Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
My bad Kath, that post was so many pages ago that I forgot all about it. Glad to read that you're liking it though.
Thanks for the idea, but as I was looking for ideas I found myself thinking of going with something like "Escape from Alcatraz!"
Finally got some time to work on stuff over the Thanksgiving break.
I never did get back to DollyGirl's project after all the trouble I had, but I did get started on another releted project that was inspired by this month's topic. I went looking for a free 3D model of a Star Wars X-wing Fighter, (The movie is coming out later this month! Woohoo!) I've been trying to get it textured for DAZ and in After Effects. I'm happy to say I managed to do both! I even got started on a scene in After Effects where the fighter has launched, opened to the X wing attitude, and is firing at ...well something to be determined... The model is on the ground. I had to change it around to make it look like it was flying. Hide landing gear...open wings...fire the cannons
I also put a pilot inside the cockpit...a DAZ model...then I decided why not try a whole DAZ scene. So I worked to bring the x-wing model into DAZ and re-texture it. I'm not really happy with the quality of the textures I had to work with. It's an ugly texturing job. All I have to work with is the diffuse textures (no bump, specular, displacement or anything else), and there's about 2 dozen of them! (edit: there's 61 different texture images!) Think it was easy figuring out what goes where?! Shees!
I just finished this last night after working back and forth between DAZ and After Effects. I know it needs a LOT of work, but it's great progress for me.
I'm considering retexturing the whole thing...
Wow! You've definately been working like crazy. I like your image, the background has beautiful colors. I don't envy you with retexturing the X wing. It looks like it's sorta an olive drab. Are you going for the traditional colors? I've done a lot of work in After Effects, in fact, it was AE and it's Cinema 4D Lite that got me started in 3D ages ago.
Are you working the textures in Photoshop or just trying to figure out what goes where?
Are you animating in DAZ then bringing it into AE as a movie clip? If you bring Photoshop into the mix that might help you organize the textures.
It's a big project that's for sure! Looking good so far!
Cheers,
Kath
I agree with Kath. It is looking very good.
I am not sure if this will help but 1 trick I use to try and figure out which surface is which is to change the diffuse colour to something strong, like red, and see what changes on the model.
Thanks Kathryn!
Yeah, I was looking at some images of the traditional colors of the X-wing for reference. Not exactly sure how I want to proceed. It will definitely be a first for me retexturing a whole model. This thread has definitely made me think it's doable though.
Yes, I have Photoshop, and I already made a few small changes. There were huge white spots in places that I didn't like, so I filled them in. Whatever color scheme I decide to go with, I definitely want to add bump, disp, spec, etc. And I was looking at earlier posts about using a geometry shell to add grunge, dirt, rust and scratches. I just need to go slow, and work on small pieces at a time...like start with the fuselage maybe.
I have 3DS Max and Maya for modeling programs. I am definitely NOT up to speed with either of them. In fact, I have never used Maya. I got it free in an eductaional bundle of stuff, including 3DS Max that I am vaguely familiar with. (That's part of my problem...I bounce around between all these highly intensive programs without mastering any of them.)
I don't know enough about animating in DAZ to bring a clip into AE. I'm using Element 3D v2, and trying to find tutorials to piece something together.
On top of all that finals are coming at school. (Even teachers have a lot of work going into finals week!) I may have to wait until Christmas break before getting into it hot and heavy.
We'll see...
Thanks Kismet,
Element 3D for After Effects allows me to turn off a section of a model with all associated textures so it just disappears in real time. It's easy to figure out which textures go where. Sometimes. For some models, a texture piece can do a lot of things. I need to get up to speed with UV mapping so I can make sense of it.
All in good time...
: )
Okay Photoshop you can make your bump, normal, spec, and displacement maps. That tutorial I posted earlier shows how to do it easy peasy in PS. So that will help you out there. I have Element 3D too - I love Video Copilot's tutorials.
Animating in DAZ is very similar to AE. You have animate blocks on your timeline that are close to hitting the stopwatch in the timeline in AE at various points. The nice thing about these blocks is a lot stuff comes already set up - like a walk cycle for example. Not what you wanted for xwing but it's useful for characters.
