Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 11
Novica
Posts: 23,887
Welcome to the 11th installment of the product showcase thread and helpful tips/tutorials!
The previous threads / views as of May 11th, 2018 are shown below, let's see how we're doing. (This is a community effort.) When you show others the products, those renders get seen and you help a lot of people. The threads FIVE YEARS AGO are still being surfed. These are the increase in views from November 18th (2017) to May 11th 2018.
As of May 11th, 2018
Thread 1 82,388 Now 83,347 (+959 new VIEWS!)
Thread 2 66,979 Now 67,811 (+832)
Thread 3 77,832 Now 78,578 (+746)
Thread 4 57,703 Now 58,508 (+805)
Thread 5 52,017 Now 52,482 (+465)
Thread 6 73,230 Now 75,603 (+2373)
Thread 7 51,745 Now 54,879 (+3134)
Thread 8 45,690 Now 49,087 (+3397)
Thread 9 47,117 Now 51,435 (+4318)
Thread 10 46,851 (May 14th) and 48,025 June 6th
Total views: Old: 554,470 New: 618,581 New views on threads 1-9 only- 17,029 views, no new posts!
plus 1,174 new for just thread 10 = 619,755 June 6th
A few good links from previous threads:
*If you want to back up your content, SereneNight gives you a step by step. It's in the second half of the post.
*RGcincy is the creator of Shape Magic, a very neat program and if you want to try modeling, take a look!
*To post your images in a thread and avoid attaching them below your post, here's where you can post them!
*Some threads I started which will help you:
ZBrush Silo Modeling Infinito How To Use GenX2 Applying Material Presets (Skin) for GenX2 Material Zones ~ Geometry Tool Tutorial
Free Portrait Backgrounds Wanna Render? Iray Tutorial (one of my favorites, very detailed and goes step by step on setting up an Iray rendered scene.)
Some fun and useful threads:
Photoshop Playtime! Where we showed you some really neat plug-ins to get cartoon, oil, watercolor effects.
Scripts: A one click solution to put things on your ground plane, under things, etc
The References links have to be expanded to several pages, believe it or not there is a limit to a post size, and we passed it. I had to trim down descriptions of existing links to add new ones, so I am scattering the References to several pages because they are alphabetical and I can't just stick new ones at the end. Whenever I add a new Reference, I always mention it in the thread.
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REFERENCES
**********References / Of Interest**********
Books, Digital: RScotJohns (Author) helped us with ebook (did a chat one evening)
Characters: I showcased Odelle, an older character from Rendo (that Daz rejected!):
Computer Research: What all those specifications mean, and what to look for in a computer
Expressions: Here's some with sliders that are really fluid and usable. And Poses (scroll for both of these, numerous posts)
Hair: One of the funniest things showcased- vendor's names in hair!
HDRIs: Fishtales showing you some HRDI's
Free Infinity Cove 3 sets
Mountain Valley: Take a tour of this product as we drive around town!
See Nath's Elegant Swan- the ACTUAL PHOTOS from the museum, and the render. This car spewed steam and pooped yogurt, and was banned from the streets due to being a nuisance. (Ya think?) Now at HiveWire.
Special Honor: Rabbicus fun with RGcincy. It all started with a cactus on a shelf and I said it looked like a rabbit.
********** Programs **********
Camtasia tip
dForce Start Here Thread
Special note: Script: David GB's G3 To G8 Pose Fixer To correct G3 Poses and get them to work with G8
Infinito: Infinito Experiments: If you have questions about Infinito, ask them here
iClone: iClone6 (I'll have to get back to it) Here's a nice video by Bigh and Bigh's thread on Iclone and Reallusions Thread The Path To iClone
Livebrush Pro (FREE) Livebrush Pro- link, it's now free
Mixamo How To Use (by Firewarden)
Motion Capture in general: Motion Capture products/ discussion linked from the Octane FaceShift question
Senosoft: Convert .rsr file types to pngs (P3DO Explorer)
ShapeMagic 2 ShapeMagic 2 By our very own RGcincy
Silo: Silo Modeling
Zbrush For Beginners: Zbrush for Beginners
********** TIPS A-H **********
Tip: Bloom Filter- Settings
Tip: Categories / Products Options Missing From Content Library If you don't have these showing up at all, here's how to fix it.
