Knittingmommy's Laboratory

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  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    Thanks, @Dracorn.  I have almost ALL of Ron's brushes including the Optical Flares.  LOL.  The only ones I don't have a are a couple of his newer ones.  I'm still learning how to use them all effectively.  I'm getting better with them, though.  I want to attach some Cyborg Parts and Cyborg Circuitry to her skin and see how they look.  I'll be working on that tomorrow.  I need to take her skin maps into Gimp and see what I can do with the brushes.  I have a few more outfits to try out, too.  I'm still not sure what I'm going to use yet.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    The Cyborg bits and pieces are on my wishlist from ron's brushes.  I have almost everything else he's done.

    I think she looks great and am looking forward to seeing what you do with those brushes.

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    Thanks, Sonja.  I think the skin turned out way better than I expected.  I have done any morphs for my cyborg yet.  That skin is just sitting on the base G3F figure so far, but I think it looks pretty good.  I hardly recognize her.  It does make me appreciate how good the base morph is if she can look that good with my gray skin.  :)

    I'll post some pics tomorrow if I manage to get anything good with my experiments in Gimp with Ron's brushes.

  • dracorndracorn Posts: 2,345

    I own so many of Ron's Brushes, too.  They are the bomb!!!

    In fact, Ron's Brushes comprise 90% of the brushes that I purchased, LOL.

    I also love Aaron Blaise's brushes - these are digital painting brushes as opposed to the stamp.  Those take a little getting used to as well.  The rest of what I own are free brushes.

    I'm oogling Ron's Glitter, Ron's War Essentials, Ron's Tornado.  I originally wasn't going to do anything with the sci-fi stuff because I'm into fantasy.
    But then my plot changed.  I'm actually going to have a full out sci-fi vs. fantasy war.  Dragons and wizards vs. mechs and tanks - that will be totally cool.  So I may be picking up some more sci-fi brushes.

    There are probably more brushes out there with the same quality, but dang, Ron's are really great.  I haven't touched the surface of really making use of them yet.

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    I started this yesterday and ended up staying up until the early morning hours working on this render.  I started by using what merchant resources I had and used SimTenero Randomizer until I got a morph that I loved.  I cleaned it up a bit and fine tuned the morph.  Then I used Skin Builder 3 to make her skin.  I really like how she turned out.  Then, I set up the scene which included using VWD to drape both her hair and her dress.  The hair was interesting because it has two parts. It's Medea Hair for Genesis 2 and it has an Add-on piece that I wanted to use.  So, I draped both pieces individually selecting the piece I wasn't draping as a collision.  It worked fairly well, I think.  Isidora Dress is a great dress to work with and has a ton of morphs, but I think draping it gave it so much more realism.  I love how it pools at her waist and on the floor.

    Although I took some breaks, overall this project was started a little after 9 pm and I hit the render button one last time just before 7 am this morning.  I was up all night with this one, but I just couldn't stop until it was rendering.  I love how it turned out.  I did a little bit of postwork in Gimp.  The only thing I regret about this particular pose is that you can't really see her face very well.  I'm rendering another image with a different camera angle for a closeup of her face.  I didn't change the pose any because, frankly, I'm too tired now after only about 4 hours of sleep to go redrape the hair and the dress!  I think she's one of my favorite characters that I've created so far so I'll definitely be rendering her again.  For a complete list of everything used, check out the gallery link.

    Nayeli

    Gallery Link

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    I'm so looking forward to really digging into the VWD.  After Sunday I should have more time to really try it out.  I'm pretty excited about the possibilities.  She looks great!  I'd say it was worth the late night/early morning.

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    Thanks, Sonja.  Yeah, if I weren't so tired, I'd agree.  I do think she turned out pretty good.  I probably would have been done earlier, but I had in my head that set behind her would make a great backdrop and, of course, it was a 3DL only set that I think came out before Iray so I had to convert everything and reset all of the lights to photometric.  There were paper lanterns in the pool and they just didn't look that great converted to Iray.  I couldn't get the emissions set right.  Luckily, I had picked up a great set of emitting light props by Fabiana over on Rendo.  This was the first time I had used them.  I borrowed one of the wooden floats from the old paper lights and shut down the opacity for the paper lanterns and put the emitting square prop on the wood, set the preset I wanted to use and then create some instances of the lights that I then had to position all over the pool.  That took some time.  It's kind of a shame that the light details don't show up as much, but I do like the DOF that I used.  I think it adds to the mystery/romance of the piece.

