Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 8
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Thanks for the tips on section plane mode.
I will certainly play with that. I do think though I will try to only buy from vendors who make their products with hideable surfaces. I have enough products I can afford to be discerning these days, and while it is nice to be able to alter an environment, I really don't think I should have to
Usability should be part of the product and considered when it is created.
+1. Create separate walls. As usual, I'll be pointing out those who don't when I showcase the sets. Then folks can decide whether they want to do what should have been done in the first place (in our opinions.)
@Novica, thank you for that! I wish it were noted on the product pages.
PC+ still has a lot of value for me. The main benefit of PC+ for me is the 30% DO discount and the coupons. I still think those benefits are worth it, especially considering that PC+ membership is often on sale at a very good price. Also remember that in many Daz store sales lately, like MM, you can use a cheap $2.09 PC+ product to leverage a much larger discount on other product in your cart.
That said, I buy very few PC+ products these days. I can't even count the number of bug reports I have had to write about PC+ products, and the number of problems per product is disappointing. Just a few days ago, I submitted a bug report on last week's free evening gown for G3F. I reported 6 problems with that product.
The PC+ products that I do buy and have been very happy with are the Dumor3D vehicle Iray conversions. They are inexpensive and look fabulous. PC+ garments are hit and miss, in my experience. PC+ shaders are not my cup of tea, as I haven't had good results with them. Poses are often good, and I do still pick up a fair amount of those.
I picked up Headshot Oneclick for $10.78 during the recent utilities sale.
I feel like I only paid about $10 too much for it.
Has anyone reviewed Thieves Alley? It looks like its just one soild prop with no way to hide any of the parts (other than geometry editor or using iray section plane), which I'd rather not do, if possible. Can anyone verify?
Return it for a refund.
I just bought it. I'll let you know. Give me about ten minutes or so.
The set is one big group but there are separate material zones for the walls so yes, they can be hidden. However, they are not clearcut sections, aka the ones right next to each other- so not quite logical. There's too many combinations to show. For example, one wall in front is the same zone as a wall (same side, aka left) but it's in the back. So the good news is yes, walls can be hidden, you will just need to watch your camera angles.Bad news is you can't control which walls are grouped.
Ok, thanks for checking, I'll probably take a chance with it and see how it goes.
@Novica, you picked up Smay's streaming hair? Just wondering what you thought.
The hair loads laying down, the morphs all keep the hair really straight, adding D formers is easy and does the trick. This is just with one, you can then lower the D Form field and do the tips. I personally like it.
Thieves Alley
To give you a quick look before I get off the computer (going on 4:40am) One distant shot to show you the size of the set in relationship to the figure. The set renders very quickly, the 900 pixels was only about 8 minutes, with the figure (and outfit and hair) in the scene.
Was going to use the evening gown in a render. Any chance you can share about the issues you found with it? Would one be that the bracelet can't be moved to the right arm?
These are the issues I found and reported. I didn't think the fact that the bracelet was only for one arm was a bug really, but I guess it is just a limitation. It would be nice if it were more flexible in that regard.
1) The wardrobe items load with 3Delight materials. The product comes with Iray materials. Aren't Iray materials supposed to be loaded by default when wardrobe items are loaded?
2) The dress does not use the opacity map that the Genesis 2 version of this product uses. That means that the underdress is not visible at all. The dress materials should be corrected to use the opacity map.
3) The bracelet was made too large. It comes with a morph to fit over the gloves. It should fit the bare wrist by default. Please correct the bracelet to be the correct size for use on the bare arm (like the Genesis 2 version does).
4) The Iray materials for the clothing use normal maps, but the value is so low (like 0.1) that they don't appear to do anything at all. Is the low value an error, or is the normal map just a waste of resources?
5) The shrug sticks out so far from the side of the breasts, that Genesis 3 Female arms can't go down more than halfway without clipping through the shrug.
6) The beads on the earrings do not match. One is shiny and one is dull. One uses PBR Metallicity/Roughness and one uses PBR Specular/Glossiness. I suppose this is an error, because I see no reason for them to be different.
Thank you @barbult!
For #2, was wondering why nothing happened when I used the morphs or hid it.
For #5, I did notice that the arm gets clipped so this is the one that is making it difficult for me to use it. Grrr. I tried hiding the shrug but then part of her armpit was visible with the pose I'm using. Double grrr.
You can submit a help request describing the problems that you are having. Maybe if they get more than one complaint, they will act faster to fix it.
Wow, did anyone else get the orange banner for the free Pro Bundle and 80% off the second one? I don't know if I did, I haven't been online, and someone said it is now gone. Someone was complaining about how much room it was taking up and I wonder if they took it down to tinker with it.
Fast Grab hasn't changed in a day or two, that's unusual.
Damn. No. Depending on what bundles it was valid for, that's damn annoying.
deleted
Hmm, my bad- it was the Bonus Buyer banner at the top they wanted changed. If you have an orange banner, it should still be there.
WTB orange banner... really cheap, lol.
It is supposed to be all Pro 7 bundles. Get one for free, get another one for 80% off. I'd be on that - but alas, no orange banner. *sigh*
So... I've been kind of hard on Headshop OneClick.
After playing around with it for a couple of days... it is probably worth $10, and I don't think I'll return it.
Here is the deal - the FaceGen Demo is a much more stable, robust and full featured program than Headshop OneClick - but even there, your results are going to depend on the effort you put into it. A high quality picture with a neutral expression under ideal lighting is critical.
