SereneNight’s Sci-Fi Fun Thread 3

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  • memcneil70memcneil70 Posts: 3,729

    Thanks @SereneNight and @Vyusur. I have Mick in my cart now and will be going ahead with my purchase. (I forgot to shop yesterday.)

    Mary

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560

    Yeah, I don't like most of the male hair products and many of the female ones.

    Ryan Hair for G3M & G8M is another good one. It's sort similar to the Nick Hair being the same PA & all.

    I agree 100 percent. Owen does use Ryan's hair. I figured no need to render it since, I quite obviously like the item, but I guess, no harm in seeing what Boyd looks like with it on! 

     

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited March 2021

    Hylas said:

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the various hairs!

    Nick hadn't been on my radar, I put it on my wishlist for now. I'm not sure about it yet. It looks pretty good but both Tjark and Sitric look similar in style and quality. There's also Matthew which is a little different; it also shows up in promos frequently and always looks great. Currently all 4 are on my wishlist but I don't think I need all of them in my library.

    My go-to for quickly making something look good is MRL Buzz Cut Hair. It looks kinda simple and it is; but all the details are right and I find that it looks great on almost all male characters.

    I think Sitric has a slightly higher hairline, but I don't own that hair (Why don't I own it, since its Redz hair).  But Redz tends to include a ton of morphs, making most of her hair an excellent value.

    Boyd wears Matthew hair, since I like the hair height and it suits Boyd's longer thinner face. 

    I will take a look at MRL.

    I still have tons of hair to render. I probably won't bother with the poor quality ones though. There are enough of those already.

    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • vwranglervwrangler Posts: 4,813
    edited March 2021

    One thing to note about Tjark is that, depending on what else is going on in your scene, it may throw an impressive render time hit into the mix. I did one render with it -- which, to be sure, had three other characters and their hair as well -- and it took 40 minutes. (Dropped to CPU, but I expected that, with all that going on.) I swapped that out for Laticis Imagery's Crew Cut Hair, and render time dropped from 40 minutes to 5 minutes, and that was literally the only thing that changed about the image.

    Sitric Hair is dForce strand hair. It really is not at all similar to Tjark in shaping or type, since it's got all sort of mohawk variations, and Tjark is pouffier than Nick, for the most part, although that's a bit closer. Sitric does have a fair number of shaping morph, mostly but not entirely along the lines of variations in mohawks.

    Post edited by vwrangler on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560

    Ah if it is dforce that's why I don't own it. I can't use dforce hair with 4.11

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,926

    I am rendering a scene using Colm Jackson's Render Studio 2.0 + Production Scenes for an ideal I had for that IWD contest and no joke, even with an nVidia GTX 1650 4GB Super it's going to take 1 day and 16 hours to render a 1920x1920 scene. That's like my old CPU render times, however I know it's GPU rendering. The good thing is the lighting does blow away my usual attempts at lighting.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560

    Mine is a Nvidia GTX 2080 Super with 4 GIG. The machine is a year old.  In the New DAZ 4.15 just rendering Boyd alone drops to CPU. Nevermind anything else in the Scene. In 4.11 I can render Boyd, Owen, with clothing, and an optimized Scene without dropping to CPU.

    I choose not to use 4.15 since its clearly designed for high end cards. It doesn't help that it also requires new drivers which switch certain things on which drains GPU.

    I am a bit irritated that Nvidia is driving the bus on the sofware and what can be done with it. I don't see the advantages of G8.1 as sufficient to warrant the perfomance drain.  

    This is why being forthcoming about the increased hardware requirements is needed. It seems particularly tone deaf though to raise the hardware requirements of Studio during a pandemic, when no cards are really available. 

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited March 2021

    Okay, so I want to talk about Attempting to use Light Dome Pro. Iray https://www.daz3d.com/light-dome-pro-iray--superior-light-with-layers

     

    What you need

     

    1. Photoshop with LDP Action installed
    2. Light Dome Pro for Iray
    3. Time

     

    We will explore this product together.  I have no idea what the end results will be. 

    1.  Create a simple scene. Load a figure and some props and an environment. you will be rendering this many times, so keep the size down.

    2. Open the Light Presets directory, find Dreamlight's subfolder. Within Dreamlight’s subfolder will be a folder for Light Dome Pro Iray.

    3. Click to add 1 Dreamlight’s camera and 2 Main Render Preset.

     

    5. Dreamlight discusses how to adjust lights and tweaking things from default, but I'm curious what the results will be from using the default product.

