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For working with any G2Fcharacters, I've found Poke Away 2 to be invaluable for easily making clotingh fit (http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=poke+away+2). It does take a bit of dial turning, and sometimes a bit a trial and error, but it can really speed up the process of adjusting things to fit.
There is some really great stuff getting posted. Sorry for being MIA, but my crazy September is in full force now. Keep up the great work everyone, this challenge is getting very interesting!!!
Thanks EP - I had not discovered that!
Aaaargh. I feel for you. If you don't have poke-away as Dustrider suggests, I have a couple of other suggestions.
- Parent clothes and G2F to a supergroup, not to each other. Then use "fit to" for the clothes to G2F. If you have closed the file and reopened it, try ungrouping everything and unfitting everything, then create a new supergroup with the figure and clothes and then use fit to again. Silly, but has worked for from time to time.
- Judging by the screenshots, it appears your character has long sleeves and long pants. You really only need the G2F head, neck, hands, and feet. You could create a new shading domain on the G2F and make it invisible. In the attached screenshots, I highlighted the actor level of G2F, entered the vertex modeler, and used the lasso tool to select the central body and limbs. Creating a new shading domain and adjusting the alpha leaves only the head, hands, and feet, which should work for you.
- You could use Daz Studio to pose and clothe your figure, then export as an .obj. Import in Carrara and place where wanted.
- You could also use the displacement shader on the clothes to expand them slightly (suggestion originated with Manstan, I think).
- Similar to the Manstan method, you could highlight the actor level of the clothes, enter the vertex modeler, ignore the topology protection warning, use select all, and increase the size of the clothing to 101% or something similar.
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Aaaargh. I feel for you. If you don't have poke-away as Dustrider suggests, I have a couple of other suggestions.
- Parent clothes and G2F to a supergroup, not to each other. Then use "fit to" for the clothes to G2F. If you have closed the file and reopened it, try ungrouping everything and unfitting everything, then create a new supergroup with the figure and clothes and then use fit to again. Silly, but has worked for from time to time.
- Judging by the screenshots, it appears your character has long sleeves and long pants. You really only need the G2F head, neck, hands, and feet. You could create a new shading domain on the G2F and make it invisible. In the attached screenshots, I highlighted the actor level of G2F, entered the vertex modeler, and used the lasso tool to select the central body and limbs. Creating a new shading domain and adjusting the alpha leaves only the head, hands, and feet, which should work for you.
- You could use Daz Studio to pose and clothe your figure, then export as an .obj. Import in Carrara and place where wanted.
- You could also use the displacement shader on the clothes to expand them slightly (suggestion originated with Manstan, I think).
- Similar to the Manstan method, you could highlight the actor level of the clothes, enter the vertex modeler, ignore the topology protection warning, use select all, and increase the size of the clothing to 101% or something similar.
-
Diomede 64, Dustrider, and Evilproducer
Many thanks for all of the suggestions, but I have grabbed the Poke-Away, so will give that a try first up.
Very interested in the other methods as well, but it looks like the Poke-Away is the pick of the crop.
Had a quick break from the Challenge and did a Critter Render in Carrara as well, for a Noobie quickie was very happy with it.
Will put it in the Post Your Renders thread.
Back to the challenge tomorrow, hopefully Vicki6 will be a lot happier with those clothes moths sorted out !!!!!!!
Many thanks for the info on how to fix the problem - much appreciated !!!!!!!
Regards, Bunyip
Hi Everyone,
What great work everyone is doing! And, so many have multiple entries :red:.
I'm still in this thing. Life, work, and Time Warner RoadRunner internet outages have all conspired to keep me offline. So, no works in progress as they’ve happened, but I’ve been saving them up.
After my lighting setup, I decided to work on my main actor. I switched Genesis 1 out for Genesis 2F, so I could use the new, perfectly timed, Penny Dreadful dress by MartinJFrost. Autofit to Genesis was OK, but leaves some artifacts that don’t look good with my procedural material. I’m using Francesca for V4 by 3DCelebrity (http://www.daz3d.com/francesca-for-v4 ) for the skin and character. I transferred the V4 morph to Genesis 2F with GenX2 in DAZ Studio. It looks a little different from the promo picture. I think I need to dial in the V4 shape, but I kind of like how she looks. I transferred the skin from Genesis to Genesis 2F in DAZ studio as well. G2F needed the V4 UV applied to make the skin align correctly. I think the Victoria 4 for Genesis 2 Female product (http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-for-genesis-2-female) is what made it possible.
