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So I experimented with Mec4d PBS Shaders Volume 2 For Iray and this render made me realize that I don't have enough props installed on this computer.
This is supposed to be a mix of Apartment 39 (room and rug), Daybed Romance (the table with the bowl, candles, and books), and Couch Potato Props (sofa and blanket).
I need to figure out how to light the room. Looks like the lights went out...but then, my house tends to be poorly lit like this, so it's real. Excuse the grain, my laptop needed to be charged. Also, a few weeks ago, I realized that I don't wait enough time for my renders. I think the most I ever waited was almost 2 hours, but then I need to do stuff on my laptop. Others took several hours or even days...but then, post work exists and we can't let the computer have all the fun in creating art.
Other people have had better luck at styling hairs with the strand-based (revamped Garibaldi) hair system but I finally figured out how to successfully use it in my renders. I'm using it to thicken/add volume to hairs that look too thin in the renders. I used to do it with geoshells but they never quite looked as good. Doing with the strand-based hairs looks more natural. The tricky part is trying to tint the hair to match.
In this example I'm using Olympia 8 (one of my most used G8F base characters), who has Ophelia 7 skin applied to her. Let's face it Olympia 8 is actually Ophelia 8, since Elithia 8 now fills the Olympia/curvy goddess role and the Olympia 8 eyebrows fit Ophelia 7 skin very well as seen here. Fane Hair for G8F and 3DArena's Davinia for G8F's geoshell lingerie to follow forum posting guidlines.
The thickening/added volume is most noticeable with the black hair, as opposed to the teal & yellow hair.
(Basically, less postwork in having to paint in new hairs. I'm also trying to figure out how to use this method to make more frizzy and asymmetrical hairs for the sake of "realism". But also, to prolong the life of lower-poly trans-mapped modeled hair.)
I saw on the Kanade 8 post people saying there's no male counterpart, currently available as of this post, so I rendered up 4 stylized characters who might work, or at least their morphs in various doses. Luc (swimsuit), Luca (goth), and Potono (orange), are all sold here.
The small blond boy is "Ayumu", he's sold at Renderosity. I'm really on the fence about picking up his female companion because his skin, in this render, has that doll-like look that I liked from old V4 Poser renders. I have no doubts she'd be like this too.
Another female character, who I had wishlisted for a while and recently purchased is Kim Seohyun for Genesis 8 Female. To me, she is one of the most realistic looking East Asian G8Fs I've seen at the store. (Some examples; Mousso's girls, and bluejaunte's Misumi/Misha and Inaru...although something about their eyes, nose, and mouth makes them look half East Asian/half Caucasian. And other ones I can't remember right now.) The only thing I didn't really like was that she doesn't come with a painted-on eyebrows option, but that's something I can fix myself. Fibermesh eyebrows by themselves don't look convincing to me, but them on top of the face texture's eyebrows look great. Fortunately, her fibermesh eyebrows match up with Mei Lin 8's texture eyebrows. (Mei Lin 8 doesn't come with fibermesh eyebrows, just like Monique 8 who doesn't have any.) She is not an HD character, but that doesn't matter to me because her base shape is very nice and I can just put another normal human G8F's HD details on her to make her look even better.
So yes, I'm glad I got her. On a side note, Mei Lin 8 has become my "go to" starting point body shape for when I want to render a petite lady.
Here are two renders I did of Kim Seohyun and the Alphakini Wasteland texture expansion, since HerYun and Aeon Soul were both on sale, and I grabbed both. First is Kim Seohyun with her default skin texture "out of the box", then with Mei Lin 8's texture. And finally an edit where I overlaid the Mei Lin render on top of the default skin render at 50%. The edit is the best, but I felt that was cheating, so I only put the Mei Lin 8 render in the DAZ Galleries here [x].
Default textures: (Didn't let it render long enough, because I didn't think it looked good in this particular render.)
Mei Lin 8 textures:
Edited/Mixed textures:
@MimicMolly, I can't stress this enough… Postwork is not cheating. It's a valuable tool to the end product: your art!
You could have used LIE to layer Mei Lin 8's skin textures at 50% over Kim's before you rendered. The result would be roughly the same. (And it would have taken you longer than rendering the two separately.)
