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Novica, Serene Night, & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 3

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited January 2014

    Hmm. Lots of Stonemason goodness on sale today. But a bit muy expensive for my tastes! Will wait for a sale as usual. Like the wheeled vehicle by Antfarm as well. =-)

    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    Here's the second shot of Karine with Hawthorn Hair, the other side. This is with the hair smoothed to 15, moved that spotlight that was overhead (but more centered) over to the same side as the camera shot. The Specular 149/121/108 which is a medium mauve got rid of more of the white sheen on the cheeks.

    Gotta go do housework, I have company coming this week. BTW, it's 67 degrees- I have my windows open. Ice predicted for Mon night/Tues. At least we're getting a break here for a day.

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  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    FW Danika (DAZ 3D / FWArt)
    http://www.daz3d.com/fw-danika

    I'm going to try this gal (for Genesis 2) and see how she does in the Abby light (plus mine) that I just used on Karine. Will post results later tonight if she's halfway decent.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited December 1969

    You've done a good job on Karine. That is a hard character to light.

    I thought FW Danika rendered pretty well for me. I think you'll like her.

  • starionwolfstarionwolf Posts: 3,670
    edited December 1969

    Danika has really pale skin compared to Genesis 2's default skin.

    I thought I uploaded a render of Danika to the forums but I can't find it.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited December 1969

    I did one earlier in a hair review. She is very pale.

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,386
    edited January 2014

    @Novica - thanks very much for pointing out that SwimWear V6 on sale - I liked the swimsuit, loved the pool and really loved the price!
    @Luci45 - your words on Male-M3dia's new HD men spurred me to get that too - pleased I did, here's my first render.

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    Post edited by MelanieL on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited December 1969

    @Melanie: Nice renders MelanieL! I like your big guy, and the pool looks awesome!

    @Novica: about Tyrese I did some investigation, and pulled up his mat, and default skin has a slight moustache which emphasizes the light space over his lip. But the texture also has some paler skin there.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    FW Danika (DAZ3D / FWArt)
    http://www.daz3d.com/fw-danika

    Cyclorama: Portrait Paper Backdrops (DAZ3D)
    http://www.daz3d.com/cyclorama-portrait-paper-backdrops

    Diva Hair For Genesis 2 Female(s) (DAZ3D)
    http://www.daz3d.com/diva-hair-for-genesis-2-female-s

    Get Funky Josie (DAZ 3D / Amaranth / Shox-Design)
    http://www.daz3d.com/get-funky-josie

    Had to reduce lighting quite a bit from our previous gal. Changed many of the settings. To get results like the second one, your diffuse and your ambient both need to be a greenish brown, and your specular a medium blue. Specular and Ambient around 80%. You will get the slightly green hue with this- but the benefit is that it looks really good in post work when you add a slight percentage of red to the hue value. (second image.)

    If you keep the original Danika, you are going to have to really be careful with your lights and "underdo" them. I was going for the character features, not the pale ghostly skin, but it's nice to have both. This gal also comes with FANGS and dark makeup. Very versatile.

    The Diva Hair goes GREAT with this hat. NO adjustments. NONE. The hat can tip forward, back, up and down. Easy to place.

    I thought it might be something I am doing, but note the lashes are WHITE (which is cool because you can really change them in Surfaces.) There are choices for dark lashes/thickness of lashes over in the library.

    NOTE: Danika has veins in her temple. Very nice!

    The portrait backdrops does not need the Cyclorama loaded first. Just go straight to it in the Product Library.

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  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    Been reading the posts- I had the textbox open and typing as I did things, so my "post" has been sitting there awhile before I hit enter.
    Let me go ahead and give you the settings I used, because quite a few of you seem to have her and if you want to play, this will save you time. (Come into my sandbox, lol. But only if we can all go into Melanie's pool! Awesome job gal!)

    One question for you that have rendered the pool- is the water done for you or do you tweak the settings?

    Okay, here's the greener Danika- only the changes from default are noted:
    Diffuse is brownish green 171 / 163 /131 at 100%
    Glossiness 96%
    Specular is blue103 / 139 / 128 at 79.9%
    Ambient Reddish Brown 187 / 170 / 125 at 78.1%

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    Anyone who has done Danika feel free to share. SereneNight, was that this thread or a previous one of ours?
    I am now doing a full length one so you can see the top and shorts of getting funky. (Love that name.)

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited December 1969

    I think this is Danika. One thing I like about her is the gap between the front teeth. I also love the portrait paper backdrops.

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited December 1969

    I tried the pool but never came up with anything I liked. It is in my WIP file- something I may revisit at some point.

    I am enjoying Ambush Alley. I needed someplace for my cars to roam.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    Just so long as you remember to put some of your really hot dudes in there with the cars :) Melanies looked really good too!

