Novica & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 4
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someday I'll get around to reading all 32 pages here, lol. That is fascinating with the tree trunks, even the black key-like artifact. I assume they used a single image for the entire diffuse texture for the plants. You're alteration in post 480, dose look much better for the bark, can the leaves be changed separately, just curious.
Post 471; It also looks like the resolution of the rock diffuse texture is drastically lower then the vine next to the figure. That rock is another item I'd be looking for a better resolution texture to apply to.
Customizing (Includes How-To For Newbies)
I have an interesting collection for my "Locations" Here's a sample, for those looking for ideas on organizing your content. For Locations, my mindset is actual locations, but also THEME. Aka, Arabic, Mexican/Spanish. In the Default...
DEFAULT>
! Characters
! Clothing
! Expressions
! Hair
! Locations
! Poses
then props are listed (or themes, or products like Cyclorama that have several things related to it. Examples:
Aliens
Angels/Religious
Animals
Art Supplies / Studios
Backgrounds / Floors
Barrels
Benches
Bookcases
Bridges
Bugs and Spiders
Cages
Camping
Candles
etc. And I'm JUST getting started, so there will be more in these AB's.
By putting ! in front, those first ones stay at the top. Fast and easy, love it. And I load the model with the character, so I don't have to go get them from People. Example DEFAULT>Characters>Genesis Female>then Genesis and the rest are loaded there.
Okay, if you do it this way, for DEFAULT>!Locations, here's some ideas:
Apartment
Apocalypse
Arabic
Armory
Art Studio
Australian (and I know the Easy Environments Outback would be here.)
Barns / Stables
Bathroom
Beach
Bridges & Roads (this is NOT the same as a prop, it's the entire scene. Put it back under DEFAULT>Bridges too, and only put the bridge.
Cafe
Camping
Carnivals
Castles
and so forth. Some of the funky categories that come in handy are rubble, litter/trash. :)
The reason I like having DEFAULT> with the props (the first tier so to speak, one click from Default) and having the LOCATIONS as the scenes and complete sets, is that I am not sifting through a scene to find one prop.
Newbies:
BE SURE TO EXPORT USER DATA EVERY TIME YOU CLOSE THE STUDIO SO YOUR WORK IS SAVED IF SOMETHING GOES FUNKY. (Be in Actor/Wardrobe/Props with Smart Content Selected, go to the little square menu right above the words "Smart Content" that has the upside down black triangle, open it up and select "Content DB Maintenance" and then "Export User Data."
Is there anyone surfing in here that does not know how to create the categories and get products into them? Read on :)
AND FYI- I don't know if you folks keep the product identified, but I sure do. First because I do reviews and if I get a boulder from somewhere, I want to know what product it was, and second because then I know what vendor did it by simply looking up the product. You'll learn who to trust so far as tiny details and who doesn't really impress you for closeup work.
Here's how you customize/get the scene, and pluck out props:
To customize the product into a category, you should create your categories first. You simply go to Content Library and Categories. Make your categories under DEFAULT. To make them, right click and select Create A Category. Create the ones you want. (Like the ones I have above. They'll go alphabetically unless you put the ! in front of them)
Go to Product (In Content Library) Go to the T's. I'll right click on (example) Tropical Island Paradise, select "Create A Category" then open up the dropdown DEFAULT>!Location>Islands and put it there. Now what if the Tropical Island Paradise has a really cool palm tree that you want handy? Create a category under DEFAULT, (by right clicking) it can be something like Vegetation>Trees>Palms or if you use a lot of them, Palm Trees. I'll do it the hard way, let's say we went with Vegetation>Trees>Palms. HERE'S THE COOL THING-
You can click on your item (in Locations>Islands) and then click on the product so the entire thing is showing as thumbnails, and under Default, scroll down that first tier where you have Vegetation. YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO GET TO THE >Trees>Palms because it will make the Tropical Island Paradise thumbnails disappear the minute you click on >Trees. (Remember, you click on something, it changes what is shown for folders.)