The default (left image) really doesn’t look all that bad. The eyes are flat and the skin is kind of yellowish, so doesn’t look lived in. There is no SSS applied to the skin, so lights create hot spots across it. I’ve been working through PhilW’s Realism Rendering, so I’m using that for the basis with adjustments to suite my setup. The specular map didn’t load, so I had to add that manually in the highlights channel. I used the following settings for the face, head, and limbs:
Color= Francesca texture map
Alpha=none
Highlight = Specular map at 18%
Shininess = 4%
Bump = texture map, amplitude=13%
Reflection = none
SSS=enabled
- Diffuse reflection=100%
- Tranlucency=10%
- Refraction index=30%
- Color (here I’m trying to approximate the color of blood since that’s what gives real skin it’s underlying color regardless of skin color) H=1%, L=50%, S=50%. This might be a little pale. I also tried darker, with L=25% and S=100%. It creates a bit of a red glow that’s not right, so maybe somewhere in between might be just right.
- Intensity= 2%
- Frenel=20%
Tranlucency=none
I’m basically happy with my skin (right image), but I can’t seem to be able to adjust the highlight and shininess to produce a nice sheen. It looks a bit dry to me. It looks shiny in the shader preview, but not when I render it. I thought it was the global illumination, but even with a direct light it’s not there. I also tried without the specular map, still not there.
Oddly, I was able to adjust the lips just fine to make them more shiny. I made a new master shader for the lips. I bumped up the highlight to 40%, shininess to 8%, bump amplitude to 18%, and added a reflection=color of black, L=5%. For SSS, I used the same settings, but the darker color version to bring out the lip color a bit more. The lips might be a little too shiny, so I’ll probably reduce it a bit in the final version.
For the nails, not pictured, I made the following adjustments on a new master shader. I think these might be a bit too shiny too, so will need some adjustment:
Color=texture map at 80% brightness
Highlight=specular map @ 100%
Shininess=5%
Bump=texture map, amplitude 20%
Reflection=20%
SSS=same as limbs
Tranlucency=30%
For the eyes, I used the Endless Eye Kit for V4 for Carrara 6 by indigone from sharecg. It’s really a great kit with a very informative manual. Even though it’s made for V4 and C6, it is really non-specific, so works just fine with C8.5 and Genesis figures. I can’t possibly improve on it with my puny procedure skills, so I pretty much used it as is. The iris colors are based on gradients. I would love to figure out how to incorporate a color texture map into it for a bit more realistic look. I used the hazel color. I really love the subtle gradation from iris to sclera the alpha map creates. I really like how light travels through the sclera and how the sclera has different texture than the iris. I used the Franscesca texture map for the lacrimals with SSS same settings as the rest of the skin. Also, I used the Francesca pupil. The endless eye kit’s pupil is too reddish brown. There is nothing applied to the G2F reflection shader.
Currently, I’m working on dynamic fur on a monkey and a silk procedural material. I hope to post those soon.
The sides of the sushi roll look good, but the top needs something to add a bit of dimensionality to it.
I know, I think I have to duplicate the roll, remove the sides on the duplicate and then recreate the top with a texture that gives it more color and depth.
I know, I think I have to duplicate the roll, remove the sides on the duplicate and then recreate the top with a texture that gives it more color and depth.
Just a thought about the sushi roll mesh, but what if, instead of triangles on top, you made a grid with quads? Then you could raise and lower polygons, or have better luck painting displacement. If that's to much of a PITA, you could make simple shapes for the stuff in the middle of the roll and have them stick slightly up from the roll, with slight variations in height.
The endless eyes kit is great. So do your renders.
Regarding the skin, I think PhilW or RingoMonfort (or both) add a 2% or 3% reflection to the skin.
I know, I think I have to duplicate the roll, remove the sides on the duplicate and then recreate the top with a texture that gives it more color and depth.