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited January 2014

    Last one. The settings are (percentages stayed the same)
    diffuse 174/154/145 (was 177/ 154 / 137 for the second, more reddish one.)
    specular 102 / 133 / 127 (was 103 / 139 / 128)
    ambient 187 / 170 / 125 (no change)

    EDIT: I checked, and she DOES have the cutest teeth! That little gap is adorable.

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    Post edited by Novica on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited January 2014

    Hmm. One of the challenges of rendering vehicles speeding along in Ambush alley is applying the motion blur to the tires. Unless your vehicle is completely stopped you are going to have those tires in motion.

    This is a good tutorial on applying radial blur to your tires. Haven't tried it on anything else yet, but it is easy to follow and works pretty well:

    http://www.automotiveillustrations.com/tutorials/photoshop-tutorial-radial-blur-filter.html

    Using this technique I blurred the tires to give the illusion of movement. I'm not claiming this is masterwork- But you can see how the tires are looking better with a little Radial blur.

    1. Image 1, maximum madness
    2. Image 2, radial blur applied to the tires, and a touch of motion blur on the back to give it some movement.

    Obviously, I will need to do more to make this vehicle look like it is in motion (such as bluring the scenary), but you can see this is a good start here, towards giving the car some movement.

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    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited January 2014

    It's a nice improvement.

    The flash sales both state 60% but some of the items are 72%.
    http://www.daz3d.com/noctem
    Has nice boots and the product image is a bit misleading- there is a shirt to go under that.Take away the skirt, add a pair of pants and away you go with a family friendly outfit. I LOVE THOSE BOOTS!

    http://www.daz3d.com/coco-character-hair
    For $7.98, get a character AND hair. I'm just picking up the remaining stuff that I didn't get on the Snowball sale. The hair looks like fun.
    I'm done shopping for today.

    Post edited by Novica on
  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,386
    edited December 1969

    Novica said:

    One question for you that have rendered the pool- is the water done for you or do you tweak the settings?

    My pool pic was entirely out-of-the-box except for adding a bit of splashy water round the girl on the left (using Ron's Waterline brushes).
    Lights were the ones that come with DimensionTheory's Skies of Terra by the way, which is where the background came from.
  • anikadanikad Posts: 1,919
    edited December 1969

    In case anyone isn't watching the rotating banner on the front page - the $6 off $30 is back: SAVE-6

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    Thank you Melanie and Anikad :)
    Everyone in the eastern Deep South buckle down for some snow, sleet and ice!

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    With BWC The Man poses, the clothes did not follow Genesis 2 Male, even when the complete outfit is parented to it. You have to pose the figure (Gen 2 Male) then click on the items of clothing and apply the pose. Tested on Ash and Voyager M6. So is it the poses or the outfit, and how do you tell?

    http://www.daz3d.com/bwc-the-man
    http://www.daz3d.com/voyager-m6

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited January 2014

    I have the man, but not the voyager outfit..

    Edited: "BWC the man" Posed fine with my gen 2 male, with clothing auto fitted to full body.

    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    Well, it isn't the pose. Using just the sliders to y rotate, the outfit didn't go with the parented figure. So I'm having trouble with Voyager. (Yes, each piece is parented.)

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited January 2014

    Todays Review:
    GIS Terminal
    By: DAZ 3D Jack Tomalin

    and

    Some other content used



    Chablis (Daz3d, Morris)
    New Adventure Continues (Uzilite)
    Coalition Rapier (Mighty_Mestophales, Sequestrian)
    End of Summer Hair (Goldtassle)
    Ron’s War brushes (Deviney) (Not presently available)
    Heavy Cable (Freebie available at Stephen Morell’s website
    Zero Gee Action M4 (Don Albert)     )

    http://www.daz3d.com/chablis-for-genesis-v4
    http://www.daz3d.com/the-new-adventure-continues
    http://www.daz3d.com/coalition-rapier-armor
    http://www.daz3d.com/the-new-adventure-continues
    http://www.daz3d.com/end-of-summer-hair-for-genesis-and-genesis-2-female-s
    http://www.daz3d.com/zero-gee-action-m4

    It probably doesn’t really need to be said that I adore the whole GIS series, and wish Jack many happy returns making more in this line. If you don’t own any of the GIS series, you’re in for a treat- they are a complex and detailed sci-fi space station environment suitable for sci-fi characters public pursuits. The environments are always quite spacious with windows, and doors, ramps and fine details, useful for plotting your next space adventure

    The set is actually a hangar, so this is a nice place for your characters to dock their starship or have er… Unfortunate accidents with the Zero-Gee.

    Regardless of what you use it for, the set is very detailed. I love the fact that there are so many details and sections. For example, the little blades of the fans can be spun, you can remove and hide the tethers, and you can whatever lights you want to make this scene pop.

    By default it comes with some brownish lights. Since the buildings are mostly white to light gray, you’re going to have to avoid bright lights to avoid burn out of the buildings. If you don’t like white walls the walls take a diffuse, so you can gray them out, or use colored lights to make them work better for you.

    The fans are a perfect way to test your motion blur skills which I did in my final render. For added drama, try using atmospheric effects fog camera.

