Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 9
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Sorry I didn't get a top 5 done this month. I was out of town for a week with only my phone to surf with.
The winning number is 26 thanks.
Although it's over for the drawing, if you'd like to post your top picks, I'd be happy to include them. You always do a great job looking at the products, not to mention your renders are gorgeous.
Oh hey, congrats to L'Adair! You have the winning number. Thanks as usual, SereneNight, for drawing a number for us. I will PM the winner with the gift card code in a few minutes. Congrats!
Okay, Rich is really pulling my chain. Love it.
FIrst, I did this.
Then, he did this.
My turn. Game on dude. You asked for it.
OK, will do.
If it's true that DS users who read the forums are in the minority, then there will be plenty who haven't heard the rumours of G8M's imminent arrival. Maybe the Daz plan is to get as many spendy people as possible blowing their usual monthly budget in full on 'unmissable' sales, only to have them all scraping another large lump of extra cash together shortly afterwards in the rush to own an unexpected Big New And Shiney Thing.
Woo hoo! That was unexpected.
Thank you. I promise to spend it all in one place!
(And relatively soon, too. I haven't yet checked out with my latest haul of cheap DOs...)
Better late than never?
barbult's Top 4 for July
Somebody was asking about Iray Canvases a few pages back. For one thing, canvases with a matte primitive allow you to hide geometry behind parts of an HDRI. In this image, the tree is part of the HDRI, but the character looks like she is behind that part of the HDRI. I learned this trick from Mec4D. She has videos about how to do it and it has been discussed in her Mec4D thread in the forum. It is a little more work than just a simple Iray render.
Here is an example where an Iray Canvas allowed me to adjust the lighting in Photoshop after rendering. It is not necessary to fiddle with lighting adjustments over and over with test renders when using a 32 bit canvas render. Notice how much better the too-bright and too-dark parts of the non-canvas render have been inproved.
Without Canvas
With Canvas and Photoshop adjustment of 32 bit canvas
Very interesting! I think I need to learn more. Thanks for sharing Barbult.
Barbult, I'm struggling to understand canvases and how to utilize them in Photoshop. Any links to more info is greatly appreciated. So far what I've tried has ended up looking really bad. But I'll keep trying!
I have a lot of trouble with canvases too. Getting them to look good always seems like more trouble than it's worth compared to just tweaking a normal render.
There is quit a bit of information on canvases in the Mec4D thread and on her YouTube channel. I have mostly experimented with 32 bit beauty canvases in scenes with HDRIs. I haven't done much with separate light canvases. When I tried the separate light canvases many months ago, I had issues with translucent objects like hair making a halo.
That is pretty cool... although I think the bad exposure of the top canvas with the image with the truck actually looks more photorealistic... because it has real world imperfections.
Be careful of the Psi Medbay Poses. They are installing themselves inside the People>Genesis 3 folder. So are the Psi Cockpit poses. The psi Barracks installed location is also incorrect. It is installing itself in the "architexture" folder. These typos will make content hard to find. Yes I put in orders to fix them.
And that sort of thing is one of the reasons I install manually.
Congratulations L'Adair!
Congrats L'Adair!
Those kind of mistakes are why I still keep 4.8 on my laptop. I load everything to the 4.8 version first then I load it to 4.9 version on the PC and follow the blue bars on the laptop lol.
There's a flash sale on right now. Valzheimer is included. Be aware that the fabric shaders in the Fabric Factory product have emission turned on. I'm a big fan of the Valzheimer Wear Them All products, but you know I dislike products that turn on the emissive channel for fabric. Fabric does not give off light. This is just wrong for Iray, IMHO. I'll be submitting a help request.
Not strictly true. If they have been washed they well emit some 'light'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_brightener
In case anyone is interested in what was used in my latest Half A Million Views contest render, (yes, RGcincy got a render reply) here's some of the main items. The props come in handy for outdoor scenes.
Surfs Up Poses for Michael 6 (surfboard)
Gwenbleiz HD and Beard (character only. Used different beard. He's very versatile, also comes with scars and looks quite formidable!)