Tip: Characters- Where To Load From Loading Characters- does it matter if you load it from icons, the Genesis figure + Character List, or the Figure (Aiko 7, Girl 7, etc) + the Character List? YES IT DOES.
Tip: Charlotte Hair Tweaks- Turn fluffy into sleek and modern!
Tip: Crashing / Clear Cache (Note: It will also show you where your temporary files are, slightly above that. Go to that folder and remove those also.)
Tip: Cursor- Turn Off Yellow Highlighting Default has it on, here's how to turn it off! EDIT: Here's how, it isn't explained in great detail in that post. Go up to top left in studio to Window>Draw Settings>Editor Tab>All>then Highlight Style will show up and you select Bounding Box Only.
Tip: Custom Categories for Sets Here's some suggestions and additions
Tip: DA Big Ocean How To Use New December 26th 2018
Tip: Delete Items in Scene: Grouped items giving you fits? How to delete those polygons!
Tip: dForce settings guide
Tip: DIM download problems? Try this. This works too. (when products will NOT install and stay in the "to be installed")
Tip: DIM downloading product to use with products from other sites
Tip: Dreamland Models in DS Learn how to work with Dreamland Models (Poser) in DS
Tip: Doors and windows that open, flat roof to add, pane of glass, good kit bashing items
Tip: Dome Orientation Results My experiments/settings for rotating the dome by changing the XYZ Dome Orientation. All settings given/ shown.
Tip: FaceGen Tweaks
Tip: Fern Lake Instances and Water Instances in Fern Lake and Through The Woods And clearer water tip for it. My example.
Tip: Finding products in these threads, using Google
Tip: Finding Morphs/Products in a Scene Script
Tip: Focal Length
Tip: Furries: How To Find Files and Pose (Llynara) And Capsces posted this for a few tips.
Tip: Gemology Shaders for Iray: Settings for best results, by vendor
Tip: Generation Tools: List of products which help you cross generations
Tip: Greek Houses: Fixing the water, landscape, and stone edge materials. All settings provided!
Tip: Ground: How to soften / blend where feet interact with the HDRI background
Tip: Growing Up: Making Chest look good
Tip: Hair: Different Settings To Increase Shine Also here
Tip: Hair Transparency: How to thicken hair when it's too transparent: Go to number 2
Tip: Hair: Using Genesis 3 Hair On Genesis 8 Easy! (By L'Adair)
Tip: Harpsburg Night Lights Best way to apply them
Tip: Hierarchial Poses L'Adair tests what hiding things in Scene Tab does and other options. Click here.
Tip: Hierarchial Presets for Materials- Applying Materials Only To One Item (By Aave Nainen) New November 3, 2018
*******TIPS I-W *********
Tip: Iray Organized References This thread links to the threads, but also categorized some of the topics within the thread so you can look things up quicker.
Tip: Iray Section Plane TabascoJack shows you how to use the Iray Section Plane
Tip: Lighting: Lampshades TobascoJack shows you how to prevent losing detail when lighting lampshades
Tip: Madelyn Ears- How to remove those elf ears.
Tip: Manual Downloads in Product Library How to find them ultra-quick
Tip:/Info: Materials and Shaders: Difference in Materials and Shaders (from Commons)
Tip: Mermaid Top Family friendly suggestion.
Tip: Metallicity and Metallic Flakes Add More Sheen to your characters
Tip: Millenium Cat- Free Persian Head
Tip: Mocap Animations FREE Here (Mixamo)
Tip: Multiplane Cyclorama Use Modern Museum Lighting for realistic results!
