Angstenstein's M/M book cover chop shop
angstyg
Posts: 52
I just want to say how super nice and welcoming and helpful everyone has been so far! I'm just dipping my toes into this stuff and have no idea what I'm doing. Like I just spent 3 hours trying to fix a problem that turning off environmental lighting could have fixed. Seriously green. But also very excited and eager to learn how to be awesome like everyone else!
I design book covers, with my main genre being LGBT romance. It's really hard to find visibly gay stock model couples. I've sunk about $2000 into custom photo shoots that never panned out. It's really frustrating. Authors want to depict gay characters. They should be able to! So my main skillset is photomanipulation. But then I spend like a week on stock photo sites looking for just the right arm or hand or shoulder. I'm piecing together embraces with a dozen photographs. It's difficult! All the lighting has to match, the camera lenses, the angles, the perspectives, the poses. It's time consuming and has so many limitations, and even though I've gained a lot of experience and consider myself 'good' at making manips, they still only look truly 'organic' maybe half of the time.
So long story short, I'm hoping to use Daz for fantastically gay things! My main skillset is still graphic design and photo-manipulation, so most of the covers will probably be those things. I just want to use 3D for supplmentary body stuff.
This is my very first attempt at a cover using 3D models. I kinda just want to chronicle my awkward skill journey here. I'm hoping in 5 months I'll look back on this and laugh at how much better I am.
The bodies are both stock G8. I haven't bought Michael yet. I just gave the guy looking forward a new stock photo head. I totally failed a rim light attempt on the other face, but ehhhhhhh whatever, ugh. This is using a pose set from Renderosity (aeris19) and Morley hair.
I'll probably set this back for whatever future cover job. These kinds of interactive poses are in high-demand, so I know it'll get nabbed up quick. The main guy's head is just a placeholder at this point. A lot of studio stock models use that pose, so he can be changed super easy. I actually have already used this head in another cover, so I just happened to have it on hand. How freaking cool is it that I can just CHANGE THE LIGHTING MYSELF to suit a new head?! This is totally mindblowing for me, you have no idea omg :D :D :D
Thanks to everyone who gave me advice and help over these last couple days!
Now I'm off to make MOAR.
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Comments
You have really great compositiing skills. The replaced head looks very natural.
Wow, thanks so much! I tried to match up the lighting with the stock photo model's, so I'm glad I was in the ballpark. I'm usually alright at that when I'm hunting for photos to marry for manips, but I expect translating that into something practical for light rigs is going to be a learning curve. I never even knew what 'rim light' was until yesterday, even though I've highly coveted the effect in stock photo images for years. I see a lot of youtube'ing in my future.
Welcome to the Art Studio. That looks great for a first attempt. Getting skin to look realistic is hard. I like your photo-manipulation skills. Those heads look like they actually came with the bodies. I'm looking forward to seeing more.
Fantastic head transplant!
Thanks @deathbycanon and @knittingmommy!
[dramatic movie trailer voice] This winter, heads will roll.
Your off to a great start! Welcome to the Art Studio and DAZ!
That's your first attempt? Oh you are going to excel at this stuff.
@ArkadySkies Wowww, thanks a bunch!!! I think I'm getting addicted already. I keep buying stuff, lol. Someone told me to buy the Platinum membership and I just did. THIS IS SO MUCH MORE FUN THAN SIFTING THROUGH STOCK PHOTOS! It might end up being cheaper, too. I only pay on average like $2 per stock photo, but once I use it, there's not much room for recycling them (unless it's like a skyline or texture). I can see some true reusability with ths stuff, though.
I just bought a clothing item to use in a client's single-character cover. I'm so psyched about it. It's like now I'm starting to see all the places where I can use this stuff, and it's really not just my M/M covers, but also my UF and PNR covers. So exciting!
Make sure you don't have it set to renew as it will renew at full price. You can always get a better deal several times throughout the year. And, if you used Paypal, make sure you set it to not renew on their site as well. They'll send the payment if you don't even if you have it set to not renew here.
But, yes, the PC club is your best way of maximizing savings. Don't forget to use your coupons by the end of the month, too. It's easy to forget about those when you first join up.
Ooo, thanks for the advice! Is the $24 quarterly a 'good' price or just the regular cost?