Cargo Shorts and Tee for Genesis 2 Male
Croquet Set
Canoes (for kayak)
Movie Sets: Low Poly Block 01 (also 3,5, 8)
Santa Beard for Genesis 3 Male(s)
Beach and Pool Fun (floats, beach ball)
Wizardly Staves (used ceramic shaders)
SY Swimwear for Genesis 2 Males (has long version, and fits G3M easily)
3D Universe Toon Crab
Picnic Basket (comes with a lot of stuff, including checkered blanket)
Selma for Genesis 3 Females wearing Olenna Hair (Gen3F) and Impulse Suit
Shayla from Renderosity wearing Christina Hair and Nathy Swimsuit
Here's Rich's list: (you can see why he and I are finishing this up- it's a lot of work to do these scenes!)
Dale for Genesis 3 Males
Adam Hair for Genesis 3 Males
Anastasia From Russia for Rune 7
Friday Hair for Genesis 3 Females
One Piece Bathing Suit for Genesis 3 Females
Western Saddle for DAZ Horse 2
Collective3D Baseball Field (bat and ball)
Outdoor Fun Set (lawn dart)
Outdoor Fun Tossing Games (cornhole board)
Squash Court (racket)
Kimberly for Genesis Assessories (surfboard)
Bodyboard (inactive)
BMX Bike
Summertime Grill
Easter Accessories (basket)
Public Indoor Pool (lifesaver)
Poolside (innertube)
Beyond the Sea (beach ball)
By the Seaside Promenade and Props (sand bucket)
The Gardeners Potting Shed Tools (hand trowel)
Everyday Morphing Primitives (plane with plaid shader added)
Everyday Drinks (champagne bottle)
Everyday Food (plates)
i13 Sandwiches (panini and turkey wrap)
Coffee Shop (donuts)
Movie sets were 7 & 9
Tip: Putting clothes on animals/objects that aren't formatted to wear them, aka, how to put pants on a crab!
1. Put the pants on a character such as G3M.
2. Put him in the same pose as the legs of the figure, let's say the crab.
3. Shrink the man down using scale, then go specifically to each leg and scale that down until they fit the crab.
4. Select the G3M in Scene and also with the Surface Tool, then go to Surfaces and use Cutout Opacity and take it down to zero to make him disappear. Now your crab is wearing the pants because the dude is hidden. IF YOU WANT TO FINE TUNE:
5. Then in Scene, select the item of clothing. Use your Geometry Editor and select the mesh of anything you want hidden (aka, in this case, most of the shorts in back, so that only the crotch, thighs, and legs show.)
6. Make it a separate material zone (right click out in the viewport and Create Surface From Selected) Name it.
7. It now appears in Surfaces pane under your item (like the cargo shorts, which you had selected in Scene when you created the zone)
8. Use Cutout Opacity and make that unwanted material zone disappear.
Ta-duh.
This is the result of trying to fit the Fedora from Iconic outfit for genesis 3 males on a different figure I found that i had to fit the hat to the hair rather than the figure.
I used Velvety print shaders on the dress. The tiling isn't perfect at the front of the dress.
Love the background you used with that too! It's a very pretty pattern on the dress- nice and vibrant.
Well, if I couldn't have G8M this week, I was going to pick up a male character anyhow and Lukas was too hot to resist. Holy guacamole, what a beautiful man, in the most classic sense of male beauty. Gorgeous! Rendering now, will post soon.
Yeah, I really want Lukas myself but I'm already way more than halfway through my monthly budget. But he's SO PRETTY. I guess I have a couple of weeks to decide before he goes off launch sale.
Well, here's another really neat dude. I put him in the gallery too, so if you like it, please consider doing that over in the gallery- then when people are shopping, it will come up as one of the examples and show people a neat character.
He's the wizard from my poke at Rich, say hellow to Gwenbleiz! Wearing Adrian Hair.
This is done with the Mitchell Filter, took 3 hours and 7924 iterations. The rendering converged ratio was 99.9% and rendering quality was 3.24 Tweaked all the filters for awhile until I liked the results, I do like having the noise filter on.
Click to enlarge and click again, to really see the detail.