You could have layered Mei Lin 8's skin textures at 50% over Kim's in Photoshop or Gimp, and used the modified textures for your render. Again the result would be roughly the same.
But to be honest, compositing the two layers in postwork gave you more control, where the strength of the overlay could be adjusted easily.
And the final image is really nice. I'd never have realized it was a combination of the two textures if you hadn't explained it here.
Well done.
I felt it was cheating, in this case, because I wanted to see how much I can do without postwork. I had failed my own personal objective.
Before I forget, I had done these other renders of my take on AS' promo girl, Alice. Except this Alice is clearly a knockoff, so her name is "Aessa". I still need to find/make a good heterochromia eye texture for her. It seems what mine still lacks is bigger, rounder eyes. Smaller button nose and bigger lips. Right now, as she stands, Aessa looks like the type of girl the V4 PA, "rebelmommy", made. (You can find examples of her work at Renderosity. But if you want to search here, just type RM in the store's search and the bought-out DO's she made are still here. Yes, this is the same PA who had made Nieves.) I like Aessa, in my failures, she looks more "normal" compared to the original.
Aessa's face. (Her eyes in these renders are edited Stephanie 8 eyes.)
Aessa bust. (She is "fuller" than Alice, but this was intentional.)
I like how this AS Outfit, Aery Mage works well with the scene identification trick. Sparkle Hair for G2F, is one of my most favorite G2F hairs. Never cared for the bundle it was from, since I don't really do fairies.
Speaking of knockoffs, this was my own attempt to make a character similar to Kanade 8 with what I have.
The main morphs I used for this Homemade Kanade 8 are the following:
Then I adjusted the lats and the pupils size a bit. Some textures made them look too small. I'm pretty sure I'd pick her up much later, but then I wasn't impressed with how she looked in the EmmaAndJordi expression pack for her. I almost always look at their promo art of these base characters because it's one of the things that convince me to at least pick up the base or wishlist it. (The most notable one for this was Gia 8 in the "Battle Princess Mix and Match Expressions.)
Finally, an artistic render with this Homemade Kanade 8. DAZ Galleries link [x].
Yes, this has postwork, but the postwork was mainly color correction and then me adding some dots overlay to cover up the Iray grain because I have no patience to finish this render.
The unavailable items here at the store used are the crown from SquarePeg3D's Bowsette cosplay, a fabric shader AllenArt had made that's no longer available, and the "veil" which was part of some V3 Headdresses that DarkWorld used to sell here before his store got nuked. Also, the DAZ Galleries doesn't let me list the Bardot Outfit. The background HDRI was a freebie made my Traveler for when Star 2.0 was released. (They are still available as of this post, here [x].)
She is using the Kim Seohyun skin and eyebrows, Also, Hellboy's Eyelashes. I use these eylashes too much that I don't want to keep linking them because then, that DAZ Deals extention is gonna pick up my spam.
Since this is my thread about my art (and unpolished artistic pursuits), I feel I can say that I'm actually glad that DAZ bought out Kanade, and made her an 8. Otherwise, I'd have to buy both her and the hair, and I only really wanted the hair. I doubt they were going to be a separate download, since DAZ doesn't do that anymore. (Like if a product came with 2 versions, you could choose which version to download but now it just makes you down the whole file or sets of files but you don't know what's in them.)
Kanade's Hair, just the hair, has a 250 MB zip download. Probably would've been like almost a gig had it been originally sold with the character. This is okay, the hair looks like it has a lot of polys.
I picked up Cinder too, and I'll try to render something with her tomorrow or later this week. I want to see how close I can get to the promos since I don't have the base but Young Minto and my mix. Cinder looks like a cross between Betty Boop and Elizabeth Taylor, that and I wanted a Belladzines character for G8F. They have a distinct look to them and I've always been curious if it's the promo set up or if the skins are like that. This one and Louisa had interested me, but I also don't have Penny 8. I have Penny's Starter Bundle wishlisted.
I did a couple of renders, but I ran out of time. This is the Cinder morph at 100% with the dial-spun Kanade. I put the Kanade Hair on her. The Tasha 8 eyebrows kinda match with Cinder's eyebrows.
