My Very First Character / Render Attempt

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  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited February 2013

    Hmmm, still piddling around- a couple questions...

    I have Kaetl posed with an animal, she's touching it. I spent a LOT of time on the hands, need to know how to-
    1.) freeze (you know what I mean) Kaetl and the animal's poses so they don't move, I can't find locks or anything. I remember seeing some when the character was originally created, but surely you dont have to go through and do each morph.

    2. How do I lock the two figures together? I assume that is what parenting is, but I cant find the videos on it that I watched a month ago (or that answered question 1 either. Very frustrating.) And when you parent something, is it just parts of the body that are touching, or all of the figures (which is what I want.)

    3. How do you save these so they can have a scene put in? I thought I'd save as character preset, it will do that for Kaetl but not the animal (says has to be triax or whatever that popup says. It's a cartoon animal) I watched the Halloween skeleton video, no help, he just swooshed through and added a background, and I'm trying to load a forest from the products. It says I have to delete the scene (Kaetl and critter) because I saved them as a scene. Getting nowhere fast! So what should I save them as so I can plop her in a forest or somewhere?

    EDIT- am going to try this, but the other questions need to be answered.
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/730/#6101

    Thank you!
    Cathie

    Post edited by Novica on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited December 1969

    Yipppeee, it worked.
    I brought in the forest (just using Smart Content, double clicked on it)
    Then went to Files/Merge, clicked on Kaetl file, and voila, she's in the forest.

    But this does bring up a question- (and please answer my other ones) should we save the characters as a scene? I thought I read somewhere that was the thing to do. Due to somethings being saved? I cant remember, when you save as a scene, are lights saved?
    (I hadnt done them yet, obviously)

    Cathie

  • Scott LivingstonScott Livingston Posts: 4,341
    edited February 2013

    Hi Cathie. Not sure exactly what you're asking in question #1. Can you tell us: a) what exactly you're doing (there are several ways to pose figures) and b) what specifically is happening that you wish wouldn't happen? I suspect the answer has something to do with pinning...attached image shows the icon for this in orange highlight.

    On your second question: Yes, that's what parenting is for. But make sure you parent to the correct node (body part). If you parent something simply to Genesis, it actually parents to Genesis's hip. So, for instance, if she's holding a bird in her hand, and the bird is parented to Genesis, then you can move Genesis around and the bird will move with her...but if you move the arm, the bird won't move because Genesis's hip didn't move. If the bird is parented to her hand, it will stay in the hand even if Genesis moves around and/or moves her arm. So parent to whichever node you want the item to stick to.

    On question 3...looks like you figured this out, but what I would do is save as a scene, and then you can merge that scene with another scene. When you save a scene, it saves just about everything, including lights and cameras (it doesn't save the perspective view though...so if you want to preserve that, be sure to create a camera). There's also an option to save a scene subset, which I'm not as familiar with.

    Did your son get the Ronin and WildMane issue worked out, then?

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    Post edited by Scott Livingston on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited February 2013

    Hi Cathie. Not sure exactly what you're asking in question #1. Can you tell us: a) what exactly you're doing (there are several ways to pose figures) and b) what specifically is happening that you wish wouldn't happen? I suspect the answer has something to do with pinning...attached image shows the icon for this in orange highlight.

    On your second question: Yes, that's what parenting is for. But make sure you parent to the correct node (body part). If you parent something simply to Genesis, it actually parents to Genesis's hip. So, for instance, if she's holding a bird in her hand, and the bird is parented to Genesis, then you can move Genesis around and the bird will move with her...but if you move the arm, the bird won't move because Genesis's hip didn't move. If the bird is parented to her hand, it will stay in the hand even if Genesis moves around and/or moves her arm. So parent to whichever node you want the item to stick to.

    On question 3...looks like you figured this out, but what I would do is save as a scene, and then you can merge that scene with another scene. When you save a scene, it saves just about everything, including lights and cameras (it doesn't save the perspective view though...so if you want to preserve that, be sure to create a camera). There's also an option to save a scene subset, which I'm not as familiar with.

    Did your son get the Ronin and WildMane issue worked out, then?

    Good morning :)
    Kaetl's only contact with the animal is that she is touching the hand, she is kneeling and it is standing. I've been using translation to move the scene around (Enchanted Forest- wow, big set!) so the scene moves and not them.

    Do you know of a good video that goes into detail about pinning? I think I am getting (well, I already AM) confused about the difference between pinning and parenting. One video showed (if I recall) pinning the foot down so it wouldnt move. So is pinning locking something in place, whereas parenting makes something stick to it? (Like bird in hand, hand goes, bird goes.) I've seen pins pop up but have no idea how they got activated, and haven't tried to use them.

    So I'm trying to figure out how to get a kneeling person, and a standing animal, who are only touching lightly in one spot (the animal's hand is resting in hers) to stay together (aka, I can XYZ them and away they go. Or do people just do that with the scene itself and never move the figures?)

    We got diverted from Ronin for a bit because of Kaetl (for me) and video games- on a Friday night and Saturday night, Ronin didn't stand a chance against zombies. :) (EDIT- which your figure looks like in the screenshot, above!)

    Post edited by Novica on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited December 1969

    Okay, as I go, I'll ask the newbie questions that others will eventually get to, lol-

    1. Does clicking the eye and hiding something in a scene...
    a. speed up the (is this right to use this word in this way?) RENDER time- aka, when you make a change and are waiting to see the results, is that called rendering? I want to say refreshing the scene... what's the correct term to use?
    b. remove it from the scene so the file size won't be as large? (Keep in mind I haven't rendered/ saved anything yet) Or do you need to
    delete it from the scene (since you're not using it. This seems to me to be the logical choice, but thought I'd ask.)

