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wow awesome work on the bot! did you give a link to the original products you used for that one? I didn't see it maybe you can add that, because what you did really makes it interesting to use :D
Sure.
https://www.daz3d.com/bot-genesis
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-2-female-bot-armor-bundle
I used Genesis, Vicki 5 Supermodel - you need this for the geographs to work. Understand that the G2 Female Bot Armor doesn't work with Genesis... without some serious fighting. As I mentioned above, the gun arm can't be fitted to G1, because the barrel end warps. I had to manually place it then parent it to her left shoulder. I used Geometry Editor to make both her left arm and sleeve invisible. To pose it I must select the bot arm, open up the levels in the Scene tab and pose Left Shoulder and Left Forearm, then pose V5's Left Shoulder to to match, so the shoulder pad lays on top of the gun arm.
The G2 Bot Armor boots have the leg attached, so again I used Geometry Editor to make the upper leg invisible, then fit it to G2 and saved it as a wearable preset so I could fit them to G1. The feet warped slightly, so I had to compensate by posing G1's feet and toes.
A straight conversion to Iray does not include the chrome materials on Bot Genesis. I chose to give her a plastic look instead by setting Glossy Layered Weight, Glossy Reflectivity and Glossy Roughness to 1.00, and adding Metallic Flakes Weight of 0.20 and leaving the other Metallic settings as they are. Her lips, the boots and gun have Metallic Flakes Weight of 0.30. I also used Anodized Shaders for Iray and the lovely metal shaders that come with Calla Cascade Hair. For the irises, I wanted a slight glow while keeping the detail, so I set the Emission Color to cyan with a luminance of 20,000 cd/m^2.
Her right hand was especially tedious. The geograph is comprised of two parts: the outer hand and the inner joints. Since she is wearing Supersuit and the gloves are invisible, it wouldn't allow me to click directly on the hand, so I had to select it in the Scene tab. I made the upper hand invisible and had to click down the levels to get to each inner joint to set the materials and emissive shader.
Whew! It was a lot of work. I saved her as a scene subset.
Wow! @dracorn your renders are stunning! I love what you are doing with the older models and outfits. I’m in the early stages of learning Daz Studio and your work is so inspirational.
Thanks, Mollytabby ! I appreciate it.
I try to post my methods so that people can see my workflow and learn. Check out some of the links in my signature for more of my workflow and please feel free to ask questions. That's what's so great about Daz forums - ask and people are happy to answer.
So I have two versions of this render. Before I put it into Photoshop, tell me which do you think is the best one?
1) Reflective
2) Blast Your Butt
Commander Saara
I decided to go with the blaster one. I think I may do a portrait of the other one, but not in landscape mode.
I rendered this in 2 stages - (1) the background ship with nothing showing through the windows and (2) Saara by herself. I used a NASA pic for the background and added some extra sparkly stars for good measure.
Here it is after postwork. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.
Thanks a lot for the links and the xplanation of how you went about it, they are now waiting in my wishlist for a nice sale :D
By the way, that bit of reflective flooring on the right really slowed down the
I had to wait for a while - Bot Genesis doesn't go on sale often... and it usually did when my priorities were higher for something else! I'm sure you know how that works. Hopefully March Madness will introduce another sci-fi item and the bots will be in the related item categories.
Toridian - Character Reboot
Here's another reboot from a 3DL G1 character to G8F Iray. Here's the original G1 version. There is no scar on her face, as I had no means to do it.
Here's the revised Iray G8F version. Toridian is an Amazon, not from history, but rather a created race in a book I'm writing. The racial skin color is varied, but I wanted features that were a combination of middle-eastern and African. I didn't want a gorgeous cheesecake babe, but muscularly powerful woman with a harsh face. I gave her a large nose, changed the face angle and brought the nose and mouth forward. However, after I added all the textures, she turned out prettier than I expected, oh well. What I did achieve is an intensity in the face that gives her a look that she means business, even with a neutral expression.
