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Holy shit!
I've had best results changing it to Un-Subdivide; and also itterations to 2 not 1, although 1 will work sometimes. Just undo it if it doesn't work.
I'll do 2 itterations, see the results in edit mode, then perhaps try two more.
EDIT
It can be worth, going into the mesh in edit mode first, take a look at how much geometry there is; also anything created in Marvelous Designer is more tricky.
Does it have to be a book? I know some people have said that they learn best that way and just can't pick it up from a video so now I hesitate to recommend videos, but when I started learning Blender I bought about 15 books on it and read a couple more at the library and they were all terribly written and hard to follow. Like they had been written in another language, run through a translator, had sentences randomly stripped out and were never spell-checked. I now have about 30 Blender books on my Kindle and I would not recommend ANY of them to a beginner with Blender.
If you are OK with videos though, then you might try the series that helped me finally break into using Blender after years of unsuccessful attempts with it. The first video is an hour long and is a very thorough, very simple intro to Blender. The same channel also has a series of short videos going over other features and introducing short exercises to help you practice a few basic skills.
https://youtu.be/s6Se3hxgLSM
I very highly recommend this video to everyone just starting with Blender. It is aimed at someone who has never opened Blender before. He covers the screen layout, how to manuever, how to add objects, basic tools, preferences setups and a short list of shortcuts (all things you can do with menus, but they are also things you will do so often that the shortcuts very quickly become automatic).
https://www.amazon.com/Blender-Foundations-Essential-Guide-Learning/dp/0240814304/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TWEX958R9FM46XJQD9FR
I don't have any book recommendations unfortunately but there are some very good video series if they help. I can give you a couple links of free and paid that are well worth the money.
If I ever get my series done I would recommend that. But unfortunately that's still a ways off.
Playing with shaders at the moment. Here's a ceramic shader I just finished. The idea was to go from wedgewood to bone china with one simple shader. It has a very simple setup, only 4 parameters; color, translucency, glaze and normals. The parameters are all set to go from 0 - 1 with reasonable scalar results so no wierd numbers to get results.
Bone china with back lighting (and small front fill light.)
Bone china with basic 3 point studio light setup.
Wedgewood with basic 3 point studio light setup.
and the shader...
Sorry for the multiple posts, was having problems this morning (not fully awake yet.) Had to reload the images also as they had bad artifacting for some reason.
A note, the images have settings showing including shade settings and render times. They are a bit costly at around 6 minutes for a 1024x1024 image on my system. I'm running a notebook with ssd's, 2 video cards with the second, a 960m 4gb ram dedicated to rendering, and 32gb of ddr4, just for comparison. Oh, almost forgot, 500 samples.
Hmm, just checked and the uploaded images are still showing the artifacting so I'm guessing that it's either something on DAZ end in recompressing the images or the images were cached and it's recalling the original images. I would just delete the posts and repost but that's not an option in this forum. :/
Wanted to test how this image turns out when uploaded. It was rendered at 2048*2048 600 samples, then downsampled to 1.2k*1.2k using level 11 jpg (PS.) It took 27 minutes to render, which shows how much sizing up the object effects render time. On a smaller object this shader would not be so taxing necessarily. On the downsampling, it can give similar results to higher sampling with less time to render a bigger size then downsizing at times. Always test of course as your milage may vary. Also, getting clean images with things like sss in low light conditions will always have some of a cost.
Note, the ceramic shader can imitate glass due to the settings for bone china. Settings for this are 35% translucency and 80% glaze (0.35 sss, 0.8 gloss)
Feel free to comment as I'm interested in feedback, ideas or constructive criticism. I'm thinking of creating a series of shaders for IRay for the DAZ store that have matching shaders for Blender Cycles (or as close as I can get them for two different render engines.)
A post of the original basic sample but at 2k*2k, 600 samples, not downsized. Render time is 15 minutes, but I forgot to mention that all render times are a bit off as I render in the background while I work, watch videos, etc... I am using the integrated video card for running my screens (notebook and 4k monitor) and these are set to gpu compute so I'm not sure how much of an impact the background processing is, haven't tested in a while and forgot the details of my previous tests.
Ok, wow... a lot of artifacting. Definately on DAZ end (recompressing.) It's too bad since the originals are very nice, even on a 4k monitor.
Ok, so I tested the user galleries and Facebook and am getting artifacting there also. It appears that algorithms used on the web don't do well with single colors that have very detailed gradiation. One thing that is not showing well in the fully lit image is the reflected light from the red surface that shows up in places like the bottom of the cheek. It's subtle in the original image and all but gets lost in the uploaded one.
[Edit]: double checked the conversion to jpg on my end and there is slight artifacting there so it's a compounding problem. Going to do a 2k sample image and see what I get. It's probably a bit overkill for the image but we'll see. ;)
thanks, MDO2020, StratDragon, Gedd...
a solid video and a solid book should give my learning curve a good kickstart.
i reckon it must be a classic blender noob thing, but i'm really looking forward to getting to be at home enough with the app's UI to be able to concentrate on understanding 3D and figuring out how to do what i'm actually trying to do. calling it counterintuitive is like saying the ocean's a little damp.
so thanks again!
j
A video isn't going to do it... a couple/few 'series' should help you get started.
