Novica, Serene Night, & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 3
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Invited Guest Contributor
Used Genesis 2 Male
- Brothers for Growing Up Genesis 2 Male(s) and M6 http://www.daz3d.com/brothers-for-growing-up-genesis-2-male-s-m6
- StreetWear : Jeans For Genesis http://www.daz3d.com/streetwear-jeans-for-genesis
- StreetWear : Mens Sneakers for Genesis http://www.daz3d.com/clothing-accessories/streetwear-mens-sneakers-for-genesis
- Wheely http://www.daz3d.com/wheely (FREE)
(Wheely is smaller I scale it Up)
That is SO clever- love your use of Wheely!!! I like the shoes, too, they look so realistic. I don't think I've used the Streetwear Jeans before, will have to check those out.
LOL- I just laughed for a solid 15 minutes. I tried Garibaldi Hair for the first time, and I won't say what I tried it on, but I ended up with one of the following, take your pick:
1. an oversized Tribble from Star Trek
2. Sasquatch
3. something that wandered through a Rogaine factory and fell into the vat for a few hours.
4. Cousin IT from the Addams Family.
I THOUGHT I had kept the hair short. I literally have laughed so hard my sides hurt. Maybe I should have a contest and ask, "Guess what this is????" I have a sense a humor and just might post the Garibaldi Hair one and the original before it got made into a walking Wookie. I've got to get to bed (yes, it's 6am and I worked on this stupid thing all night!) and "it" is still rendering. Just a warning before you view it when I post it- don't have a drink in your mouth because you'll spew it out!
I've got to go snooze. Later!
Psst. Over here.
If you put Zev0's new Aging Morphs 2 HD in your cart -
http://www.daz3d.com/aging-morphs-2-bundle-hd
Then add an item from the 40% Off Select Figure Morphs that is already showing a discount -
http://www.daz3d.com/mighty-morphing-figure-morphs
the discounts stack when in the cart. But I think it only works when the Aging Morphs 2 HD are in the cart with them.
Shhhh....
Awww, adorable render. Great to see Wheely here, he's a fun model.
@TJohn: Thanks for that tip!
@Novica: Hah! At least you are trying Garibaldi. I think I gave up on it when I tested it out! But knowing you you will persevere
@Sasje: Great one. And good use for Wheely. Now that I have seen him in action, this might be time to play with those rubber/plastic shaders. Tres Cool!
Sounds a lot like my attempts. I eventually gave up because I have no patience. I didn't buy LAMH when it was deeply discounted because I hadn't managed to use Garibaldi and there were a lot of comments about machines crashing.
Garibaldi Hair Express
Tjohn, I just remembered- your avatar looks like my critter :) All I need is the sunglasses.
Anyway, the Garibaldi Hair (GH from now on) did get me to thinkin' and I have several things to experiment with. Not your typical approach, if you know what I mean. (Like when I said to flip the floors and use them as backdrops.)
I did screenshots as I went along for a tutorial, and while the end result is dramatically WRONG, that has nothing to do with the screenshots showing the process and how it works. I have to do a lot of work to crop/organize those but I probably will and share a bit later tonight or tomorrow.
My opinion is this- the tools are AMAZING. You can comb the hair, cut the hair, bend the hair, determine the base AND the tip of the hair size. It's easy- you just drag and select the areas. Now here's where I think I'm going to do something different- if you select ALL the hair then you can use the tool where you draw a line and it "cuts" the hair. That tool wasn't shown until WAY later in the video I watched, so I could not cut (aka shorten) most of my hair. I was afraid to go back to earlier tabs (they are across the top of the viewport) because I wasn't sure if that would "erase" what I had already done. Will test that later today.
Yes, my studio crashed one time, the first time I started, but no problems after that. Breezed right along.
Here's my poor gorilla. Warning before you scroll down- I am NOT responsible for uncontrollable fits of laughter leading to sprained muscles, torn ligaments, or any other bodily injury your laughter imposes on your body. I can NOT look at this poor thing without having giggle fits, I am doing it now with literally tears in the corner of my eyes.
Enjoy. And it would be funny to see some of YOUR attempts. But I promise you, yes, I'll try toget it licked by whacky experimenting if nothing else, and I'll tell you how I did it if I succeed. You folks concentrate on the product reviews and I'll do Garibaldi for a few days at least.
I'll also post the Gorilla as I was doing it for a product review, next post.
Gorilla For Genesis DAZ 3D, Debra Ross, etujedi, Guarie, Muscleman
http://www.daz3d.com/gorilla-for-genesis
He lit really easily, the poses are nice, but I want more hair details. I'm picky about that as I specialized in wildlife art.