Tip: Nobiax Free Iray Daz Textures
Tip: OOT Hair Steps
Tip: Photoshop Postwork Postwork Photoshop Tips (Laticis) and my example
Tip: Photoshop Plugins From Thread 6: Examples
Tip: Portrait Lighting Novica's XYZ Dome Orientation Quick Guide (Portrait Tweaks)
Tip: Pose Converter (Genesis 2 to Genesis 3) Where to find files (Scroll for discussion)
Tip: Combining Poses by locking body parts
Tip: Postwork The Postwork thread has a lot of good information!
Tip: Putting Prop On Top Of Prop (Align Pane)
Tip: RDNA How to find your purchases
Tip: Rigging How to import OBJ and rig in Daz Studio
Tip: Rigging Basic Rigging Preparation then Adding Bones for Rigging
Tip: Section Planes How To Use (by TabascoJack)
Tip: So Wet Bundle Examples
Tip: Skies of iRadiance Which are for high / low altitudes? Answer
Tip: Spectural Rendering tests for the studio
Tip: Spotlights: (Iray) How to Hide Them and Still Emit Light
Tip: Studio Crashing: Script by Taoz to save last render
Tip: SubD: How To Add It (Darwins Mishap)
Tip: Texturing With DestinysGarden (DestinysGarden)
Tip: The Briefing Room Lighting with Iray (V3Digitimes)
Tip: Ultragenesis: Faces of G has a variety of older faces.
Tip: Weight Maps: How To Remove or Change (Thomas Windar)
Tip: White Point Changing it- Examples
Tip: Walls- Sets Which Are Easier To Use- or Not. Sets that don't have separate walls and handy notes on a few sets
********** TUTORIALS**********
Tutorial: Bus, Noggins- Converting from Bryce to Daz Studio (RGcincy) Here
Tutorial: Breast Gone- In Hexagon (Smoothing Zev0s Grow Up product even more)
Tutorial: Clothing, Making in Blender SickleYield's tutorial on Deviant Art.
Tutorial: Converting G3 and G8 Clothing by SickleYield on Deviant Art Added June 2018
Tutorial: Create Categories Using Gen2F, I showed how to Create Categories and Export to save your custom categories. (Here's WHY you may want to do that with your characters.)
Tutorial: Custom Actions In Toolbar How to Create Custom Actions In Toolbar
Tutorial: Customizing Morphs Using Morph Loader Pro
Tutorial: D Former D Former Tutorial D Former tutorial and links
Tutorial: Depth of Field Flipmode provides a good depth of field tutorial for you.
Tutorial: Fisty's Shaders & Getting Rid of Gooey Lips This one shows you Fisty's shaders. Get rid of the overly gooey lips.
Tutorial: Fur Brushes Download and Video (Kathryn Loch)
Tutorial: Garibaldi Hair Doing a cat with Garibaldi Hair- Tutorial
Tutorial: GenX links on "how to use."
Tutorial: Generation 4 Materials on Genesis 2 This one put Generation 4 materials on Genesis 2 using Victoria 4 for Genesis 2 Female.
Tutorial: Geometry Shells How to do Geometry Shells (video tutorial the3dwizard) and doing makeup for different characters
Tutorial: Hair Shaders (Slosh, his product) explaining how to use them.
Tutorial: Iclone Iclone videos
Tutorial: Images- How To Put Them In Forum Posts Here's Putting Images in Posts
Tutorial: Instances: Using Ultrascatter
***** Tutorials Iray- S *******
Iray Canvases- How To Do Lighting
Iray Ghost Lights 2: Portrait Setup in 13 Steps, All Settings Given
Tutorial: Iray Light Manager Pro Step by step screenshots
Tutorial: Iray For Beginners- Do A Scene Step By Step The Wanna Render? Iray tutorial walks you through Iray lighting for total newbies- including Crush Blacks, Burn Highlights, how the sliders work together and why in Tone Mapping, and Environment Intensity.
Tutorial: Iray Lighting- A Night Lantern Doing a night time lantern with Emissive Lighting.
