NEW! Novica & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 6
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I am curious about the beard product. In general I like my guys squared away with no beard, or only some stubble. I could very much use a plain stubble set. The rest of the more flamboyant beards aren't anything I would use for anything but background characters and then only rarely, since I'm not over fond of facial hair.
If anyone gets the beard set, I'm curious about the stubble and how versatile it is. I only see one image in the preview that has the very short stuble I'm interested in, so I'm unsure if it would really work for me.
Luci, I can't remember- have you done anything with the Painter's Lights product? I bought it but haven't used it, but everyone seems to really like it. Good for portraits.
I did get those. They are excellent! Yes, the lights are set up for portraits.
wow, Jen's been busy. I have 23 product updates in DIM. Smells Like Fall has an update, we just showcased that one.
BTW- did you ever get the category crashing resolved for 4.9?
And I'm wondering how Kharma is doing with her new computer.
I tested the beard.. the main stubble is like a skull cap with a texture, and you can add any or all of the other figures to have 3D stubble as well, the default on all of them before adding morphs is very short stubble. It's really an incredible product.. if anyone's on the fence just get off and buy it, it's worth every penny.
I've been waiting for that adorable drake for a while.. he's sitting in my cart waiting for any goodies that I might want today to join him.
The release version of 4.9 was very bad for me. The latest Beta 4.9.0.30 is working pretty well for me. There are still products that don't work right when installed with Daz Connect, but Daz is gradually getting bugs fixed. Every Beta is better than the last one.
Good to know! There's another interesting product out- I believe you're familar with it? Called Fabric Basics Lace for Iray... having fun with it! I've got to get some sleep, but here's a few renders with your latest release. I like the variety of lace, very nice! I'll add more tomorrow. These gals are Kathy and Summer, and they are Gen3Fs. Wearing Ireland Hair and Cailin Hair.
Rather than let the thread get too far away I stopped this render at 24 hours and 25% finished, saved it out and resumed the render. DAZ Studio crashed after the last render and I had to redo quite a bit to get it back to the original as I hadn't saved it for a while, I tend to forget and end up losing changes
Hopefully it doesn't look that different.
No, I don't know anything about it. I saw it in the store today. I've done lace with PD Irays Shader Kit 1 in the past, but it doesn't have nearly as many lace patterns as this new one you got. I look forward to seeing your renders of it.
I got the Whiskers for Genesis 3 Male(s). Here are a couple renders. I don't really understand why the product has so many wild color textures and so few natural hair colors. But I guess you can tweak the colors in the surfaces pane if you need to. I tried one brown beard and one blond moustache. I also tried a black beard on Dash, but it was so dark, I just couldn't light it satisfactorily. I'll have to try it again when I have more time.
Trying out my purchases today.. Hunting Drake and Refracted - Iray Glass Presets
and Ding 42!
I'm going to say I bought the Whiskers product and I really like it. Thanks Fisty for testing it out! For facial stubble there are 4-5 options, from dark to light. I really like the subtle look! Great job. Now if there was just a matching skull-cap, I'd be very happy.
Here I did Sarge with the lightest stubble setting.
Try the hair that comes with FW Oliver for G2M if you have him.
Of course I have Mr. Oliver. One amazing character. I tested that hair out, and it does match the beard almost perfectly! Thanks for the suggestion. =-)
Beautiful render of the jade/emerald hunting drake. I like that a lot
Those lace shaders are really convincing! And your renders look great Novica. Good job.
Barbult- I'd say the facial hair looks amazing...but I was too busy gazing into those EYES!!! Wow. But anyway, you did a great job (as usual) and thanks for showing that. And Sarge looks hunky and well done with the stubble, that's always sexy but especially on a military dude. (He doesn't belong out in the field, he needs to be in a museum as the exhibit for the most eligible bachelor... or better yet, The Bachelor! LOL, I can see all of Lyoness's and Emma and Jordi's women as the bachelorettes vying for poor Sarge's attention... run Sarge, RUN!
Fishtails, wow, looking good! I love the reclining dog.
Serene Night, this hair is pretty good, though a little hard to see the sides because it is buzzed to short. You could probably copy and paste the shader from the beard. http://www.daz3d.com/buzzed-hair-for-genesis-genesis-2-and-genesis-3
So many good renders posted in the past few hours!!
