NEW! Novica & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 5
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Okay, did all of them but the last one.
Beautiful renders so far, Novica. Love the background too. You've shown off something I appreciate about these Dogz morph packs, which is the way they add real-world looks and variety to female characters, without going to the opposite extreme. They are still attractive, but you can imagine actually meeting people who look like these women.
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Invited Guest Contributor
Featuring:
Steel Frame Specs: http://www.daz3d.com/steel-frame-specs (Dogz)
Smile!: http://www.daz3d.com/smile (Dogz)
Ballerina Assembly Kit: http://www.daz3d.com/ballerina-assembly-kit (Dogz)
I work a lot still with Genesis, so these 3 products are all for that generation.
Although the shoe pack (Ballerina Assembly Kit) is the oldest in the Dogz store, it was a sign of things to come. There are so many different options that I can't even count them all. I could only show off one particular combination here, but there are many colours, patterns, contrasting toe and trim, buckle, jewel, bow and other effects. You could coordinate these with any outfit. It's also nice to have some shoes without heels that women and especially girls can wear and still look stylish.
The glasses have fits for a wide range of generation 5 and 4 characters, and go on like a dream. There are 5 basic styles, but again with so many different options and morphs that you can customize them to your heart's content. With a bit of tweaking, I can even get these on more extreme shapes. They are nice, real-world styles for contemporary people, and there's a round John Lennon style too for your hippies and eccentrics!
Smile! is a set of natural looking smile morphs, again for all the Genesis DAZ Original characters, plus V4, M4 and Stephanie 4. Just apply the presets and you are good to go. Look behind the scenes at all the extra morphs and you can see how much work went into these. These additional morphs let you fine-tune both the smile (Posing) and teeth (Shaping) for custom characters, and I've found them useful but not the most intuitive dials. The Shaping tab has the teeth ones, you'll have to look under the Posing tab, then Head > Mouth > Lips for the lip dials.
As S5 and D5 differ quite a bit from the standard female and male Genesis shapes, these smiling and laughing expressions are especially nice to have for expressions that look like they actually belong on these faces!
I spent all night surfing the threads here while the renders were going, so take a peek at the latest additions to the art forum showcases. Couldn't include everyone (all the WIPs) as I picked a variety. I didn't surf this thread, I included my Derek but that was all. If there were some others from this thread that you'd like to tell people about, feel free to add them to the thread below. And if you have time, please leave some encouragement for these artists. Some of them haven't gotten much input or comments. (I'm guilty! Did you notice though how many posts I made all night to these threads? Catchup time!)
Tour The Art Studio Forum
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/41748/
jindi- that was a smart thing to do, showing the default smile with the changed one. It helps to see the difference. And I'm sure there's some hippies out there that can use those glasses!
I had a retrospective moment, but not due to the glasses- I was the one that spent four and a half hours fighting a glitch with that shoe kit- everytime I would apply a bow, the other bow would shoot off the other foot. Being a newbie, I thought it was me. I finally posted and was told to submit a bug report and it got fixed. Haven't used it since though- no fond memories on that one lol! The shoes are really handy for daily use and I think the title did it a disservice- glad you featured it.
You did a nice pose (sitting) with the dress. Those are always tricky.
Thanks for showing us Gogo. I admit, I found the promo art for that character so unappealing I passed on the character. I much prefer the real-world look you show here.
Yeah, I'm not rah-rah with the eyebrows, I'd still like to see a few more individualized hairs where the eyebrows start- these will look better closeup but from this distance they look too painted. Me being picky. Doing the last one, that will only leave one not done but I've been doing this since yesterday (and all night) so I could wrap up by this morning. It's 70 degrees and I'm doing outside stuff today. (Cutting massive bamboo. Yippeee.)
Anyone who hasn't popped over to SereneNight's thread should do so- she has done a lot of outfits over there.
Okay folks, pick one of the 9 (not including Gogo) Who do you like best? I like Chun.
Edit: go back a page to see the others.) http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/44327/P1155/#722578
Invited Guest Contributor
Another look at Gogo. :)
Short Ponytail
http://www.daz3d.com/short-ponytail
Cherry Blossom Dress for Genesis 2 Female(s)
http://www.daz3d.com/cherry-blossom-dress-for-genesis-2-female-s
Ron's Background Images and Textures
http://www.daz3d.com/ron-s-background-images-and-textures
A beautiful vintage take on her there, tjohn, like the old Communist China posters (edit: wrong era, I meant 1930s, before Chairman Mao). I read a book about that, they were called 'beautiful girls' I think. Not a very useful name to search on but I found a couple of examples:
http://www.zitantique.com/poster88.html and
http://www.zitantique.com/poster29.html
Novica, I like Kim and Noriko. They stood out for me, somehow.