Just click on the palm tree you want (regular left click) from the thumbnails, and drag the palm tree to Vegetation. If there's anything else you want from Tropical Island Paradise, you can drag them into their category as long as you don't CLICK on other categories. Just scroll to them and drag the products there from the thumbnails. THE PRODUCTS ARE NOT MOVED FROM TROPICAL ISLAND PARADISE, by just clicking on and dragging, it is making a COPY. I didn't know that!
So your palm is in Vegetation. How do you get it to Vegetation>Trees>Palms? Since you're done with Tropical Island Paradise, NOW you click on Vegetation and your palm tree is there. Open up the next two tiers (Trees>Palms) and either just drag the palm tree under "Palms" or what I do, right click and create a subfolder under Palms "Tropical Island Paradise" and drag the palm tree under it. That way, you know what product you used. So I end up with Default>Vegetation>Trees>Palms>Tropical Island Paradise.
And to remove the pesky palm from under Vegetation, just right click and select "Remove Reference." It will still be in the other folder (the
Default>Vegetation>Trees>Palms>Tropical Island Paradise) but will be taken away from Vegetation.
Any questions, just ask.
Hi zarcondeegrissom,
32 pages is nothing, lol, this is thread FOUR. :) Welcome to the thread.
The material zones in Tropical Elements are large groups of items. You click on one palm tree top, it's all the palm tree tops. The rocks are all one group. Unless the Polygon Group Editor is used to create different zones, that entire pile is one object. The vegetation is in large clumps too.
EEEK. We have hail (reported by the weather channel to be 2.9" in diameter) and 60 mph winds bearing down on us. I hope the rest of you folks in the path of this storm front are awake and monitoring this. I hate tornadoes at night. I'm just slightly to the east of Pensacola. My horse is closer to the coast.
If you haven't see the latest freebie, it looks like fun.
http://www.daz3d.com/new-releases/fountain-of-health
And oh my goodness, what nice new products for today! Zev0 has a cool concept with changing the skin tones and finally, get a variety of eyebrows!
I had to laugh at the timing, this happens a lot. Did you notice the poses for the Tropical series that I just discussed? (There are parts of the tropical series that I like (aka the vegetation, the lighting in the cave, some of the rocks) and I haven't explored all of them. But the pose sets are out for them: (and the vendor's store is on sale.)
http://www.daz3d.com/new-releases/tropical-poses-pack-1
http://www.daz3d.com/new-releases/tropical-poses-pack-2
I saw the destruction from tornadoes on the news this morning, how devastating!! it's so sad that everything you have can be ripped apart and so many lives lost in a matter of seconds....
with the new tropical release poses if you buy both it looks like you get an extra 10% off?
I'll continue with brief reviews of these, since they are featured today. This one is particularly interesting-
Tropical Plateau
http://www.daz3d.com/tropical-plateau
Get ready for a surprise. For the lights, Andrey went above and beyond in giving you a BUNCH of lights- to my surprise, when you click the lights you get 24 Ambient Lights and a couple spotlights for EACH of "lights" thumbnails- and they REPLACE each other each time. Meaning the front lights will replace the right side set, etc. So imagine how many light setups you get :) (And unless I'm mistaken, you can save the front lights as a light preset, save the right side set as a light preset, and then bring them both in with the left side lights if you want all three.)
So far, the Cave and the Plateau are my picks, because I do like the interior of the cave and with depth of field, I don't think the blurry low polygon rocks will be a problem. Bring in your own vegetation and no problem. The lighting was nice (as I showed you.) The Plateau is just plain fun- a LOT of different angles. Right now I am rendering the right side, right lights. Back in a few minutes, just wanted to give you a heads up. :)
Before I forget, something humorous to relate- I feed a stray cat that has showed up since last week, and with the severe storms coming in last night, I called the cat for about half an hour and she showed up. She spent the night in my master bathroom shower (with the doors you can pull shut) through the storm. :) Purred the entire time. (We re-named her Chill) I gave her a Capstar for fleas but am keeping her separated from my other cats inside the house. She'll go back outside (food, water, and bed on our porch) after this next round of storms goes through.