    6. We will need to render layers now. In the directory, select Step 2 and begin to render your layers in your scene.

    NOTE: Dreamlight advises that all colored layers be saved in .bmp  format. Black and white layers must be saved in .png format for masks.

    The layers window looks like this:

    7. To apply the render preset click on it and render. Do the first 3 and save them in a folder with the numbers 1,2,3 etc.   See you in a few.

    8. Steps 1-3 look like this

     

    9. Steps 4-5 require you turn off the fill light in the scene. So go into your scene file, expand the LDP Camera, and turn off Camera filler Light

    10. Okay well, when I click render on step 4 with Custom fill light off I get this:

     

     

    screenshot1.JPG
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    tutorial2.JPG
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    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited March 2021

    11. Okay so when I take the environment out of step 4 I get a mask. Is this correct to use or is the black one correct? Unclear. I will save this as png and try it both ways I guess

    12. Step 5. Is very clearly a mask as well, so I hide the environment and render an identical image to step 4.

    13. Okay so now we have 5 images rendered.

    14. Images 6 and 7, should be rendered without the background in scene. I am  unclear if filler lights should be on or off, the instructions do not say on the thumbnails, so when in doubt, I leave it on. 

    15. Images 8-9 should be Rendered with everything in the scene on. 

    16. Okay so thats all the renders. It took me about 40 minutes at this low resolution. Yes there is a blank at step 4. There are also a couple of same ones at step 6 and 7. I did click the render presets and this is how they look to me out of the box.

     

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    Image10.jpg
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    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited March 2021

    17. Okay, we are now moving to photosohop. If you haven't already installed the Dreamlight Light Dome PRO Iray.atn in your photoshop presets action folder, you should do it now.   If you can't figure this out the easiest thing is to locate the  actions file in the installer dreamlight has, and copy it. Open Photoshop, Open the actions menu. Go to the menu within the actions panel and click load actions. Paste Dreamlight Light Dome PRO Iray.atn in the folder with your other actions. Close that window and click load actions again, and select Dreamlight Light Dome PRO Iray.atn

    18. Next, open the non-mask layers in photoshop. Leave the black and white mask ones out. Run the action which corresponds to the number of layers you have which should be 7.

    19. Okay so compiling them I Get this: 

    20. Clearly I have done something wrong. Maybe my scene was too dark?   Laughs. I guess this is simply too advanced for me. I will do it again, I'm sure. 

    image.jpg
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    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited March 2021

    One thing I do really like, which doesn't require all the rest of t he business above, is the included  "Add Glow Effect" Which is included with Light Dome Pro Photoshp Action  You aren't required to do any of the other stuff, just have a flattened image. You load Dreamlight Light Dome PRO Iray.atn

    And ADD the glow effect on any flattened image.

     

    Without Glow Effect

    With Glow Effect

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    glowy.jpg
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    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,926
    edited March 2021

    I really like that work you did. I only have a 10 year old version of Photoshop Essential 9.0 but in the next year I intend on buying the Photoshop Essentials 2021 and Adobe Premier Elements 2021 which I think would allow me to use Photoshop actions like the ones you demonstrated. Those usually go on sale Christmas season as a bundle for less than $125.

    Post edited by nonesuch00 on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited March 2021

    I am glad you like that. The glow action is nice.

    I am sorry I was defeated by the light dome pro Iray.  In my defense the 3DL one was really easy.  I just could not figure it out.

     

    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • HylasHylas Posts: 4,767

    Reading the promo text, I thought the product is supposed to be time saving and less confusing than HDRIs or sun/sky? LOL.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560

    I question whether this was tested for usability.

    The video guide involves a lot of tweaking from the original product.

    I feel mislead because there is a lot of manual work involved in using this and it is not a standalone product and things aren't very clear.

    I really liked the 3Delight version.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited March 2021

    More hair!

    Terran hair is a tight pompadour of 80's style curls. There is no part, and it is shaved oddly high over the ears.The hair cap is minimal.

    Terrence Flipped- This hair looks good, for a man with a receding hairline, but the stubble on the sides doesn't follow the hair cap so you have the cap, and then hair a few finger lengths back. I wish the hair of the scalp followed the darker cap a bit better.

    Thomas hair- is G7, and the temples are hidden by clumps of hair, but the style is realistic and not one widely seen in the store. I like it, even without the defined temples, because it look good for a person with thick wavy curly hair.

