Novica, Serene Night, & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 3
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Comments
Love the lighting on that tjohn- the arm veins show up quite nicely.
Just a heads up- a set that no one has rendered before- and yes, it has a pool. What is it with me finding pools? This wasn't a hidden bonus though, it's listed clearly in the paragraph, but I forgot it had it. Gorgeous set by Nathy-
Castel
http://www.daz3d.com/castel
I haven't rendered it yet and I'm using Chablis lights, so we'll see!
@Novica: I don't remember where Ohia is, but probably the first thread. It wasn't a full review, but a few renders for someone who wanted to see how he looked. I'll root around tomorrow.
My next review is Wynter hair. I've got Chablis wearing it, but sounds like you have a nice one of Chablis coming on, so I'll let you talk about her.... =-)
EDIT: Googled it and found Ohia.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/28138/P750/#472665
He is just as dreamy as I remembered :) Made me glad I had him, even though he wasn't rendered. So I'll just check him off.
If you want to do Chablis, please do. The more the merrier. Mine might take awhile, it's a loaded set. Brought in a lot of stuff from various sets and have no clue how long this will take. Haven't even started on testing the lights, and have another character to add. Think it will be one of the K4's from Morris.
Vendor: Morris
Product: Beck for M4
One thing I noticed about Beck was that I needed to reduce the bump and displacement for closeup renders. I believe the default values are OK for distant renders. He comes with an option for painted hair on his head, which looks pretty good, even fairly close. That speeds up renders. He also has an option for hair on his chest. It also looks pretty good.
I rendered Beck in DAZ Studio.
Edit: I realized none of my pictures showed his eyes. I added a quick one. In all of these images, the specular on his skin is reduced from 100% to 50%. Serene Night is correct. He was too shiny.
The first image really looks like it has a story behind it! His expression is good, too! =-) I remember My attempts to render beck seemed sort of Shiny for some reason. I think I gave up and never used him. I like Beck's head shape too.
VERY nice- thank you so much! Any of the others from Morris you have, feel free. I'll be putzing with Morris all week (at least!) I have Beck but haven't tackled him, so it's good to know about the hair, displacement, and bump. I'll put a link to your post back over in the Morris list.
I'd be interested to see how you light Beck! I admit, Beck defeated me the last time I tried to render him. Maybe it's time to try rendering him again.
Okay, I'll give it a go next (after this one.) Or I might plop him in to see how the Chablis lights work on him- if they work, I'll leave him in.
I'd be interested to see how you light Beck! I admit, Beck defeated me the last time I tried to render him. Maybe it's time to try rendering him again.
In this render I applied the Human Surface Shader to Beck's skin and tweaked the settings. I know I reduced bump, displacement, and specular. What else??? I did this modification in 2012 and saved the preset. I tweaked a little more today. I also used the blue eye preset that comes with Beck.
Here are the light settings I used. This is not a sophisticated light rig. It is something simple I put together in 2012, soon after I started DAZ Studio. It is pretty flat lighting. But since you asked...
No, it looks good to me! =-) Thanks for showing that. I admit, I haven't used human surface shader that much. Beck is a cutie. I like what you've done with his skin to get the shine out!
Todays Review:
Wynter Hair 2
http://www.daz3d.com/wynter-hair-2
by: AprilSysh
Some Other content Used
Chablis for Genesis V4 (DAZ 3d MORRIS)
Digital Photography Indoor Backdrop Backgrounds Muslin Photo Studio Green Screen (ABUNIVERSALLLC) (Sold elsewhere)
Benjamin for M5 (Skin only)
Tech Solider: Special Forces (DAZ3d, Valandar)
Future Cop for Genesis :(DAZ 3D, 3D Universe, Bobbie25)
http://www.daz3d.com/chablis-for-genesis-v4
http://www.daz3d.com/benjamin-for-m5
http://www.daz3d.com/tech-soldier-special-forces
http://www.daz3d.com/future-cop-for-genesis
All lights are default Chablis Lights
Wynter Hair 2, is a versatile useful hair with a ton of morphs, movements, and parts which can be hidden to give your genesis or gen 2 character an entirely different look. The hair applies well to both men and women, and you can resize your dreadlocks so you can have bigger or small dreads.
The set includes a silver flowered hairpiece suitable for a fairy/nature/princess type character (not shown), which you can turn on and off, a light set, and the ability to turn the dreads and the longer tail like dreads off and on. The colors are the usual: gray through black (Although I found the black looks a bit too black with very little highlights), I would’ve loved an ‘amost black’ hair color which features some of the lighter tones of the hair, or mixes the black and brown, as dreads often are a bit brownish in highlights.
You can alter the shine of the dreads as well using a handle toggle. I personally prefer to dial-down the size of the dreads, as the super-sized ones can look a bit plastic.