As someone with experience in Maya - I think you'd be better off with Blender. I pounded my head against the wall for almost a year with Maya and 3D Max - I had the education package too (former department secretary for English & Foreign Languages at the local unversity here - so I was the one scheduling everyone for their classes, overloads, Finals rooms and times - hehe! I know how it goes hun!). I went through tutorials and despite experience with C4D, and a little with Blender, me and Maya did NOT get along. I just went back to Blender. The interface is awful on Blender but the tutorials on YouTube are pretty good.
There's a free program UV Mapper I believe that will allow you to do what you need, but Photoshop will allow you to do the same as well and it's not that hard. If you want, I'll be happy to walk you through it and it will take all of five minutes. And if you go with photoshop, you can also add your dirt and grunge but it's also good to experiment with the other ways to do all of this as well.
So if you need any help on that end of the spectrum, just holler and I'll be glad to do what I can.
Cheers,
Kath
Yeah, I remember looking at your tutorial earlier this month (before I had all those problems with the Nellie, Suki, Pookie models) and I remember thinking they were going to be useful at some point.
However at THIS point, I need to get the diffuse maps straightened up first. Finally! Some actual ART WORK! Hee!
Thanks!
David
Hi, try working in your image editor with levels and saturation. Note how the saturation enhances the glow of liquid so that it fills more of the room. Working with the mid-range in levels brought out more details to be able to see the young girl and weven the rust patterns on the door. You want your viewer to be able to see your work. :) Don't be afraid to strengthen your lights.
Looking good...I vote for the second one. :)
Ati, I don't think any of us covered your question as I glance through the thread.
One thing to be careful or shen doing walls with bricks or stones is to not make them look perfectly even. If you create a tiling displacement or normals to go with the diffuse on the walls, it will help. For this type of stone wall, you could bevel and roughen the ends. Nothing in the real world has sharp 90 degree angles in any case. Even on furniture, a tiny bit of bevel makes it more realistic. The shine will be handled by a specular map. Do you need resources for the things I've mentioned?
A few suggestions. Make sure there is enough lighting to see what you've got. This can be done by lightening over all or some strong rim lights. The one thing I strongly advise is moving the camera so your figure is not blocked into the pillar. He'll be a much stronger silhouette without that. :)
Heres my latest. I've been workinhg on her hair. I added an additional morph so I could get it further to the shape I wanted. Then I used the Kozaburo morphs to finish it. I find that it is always worth checking the readme file just in case there are any morphs or other features that I may not be aware of included with the DAZ product. For the hair, I didn't realize that the morphs were in the neck of the figure.
I decided to use my rabbit figure and reduce him down to a suitable scale. I applied the velvet texture with a violet diffuse color. I decided to make the bunny violet so there was no mistaking he was a toy rabbit, and not real. I used a carnival glass shader for his eye whcih seems to work pretty well even though its small and far away.
I am going to continue on with the project. I see there are some tiny pokethrough holes in the boots (strange, I thought I had already fixed those).
Thanks Chris!
I see what you mean about that pillar.
One thing I really didn't give a lot of thought to was the composition. For example, if I didn't mention that this was a Star Wars X-wing fighter, I'm sure some ppl would have missed it. It's not the best camera perspective to show off the fighter. I threw in a background image for some color, and a couple of lights for some shadow effect. (2 advanced ambient lights and an advanced distant light.)
I actually didn't like the fact that the plane was so well lit. I wanted more of a silhouette effect, with the pilot and the plane backlit, but it was 2am so...this will have to do until the next draft.. I spent so much time with the texturing (which isn't that great) that I just said "Bump it. It's bed time!"
Thanks though. I do need to think of a better place to put the camera so you can actually tell it's a Star Wars era fighter. And the Level 19 model was the best I could come up with on short notice.
Heres my latest. I've been workinhg on her hair. I added an additional morph so I could get it further to the shape I wanted. Then I used the Kozaburo morphs to finish it. I find that it is always worth checking the readme file just in case there are any morphs or other features that I may not be aware of included with the DAZ product. For the hair, I didn't realize that the morphs were in the neck of the figure.