I began with the face belonging to the texture, that is, Azalea for G8F which I picked up at Rendo. The original face was based on Brawnwen for Genesis, so I converted that face to G3F using GenX2, and then used SingularBlues' script to transfer that to G8F. I dialed in a little of this, and used Rarestone's face morphs for the rest.
I used Muscularity Morphs for G8F and Breast Utilities for G8F for the body.
Toridian Part II
I did additional work for the scar. On the Azalea character, the facial scar is a LIE texture, but I wanted more texture than that. So after using Brow Remover, I collected the assorted texture files it created in my temp file and opened them in Photoshop. I also opened up the scar texture. Fortunately, it was by itself, and I didn't have to separate it.
First I wanted the look of an old scar not a newly healed one, so I softened the redness (first one is the original)
Next I made a copy of the scar and desaturated it and added it to the bump. I used Levels for the specular scar, and then Photoshop's normal map creation tool to add the scar to the normal map. These I loaded onto G8F to give the scar more depth.
I would have voted for the Blaster one so good choice lol!
Your Amazon is amazing, and I like your version very much. She definitely looks fierce and capable.
Thanks! I had created lots of book characters, but they are all 3DL and Genesis 1. I've got lots of work to do - now that I have the ability to actually make the characters and not just settle for what I had available.
Playing around with Zev0's 200 + Head & Face Morphs - and having fun. The texture is Rumor for G8F from Rendo, and hair is Two Phased Bob.
Character Reboot - Savatar
Here is my Genesis 1 original in 3Delight. I couldn't stand the hair, but that's the best short hair I had at the time. The one on the right is another 3DL rendition with longer hair and AoA's Subsurface shaders: (I was such a noob at the time that she has the dreaded elf ear effect going on in her hair that I didn't know how to fix).
Here she is in Arki's Rune Armor. I had added a little more green.
To begin the reboot, I used G8 and the character Aurelia. I removed her face morph and added two morphs converted from G1 using GenX2 and SingularBlues' script: Victoria 5 and Branwen (love her lips!). I used a combination of morphs from Zev0's 200 Plus Face Morphs and RareStone's Face Morphs. The ears came from converted morphs from DD Resource Ears for G1. There's one morph which creates a curve in the ears that I absolutely love. To make her face long, I lowered her jaw, then lowered her mouth and nose.
The next step was to remove her eyebrows using Brow Remover and add G8F's brows. I used Arki's EYEdeas for the eyebrows and used the morphs to make them slanted, something I had not been able to do with G1. I colored her skin with a bluish green on Base Color and a neutraled yellow green for Translucency Color. Aurelia's translucency maps had red noses and ears which didn't look good with the green, so I replaced those maps with the main skin tone map.
For the eyes, I added a green emissive shader to the cornea and eye moisture surfaces while keeping the maps. I toned down the lumens, but the cornea was still too bright.
I replaced the iris maps with my own rendition of a blind (no iris or pupil) texture. Now you can barely see the iris/pupil underneath the glow, which is the effect I wanted. She is wearing Morley Hair.
The next step was the Rune Armor, using the G3 version. I did considerable more texture replacements this time. The green leather is from Destiny's Garden for 3DL - I wanted this map with the Iray surface settings, but I didn't want to change the bump/normal/displacement by using an Iray leather texture. So I used the leather texture that came with the Iray Uber Shader set, kept the maps, then set the brown color to white, and adjusted the tiling for a fine texture. I used Iray leather shaders for the gold and yellow, then copper and gold for the various trim.
SNAG...
When I returned the following day, I discovered that some poly's were protruding funny from the left arm. Couldn't figure out why. I played with mesh smoothing, but when I turned it off the skin poked through in various places. The higher I set Smoothing Iterations, the taller the poly spike became, so I took it down to one and changed the Weight to 0.10. I fought with various fitting utilities and settings all over the place, but absolutely could NOT get rid of the armpit poke through. So either I hide it in the render or I will have to post-work it out. That will be easier than getting rid of the poly spike.
GLOVES, HELMET AND SWORD
For the gloves I used Arki's Eagle Guard and turned off visibility for all but the glove, then changed it's textures. SY's Clothing Fit Helper gave me a morph for the sleeves to fit over the gloves.