  • dracorndracorn Posts: 2,345

    I LOVE this pose!  The slouch looks so natural.  I actually like the fact that her face is partially hidden.  That makes it more interesting. 

    Love the way you draped the fabric of her dress on the floor. 

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    I was just looking at those lights by Fabiana.  They are well toward the top of my wish list.  I'm sticking with my budget though and waiting for Creech. I can't buy anything else at the moment no matter how much I want to lol.

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191
    dracorn said:

    I LOVE this pose!  The slouch looks so natural.  I actually like the fact that her face is partially hidden.  That makes it more interesting. 

    Love the way you draped the fabric of her dress on the floor. 

    Thanks.  I was really pleased with how it turned out.  It was actually super easy to drape. Nothing went flying off the model this time so I must be getting the hang of it.  I think the pose and the angle makes it a little more interesting and mysterious.  I'm glad you like it.

     

     

     

    I was just looking at those lights by Fabiana.  They are well toward the top of my wish list.  I'm sticking with my budget though and waiting for Creech. I can't buy anything else at the moment no matter how much I want to lol.

    I love those lights.  I should have used them before now, but they ended up being perfect for what I wanted to do here.  There are a lot of options for each prop.  I got Alterglow 1 and 2.  She has another one or two that I have on my wishlist.  I couldn't get all of them despite them being on sale when I picked them up.

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191
    edited May 2017

    Closeup of Nayeli with different lighting.  I actually like the full picture better, but you can really see the skin details in this closeup.


    Gallery Link

    Post edited by Knittingmommy on
  • dracorndracorn Posts: 2,345

    I agree - the full picture is much better - but keep this one too.  They are both good, and you really can't tell that the close up is a repeat (especially if you retetexture the dress for the close up).

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    I don't think I've ever gotten rid of any of my images.  I keep everything, even the bad ones.  I really need to burn some stuff to DVD.  I'm like a pack rat on my computer.

    I was playing with Skin Builder again today.  I wanted to try out the toon options so I made a skin for Star 2.0 and tried to make a morph for her via the Randomizer.  Her morph isn't too bad, but not quite what I was thinking it would look like so I ended up using the default Star 2.0 for this render instead of the morph that I made.  I really need more practice working with the makeup.  I figured out how to layer the eyeshadows, but again, not as pretty as I had hoped and you can't even see the two tones in this image.  I'll be trying again soon.

    Sexy Star

    Gallery Link

     

  • Worlds_EdgeWorlds_Edge Posts: 2,152

    It's cute, I like it.  And she has matching nails even!

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    It's cute, I like it.  And she has matching nails even!

    Thanks.  It's not exact, but as close as I could get.  :)

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119

    With referrence to your comment about getting the colour close to the one you want. Wouldn't it be nice to have a colour picker built into Studio that would allow the user to match a colour in the scene and change something else in the scene to the same colour without trying to guess? Open the colour picker, click on the colour you want and then click on the surface you want to be the same colour.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Agree with Sandy... Carrara has an eyedropper to do just that... as does any paint program I've ever used.

    KM, Can you not save your color settings out then load them on to other object, shader domains, in Studio?

  • DarwinsMishapDarwinsMishap Posts: 4,087

    I started this yesterday and ended up staying up until the early morning hours working on this render.  I started by using what merchant resources I had and used SimTenero Randomizer until I got a morph that I loved.  I cleaned it up a bit and fine tuned the morph.  Then I used Skin Builder 3 to make her skin.  I really like how she turned out.  Then, I set up the scene which included using VWD to drape both her hair and her dress.  The hair was interesting because it has two parts. It's Medea Hair for Genesis 2 and it has an Add-on piece that I wanted to use.  So, I draped both pieces individually selecting the piece I wasn't draping as a collision.  It worked fairly well, I think.  Isidora Dress is a great dress to work with and has a ton of morphs, but I think draping it gave it so much more realism.  I love how it pools at her waist and on the floor.

    Although I took some breaks, overall this project was started a little after 9 pm and I hit the render button one last time just before 7 am this morning.  I was up all night with this one, but I just couldn't stop until it was rendering.  I love how it turned out.  I did a little bit of postwork in Gimp.  The only thing I regret about this particular pose is that you can't really see her face very well.  I'm rendering another image with a different camera angle for a closeup of her face.  I didn't change the pose any because, frankly, I'm too tired now after only about 4 hours of sleep to go redrape the hair and the dress!  I think she's one of my favorite characters that I've created so far so I'll definitely be rendering her again.  For a complete list of everything used, check out the gallery link.