These are two characters I made using Cinder's morph at 100%.
The first one, is the Kanade Hair lilac girl. I actually re-did this render because I didn't like how the bangs got crumpled when I shortened them, so I left them alone and it looks much better. The tails also deformed, and adding the smoothing modifier didn't help much.
The second character uses Cinder's skin too. But she is a mix of 75% Teen Josie 8 and 55% Aiko 8. I used a similar curly hair by AprilYSH, because the product promo had a hair like that.
It was with this render that I discovered that the rectangular artifacts were caused by too many shadows. In the thread where the OP was asking how Cinder looked like without Kanade, all the other formers seemed to have experienced this same problem but me. However, they were using more "dramatic" lighting with dark shadows. (I guess they were all really trying to make their Cinder mixes be goth girls, as was advertised, except me. But I'm a rebel like that. :P)
Just because I can, I did a render with both lilac!Cinder and curly!Cinder. Their kitbashed shader outfit both had shoes. (And yes, they both use dForce Pathera Outfit and dForce Loincloth Collection. Except the tops and the bottoms are switched. XD) I wanted the lilac!Cinder to wear socks, and for the convenience, I used a cotton shader on her legs. The pants cover up the legs anyway, so this just looks like socks. I have also changed the settings of their eyes and teeth. I think, for toons, it looks better lighter, since they're stylized anyway.
The rectangles are still visible, but then I don't have enough patience to render these all the way.
I bought the DAZ House Cat too. I tried to recreate one of my cats. Unfotunately, there's no tortie skin with these, so I'll have to paint one myself one of these days. I've seen others complain about the eyes too, but my problem with the eyes is the pupils. This barely looks like her, but it's because the eyes are wrong and the whiskers are too thick.
I like how this cat is weight-mapped. The old poser format has always confused me. I wonder if I could make my own morphs with Sculptris.
I decided that a "quick fix" for Daz House Cat, is to parent an eyeball prop to each eye, and then hide the eyes. I used EYEdeas 3+ for V4 and M4. The Calico, which uses the same shaping preset I used to recreate my cat, had the eyes scaled up to 76% (because my cats have big eyes). Then the tabby, who is in the default shape, the yes were scaled to 74%. So if you have this product, it comes with pupil slit morphs that you can adjust to your liking. Just remember to make the iris and pupil really big.
The calico, no hair. (in the DAZ Gallery, because this render came out cute IMHO [x])
The tabby with hair. (Also in the DAZ Galleries because it looks believable at a glance. [x])
Now all the DAZ House Cat needs is paw geografts that give it flexible toes/better toe (and toe bean) shaping options, and better claws. I'd also buy wearable eyes, though it's kind of sad that we need add-ons like this to have a more realistic cat.
I managed to transfer Maelwenn's Lydia HD for Victoria 7 (except for the HD morphs) onto G8F. I had gotten her a while ago, but haven't used her until now. I decided to do a test render with her and the Eudora Hair which I transferred to G8F thanks to RiverSoftArt's V4 hair transfer script. (Eudora Hair is basically the older/lighter alternative to Linday's Classic Long Curly Hair with dForce for G8F. I can barely use Linday's hair on my system.
) This first test render I used the trusty Artemis X for Genesis bodysuit.
Test render, with default skin settings and default HDRI. (Eudora hair has ColorWerks applied to it. I used the Look At Me eyes because transfers always have messed up eyeballs.)
Somehow Lydia looks Latina here to me. I could tweak her nose a bit more for her to look more "passing". But yes, this is Lydia and she looks nothing like the "pretty white girl" in the promos. This got me curious and decided to use the same skin and apply it to the shaping preset that's supposed to look like me (an actual Latina.) Used a different hair color, used one of Minto's glasses that look like mine and Aeon Soul's Lyra Outfit for G8F because it's cute.
Personally, I don't feel I need a Latin American base. Especially since my ethicity is so diverse-looking. However, I completely understand people wanting characters like this out of the box. They might not know where to start to properly dial-spin their own "believable" ones. I take this for granted because it's my people, who I was raised with and see everyday. It's a no-brainer for me to whip up one. Still, as long as it adds to the gene-pool, I don't mind if it's different than what I got. The more, the better.