Tutorial: Iray- Portrait Light Setup With Point Lights Portrait Lights: 3 Point Lights and a Spotlight- Settings Provided
Tutorial: Iray Skydome Super Pak The Explanation to use (magix101)
Tutorial: Iray Worlds Skydome Explanation on using it (rgcincy)
Tutorial: Maps for Iray and 3DL / Albedo Explanation Texture Maps: (Saba Taru) ALBEDO explanation, and where to put the maps for Iray and 3DL
Tutorial: Material Zones
Tutorial: Metadata- How To Make It Video Here (Slosh) and Here (3D Almanc)
Tutorial: Rigging and Weight Mapping- Beginners Through Advanced
Tutorial: Rigging Static Doors So They Open (RGcincy) How To Rig A Prop
Tutorial: Shaders- Mec4D's PBR Shaders Mec4D's PBR shaders: How to use
***** Tutorials T through W ******
Tutorial: Tears by SereneNight
Tutorial: Teeth, Getting Realistic Shapes Getting realistic teeth shapes was here and slight tweaks here.
Tutorial: Texturing Texturing With DestinysGarden is a good thread- let a pro show you how!
Tutorial: UltraScatter Advanced Instancing UltraScatter Advanced Instancing: RGcincy's handy notes, how-to.
Victoria 4 for Genesis 2 Female: How to use the product.
Tutorial: Weight Mapping: How To Smooth All Face Groups At Once (By SickleYield)
Tutorial: Windows, Making Them From Planes And Cubes Realistically Making Windows using planes and cubes, with glass panes and images!
Please wait until Thread 10 is closed before posting. (Don't wait on me to give the go-ahead, I will be on and offline all day.)
I went to check out the last thread and saw (closed). I initially panicked then realized, oh hey, there's the new one. Your reviews and tips are extremely useful. Thank you (everyone) for keeping this going.
Yay, new thread :) grats Novica and hello everyone *offer coffee, buns and sandwiches*
I'll take that coffee!!
I have a question.. this weekend I was in search of a door for a render. It needed to be a closed and locked door. I looked at most of my content and noticed I just didn't have anything that looked right. I even tried the Vault. That almost suited the need. The idea that prompted the need was to show a locked door (preferrably with chains) to demonstrate visually what cybersecurity can do to an environment (protect it/lock hackers out). I ended up with a less than ideal image.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to visually portray that sort of idea?
Lara for G8F hit. It was the hair and skin maps that made her look bad. If you're in the market for a new toon style figure with huge eyes... she is your ticket.
I used the Subterranean Pool in this render, with a lot of tweaking. When loaded it went 20 minutes and still hadn't written to canvas
After a bit of slider pushing and pulling I got it down to 4 minutes, most scenes are between 2 and 4 minutes on my machine. Then it just grew into this render :)
I stopped the render, save the Last Raw and then resumed it. I'll see how long it runs for.
Pool Time
2018-05-14 07:34:54.779 Total Rendering Time: 11 hours 58 minutes 15.86 seconds
50% done
Click on image for full size.
I was having all my renders suddenly jump up from about 15 minutes to over an hour for days. Then, just as suddenly, renders jumped back down to under 45 minutes. Not sure what is going on with render times. I did some tweaking with lights and what not... but at the same time... those changes didn't seem to make any vast improvements at the time. Only a couple days later did things improve.
It got to the point that I was looking at Task Manager to see if anything was going on in the background like backup or AV scanning.
Anyhow...
I just wanted to drop this here, that as intent on driving us to their competition as the DAZ marketplace seems to me lately, their main competition's site re-design drives me right back. I was just getting used to their admittedly bad design and learning how to navigate it, when they changed evertyhing in a way that just exaggerates everything that was bad about their site design before.
I think if you can't find any chained shut doors your best option might be to add the chains in post. I can't thing of anything else, I don't recall every seeing a door that is chained shut as an option in any content. Maybe try a search on shareCG that might be a possibility. Or post in the free stuff thread, someone may have an idea over there.
Strings has a rigged chain. You could use that on the door you finally decided on. And you have more control over how many chains and where they go with a product like Strings. There is also the Locksmithing Set with several locks you can choose from to add to your chains.