Back to the Plateau:
First impression-
After you remove the deep shadow maps on the two spotlights (always check for that with any of these tropical ones from this vendor) then the scene renders slower. It's 13 minutes and 15% done, whereas previously, it was done by 8 minutes. I tested with the deep shadow and got artifacts, so it's not an option. (18 minutes and 16%, it hangs up on that tree up at the top. It's moving on now) 23 minutes, 18%. This really is chugging along slowly, still on that one tree with nothing but skies around it. 29 minutes, 19%. This doesnt cut it. The shading rate is .40
I'm starting over to see if it just got a hitch in it.
Well, unfortunately, it's rendering ultra slow and I'm just not willing to forego hours of my afternoon of working on my studio to do a render. This 640 x 900 pixel with .40 shading rate render would take at least an hour to an hour and a half (or more.) If anyone has the Plateau in this series and has it rendered, feel free to share. My computer is NOT slow so it's just the detail in this set.
I think I know why it's going so slow- I unplugged my computer during the lightening strikes at 4am, and my computer just gave me the "plug in your computer, 10% power left" so I think that's what caused the slowdown. So will try it one more time.
EDIT: 21% at 27 minutes, so that was definitely the factor that slowed it down.
33% at 29 minutes.
67% at 42 minutes
76% at 46 minutes
80% at 47 minutes
done at 55 minutes. So for not-too-large renders at .40, you are looking at an hour.
Shown is the right side lights. 24 ambients and 2 spotlights, changed to raytraced. The Plateau product has the waterfall, and I believe this set intersects with one of the other Tropical sets.
For those of you subscribed who are getting emails, I attached the image to the previous post.
To continue with Tropical Plateau..
To get you some quick renders, I am leaving the deep shadow map settings (you'll see the artifacts) but at least this way you can see the different views quickly. With deep shadow maps, it renders in three minutes.
So ignore the artifacts (for newbies, that's the blue, pink squares. Change to raytraced shadows and those will disappear. But render times increase.)
First render: top lights.
Second render, still keeping the shadow maps- just swung the set around, using another light set. Set is DS3 which is a Top light. Hey, no artifacts!
Third: WOW, this would be a no-go with the Deep Shadow Maps. Looks like holiday lights with all those artifacts! Lightset DS5Left, and I continue to swing around. This is at the back, shooting TOWARD the front of the waterfall. The previous render would be the section on OUR LEFT. From here, I will swing and render OUR RIGHT section.
Doing more renders, check this post.
This rendered SO NICE AND SO FAST that I wanted to do a separate post.
For Tropical Plateau, the ltPoser lightset rendered in TWO MINUTES and is gorgeous. So yes, I would definitely recommend Tropical Plateau. There are so many views you can use, even without the other Tropical sets. And just piddling with four lightsets, I've found two that you can use with the Deep Shadow Maps for ultra fast rendering, and NO ARTIFACTS. :)
Hope this has helped, since those sets are on sale today. Remember, the Plateau one has many, many light sets too that using Light Presets you can probably combine to make your own sets. Find the ones with Deep Shadow Maps that don't do artifacts and possibly combine them. (Don't know if that would cause artifacts or not.) These have been slightly brightened and intensified, but the lighting is what's important.
EDIT: Renders SO fast I am doing a widescreen 2000 pixel one for you, same lightset (Poser)
TWENTY FOUR PERCENT IN 40 SECONDS!!!
SIXTY PERCENT AT ONE MINUTE 15 SECONDS
DONE at two minutes.
Something you wouldn't know by looking at the set- Genesis will be tiny on this set. Anyway, you can see that closeups are not good with Tropical Plateau- the leaves are squished, the grass is cartoony, the bark of the tree is not accepable. This is Gwen, Georgina Hair, with Effortless Cool outfit.