    Nayeli

    Gallery Link

    Stunning, KM. Seriously.

  • SaphirewildSaphirewild Posts: 6,668

    You are such an amazing 3D Artist KM, all your renders are truely amazing!!!!

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191
    Fishtales said:

    With referrence to your comment about getting the colour close to the one you want. Wouldn't it be nice to have a colour picker built into Studio that would allow the user to match a colour in the scene and change something else in the scene to the same colour without trying to guess? Open the colour picker, click on the colour you want and then click on the surface you want to be the same colour.

    @Fishtales There is a Color Picker for DAZ Studio.  I have it.  It's by Draagonstorm.  I've used it a few times.  I find it kind of clunky to work with and it uses the print screen function to grab a screen capture.  Unfortunately, it stopped working when I installed a print screen utility.  I'm using Lightshot.  It's free and very easy to use.  I'm guessing they both call the same function because, whenever I use the Color Picker, my screen capture program gets called instead now so I can't use the color picker script. 

    I love my screen capture program and use it often as I use it for screen captures for my tutorials so I can't get rid of it.  I have been trying out a few of the color picker add-ons for my browsers since that is usually where I am when I'm looking for color inspiration.  I use color palettes a lot online, but not all of them give the RGB or Hex Codes.  I find it's fairly easy to use the color pickers in the browser to get the code for a color and then input that into DS.  However, some color pickers are better than others.  I'm still looking for one that I like for Firefox.  I think the one I use in Chrome is the best, but it doesn't seem to be available for Firefox.  I might have to do a review of color pickers sometime and let everyone know which ones I find to be the most useful for DS.

     

    wgdjohn said:

    Agree with Sandy... Carrara has an eyedropper to do just that... as does any paint program I've ever used.

    KM, Can you not save your color settings out then load them on to other object, shader domains, in Studio?

    @wgdjohn  I'm not quite sure what you mean.  I don't think I ever got as far in Carrara to use a color picker so I'm not sure how it works.  Other than saving material presets, I'm not sure of any other way to save color settings in Studio.  You mean like save out a color palette for use later?  I'm not sure that is a feature in Studio.  If it is, I've never seen it.  I can save colors as shader presets in studio, but I'm not sure that's what you mean.

     

    I started this yesterday and ended up staying up until the early morning hours working on this render.  I started by using what merchant resources I had and used SimTenero Randomizer until I got a morph that I loved.  I cleaned it up a bit and fine tuned the morph.  Then I used Skin Builder 3 to make her skin.  I really like how she turned out.  Then, I set up the scene which included using VWD to drape both her hair and her dress.  The hair was interesting because it has two parts. It's Medea Hair for Genesis 2 and it has an Add-on piece that I wanted to use.  So, I draped both pieces individually selecting the piece I wasn't draping as a collision.  It worked fairly well, I think.  Isidora Dress is a great dress to work with and has a ton of morphs, but I think draping it gave it so much more realism.  I love how it pools at her waist and on the floor.

    Although I took some breaks, overall this project was started a little after 9 pm and I hit the render button one last time just before 7 am this morning.  I was up all night with this one, but I just couldn't stop until it was rendering.  I love how it turned out.  I did a little bit of postwork in Gimp.  The only thing I regret about this particular pose is that you can't really see her face very well.  I'm rendering another image with a different camera angle for a closeup of her face.  I didn't change the pose any because, frankly, I'm too tired now after only about 4 hours of sleep to go redrape the hair and the dress!  I think she's one of my favorite characters that I've created so far so I'll definitely be rendering her again.  For a complete list of everything used, check out the gallery link.

    Nayeli

    Gallery Link

    Stunning, KM. Seriously.

    Thank you, @DarwinsMishap.  It's nice to know that the staying up late paid off. She was just one of those projects that grabs at you and you can't stop until it's finished.

     

    You are such an amazing 3D Artist KM, all your renders are truely amazing!!!!