Good afternoon, glad to see folks jumped ship and over to the new thread.
I saw this thread over in Commons that Ikyoto posted. It's a remarkable day regarding a health issue and thought you might like to post your thoughts to a very helpful person.
Regarding chained doors, I think of dungeons. The Dungeon has some dangling chains (don't know how they morph) and some formidable-looking doors. Sickleyield's Shackled also has chains that if you scale down so they're not "deep" may appear to be across a door instead of around someone. (or just embed in the door so the back half doesn't show.
I was going through my lights and remembered the BOSS lights. Then remembered I had done a thread! So if you want to piddle with portrait lights (and promos), give it a look. BOSS Pro Light Set is the product.
And that brought up a "nostalgic" tip, meaning one we covered ages ago (like Thread 2ish.) Which got me thinking, it would be nice to share some tips us old-timers (several years +) know, that would help someone with a year or less experience. Have some? They're obvious to you, but would be a "Ah-ha!" for a newbie. Since we're on Thread 11, a LOT of tips have been buried and I can't possibly index all the tidbits. So thinking back, here's three. Any you'd like to share?
Want to keep a good light setup? File>Save As> Light(s) Preset That in itself isn't more than a "meh." But here's an option to save you a lot of time.
1. Let's say you have an outdoor scene/set. Do your character at World Center (and put your other characters wherever you want, from there.) Do your lighting. Save as Light Preset.
2. Then next time you have an outdoor scene, load that Light Preset.
3. Load your character (which will be World Center) BUT put him/her where you want in your new scene, then group (or parent your character(s) and the set.
4. Move your main figure(s) to World Center. Because the set is parented or grouped, it goes with it. Leave your lights alone. The lighting will be correct.
So this is the TIP: Use Light Preset(s) and set them up around World Center. Then simply move your set/people with your main characters at World Center. The lights will already be set up. In short, why mess with a lot of lights when you can just move your figure/set in one move?
*****************************************
This one was one of the best things I ever figured out (it hadn't been posted on the threads for a long time when I was surfing. It was an accidental find at the time, but well known now.)
Although the viewport dropdown showing the cameras are normally for views, if you select the light in Scene (like Spotlight 1) and select it in the viewport dropdown, YOUR VIEW BECOMES THE LIGHT and wherever you are "looking" you are shining.
TIP: Direct your light by selecting it in Scene and the viewport dropdown, instead of messing with Parameter sliders.
*****************************************
TIP: Flip your floors and use them as backdrops!
Oh, I had forgotten about this. From my BOSS thread-
Please note: when you do Save As>Light Preset it will NOT save any of the mesh lights. Only your spotlights will be saved.
Is that still true or did later releases of the studio address that? Wonder why the mesh lights aren't saved.
Mesh lights aren't "lights". They are emissive surfaces on actual geometry mesh.
I only use three types of light setup products.
The DAZ Stduio built-in 'Sun & Sky'
The already mentioned Boss Pro Light Set
And the Painter's Lights
https://www.daz3d.com/painter-s-lights
I have other light sets that I should try out too but haven't. They might be better in some circumstances.
For all intents & purposes I consider a product like Altern8 a light product too much than a skin texture product since it only changes material & renderer settings and not actual textures but I haven't bought it yet.
@barbult Aha. Makes sense.
I was also reading this thread on making emissive surfaces invisible, it's interesting to read how the Thin Wall setting can speed up renders. I've decided to just move all the BOSS lights out of the render area and really increase the lumens, so I'm not dealing with reduced reflections. I haven't played with BOSS lights in awhile.
Dang it, I have too much stuff. I haven't used this in ages and it would be great with the BOSS lights. Barbult mentioned it in the BOSS thread. Iray LIght Manager Pro. I love products from @V3Digitimes and I'm going to surf back through her store and see what else I'm forgetting to use.
I have that too and haven't used it once although it look ideal to get me past using the 'same old same old' lighting setups I always use.
