Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 9
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@serenenight can you explain why it is better not to have a ceiling? Is it for the purpose of rendering faster, or is there some other advantage?
hiding the ceiling means you can get cameras in easier for different views, and also for lights.
Ah ok, thank you @jakiblue. I do have trouble lighting indoor scenes so I can see how that would help.
I do mostly interior renders of characters close up. I don't do architectural shots so Hiding the ceiling and non viewable walls makes it easier to light and render a scene. A lot vendors make the ceiling a separate texture that allow you to change to opacity and hide it so you can get around and light your scene much quicker. Pro vendors make the ceiling and scene parts separate so you can mix and match.
With the increase use of high def texture getting rid of non essential scene will make things run much quicker.
A ceiling would be pretty easy for a material zone (one big one) wouldn't it? Because you can change the brush size and make it huge and select everything? I haven't done that so I am just guessing. But yep, you shouldn't have to do that. I have that set but as usual, hadn't played with it. Lovely renders @MelanieL with that lighting. @luci45 I have the Alpha Centaur but didn't know it (sigh, too much stuff in splurts, can't keep up with trying to showcase it) and I really like your two characters.
I've been waiting on Makemba and she's 84% off, (new item and store item drops it)
Picking up the Everyday Books, (Maclean) and the crockery as the Debut item, the Privacy Screens (those rotate btw, you can even make them into walls if you lower them through the floor, at least that's what I am thinking) which are Zeddicuss. If you have any winter stuff from here or Rendo, keep Winter Grove HDRI in mind. It's 60% and 7.98 (featured store) when you do the qualifying items.
I didn't have Anneka or Damien so grabbing both of those, as I have all the individual pieces of the Pro Bundle that I want (picked up various products when they were 60-70% off. I've learned cherry picking is better for me than buying Pro Bundle with poses (which I can do frankly) or outfits I'll never use.)
I recently picked up Easy Shape Master - Age Control and Body Tuning for Genesis 3 Female. I couldn't fully tell from the promos if I would like the product, so I took the risk figuring I can return it within the 30 days. At this point, I plan to keep it, as I think it does a reasonable job. It's quick to vary age and weight and with changes in skin color, would let you make a vaariety of characters good for mid-distances. Hopefully there will be a male version coming along.
To make comparisons, I set up a mirror rig that shows 3 figures from the front and the side in one render. The figures have the same pose, wardrobe and hair.
Front View: (right side of render) 1st figure is default G3F. 2nd figure has the Easy Shape applied. 3rd figure is the default G3F scaled to the same height as #2. This shows if the change in shape can be achieved by simply scaling the figure.
Side View: (left side of render) 1st figure is the scaled G3F. 2nd figure is the Easy Shape version. 3rd figure is default G3F (if I had been thinking better, I would have kept the same order).
Comparison Lines: These help highlight the changes. The top line shows the top of the modified figures. The next line is at the bottom of the head. The 3rd line down shows the middle of the breasts. The next line show the waist. then there's a line at the bottom of the torso. The final line shows where the knees are located
There are presets for the following ages: preteen, young teen, teen, older teen, late teen, then adult, midaged, older, and elderly woman. I show comparisons of all but the adult and mid-aged woman.
There are also presets for 5 levels of chubbiness (I show 1 - 3 - 5 applied to the mid-aged woman) and nine levels of breast adjustment presets (one for each age, but each can be applied to any age figure - I don't show any of these as the one corresponding to each age is applied with the shape preset).
The same product is available for Genesis 8 Males (new release, still 30% off) and Genesis 8 Females (new release, now at full price). I don't have the G8 products as I'm minimizing my investment in G8, but I'm assuming as they came first, the products will behave in a similar fashion.
Click on images to see larger size versions.
Preteen
I'll spend more time describing this one since it is first. Clearly there's more than just scaling going on. Compared to the scaled figure, the face is larger as expected, arms are thinner, waist not as indented, chest flat, lower legs are thinner. On the other hand, the arms seem a little short to me and the outer thighs extend too far out and makes her look hippier than I think that age would show. EDIT: The product has an update that adds hip and upper/lower leg voume morphs that allow you to adjust for the thigh and hip issue I mention. Comparison can be found here.
Young Teen
Similar to preteen but somewhat more developed as expected. Arm length seems better but outer thighs still large.
Teen
Starting to look more similar to the scaled figure but hips and breasts are less pronounced, torso relatively wider. Thighs still big.
Older and Late Teen
Legs look like the scaled figure. Hips, breasts, and torso differences are becoming subtle as one might expect.
Elderly Woman
Face much more gaunt, arms and legs thinner, knobbier knees, drooping breasts, rounder tummy.
Older Woman
Similar to elderly woman but less pronounced.
Chubby Mid-Aged Woman
This shows 3 of the five levels of chubbiness.
Closeup of faces are in a post a few down
I like winter grove a lot. It renders nicely and the camera with the dof is very useful. It also looks less photographic which I like.
I've been having issues lately with the hdri textures failing to load. I go in and select them manually but I find it tiresome. I wonder if it is a bug. It used to load all the time when I selected an hdri preset. Now I'm lucky if I get one to load.