Overall, I really like the hair. It renders well on Chablis here, and on M6.
NOTE: Chablis is default with the exception of removing the nipples and adding B6 default smooth and Breast Small .80
Images 1-2 Hair front and back
Images 3 (Hair on both genders)
Here is the only other Morris character I own.
It is Aiden M5 for M6 by Morris, Daz3d
http://www.daz3d.com/aiden-for-m5
Images 1-5 are Aiden with default lighting (Which comes with the character). He comes naked (with gens) and with a painted on pair of undies.
Aiden's skin is quite wonderful. Lots of little details, and an interesting back tattoo. He also has some applicable arm tats if you like them.
The only issue I have with him in these renders was with the 'hair' texture. If you apply this, you have to reduce the shading rate to .1 or a seam will show on his scalp. It also can look a bit odd from behind near the ear.
I am using default Aiden lights here.
Yeah, I think I have this hair and I agree about the larger dreads.
I'm still working on that Chablis render. The water in the pool I really, really do not like. But I'm not coming up with much better!
Invited Guest Contributor
Derek for Freak 5
http://www.daz3d.com/derek-for-freak-5 (DAZ 3D, Morris)
Other items used:
Easy Environments: Outback (Flipmode)
Barbarian Warlord for Genesis (DAZ 3D, Valandar)
StreetWear : Jeans For Genesis (StreetWear)
StreetWear : Mens Sneakers for Genesis (StreetWear)
SG Baseball Cap for Genesis (smay)
SG HeadDresses for Genesis (smay)
Bad Guy for Genesis (smay)
Project EYEris (DimensionTheory)
Advanced Ambient Light (Age of Armour)
Since Novica is showcasing Morris's work right now I thought that I would render one of their characters I own. Sorry for not being around but unfortunately I had some real world stuff I had to deal with. ; )
Derek for Freak 5 is a very nice character set. I don't think I have ever used F5 character as is in a render before, but dialing in bits of him can give a character an interesting look. I really like Derek's texture, it's very detailed and has options for facial, head and chest hair. The shader he comes with is unfortunately a DAZ default one so the skin doesn't look that attractive without manual adjustments. I have made two quick renders in which I left the skin at default settings (the one showing the Derek character morph and a custom dialed genesis 1 character in SG Baseball Cap). The other two images show my poor attempts at applying AoA SSS to Derek. In the close-up I changed the AoA SSS settings some more, dimmed the lights a little and applied EYEris shader to his eyes (with reflection strength lessened), I think he looks best in that render. In every image I used one Distsant Light and one AAL, the only postwork is DOF added in PS. All in all I really like this character and must say that it's a pity we currently cannot use his textures on G2M since with very little tweaking they can look very nice, I would certainly recommend him to anyone still using genesis 1. Please don't judge this character based on my renders since I spent very little time making them and haven't tweaked his materials to my liking yet, also my lighting skills are still quite limited.
I like Derek's military pants and shirt, and nice job on that DOF in photoshop. =-)
Before you mentioned it, I hadn't realized he didn't convert well to Gen 2. But after you mentioned it, I had to go see. Yep. That's too bad. I'd love to use this skin on gen2 figures. We don't have a lot of mid-tone black skins, let alone any for gen 2 male.
I've actually had some trouble with Derek's skin on his scalp even on Freak, I had to lower the shading rate or the scalp would show a line.
Vendor: Morris
Product: Derek for Freak 5
I'll contribute some Derek renders, too. His skin looks good on a variety of Genesis 1 shapes. Some of my lighting here is rather harsh and the character is a little dark on my monitor.
Thanks Serene. Yeah, unfortunately he uses Freak 5 UVs so one would have to put in a lot of work to make him look good on G2M. I hope that the future G2 characters will use mostly G2M/F or M6/V6 UVs (or M5/V5 or even M4/V4 ones). UVs different from base figures lower the usefulness of a particular skin set (and probably mean lower sales for the PAs as well). I have some F5 and D5 textures I would love to use on G2M but at this time it is quite impossible (with my skill set at least). Derek is a fine character though his materials need some tweaking to look well in render. The textures are very high quality, so more is the pity they are currently usable on g1 only.
I liked your Chablis renders, I don't have her but she is on my wishlist. ; )
Really nice renders barbult, thanks for sharing! They really show the versatility of this texture set. The characters do not look too dark on my monitor.
thank you! I hope when they do create a freak 6, the UV's will also be updated. I get the feeling they are switching genders, IE doing one female release one male release, so maybe we will see a freak6 eventually, although, I hope they rename him. Freak just doesn't do the character justice. And I agree with you, I tend not to use full freak. Just a little dialed in can really buff out a character.
