share and help! I want Everyone to have fun! I guess I was born that way! ;)
I have to say, there are some tools that I purchased fairly recently that have been absolute game-changers for me!
I mean, I was always having a great time before, but these tools are such an every day way of life for me now, I couldn't live without them!
This is going to be a really fun webinar! Looking forward to hanging out with all of you! :)
A couple of DIM Tutorial videos I've made to help answer questions from the Commons
Along with that:
You can.
Now any time you uninstall anything, you won't have to download it again, it'll show up in your Ready To Install tab, using your backup location.
I love this! I bought this concert from GOG.com when it first came out. I'm glad it's free for all to enjoy now!
Wow! I keep getting upgrade offers for my ancient version of Vegas - mine is still from back when Sony developed it - it's over ten years old now.
I was tempted to write them and say, Look, I have DaVinci Resolve for Free, and it really Rocks! I Love Fusion!!! But if you could find a way to half the cost of your offer, I'd probably upgrade a lot more - as opposed to... never!
Corel comes along. I use VideoStudio Pro's Screen capture for my tutorial work. I like it. When I close it down, it pops up offers to upgrade and the deals are usually incredibly reasonable, and VideoStudio is a really user-friendly studio for all sorts of quick and easy or get down and dirty video processing and rendering. I like it.
Well they just offered the really cool VideoStudio Ultimate at 75% Off for a crazy-low price of $24.99 USD!
I asked Rosie if I could do it. She said Go for it. So... Downloading/Installing now!
Sweet!!!
EDIT: That's a sweet little starter tutorial!
Oh Yeah!
As soon as installation is complete, in true Friendly and Helpful Corel fashion, this page pops up to help gets started and advance with this awesome suite!
Even more, I didn't realize that buying this also granted me WinZip 27 Pro for free!!! Yessss!!!!
WinZip Pro comes with cloud share and backup services - free for now, inexpensive to upgrade. Things are looking up. I'll look around, but this looks like a great option, In the meantime, the free service looks like it Rocks!
I've been collecting a whole bunch of Mely3D's Sci-Fi Interior kits. These things are Great!
Now Santa Claus just gifted my one of the very few Petipet products that I don't have. Petipet's store is now down to one page for me. Eventually it will be blank.
I haven't grabbed any of the alien creatures yet - and I was just trying to figure out why that is. I think - as I strive to keep my punch card full, I'm going to see how many of them I can collect. Just looking at them today, I really like them and think I can come up with some fun ways to animate them. It'll make visiting all of petipet's amazing alien planets really come to life!
On that note, I also have to try and grab up ThePhilosopher's Animated Butterflies and Sprites. In the meantime I can use the animated dust particles, clouds and bees that I have to help add bits of movement into the scenes.
Wow. Pages and pages of new gear for next to no cost... I'm really loving my library right now!
Below - the new Sci-Fi Interior Kit 3 I got from Mely3D, Gavagai, and Daz 3d
In the second image above, the yellow box area with the squiggly white line on either side of the corridor is a wall to one of these cool little alcoves!
Watching behind-the-scenes interviews, it's fun when they reveal that one short decorated hallway will get shot from several angles to make it appear that the characters are running through a really long corridor with many intersections and turns - yet it's just a simple hallway dressed up with modular props to make it appear much more expansive than it really is.
After I started collecting these from Mely3D, I've become a fan of them - and I have a quite a selection of them to choose from. And with what I just said above, I find it fitting that Mely3D also made a behind-the-scenes sound stage environment! That thing is really cool too. I'll be using that for my own behind-the-scenes reels! :)
As my collection is nearly complete,
I have updated my article on Content-Driven Story: "What Happened on Odysseon Station" and it's looking pretty cool now! :)
Wow! What a Massive Score I got today during the incredible sales going on!
The AntFarm's Last Earth Object is an immensely awesome sci-fi environment whether we use one of the "Last Earth Object" props or have some other purpose for this wonderful space!
This thing has nostalgia and Awesome Sci-Fi written all over it!
Lots of details to explore throughout this environment. Horrifying to Fascinating to Area 51... all in a wonderful color scheme.
Really looking forward to rendering this thing!
At the same time I was treated to some fun freebies from Daz 3d and the Incredible PAs!
My Advent Calendar drop was the Amazing Crypton Alien HD for Genesis 8 Male! I am actually quite amazed that this cool alien has sat in my wish list for so long... so many times it was heading for the cart, but I needed something else even more - and I have a really good selection of Josh Crockett already, so I could afford to hold off for a bit. But to get it Free? Somehow feels unfair... but I'll graciously accept the Christmas Gift! Thanks Josh and All of you Generous Daz 3d PAs!!!
And to really top things off, between my fully punched punchcard and today's Sci-Fi sale, I've landed Polish's Space Battle Fleet Bundle - the Whole Kit and Kaboodle!!! Oh My!!!
Three massive battlecruisers and a fighter jet, along with all of the space props! This will be fun!
That all happened as I sipped my morning coffee - converting a bunch of my legacy animations to Genesis 8.
What a relaxing way to spend morning wake up times.
My awesome little dog wants to go for a walk, so I load up one of the longer animations and let Bone Minion chug away on it as we head along the beach of the majestic Lake Michigan.
I do have it made! :)
I've always loved the legacy animation collections of Reisormocap and GoFigure. There were a few that I didn't think I'd need, so now I'm happily buying those up as well, as I can, to complete my already massive collection.
Bone Minion is a real blessing! Conversions always worked fine for me, but Bone Minion odes such a great job with these more modern rigs with separate bend and twist bones... along with the brilliant job it does with Mixamo downloads after running 3D Universe's Body2Hip script... I'm just overjoyed with the professional motion capture results I'm getting with my new tools!!!