I dont like doing the mat zone thing or the section plane thing either . I find I get raggedly weirdness and section plane requires I use Iray preview mode and I find that tiresome. Granted a ceiling should be far bigger and easy to make a mat zone that smaller items.
@rgcincy Wow Rich, how long did that take you to do??? Thanks for being so thorough. I mentioned before I didn't really like the elderly shapes, as it is only the head that really takes on the aging IMO- no sag elsewhere. But I found the chubby options to be useful and I got a good price on it when I bought it a few weeks ago so keeping it. Not buying any more versions of it though.
@rgcincy Oh, and your kit-bashing of the houses was IMPRESSIVE. I think that's as close as anyone's gonna get.
Since the faces weren't visible in my full body renders using Easy Shape Master - Age Control and Body Tuning for Genesis 3 Female, here are close ups of the faces. Click on images to see larger size versions.
This renders shows the preteen, young teen and teen faces.
This render shows the faces of the mid-aged, older, and elderly woman.
Actually not that long to get it set up (maybe an hour, and now I can use it for shape comparisons in the future). After that, it would take a few minutes to adjust everything for a new age and then I could walk away while it rendered.
Definitely not as good as Zev0's growing up and aging morphs but still useful I think for many purposes.
For the smaller section, I just hid part of the ceiling using the Surface tool. It is labeled Room Ceiling. You can also take out the ones called Metal Base and Black Bar, which are part of the ceiling. But you are so right on the main section- why the ceiling is connected to parts of the wall really hinders the rendering experience. If I hadn't had it for so long, I would have returned it too.
Try moving the robot.
I don't have this product, but sometimes it helps to select the object's Hip and move that, rather than moving the object root. If you are ambitious, you can edit the objects start and end points, to control where it rotates around, but I don't really know how to do that very well.
There is no hip, it's all an embedded group. I see what SereneNight is talking about, it swings around and the universal tool "box" out in the viewport isn't located at the drone, it's further back from it. You do have to swing around a bit to Y rotate it. It's a cute drone!
Oh, that's good to know. I wasn't sure about that so I haven't picked them up yet. Also good to know that there are some non-bloody textures, too. I might have to see about picking them up.
I picked up the Centaur for G7F Pro Bundle and Makemba for Centaur 7 and Genesis 3 Female today along with Growing UP and those Jeweled Excellence Rings. The pro bundle was a nice price with discounts and coupon. I really like that the rings will work with Genesis 2, 3, and 8 females. There is a nice variety in there, too. In all, not a bad day and I have lots of new toys to play with.
@knittingmommy - have you tried using the Jeweled Excellence Rings yet? I can't get the stones to turn the proper colors. In the render below, all the stones were suppost to be a deep purple amethyst - which they clearly are not. I used the iray mats and rendered using iray, and i can't figure out what went wrong.
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/426436
Picture is of EJ Vera using Speed Lights and the default genesis hair. Pose and mats for Vera all came with the kit, and I should probably mention I don't own Genesis 8 Female Body Morphs, which Vera uses. @EmmaAndJordi made an amazing product with her.
No, I haven't tried them out yet. Give me a few minutes and I'll load them up and see what I get.
Okay, I had a chance to take a look. How did you apply the shader to the rings? I ask because I changed the shader of the gems to the amethyst and they look deep purple in my render using those lights. Your render looks like the rings as they loaded in their default materials. First make sure you have the rings selected in the Scene tab then select just the gems of the rings under the Surface tab and then apply your gem surface. The same with the metal, choose the metals surfaces and then apply the metal materials.
By the way, did you realize that those lights are actually for 3Delight? I'm actually surprised that they work in Iray. I suspected that the only reason you had light was because you still had the headlamp turned on, but I tested that out and they do sort of actually work in Iray. You'll have much better luck, though, with lights specifically created for Iray. You'll know that the lights work in Iray if it specifically says Iray on the product page. Most HDR lights work in Iray as well. Another way to find Iray lights is to type Iray Lights in the store search. Your sure to find something on sale. Another thing to try is to just use the built in Sun/Sky mode in Iray. No other lights are really needed. The same with HDRs. There are a lot of free ones available and they work really well. They are a good choice for those who are just getting started with Iray.
First image is my test render with the lights you used and the materials applied. I stopped the early so it is still a little grainy. I don't have the character that you used so I just used G8F with default materials. The second render is the same except the only lighting is with the sun/sky mode which is definitely Iray and a small amount of basic tone mapping. As you can see, the color is close to the deep purple no matter which lighting so I think the materials weren't applied. My guess is that you may have just had the ring selected in the Scene tab, but not in the Surface tab. You need to have it selected in both places to have the shader apply. Make sure you only select the gems part of the ring in the Surface tab.
Good luck. Let me know if you manage to get the shader working. Just ask if you have any more questions.
Thanks for your thorough review. I will take up your points to make an update for this product and improve it.
Custom morphs for the thighs (legs) and hips will be added to get better proportions for the younger shapes., like I did with the G8M version.
Initially it was only planned to utilize the DO morphs here, but I noticed and based on customer requests that for some body parts additional custom morphs are needed, in particular for the young age groups and there for the legs and hips.
