The best purchase I ever made in the Daz Store (misleading title on purpose) [Commercial]

Griffin Avid

Was this one. Why? Because I (basically) made it, so to speak.

I've done these grand, epic rewinds and recaps before, and now it's time for another one.

 

My first order from the Daz store was on December 26th, 2016, which means we're coming up on the two-year anniversary of CGI at this level.

I bought a whole bunch of Sci-Fi stuff and seeing what I bought, I can tell how my mind worked. I grabbed everything that I would need for a few comic pages and wasn't thinking about building a library or series (at least not yet).

I grabbed two people, hair, a spaceship outside and interior.     ---     Enough items to make an entire action sequence. 

I can still remember how all my first renders were pitch black. That damn Level 19. Cameras in the walls and 3Delight skydomes in my Iray renders. Sheesh.

One of my first posts (if not the first) was complaining about being a PC+ member and just struggling with the Daz sale system.

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I do remember NOT knowing that they were sales everyday. And I had no idea why sales items changed in price - seemingly at random. I also didn't know what a vendor was and would search the store library and buy the cheapest thing that filled my needs. Hmmm...I need a raygun and sure enough there was at least one space gun on sale. I used to buy stuff and thought I owned everything in the Promo pictures. I didn't notice the 'required item' blurb and wondered how to use TEXTURES when I didn't own the source item.

It was DiveMakeup and Llynara and Serene Night (and maybe some others [Novica]) that mentioned Shaders and kitbashing and stretching your content further.

I still have my folder with a few black renders and one or two where the poeple don't have shadows and they are floating.

I sent my all my friends my first set of good renders and said THIS is going to be how my comic LOOKS! THIS RIGHT HERE!!!!!!

And everyone was skeptical. One of my closest friends said "Dude, if you can really get it to look like that, all the time, you'll really be on to something."

A lot has happened in a very short amount of time. And I think this will continue.

I thank (mostly) Jack Tomalin for being so nice when I was such a disgruntled PC+ newb. And Richard Haseltine for the patience.

And everyone else that has helped and supported and took part in this series. And of course to Paul Bussey who commissioned the whole thing.

I think being an actual P.A. is in the future. But for today...

This is a great day.

Diomede

Congratulations.  Looking forward to more.  

towdow3

renders look great. What are your thougths on sketchy for iRay. I am also using daz studio for comic book creation. I'm currently using 3delight but the emissive light thing has me shook. In iRay its soo easy to make any surface emit light. In 3delight i've bought so many things and they are not EVEN half as easy and have a huge learning curve. Now I am very close to pulling the trigger on a 1080ti 11gb version.

Griffin Avid

What are your thoughts on sketchy for iRay.

It's actually the product I demoed in the Webinar, so it's an obvious high choice. The participants powered the class and someone (I'm drawing a blank but they had examples too) also uses it so we knew it was already popular and gave solid results.

I also did a lot of work in LineRender 9000 but didn't use it for the demo. I found Sketchy to be easier to use. 

Now I am very close to pulling the trigger on a 1080ti 11gb version.

I got very far with a 1060 and used that  early on...

.Eventually, I was just spending too much time waiting for the renders to finish. When I grabbed a 1080TI, it was during the crypto mining craze and the prices were jacked, but it was still worth it for the time-savings alone.

IceDragonArt

On my wishlist for Christmas for sure ( I was really sorry I couldn't attend in person)  I don't acutally do comics, however,  just from what I've seen, there is a ton of information that will be useful for so many other things as well (I still want to learn how to do comic book art, just so I can, if I want to lol) but I also think there is probably a lot of information in here about how to tell a story in pictures, even if its not necessarily in a toon/comic style.  I am doing a world building project, what I want to do is create a huge world, and tell the story in short stories illustrated with lots of pictures.  I think this course will help me with that in a lot of ways. Things like creating your story, structure and workflow as well as the camera shots and techniques portion are just a couple of things out of many that I think I will find most useful in creating my own art.