Unsubdivide... I'll have to try that.
Carrara has been working ok, but I'm nervous about stuff that might be too much for 32 bit to handle.
http://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=Blender&src=ukw&lang=en
I have the top two courses. And I did NOT pay anywhere near what the prices are showing. LOL. I think I paid 27 US dollars for each one ;).
If ya sign up for the site, then put some stuff in ur wishlist, they'll send you an email with some deep discounts. And the top one especially is very good. If you've never done any 3D modeling either, I recommend it. Just don't pay that much for it LOL.
Laurie
CG Masters has a two part Master It series that is an excellent deal. It coveres a lot of aspects of modeling that should be covered that even many experienced Blender users aren't familiar with, including curves, cloth, particle systems, physics, add-ons like the ivy generator, etc... It goes from basics of understanding the 3D space to a solid basic understanding of modeling through rendering using most built in tools available in Blender. The presentation is very easy to follow and they have a forum where you can ask questions and get help. They are also very responsive. If you find you like their products, they go through character creation, rigging, animation and more. This series isn't any more expensive then a good book on top of it and has 18 hours of high quality video training. Plan on spending a good amount of time going through it since even though it is extremely well presented, it covers a lot and most will want to watch the series more then once along with going through all of the exercises at least once.
Something to keep in mind with a good series is that both the videos and the exercises should continue to develop and cement skills on a 2nd and 3d pass so plan on that going into it. If a training series doesn't have that kind of repeatability then consider how much is gained for the time put in.
For free tutorials, you can check out my Pinterest page as I've mentioned previously in this forum (scroll back for link) but most of them are at intermediate level and beyond.
Ends up the 2k sample image didn't really make a noticable difference and render time was going to be very high, so here's a 4k*4k downsample to 2k*2k at 100% quality in photoshop. Lets see how much artifacting we get and if we pick up any of the reflected light that was missing in the previous images.
hmm... still bad artifacting. It looks like previous mentioned, that current algorithms used on the web often end up in bad artifacting/banding where there are many shades of a given color very close together. I let my web site lapse. Guess another reason I need to get it back online, so I can put up a higher quality image gallery. I wonder if smug mug has this problem. Didn't think to mention before but the 4k 8bit (no alpha) png version of this image weights in at 48meg. Perhaps I'm just getting spoiled working at 4k. If that's so, once you get hooked you won't want to go back.
Yep, off today. Didn't think to check the images on my standard laptop screen. There is nowhere near the banding issues on a standard resolution screen so it appears at least a good part of what I'm seeing only shows up on 4k displays. Again, interested in hearing thoughts on this.
I have an hd screen on my laptop and the image directly above looks good. No banding and I can see quite a bit of reflected red under the eyes, on the left side of the face, etc.
Laurie
Thanks. It's the UHD where it breaks for me.
very cool. thanks again, y'all...
i really appreciate the recommendations.
my learning curve so far this week has been hilarious. several hours to just figure out how to view the cube from the rear. several hours to figure out that the tiny icon in the upper right-hand corner is the master switch that allows me to access that 3D View everyone's talking about. et cetera...
my goals for the day are to: a) figure out how to keep the cursor from teleporting over to the left side of the viewport when i drag it anywhere near the viewport's right edge; b) figure out how to restore the floor grid to its default location in the 3d view window; and c) figure out how to undo the constraint i placed on my sphere yesterday, because i pinned the wrong axis to the floor...LOL.
so it's pretty clear some basic education will do me good. thanks for helping. :)
j
Remember the menus. The menu for the 3D window is actually at the bottom not the top. The top menu is a separate 'window' called the info window. If you look at the 3D View menu you will find a 'view' menu which will give you all of the controls you need to maneuver around. Up there as a contender for most valuable shortcut key is the period '.' key on the numpad. It will zoom to whatever is selected, so selecting something in the outliner then hitting period will zoom you to that object.
There is a big gotcha that gets many new users. Shortcut keys are targeted to the 'window' that the mouse pointer is currently hoovering over. Many things that look like different 'panes' are not. They are actually separate windows. To get the '.' key to work for instance, the pointer 'has' to be moved to within the bounds of the '3D View' window, that is, the working space.
...as there are few if any really well written self help books for these programmes, and all tutorials have gone to video format, I often find myself having to fall back to "seat of the pants" flying when working in 3D.
Daz is like a Cessna 172 (in the old days, a Piper Cub or Taylorcraft), Hexagon: a Beechcraft Twin Bonanza, Carrara: a C-47/DC-3, Blender: a Lockheed/Martin/Boeing Space Shuttle orbiter.
Ok, so figured out a way to upload a better image to the forums, check out this link if interested. The second image I have yet to update (is rerendering now.)
@jardine, BornCG has a free series for getting started in Blender that's pretty good, especially for the price. ;)
The SSS example of the ceramic shader also came out nicer in the Gallery version.
It just occured to me that one thing we need for shaders is a way to import svg information into procedural shaders. It would open up a whole new way of working.