    Thorin hair- took nearly 4 times the length of time to render over any other hair. I'm not entirely sure what is going on here with this hair. But this hairstyle relies on covering the hairline with clumps of hair. It also has chunky bits chopped out, and a ragged part. If it had a masculine hairline I'd like this, but Unisex is always a disappointment.

    Tiny Locks: Boyd can't pull it off. Maybe your character can.

    Tope Fade: A realistic Top fade haircut. Nice.

    Tousled Hair: This hair has 8 hairstyles included, and one of the most useful hair caps for replacing poorly made ones in the store. Worth taking a look at this one. 

    Troy hair: A long combed forward style completely obscuring the hairline, with shaggy sideburns. 

    Terry Hair- I wanted to like this hairstyle, since there aren't many plaited male braid hairstyles, but the hairline is unisex, and it kind of ruins the look. A hairstyle like this should have a prominent visible hairline. There seems to be a trend to add a long sideburn to a unisex hairline and call it male hair. 

    FE Short Hair Volume 1 for Genesis 8 Make and Female: 

    It is unisex male hair manga style. Nevertheless, I rather like it. At least when the hair is long, covering the temples with falling pieces of hair make more sense.

     

     

     

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    Hair-topfade.jpg
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    Hair-Touseled.jpg
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    Hair-Troy.jpg
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    Hair-FESHort Vol.1.jpg
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    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • carrie58carrie58 Posts: 3,951

    Where is the Tousled hair from?

  • carrie58carrie58 Posts: 3,951

    hahahaha well that explains why I couldn't find it ,I already have it  thank you SereneNight

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560

    I think vwrangler told me a while ago a suggestion worth repeating, that if you remove the hair from tousled hair cap, you can apply/parent difficult hair to that cap and move it around quite well.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,926

    Serene Night said:

    I think vwrangler told me a while ago a suggestion worth repeating, that if you remove the hair from tousled hair cap, you can apply/parent difficult hair to that cap and move it around quite well.

    Good ideal.

    I like about half the hairs you last posted but don't have such a budget. Hair is persistently (in my opinion) overpriced in the DAZ and other stores relative to other items. 

  • inquireinquire Posts: 2,097

    @Serene Night: I wonder if I might ask about Curly Hair and Facial Hair for Genesis 8 Males. Don't have it, and today it's 70% off: https://www.daz3d.com/curly-hair-and-facial-hair-for-genesis-8-males

    Do you have this one, and, if so, what do you think of it?

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560

    I have it now. I will load it up and see. 

  • inquireinquire Posts: 2,097

    Great! I'm waiting to see what you think.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited March 2021

    No problem, will get to it soon.

    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited April 2021

    My opinion of that hair, is that it appears to be made for a newer version of Studio, because the beard options, and several hair options don't conform to Boyd's head, which is a shame, because they look nice. They probably work okay in Studios newer than 4.11 but for example the hair icalled 'billy goat beard' projects off the side of his chin. (I wish QA would catch such obvious naming issues. Black people do not have Billy Goat beards, perhaps they mean goatee?)

     

    That said, the afro looks good. The beard looks patchy and bad, but this is likely the result of not working well in 4.11

    WARNING It takes about twice as long as one of the other hairs above to render on my machine as well. 

    afro.jpg
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    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • vwranglervwrangler Posts: 4,813

    Serene Night said:

    My opinion of that hair, is that it appears to be made for a newer version of Studio, because the beard options, and several hair options don't conform to Boyd's head, which is a shame, because they look nice. They probably work okay in Studios newer than 4.11 but for example the hair ignominously called 'billy goat beard' projects off the side of his chin. (I wish QA would catch such obvious naming issues. Black people do not have Billy Goat beards, perhaps they mean goatee?)

    For what it's worth, Matari3D has a few other facial hairpieces with similar shapes, and they're all called "billy goat beard". It's the same name they give to the beard for Classic Diablo for Torment 8, for example. They're not a native English speaker, and I think they just don't know the word "goatee".

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560

    Point taken. I agree. 

  • inquireinquire Posts: 2,097

    Thank you for looking at it.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,560
    edited April 2021

    Owen and Boyd dye Easter eggs with their doggo Bitty. Little did I realize what I was getting into with the Easter egg dye kit "Carrotdye" from Rendo. LOL

     

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    Post edited by Serene Night on
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