Novica, Serene Night, & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 3
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EDIT: The first two images I have re-rendered with some more professional lighting.
I recommend this item. Next to the new Stonemason bike I think it looks pretty detailed. The only thing I can't see it having is any lights. (Correct me if I'm wrong). I had to add points to the fronts of the vehicle.
Some of his large scale environments are beautiful for distance work, but look sort of undetailed and grainy to me up close, particularly the chairs. This vehicle looks good up close and far away as well I think.
Agreed about the foot clamps and hand clamps Either your character will have to have super human strength or being wearing body armor that stiffens and holds him in place so he's not suffering the effect of too much. It does make posing super easy though. You can stick the hands and feet in holes and call it a day.
I'm going to work on an image of two people on the craft. It'll be interesting.
Novica See the RRRR Thread for info on Sky Bike. If need more help let me know while my body is still working. The Weather has beat me up pretty good the last couple of days.
Thanks Jaderail, I was monitoring it :) I saw it. Finished up the scene I am working on and will go try it.
Can understand about the weather. We were lucky today to have a 60 degree day. Real feel on Monday will be 3 degrees- going to actually put a neck piece and hood on the horse for the first time. Stay warm, stay well as possible :) And thanks so much for your help. I think I put the files in the old manual location and not how the DIM is setup. Don't know if that makes a difference but I'll try to figure it out.
I'll have a look at the jet bike, too. Was out of the loop today.
And I feel your pain on the weather -- we've already got most of the schools in the state closed Monday due to wind chills. Our high Monday night is supposed to be like -14 BEFORE wind chills. I keep thinking about all those nutcases who will be out in 40-below windchills Sunday night to watch the playoff game up here! I love the Pack, but... I'm just not that much of a fan, I guess!
Yep, that is NUTS. Sports are not worth getting frostbite over.
Got the jet bike to work. When I started using DIM, I had forgotten that the file path was different than when I was manually installing it. After figuring that out, it still took about three installs to get it to show up. :) So you don't have to worry with it- thanks so much anyway KB!
Invited guest writer
Today I'm gonna breakdown an image I just finished which was rather quickly put together using a heavy kitbash. For me this is fun as this was what brought me into the world of DAZ, making character portraits for RPG characters.
Let me introduce to you Lomund, son of Giermund, dragon-eyed Barding Warden from the torn of Dale, in northern Middle Earth. I was invited to join my neighbors' game of "The One RIng" which they will start off later today. I spent halt the night reading through character generation rules, making a character and making a picture of him.
Lomund is based on David 5, my fav male character still. As he is a Barding, he has fair hair that is kept short and he is well shaved. I used SAV Alpha Scalp for the hair, even though is not visible in this render.
For the outfit, I used a lot of different items.
Boots, Pants and Cape are from Forest Scout with textures from Roaming Scout.
Eyes are set up using Project EYEris as I needed ash grey eyes (because my great grandfather saw the dragon burn the city and his eyes turned grey, and that has passed from father to son in generations.
The tunic with chain shirt and the bracers are from Defiant for Genesis using the Valorous for Defiant textures.
Bow, quiver, arrow and pose are all from Ranger Bundle for Genesis 2 Female(s) but as you see works well on a Genesis male, David 5 in this case. Then I added a belt and knife from Percy for Genesis.
For environment I used Forest Hut, which has some very good cameras which I also used, set up well for a very hard DOF. I used the Advanced DAZ Studio Light Bundle for lighting, using the breaking up gobo on the spotlight. Rendered in DS 4.6 with Shading rate 0.2.
I hope you like him!
I like Lomund very much, Totte. D5 is my favourite male too, and I love the way the light falls on his face and the use of depth of field to guide us straight to the tension in his brow and his hand. Beautiful. Very nice results with the kitbash too. I've had my eye on Forest Scout and this shows how well it can work together with similar clothing styles.
@ totte , very nicely done. Really like the way you put together the outfit, I would have presumed it was a set as it matches so well. I just started playing with the spotlight yesterday finally figured out how it works to show the different types of lights, but I had to turn off the AAL to get it to show anything, is that normal? DOF is a whole nother can of worms for me, no matter how I set the camera it never works, your's looks fantastic...always love your work, very inspirational!
