Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 13
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Oh that is so adorable! With the cost of evacuating the horse, and paying off the puppy, I'm not even nibbling at 30% gift cards. And you had to buy three things to get that, so forget it. But at least Daz is making it worthwhile, rather than requiring $300 or more for the card.
It's great that you were ready to evacuate, but awesome that you didn't need to!
Glad no people or animals were hurt it seems.
I really appreciate firefighters too as they put out a big fire (not as big as the one in your pictures!) a bunch of drunks set that spread to my mom's land getting within 75' or so of her house and across the street from her land as well. That was the last time those drunks set a fire as they got in big trouble. It was a volunteer fire department too that came and put it out and then came and explained to her that they had put it out for us as it was my mom that had called them. Also when I was real little in Chicago they'd come to school for fire safety lectures and open the fire hydrants for the kids to play in during the summer; really they were testing them but they let us play in them for a while anyway. It's quite expensive and a lot of school to become a firefighter too as there was a bunch of them in training earning a regular degree in my dorm when I went to university. Before that I thought you just go and apply to be a firefighter and they hire you and train you like most other jobs.
@Novica, thank you. I hope it will give you a little lift.
Being from California and now Colorado, the one major thing that any homeowner can do to save their property is cut back on brush and create a fire line. Types of roof and wall materials all contribute to saving homes. I hope if those owners are able to rebuild and that the local fire department advises them on the best materials, not only for hurricanes, but fire retardent methods. Of course building codes are being upgraded all the time as well.
Did everyone survive with their lives and their animals?
Mary
People yes, sadly animals no. MOST of them got taken out. Because this exploded within hours from 150 to 450 to 1100 acres, it was just raging out of control and roads were being shut down super fast. I've never seen Interstate 10 shut down for two days, just a couple times for an hour or two due to smoke.
Fires like that are scary and can move fast. Glad you were able to move Stetson and other animals and gear. You make a great neighbor I'm sure. Hopefully that's the last one in your area.
@memcneil70 I saw in the Commons thread that you tried the new DazCentral for downloading products. Did you decide to skip it and just use DIM? It says your new Content Manager, but I'm not interested after reading that thread. I don't see anything new it does that would be of interest. I dont want tutorials. What's your overall thoughts? (And anyone else who tried it?)
I'm headed to get some sleep, trying to get a normal schedule going and it's 3am so I've already failed LOL. Interested to see what you think of the new pro bundle, I don't like that high collar outfit at all, think it looks goofy, and I don't really want any of the items in the bundles. Skipping all of this sale. Feel free to show your renders though if you get any of it, that's always helpful :)
I've decided to try DazCentral and see if it can become an improvement on P3DO for me, but so far it doesn't even detect my Studio install, and while it shows me an inventory of my products, but also offers to install all of them - um, no thanks, they are installed. If it learns to play nice with custom runtimes, it might become useful. If not, I'll just continue to do things my way.
DAZ Central worked fine for me but it's really in it's current form only another search, install, deinstall, update mechanism for DAZ products. You can "open" a product in DAZ Central and it sends a search string for the opened product in DAZ Studio but it only works of course for products you've bought from DAZ 3D and installable via DIM.
It is using QT 5 so maybe it's the 1st tenative steps of the migration of DAZ Studuo 4.5+ to DAZ Studio 5.
Really not impressed with the Aubrey 8 products- be sure and check all the Read Me documentation. This is a product much like Dain 8, with the actual PA not listed for clothing, hair and poses. When you check the file list of the clothing and hair, you'll find the vendor is named Bloodhunter. One pose set doesn't have a read me, the other shows the poses and expressions are for Genesis 8 Female, without a separate set for Aubrey; just as the pose sets for "Dain 8 and Genesis 8 Male(s)" did back in January.
As I said over in the Aubrey thread, I think the hair looks quite clumpy, oily, and cartoonish. The one with the messy part, if you look at the from-the-back-shot, it looks like one BIG mess IMO. The strands don't integrate well at all.
That huge collar outfit just defies explanation to me, when you consider Daz rejects stuff from premier PAs that are the epitome of gorgeous. To each their own though.
Bloodhunter is not listed as a recognized Daz PA, and ALL four clothing items and both hair items are from this unknown artist again. (Was that the warped belt buckles vendor?)
I think the best products are the PC+ ones today. Awesome variety and look at the vendors! A no-brainer to buy PC+ today. Scooped all these up. Nice job
@martinjfrost @forbiddenwhispers @merlinstudios @predatron
I got three of the Aubrey clothing items (and Aubrey herself has been wishlisted). They all need fiddling either before simulating or after, to (try to) fix pokethrough. Interestingly, all three items had fairly significant pokethrough on the buttocks in this active pose, more or less fixable, but you should really see something like that if you use a reasonably active pose in testing. Also, smaller amounts of pokethrough in other places. They do all have some morphs, which helps. A bit of work with weight maps for the dforce drape would improve them all, I think. Also, the mesh grabber may come in handy.
I must admit I actually like the high collar thing, and it almost works better with just morphs than with dforce. The collar collapsed almost completely here, and there's something weird going on with the left breast next to the arm.