It lights okay though-this is out of the box and you can soften the lights with a bit of tweaking. You can remove the set and use the Poserlt lightset.
TIP: Open Mouth, Morph Teeth
I do try to keep newbies in mind, as many surf the thread.
When you are creating your characters by morphing them (moving the sliders) you select Actor in Parameters tab. Now one tip- when you get to the teeth, you may think, "Well, great, but the mouth is closed." And you don't have a way to open the mouth from there. If you're new, you might think there's no poses. Wrong, you have to get to the HEAD.
Go into Scene and expand your figure (let's say Genesis) and under Abdomen 2, you expand to get to the HEAD. When you go back to Parameters, you'll see Poses and can open the mouth from there.
Then when you go back to Actor, you can go Head>Face>Mouth and work on the teeth. (image)
Virtual dentistry. :)
Don't forget the virtual novacaine.
LOL.
Here's how I morphed them, and how they look for a normal smile. I like the way the front teeth show and the rest are not prominent.
One of the best morphs was Hitomi Smooth! I'll come back and post the settings. This is on the model Gwen. I always reduce the size of the bottom teeth, they look too fake to me otherwise.
I wish there was a way for the morph sets to be identified, I don't know what's installed that gives me the options I have.
This might give you a good starting point:
Teeth bottom size -0.98 (remove limits, you can only go to -.50)
teeth gap .43
teeth irregular .93
teeth top size .90
teeth caynines out (that's the way it's spelled- SERIOUSLY) .29
teeth front arc -37.8
teeth front pertrude 26.4
teeth in out A -11.4
teeth in out B -25.5
teeth sides in out -87.7
teeth snaggle a 33.1
teeth snaggle b 14.7
hitomi teeth smoother 0.13
Tornado warning, two on the ground, one about 15 minutes from here but it's a bit south of here. Unfortunately, that's the general location of where the horse is. We've got all the cats and dogs crated so they have some protection. It's POURING here, about 10 inches of rain so far and still coming down.
EDIT: It is definitely below us and moving east, so it would have to take a mean north hook to get here. We're safe :)
I'm working on customizing Gwen just to putz around.
There is also a flash flood warning for the Styx River in Escambia county. Glad you are safe considering it is raining hard outside.
Edit: that is one big storm cell. Wow. On closer examination, I think the radar shows two storm cells that are next to each other.
We just set a record for here. In 45 minutes, we got FIVE AND A HALF INCHES of rain! (5th wettest day since 1810, they just said.)
Hope you are okay where you are. The one cell has gone east and bearing down on our friends over in Navarre Beach and headed to Crestview. It did go right over the ranch but it didn't touch down as it wasn't wound up.
Stay safe up in North Carolina!
I really like Jade Hair, haven't rendered it yet though. One I've had for a long time but haven't tried.
sounds like an eventful morning there. Good to hear your doing o.k.
This looked almost like an eye looking/facing to the left, lol.
Infinite Gardens (Merlin Studios)
Jade Hair (DAZ3D / Goldtassel)
http://www.daz3d.com/infinite-gardens
http://www.daz3d.com/jade-hair-for-genesis
I won't list this as Gwen because I changed a lot of her, so she's not "out of the box."
This is Jade Hair, with the Tropical Cave lights, and Infinite Gardens brick wall. (Love that product, check it out.)
I've gotten several PM's- I know Pensacola is THE city in the news on Weather Channel right now, but yes, we are fine here. No flooding at my house. The roads leading to our home are flooded out, but we don't need to get anywhere tomorrow. Now going on 11" and still raining. Feel sorry for the people on Interstate 10, it is CLOSED at Florida/Alabama state line and cars are sitting there for miles. Won't open tonight, that's for sure, still pouring rain and lightening. If my horse wasn't okay, the ranch owner would have texted me. I know it's flooded out there but all horses are in the barn and mine is in the middle of the barn and not near the doors. (Thanks for asking, you-know-who.)