Just a thought about the sushi roll mesh, but what if, instead of triangles on top, you made a grid with quads? Then you could raise and lower polygons, or have better luck painting displacement. If that's to much of a PITA, you could make simple shapes for the stuff in the middle of the roll and have them stick slightly up from the roll, with slight variations in height.
I duplicated the sushi rolls, deleted the tops to one set and the sides to the other sets. It allowed me to lower the tops to give the edges depth. What I did was add vertex objects to it, a lettuce and fish textured ones, plus I added an opal type surface to the top sushi texture. This render is a quick lux render test.
That looks pretty good! You can send it on over with a side of pickled ginger, or whatever that pink stuff is.
People, you are amazing! I'm loving the WIPs so much, I am almost discouraged from entering my own. But I still need those tests done, so I might as well use this deadline to push myself to do it sooner rather than later.
dievans - those WIPs of yours are amazing, I can't wait to see more.
EP, now I am craving some cake and it's all your fault. I actually don't want to see any figures in that image. The cake is so wonderful, it's a masterpiece by itself. :)
My image is still in it's earliest stages. I was doing character designs before and got a bit carried away and forgot the deadline again. So now I have to be quicker about it. So far it's just the sketch. The shaders are all messed up, the background plants are no good. The lighting is just not happening yet at all. It's just a composition and idea test so far.
I've been working with a lot of trials and errors on this render without, I'm afraid, posting any WIP meanwhile. So, I'm afraid those posts will be more of the "making of" kind, instead of the WIP kind :-.
The character:
It's based on 5 with just a little morph applied.
I've used http://www.daz3d.com/skin-overlay-merchant-resource-for-v5-m5-skin-sets to add freckles and wrinkles around the eyes (Vickie has spent a night standing guard, after all).
I've also used the EvilProducer/Cripeman (TM) technique of inserting a low intensity SSS map in the glow channel to simulate SSS.
The bump map has been converted to a normal map using a Gimp plugin to make the bump more subtle.
The clothes:
Clothes are based on Alruna (armoured part) and Defiant for Genesis (tunic and braces).
Alruna armour is all shiny and new and didn't fit the idea I wanted to convey. I created a new shader based on
Iron texture from Nobiax medieval pack.
For the leather, I used textures from HD_leather by Heartdown.
By the way, vray-materials.de is a great site to invertigate. Materials are for vray, but most of them are texture based, so you can get great colour, normal and/or highlight map.
The spear is from http://www.daz3d.com/viking-for-genesis-2-males with custom shaders.
The ruins
The ruins behind are Palenque Ruins from Daz
I've used InsaneBump (a Gimp plugin comparable to Crazy bump) to redo all the textures.
The result is far more contrasted that the original textures, which suited my needs (but may not suit all uses).
More terrains:
I also need a path in the front and a kind of cliff to fill the space on the left of the ruins.
For those, I used the technique I've used in the previous challenge.
I started from hires picture I found in CGTextures (road and Cliff).
I used Insane bump to create and height map and then used the terrain editor to create the meshes
Lighting:
The scene is supposed to be happening in early morning just after a night watch.
Early risers :-) have noticed that the light is a bit harsher at that time, with more contrast. This is due, I think, to both the low sun and the air humidity typical of that time of the day.
The lighting is based upon Carrara Skies Lightdomes 1 from Tim Payne.
The idea behind this lightdome is to use environment light primitive whose colour is set using an image map. The colour is then corrected by a colour gradient based upon the luminosity of the image map. This render fine if no gamma is set, but not otherwise.
I used an ungammaed version of the image. I also added a gradient of brown at the bottom of the sky to add more contrast from ground level up to about shoulder height. I also removed the gradient correction from the shader as I render with gamma and the image was to whitish.
The background image was also ungammed as it is not done automatically by Carrara.
This allows for strong and coloured highlights that can be seen mainly on the armour and the leather.
I also had the feeling that highlights were to weak on the face I therefore added a bulb light at low intensity parented to the head and restricted to the genesis model.
Just to be more in a "early morning" feeling, I added a fog primitive centred on the ruin mesh.
Animals:
The image was then a bit empty. I also wanted to give the feeling that Vickie was so bored and tired from an useless night guard that she wouldn't notice life around her.
