NEW! Novica & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 6
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Rich- I love the camera angles on the turret and castle, you really get a feeling of the expanse of the set and how roomy it is. I love the tilt of the camera shooting up the stairs and up the front of the castle, really makes us feel like we are right there.
The Iray Skydome looks neat, I have it in the cart but haven't checked out yet today. Thanks for showing it, it really looks awesome!!!
Been busy cleaning out garage, sold the kiln and it was picked up today so it was a good reason to work out there. In the upper 60's so nice and cool but not cold. Won't be online at all tomorrow so if anyone posts and I don't respond, I'm not ignoring you.
In case you haven't seen this thread, there's some beautiful renders and it's their first-ever post (remember waaaaaay back when...) In three days, there's been ZERO comments, which can be a bit of a letdown. I know I haven't surfed other threads in a few days (and will be gone all day today, got up an hour early to surf) so if you get a chance, take a peek and comment if you have time, I know they'd appreciate it. (And the renders are wonderful!)
Has anyone rendered Mina? She appears to have a line in the middle of her nose (click on the second thumbnail and you'll see it clearer.) Don't know how noticeable it is otherwise, lighting can throw things off and it may not be too pronounced in other lighting.
I did a few experiments to learn more about Iray Worlds SkyDome. I rendered these small to get a quick sense of what's possible.
First image is as Scene Preset 8 Water loads. Base is at 0 degrees, skydome is at 30 degrees. Second image has base rotated to 45 degrees and the third image has base rotated to 90 degrees. What you see happening is that when you rotate the base, both the mountains and the sky change.
The fourth image shows the skydome rotated to 90 degrees and the fifth to 135 degrees. When you rotate the skydome, the sky changes but not the mountains. So after loading one of the nine scene presets, first rotate the base until you have the mountains you want, then rotate the sky.
You can see the mountains in the DAZ Studio viewport but not the sky, so to see the changes in the sky you need to either do a test render, have the auxiliary viewport opened, or have the viewport set to show iRay.
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To use this product, you have to first load one of the nine preset scenes. After that, you can change the sky to any of 17 sky shaders. As with any shader, to apply one you first have to select the skydome in the scene tab, then select the skydome surface under the surfaces tab, then add the shaders. Image six shows sky 3, image seven shows sky 9, and image eight shows sky 15. These all have the same mountain view as images 3-5.
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Continuing with my experiments using Iray Worlds SkyDome. In addition to rotating the base and sky and changing the sky shader (discussed in the previous post), there are also a number of morphs found under the parameter tab.
The skydome has one morph that changes the vertical look of the sky. Image 3 is from the previous post and the Skydome-Clouds morph is at 0%. Image nine has the morph at 50% and image ten at 100%. What you see happening is that the clouds are being compressed into a smaller space, bringing other clouds into view.
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The base has five morphs: one that changes the height of the hills and four that affect a mist layer. Image eleven shows no mist at 100% and image twelve shows lower hills at 100%. These changes may appear subtle in these small renders. Both of these have the skydome morph at 100% as in image ten.
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There are also 25 sun position presets. To use them, first select the sun in the scene tabs then apply the sun position preset. Here are three: image thirteen uses 1-low, image fourteen uses 6-low and image fifteen uses 8-mid. The icons show where the sun is located in the sky. The changes appear on the moutains and the water.
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The thing that I object to with that Iray Worlds SkyDome is that the sky is mirrored at 180 degrees, just like the previous product from that same vendor. For that reason, I have not purchased it. You can see that mirroring in your image examples, where the clouds look like a Rorschach test on the right side.
LOL- with the Rorschach test, I see a crab on the right with it's claws forward, ready to pinch!
The vendor mentions in another discussion thread that the dome is mirrored 180 degrees, so you do need to be watchful (more so than I was on the one set of examples).
Even with the seam, I feel I can do outdoor iRay scenes I wasn't able to before. This iRay render shows the sunset scene preset from Merlin's Oak, Plants and Props Set combined with the 6 Sunset Worlds scene preset from Iray Worlds SkyDome. I hid the skydome and lights from Merlin's set, used the 0 Lux Sun color shader from IWSD to turn off the sun, and ctrl+click added the campfire shader from Real Lights for DAZ Studio Iray.