    Thanks, @Saphirewild.  I'm not sure I'd go that far.  I do still have some serious flops.  But, I think I'm getting better.  :)

  • deathbycanondeathbycanon Posts: 1,227
    edited May 2017

    I started this yesterday and ended up staying up until the early morning hours working on this render.  I started by using what merchant resources I had and used SimTenero Randomizer until I got a morph that I loved.  I cleaned it up a bit and fine tuned the morph.  Then I used Skin Builder 3 to make her skin.  I really like how she turned out.  Then, I set up the scene which included using VWD to drape both her hair and her dress.  The hair was interesting because it has two parts. It's Medea Hair for Genesis 2 and it has an Add-on piece that I wanted to use.  So, I draped both pieces individually selecting the piece I wasn't draping as a collision.  It worked fairly well, I think.  Isidora Dress is a great dress to work with and has a ton of morphs, but I think draping it gave it so much more realism.  I love how it pools at her waist and on the floor.

    Although I took some breaks, overall this project was started a little after 9 pm and I hit the render button one last time just before 7 am this morning.  I was up all night with this one, but I just couldn't stop until it was rendering.  I love how it turned out.  I did a little bit of postwork in Gimp.  The only thing I regret about this particular pose is that you can't really see her face very well.  I'm rendering another image with a different camera angle for a closeup of her face.  I didn't change the pose any because, frankly, I'm too tired now after only about 4 hours of sleep to go redrape the hair and the dress!  I think she's one of my favorite characters that I've created so far so I'll definitely be rendering her again.  For a complete list of everything used, check out the gallery link.

    Nayeli

    Gallery Link

    love this scene, especially the lights in teh water, beautiful 

    Post edited by deathbycanon on
  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    @Deathbycanon  Thanks so much!  :)

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited May 2017
    Fishtales said:

    With referrence to your comment about getting the colour close to the one you want. Wouldn't it be nice to have a colour picker built into Studio that would allow the user to match a colour in the scene and change something else in the scene to the same colour without trying to guess? Open the colour picker, click on the colour you want and then click on the surface you want to be the same colour.

     
    wgdjohn said:

    Agree with Sandy... Carrara has an eyedropper to do just that... as does any paint program I've ever used.

    KM, Can you not save your color settings out then load them on to other object, shader domains, in Studio?

    @wgdjohn  I'm not quite sure what you mean.  I don't think I ever got as far in Carrara to use a color picker so I'm not sure how it works.  Other than saving material presets, I'm not sure of any other way to save color settings in Studio.  You mean like save out a color palette for use later?  I'm not sure that is a feature in Studio.  If it is, I've never seen it.  I can save colors as shader presets in studio, but I'm not sure that's what you mean.

    Colour picker is available in Assemble Room only, AFAIK,... see my pic which includes instructions... I can design my shader settings which can include either procedural settings as well as texture maps save them to My Shaders then later apply one of those to an object years from now then use the Eyedropper to pic up that shader and apply it to other objects in a scene.

    Not a colour pallet.  I believe that Studio calls it a preset instead of calling it a Shader.  What I mean are color settings which can include a colour and or a colour gradient, highlight, shininess, bump, alpha, reflectivity, refraction, glow, subsurface scattering and also translucency. In any of those channels I can have other settings which could be as mentioned above... also value settings and 3rd party plug-in procedural settings.  I'll have to crank up Studio again to see it's settings.

    Keep those renders coming!

     

     

    EyedropperTool.png
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    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited May 2017
    wgdjohn said:
    Fishtales said:

    With referrence to your comment about getting the colour close to the one you want. Wouldn't it be nice to have a colour picker built into Studio that would allow the user to match a colour in the scene and change something else in the scene to the same colour without trying to guess? Open the colour picker, click on the colour you want and then click on the surface you want to be the same colour.

     

    wgdjohn said:

    Agree with Sandy... Carrara has an eyedropper to do just that... as does any paint program I've ever used.

    KM, Can you not save your color settings out then load them on to other object, shader domains, in Studio?

    @wgdjohn  I'm not quite sure what you mean.  I don't think I ever got as far in Carrara to use a color picker so I'm not sure how it works.  Other than saving material presets, I'm not sure of any other way to save color settings in Studio.  You mean like save out a color palette for use later?  I'm not sure that is a feature in Studio.  If it is, I've never seen it.  I can save colors as shader presets in studio, but I'm not sure that's what you mean.

    Colour picker is available in Assemble Room only, AFAIK,... see my pic which includes instructions... I can design my shader settings which can include either procedural settings as well as texture maps save them to My Shaders then later apply one of those to an object years from now then use the Eyedropper to pic up that shader and apply it to other objects in a scene.