    TIP: When you are trying see portions of your scene to manipulate it, and can't get a good view- you can hide the item blocking the view so you can get to what you need to see. Example: you are trying to work on fingers bending around an object, but you have a potted plant in the foreground and to check the view you want, the darned plant is in the way. You go to SCENE, select the potted plant, click on the eye to close it, and POOF. The potted plant is temporarily hidden so you get a clear view of the fingers and can zoom in to work with them.

    When done, open the eye and the plant reappears. Don't forget to hide things so you can zoom and get in there to work from the view that you want.

    Cathie

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Novica said:
    Okay, as I go, I'll ask the newbie questions that others will eventually get to, lol-

    1. Does clicking the eye and hiding something in a scene...
    a. speed up the (is this right to use this word in this way?) RENDER time- aka, when you make a change and are waiting to see the results, is that called rendering? I want to say refreshing the scene... what's the correct term to use?
    b. remove it from the scene so the file size won't be as large? (Keep in mind I haven't rendered/ saved anything yet) Or do you need to
    delete it from the scene (since you're not using it. This seems to me to be the logical choice, but thought I'd ask.)

    Yes your render time will speed up because Hidden items (eye Closed) are not seen by the render engine. I use this all the time.

    TIP: If an item is NOT in the render in any way (Check for Shadows and Reflections if Doing that type of render) Turn it off and If it is possible Delete it. Then save your Scene and Close DS. Reload the scene and you now have much more free RAM to do your render. Not only is the Item not loaded but the textures are not loaded into ram either. Just Hiding it leaves the textures in memory and eats RAM that could be used to render.

    I hope this helps.
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited December 1969

    Jaderail said:

    TIP: If an item is NOT in the render in any way (Check for Shadows and Reflections if Doing that type of render) Turn it off and If it is possible Delete it. Then save your Scene and Close DS. Reload the scene and you now have much more free RAM to do your render. Not only is the Item not loaded but the textures are not loaded into ram either. Just Hiding it leaves the textures in memory and eats RAM that could be used to render.

    I hope this helps.

    Yes, very much so, thank you! I am using Enchanted Forest and that set is HUGE- I had already started deleting the sections that aren't needed. When I loaded the forest, I couldn't even see my character, there was so much stuff. Great set, worth the money, particularly at half price (right now, Feb 17th, when buy 4 items from promo artists)

    Cathie

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited December 1969

    Still wanting an answer as to a good video/tutorial on pinning and parenting. How do you make the pins appear? They seem to pop up randomly.

  • Scott LivingstonScott Livingston Posts: 4,341
    edited February 2013

    Novica said:
    Still wanting an answer as to a good video/tutorial on pinning and parenting. How do you make the pins appear? They seem to pop up randomly.

    Here's a basic posing video tutorial. It gets into pinning about halfway through: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELIUID6OR00

    My hair tutorial has a section on parenting (parenting hair, of course, but the same method can be applied to props and other things). One thing I've found helpful: it's often easiest to move the item into position first, parent second, and pose third...

    Post edited by Scott Livingston on
  • Scott LivingstonScott Livingston Posts: 4,341
    edited December 1969

    Novica said:
    I think I am getting (well, I already AM) confused about the difference between pinning and parenting. One video showed (if I recall) pinning the foot down so it wouldnt move. So is pinning locking something in place, whereas parenting makes something stick to it? (Like bird in hand, hand goes, bird goes.)

    Yes, that's right. :)
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited February 2013

    thanks, am going to watch that now. (It's only 3:30am, lol. But we have severe weather headed toward Pensacola, some clouds are rotating, so I'm staying up.) EDIT: had already watched that one, but will watch again. I watched all the DAZ videos to get a vague overview :) and highly recommend other newbies watch all of them!

    Another question- how do you get the light boxes (the cubes) to disappear? They are driving me nuts. I did a forum search for hide lights, hide light cubes, turn off light cubes (NOT the lights, I know how to close the eye) So I did look, no luck. Same question for the cameras?

    Cathie

    Post edited by Novica on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited December 1969

    Caitlyn is on sale during March Madness, just thought I'd give a heads up. She's so much fun to work with!

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited April 2013

    I finally got my first render done. Thanks to SO many people for telling me the basics and the not-so-basics, like the Pyrit Hair that required so much adjusting, collision, smoothing- (but on another model, no problem. It just depends on the character morphs, I highly recommend the hair!) Thanks to ScottLivingston for his hair tutorial and the help with the geometric shell on the hair- it thickened it nicely. Thanks to Szark, Tramp Graphix, Totte, Jaderail, Chohole and too many others to list, for answering my questions. Szark, I did get the depth of field on the waterfall finally!

    This is going to be used for kids, to teach them how to read. :) My thread in the art studio (see signature) has a few behind the scenes look as well as links to the threads as the work was in progress. Should help other newbies a lot!

    Enjoy Babies First Bug- my first render. No experience with 3D, but the forum members kept me going. THANK YOU. It isn't perfect, but it's mine!

    Cathie

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    Post edited by Novica on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,892
    edited December 1969

    http://www.daz3d.com/nauticallie

    Have to mention this as this is such a neat texture- NautiCallie is on sale at 60% off. She's what my character Kaetl uses and it's just beautiful. Take a peek as it's a good deal!
    Cathie

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