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ah ok, very often I look only at pictures or clips
thx for the hint about the scene
Yeah, and my computer is constantly rendering my animations, so I post the promo pics for illustration.
Hello, everyone--!
I have not visited any of the DAZ forums for a very long time-- several years-- but just for the heck of it, I decided to take a peek, and I was amazed at what I found!
I stopped making content several years ago, and NONE of my products are anywhere close to being "new"-- and yet, people continue to buy and use them... and not only that, but continue to recommend them!
The story of my involvement with the 3-D world in general and with DAZ in particular is very long and tiresome, and I won't bore you with it. All I want to say is that I'm very grateful that my products-- OLD as they are!!!-- continue to sell! So, I wish to thank DAZ for keeping my "ancient" products in the store, and to thank the customers who continue to buy and use them! THANK YOU ALL!!!
Very truly grateful,
blondie9999
Greetings, Blondie9999. I have your pdf tutorial for rigidity mapping. Wonderful! I love having a pdf tutorial with a table of contents. It makes it so much easier to go back later and look something up. A very big THANK YOU for that tutorial and the other content I have enjoyed over the years. Wish you the very best.
Well, thank you, Diomede! I'm very glad that you found my tutorial useful! In writing tutorials, I always tried to view tutorials from the point of view of the "end-user." I've been an "end-user" myself in many, many tutorials and instruction manuals-- and I've often found myself trying to find "this" or "that" bit of information, only to find that the "index" (if there even was one) gave no clue, and neither did the "table of contents" (again, if there even was one). Having suffered countless hours of frustration caused by inadequate indices and tables of content, I tried very hard to make sure that the users of my tutorials could find the information they wanted, quickly and easily!
Thank you again for your kind words!
--blondie9999
When made with love (and plenty of bacon!), content products endure time and modern changes!
I have blondie food, and also interior items too, but my first purchase many years back were the primitive weapons!!
Silene
I'm one of those who recently bought one of Blondie's products, picked up the 'From the Deep' for Genesis 1. I've also got a ton of the various food products (I think all of them) as well as the Art of Posing. Good quality stuff!
Dart, your page is a pleasure to read, and I have it permanently bookmarked. I may have gone a bit silent in the forums for a while, slipping into lurker mode, but I think your website is doing a tremendous service for all aspiring 3d artists/animators, and I love reading when you add new stuff.
By the way, I noticed on your Animal Kingdom: Dragon page there is a only brief mention of the Sea Dragon. I can understand it; the Sea Dragon is an elusive creature, hardly ever seen. Even on it's own product page, there's not many pics of it, and they don't show much detail. But recently there was a brief sighting caught on camera in a lake near me:
:)
Seriously though, these legacy products are freakin' great, and suuper inexpensive. I snatch them up at bargain basement prices so good it makes me feel like I'm stealing. :)
Awesome, Jonstark!!!
Thanks for the kind review. It's nice to get a little encouragement from time to time. Always easy to write my babbles, not always easy to know if anyone likes it.
I agree about legacy greatness! Carrara makes these gems especially worth still collecting and putting to good use - the ability to work them back into new life, into fresh light and into wonderful renders!
Great to hear from you again, my friend! More stuff coming soon!!! :)
I love the hair I'm using now, but when I look back at my Carrara Dynamic Hair tests, I think I can improve it and get my arse back into Carrara a lot more often.
When it comes to animating, Carrara just blows Daz Studio out of the water - I mean... not just a little!
Too bad we can't get Daz 3d to see what they're doing by ignoring this incredible software!
Oh well. When I get Rosie back into Carrara, it will likely mean a lot less shopping for me, but I'll be very happy to be more efficient in my work once again!
Hmmm... maybe I'll be able to sleep more than three hours in a night again!
That was nice!
That was before I started messing with Daz Studio!!!
I know I show this video a lot, but check out the difference.