    Not a colour pallet.  I believe that Studio calls it a preset instead of calling it a Shader.  What I mean are color settings which can include a colour and or a colour gradient, highlight, shininess, bump, alpha, reflectivity, refraction, glow, subsurface scattering and also translucency. In any of those channels I can have other settings which could be as mentioned above... also value settings and 3rd party plug-in procedural settings.  I'll have to crank up Studio again to see it's settings.

    Keep those renders coming!

     

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Hmm... perhaps I did too much editing in my post above... looks like I quoted myself... see show previous quotes for earlier remarks by KM.

  • ChameoChameo Posts: 306

    She is absolutely stunning. There's nothing about her I don't love, in both the full picture and the closeup, though I'll admit to being partial to the closeup, because her expression is so captivating.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    While I basically like the renders... the kink in the hair on left cheek ruins it for me since it shows that it is 3D... not real... the full pick is better since the kink is not noticable... well except that I know that it is there.  I wonder if SubD smoothing or VWD might straighten it out a bit... make it bend instead of kink where polylines join.  I'm one to talk... having the same problem with one of my own objects... luckily I caught the problem in a render early on... I'll just create the object again with better design(detail)... hopefully... as is it will go in my trash bin.

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    @cameleonsdream  @wgdjohn  Thanks.  I'm not real crazy about how the hair turned out either.  I might redo it and try to get rid of the kinks.  I do love how her expression turned out which was one reason I wanted to do a closeup.  

    As for the shader stuff, yes, I can save all of my materials as a shader preset.  I've been playing a lot with my own presets since attending that Shader webcast by Esha.  I'm not sure they work in quite the same way as in Carrara.  I'm not sure I'm ready to dive into that one either.  I did install it in Windows again so I could play with it.  I haven't been able to get it completely working in Linux so I'm kind of stuck with Windows if I want to play around with that.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited May 2017

    Agree with your love of the expression... looking good.   Regarding the hair... years ago I'd bought  hair from Goldtassel and Swam who worked together for quite awhile on hair... back in V3/V4 days perhaps earlier and later... every once in awhile I'd get hair similar to the one you used with a kink problem... that's when I started looking very closely and zooming in for all hair products considered from anyone... checking for anything "not normal" with unusual bends or sharp turns noticeable in the promos... many I've passed on.  I've more recently purchased from both Goldtassel, Swam and others like Lady Littlefox and cool hair from other PAs.

    Glad I asked about presets.  Can each slider in a in a DS setting be multi layered, consisting or more than one setting?  IE; in Carrara I can change the default Colour to instead be Multi Layer containing a color, a gradient, a texture map with a Blender and Shader(s) and more even another Mutli Layer... it can either be simple or complicated.  My earlier questions on this subject are helping me to understand other programs like Poser, FilterForge etc, which use boxes connected together to form a tree which can either be simple, straightforward, or complicated, splitting up into different forks/additions, also.  Carrara is very much FilterForge etal; but in a list instead of connecting boxes... me thinks. Thanks KM for getting me to thinking about this. Until now I never played with nor experimented enough with those confusing, to me, connected box method programs.  You have also helped me to understand Carrara Shaders even better... whether you meant to or not. :)

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191
    edited May 2017

    @wgdjohn  I don't know the answer to your question about the multi-layered but it's a good question and one I'll be looking into because the would awesome and really open up some possibilities.  I'm thinking it might be possible with some playing around with some settings.  I'll let you know when I've figured that out one way or another.

    So, for two days I've been following along a tutorial by Sveva from over at Renderosity in an attempt to improve my postworking skills.  This particular tutorial is on creating background images by combining a rendered set with a photograph and attempting to get them to look like they go together.  I will tell you now that my first attempt was not a total success but wasn't a miserable failure either. 

    Here is what I started with:

    Here is where I ended up:

    There are still some flaws and things I think I could make better.  However, it gets me one step closer to figuring all of this out.  I love learning new things and learning these new skills will definitely be useful.  One thing I don't like is that the render part, the part with the beach, is still too yellow for the background photo of the sunset.  I need to see about darkening that layer and matching the colors a little bit more before continuing on with the other steps in the tutorial.  Overall, I like the final image.  I just see some stuff that I could do better and I'll probably work through the tutorial again at some point.  This does give me a better understanding of how to mix my renders with stock images to make better pictures and opens a whole new world of possibilities.  I still need to get a better handle on using brushes.  However, these didn't turn out quite so bad.

    SVPracticeRender_StartingImage.jpg
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    SVPracticeRender_FinalImage.jpg
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    Post edited by Knittingmommy on
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