Tayisha For K4 (DAZ3D / Morris)
Bolero Dress (OptiTex)
Castel (Nathy)
Beautiful Black Hairstyles (Neftis3D)
Millennium Puppy (DAZ 3D / LaurieS / Lisa's Botanicals)
Puppy Love Poses ( DAZ 3D / Skyewolf)
http://www.daz3d.com/tayisha-for-k4
http://www.daz3d.com/bolero-dress
http://www.daz3d.com/castel
http://www.daz3d.com/beautiful-black-hairstyles
http://www.daz3d.com/millennium-puppy
http://www.daz3d.com/puppy-love-poses
This is Morris' Tayisha For K4. I tested the Chablis lights, but they are just too dark for a large scene render with African Americans- you'll need to add one or two distant lights (which I did, but if I weren't testing lights I'd also add a spotlight or another distant light. Face still needs some oomph.)
Notes: I do not like The Kids 4 dimensions at all. On the base figure, I reduced the head to -.026 and legs length got increased to .76 Although kids' heads are disproportionate and larger, every time I see one of the K4's I just want to stretch out their legs! See if Tayisha doesn't seem more proportionate to you, this is my preference.
Okay, about that water. The pool and the water are grouped by the vendor and I don't think you can ungroup a vendor's group. If you can, post that solution please. So, you are dealing with very cloudy water for default, plus their textuing. So here's the solution for this set:
Bring in your water and put it in the Surfaces tab in both the Bump and Displacement channels.
Settings for this water (which you'll see better in the Chablis render, which will take hours once I get it started, making a few adjustments) or for you to try on a primitive plane:
Diffuse 225/246/249 80.8%
Glossiness 60.7%
Specular 255 /249/249 100%
Mult.Spec Thru Opac. ON
Ambient Black 52.7%
Opacity 41.5%
Bump Strength 200%
Bump Neg -0.14 Positive -0.047
Displacement 96.4%
Min -.30 Max .064
Reflection 225/235/229 39.7%
Something interesting- I thought that by using a sharper, crisper image of my water jpg that it would look better. Not. It made things disappear and didn't add any "oomph" to the water ripples in the water. I've included the original pool water from the vendor, the one I used, and the one I used that was crisper that just darkened and took out detail.
REALLY love Castel- very elegant.
BTW- my internet connection is going off every other minute- ATT&T screwing up bigtime. I posted a 20 minute post that was lost re: your renders. Will get this up then try again. If you don't hear from me, I just can't access the site. This is NOT cloudfare.
Click to enlarge, Tayisha is 2000 pixels. Her face won't have quite the pore details as her legs, as I had to postwork to lighten the face a bit. Zoom in to her legs to see the detail of textures. :) As usual, the dog's eye was postworked to give it realism.
EDIT: I did not care for Bolero Dress. Would not load on the figure, morphs didn't come together to cover poke through. I had to manually paint in areas after 20 minutes- which very few outfits take me that long to do. Never could get the edges to lay down without going through the leg, tried scaling, rotating, you name it. Just had to settle since this is more about the character and not the dress.
Nice render! Adorable character, and love the dog as usual. I can see what you mean about the water. =-)
Okay, going to QUICKLY redo my lost post-
Barbult- thanks for sharing the Beck and the settings- looks so good! Also the Derek. I've added links to all the posts back in the Morris post. (which I'll then put that link on the Products page on the first page of this thread.)
SereneNight- I totally agree about the dreads- the larger ones would look too fake and plastic. I like the SWAT outfit- looks good. It's interesting to see Chablis in different lighting- she doesn't appear African American in some settings. Definitely different than the promo. Mine too, coming up tomorrow.
Like Aiden- the second image, it's like he's saying, "Anytime dude." That's my favorite of the group. Like the way the eyes sparkle though in the last one. Penetrating.
Tarina K- Life comes first :) not a problem. Thanks for helping with Morris. I did have to grin- your lighting looks similar to some of mine and you're saying "Don't judge my lighting, my skills are limited." Well I like THAT. (just poking fun at you.) We can all do better lighting depending on how much time we have and what the render is for. For contests, worry about it. For here, would rather see good renders than superb ones that only get posted when it is contest ready. Folks are just looking at whether they would buy the products and your lighting is IMO very good regardless!
Back up a few posts, I just added the water jpg that I used for the pool water- but remember, the vendor had the water textured and you can't take it out. There were no images in the Surface section to remove.
Thanks. One thing I forgot to mention (trying to post before my connection goes down) is note the dog's nose- put a broken up strip acrross the tip, right above the nostrils, and a white swirl inside of one. You'll have to zoom in to see it, but that's what makes the nose shiny. These dogs just need a fur job, but no way am I doing LAMH right now with company coming Tuesday, I'd never get any other Morris characters done. Chablis will render all night tonight, she is actually in the scene with Tayisha but I am doing them separately first.