That's the regular cost. There will probably be a sale again before Christmas on the PC membership. Sometimes you can pick up a year's membership for less than that $24 a quarter. It just depends on the sale.
Welcome to the forums. Great cover. If you struggle with more issues similar to the enviromental lighting, just ask. People are very helpful.
Thanks for the advice @Diomede! I'm at that point where I'm new enough that it feels like every question is obvious and embarrassing, lol.
So.... I bought M8 and the HD pack. I wasn't going to because it seemed like a lot, but my husband leaned in close and whispered into my ear, "tax deductible", and I quivered so hard I clicked the checkout button. Whoops. Oh well, what's done is done.
Here's that first cover with the new shiny bods! The details is freaking amazing.
I was wondering about this little issue. It's like... scanlines, or pixelated? Only in this one place. It's not obvious enough to seriously bother me, but if there's a way to get rid of it or avoid it in the future, I'd like to.
It may need to cook longer. You can do a spot render on parts that don’t look exactly right if you don’t want to re-render. Before doing the spot render open add the tool settings pane and set it to render to a new window. Then drag the marquee to spot render the dark area and see if it looks better after just concetntratijg on rendering that bit. If it does just combine it in Photoshop.
Oh cool, I'll give that a try! I let it go until it was completed, which was around 8000 iterations, took an hour. I try not to fiddle with the render settings much because idk wtf I'm doing there, lol.
I'll give spot render a shot, thanks!
I find that may help best, then you don't have to rerender the whole enchilada. it works too if you want to bring out detail in one specific area that doesn't converge as well.
Looks great! Looking forward to see more, and also.. welcome to the art forum and the addictive world of 3d :)
Have you gotten the Genesis 8 body morphs yet? They will expand your range of bodies hugely.
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-male-body-morphs
Ooooo, I never even saw this! I'd probably get a lot of use out that one. People keep recommending things that I think 'ehhh it probably won't add much to the overall project', but then it always does. I'm also trying to get myself to concede that Bend Control is something I need.
I'm currently trying to get a refund on a failed photoshoot so I can just throw all it all at Daz, lol. I've already rendered four really solid MM couple poses that would probably cost me a few hundred otherwise.
One thing I am wondering... is there any way to change the skin tone/texture, or does that require a certain set? I've got G8, M8, M8 HD, which I'm using for my models right now. But aside from the sizing morphs, I feel like their skin might look a little too 'samey', if that makes sense? I can always adjust in photoshop, but figured I should ask, just in case that capability is already there and I just can't find it.
For starters there are different translucency settings provided with M8, you can find that in the materials for your chosen character (smart content). try with those under different light situations.
Then you can fiddle with the skin tone in the parameters surface settings for the skin, easiest for starters is the base colour and the translucency colour. But be warned too much of that can make the skin look like plastic really fast. Somethig easy is the dual lobe specular wheigt slider, with that one you can give teh skin a sweaty sheen.
Tools of the trade skin builder (comes for different generations) but alas only for the females
Welcome! Glad to have you here with us! Your head transplant looks good.
I got into 3D to do my own book covers after getting frustrated with stock photos. I'm now branching out to do them for other authors. There are plenty of underserved areas (in stock photos) that 3D can help with, and the technology keeps getting better. I believe it is the future for stock, and will eventually replace traditional stock phtoos of people at some point, just like what has happened with 3D animation vs traditional cartoons.
I don’t have bend control but it works only for certain areas of the body to give improved bends on those parts. If you do torsos only you probably don’t need to buy that yet....so you can wait.
If you get the UV Swap programs (https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-uv-swap-male-and-female-base or https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-uv-swap-male-and-female-base), you can use Skin Builder textures (https://www.daz3d.com/skin-builder-3-for-genesis-3-female-s) on both male and female characters, though you may need to get one of the fibermesh beard or body hair products to compensate for comparatively smoother-looking skin.
(With Genesis 2, you could simply copy the UV definition into the appropriate directory. Not sure whether or not that works with Genesis 3/8, though.)
I'm fairly new to Daz also but one thing I didn't know when I 1st started rendering is that it will stop, before it's done "cooking" if you don't turn up the Max samples and Max time sliders. I usually just slide them up as far as they go. I recently searched on how to get more detail and less "grain" also. I found a conversation that in the end they clicked on Architectural sampler and caustic sampler. I have done this a few times rendering my characters and I really like the difference but it takes a lot longer to render.