The sword and scabbard were set on the hip and parented to the belt. The sword is supposed to be made of enchanted wood, so I made use of Destiny's Garden's lacquered wood shaders for 3DL, then converted to Iray using the base shiny plastic shader and kept the maps. The top is supposed to be a magic acorn, but the best I could do is use a wood texture then add some metalicity. Maybe I can find a 3D acorn to add if I can get it to look decent.
The Helmet decided to warp with the ears, and warp even further when I removed the elf ear morphs from it, so I had to load it without fitting it G8F. I turned off visibility for the hair and ears and then adjusted the fit and matched the textures. Thank goodness for the copy and paste surface feature. This would have taken forever without it.
Finally I added the cape and matched the textures on the shoulder pads, and we are done!
Hey, @dracorn, I really love seeing your process. The things you're doing are amazing. I hope to learn a lot from your thread. Keep going!
Thanks, Wanderer. I have really learned a lot creating these custom characters and love to share. I personally learn best by watching how somebody else does a project rather than a tutorial which explains the steps to do something generic.
Scene Subsets and Character Notes
I can't stress enough the importance of using scene subsets to save these characters, especially if you are going to be using them again. Character presets won't save the custom eyelashes and eyebrows, or the hair, costume, etc. Want the sword out of the scabbard? Duplicate the sword, then make the sword in the scabbard invisible. I plan on making another scene subset with the sword already in the hand. It's really a pain to wrap the fingers around the pommel and I don't want to do that over again. Take off the helmet? Make it invisible and turn the visibility on for the ears and hair.
I also have a text file with notes - like the starting character so I know where the textures came from (useful if I want to change makeup), full face and body morphs, color settings, and any other items.
Custom Textures
I will often modify face and eye textures. I can do this as long as I don't sell them, unless I start from a merchant resource product. I have made my own folder in C:\My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime\Textures\ where I store these, so there is a consistent place to find them. You don't want to use textures in a working folder, because if you ever move it, you will get missing texture errors.
Thanks! I did not know that about the presets not saving the other bits. You just saved me a lot of headache later.
Kewel.
Hi dracorn,
I really appreciate you sharing your process. I learn something new every time. Thank you.
Trish
P.S. Looking forward to seeing your final updated render of Savatar!
Thanks Tricia!
Now that I have made some nice characters, I need to think of a good render for them...
I think Savatar needs a villian to fight.
She looks awesome! All the hard work definitely paid off!
Thanks. It's the first time I tried to create a fantasy skin color with surface settings, and I'm pretty happy with the result.
I was playing around with Terra Dome 3 and wound up with a gorgeous landscape in nothing flat!
I used the standard Terra Dome shaders. I did add snow decals from Iray Snow, Ice and Ash into the Diffuse Overlay layers for the tower roof and the lower part of the base. No postwork.
Dragon Tower
Amazing landscape. Gives the feeling there is nothing else for miles around.
That was exactly my point mori_mann , thank you! I was thinking of adding a bird, but agreed with my husband who said less is more in this case.
I had played around with TerraDome 3 in 3DL, where the displacement really gave it texture. However, there was no 3DL rock and snow texture that performed like the iray version.
Yes Iray's lighting looks better than 3DL's, but it is harder. It takes me longer to get the lighting right in Iray. In 3DL you can turn off shadows and dark scenes keep crisp detail.
I wish there was a way to combine the best of both render engines. Wouldn't that be nice.
I hear you! Still a big fan of 3DL. Iray doesn't have the same flexibility (or should I say tweak-ability) as 3DL does, although you can kill the HDRI/dome lights and have a ball with mesh lights and emissives, but.. still figuring out how to make that behave properly.
That is really gorgeous! I would love to be able to comine the best of both of them lol. I know Iray is more "realistic" but sometimes, that hinders what i'm trying to do!
I wish there was a lighting set for Iray like AoA's Advanced Lighting, with settings that allow you to light (or not to light) a specific surface.
That is an AMAZING render Dracorn absolutely breathtaking!!