Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 7
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Edited. Back in a minute. I'm going to uninstall and reinstall first to see if it shows up. Having trouble with Urban Future 4 location. Found it under Props in Content Library.
I'm going to render it first with the default Iray lights. Increased the Environment Intensity to 1.20, I like to keep Film ISO in the lower 100's to avoid graininess. Exposure value 12.35, shutter speed 33.06, F stop 6.76, ISO 344.90. Burn Highlights .35 Crush Blacks left at .20 Left the Dome Rotations and everything else the same.
RENDER IN PROGRESS. 752 Iterations, 0% done, about 5 minutes. DId not delete ANYTHING from the set. This is a (IIRC) 1200 x 800 pixel. Back soon.
Okay, I thought this may have happened when I applied Iray Uber Base (held down shift and selected all items) but even without it, I'm getting an error on that fence that runs along the front of the building. It goes through pipes and extends on our right past the building. (Sigh, nothing is ever easy, just trying to do a render for someone and hit a snag lol)
Anyone experience this? This render is only 8 minutes, 2%, but the dots were getting more and more pronounced as it progressed and shouldn't be doing this even at this point.
Here's a quickie from the viewport (Save Last Draw) I want to piddle with a few things and see what it does. This is a different view of another street, don't know what's going on with that first one. BTW, if you don't hear from me, we have some thunderstorms rumbling and I may go offline for a bit. Anyone who has this set and can render or has renders, feel free to post. I am doing Iray, don't know if Alicia would want 3DL?
Still Default Lights.
I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe iray doesn't like displacement, which POSSIBLY could be causing the issue with the fence?
I rendered the alpha bikini the other day, with the "chainmail" iray mat, and it was completely and totally invisible in the render. When I went into the displacement in the surface tab and turned it down to 0% and took out the displacement map, it rendered perfectly fine.
I'll go back to it and try it. Doing the same scene as above first, using Dumor's light set (Apocalyptic Outdoor)
5% at 10 minutes (and I have a fast computer) (Entire set loaded, not recommended but this will give you an idea, in case you're doing a distant shot.)
36% at 21 minutes 58% at 43 minutes.
BTW, good morning Jakiblue!
It's "good evening" here *grin* I'm about to head off to bed :D :D
Okay, only at 60% but will give you a good idea. The Apocalyptic lights are one of my favorites, takes quite a bit of the blue from Default lights out. This was the overcast day, the sunny day will give you the typical sunshine look. I associate overcast with the Apocalyptic as it does it so well. Hope this has helped. Keep in mind, no special Iray shaders applied, with Mec4D's shaders (or others) you'll get glimmering metals, etc.
Well, those dots are a transparent strip with the words NC Acess on them, and they're floating in the middle of the road, not in front of the building. I went back into that view and they're there- also in 3DL. It's UF4 Barrier C and it's Barrier A Strip. If you applied Uber Base, you can turn Cutout Opacity to 0. But this appears to be something wrong with the set?
So I tested Iray shaders briefly. One thing I don't like is on some items (such as street poles) the bits and pieces aren't separate material zones. I'd have to say overall, I'd use it as is with perhaps testing a concrete shader for the roads. The set has a lot of dark grime in it, that's for sure!
Streets of Asia 2: Still using the Apocalyptic lights, lowered the brightness (the Urban streets were in the shade) and had to darken the Diffuse on that front stone quite a bit to give you some idea on what it looks like. Also increased the bump. Didn't change anything else so you can see out of the box. I would definitely substitute in Iray plants or use some shaders, and change out the rocks for Iray rocks, but overall does quite nicely in Iray. IN PROGRESS. (NO Uber Base applied.) The Apocalyptic Lights give you the hushed overcast tones, as you can see with MelanieL's the looks can really vary. Thanks Melanie!
I'm just cooking a render of Streets of Asia 2. In the meanwhile here's an old one I did when I first bought it in November 2013 - you should be able to do much better with decent lighting.
Oops, sorry, Novica I didn't notice your post till I'd added mine. So you are onto it already...
No no no! Continue! Nice to see different lighting and appreciate the input. Edit: What lighting are you using? I'm still Apocalyptic.