I'm sure this MUST have been mentioned somewhere, right? The title of the Dolly Changeable Hair Expansion is spelled as CHANGABLE. Proof reading??? This hair has been released HOW LONG? @goldtassel they butchered your product title!
@Novica, it's nice to know I'm not the only one who finds that stuff. I am a technical writer by trade and handle a lot of editing as part of my current job function. When looking at the store (e.g., titles, descriptions, etc.), I have to do it gritting my teeth many times.
I've been a little engrossed working on a render for the last couple of weeks, but I'm here to rememedy my recent lack of contribution to Novica's wonderful threads.
This is SC Olivia HD for Genesis 8 Female. This is my first Second-Circle character and I must say I'm impressed with the range of eye brow / eyelash shapes and colours. They come in black, blonde and brown, which makes it much easier to match up with hair colours out of the box. The eyes are lovely subtle shades plus a deep brown and you can tint them and darken the iris. The only thing I'm not keen on is the lip shine option and because everything else is so good, I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong when I apply it. (See below.)
1. SC Olivia - minimal makeup. With this one I paired her with Whitney Hair for Genesis 3 & 8 Female(s).
2. SC Olivia - more glamorous. Here I changed the lighting, used Tonal Rage and put a satin shader on her top. She is paired with Tinkerbell Hair. I've had do some photoshop correction work around the lips, due to the lip shine I mentioned earlier. Everything else had rendered and but the lips were still way off being ready. Also, I'm not so keen on the lip gloss extending beyond the line of the lipstick (see below). I love the way she glam's up though and she has an etheral, elfin, look which I love.
3. The lips and lip shine. These are the lips before my photoshop work. As I've mentioned, it's probably something I'm doing wrong when applying the shine. To me, she looks as though she's had her gloss applied beyond her lipstick and it's a look I don't really like. It may be that this is the fashion and, believe me, I'm totally not a glam make-up kind of girl in my daily life so I have no reall reference point! I remember seeing something, somewhere on the forums, about adjusting colour around the lips but I can't find it. Has anyone got any advice on how to tone down the gloss around the edges or even all over so it isn't so obvious? I do want to be able to use her with glossy lips and I can easily photoshop the final image, but if there is a quick and easy alternative in Daz Studio I'd love to use that instead.
SaveSaveSaveSave
Michiko HD (Gen 8F) Dolly Changeable Hair (Gen8F) Fancy Pool Party Outfit (Gen3F)
Since there was a Mousso Flash Sale, I picked up some more gals. This is a combination of the Pro-Studio Lights and BOSS Lights, but I moved the lights a LOT and did my own thing with the tilting, rotating, distance away, etc. So pretty much my own setup almost from scratch. BOSS lights give you a good starting point, and the PDF is exceptional that tells you suggestions and what does what, and why these vary from HDRI lighting.
The Fancy Pool Party Outfit is for Genesis 3, shown on Genesis 8. Although it has a bend morph, the bottom of the dress really doesn't impress me as it didn't hug the underneath of the legs- using the Parameter morphs. I did NOT explore Scene tab and break down the bones to see if anything else could be done. I definitely was impressed wtih the lower the shoulder strap morph- I think ALL tops should be required to have that so we don't have the stupid straps arching above the shoulders. I mentioned this to you folks because it was very reasonable (I think around $6) and you get a lot of jewelry with the outfit. Hoop earrings, necklaces, bracelets.
Click to enlarge.
@mollytabby Your gals look great, SC Olivia certainly looks very different, depending on what you do with her.
The lips do look a tad off, you have a marvelous eye. See if there is a metallicity factor- is it on in Surfaces? Reduce the sparkly and call less attention to it.
Which reminds me, I added it to Michiko's lips, and I also created my own color. The icons on the lip colors were WAY off, the mauve came out fairly Hot Pink. So I'd recommend picking a light color and then darkening it yourself.
@mollytabby, it's not you. The material zone for the lips extends slightly beyond the lips into the surrounding skin. Most "shine" settings apply the shine without masking that bit of skin. Here is post I did with images to detail the issue in a thread on Megah in The Commons.