I decided to use my rabbit figure and reduce him down to a suitable scale. I applied the velvet texture with a violet diffuse color. I decided to make the bunny violet so there was no mistaking he was a toy rabbit, and not real. I used a carnival glass shader for his eye whcih seems to work pretty well even though its small and far away.
I am going to continue on with the project. I see there are some tiny pokethrough holes in the boots (strange, I thought I had already fixed those).
:-)
Hi DollyGirl. I would be appreciative of the rouge layer please! I would like to see how you added this to your figure. Also, do you think you will be able to do the Iray version tutorial? That would be great!
Thanks again!!
Kathryn said "There's a free program UV Mapper I believe that will allow you to do what you need, but Photoshop will allow you to do the same as well and it's not that hard. If you want, I'll be happy to walk you through it and it will take all of five minutes."
A 5 minute walkthrough sounds hard to pass up! Let's do it!
Thanks Kathryn!
"D"
Do I have time to make a new render for this months challenge?
You have until DAZ Midnight tomorrow. Sometimes last minute renders work out.
I"m trying to finish my second entry for this month before that.
So here is what I was talking about, I've been working on it for some time and finally and hopefully I made something nice
I was thinking of adding some blood or scratches to the lion and tiger, but I'm still in doubt to do so, or what do you think?.
I really like there poses and the environment, the lion and the tiger are in a good touch to each other! The fur looks like it has a soft touch to it.
What I noticed is that there are no shadowns on the floor around their feet, so it looks a bit as they are floating above ground, maybe there is something you can do about that. Other than that I wonder about the fur, especially on the tiger, it looks like there is a lot of velvet with a white for velvet colour so that the original colours are faded out.
That would depend on what you want to depict. Is this a fight to the death? Is it a scirmish? Have they just started fighting?
Whatever you decide, please keep in mind the DAZ Forums TOS.
I got it, and thats why I prefer it like this (I mean without any RED Liquids)
Thanks Kismet.
Thanks linwelly, I will check the tiger texture setting, and see about the shadow "there is a very light shadow under the cats" I'll do something about it also, I think the light setting need some adjustment.
I had no idea such a thing was even possible in an editor - I've never touched post-work. Which one?
I use photoshop elements but any image editor will work. Elements won't do 3d but the full version of photoshop will so I always make sure all of my work in Daz is done before I postwork. Gimp works as well as do most of the other paint programs out there.
Thank you for the feedback, Cris!
Good point about the sharpness of the walls.
Displacement, normal map, specular map... the lesson learnt is that these types of walls should not be handled by these wall-shaders. :) In fact, I've recently discovered that there are many circumstances where it's better to not use a shader. I had a floor shader in an animation, and it was taking forever to render. Changed the shader to a simple texture, it looked the same, and render times got way better.
Well, the best laid plans of mice and men. I have a very sick cat this morning so I'm trying to get her in to see the vet. Waiting for a call back. It's not my Dad's cat but my Maine Coon. So that kinda throws things for a loop for me.
BUT I don't give up easily so I want to figure this out. lol!
So let me get a better idea of what you're dealing with here. You said you had a bunch of textures you were trying to sort.
Are they not attached to the 3D mesh at all and you're trying to figure out which one goes where?
From what I saw in your earlier image the mats, however they're assembled don't look entirely accurate to the traditional xwing are you wanting to create new ones from scratch?
No matter how you look at it for the majority of situations - not all but most - it's easier to keep what you have and work on fixing and modifying from there - you can totally overhaul the textures and it will save you a bunch by starting with what you have.
If you want to start from scratch, then Photoshop isn't going to be the best way to go with a complex model. If it was a soda can - no problem, but complicated gets . . . complicated and that's usually best done in a program that's designed for texturing like Blacksmith.(Which I'm just starting to learn.)
Is it possible for you to do a screen shot of what you're looking at?
And the guy who is delivering my storage building just called - they're on their way. So I'm going to be in and out on the computer today.
Cheers,
Kath
Thanks I have been working on a new render for a few days now messing with shaders and the Shader Mixer so will post it as soon as it is rendered!!!
Saphirewild, don't forget that we're only allowed two entries each month and you already have that. I would think you would have to remove one of them if you're to submit a new one.