Had to grin- I am doing a closeup of those rocks, and lo and behold, vendors float things above ground planes too. Stefan has a floating flower! (the white flower "laying" on the ground. Maybe it's my Bump? (EDIT: Took out the bump and tried a second render, wasn't my bump. HA, now I feel better at all the times I've had floaters! (Good natured ribbing at Stonemason) Look at all the flowers on the right, laying on the ground. Click to enlarge and zoom in.
Dang, that set is huge. I had to meander around a bit to find the water and statue Melanie showed us.
Oh, thanks Novica and MelanieL... So it seems there's a lot of work to make these sets look good. That's what worries me about buying Stonemason's stuff. His talent is so far and above mine that I know I could never create anything close to what the promos look like... Dreamlight was selling lights and settings for his older sets in mega Fastgrab but of course I didn't have them then and had no use for them. Haha, when I was typing "his" , autocorrect somehow put a capital H making it "His" as if Stonemason were a god, which he could possibly be LOL.
Oh, BTW, it looks to me like the flowers are growing out of the rocks rather than floating, but that's equally weird... Damn I should have gotten Dreamlight's tutorial on lighting with 3Delight because I just started with DS with Iray. Although there must be old free 3DL tutorials on YouTube. Or maybe it came with 3DL lights? Have to check. Although I could always render in Poser... Probably will wait till his newer sets go on sale. I ve noticed that most of his older sets are pretty depressing, garbage, graffiti, decay, places I would NOT want to go LOL. His newer products are a bit more cheerful... Sorry, just rambling here...
Thanks you guys for taking the time to render! I really appreciate it! :)
Oh, you're welcome. It's fun to explore stuff, and helpful to know what people want to see. So anytime, just ask. I, too, find the city stuff rather depressing, too much graffiti to suit my taste. I did try applying UberBase and a couple of Mec4D's shaders (not sure if I had to do the Uber first) It helped a bit, the concrete shaders needed tiling to about 4.0 or more but looked good. Several of the shaders applied to the building (I tried quite a few) made the building disintegrate, don't know what's up with that. Do you have any of Faveral's cities? You can do closeup of quite a few of those storefronts/ building fronts and they give you a really nice pristine feel of a town, less grimy. Provence is HUGE. You'll get lost.
I've loaded Urban back up, it comes with lights. Whoa, my computer is so fast! This took 1 minute 17 seconds. Anyway, don't remember much on how to do 3DL, so my apologies. I increased the bucket size to 28, Filter Pixel width to 8.75, shading rate .10 (I do remember that being low is getting the best render, the other stuff I remember I always increased. Don't remember why though.)
Pixel samples were 8. I left the lighting alone, so this is the default. It's dark but I didn't want to tweak the lighting so you could see it. Looks good in 3DL!
I just bought the Streets of Asia 2 today as well. I also got the dark fae and have a render cooking now. she is really cool looking. I am actually using on of stonemasons props for that one too Through the Woods. I don't have much trouble using his stuff in Iray. Most of it looks pretty darn good with a just a little bit of tweaking.
I have Faveral's Alsace and Village Bundle that I got in the Mega Fastgrab but haven't had a chance to render them yet. I like those looks better than the run down poverty infested look of Stonemason's earlier sets but may get the Tin Pan Alley because you never know when I may need something like that... Provence looks really nice and I saw your renders, just need to wait for it to go on mega sale! Plus I have to start using what I already have! Lately I'm spending way more time shopping and looking at products than actually rendering anything LOL.
This hair for V4 looks interesting- a ponytail, While it's not dirt cheap ($2 or less) it's cheap enough to give it a look. It's in the vendor stores that get discounted even further when you buy two things.
Anyone know what outfit she's wearing in the O'Bannon bridge?
I hear ya! I've decided to do more looking and not shop because I have more than what I need (and that was over a year ago, lol.) But yes, I can spend half an hour looking at things, even when I don't buy.
Some very lovely products.
My main purchases during this sale have been the Sunny Starter bundle (had everything I wanted from the Pro Bundle, which was a first!), Vidra Hair, Millionaire Private Office (incredible props!) So Wet Bundle, Modern Chinese Living Room and Bedroom , Perouges Medieval Village, Dream Street Bedroom Suite, and the Sky Gods series. Mostly focusing on sets.
