Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 10
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That's pretty great though, averaging 80% off.
I won't even look at how much I've spent.... I did it once at the end of last year and was horrified.
I choose not to know how much I have spent. Next to Dunkin’ Donuts coffee this is my one vice. I choose to remain ignorant of the cost and simply enjoy my vice.
So, I've been resistant to the Centaur even though everyone else was losing their mind when it first came out, but at $5.55 I couldn't resist, and saw no need to pay $35 for the Pro package.
I do have a question though - on the male centaur, can you hide the anatomical elements?
I'll show you why I ask, in a few minutes.
G3M Centaur with G3F/G3M UV Swap and GenX2. The only problem is the dang... ly anatomical elements. If there is a way to hide them, I can't figure it out, so I'll have to always place my centaur ladies strategically so that there isn't any confusion. Getting the hair to parent without using autofit and autofollow was a bit of a headache. Sometimes when I just add a hair prop and then parent it, it doesn't follow poses right - but I've been told that is the way to go if you want the hair morphs to continue to work - and when I was letting it auto-fit, I was losing the morphs, causing the hair to disappear into the torso of the character.
Anyone have any suggestions on that? I tried parenting in place to both G3M Centaur and to the G3M head... but both caused some fits and seemed to keep de-parenting.
The sword was hard to set up too, because it expected to be further out and up higher than the G3M clone morph was at. So it was probably a lot more work than just getting the G3F Centaur... but again... I only did this because I've yet to see this character so cheap and I figured I could more or less get both male and female centaurs out of just the G3M version.
I had considered that you could probably use DAZ Horse 1 or 2 and make the neck and head invisible and just position a Genesis 1, 2 or 3 character near the torso and use some post-work to get a centaur too... Never really gave that a shot to see how it would work, though.
Heh. After I got it to work and I was playing with poses, I was so smug and happy with myself for getting two characters for the price of one, until I selected a pose where the Centaur was rearing on its hind legs. I wish you all could have seen the look on my face when I realized the one flaw in my master-plan. :D
Photoshop? They aren’t that detailed you ought to be able to brush it away
This, or Gimp. Daz reserved the Mare morph for the female centaur. Or if you're good at using dForms, you might be able to create your own "mare" morph.
I got a resonable female centaur using Cross-Figure to increase the breasts and decrease the waist, before the C7 female was released. (You can check it out here.) One advantage to using Cross-Figure is fitting the clothes. G3M clothing fits because it's still a G3M, and you can get some really nice warrior type clothing, without the skimpwear aspect to it.
Anyway to get weapons and such to parent where you need them, you might try bringing in a G3M, parenting the item(s) to that figure, then move one or the other until the two overlap where it counts, (for example, the right hands, for a sword.) Make sure you're set up to Parent in Place, and just drag the item from G3M to the corresponding bone in the centaur, (for example from one right hand to the other right hand.)
I've never heard of, or seen, a prop "deparent" on it's own. Although I have gone too far with Ctrl+Z and unparented, as if it had never happened... Make sure you turn smoothing on and set your centaur as the collision object. That will help. Also consider using hair that was sold for G3M. There are quite a few hair items that looke equally good on the males and the females. I should think Adrian hair, would look great, sans the facial hair, of course
I hope some of this is helpful.
Ah, I didn't consider doing a little elective surgery post-production in Photoshop. I've actually been trying to transition from Photoshop to PSP 2018, because I hate the CC only model - and so far I've been pretty impressed.
I guess my female Centaurs are going to get sent to the vet post-production in the future! :D
I didn't try using any of the male G3M props... the truth is sadly, I don't have as much of a library of G3M content because there isn't as much out there *and* it tends to be less discounted than GF content (and we're full circle back to that 'I'm a cheapskate', conversation.) But what I have should autofit and autofollow. I'll look into that. Hair though - I'm sure I don't have a lot of long, flowing, braided G3M hair... which is what my mind's eye was calling for with this one. I suppose if I'm going to be a cheapskate and genderswap Centaurs to save $10 - I'm going to have to deal with doing a little more work.
I'm decent about DForms. I suppose I could also whip up some sort of geograft in Hexagon, possibly, too, and just use a Dform to push the area I want back up into the model.
I love your G3M female centaur, L'Aidar. The moon and her skin compositionally, look awesome.
