Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 8
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@RGcincy Thanks!
LOL, I just LOVE it how I have a tutorial listed in my References post in the beginning of the thread under Tips, and someone gets sent OFF my thread to find the information. Ahem. Thirty lashes with a wet noodle.
Just found out a few minutes ago through the grapevine that gift cards this morning were steeply discounting. They were doing 30% off, in case you'd like to know what you missed. (Hey, misery loves company.) Apparently just one new thing from today triggered the discount.
In addition to what Rich posted, I try to do my images no taller than 575 high, sometimes 600, so people don't have to scroll to see the entire image, and because that works well on mobile devices. I pretty much focus on the height, not the width, because height is what makes people scroll.
Figures. I just bought a gift card last night....
I never read the rules! I'll be sure to resize any further images I post to your thread, though. Sorry. It isn't that I'm a natural rule breaker... I'm just lazy! :)
Not a problem. Happy to see your renders.
On the forums the width is what governs the size of the images. We say max width 800 which allows a relatively good size in line image and it doesn't get corrupted on any of the usual devices that people can use to view the forums.
Hmm, going to mention this. "Not quite happy with this" goes to Uptown Kitchen- I dislike having walls and the ceiling as one piece, you can't hide the roof. And if you hide a wall, the ceiling goes too, totally disrupting your lights. It does have the back wall and right wall separate, but not the third wall.
Getting a gigantic, ginormous "A+" would be Shabby Chic Kitchen. Kudos to @DavidBrennan and @ForbiddenWhispers for taking the time to make every little thing separate. Thank you!
True about the width. However, many of the 800 wide are over 600 pixels tall and requires scrolling. I don't have a tiny monitor, so I know for a fact that many of those 800 widths are also taller than a typical post will show without scrolling. That's why I like to watch the height. I don't have time to pull the corner down and expand the text area every time I'm surfing the forums, it should be easy to see IMO.
I hate being unable to make a wall or ceiling invisible and if a room is all one material zone, I get annoyed. However, I only discovered last week about 'iray section planes', which you use to make things invisible (in iray). Snowsultan has an excellent video about them here
Talk about "mind blown"! LOL
@Jakiblue - that sounds interesting. Thanks for the link.
Yes, objects without separate material zones drive me nuts. Not only does it make it difficult to hide something without having other things disappear, but it can also cause a lot of misery with shaders, too.
I will return content for environments that I can't hide content in. I need to be able to hide non-essentials and lighting interiors is challenging enough without moving around walls ceilings and floors. I wish there was a way to determine in advance whether a room had hideable ceilings. Novica was kind enough to let me know about some of the kitchens. I do think this is a selling point for content so wish more content had this advertised.
Don't forget that if you are rendering in Iray, you can add a section plane and basically make any content area invisible to the camera and optionally to the lights. It just cuts a cross section across the scene. When you hide walls or ceilings, you are limited to the boundries of those meshes.
I'm reviewing older content (like SUPER old) on my art thread this month in my "Old is New Again" challenge. I have fallen in love with V3's wardrobe and am shocked at how well it renders in Iray. Equally shocked at how beautiful V3 can be in Iray as well. Here is Vega for V3 next to V7. They are both wearing "Princess of Atlantis" textures for MFD (each in their own version.)
@Llynara, that's amazingly gorgeous!
Thank you! I am shocked and delighted at how it turned out.
Here's a trick that I use (require that you use the Iray Preview in the viewport):
1) Create a camera. Zero out all the X, Y, Z translation and rotation parameters
2) Got to Create->New Iray Section Plane Node
3) Highlight the Section Plane Node, go to parameters. Set X Rotate to 90. Set Z Translate to -100.
4) Set the parent of the Section Plane to the Camera you created in Step 1.
You now have a vertical plane in front of camera that slices through everything. Set the camera where you might want it (even if it's outside your building). By selecting the Section Plane, and sliding it's Z Translate parameter, you can move the plane forward and backward in relation to the camera to cut off walls and other things that get in the way.
Also, in the Section Plane parameters, there is a field named "Clip Lights". If set to On, light from behind the plane won't pass through the plane. If set to off, your HDRI and other lights will shine through the hole you just created.
This is an excellen tip and a good step by step explanation of how to add and use the Iray Section Plane. Thanks for elaborating @TabascoJack. I usually add it after the fact and fiddle with getting it positioned. This soulds like a better way to do it.