Thanks for your comments, @Novica and @Luci45. I like your centaur pair, Luci - the skinny one looks like he needs a nice tub of bran mash to feed him up! I was considering that Winter HDRI set too, Novica, but plumped for the Triskele Falls set instead as my qualifier for extra discounts yesterday. I plan to try it our today and maybe go back and hoover up a few more of Orestes HDRI sets if I like that one.
Interesting to see all that detail about the Easy Shape Master, @RGcincy - I've been wondering about that one. I've wishlisted Zev0's Growing Up and when Aging comes out I'll probably get them as a pair (I have almost all his Gen2 and Gen3 stuff), but it was interesting to see the alternative. (I don't actually have the Gen8 Head and Body morphs so I can't make use of Shape Master as yet anyway.)
I'm not liking it at all. I have been watching both the European (ECMWF) and the GFS tracks on Weathernerds for several days now. I'm on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and it looks like it might go right over top of us.
Seems like Mother Earth is getting back at all of us.
You guys have too much water, along with wind; we have too much fire, along with heat and wind. In Oregon alone, there were 40 wildfires as of yesterday. The wind is blowing the smoke into the valley where I live, and people are being told to stay indoors if they don't have to go out. It's causing my husband a lot of trouble as he has asthma. The expected high for Eugene yesterday was 95º F but there was so much smoke, we only reached 84º F. Here's a map of the fires throughout the northwestern states and most of California. (Most of the wild fires were caused by lightning.)
Not that I think this out ranks hurricanes. But they are both devastating in their own ways.
Oh, I'd much rather have a hurricane coming at me than a fire. It's easier for a fire's winds to change directions and be unpredictable than a hurricane. We have days to plan for the different possibilities, or at least KNOW it may be unpredictable (we always assume that.) but a fire can do things on a dime. So sorry you're going through that!
@charliejudge Hoping for the best for you! The barn owner and I just sent a group text to tell folks to get their horse supplements now and not wait, because the supplier a lot of us use is up in MA. Shipping will be disrupted, no matter where this thing hits.(even if it is a GOM hit. (Gulf of Mexico which right now isn't likely.) Anyone else who orders things needs to start thinking about that, if it comes from the East Coast. And get your prescriptions refilled!
Today is a national day of prayer and I'm certainly praying for all affecting by floods AND fires. We've been blessed here in the Midwest with gorgeous weather, but I'm severely allergic to ragweed and the pollen counts are through the roof here.
You figured out every single thing I did wrong. I did a 2nd render and everything looks so much better! I used the sun dial in iray ... or at least I think I did. I just finished the DAZ video tuts on posing, so any attempts at rendering are (literally!) a stab in the dark.
@lapetiteverita (and everyone else, please!) Would you mind trimming your quotes down to one or two applicable sentences? For people on mobile devices, it's a pain in the hiney to scroll through that. I tried surfing the forums a few days on my iphone and was like, "ugh." All we need is enough to know what you're referencing. Appreciate it!
Your portrait looks very good, glad you got it sorted out. The lighting looks nice with the brighter highlights on the lower neck, ear and side of the face. Her pose looks very relaxed too. You're on your way to creating masterpieces now!
Finally! Today's new releases have something I can't resist.
The cheerleaders were not doing it for me. But... O.M.G... Dylan is so realistic! I wasn't going to get him, as he is just for G8, even though I did get the M8Pro bundle and G8 morphs. I'm trying real hard not to drop another small fortune on yet another generation. However, I love the hair, and when I did the math, it's only $3.15 more than the hair alone to get the Bundle, (with a second new release to bring the discount to 55%.) I'm getting Fisty & Darc's Sparkle Shaders for Iray and OOT's Nick Hair for Genesis 3 and 8 which are both DOs and about 69% off.
That's two hairs, (for G3 and G8,) one character, (with fiber mesh brows and beard,) and a set of shaders, for under $30! (Happy dance...)
We interrupt L'Adair's happy dance to say- CRAP. The National Hurricane Center has moved Hurricane Irma's track west, as the protective trough is now forecasted to move north and out. (go to tropicaltidbits.com and watch the video, you really need to see it to understand the three factors at play here.) So now "Cuba" is being mentioned, which of course isn't good for the WEST coast of Florida (the East isn't out of the equation, or straight up the middle.) but when mentioning Cuba, that's a "continue on / further west" scenario. From nhc.noaa.gov at 5am (and another hurricane hunter aircraft is taking samples as we speak:
"...and the track guidance shifted significantly westward on this cycle during that period. Remarkably, the track models are very tightly clustered through day 5, which increases the confidence in the westward shift of the latest NHC forecast."
Okay, back to L'adair. That's a great deal- I really like both bundles and they're a really good price. Looking forward to seeing the renders of all this. I'm not rendering this week or next, I HAVE to get things done in case that hurricane comes this way. (or Jose, right behind Irma.) I'm clearing out a storage unit this week to go through stuff and I have a house piled HIGH of that and mom's apartment. I want it out of my house before we have tropical troubles, so sorry about the lack of chipping in renders.
And Fast Grab did change recently.