I did these Sailor Mercury cosplay renders back on Sunday. I just forgot to post them here. These were done using AmyAiMei's G8F shape and the Sailor Mercury cosplay for G8F. The hair is the Genesis Portia Hair. This was originally an attempt to use more Depth of Field, Bloom effects, and to use the Bokeh HDRI as the bubble attack that Sailor Mercury has.
Full Body:
Bonus Portrait. (I have no clue what happened to her eyes.):
This is Jurou for Lee 7, but on G8M. Since this character uses the DAZ Original morphs, I was able to reapply most of the shaping preset to G8M easily. The one thing it did need was the Lee 7 shape. But since I don't have Lee 7's shape on G8M yet, I used a mix of Lee 8 (89.8%) and Darwin's Mishap's Ishimoto (26.9%), trying to eyeball it so the final shape could be similar to the original. I was too lazy to double-check, but I like this mix I made. This skin is beautiful and I regret not picking it up earlier, though I got it at a great deal.
My first test render, which I will definetly redo because there's some things I'm not happy with, but I love the results enough to share them:
This is practically the same scene, exept it has brighter lights, no skeleton makeup, different clothing and yes, the exact same facial expression:
The shaved scalp hair is from Ohanzi and the hooded skeleton render has Ishimoto's fibermesh eyebrows. I currently don't have a similar fibermesh eyebrows that are close to this texture. Ishimoto's were the closest but not close-enough.
This is a quick edit of my test Jurou renders. The no-makeup render overlaid on top of the makeup render at 15% opacity. Mostly to show that the eyebrows don't match up. (And why I want to redo it.)
I finally got Kala 8, and she is one of the most beautiful "base" figures I've seen for G8F. Unfortunately, my only gripe with her is that her skin is like Tasha 8's human skin, in that her nice tan is the result of 90% translucency. Her skin texture is actually light. Still ca be usable for other characters. I also have her Bollywood Bride outfit which was the only thing I liked from her bundles.
One more quick render, which I liked and posted in the DAZ Galleries too [x].
She does have eyelashes, it's just that they're red and don't stand out at all lol
Thanks to this utility by InTheFlesh, I was finally able to nearly successfully transfer one of my favorite G1 characters, Lyoness' Emily onto G8F. For some reason, she kept coming our quite deformed. I finally managed to get her approximate shape close, after going back and forth with Morph Loader Pro. I used this utility, mainly for the ear and eye deformers. I still need to fix her eyes but it's a start.
Here is Emily with Kala 8's skin. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with this scene.
This is a WIP of a character I'm working on. Even though he's intended to be a middle-aged man, that needs to look stylized/toony/anime-ish, for my project. And I think the stylization is what's making him look much younger than what I'm aiming at. Even the Ollie 8 HD I put on him isn't working. Even though I like this young man skin because it's light and has blemishes, I don't think either Ollie 8's or Edward 8's skin can be similarly light. They are both much darker than this. (Yes, I checked the Diffuse mats in the Runtime.)
In the Surfaces > Editor, select all the Skin materials, including the lips. Then dial down the Translucency Weight. You might be surprised how light you can make the skin that way. And skin with lower translucency is probably better for "stylized/toony/anime-ish" anyway.
(He looks good as is, if not overly old.)
Great job on the Emily transfer! Transferring characters can be so frustrating, but also fun. I'm still getting the hang of it.
@L'Adair that probably means I can make this skin lighter, even though it's the perfect shade right out of the box. I'll try to see what I can do with Ollie and Edward, since I think an "older" skin like theirs will fit him better.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
I was thinking of Ollie and Edward when I posted. I think the skin on the character now is wonderful. (It's just not as old as you wanted him to look.)
I'm trying to recreate my head morph with other morph combinations. Mostly to see if it's possible.
Roughly, the original is Monique 8 Head 14% and Olympia 8 Head 41% (with nose lips and eye tweaks). This new one is Kala 8 Head 40.6%, Latonya 8 head 17%, Olympia 8 Head 25.5%, and Tasha 8 Head 37.7%. (No tweaks yet but they are needed.)
The second one has that G3F/G8F angular face look and possibly a more accurate-looking nose.