    I found the default lights rendered grainy and orange for my tastes. It is possible adjustments can be made to the quality of the lights to fix this, however, I left this at default so you can see.

    Enjoy

    1-4 Different shots. The brown one is default lights.
    5. Drama in the airlock.

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    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited December 1969

    Novica said:
    Well, it isn't the pose. Using just the sliders to y rotate, the outfit didn't go with the parented figure. So I'm having trouble with Voyager. (Yes, each piece is parented.)

    Oddness. Can you reparent the item when it moves off the body?

    I don't' have that outfit- Or I would test it. =)

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    I checked and it was still showing being parented. I am having RAM issues- even though I run the diagnostic and it says RAM is fine, I went and turned off some programs at startup, etc. Computer has given me the "low RAM four times so I can't render anything. It's 2am and I've had enough for one day! I switched to a different outfit and am doing a DOF with coordinates of the characters and the camera settings ( IF it renders correctly,) so folks can have something to play with that can't get DOF working very well.

    I have company coming in a few days so won't be online much- had to get the horses set up for sleet /etc- stuffed extra haynets blanketing, etc- and everyone but me has the flu so I did all the horses. (and I'm on antibiotics, second round. But not the flu.) Hope you're feeling better SereneNight :) One hospital here was so swamped with flu folks that they warned them there was a minimum six hour wait for the emergency room.

    G'nite, I'll try the render again tomorrow.

  • anikadanikad Posts: 1,919
    edited December 1969

    In case you don't check the flash sales thread. The new sale (buy X new item get 50% off) is taking 50% off items that are already 50% off.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    I see they fixed it about three hours ago. Hope everyone took advantage. I don't have much on my wishlist after the Snowball sale. I try to remember to test the cart but I was mostly offline after midnight and getting that RAM error (which not getting now, and nothing has changed.) Just did a DOF render.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited February 2014

    Lady Worthington (Esha)
    Cyclorama: Gardenland Backgrounds
    Nordic Hair (DAZ3D, Swam)
    Bandit Outfit For Genesis 2 Males (Shifting Images)
    Warrior Hair (Valea)
    RoboSpider (DAZ3D, Serrge)

    http://www.daz3d.com/lady-worthington
    http://www.daz3d.com/cyclorama-gardenland-backgrounds
    http://www.daz3d.com/nordic-hair
    http://www.daz3d.com/bandit-outfit-for-genesis-2-male-s
    http://www.daz3d.com/warrior-hair
    http://www.daz3d.com/robospider

    Love the Bandit outfit- you can do the pants loose, shirt loose, etc -with just a click. Want the pants over the boots and not have to twiddle? Pants loose.

    Warrior Hair went on without tweaking. Rendered FAST even at .20 shading rate. Nordic Hair is one of my other go-to-fast-results that looks really nice.

    Lady Worthington- note this one has a white shirt- you can easily change it to other colors, I went with a maroon. I love outfits that have white! (Also note Worthy Nobles, the texture set.) No tweaking required for Lady Worthington either- very easy to use!

    ALL these outfits and hair with really good render settings took under 7 minutes to render, with a large image. (1400px) Keep them in mind if you want multi-characters in a scene.

    DOF For Those Struggling- Something To Play Around With

    There are many tutorials on DOF, so you should know HOW to do it, but if you aren't getting results that you like, I'm going to jump start you and tell you where to put figures, and the camera and render settings, and you can tweak from there. I'm not saying these are the render settings you need, but to get results like mine, they should be similar.

    There are different ways to do DOF and if you are just doing backgrounds, then the Gaussian Blur in Photoshop works. But that gives unrealistic blurring (it's not gradually fading back) if you have props or people that gradually transition back. I tweaked this until I got Ash's back arm gradually going into blur- look closely and you''ll see it's not as sharp as he is.

    Camera DOF
    Focal Length 54.53
    Focal Distance 333.32
    F Stop 29.11

    Render Settings:
    size 1400 x 973
    bucket size 32
    max ray trace depth 1
    pixel samples 12
    shadow samples 32
    gain 1.0
    gamma correction off
    shading rate .20
    pixel filter widths 10.01

    Olympia- put your front figure here. This one is most in focus:
    These are XYZ translation, followed by XYZ rotation
    -124.81 / 0 / 62.96
    0 / -84.41 / 0

    M6 (using Ash, btw, with Warrior Hair)
    1.94 / -5.82 / 0.49
    0 / -67.15 / 0

    RoboSpider- note that items between Ash's back arm and the spider will gradually blur.
    810.49 / 374.26 / -816.25
    0 / -62.81 / 0

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    Post edited by Novica on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited December 1969

    BTW, I like your GIS Terminal. I do have the GIS series but not done any of them yet. It makes sense to use darker lights, glad you pointed that out. I think some gray blues would be pretty. Agree that the lights that come with it are grainy- don't like those at all. Is Terminal the favorite of the series for you, or have you done any of the others?

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