Just pay attention to the dynamics of the hair movement. This Carrara hair works best (in my tests) as Dry Hair
While this dForce hair looks great and can really work as heavy, more wet hair, getting it flowing like real long, dry hair is yet undiscovered by me.
That dForce hair really does simulate well though. It's really quite predictable but takes a l o n g time to simulate.
I also think it really looks good!
Carrara hair, when made as long and curly as this can be a bit tough to keep in check, but flows really nice and simulates about three or four (or more?) frames per second, whereas a six second animation at 30fps will take close to or more than two hours using Classic Long Curly Hair with dForce
I also love how Carrara's hair looks!
Animating Dart scenes now.
Still in the process of finalizing his look - and it's going to take animation renders to make the final call - for his episode 1 look, that is. Both he and Rosie have many different costumes and such. Right now it's his hair and shaders that are being worked out.
Being a quasi-Genesis 1, 2, 3, 8, M4 figure (Genesis 1 base) he's being just as much fun as Rosie to animate!
When I get a little further I'll post some screen shots of him.
This is almost the same as he is now, except that in this he's wearing Dorian Hair for Genesis 3 that I've converted. That's Aeon Soul's Legend Sword he's holding. I Love That Sword!!!
Wow. The first animation test of the current Dartanbeck character is now underway and looking really great, I think!
It's fun how well the combination of morphs between M4 Morphs++ and Genesis Muscularity (and others) work toward animating muscle flex during certain motions - like the first one I decided to try.
The Long Wet Hair seems to look groovy as well!
One of Misty's recent comments about playing The Witcher 3 again for inspiration, inspired me to watch Season One of The Witcher again (Netflix). Again... Wow! Cool stuff!
Something that's slipped into the cracks since I've watched this is a whole series of "Behind the Witcher" documentaries... what a Blast! But for now... I'm just watching the show as the render bakes! ;)
Kinda funny how the hair I chose for Dart reminded me of Geralt (The Witcher), and now I'm watching the inspiration... Cool times we live in!
My normal workflow doesn't work that way, however. I normally follow my own guidelines as set forth in Content Generation Conversion so that I end up with an actual Genesis product to load in from my library - a skill learned from reading product notes from SickleYield, such a generous artist!
Even though it didn't Auto-fit correctly, just messing around with it and some test shaders shown me that this should make for the ideal five o'clock shadow I'd like Dart to have - since the Real Rosie likes me to keep my shadow for that "Bad Boy" look she says it gives me.
The look I'm after is nearly achievable directly through the included materials, but I'll likey create some custom textures to get it just right.
Of course, if I can't get this working, I'll work on getting the look I want painted directly onto the texture, bump, and spec maps (M4 HiRes) of Dart's face. I'd prefer to use this, however, since it will allow me to change the density of the beard from time to time depending upon the adventure details.
As far as 'purchaseable products', the bundle I bought only shows the Mill Beard for M3 and F3, but it also includes the no-longer-available-separately Millennium Beard for David 3 - and they're all actually Millennium Beard 2.
A teaser for the main "Making The Witcher" feature. There are others that capture each episode as well
Production Wrap for Season 2 - It's Coming!!!!
OMG! And a new Trailer and a Date!!!
Now back to watching Season One as I still await my render!
The entire cast is really special - very well placed! Henry Cavill is one Amazing Geralt!
Oh my.... Rosie sure is dangling by a thread there! I like that wet Lindsay hair. Nice effect.
Silene
Dog gone Evil Wrong-doers will never learn!!!
It looks pretty cool on Dart (yet to be seen)! It's still not exactly what I was looking for, but really close. I'll work with it some more and see what I can do.
Rosie's is that Classic Long and Curly Hair, also by Linday. That's pretty spot-on for what I want for her.
Just got a new RTX 2060 from a friend in the PC+
Since Carrara doesn't really need this until I can find a way to get my hands on OctaneRender for Carrara, I did this in Daz Studio to test out the new card
Oh... and that's the new Dartanbeck, back with his Dorian Hair for Genesis 3 Male(s) (converted to Genesis 1). The Long Wet dForce hair is really cool, but I just can't get it styled to look right on Dart.