The depth of field is really, really good- sets the tone. I also like the way you didn't highlight the tip of the arrow- the mind does closure and from seeing the bow and shaft the viewer knows it is an arrow, so the tip being in shade makes for very natural lighting. Your character has such concentration, but also radiates confidence. The outfit was a wonderful choice!
Kharma, do you mean with a certain product, like a preset camera, or DOF in general?
DOF in general..I have my DOF camera, then use a second camera to set it but it seems no matter how I set it I never seem to get that blurred looking background, except for one time and that was a fluke as I don't know how or why it worked. I have a couple tutorials that I have followed religiously but still doing something wrong. I know there is a little red marker in it but I am never sure exactly where to set it. Its another of the things on my todo list for this week along with that AOA spotlight, and new modeling program :)
I know other folks have "simpler" ways but what works for me is to get the view I want, create a camera and name it DOF.
Select Camera DOF in the Scene tab
In the Camera and Lights section, turn on DOF for the DOF Camera. (be sure you've turned DOF on for the RIGHT camera!)
In Perspective view, you will see the two planes if you move your view to looking almost from the top, or the top view.
If you see the round white ball, put it on top of your character's head.
Don't have it in front of me, but your first DOF setting, try to keep it between 40-70 to play with
Keep switching your view to check in the Camera DOF and see if you like it- I sometimes zoom in a bit more even while IN the Camera DOF to see if I like it.
You can also simply use a background which is already pre-blurred and slide it in as a backdrop. IE add some Gaussian blur in your photo-editing program to your background and voila! Less resource intensive as well.
I will try your suggestions this afternoon as it is very cold and snowy and blowing here, the temp is -35 C plus wind chill, so very cold, freeze your skin in less than a minute outside today! I am going home from work at 1:00 and staying inside to play for the rest of the day. On a good note I haven't bought anything for 3 days now..lol...last thing I purchased was the princess dress and textures. Anything else is being wishlisted for March Madness...gotta think ahead plus the sale after sale after sale has worn me out.
Hm. March madness. Sounds fun. =-)
I did pick up Koichi. =-) Decided against the gynoid. Novica's statement about the posterior bothers me too, so I'll pass, although like those guns.
Invited Guest Contributor
Well I finally got my rendering PC up and running again (I had it plastic-wrapped in the aftermath of a storm at Christmas which took some roof tiles off) so I'll try and get a few renders done.
First off, here's a couple of shots of the Elven Earrings and Elven Necklace which are still on introductory pricing - the bundle is best value if you want both, of course. I don't generally spend much on jewellery (real or virtual!) but I fell in love with this set from the forum promo thread. I used the Dragonfly set first.
The jewellery claims to fit "any figure" so I tried it first on FW Cassie for Teen Josie 6. There are lots of fit morphs and movement morphs - I used the fit morph for Josie then adjusted it to fit Cassie better, which was quite simple to do.
The first image is just using a single Advanced Ambient Light (75% light strength) with hair surfaces set to primitive hit mode - I used Jewell Hair, because it can mostly be moved out of the way to show the earrings more clearly.
The second I changed the pose to try some of the movement morphs in the jewellery. I picked a fairly tricky pose for the necklace to follow and had a bit more trouble making it look right, but the earrings were easy enough to do. I added a simple spotlight (40% strength) from the camera side for this render.
As well as the out-of-the-box materials I've used here, there are several extra materials for each of the 5 styles - the third image shows one of the other mats fot the dragonfly jewellery. Don't judge the hair by this render by the way: I didn't think until after I rendered that I should have made it move a bit better with this pose.
Used:
Elven Jewels Bundle For Any Figure by EmmaAndJordi
FW Cassie by DAZ3D/FWArt
Jewell Hair for G2F by DAZ3D/SWAM
Singlet from Sneaking Out Clothes for G2F by DAZ3D/Xena
Final image is Olympia (out of the box settings) with the Primroses jewellery style. There's no specific fit for Olympia, so I used Gia 6 and adjusted as necessary. (Don't I just like making work for myself?!)
She's wearing Micah Hair by DAZ3D/AprilYSH and Winston dress for G2F by DAZ3D/Bobbie25/Sarsa - I didn't tweak either, they are just as they loaded, because I just grabbed whatever came to hand to cover her up.