Can you tell which set this is?
Well, I take it back. My studio has crashed TWICE in the past two hours with the Garibaldi Hair. At this point, will not recommend. Got almost to the end too. Was working on the same gorilla, same resources needed, yada yada. No other programs running. No excuse for that. Will try again shortly.
If something crashes on me or takes long to render, than I usually give it the old heave ho. I have plenty of stuff that works well from the get go.
When I used the hair products, I found them somewhat difficult to use.
I like the idea of hair- and want hairy critters and people, but there is nothing more frustrating than a mid-render crash!
Invited Guest Contributor
TOA Triplet - Part 2
Back to TOA Triplet by Frances Coffill. This time I'm using the full outfit.
The first picture shows the black texture of the overdress. I put it on top of the gold underdress to (a) give more contrast to see this texture and (b) make obvious any poke-through (the images have zero postwork). This first picture is of a simple pose where not much tweaking was needed.
The second picture shows a more extreme pose, where I've not entirely managed to get rid of a couple of specks of poke-through on the right sleeve - I upped the smoothing parameters, but maybe it needs a little more. On the same colour underdress they wouldn't be noticeable.
The third picture shows the second style of overdress (shown on a male figure in the product promos) on Liu. Again it has several adjustment morphs, a couple of shape morphs, a few movement morphs and handles on the four skirt sections: upper left, lower left, upper right and lower right - I've given it a little movement here. This is the gold texture option.
The final picture shows the material zones for the overdresses. The sash is a single zone, the boots have two zones: the foot and the leg section (cuff).
As before, the garments are shown on Summer Edition Liu by Raiya, for V4 and Genesis (I'm using the Genesis one of course) and the hair is Jade Hair for Genesis which is a PC item by DAZ3D/goldtassel.
Melanie, beautiful lighting- and I love the "free spirit" pose, like she's ready for flight. A very light, whimsical feeling.
SereneNight- it was actually more like 5 seconds away from END of render. :(
I have one rendering now, where I just went through and lowered all the settings to try and get only teeny sections- and I mean TEENY wisps of hair that might not even be seen. It's rendering now. Didn't bother writing down the settings because I'm just playing around. There's almost no hair showing.
EDIT: It rendered and could only be seen under length of face and under the chin, with a few wisps on top of head. Doing another one. I doubt I use these too often as the render time goes WAY up. (Unless I let them render all night.)
Afraid I can't take much credit for the lighting - I used the set from Micah Hair by AprilYSH plus a single Advanced Spotlight by Age of Armour on the black-textured ones to bring out the textures a bit. The background is a primitive cube with a stucco texture from (free) CGTextures.
@Novica: I like the shiney scene and lights on the gorilla fur. Good work on that.
@ Melanie L: Nice to see Summer edition Liu. She looks good in those shots, and she has a very porcelain-like beauty. Thanks for the tips on where to get some other lights. I'm always lookin' for more character lights!
Invited Guest Contributor
Portrait Lighting Tutorial by Laticis Imagery
http://www.daz3d.com/portrait-lighting-tutorial-for-ds4
Other products used:
Brandon http://www.daz3d.com/brandon
Casual Long Hair http://www.daz3d.com/casual-long-hair
Night Moves for Genesis http://www.daz3d.com/night-moves
Anyone learning lighting will definitely profit from the direction in this tutorial. It demonstrates how to set up a simple light rig using 2 distant lights and UE2 and adjusting the lights, how to adjust your render settings, and apply depth of field. A great starting point for beginners.
Posting my starting point render, adding UE2, adjusting settings, and final render. Hope they show up in order this time :)
The final render took 1 hour on my machine.
Nicely done Kharma! I like the third one the best, on my computer it's a vague greenish tint (doesn't look green, it's like a greenish gray.)
One thing you might want to piddle with is the bump and displacement in the Surfaces tab for the choker- might see if that will give the chains a bit of "pop." They look good the way they are, just giving "play around withs" if you're interested.
I've heard good things about that tutorial, glad you mentioned it for newbies.
Anyone with experience in Puppeteer, if you could answer these questions for me I would appreciate it. I am going to start piddling with animation (more rewarding than the Garibaldi Hair, but will occasionally keep trying that- my computer did not crash the last time I tried it. But results were so little, they barely showed up.)
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/35853/
Appreciate the help. :) I'm animating Hudson (with the Marielle Hair.) I used to do animation cells before animated gifs became popular, so am used to doing frame by frames. Puppeteer is nice in that it will fill between keyframes, but not as good as minute (my-nute) tweaking.