My webinar attendees were so awesome during the first session, and in the Digital Art Live Studio forum afterward, that I made a couple of Bonus Video Tutorials to send home with them for the second session - which was a lot of fun to do for them - even though it took the whole week to do! LOL
One of them is using the Generation 4 Pose Bone Minion to transfer the entire V4 Walk Construction Kit by GoFigure - start to finish, and the other was then to use MikeD's Icon Creator Pro to make thumbnails and tip icons for the whole collection. What a Blast!
This was my homework I did between the two session of my own webinar LOL
And then, during that next session, I dug deep into it and showed how the whole thing was made.
I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with my ►►► Carrara Information Manual ◄◄◄ thread in the Carrara Discussion Forum here, but that all began a few forum updates ago - including getting its start before the massive forum software change, which really broke it, so I painstakingly went through it - fixing it as best I could with the help of chohole and her friends - guiding me.
Well just recently in the Daz Studio Discussion Forum I've created one for aniMate 2, which has also expanded into workflows with other tools, like Bone Minion, LimbStick and Body2Hip, for example, and it will grow from here.
►►► aniMate 2 - Real aniMating Power for Daz Studio!
Like the Carrara Info Manual, this one also has link collection posts, with an index to certain information within the thread, as well as links to products and so on. I'm including this little Link Post thing to each page of the thread, along with links here and there to go back to the first post of the thread for convenience.
The whole idea, as with the Carrara one, is to have a nice place where folks can learn and share. Because of how I currate that links and the link posts, we can feel free to discuss away at anything. These posts make it easy to navigate the thread (and other threads in some cases - like to zaz777's amazing animated pose conversion script, for example) and it is my hope that it can be a big benefit to anyone wanting to explore the incredibly fun ways to animate in Daz Studio.
Cheers my firends!
Happy Holidays!
The older ones are animated PZ2 (Poser) pose files. Bone Minion for Generation 4 poses transfers them beautifully to whatever generation of Genesis we're using. Since I use all generations of Genesis except for 9, the Generation 4 Pose Bone Minion Bundle is a real gem!
When I'm in this phase of "Converting", I'm only doing the generation of figure that Rosie is currently using. Dart is always the same generation figure for such reasons.
I use this new structure of saved aniBlocks for previewing, so when I need them for another character of another generation, then I simply use Bone Minion as Riversoft Art suggests - don't take up a bunch of space "Converting", just do the transfer and be done with it. Works really, Really well!
"Kids at Play" is a Reisormocap pack for Kids 4. I converted that under the idea that I'll one day do some flashbacks into Rosie's childhood.
Other legacy Reisormocap packs which have been updated to newer generations - some have other motions that are not in the newer ones, and some of the newer oneds have motions not in the legacy. Even if the differences are few, I like having the extra variety and, since these kits are on sale throughout the year, I feel it's perfectly acceptable to give a little more to the artists that are doing me all of these favors - so I don't even wait for them to go on sale part of the time. But for packs that I never felt I'd 'really need', I'll have those in my wish list and wait.
I've just added a bunch of updates to my Home Page as well as added a new Inspirations page: Inspirations Blade Runner: Black Lotus, with the full first episode and some really Really good behind-the-scenes videos. It's incredible how they put this all together.
Here's a short piece of an Amazing sequence (without spoilers). This is one awesome episode. The singing girl is truly alive in this
The Official Trailer
Here I am, nearly supposed Bed Time and I'm still having fun with my legacy animations! :)
Going through my entire Genesis 1~2 BoneTech 3D aniBlocks. What a variety!
I'm still keeping the collections together, but if it's a three-part series I'm only using the one folder.
So for example, in the CGI Action Combat collection, if it's a kick, the name begins with "Kick - " and then the name. "Punch - " and then the name of the punch, etc.,
It's fun how different each vendor is from the other. I was a little nervous, but yet excited before I bought a BoneTech 3D pack.
I think it was the Animation Starter Kit. I was really pleased with it! I was so used to how Reisormocap and GoFigure had such organized naming conventions, that it threw me a bit to come into this world - but I love it!
The CGI Action Combat series is hand-to-hand combat in small clips of action - just like a single action shot in a movie or TV series. When the Action starts, the camera is only in one place for a second or two... often even less. These are perfect for doing those because we really want to follow that estblished convention of making action sequences fast, in-your-face, kind of almost difficult to follow... we can do these things with longer animations - and I do. But these are really cool - especially when, say, we need to simulate clothing or hair or both. Longer heavy-action sequences are more adept to having a simulation failure somewhere along the way. Or rather - shorter animation sequences are easier to adjust to get the simulations right - being more accurate.
It's neat, though. Having a complete set just for magic. Another for more modern military weapons (Movie Combat), another for duel wielding (or single) melee combat, locomation is for... well... locomotion! Walking, running and other related moving around. Dancing, Photo modeling, Sword and Shield... Movie Bones is a variety of all sorts of things. Idles, Conversation, comedy walks, a little bit of fighting...
I think that every pack also contains bonus material from other packs. Pretty sure all of them do. Like CGI Action Combat comes with quite a few bonus animations from Locomotion collections. That's nice. It gives us a taste of what the other packs are like.
I haven't tried Ceres 7 yet. Ceres 7 is BoneTech 3D's own IP Game/Movie character and he comes with the pack, and he's built using the Genesis 8 male rigging, so the animations will work (even all five fingers) with Genesis 8 as well.
So I'm definitely getting them when I can. Currently there are two.
Epic! Can't wait to see more of your fun with the fleet.