The Elven jewellery is very pretty. I wasn't sure if I'd use it, like you I'm not that into jewellery, but I'm impressed by the way it hangs. It adds a touch of realism. Thanks for going to the trouble to show us the morphs in action. Plus your renders show that 'everyday' girls can wear it as well as more magical, fantasy genre folk.
I love your render of Olympia, she wears that hair so well! I haven't bought her yet (still using Genesis 1) but this is a very nice look. I also appreciate that she has a more realistic figure than many of the female characters, and her face is nice too. Pretty, yes, but friendly with it. :)
Thanks, Jindi - yes, I like Olympia too (wasn't going to buy her but the stacked sales and Snowball etc made it hard to resist).
Invited Guest Contributor
Next up, I was playing with some of the new animal figures before Christmas.
This post is of the Polar Bear by AM by Alessandro_AM, using the "partially clumped" LAMH preset. (I've heard that some people have been having trouble getting some of these LAMH presets to work. I am on DS4.6.1.33 and personally have had no issues since installing the latest version LAMH Player. Sorry if your experience has not been so good.) I really like these furry animals. For me they do take a little while to load (compared to the base figure) and there's quite a delay at the start of rendering where DS shows "Not Responding" but stick it out and it will start eventually and I think it's worth the wait. (By the way I'm on a Quad core i7 with 32 GB RAM so the machine isn't exactly underpowered.)
The girl is the base Genesis figure with Young Teen setting from Growing Up for Genesis by Zev0 and the Jenna face and partially-applied body shape from Sugar and Spice for Genesis by Male-M3dia. The skin texture is from Haley for Young Teen by DAZ3D/Morris.
Clothes are a bit of a mix: Barbarian Boots for Genesis by DAZ3D/Valandar, hoodie top from The Jogger by DAZ3d/Oskarsson, pants from Trail Blazer for Genesis by DAZ3D/Sarsa/Bobbie25. The boots and the top have been retextured with shader presets from the Leatherize by Marieah and Furify: Fur Shaders by 3DLust/Marieah - I get a lot of use out of both of these sets.
The background is FirstBastion's Land of the Ice Cold Sun and the lights are from that set too, but changed to Ray-traced shadows to avoid the dreaded pixel-spots. I did find that the Polar Bear came out rather a grubby grey compared to the snow, so tweaked the "Static Ambient" setting on the Polar Bear LAMH Group from 184-184-184 to 160-160-160, which I thought looked better. It may just be the mix of distant lights I was using that has the darkening effect on the fur - I haven't had chance to try other lighting yet.
Edit: Add links.
OH SURE- blame me for someone else's booty. :)
BTW, if you have the Witchcraft poses for Gia, those would work in that DM Secret Chamber.
@MelanieL I like your image of Olympia. She looks nice, and the hair and lighting are great. Thanks for showing the elven necklaces! I also think you are the first to show us the polar bear! Cool! (No pun intended).
@Novica: I admit, although I like DM's sci-fi stuff, I'm not keen on the blade/ritual/magic/skull stuff. A wee bit darkity for me. I passed, but agree those Witchcraft poses are useful. Gia's poses also can work for men. They tend to have less of the hip and body thrust that dominates v6 poses. Yes, I blame you for awareness of the booty. LOL. No, I'm actually glad you pointed it out. My feeling is if you have a realistic bot booty, it will be tough to have her wander around unclothed. And clothing just looks funky on bots. Unless a morph is produced no bot 2 for me.
I do like Maia. She has less large eyes than the typical releases this time. I am tempted, but I do have plenty of female models, and since it is a daz original, I know she will go on sale at some point.
@Jindi: I like your phrase: "Pretty, although friendly with it." Agreed. Olympia has very approachable less aggressively-I'm-so-sexy face.
DOF in general..I have my DOF camera, then use a second camera to set it but it seems no matter how I set it I never seem to get that blurred looking background, except for one time and that was a fluke as I don't know how or why it worked. I have a couple tutorials that I have followed religiously but still doing something wrong. I know there is a little red marker in it but I am never sure exactly where to set it. Its another of the things on my todo list for this week along with that AOA spotlight, and new modeling program :)
I can throw together a tutorial on DOF in DS, Poser and through postwork. DS makes it easy because you can see the "un-blurred" box when you view the render camera from another perspective. Poser is harder to visualize without test renders. Postworking it is easiest.