Puppeteer
To save the thread followers some time if you are starting out with Puppeteer (about four hours of wasted time total for me- totally annoyed with ring-around-the roses) I'm going to tell you what I think is the BEST way to learn Puppeteer and animation- I just started yesterday and doing it this way worked like a charm- and then I'll give you the "not so charming" that was left out. Here's what I know so far-
Start with this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qhgh5ocr7w
Now unfortunately that ends and doesn't tell you what to do if you screw up. Henceforth, add two more hours of frustration. Here's your answer folks- and I'll get right to this before the tips, so the folks on the Animation forum will get their answer that want to know-
IF YOU MESS UP, go to the little menu box (you know, the one at the top corner where if you're in the Smart Content pane, it would have the Content Database Maintenance stuff) and because you're in Pose And Animate Activity Tab (at the top) your menu box will have Puppeteer options. (Called the Puppeteer Options Menu, btw)
If you want to get rid of your TIMELINE (not all those precious dots you've just made in Poses tab- Select CLEAR ANIMATION LAYER. Then you can re-scrub.
Also, that is where you also ADD LAYERS. Didn't have that in any of the videos either.
Now, how to actually speed up your frames- not just the viewing of them-
Free, (thanks to ghastlycomics in another thread, which took me TWO HOURS to find.)
http://www.virtualdub.org/
Hope this helps you folks over in the Animation forum. :) I'm on Day 2 of animation and still stuck though. Don't know how to save- need it to be an AVI if I am going to use the virtualdub. Anyone know the answer to THAT?
Cathie
Invited Guest Contributor
Hi Everyone... It's been a while since I've contributed but I just HAD to stop rendering and rave about Miss Fisher's Wardrobe dresses. WOW... so fun to play with. They have built in morphs for the skirts that go with the poses for Genesis female... and some fun morphs. They remind me of the draping of Dynamic but without all the hastle. AND....drum roll... they are ON SALE for 60% off!!!! Not sure for how long though.. so best snatch them up fast. Make sure you watch the videos of the dresses in action... I'm gonna be using these dresses for sure in more of my renders!!! That's my 2cents... Happy rendering!!!
p.s. I'm still learning.. but here are a few of my renders... (love the scalloped edged and attention to detail.. darts on the bodice.. etc)... ENJOY!!! :)
@Novica... I will have a look at the collar settings,thanks for the tip, I wasn't too worried about them right now, I was so concerned about trying to make the skin look good, not sure if the blue tint they used in the tutorial was making it look a little green/gray, it was to combat the red of the skin. Looking forward to seeing what you accomplish with puppeteer, I have never tried it.
@llolalane, I am a huge fan of Miss Fisher's Wardrobe ... thanks for showing them. Love them, wish more clothing had the built in morphs. Absolutely grab them while on sale, they aren't on sale too often
Todays Review:
Sculptural Genesis Ultra Fun Kit
http://www.daz3d.com/sculptural-genesis-ultra-fun-kit
by: Canary 3d
Some Other content Used
Bridge of Cheirocrates (DAZ 3d) (Jack Tomalin)
Starship Stingray (Daz 3d) (Petipet)
Millennium Puppy
Rock Pigeon (Smith Micro, sold elsewhere)
Prison Jumpsuit for Genesis (Oskarsson Sold Elsewhere)
Nye Hair (Aprilsyh)
Tequila Hair (Daz 3d)
Alexios Hair (3d Dream, Mairy)
Yamaki rapture (Daz 3d, Ravnheart)
Yamaki rapture enforcer ((Daz 3d, Ravnheart)
Ingenious Rock Shaders (Daz 3d, JGreenless
http://www.daz3d.com/bridge-of-cheirocrates
http://www.daz3d.com/starship-stingray
http://www.daz3d.com/millennium-puppy-bundle
http://www.daz3d.com/nye-hair
http://www.daz3d.com/tequila-hair
http://www.daz3d.com/alexios-hair
http://www.daz3d.com/yamaki-rapture
I’ve been wanting to try Sculptural Genesis Ultra fun kit for a while. So now that it is on sale at 50% off it seemed a great opportunity. With the kit you get a number of shaders, two sculpture shapes, a few props (including a fig leaf), and some poses as well as a UV map, and bases to mount your statues.
How it works, is you can create a genesis character, use it alone, or with one of the shapes (the shapes make it look like an idealized Greco roman statue), apply the uv’s and the shaders to make your character look made of stone.
Unless you want a nude statue or Barbie smooth statue you’ll need to also shade the hair and clothing to match the base figure. I found the easiest way was to color the figure the way I want and then copy the texture over to the clothing and hair by simply copying the figure’s texture and pasting. You can also apply the shaders individually to the extras as you see fit.