So I added to hares (Corvus hare from sharecg)) and ravens from predatron (LoREZ Crow) interacting behind her back).
Postwork:
Postwork is limited to a level correction in Gimp to get a desirable white balance. See below the original and corrected images.
Philemo, beautiful image. The pose is a bit stiff (though probably not important for this challenge), especially the hands - I understand she should be tired, but that would probably mean she'd lean on the spear more and grab it tighter, not the opposite... The sky is gorgeous! So is the fog and the animals. Love the skin on the figure, too.
I am setting up the shaders and lights.
I've got an HDRI with 100% Sky Light GI (no indirect lighting though), some ambient in the scene, and 2 distant lights + bulb to fake indirect lighting. The 2 distant lights are the same in everything but intensity and one is set to affect the whole scene except the figure, while the other has the setting reversed and only affects the figure. The bulb is there to fake bounce from the book pages onto the figure's face. It's got low intensity, very blurred out shadows and very low range with maximum falloff. The distant lights and the bounce are warm(ish) to compensate for the blues in the HDRI (and therefore the sky light)
I'd welcome some suggestions at this point, because I am not getting the carefree summer day mood here. And just general improvement suggestions would be great too. Shaders? Lighting? More/fewer props? Scene setup?
The endless eyes kit is great. So do your renders.
Regarding the skin, I think PhilW or RingoMonfort (or both) add a 2% or 3% reflection to the skin.
evilproducer Thanks for your suggestion. I tried 2% on her face, and it gave her the dipped in paraffin look. For some reason it's so sensitive to the slightest bit of reflection. I added 1% reflection, reduced the bump map shininess to 10% shininess & 18% amplitude, highlight is 100% specular map, and shininess is 4%. The highlight channel is also multiplied by a little cellularity. It’s subtle, but I think the face looks a little less dry. Forgot to bring down the lip gloss though.
Now, for some strange reason, I want cheesecake and sushi...Hmm
Philemo The Insane bump textures are great. Also like the lighting and contrast increase. I really like the action going on with the hares and the crows. I agree with Antara, a little more slouching and weight on the spear would really sell the tired and bored part better. I know from experience; I was a student intern in my state's Department of Transportation. We used to have to stand around for hours with shovels waiting for directions from our supervisors. We put the shovels to their true purpose, which was to lean on. It was a running joke.
Antara Wow! I was going to comment on how I like the camera angle on your previous post. Now it's got beautiful plants! I think for the breezy summer feel the sky and light should be more bright and scintillating. The light quality is too blue, which reads cold. I like the blue of the sky in the lower right under the bench.
Wow! Great stuff everybody! These are all coming along beautifully!
So I was struggling to come up with something for Vicky to have or be doing. I had the nice tower set, and I knew I wasted her to be bringing something into the tower. Only question was what. Boxes or crates would be too ordinary.
So I put it to one side, and started playing around with lighting the room at the top. Such a nice, big airy space, with the only access up a narrow twisting 90ft high staircase. Of course there can only be one thing to put in a room like this...
Exacty! :coolgrin:
I just have to find a free one...
TimA I love your stairwell.
For the monkey in my setup, I’m using the SilverKey 3D Monkey (http://www.daz3d.com/silverkey-3d-monkey) with the green eye texture from Hurdy Gurdy Man (http://www.daz3d.com/hurdy-gurdy-man) texture pack. I’ve attached an after (left) and before (right) shot. The default monkey definitely needs some real fur and help with skin and eye materials to bring out its 3D-ness. I’m really happy with how the skin of the face turned out. Basically, I gave it a similar treatment as the human skin, making adjustments to the highlight, shininess, bump, and SSS channels. I didn’t think the included bump map was giving enough detail, so I made my own from the color map with the Bump Maker filter by Mister J.W. in Filter Forge Pro. Because the skin of the face and ears is brown, I tried a brownish color in the SSS at first. This didn’t look good at all, so I went for a blood color, which seems to work better, giving it a more lifelike glow.