EDIT: added a better simulation with the high collar outfit - and as was pointed out, it doesn't say it's dforce on its page. However, it does have a dForce modifier, so *shrug* who knows...
The futuristic dress: The cloth is only two material zones when you would expect four (jacket, shirt, underskirt, overskirt) and another zone for the edge and the straps, and yes, that is fixable, but well... I like the jacket more than I like the skirt. There's pokethrough in the back between the two skirt layers
The cloak: it's okay and drapes reasonably well (except again for pokethrough in the back) if you assume it's a fairly stiff fabric
All renders with contrasting colours to attempt to show what's going on:
As of yet, no matter what I've tried or what tutorials I've followed I haven't been able to get DForce to do anything other than to reincarnate the nightmares of dynamic clothing
@novica
In my car waiting on someone. Will give more info when home. But Emma from Customer Service emailed me about that program. I uninstalled in. It changed all my paths. Found out after my download today.
I just got back from the barn, took the rest of Elaine's personal items that we saved. Scary thing- yesterday, when I tried to start the truck, it was stone cold dead. Battery. No warning, no "hard to start for a few days." Do you realize I got lucky by just ONE truck starting up incident? That could have gone dead at the barn the day of the fire. Yikes. Anyway, there was no traffic, so I slowed and took photos for you. Will do some trimming to cut out the rearview mirror, etc, and post soon. I took Ci Pwff out to the barn for the first time, he needs to ride in the car / truck and realize he's not being dumped/taken elsewhere for a new home. The last trip out to the dump (when I first spotted the fire, little did I know two days later...) Ci Pwff was very, very subdued. I realized then the last trip was with his breeder, an hour to the airport, then his old family "disappeared" on him. So he was a bit more mellow.
LOL he tolerated sniffing the nose with Elaine's donkey, but growled at the huge pig! The goat, he just stayed away from completely. (All this was with them in pens, and us in the yard.) So not a fan of dirty, huge pigs. (Me neither.)
Home finally and posted some renders in the Aubrey 8 thread. After getting my Windows computers working again, I have taken today to explore the products in the bundle. I took a chance on the bundle, but really worried when I saw the same pattern we saw with Dain 8. But, with the exception of the hair, I think this PA deserves a chance.
I used the poses, and really liked them. They respect women as professionals and adults and not 'things'.
I also note that many of the issues folks complain about 'high heels', 'edging on clothes', and something not the same-oh-same-oh.
The dForce cloak has an 'edge'!! Yes, it has some issues with poke through. It also has textures that look real, not like plastic.
The High Collar Outfit is not a dForce outfit, but there a lot of adjustment dials for it. I am not that crazy about its textures though. Want to try using shaders on it.
Have to still try the dForce Futuristic Dress, which I fell in love with at first sight. Characters are great.
Novica you were dead on about PC+ items today, they added to my cart.
For my $60.00 free items Novica your thread made it easy to choose. So anytime someone gets tired of linking URLs remember this:
Quiet Nook $29.95 $20.95 Free
A Cabin in the Woods Bundle $29.95 $10.48 Free
Rendezvous Ballroom $29.95 $20.95 Free
AlmstÜbli $6.95 Free Not previously mentioned in the forums with a link, but I didn't have a German interior.
@Robert_Freise, I still have hits and misses with dForce. If I hadn't had to give up working on my iMac with its Nvidia 660 card, I would have had to stop using Daz Studio. But I had a new Windows computer built for me and now it is considered limping as it is only an Nvidia 1080ti card with 64GB RAM. The laptop is a 1080 with 32GB Ram. It does better than the desktop, but is harder for my eyes to see. It is not until I have rendered large that I see a poke through or something. Very aggravating.
Mary
@Novica, Pretty soon Ci Pwff will be totally into riding 'shotgun' with you, and even trying to backseat drive. Bugsy loves it, and goes with me to drop off our ballots and stuff.
I am glad you had a guardian angel watching over you on your fire missions.
My Facebook page shows you the fire photos of Garcon Point Road this afternoon.
The odd thing with the High Collar outfit is that no, it doesn't say it's dforce,but according to the dForce Companion, it does have a dForce modifier.Also, when you simulate it, it just goes without any 'no dforce item in the scene' error, and the buttons are set to work with dforce (don't know what it's called, need more coffee). So why it's not advertised as dForce?
@nath Mary posted over in the Aubrey thread, a screenshot of all the morph sliders of one of the outfits. Don't know if you saw it, but I'm going to go see which outfit it was.
Edit: Ah, the High Collar one. Here you go. (and so everyone can see it.)
Yes, I did - and with the dforce as well, it's a lot more versatile than you would think at first sight.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with yesterday's purchases.
EJ Juncal was the only EJ gal I've rendered so far, so I will also be doing a few more of EmmaAndJordi gals. If you have any, feel free to help showcase. I like the skin materials as they don't have that "perfect" vibe going, and the eyebrows have good, realistic hair. I will be doing EJ Samara later today.