Dorian hair looks fine for now anyway ;)
I've been on a bit of a Carrara hiatus to learn my way into using Daz Studio more fluently.
It might seem as if I've been abandoning Carrara but that'll never happen.
In doing this, however, as I've eluded before this whole thing is reducing compatibility issues and creating a smoother set of workflow options that are proving to be most welcoming to me.
It's still fantastically amazing when I come back into Carrara - Carrara is such a wonderful and fun suite to work in!
This has recently brought up a new idea. I thought to myself: To be fair, I really should also take another interlude to give Bryce Pro a try. It looks So different from DS and Carrara that I'm not going to do this in the immediate future, but I definitely want to squeeze in a few introductory basics when I can, just to get an initial feel for the UI and most obvious tools.
Thoughts?
I went to David Brinnen's YouTube channel and watched a couple tutorials of his and Horo's just to let my eyes touch what it's all about. Yeah... totally different, but it does look like fun. The UI looks fun, but it's so "either you're looking or working with wire" that I'm not sure I'll enjoy it nearly as much as I like working in Carrara. But who knows, eh?
Before I get to any of this, I'll be putting out some evidence of what I've been slaving over - A fun video episode with some behind-the-scenes coverage to demonstrate this new workflow. It's my hope that the new demonstrations/tutorials will be more streamlined and 'produced' than my previous ones, as well as being more informative at the same time. We'll see how that works out.
Watching this cool video by Horo gets me pretty jazzed about giving Bryce a try
This one by David Brinnen is really quite interesting - he always loves a good challenge! But it also shows how impossible Bryce can be in certain aspects as simple as selecting a single element within the scene, for example. He is incredibly proficient in Bryce, so he makes things look pretty simple. But toward the end, after he's got all of his elements into the scene he tries to select the original object - and does so rather quickly, but at the same time shows me how awkward it can be to do so.
I know that, in Carrara I never enjoy working in wireframe mode. I can do it when I have to. Bryce looks like it's Always in wireframe mode unless we're rendering. Not sure I could stomach that for long - knowing that Carrara is just a click away!
...but this is the game-changer. Dart, why not start from the beginning, eh?
This beginner's tutorial makes Bryce Pro look like a lot of fun!
Holy cow! I really like the HDRI-creation tools in Bryce! Yeah... I'm definitely going to install this and play with it after I'm done with Episode 1
Bryce's landscaping is worth exploring as well !
that's a fun render. Dart is looking like quite the solid human specimen too! I need to find out what gym they go to!
While it's pricy, I'm glad to hear you're considering the Octane for Carrara option. Note that there's a single-pay mode for Octane if you dig a bit. With your core strengths in Carrara, but appreciation of the realism/pbr of DS Octane, this screams of being the right direction for you - where the rendering power of Octane work with your finesse in Carrara. But yeah, it's not cheap.
I'm also considering that path because it works in Carrara, DS, and Blender, so I'm thinking that skills and resources collected in materials and Octane tuning will compliment my workflows in each platform, and maybe allow for consistent renders and compositing across the three platforms.
Do you (wendy? philc?, ???) know if the DS Octane material set resources (or similar 'presets') can be 'ported' or otherwise used in the Carrara Octane context (or blender)? Is there an export mode that lets Octane users render to a '3DL RIB-like' Octane directive file and then use the standalone Octane to burn through batches of such files from various sources? That would be the bomb.
cheers!
--ms
DAINapp helped pad out a Bryce animation I recently did too
Yes. We can add our materials to our own saved library with easy access from within the OctaneRender interface.
I've also noticed that, when I make a character preset in DS which I have given Octane materials to, certain Octane settings come along when I load that preset character in Carrara. Not sure if that holds those materials properly, but it might. I'll need to win the lotto to find out. Since I don't play lotto... I doubt I ever will.