I hope that pond has a steep drop-off, otherwise that girl is gonna get seriously hurt hitting the bottom. The end of that pier is way too close to the other shore.
When I post I try to remember people make these products and while it's okay to voice displeasure, statement after statement of extreme adjectives belitting someone's work really isn't okay to me. These type of superlatives definitely don't foster goodwill for the vendors to come onto the forums to get feedback and hear what we have to say/ give input. Why would they want to? Then the rest of us don't get heard with our helpful comments because the vendors are saying, "Screw this, I don't need this abuse." RIGHTFULLY SO.
To the vendors who surf this thread- while we might not always be over the moon with certain aspects of any given product, speaking for myself I can only say I appreciate the time you take to get our input/opinions and help us along by fixing things or changing things in the next product.
Read below. These were comments found on page 3 of the Owen thread, and really not necessary. I edited the second comment (not much was taken out)
***First post: Nice base skin and character morph, relentlessly ugly clothes and hair in the bundle. Even the freebies can't justify that purchase to me.
***Second post, by ONE person: "relentlessly ugly", nice turn of phrase. I was leaning towards "fashion run-way disaster", but I think you win..... not buying the Pro Bundle because those clothes are hideous. ...... Or here's a thought: stop making these wretched outfits that invariably have bits (like shoes) that look to be clunky cartoonish hack pieces and concetrate on making a single, versatile piece that I might want to buy.
I really like the new guys clothing personally, (phew, no conan or roman wear) .there are a couple of problems with some of outfits in the promos, but I haven't loaded them up to see if it can be fixed. In general I bought the new character to kitbash, as I don't have a specific need for this figure type or all the content, but I do like the content for the most part and my wallet can attest that I bought every chracter and outfit and texture expansion released today costing me well over a hundred dollars and that was without todays discount.
Is every character or outfit perfect? No, but I really need men's stuff and it was a bargain, especially with the other characters I don't own thrown in.
With men's content, we tend to get only clothing characters and outfits when new characters are released. So I buy it all when it is released.
I can only say the only reason I have any of the Owen clothes is that buying his whole pro bundle cost less than buying him and the hair and pose pack I wanted.
I mean look at this:
First, I do really appreciate that there are dForce male clothes now.
Second, why even with dForce the coat is still glued to his leg? This is the kind of thing that shouldn't be happening even in a properly boned conforming outfit.
I do really like the shoes and hat in the Hipster Outfit, and the beanie in the Alt Style Outfit. I'll always take more headwear for both genders even though I never actually render it. Just knowing they have hats feels nice I guess.
And you're exactly reinforcing what I'm saying. You are very tactful and considerate when posting what you like and don't like. Vendors need to hear honest responses and opinions so they can use the input to make things better or offer different options. (Or they might choose not to.) IMO it will help their sales and help products improve.
I haven't used Dforce so I'll sit out on that. You guys do a wonderful job of covering it, thanks so much!
And thanks Daz for the orange banner discount to help with the character or Pro Bundle. Wondering why the starter bundle would be left out though. (I haven't surfed the forum very much, I'm sure that was already asked?)
There is a texture expansion for the red quilted vest outfit that adds some interesting transparent sleeves and I like the boots a lot. They might make nice rainboots. I wish the top had a bit more detail. I think the outfit would’ve gotten more approval if the shirt had more detail and the vest was black and perhaps a different material.
Thank you.
As that is the male, the, um, male bits, are strategically hidden. lol
I really don't like that vest. But I honestly don't know anything about "grunge" fashion. For all I know, those vests could be all the rage.
Either way, it didn't stop me from putting the pro bundle in the cart. I kitbash all the time anyway, so now I'll have another pair of boots, another pair of pants, and new shirt that should work well with just about any vest or jacket I want to use.
And I'm really happy about the 30% discount. Just a shame it didn't apply to everything else in the cart. (Yes, I'm quite "frugal," not to mention rather spoiled with all the deep discounts from the last several months of 2017.)
I think that this suit has some Sci-Fi possabilities
For sure.
I'm pretty happy that Owen is still in my cart.
I'd been trying to decide if I wanted to keep the cart as small as possible and pay with cash, or build it up to reach the promo threshold and get the 6 month, no interest deal.