Tiana for Monique 8 Angels Secrets Lingerie/Poses (G3F/G8F) Peyton Hair (G8F)
I don't know which came first (don't care enough to look) but Angel Secrets and Angels Secrets are two different vendors. So be careful which one you wishlist/reference.
Peyton hair is EJ (EmmaAndJordi) and the promos make the hair look rather straw-like, but it's not. I love EJ hair products, SO many options/morphs.
Below, I put Tiana in dForce Fitted Drop Waist Dress (G8F) which is a PC+ (currently 65% off, may be in the 60.00 freebies promo, I don't know) and the material Dressy set is really nice. Here's the observations on that- I think this one does a GREAT job of boob side coverage. So many outfits make you wonder how the material is hanging on, and look bad. This one is sleeker and believable. I love the sleeves being separate, you can have them or not (they are a separate item in Scene Tab, listed by themselves, not in a click/click/click hierarchy.) I did not dForce at all, this is out of the box and it moved well with the pose.
However, look at the closeup of the material. Around the dots seems...strange. Like some blue blobs, dark areas- ? And I can see some blue stringy things running along part of it, like what's found in the lace. Just strange to me. I wasn't overly impressed with this material (upclose) but it's fine otherwise, and the Dressy set really appears to be nice from the promos.
TIP: SMILE: BJ Carmen Smile 31.1% Akila Smile 68.9% BJ Sahel 28.1%
If you don't know how to find the individual smiles, you select your character in Scene, then in Parameters select the character, then it's Pose Controls>Head>Expressions. Easy smeezy! The above combination gets you an open mouth smile with the corners widening and gently pulling back, depending on your starting character. I think it's a pretty fluid results starting point. Regardless, instead of using canned expressions, try mixing those already provided by different characters.
First is the default loaded skin.
Next is with the bump higher option. Click back and forth, they open in new windows. These options come with the character, you just click. :)
Then bump higher, specular higher.
Now bump low, but specular still on high.
Here's with the Fitted Drop Waist Dress, as mentioned before, no dForcing. It fits quite nicely with this pose out of the box.
Not too impressed with the blobs around the buttons. My render settings are the same as with other clothes, and I don't have issues. (aka a long render time, a lot of samples, etc. Using Mitchell filter.) Click to enlarge, it will enlarge slightly.
@Novica, I have Tiana and I love how you warmed up her expression with the combination of smile sliders. I have that dress too and the dark material reminds me of some I wore in my childhood, dots on taffeta or something with a 'shimmer' to it. Created a glowy effect. (Scratchy as all get out to me, but my grandmother approved.) I expect that dress, if it was real, would be lined.
Just for fun and to test that my LAMH2Iray Catalyzer had been reinstalled correctly after being wiped out by DazCentral, here is the Lion Cub by AM. I just needed some cuteness.
Mary
Oh he is adorable!!!!
I don't have any of EJ's characters so I can't help out with that. I would like to post my Stay Home-Spread Hope render created for the free give away by Hivewire3D. If anyone still hasn't gotten over there go to the shop then in the menu on the left click the Stay Home-Spread Hope and it will list the freebies. So awesome of them! Some good stuff there!!
I used the 3DL to Iray converter on the Gazebo and the bicycle then decided I wanted different colors on the bicycle so used multiple shaders that I had. The glass on the gazebo is also from a shader pack. Other things I used were: UltraTrees, Cloudscape Creator, UltraScatterPro and UltraScenery. I did use the LAMH presets for the cats but at that distance you really can just barely tell.
(click for larger)
That cat is a nice touch! Thanks for mentioning that offer, I had checked it a few weeks ago but I want to see if anything had changed.
@Novica, Thank you. I have 130 of EmmaAndJordi's store. Many are expressions, outfits, hairs, morphs, and now scripts/utilities. All excellent quality. I am tied up with wrapping up a year-long editing project, so my render time is very limited.
@Daventaki, thank you for reminding me of the Hive Wire project also. I finally created an account with them and picked up some very nice items, along with the HiveWire Cat, flowers, and birds. Your render is lovely and very relaxing.
EJ Samara (G8F) Accents Fall (G8F) Blair Hair (G8M / G8F)
Samara has many unique options, be sure and check out the smaller promo images. I am not re-inventing the wheel, just showing you the regular gal.
For Accents Fall: TIP: the hat requires mesh smoothing of about 7, or you're going to get sharp corners for a round hat. And Accents Fall IS dForce. It is not in the title. (LOL L'Adair mentioned that in my thread back in March, 2018.)
This is Brynn Smile 1 at 12.7% A Popular Girl Flirty 2 at 19.9 A Popular Girl Good Surprise 2 17.9% then to give her an asymmetrical quizzical look, I did Brow Inner Up/Down Left at -45.4 and left the right side at positive 51.
The hair is a mess with that hat- but just remember not to mess with pokethrough until you decide your camera angle. I used to forget, and waste a lot of time fixing things which weren't going to show anyway. :)
If you want a nice reddish brown hair to match Samara's eyebrows, choose Blair Hair red then 131 / 119 / 99 That color may also work on other "too red, not enough brown" hairs.