The lights are those that came with the character, so hopefully they do her justice. =-)
She's a nice character. I prefer a less pronounced chest- personally, so I dial that down, but her skin and facial sculpt are quite nice.
I also used her skin in the GIS terminal final render. I've used the skin for mixed race/black as well as Latina characters. Very versatile. I would like to see more mid-tone skins. They are rather uncommon in the store.
I admit sometimes the fluffy artificial hair can be distracting. I think your pup looks great the way he is! I wouldn't make any changes!
I just hope they redo the dog and cat sculpts and retexture those eyes. Those eyes on the puppy me of little orphan annie eyes. Just two black dots! You did a great job making those eyes pop (no pun intended)!
Project Render The Vendor
So let me post why I started selecting vendors as my method of choosing what to render:
1. it helps when stores go on Flash Sale or on sale, we can get an idea of one particular vendor's products
2. I am working my way through the three threads, posting links to the showcase renders, but it will take awhile to get them all done. Those are alphabetically by product, THEN I'll arrange them by vendor. In the meantime, this way is more organized than just doing things as a whimsy. (Speaking for myself.)
3. No matter what vendor is selected, some of you ICG's (aka Showcase Team) are bound to ALREADY have renders of one or more of that vendor's products and can share them if you want to. You can also "Render The Vendor" if you have some of the vendor's products that you have yet to do.
4. Related to that, it's getting me to explore products I haven't tried yet, but in an organized fashion that helps others when those stores go on sale.
5. After I (we) do a vendor, they will be in a separate section on the Products page (first page, where the products are alphabetically listed with links to our posts showing the renders/reviews) in a separate "By Vendor" section. I will put a link to the vendor posts (for example, my Morris post) so that section is not cumbersome by listing all the products under a vendor.
6. (Dreaming....) Maybe if there is an organized showcasing, DAZ will consider those vendors for sales? (I know, but we can dream.)
After I do the alphabetical list of products/links, I will also insert them into the vendor's post (like Morris) for easy surfing.
There is nothing this organized (for good reason. I spend hours on this.)
I want to emphasize, Render The Vendor is just my way of showcasing, it is not meant to put anyone on the spot, create work for you, or imply you need to assist with covering that vendor. HOWEVER... (evil grin)
The ICG's do get to help with picking the vendors, hopefully picking a vendor you have a render for. You can choose a vendor you ALREADY HAVE SHOWCASED IN THIS THREAD. As with Morris, we won't cover every product, but quite a few. We'll have several vendors going at once.
Will the following people below pick a vendor? Even if you don't have a render, you still get to help drive the thread, we appreciate your help. Let's go with the posters from tonight plus of course the thread co-hostess. First wait on SereneNight, then the rest of you can jump in. If someone takes your vendor, just pick another, as everyone (who wants to) contributes on all vendors anyway. I'll continue working on the Morris characters, I'm probably just keeping them at Castel and doing closeups. Any ICG's (and Barbult) wanting to do Morris feel free, and find any renders/ start on "Render The Vendor" for the vendors these folks pick too if you'd like to participate. NO OBLIGATION.
And please remember to keep putting the vendor with the product name, that is such a big- no HUGE- help when I am doing the alphabetical list with the vendor noted. :)
Okay, these folks please suggest a Render The Vendor: (Again, wait until after SereneNight picks, then go for it.) Then the next group of ICG's can pick after we start wading through these vendors. You take charge! :)
SereneNight- Chose Muscleman
TarinaKivi - Chose Zev0
Tjohn
Barbult (Honorary ICG- thanks for you help with Morris)
Jaderail
Dang it, I knew I would leave out something. (Remember, I had to retype that entire thing as I lost it the first time)
The ICG's should continue showcasing whatever they want. Render The Vendor isn't THE way of doing the reviews, just another way. :)
Lets try Muscleman?
I'm always interested in fine pose sets
Muscleman it is :)
Now the other listed ICG's please pick a vendor. If you have Muscleman renders or want to do some, start right away. I'll add the links to Muscleman here once we get going, and delete this blurb. :)
Render The Vendor: Muscleman
I Will Protect You (Muscleman)
http://www.daz3d.com/i-will-protect-you
By SereneNight: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/34269/P15/#507090
Kid And Dog (Muscleman)
http://www.daz3d.com/kid-and-dog
By Serene Night: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/28138/P15/#422137
Noi Due Poses (Muscleman)
http://www.daz3d.com/noi-due-poses
By Novica: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/34269/P1245/#538958
That's Amore (Muscleman)
http://www.daz3d.com/thats-amore
By SereneNight:http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/34269/P1230/#538769