Headshop OneClick really seems to have evolved from a program designed for more generic importing into 3D modelling apps and for 3D Printing - and that kind of explains one of the worst limitations (and biggest advantages FaceGen seems to have,) the way the face texture that is created doesn't blend into the rest of the loaded figure. In fact, the face texture often doesn't really reach back to the side of the face. It creates this creepy "Genesis wearing the skin from your face," effect. I guess if you were going for a Silence of the Lambs, Buffallo Bill render, maybe that would be ideal. It puts the lotion on its skin... or blah blah blah...
I haven't had much time to play with it, but I did manage to make a render of myself that looked pretty darn accurate - it just looked like there was a spotlight shining on the figure's face.
Unfortunately, trying to create a second face import overwrote the morph and texture that was created, and that one looked lousy - and I wasn't paying attention to my original referrence photo so I can't just go back. This is another limitation of Headshop. It doesn't make it clear that unless you rename everything, you're going to overwrite any previous work when you create a subsequent face model. Related to this, you also can't use GenX to transfer the created morph to other generations. It doesn't find the headshop face morph that is created. FaceGen handles all of this much better if you plan on transferring morphs or textures from generation to generation.
Finally, exception handling is terrible with HeadShop OneClick and very cryptic. I took one photograph, tweaked it in Photoshop to make the expression more neutral, and tried to import it, and it crashed FaceGen every time. I don't know why. The image was flattened, I resized it to make it smaller, I tried it in different formats, jpg, png, bmp... no matter what, Headshop crashes on that image. It crashes in a lot of situations. It crashed on importing a profile picture. I have an i5 with 2GB Geforce 750ti and 32GB of memory - so my rendering PC is no slouch - I don't think it is memory issues.
With all of that said - I think that with pretty heavy postwork in Photoshop and a good reference picture, you could create a fairly good replica of a real person. In fact, doing two imports of the same person into FaceGen and HeadShop, there were some aspects of the morphology and texture that turned out better on the HeadShop attempt than in FaceGen. Overall, though - FaceGen is a more competent program for this kind of work. I don't think HeadShop is worth the full asking retail price, or anything near that. I think the regular price should be around $10 or $15, and on sale it would be a great deal at about $5, considering how unstable it is and the features it is missing.
I'll post some side by side renders using the FaceGen Demo and Headshop OneClick with the reference photos used later. I'm about to go on Spring Break and I've got a bunch of things to get done. It isn't the most frustrating plugin or addon I've bought. LAMH is awesome, but has a steep learning curve and just crushes my system performance. It really wants a DSLI GPU with lots of memory and a strong core CPU in order to be usable. I get frequent crashes in that PlugIn, too. HeadShop OneClick runs decent on a relatively modest PC rig, although it crashes more often than Vince Neil, Ted Kennedy, and Mark Hammil after a weekend hard-drinking and doing blow with hookers in Vegas.
It isn't a GOOD program. It is insanely overpriced. But at $10, it is a decent novelty.
And that is my kinder, gentler, more generous review of Headshop OneClick.
:)
Would you describe it as less than 1/10 the price of Facegen, and less than 1/10 the usefulness???
(At that $10 discount price, I mean)
Cool comparison. Very helpful. Thanks! I hope Facegen might be on sale for less one day. It was tempting, but hard to justify the price for my usage, and I doubt I'd ever buy Headshop OneClick based on your review. (I thought it looked jicky anyway.) Other topic, sorry so many of us didn't get an orange banner. :( Maybe DAZ will make it up to us.
I'd say it is probaby more than 1/10th the usefulness, but at 5 times the effort and frustration of the other. :D
If you've got more time than money and it is on a discount, it might better than nothing. If you've got more money than time, don't look at it twice and just pay the difference for the better product. :)
No orange banner for me. And despite making frequent purchases I'm still getting the same old 10 percent offer. Not really mad but rather mundane. Like the freebie Easter cookies today. Very cute.
Me neither, despite buying several things every day or every other day. But it's happened to other people too, there's no rhyme or reason. It just means now I'm going to focus more on shopping at Rendo, been loving the deals they are giving me.
LOL, I read your sentences and thought you were calling the cookies mundane- meaning "like" taken as "just like the..." (in addition to.) Then I read the last sentence. I agree, they're adorable!
Someone asked me how to put products on an external hard drive, which is funny because I just mentioned that to someone else yesterday. If you're new and just starting out, or old (couldn't resist) and haven't done it yet, consider doing it. Should Daz's site go down (and it did) I kept puttering along because I put every product on the external drive the minute I buy them. I just make it habit. So here's the way I do it (and as you know, I am SO not technical. So if I can do this, so can you. It's easy.)
1. Make sure your external hard drive is plugged in and ready to use. Go to your DIM
2. Have the Ready To Download column active.
3. Uncheck the "Install After Download" that's at the bottom left.
4. Click your items that are new/that you don't have in an external drive
5. Click Start Queue and the items go to the file you have selected for the downloads. If you don't know, go up to the right corner in DIM and click the cog, there will be a tab that says downloads and it tells you what folder.
6. Go to that folder and then hold Shift and click on the first and last one, and drag them into a folder (that you have already made) in your external hard drive. I used to make individual folders for the products first, then drag them into it, but have waaaaay too many products to do that for. Here's a tip:
TIP: Make folders by the month and just drag them in there. Be sure you have the year. So have a January 2017, February 2017 etc folder. Then if you want to find a product, just go to Product Library, type in the product, and you have the date. I was doing folders for each product, but by the month is so fast and easy!