Yes! You can change skin tone by slightly tinting diffuse color, and you can change the skin base altogether by using another character's skin. Usually characters come with a new skin and a base shape that can be blended with all the other shapes you have.
A couple that I really like for G8M:
https://www.daz3d.com/dylan-for-michael-8
https://www.daz3d.com/salvatore-for-genesis-3-and-8-male
https://www.daz3d.com/fw-kieron-hd-for-genesis-8-male-and-li-kieron-whiskers
https://www.daz3d.com/garrett-for-michael-8
A word on FW characters: the morphs are incredibly beautiful and I really like the way all his characters look. However he tends to us the same base skin to build his characters off of, so the skins can look samey. Every one of them I've seen has a very prominent texture error in the crotch area, but since you are not doing explicit renders it might not matter to you. They tend to be a really good value with a PC subscription since he makes DAZ Originals which get a discount.
Now, G8M has only been out for a little while so there is not too much diversity in his skins yet. The good thing is you can use skins from the older G3M base. Here are a couple that I like from there:
https://www.daz3d.com/darius-7
https://www.daz3d.com/ivan-7
https://www.daz3d.com/kimo-7
https://www.daz3d.com/elijah-7
https://www.daz3d.com/dale-for-genesis-3-male
https://www.daz3d.com/raoul-for-ivan-7-hd
https://www.daz3d.com/fw-mateo-hd-for-michael-7
Ah. It's worth mentioning that the above Daz base characters cannot necessarily easily be used with G8M as they are. They use a slightly different UV layout that can produce seams where the different "islands" of the body texture fit together when you render, or cause parts to be misaligned. To use them, you'll either need to do a map transfer to Genesis 3 Base Male on Genesis 3 (if you're just starting with Studio, that's probably more than you want to get into) or by using Genesis 3 Character UVs for Genesis 8 (https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-character-uvs-for-genesis-8-male).
It's a bit annoying, because -- with the exception of maybe some Michael 7 characters, I think -- there is basically one and only one use of the specific UV per base character. So the only character that uses the Kimo 7 UV is Kimo 7 himself; the only character that uses the Elijah 7 UV is Elijah 7 himself, and so on. Almost all of the other characters use Base Male UV for their textures. (Map transfer is the most economical way to work; the above product may be the most sanity-saving for a new user.)
Yeah, I completely forgot that you had to get the UV swap product because I got it as soon as it came out. G3's proliferation of DO uvs was...bizarre.
Ok smart people is there a reason she would want to use 8 over 3? There's so much back and forth between people that I am lost... lol Some swear that g3 is still a better product and others are all on the 8 band wagon and I understand none of it. :)
There is a lot more content out there for 3 right now and some amazing skin and add ons. Like Dale, that was mentioned, not a pretty boy some really amazingly detailed skin. Would she have to put him on an 8 figure or could she just use it on g3 with just as good of results?
Well it’s basically the same product. Genesis 8 is pretty much Genesis 3 with a few changes to Certain body parts. So same figure really. One of the reasons the skins work so well.
Geneis 8 male has superior bends and and expressions. Genesis 3 male has a lot of content and you can use the skins for Genesis 8 in some cases and with the right uvs but expressions aren’t that great and the body has a few problem areas. Gen 8 does as well and there is so little content for him and autofit is problematic.
as far as dale goes you can apply the texture depending on his uv. You can convert his morphs that aren’t hd over as well.
I kind of stopped using Genesis 3 once gen 8 was released. Gen 8 just looks better to me from the neck down.
G8 can use basically anything from G3. Clothing can be refit using Sickleyield's tutorial and looks as good as it does on G3. Hair and anything else that's head and torso only can be brought to G8 just by editing scene identification which takes a couple clicks. Materials all work (except you need to get the UV sets to use G3 DAZ flagship figures because of their old UV happiness). Morphs can be transferred using Singular Blues' script. Poses can be converted (or you can download my free auto-converter).
Meanwhile, G8 has huge improvements in bends and facial posing, the separate eyelashes are a godsend, and a lot of characters being developed are coming with fibermesh brows and facial hair which is AMAZING...I'd point anyone to G8 any time.