As it turns out, I cleared my cart and got a couple of today's new releases... along with a bright, shiny new gift card with more than enough credit to buy Owen and the other five non-free items I originally had in the cart. So I guess I can check out now...
Yep, I did the same thing- so far as not buying him yesterday and keeping him in the cart. I always try to wait until the next day, as Daz does this kind of thing frequently. (The wish-I had-waited-because-screwed-up-marketing-strikes-again.) People who bought yesterday could have gotten another 10% by using the gift card if they wanted something from today. BTW @kindredarts that Instant Zombie product is hilarious- nice job!
I have to get some sleep, it's going on 6am. I was outside exercising (walking) and it's so humid/misty it felt like spritzing rain. It's currently SIXTY THREE here in Pensacola. High will be 67, and LOW tonight 61. I'll take it after the horrible cold last week.
I don't often shout about my purchases here, but I just have to say that I am totally in love with https://www.daz3d.com/striker-of-shadows-outfit-for-genesis-8-male-s - good incentive to finally work on that G8 remake for one of my beloved G1 characters. (Yes, a remake. Transferring is not what I want - I like the challenge)
And this https://www.daz3d.com/lady-of-the-land-for-genesis-3-females just screams Nia'rith. Sure, she's G2 and I haven't worked with G3 at all (and I don't intend to), but there are tools to make it work, so I'm happy.
That said, I am all for constructive, civil critisism. No one expects everyone to love everything they create, but it's downright demotivating to see your efforts being burned to the ground. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Or keep it to something along the lines of 'product X doesn't do it for me, I won't be using it' if you must mention it.
The same goes for commenting on people's art, I suppose. Which basically is the same thing.
You know, its okay if you don't like something, heck, its okay if you hate it. But there is no reason to even say anything like that except to hurt someone's feelings. There are several hundred different ways to say you don't like something that are not derogatory or mean.
I was not going to purchase Owen but...I totally LOVE Kindred Arts Zombie billboards, I have been wanting to do some zombie scenes but populating them is problematic. Problem solved! I also picked up the Strings product, which looks super useful. That triggered the gift card discount so I picked up my gift card for the next month or two. Then I realized that there were actually 4 pro bundles that I could get for free that I had NONE of the items in them or just one or two. So, I got 5 pro bundles for less than $30 if you count the gift card savings. $700 worth of stuff.... its crazy.
I don't have a lot of use for most of the clothes in Owens bundle because I actually prefer the fantasy items, however, (and I know a lot of you aren't thrilled with that long vest) the vest will probably work great with a chainmaille shader applied to it and it won't hurt me to have some modern clothes for G8M, I own a ton of shaders so its easy enough to convert and kit bash to get what I want.
I actually think there should be buyer only forums where people can be free to discuss things they need to discuss just as there is a pa only forum. I am less sensitized to product criticism than others as I have always been a longtime consumer advocate and rely on critical reviews to make buying decisions. In fact I tend to prefer critical reviews to overly positive ones since I can generally parse out what need to know far faster than I can when someone simply raves about something. I do think people should be free to voice their opinions even if others find these opinions negative. That doesn’t mean there aren’t better ways to express critique but I have a thicker skin than most about reviews and the comments Novica quoted didn’t really ruffle my feathers even though upon thought they were unnecessary
I doubt this will happen here so I keep things light on the forum but I do feel that sometimes the emphasis on avoidance on critique of products leaves buyers without a voice or ability to asses the usability of items.
I’m picking up the zombie billboards, strings (love the Christmas lights), and the shaders and basement environment. The basement looks useful as a bad guy lair and has a little cell and mattress too. I’m also going to nab another gift card
The Zombie Billboards will (probably) never make it into my cart. lol I love the bulk of work from KA, but I just don't do anything with zombies! In fact, I wasn't much interested in any of the "nightmarish" products on offer today. I bought Nicole, (love Mousso's characters,) and the basement. A bit of retexturing and bit of kitbashing and the basement will be a fine set for less nightmarish scenes than it was designed for. I decided to pick up Strings with the store credit, so I could also get the 60% off related items. The final cost for Strings will be the same, (too bad there's nothing else I want from today's new releases!) but the Creepy Forest will be effective a bit less.
Sharks by AM: Great White - is this the one that was gone?
I think it was great white.