I like Trinh and Noriko. I'm less into the big-eyed dollie look, so everyday women looks good for me. =-)
Today I am tempted by Design Anvil's Autospray's and Antfarm's worm. I'll probably pick those up. The spray shaders could be used to repaint bodyamor and bots too.
I decided to make an image using every Dogz product I own. It took me two days. I finally finished it and put it in my gallery.
Very clever- how you managed to get all the products worked into a scene shows your expertise doing RRRR type compositions :) Creative thinking at its best! Love the cat over there by the woman keeping her company too. Well done! Thanks for sharing
I love the coloration in this- it does seem to make it a bit vintage. Her expression is coy and suits her perfectly. Nice choice of a background and color too :)
Not sure how I feel about the name Gogo.
Onto something new. Going to try Uber Area Light Plane (UALP) lighting. Never tried it before so I'm a year behind everyone else on that thread. :) Nothing new about that! So, I'm using Szark's tutorial http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/ and positioning ONE plane and tweaking it to see what I can do- I'm interested to see the light coverage as according to Szark's explanation/diagrams, the light should be more evenly distributed. Distant lights have parallel rays, spotlights are concentrated, etc.
It took some getting used to fixing the light settings over in Surfaces instead of Parameters. I did a simple test using Genesis and will show you when it's done. It is only the one UALP so let's see what that does before adding other light sources. And I'm curious, how many of you use the Uber Area Light Plane (UALP) in your renders?
EDIT: I'm editing as I left out the word LIGHT. It should be Uber Area LIGHT Plane. Barbult was copying my error- sorry about that!
Uber Area Plane - almost never, but I did use it in my recent RRRR entry about the PC Club. It is kind of tricky, I think.
I saw that one :)
I found that setting the falloff was interesting with the new ability of version 4.7 to show you the immediate effects while you are tweaking. There's that little sliver of space where the light shows up, and then it really goes POOF. It's rendering now and will be the morning before the render is done. Should be interesting to see what one light in the shape of a plane will do.
:) Try it. I'm lonely LOL. I want someone else to play. I did my one plane slightly above and to our left. The next one tomorrow I'll add a spotlight or distant light to see what the combination looks like. Did you use UE2 with yours? I think I'll try that too (but only adding one thing at a time- like doing the plane plus distant, then doing plane plus UE2. This could be interesting.)
EDIT: Wow-I didn't do half bad for my first try...she's already got her hair and most her face done, and it's hard to describe. Like a really good, soft distant light.
I couldn't go to bed until I saw what this was doing. It's Rapture morphs on Genesis with Neve skin materials. One UALP (Uber Area Light Plane) (Edited from UAP to UALP, I left out the word Light)
Rather fun actually!
So good night. I'm a happy camper for my first try.
Looks nice Novica! =-)
There are more freebies available today- And of Course Deviney's stuff in fast grab.
thank you. It was either Stephanie and the Aquatic Poses or someone's Intricate poses.
I rendered her with a dull distant light and there isn't enough difference to post her. I'll have to play around more today. I think I'll add a couple more planes to set it up like a photography studio and the way I normally do distant lights all around.
Weather is crazy. 78 degrees yesterday while the western part of U.S. was in 30's and 40's (or colder.) We got sunburned putting out the Christmas lights! Going to be this way all week. Headed out for errands and outside doing yard work after that, going to take advantage of the weather.
I've got a few minutes, so thought I'd help out those of you who haven't done a UALP. (Uber Area Light Plane) Szarks tutorial will tell you how to do this, I'm going to paraphrase and shorten it but all credit for these first steps go to Szark. He's so talented! I may be the only one who hasn't used an UALP, but if you haven't or have forgotten how, here you go: (I'm also doing this for me- going to put a link to this post in my reference section)
Again, Szark's thread:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/
1. Load a Camera. Putting all translations and rotations to 0.
2. In Content Library:
Daz Studio Formats>Daz>Light Presets>omnifreaker>UberAreaLight
Select and load Uber Area Light Plane
3.
Rotate the plane 90 degrees on the X axis
4.
Parent the plane to the camera.
I am going to give you the exact coordinates to do a scene exactly like mine- with the plane's light coming from the side. Because you are attaching the plane to the camera, the camera coordinates are your plane coordinates. Nifty, eh? So for your CAMERA coordinates for side lighting:
Mine: In X/Y/Z format:
Translations: -53.69 / 194.27 / 120.71
Rotations: -18.85 / -22.74 / 0
5.
The light settings are going to be in the Surfaces tab, not Parameters. Select your plane. BTW, you don't do anything with the headlamp blocker. Leave that alone.