The Hurdy Gurdy Man eye color map has a burned in reflection. This doesn’t work with the scene lighting and detracts from the realism in the eye. I removed it in photoshop with the clone and smudge tools. I made a new bump map from this color map as well in Filter Forge. The iris/eyeball/pupil eye domains all have the same shader applied. There are no settings for highlights and shininess in the inner eye. The highlights and shine are set in the EyeTransparent domain shader, pretty much following the setup by PhilW in his tutorial for a human figure. Transparency is 100% and the refraction index is 1%=water.
For the teeth, highlight and shininess is high and reflection is 5%. A little translucency makes the teeth look more realistic, allowing light to penetrate the surface a bit. The mouth and tongue have higher highlight and shininess than the rest of the skin to make them look wet.
Continued...I applied the dynamic hair to the monkey model, selecting the UV based option. I set up separate hair domains for the body, head, head tranfur, and tail since I wanted to be able to give them different hair densities. All hair groups have the same general settings of length, thickness, and mode. Originally the scaling was 2%, but this made the monkey look like a prickly cactus, so I set it to 1%. The body fur seems a little thin, so I might bump up the scaling. The body hair count is 60K, head 40K, head transfur 10K, and tail 40K. I didn’t do too much styling other than brushing it out with symmetry on and used the popup tool at 0.01 inches. I made 2 hair shader domains one for body and tail and the other for the head. The monkey’s color map is placed in the root and tip color channels so the fur follows the figure’s markings. The paws have dark black on the color map, which needs some adjustment. Highlight and shininess are pretty much off in this render, so the fur looks a little dull. The hair thickness is set at 100% for the root and 30% for the tip, but it looks a little too blunt ended, so I might adjust the tip % down it for a more pointed look. I didn’t want much hair on the face and ears, so I made a density map from figure UV map in photoshop with black where I don’t want any hair. The brightness is set to 75% to let a few hairs through.
Wow, I am so impressed.
@Philemo, I really like how you used the terrain editor. The animals make it all work.
@TimA, that tower set is incredible. I hope you find your freebie.
@SukyL, thank you so much for your clear explanation of applying the hair to the monkeys. That is definitely my weakness. Your scene is coming together extremely well. You face has wonderful character.
@Antara, Lovely. The only thing I might suggest is to agree with the comment about the lighter sky color.
Great work, everyone.
Great job explaining your process Suky.
The hair settings are great. You obviously have had a bit of practice with it.
The following is meant more for people new to Carrara and its hair system:
Using hair groups, density maps and length maps is a great way to drive hair placement and length, as well as to define other parameters. Hair thickness is a universal setting for that particular hair object, so if you need different hair thickness, such as head hair, versus facial hair, you can add multiple hair object to a model and they can even overlap, so you could use one hair thickness for an under fur, and another for a thinner over-fur on an animal for example. What I did in my procedural V4 model was replace the eyebrows and eyelashes with dynamic hair. I used large (or medium) hairs for the eyelashes, and thin hairs for the brows.
I agree completely!
This WIP thread is one of the better ones regarding educational and informational posts! As one member of the community, I want to say thank you to everyone that has shared their time, knowledge and artistic vision with the rest of us. It doesn't matter if you're an old hand at this, intermediate, getting back into it after a long hiatus or totally new, just watching the journey and how hurdles have been overcome, is inspiring in itself.
cheese in fog with alien mold
try to make a very organic thing.
cheese is metaball into vertex modeler,
with sss.
mold is metaball in surface replicator.
indirect light is a killer in render time!
I agree completely!
This WIP thread is one of the better ones regarding educational and informational posts! As one member of the community, I want to say thank you to everyone that has shared their time, knowledge and artistic vision with the rest of us. It doesn't matter if you're an old hand at this, intermediate, getting back into it after a long hiatus or totally new, just watching the journey and how hurdles have been overcome, is inspiring in itself.
I couldn't agree more!!!
There are some outstanding posts in this challenge, along with some very creative ideas on how to achieve different objectives.
I think the sun light is not strong enough and highlights should be stronger to get the summer day look. Personally, I would try to lower the sky intensity and add a distant light to mimic the sun, with a large distance (50m for isntance) to get soft shadows. I would also (but you've been doing that :-) ) make it yellowish to get a white feed back when mixed with the blue light from the HDRI.