Two quick notes:
1) Focal Distance is how far away your camera is in perfect focus -- i.e., what you're aiming at.
2) F-stop is how much blur you want. A small F-stop essentially means your focus STOPS at a very small distance -- therefore things will be quite blurry when you aren't far from your focal point. A large F-stop means your focused area extends further from where you're aiming; making it look less blurry.
Gimme a few and I can illustrate this with some screenshots.
Appreciate you helping out with that tutorial :)
I'm had issue after issue with my RRRR. Got the jet bike, then when I tested my lights, my Ariadne was glowing white. Heard it can be an SSS issue with no shadows from the lights, but they all had lights. And this was the same Ariadne and light setup that I posted the preview of SeaNautica with. Grrr. So merged as scene subset again, now no problem with light, but scene messed up as I had her posed and didn't want to introduce more than one issue back into the fray. So putzing.
I LOVE that jewelry- particularly the earrrings- such detail. And the lighting is soothing- the hair highlights look very nice- perfect blend, not too harsh.
I was surprised there wasn't a flurry of polar bear renders- I just wanted to grab a Coca Cola and cuddle with one! Nicely done.
Thank you, that would be fabulous if you could do a mini tute on DOF, after reading your hints I think maybe my issue lies in setting the F stop possibly, as I don't seem to get that blurried look.
@SereneNight
Skyjet looks good in your renders. I like the last one especiacially - that cityscape looks quite impressive. I have a question about the first image though. What are those weird "tentacles" coming out of the characters arms where they go into the holes?
@Totte
Really nice character, atmospheric lighting and perfect DOF. Thanks for sharing!
@MelanieL
Nice to see that jewellery in a render, looks very nice.
The Polar Bear looks nice and the girl's outfit is perfect for that scene (I have to invest in those furify shaders one day). A pity that this bear was not an add-on for the previous AM bear. Would love to get it one day. I have an issue with LAMH though, I can never get a satisfying look using it. The polar bear in AM's promos looks beautiful and very realistic. In your render however the fur looks completely different than in the promos. I wonder what settings does AM use to get that perfect look and how long the render would take to achieve it.
@Novica
I've read on the forums that when you get that white glow (it appears solid white) on an item that uses AoA SSS, to get rid of it you just have to apply the basic AoA SSS shader to it (it won't change the AoA SSS settings) and the issue should go away. I encountered that "glitch" a couple of times and the above solution always worked perfectly.
@Kharma
Have you read any of these DOF Tutorials?
@Tarina: The last image was the one I spent the most time on and is the final piece. glad you like it. The rest are just stills so you can see the detail of the bike. You are the first to notice the tentacles. He is a sime which is a race of mutant humans with arm tentacles from a sci-fi series I like to read. I do sime~gen fan art on occasion, and he is just a character I made for fun. I do simes and gens from time to time f and you can see an image of Klyd in thread 1, which is from the same venue.
Here is how the DOF is setup. I've selected the camera used and is then looking through the perspective camera.
That explains it, I wondered if it was intentional, it looked that way bu for a second there I thought that the "hand holes" have messed up his fingers. =P May I ask how have you made them? Were the tentacles included in some character set?
And this is why DOF is sooooo much easier to visualize in DS than Poser. Love that camera visualization. I'm "cooking" my tutorial as we speak, lol.
Sure! The tentacle is a prop bought a while ago at Runtime DNA by evilinnocence. It is very large, so I shrink it down to the correct size, and make matching skin material from the character's scalp. To make the sheaths I add a torus to go around the base and shrink it down. I embed the whole thing into a ball and parent it to the fore-arm. I find it easier to move if I need to adjust the angle if it is one piece. There are 6 of those suckers in each arm. Fortunately they are easy-pose!
Eventually, my hope is to ixnay the sheaths and make the sheaths using a HD morph for the forearm. However, my attempts with hexagon have proven unsatisfactory. Maybe one day. For now, a little post work makes it as possible given my current skill-level.
Many thanks for the info!