The Millionaire Private Office (fully loaded) will take awhile.
I'll share my test renders, they're test because I didn't let them render the entire time (about 75%), I was checking for certain things and not the overall scene, (seriously, I'm going to point out what NOT to do. You won't see this in my showcase renders. I did these a few days ago and won't be coming back to the set for awhile, so showing you the test ones ) and I didn't change up Taia's skin for a "keepable" render. She's too gray for me. But this is to show you the set. TIP: Merlin's The Secret Garden has a nice woodsy background that's easy to put outside windows, as well as a lot of foliage. I probably would have taken that to a darker, more drab green for a "keep" render. But keep The Secret Garden in mind, it has a lot of props too! (Including that bird.)
I love the couch cushions. The texture is very classy, and I was experimenting with D forming and it was easy. I increased the scale so there was more surface area and it made a very luxurious pillow! Can't go wrong with Millionaire Private Office, the lighting is all done for you too. This was out of the box! Walls do hide individually, as do the props. KUDOS!
So don't judge these on the gray person or the scene setup lol. Just look at the set!
Another tip: Image 1: Morphed pillow. Be sure to move the head further up on the pillow and support the neck if you're doing a keepable render.)
Image 2: Bad horizontal lines of the table and couch. Can't see the backdrop too well (one lonely tree sticking up) but if you don't want vegetation by the window and want more distant trees, it's a good one.) I do want to point out to newbies something to watch for, and I'm including an example here ( I was just checking how those stained glass pieces rendered, and outdoor background. You CAN opague out that stained glass.) Be sure you do NOT line up tables with pillow couch lines. See how the table horizontal line is exactly where the couch pillow line is? You lose your depth of field and the two items look merged. Simply tilt your camera. Likewise, make sure things aren't coming out of people's heads. It's the rules of photography basically.
(I would also put her hands higher above the couch, so it's more separated from the back of the couch.)
Image 3: The far end of the set, vendor's lighting does it all. SO many props! This doesn't even show the fireplace wall. Well, let's have the test renders show you another no-no. I'm on a roll here! Don't line up arms with seams in the floor. See how her outstretched arm runs along the floor board?
Looks like a Star Trek on-line uniform. Probably something you can find in the Trek Thread.
The O'Banon bridge for poser has been on sale at content paradise for a while. Knock of Star Trek uniforms for genesis are available there so I suspect maybe that would be a good place to look.
Sorry for the (long) delay - I went off to cook dinner yesterday and never came back! The old render was 2013 so 3Delight but I've lost the scene file so not sure what I used for lighting. This one is the one I was doing yesterday but didn't get posted - pretty simple 3Delight again, this time AoA Ambient and a distant light at an angle from the left to give a bit of definition to the buildings - took an age to do the water (by which I mean nearly an hour for an otherwise simple scene). I'm hoping to get back into Iray soon but during the Summer my PC was getting all hot and bothered using VRAM (it really wasn't built for Iray) so I stopped doing anything "challenging".
I've got 3DL on my laptop but not my Alienware 51 desktop that I now use- and man, did I forget the settings fast lol! Thanks for posting the image. I had not explored that set and was surprised at how big it is.
I haven't rendered images and used them as background planes with DOF, but for these sets that are 3DL, that's something to think about. They look really decent in 3DL and I guess by setting up the plane size the same as the render size (or really close) there wouldn't be any distortion. Anyone done that? I just posted last week the reminder on how to get the plane to rotate with your figure if you rotate in viewport. May give it a try. Curious as to how a rendered 3DL image will look in an Iray rendered scene. Anyone done that?
yes I've used 3dl backdrops in Iray. It saves time as Iray can be clunky with big scenes. If you are going to post work the foreground anyway what program was used in the background really doesn't matter too much.
I'm using Melanie's in a quick test (hope that's okay Melanie?) And I do mean a quickie. That scene doesn't have anywhere for my figure to stand on, so I am cutting her off at the knees. (not good.) Will post here in a minute, gotta set up DOF.
Fine by me. I actually started the render square, with ground in the foreground, but after nearly that hour I cancelled and trimmed it down to the size that had finished rendering!