For comparison, I also did a 3DL render of the Merlin sunset scene using the original skydome. I turned off the uber environment and distant lights to have the same back lit view.
I'd be curious whether you could put stars in these renders. I suppose you could make editted copies of the original skymaps.
I'm guessing it's just a sphere of sorts. So a slightly smaller sky-dome with only a B&W star map in Opacity and Ambient may do the trick. At least I think that would work in 3delight, I'm not sure if that is possibly in Iray.
Or you could put tiny spheres with an emissive shader on them. It might be less hassle.
Well, Michael 7 finally made his appearance. The cart will show you the price, and those of you who bought the qualifying item (think it was the Scott bundle, been so long I don't remember) will get a discount. (What is it?) Not sure what is stacking to do what, but as a PC+ member too, my price was $47.24
I took other items out of my cart that weren't in the Pro Bundle- here's why- later in the day they often change the scrolling banner and give discounts on things and it's with a qualifying item in the cart. So I sure as heck am not putting all the new items in the cart in the wee hours of the morning, only to have them turn around and change the promos. (You've been there, done that- thought I would remind you!) Slosh's item is 30% off so there's no rush to put that in the cart right now (love the casual outfit Slosh!) and I'll pick it up later today. Look at the wonderful material zones on it- work went into the product and I do support quality men's line apparel.
Okay, this is my opinion. I don't like Michael 7's thin lips and the ends have WAY too much pucker. Not a fan of the eye shape either. Morphs can fix that, but end of the lip pucker is not as easy to fix (one way is to pull out the corners, which makes the lips wider, and what if you don't want wider?) And on another character, Aiden, when there's acne on characters I'd want it optional, with a clearer complexion included. There's acne on both sides so you can't get a clear-face, although postwork can fix it. It's distracting to me when doing closeups. The skin aside, I do actually like him better than M7 in every other way. I like the lips, eyes, and face overall on Aiden, and kudos to doing something different and more realistic.
And it will be easy to remember M7's release- my hubby's birthday!
All the vendors did a bang up job and I love the contents of the Pro Bundle- and there's a LOT in the bundle. Thank you vendors / DAZ!
Thanks, Novica :) Nice to see that after the Brian Hair post :( Anyway, my Genesis 2 Legacies: Heroes should be coming soon, so you can mix some of those head shapes in, too. Heroes has Michael, Darius, Lee, Scott, and Gianni from Gen2.
I really like the Iray Worlds Skydome, those clouds are so pretty! You got quite creative with your tinkering and it really paid off. I love Merlin's products and have used that oak tree several times.
Ooooh, neat! And don't let the Brian Hair bother you, I'm a really picky person (nit picky) on some days, where on other days I'd adore the exact same product. I think that's called "moods." The Heroes will probably sell like wildfire!
That's not Michael, that's David 7.
Did they bring back Gunner? runs to look. lol.
You're right, That dose look like D5 at first glance (I like). Now I just need an FW Eve for V7, lol.
RGcincy, Those are really nice renders by the way, I like the campfire at night scenes.
O.T. I'm patiently waiting for David 8, lol.
Oh, no problems here, Novica. I was just funnin' with ya :)
Don't want to double post, so please see my screenshots of why I don't personally like M7's physique- the upper arms where they attach to the chest are rubbery- reminds me of those fix-the-bends product examples. He sure needs it IMO. There's a rubbery line of skin created which also makes a hollow in the upper arm where it should be curving out. Pull up your sleeve and look at your first section of arm up by the shoulder. It curves OUT even if you're not toned, and if you are, and men are usually more muscular, and it should definitely curve OUT. Move your arm to bend in front of your body and you'll see it gets slightly more rounder.
When Will asked his question I had no idea how to add stars, but after Khory's suggestion, I thought that might actually work. So I did an experiment and here's what I came up with:
I started with a large primitive sphere. I then created a tiny sphere. To help see what I was doing, I made the large sphere black and the little sphere white. I then made 1000 copies of the little sphere, with random sizing, randomly placed on the upper 40% of the large sphere using the Surface Replicate script. I then moved the first little sphere below ground to hide it (you can't turn it off in the scene tab otherwise the instances also turn off). I saved all this as a scene subset.