Edit: at 2:45am we have 15.72" of rain and an unbelievable 9,000 lightening strikes an hour the past five hours PER HOUR. Cloud tops are a whopping 55,000 feet so that is a lot of tall clouds filled with rain. City of Pensacola and schools closed tomorrow. Retaining pond walls are bursting and flooding neighborhoods with thousands of gallons of mud and water. 33,000 without power in FL/AL/MS.
I'm finding the expressions for Kimberly make good "conversation" renders, aka, like the character is talking. Here's some samples of Kimberly Expressions. When used in combination, you get a really nice range of looks.
http://www.daz3d.com/kimberly-expressions
First render, laugh at 32.8%
Second: Mean II at 50.4% plus Shock 14.1%
Third: Smile 67.2% Soft Smile 100% Shock 12.3%
Same, front view.
@Novica
Hoping that your silence is only a short-term power outage.
Be safe.
I'm fine, just amazed at the destruction here. Scenic Highway (which is a mainstay of Pensacola, something like Scenic Route 1 in California) collapsed and a 40 feet deep by 50 feet sinkhole formed and two trucks went into it. Another main road also collapsed, and two homes were engulfed in sinkholes. PNJ.com has images and video.
I give up, the sales at DAZ are so inconsistent. We're supposed to know what they mean. Have you folks tested the cart? The "50%" off isn't 50% off the original price (as it was last time, and "it's always been that way" was stated frequently in the forums when people asked about it)
The discounts in the cart are really good. 70% I think.
I'll plop some in so you can see. I'm not getting these items, they are on my wishlist, but not have to haves and I am trying to stick to my budget. The Tropical Poses pack 1 is the qualifying item that drops these supposedly only to 50%. NOT. So go shop those 50% categories and get good discounts.
Glad to hear you're okay. :)
Thanks for pointing out the strange sale prices. I believed the advertisement, and it couldn't entice me. Once you showed the real deal, I went shopping! I finally bought Look At My Hair, after turning it down before. At $15 and some cents, I decided it was worth a try. I also got Spring Hair and Vignettes for Poolside along with the qualifying Tropical Poses Pack 1. If you don't have Urban Sprawl 2, that is worth grabbing for sure, but I already have it.
You're welcome. I did decide to go get some things that were just seriously discounted and probably wouldn't be more than 70% off anytime soon. With the SeaNautica series, I figured watercraft would be good, and one of the DzFire vehicles was too tempting :)
And here's a head's up, thanks to Vaskania who helped me discover something a bit unsettling. Did you know that in Content Library, when you use Products to get to your product, it might not show you all the options? I was missing the static prop (obj) for Breaking Waves when selecting it from Products...but when I go the route of Daz Studio Format > Library > Environments > First_Bastion > BreakingWaves
then I get all the options.
Which, as I said on the thread, makes me wonder what else is doing that. Maybe I'm missing options that I just don't know exist!
This was the thread.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/40764/ where I asked the question, and their screen shots.
This is what I ended up buying.
Tropical Poses Pack 1 (much better IMO than the second pack.)
BMX Bike (note this for your DAZ $6 PC code, is a DO)
Tramp Steamer & Clyde Puffer
ESCoRT FAV
AH-9200X - Fast Attack Aircraft
I am disappointed that the content library does not have things in their proper folders. It just dumps everything in the same folder. When You use the DAZ content library structures, sometimes it is easier to use certain products because they are sorted properly and I can locate content accordingly. I often have to go in and make a product from the original folder structure, rather than to use content library which is inefficient to me, and renders that feature not helpful.
I haven't been aware of missing items before, but there is such potential for databse corruption it is tough to differentiate between that and something not working properly.
Glad to hear you are safe and well, Novica.
This is free right now, it is probably posted somewhere just letting everyone know who may have missed it.
http://www.daz3d.com/sci-fi-warrior-bundle
Thanks for posting the link. I have missed the sci fi warrior bundle. Observation: the Sci-Fi Siren Outfit in the bundle is revealing. I do like the boots.