Tone does test renders

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I keep a strict calendar to make sure I test every product I purchase before their last refund date. This means doing test renders, and I figured, why not share them and talk a little bit about the process? So this is the thread where I’ll do that.

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This render started as wanting to test RSSY Cross Gender Clothes Genesis 8, which I purchased for the purpose of converting male clothing to female. Well, colour me surprised when I go to test this and realise I don’t actually have any male clothing. Fine, I guess I’ll have to go the other way and do something I very rarely do: Render a male character.

I queued up a bunch of clothes for conversion, but only a small handful actually converted. This is likely my own fault, as I looked at the manual for approximately 15 seconds before hitting the button.

Among the clothes that did convert were Samue and Asteris. I picked the jacket and sandals from Samue, and the pants from Asteris.

Finding a male character to put them on is easy enough, as outside of the base male I have exactly one to choose from: Michael 8, and I only have him because I got him for free at some point. He’s way too beefcake, so had to tone him down to around 50%. I also threw Beautiful Skin at him, and gave him some eyes from GP Character Eyes, because those are also in my testing queue, so why not.

I have no pose sets for G8M, but found a few poses in Technomancer, so applied one from there. His hands and feet looked a bit wonky, but Ultimate Pose Master and Ultimate Pose Mixer are also lying around in my queue. After some tweaking and mixing, his feet are firmly on the ground, his fingers no longer embedded in his cheek, and he’s no longer pointing at nothing. I gave him a simple primitive textured with Clay Style Shaders to sit on.

I have no hair for G8M either, so I slapped a pirate hat on his head. To make all the clothes match up, I retextured them with Delicate Cotton Shaders.

For background and lights I used BOSS Pro Light Set, and added a couple of plants from Victorian Garden Decor for visual interest.

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Another run of RSSY Cross Gender Clothes Genesis 8, this time to put Gunslinger on Carabelle.

Results were mixed. The pants converted beautifully, the boots a bit wonky but usable. The shirt was weird around the breasts and collar, but possibly workable with more effort than I’m willing to put into a quick test render. The vest was pretty much a lost cause, with serious pokethrough I couldn’t even come close to fixing. Maybe one of those Clothing Fixer products could be helpful here?

In the end I replaced shirt and vest with the beautiful loose shirt from Vernea Fae. This also seems to have some weird issues around the breasts, which hasn’t been there when I’ve tried this shirt on a base G8F, so I’m wondering if this is caused by Carabelle’s morph.

I only have a couple of hair models to choose from, so I put Evelyn Hair textured with UHT2 (one of the very few products I’ve rated 5 out of 5 stars in the database I use to keep track of my purchases) on her head. I made a pose with Build Your Own Standing Poses and put the Carbine Axe from Vampyres Bane in her hand.

Again I lit the scene with BOSS Pro Light Set. It’s really good for setting up quick test renders like this, but I’m not convinced I would use it for anything else.

Finally I put down some props from Vampyres Bane and Triple Moon to make the scene less bare.

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Arbor Mortis is fast approaching its last refund date, and I still haven’t looked twice at it, so into a test render it goes, and quickly!

Immediately, I’m reminded why I keep a strict testing calendar: It’s all one prop, not a set of props that can be used together or separately. As much as I love the way this looks, it just isn’t very useful to me.

I’ve used the Evelyn Hair in several test renders and I’m still struggling to make up my mind on it. It’s a nice piece, I like the braids, but I don’t use long hairs much.

The character in this render is Chantalle, wearing the Vikings textures for the Universal Dress, and making some magic with Marvelous Magic. I did have some issues with some weird bulges forming on the belly of the Universal Dress while simulating (easily fixed by setting Contraction-Expansion Ratio to 95%), but overall these are all lovely and obvious keepers.

I ended up lighting this scene with iRadiance Crystal. This is one of those products that seems so odd at first glance, and so great when you play with it. It’s so good for giving interesting and colourful lights without becoming overly chaotic or artificial.

Because I went with a dark preset, I also added a single spotlight aimed at the character. Hot tip for newbies: Use the spotlight as your viewport camera, and make sure you can see the character’s eyes.

The background was made with the built-in backdrop and a free starry sky photo.

junk

Hey nice work on these!  I really enjoy your lighting on the characters.

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junk said:

Hey nice work on these!  I really enjoy your lighting on the characters.

Thank you!

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My testing calendar is absolutely stuffed, so better get another render going!

The initial focus of this render was the adorable Punkin Outfit. The textures that come with it are super cute, but I have shaders to test, so it’s textured with a mix of Elegant Fabric, Delicate Cotton, and New Way to Shimmer. I replaced the footwear that came with the outfit with Amazing Morphing Boots and textured them with Worn Rough Leather. Not that you can see much of the boots in the final render, but it’s the thought that counts?

The character is Babina. I got her because I’ve seen people raving about her, but to be honest, I don’t see what’s so special about her. She seems so very generic to me. If you think she’s great, tell me what you like about her?

The adorablest Baby Packy hit my runtime just yesterday. I have absolutely no need for this figure, but it kept looking at me in the promos, and here we are. I will simply have to include it in every render from now on to tell myself I make very good purchasing decisions.

The environment in this render is super simple: A plane primitive textured with a Nature Shader, and a couple of stones plonked down to cover the edge of the plane and to give Packy something to stand on. Light is a sky HDRI and a couple of spots. All of these are obvious keepers.

There’s actually enough lights in this render that for “real art” I would render each light out as a canvas and adjust them in post, but these test renders are supposed to be quick and easy, so not doing any postwork here.

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I set up for another render, and had so much fun playing with SimTenero Randomizer I barely got around to finishing it up. What a great product! I can definitely see myself using this to generate NPC portraits for my roleplaying games. Now I just need something similar for skin textures…

I have an image in mind for the Cirth Outfit and its addon, so in it goes. I like how easy it was to put together a necromancer-type look with the included textures. The outfit ended up a bit too revealing around the hips for my tastes, so I tried to add some trousers from other outfits. However, the Cirth dress is a tight fit and doesn’t have any adjustment morphs, so there was serious pokethrough issues. In the end I went for some geoshell shorts and pantyhose.

The environment is my very first attempt at UltraScenery. I did not enjoy working with this. Building the environment took so long, and afterwards doing anything in the scene was noticably laggy. Very frustrating. But look at those results? Goddamn. I may just have to learn to live with the slowness and lagginess.

The scene is lit with the amazing Theory of Light off Renderosity. I’ve played with this set for about ten minutes and it may already be my favourite HDRi set ever.

Finishing touches are The Flock in the background to give the character something to look at, and a tiny Baby Packy because everyone needs a little pachyderm buddy in their lives.

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My stomach hurts so bad I can barely think, so just a really quick one today.

Bellerose with Stella hair. Sexy Kimono 2 textured with Paisley and Patterns. Grungy Threads to splatter blood all over the whole mess. All slapped together in a few minutes and looking like it, but honestly, how much time do you really need to get a feel for a product?