I next opened the original file with Merlin's Oak, Plants and Props Set and Iray Worlds SkyDome and merged in the star subscene. I scaled the large star sphere until it was just a bit smaller than the Iray SkyDome and then hid it, leaving only the scattered stars visible. On the parent star I put the 100 watt bulb iRay light shader from Real Lights for DAZ Studio Iray, then turned the luminance down to 100. I also changed the sky map on the iRay skydome as I didn't want stars in front of the clouds. I used the 3 Skys BlueIce map which has clouds closer to the horizon and not so high in the sky. I also added the x25 LumOnly 1000 material preset to make it dark. This approach looks promising. I think I might try again with a couple of layers of stars so they can have different shaders and light levels.
Very nice! Whenever we have an environment we want tweaked, we know who to ask!
RGcincy, The script part is way beyond my skills, however that is really nice looking.
I'm still wrestling with a single D-form, and it is winning. I want to curl up next to that fire pit under the tree and go to sleep now, lol.
Here's another view of that weird arm. Plus someone mentioned the teeth are screwing up again when some of the morphs are applied. Same problem that happened with G3F.
Novica are you getting those bumps and so forth when you pose him differently? Do and can you re-render this one with out the shirt?
That's a promo image and the one I linked to is from the M7 thread over in The Commons that someone else rendered. I haven't even installed M7 yet
Ah so you can't actually check yourself that the issue is not due to a bad pose, lumpy clothing or something else.. okee dokee.
Someone showed images in the M7 thread of how it deforms when using the different body types too (showed with the shirt off.) Suggestions included that perhaps the morphs are doubling up. I have to be honest and not inflate what I think when I review the products, and this seems like this product has problems and not up to par IMO- I've never seen this type of rubbery arm mess with muscles hollowing inward, sections seeming too small which are supposed to support the next larger section of the arm, body shapes that worsen the effect of the arm, but yes, saw the teeth problem with G3F and they didn't fix it. Due to the wonderful products (clothing, characters, hair) in the Pro Bundle and the fact I was an early adopter of Scott and got all those products for dirt cheap, I'm a happy camper about all that. It's not the products in the bundle, I would strongly recommend people get those via the bundle- but M7 has arm issues that I've never seen in Genesis males or Genesis 2 males. It's more along the par of Michael 4, if anything, so far as fluidity with the bends. (I like M4 don't get me wrong, I'm saying it seems more like a backward accomplishment rather than two generations forward.)
Others are seeing the arm problem too.
BTW, someone had a good tip for you folks with changing currency rates- buy a gift card for yourself when your currency is a better rate, then use the funds as store credit for your purchases.
You mean the ones where the pose actually is not suited for the shapes and in one image they have intersected the body with the muscles in several places? I saw that and am positive that falls under user error. One thing everyone should realize about poses is that just because it does not exceed limits does not mean that it is necessarily a realistic position for the human body. That is true for multiple rotation combinations especially.
The poses were simple, with the arm simply coming down, so that didn't seem likely to me- he only had it crossed in front of him and it was down toward the crotch, which would relax the tension of the "reach." But you could be right. I'll have to download him and test it. The person who posted the shirtless images looked like they loaded the body shapes, but I'm not sure.
I've been busy tracking down online orders where stores say they have things in stock, then the next day (after the sale) they send an email saying not in stock, order cancelled- and I've been going head to head with store managers and making them find the stock at other stores and calling those managers to give me the same price. I did screenshots during the order where it said it was available at such and such store, in stock, and ready for pickup- so they worked it out between stores and I got the same deal at the other store, the day after the sale. Been an exhausting day, but it was over $200 difference (there was a 20% internet discount too, which I insisted be honored.) So Im not feeling very lovey-dovey today, coupled with of course, being on meds for bad sinus/respiratory condition and supposedly only supposed to be "resting." Yeah, right. So didn't really want to fiddle with M7 today, but maybe tomorrow (well, after 2am, today is tomorrow) I'll test the arms.
Thanks for putting up with me lol
Cranky is going to go get some sleep.
I'm sorry your feeling so yuck. Eat more raw garlic! That by the way is my go to answer for pretty much every illness.