You’ll have to hunt through your runtime for chunky hairstyles and hair that is not too fine to make your character look sufficiently statue like. Fine thready hair looks unrealistic, so this is the time to break out hair that has fewer fine bits.
One thing I ran into, is that when I recolored certain hairs, there is a transparent layer around the face that becomes visible with the shaders. I had to edit that out and hide it using the polygon group selection tool. I’m not sure if that is the best way to handle that problem, but it worked for me. =-)
Overall, I think this is a great set. It has been fun to make my own statues and decide who I want to immortalize in plaster.
One thing I would love would be an unfinished statue morph. Perhaps I will try imbedding one in a big marble block! Also a few more ‘drapes’ would be useful.
EDIT: The shaders can have a diffuse color added if you want a darker model. I tested the marble using JGReenless's Ingeious Rock Shaders as well, and it creates an entirely different statue look. The statue's tentacles are still JGreeenless shade, as I liked the shade and matched the statue stone to that color.
@Novica: Sorry. I'm afraid, I don't know much about the Animation/Features in DAZ.
I personally AniMate2 I never use the other features. To SAVE your file if it is on the Timeline it will save as a standard Scene file but only load back into the Timeline not into Puppeteer. There is a way to save Puppeteer presets but I'm not sure how.
As for VeeDub I use it all day many days and it takes files Rendered to FRAMES just fine. No need to try the BUGGY AVI save.
Hi Jaderail-
I saved it as a Puppeteer preset so I do get the Puppeteer to work with. You load your file (mine is Hudson Animation) so you have your figure, then go to Presets and it will have a Puppeteer Preset (if you "saved as" a puppeteer preset) and it will load all of it back onto your figure.
So I'm still confused about saving it. Does it save as a DUF with frames? Help me with the save part? (SAVE ME, lol. I'm confused.)
I just tested it to be sure the darned thing came up- and if you do save your Puppeteer as a Puppeteer Preset, do as I said and load your scene/figure- then I used "MERGE" (not Open- don't know if that works or not) and Voila! my Puppeteer was there with all my pose dots, and working on my Hudson figure.
EDIT: Nope, wait a minute- that gave me two layer 1's. Let test some things. My Hudson Animation may have already had Puppeteer in it and I just wasnt in the Pose Activity tab.
Okay, correction. Did not want to merely edit the previous post as subscribers wouldn't see that. If you save as a Puppeteer Preset, it will be there when you load your scene back up if you exit the studio. You need to make sure you are in the POSE Activity tab. Do not go and add it again or you will have two of the same Layers. (I had two Layer 1's.)
llolalane- We did a section on these dresses and the vendor was a real sweetheart, came onto the thread and discussed some of the features that I was confused about. We're members of her fan club :) I love your renders- I haven't rendered those dresses and you did a stunning job with them. They don't go on sale that often and folks really should scoop them up. It's an entirely different level of being able to fix dresses when your character sits down or really extends the legs.
SereneNight- what fun! I was hoping you were going to do that review when you mentioned you had picked up that product. Good tip on the chunky hairstyles, I have to remember to do that when I get around to using this. I also loved your dog and child in the render- very nice touch!
I'm learning Puppeteer so I can help you folks when you get to it. Will save you some time.
EDIT: Rendering now- in case you're interested, its at 38% in 14 minutes. I thought it would take longer! It is a simple 350 frames (hope that's right, I can't open the studio, I think frames is the right word I'm looking for.)
Novica I've not touched Puppeteer once after I started usin the Animate versions in DS3A. But IF your Puppeteer action is on your DAZ Studio Timeline and it RUNS as a Animation with just the Timeline open, that's the part I'm not sure of, your ready to Render to Frames right then. Of course most folks would build a Background and lighting to MERGE the animation into and then reander, but one the motion is on the Timeline its ready to use.
In VeeDub to send Frames to it Just select ALL, they will be numbered for you, and VeeDub loads them into one File for you. You can then set the Frame speed you like and do SAVE to the Supported Animation file type you prefer, most are supported.
I'll have to download V.Dub and try it- it was intimidating reading all the stuff on that site- I'm not technical and talking about computer this and that was disheartening. I'll jump in and see what my questions are after I try it, and will refer to your post. Appreciate you!
Also- I'm wondering if that's how llolalane knew those dresses were on sale- it's not in the rotating banner. Did I miss an announcement, or is this another newsletter thing?
Quick question- what is the best file type for animations here on the forum- do we load it elsewhere and then just link it?
Second- what's the best for YouTube?