Novica, really like your main image. Very nice lace pattern and that shirt color goes really well with her hair and skin.
Barbult and SereneNight, great portraits! thanks for showing off the beard, I've bought it but haven't tried it yet.
Fishtales, well-done scene! I like how you have the table laid - nice dispersion of food and utensils. Makes me wonder who's coming for dinner?
I wish I could make the beard more sparse. I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
I did a couple of Iray renders with Japanese Maples. First one uses one of the trees as a bonsai (the set comes with a bonsai but I liked the look of this other tree better). Planted in a pot I made in Shape Magic colored with shaders from Ceramics for Iray and and set on a counter in Cafe Luca. Very sloooooooowwwww to render - I think this timed out at 2 hours and it really should go longer. I haven't done Cafe Luca before, so not sure if it was that set or the tree.
The second render has a maple and fallen maple leaves added to the Multiplane Cyclorama Forest scene. I lighted the scene with the Iray Skydome from Modern Museum (I just got it yesterday, still in Fast Grab today, like light from the dome). This rendered quickly, so I'm thinking it was Cafe Luca that was slow in the other render.
LOL, I had to take a second look at the first one- those backs of the chairs reminded me of a stupid what-is-that-thing which kept popping up in my Reality render but not my Iray one. I never did figure it out, I thought it might be movement helpers, or some light I had put in from Reality, but it formed a really pretty textured (multi-texture) pyramid. So I was biased with that on my mind from yesterday and I thought, "There's those darned helpers again!" That pot you made is GORGEOUS. Are you sure you don't want to be a vendor and do exotic planters?
Your multiplane cyclorama looks well integrated.
I continue to say it- Fast Grab has better deals than this buy two and get 50% off March Madness. With great products! (I already have what's in Fast Grab, and of course haven't rendered them yet.) I am liking (overall) the MM products but not into characters anymore, have enough, and with shaders, I don't need any more clothes either. I'm really liking the Lace ones and the Metal Abounds that I tried previously.
RGCincy I can't believe that's the Multiplane Cyclorama!! WOW. What on earth did you do to it to make it look that fantastic????
Here's another of Fisty's lace shaders.
BTW, Happy Birthday Fisty! DId Darc take you out for a fantabulous dinner?
Nope.. we got some sushi from the local grocery store though
That's a great question jakiblue. I'll give you the simple answer but also share what I learned from your question and why I'm glad you asked it.
This first image is the Forest2 scene from Multiplane Cyclorama using the default Iray render settings and environment map. You can see it is quite dark.
This next image is now using the Iray skydome from Modern Museum. Although labeled a skydome, it is really a new environment map. The scene is now quite bright.
The new map was too bright, so I toned it down by changing the film ISO, Burn Highlights, Crush Blacks, Environmental Intensity and rotated the dome to move the direction of cast shadows. The first three are under Tone Mapping tab and the last two under the Environment tab. This image is the result and shows what I used in the render with the Japanese maple:
So that's the simple answer - I used the skydome from Modern Museum.
BUT, I went backwards from there and found out that if I now switched back to the default environment map, it looked much better (brighter) than in the first image. This meant that the MM skydome not only added a new map, it changed some other render settings. The two settings MM changes is Environment Map from 2 to 8 and Environment Light Resolution from 512 to 4096. The latter seemed to make little difference but the first did a lot.The image below shows the results of using the default environment map with the new MM render settings. Quite a difference compared to the first image. The trees are similar to the second image but the leaves have less red to my eye.
So, bottom line, adjusting the Environment Map value from 2 to 8 does a lot for you when using the MP Cyclorama.
As a test, I went back to my Japanese Maple render and switched back to the default Environment Map. The forest looked OK although a little darker. The maple tree was brighter and the figure way too bright. I played around some with the Tone Mapping settings to try and balance them out but didn't get as good a combination as when I just used the MM skydome, so that map adds more value than just the change in the Environment values. One reason I bought Modern Museum is I had read on a forum post that the skydome was quite good for other scenes.
I also tested out another cyclorama scene, this time Heart of the Jungle. Just swapped it in for the Forest prop, keeping the maple tree and figure. It uses the MM skydome and my settings. This one looks good too I think.
Subsurface Workshop - SSS Shaders for Iray
These shaders are kind of fun. Some of them are very subtle, some are really slow to render and some require a little tweaking.