I put that tip in the References, second post. Thanks @tabascojack
In Commons, there's a thread regarding the Streaming Hair and a post mentions the lack of morphs which resemble the typical hair, aka, it laying down and working with clothing. Well, how would there be a thumbnail showing the hair laying down the back if there weren't morphs to do that? So that morph list seems wrong to me on the product page. Has anyone played with it?
But that had me checking a few other hair products, one I rendered for you was Kara Hair, as I remember fooling with it last month and enjoying the float-ability of it for underwater scenes. Years ago, we did a list of hairs that had fun movements, particularly underwater, and this hair would definitely join the list. For movement, what came to mind for me was Emma and Jordi and OOT. The Selvana Hair will take all strands out and behind, but I couldn't get the left, right, and back sections to ever come together. So, what other hairs have great movement? Tell us your favorite and if you have time, do a couple renders of hairs with movement.
I'll start with Kara Hair on Gen3F. I'd still like to find hair that looks more realistic, I'm not liking the way some strands crimp and others are thinning out (particularly on our left). I think it'd be best for farther-away renders.
Is it just me or are they increasing the prices in PC+ items? I'm not liking the $16.95 for this Peasant Dress as that seems too much for something basic (and the hem frankly seems a bit stiff on a few of the images, but seems to flow better on others. In fairness, the shoulder straps do fit nicely on the shoulders and there's nice fabric morphs on the end of the sleeves.)
I think I remember (and correct me if I'm wrong, I want to be fair) that when changing PC prices of $1.99, they reassured us they were going to be $2.99 for dresses and SETS were going to be higher, and now this Peasant Dress at EIGHTY PERCENT off is $3.50? (.49 doesn't hide the fact it's one penny short of 50 cents. Nice try.) I don't like that price when I compare that to $16.95 for the more detailed Belle Dress.
But frankly, enough of the texture sets for the same old same old, how many Hellenics do we need???
@TabascoJack, I'm just starting to use iRay, so newbish question. If I use that plane to hide geometry that I don't want rendered, does it reduce the memory requirements for the scene so it fits on my graphics card better? Or are the memory requirements still based on what is hidden?
I don't believe it reduces the geometry. It's all still there, just not rendered.
Thanks for the info. :)
$16.95 is not the PC+ price. Maybe you are logged out or there was a store glitch. Check again. Sometimes they have to fix an error and it causes the PC+ prices to get messed up for a few minutes. Maybe you caught it at the wrong moment. I see it for less than $4.
No, I was quoting the original price in the first paragraph, the entire second paragraph discussed the $3.50 price.
Sorry, I guess I didn't understand or didn't read carefully. My bad.
Well, it's the same price as the Genesis 2 Female version. Also, unlike the Belle Dress, it does come with shoes and the apron - although I do agree that the Belle Dress has more to it in itself than the base Peasant Dress. But as far as I recall, only texture sets have been released as low as at $2.99 since PC+ started properly (in 2014) with pose sets and sometimes shader sets at $3.99 and actual geometry-based products normally at $4.99.
I am probably getting spoiled with the Rendo sales and getting the pricing confused. They're certainly amping it up to do battle with the March Madness. They, too, seem to have a few glitches- codes sometimes work more than once when they're not supposed to, so anyone who is Prime be sure and always test that.
@barbult Not a problem, I've done that very same thing.
To be honest, if I wasn't a PC member, I wouldn't buy a PC product in a pink fit. Particulary the clothing (the sets/props/scenes I probably would). But I am firmly convinced that the clothing coming out of the PC is not worth the full non-PC price. $16.95 for what looks like a giant cylindrical tube that happens to have two smaller tubes as sleeves, and no textures. It really looks like just an autofit of the previous version. And Novica, I kinda remember that discussion about prices too. I'm fairly certain I asked a question along the lines of...the products are going up in price, but we'll still be getting the same thing? As in, an outfit with NO textures? Hair with just 3 colours? We didn't get anything new for the extra prices. Still the same cyclinder/tube pants and dresses....still the same long dresses with barely any proper movement for the skirt. Some PA's are starting to leap ahead in technology in their products - DO's and PC stuff are staying the same.
Ah, ignore me. :sigh: I'm becoming very very disillusioned with the whole thing, I guess.