To make this work, here's a few other settings you'll need:
Diffuse, Opacity, Ambient Strength 100% 255/237/ 210 (This is a pale white mauve/peach. You may want a blue)
Fantom Off, Raytrace and Accept Shadows On.
Intensity: Start with 516.4% when adding other lights (this will give you a good fill) and then see how you like higher numbers. I went with 552.3% but I like 582.1% best. Color: White
** Samples 160. I was dealing with shadow grunge and tweaked several settings, not sure if this high number is needed. Any input would be appreciated.
Shadows Active On Color: Black Shadow Intensity 90.8% Shadow Bias 0.10
Falloff Active On Falloff Start: 0 Falloff End 2000 (Very important!)
**Falloff Decay 2.00 (Szark said to leave it there, I don't know what this does either- said it was natural so I am assuming a gradual gradient on the light fading.)
My character's location (so that the Falloff hits her correctly:
XYZ translations: all World Center (0's) and so are the rotations except for Y: -73.84 (Due to the pose.)
6. Render Settings: These may be overkill but I was avoiding Shadow Grunge.
Shading rate .20
Bucket Size 16
Max Ray Trace Depth 1 (I usually leave that there out of habit)
Pixel Samples 15
Shadow Samples 24
Gain 0.24 (don't ask me how that got that setting)
Gamma was off
Pixel Filters were 13.34
I'm irritated that I keep forgetting things. I'm going to have to go back and look at the settings to see what does what. Gain and Gamma again, those trip me up, as do Pixel Samples and Pixel Filters. I know this stuff, then go off and do other programs or keep using similar settings, then I don't remember why I've done what. Argh. No one can ever say I'm a "know-it-all." I'm a "well-I-did-know-it."
Anyway, have fun :)
Congrats to Luci and Barbult on their first place wins in RRRR, and to the other artists who had such funny renders! Check them out here:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/47517/#694009
Thanks for the congrats on RRRR. :)
Some comments on render settings:
Shading rate .20, Bucket Size 16, Max Ray Trace Depth 1, Shadow Samples 24 and Gamma off all look reasonable.
You will need a higher Max Ray Trace Depth if you want ray traced reflections in your image and you have mirrors or transparent items like glassware. This slows down the render significantly, though, so increase it only if you really need to. 1 is probably fine for your character renders to quickly show off morphs, etc.
Gain below 1 will darken your render. I leave it at 1 almost all the time. Normally scene brightness should be adjusted with light settings.
Age of Armor recommends setting pixel samples to 4. His tests show that higher values slow down render with no visible improvement. I think higher values are only needed when DOF is used.
I think pixel filter should normally be left at the default value of 6. A value of 13.34 is puzzling to me.
Thanks Barbult! I'll tweak. :) I got home a few minutes ago- ran errands to TEN places. Whew. Done for the week though. Since it was so nice I took advantage to be gone all day.
Hi Cathie, hope your having a lovely week. Gorgeous pup !! Will be cool, to watch him grow with us. Haven't been keeping up at the forums lately, I hardly ever use 3Delight anymore. Keep up the great work, we've all learned somethin at your threads.
Hi awesome! Puppy has helped me lose several pounds this past week (not kiddin' either.) due to getting up and down from the computer, and chasing him while he's chasing the cats. I'll post some pics when I get them off the camera :)
BTW folks, the Fast Grab price on Ron's film effects is showing up at over $10 in the cart and it's supposed to be 70% off, so watch out if you are adding that to your cart. With this darned "Hide What I Own" I keep wondering why there's nothing on the pages or only a few things- then I realize what's going on. I have reported that price glitch but don't know if they can fix it before midnight.
Hi Cathie, happy to read your having a great time with pup, what's his name ? Updated pup pics would be cool. I had to give my 2 yrs old Shepherd away due to health reasons. Sure miss wakin up in the middle of the night for pup bathroom breaks, Not ! Roflmao !!
Sales are awesome !! but any product I put in wishlist never, ever went on sale. Could you keep a look out for me on Griffen wings for Daz horse 2, dragon lord horse armor & PW ghost. PM me, when items go on sale. Thanx.
Ron's blood is $2.69 @ 86% off. Nice :)
AJ
Awesome, keep in mind that the store hides what you already own, so they wouldn't be showing up for me. I wouldn't remember to look, even if they did- I forget to surf my own wishlist, lol! I'm not doing much shopping due to the back to back mega sales (PC and PA) but hopefully you'll have some luck this month if they do some specials for December.
Thanks for asking about Puppy's name- :) I'd love to share it but he's the main character in my book series and I have to copyright/protect the name until the book is published. It's a unique name, so for now, he's Puppy. So sorry to hear about your dog. They become a nice habit and a good friend, and then when they aren't there, it can sure make such a difference.