There are two sets - one changes translucency and the other only changes SS settings. Also there are some ultilities to tweak both.
At first I said - What did it do? It turns out, upon reading the PDF guide, that strong side an/ or backlighting is best - that is it is most noticible. So that is what I used for all of my renders. I looked at Dimension Theory's promos after spending most of the day with my experiments, and I see that most of his are lighted from the front and side. I appreciate the subtleties of the shaders in his renders so much more after spending time with them - they really enrich the colors and mostly look like the materials.
Here are a few renders of mine and my observations:
Cloth - I tried using the cloth with a pattern and it got all washed out when I used the one that gave it tranlucency. Just putting the map in the tranlucency color square took care of that. In his one back-lighted promo you can see how great the cloth looks.
Liquids - one of the main reasons I bought it - there are some really strange ones and some that seem too thick or opaque, but they can be altered like I did with the teriyaki sauce to make it look more like blood (to me anyway.)
The clear plastic ones are kind of cool, more like the translucent plastic that so many things are made from now. Also a soft and a hard plastic - great for bathroom stuff (see promos.)
Vegetables and fruits - I have older fruits mostly. I really like the grape shaders. It leaves the base color so if it's not so good like the red apple, that's what you get.
The hair shaders are nice, can be added to existing Iray hair.
Wax (hard and soft)- Look good. I don't use candles much so not much interest for me.
Also flowers, grass and leaves - I didn't do much with these yet.
Guide: http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/public/read_me/index/24199/24199_subsurface-workshop-sss-shaders-for-iray.pdf
Just an update. Today I went over to the tornado neighborhood to try and connect with that family again that had their rabbits stolen. Remember, as the tornado hit, the mom ran to the hutch and took out the pet bunnies, got the dog, and the four kids were already in the garage huddled in a corner. Smart thinking- a lot of the house was blown out, garage is completely intact except the huge door. The newspaper covered the story about the rabbits and how important they were to the kids, and that was THE ONLY home burglarized a few days later on Sunday while the family was at church, and belongings and the rabbits were stolen. A week later, that neighborhood would still almost bring you to tears. Debris is piled high, but what broke my heart were the children's toys and bedroom items/decorations crushed, splintered, piled by the curb. I'm sure we all remember how we decorated our rooms as kids, how knick-knacks meant so much.
I waited awhile but they never came home (they are staying at the mom's sister's house.) For now, I'm letting it go so far as deliberately driving over to see if they're home, but when I'm in the neighborhood I'll stop by. The house is boarded up and even on a Sunday, there were about eight contractors working in the neighborhood. What struck me is how on earth could contractors work during the week, as there's nowhere to park their trucks/trailers as the streets aren't wide enough to accomodate the debris (even though most of it is on the side of the road, in the yards) and trucks on both sides of the street.
If you've never driven into a neighborhood hit by an EF3 tornado (158mph) you'd be instantly aware of driving into a perfectly fine neighborhood, no damage whatsoever, then there's a scattering of smaller pieces of plywood up in trees. Then suddenly, just like that, large pieces of homes are gone. There's no transition zone. What got hit/sucked in, got hit and sucked in, then spat out. It's absolutely eerie. Then further down the street, it returns to normal. Just like that. The street today was quiet, with a few neighbors in the "good" part chatting on their front porches, but there was no hauling of the mounds of remaining debris, no loading of trucks, and as I said, only 8 contractors in the area. We're going to have severe storms and heavy rain this coming Friday, but all possessions on the curbs have already been deemed lost.
My neighbors have been helping all week, and they were trying to find a lost dog a home. I was pretty hot about that, I said it needed to go to the no-kill shelter as a marked tornado dog as the owners had lost enough already, they needed to find their dog. And there needed to be media attention about the dog. (Anyone claiming it would sure have to show me a valid drivers license so if they weren't the owner, I would know how to nail their hide.) The main thing is the dog is safe, my neighbors have really big hearts and won't do anything detrimental.
I'll keep on the bunnies. Those people are dealing with alot, a bit of time passing isn't a bad thing. Since they were at church when this happened, I know they have a lot of support. A stranger popping in a month or two later and letting them know people are still thinking of them might be better in the long run anyway. I will keep you posted if I make contact.
Luci- thank you so much for the insight, it will save us a lot of time when we experiment. I really notice the difference on the fruit- wow!!!!