Question on Stonemasons 'Desert Outpost' & 'Enchanted Forest.'
HorusRa
Posts: 1,665
I was thinking about maybe getting one of these two items but am finding the promo images very wanting, especially on The Enchanted Forest. I can't tell anything about how big this is at all by the promos, it doesn't really show the areas & terrain very good. I can tell a bit more about Desert Outpost except for how many different areas there are where one could place characters and such, hard to explain, but what I mean is different sectors, or semi-flat ground areas. I can see two for sure in between two diffent sets of arches with steps under them. Anyone got screen shots of both? I might also be interested in anything concerning 'Return to the enchanted forest as well. I couldn't get much out of the promos for that one either. Thanks
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I don't have my renders handy but Enchanted Forest gives you a lot of camera angles from which to shoot. The ground also rolls a bit for realism, with flat areas also included. You won't be disappointed with the size of the set IMO. It's not a tiny section, your characters can wander off and be seen in the background. To me, when I think of a great forest set, this is it.
One small section of enchanted forest revisited
Enchanted forest
http://kerya-alexis.deviantart.com/art/Wonder-of-Nature-362636433
Novica: Sounds good thanks for the info. Sounds like it has somewhat sizeable clearings to stage character scenes in.
Chohole: wow, thats very beautiful. I'm guessing 'Return...' also has some sizeable areas in.
Kerya: That's a very nice render too. Thank you.
Anybody with any info on 'Desert Outpost'? Surely someone owns that one.
Like a lot of Stonemason's sets, this one is huge. There are lots of nooks and crannies to hide people in. I tried getting shots for you from a few different perspectives. I put a couple of Rocky characters in it so I wouldn't have to deal with clothing. They a little shorter than the base G2 male, but bulkier. All of the renders are done with just what comes with the set as far as lighting and cameras go. There is one atmospheric camera with the set. I hope this helps you decide. Of course, you can never go wrong with a Stonemason set. They are just that good.
I have Outpost and while I have yet to make a nice render with it, I think its a very good product.
Below is a top view of the set provided. The tower, curved barrier, straight barrier and arch are all seperate props, so the set is made up of resized and/or rotate versions of those. There is a skydome. The rocks can be selected from out of the set, and are composed of the curved rock wall, tower-base rocks and the field of general rocks; it looks like three seperate objects with a couple duplicated for the set. The stairs are also seperate. My only dissapointment was the ground/sand - it is not a solid plane but instead has gaps and holes where the rocks and walls go in, so you can't use it if you want to change the layout of the rocks as provided in the set. Not a big deal since you can just plop in your own plane and maybe morph it, but it seems that it would have been easier to just provide an undulating plane. But really its a great product.
You have to ask yourself, though, how are you going to use the product? Do you have other props/creatures/etc., that fit a desert? Or forest? That might help make up your mind; I had more items that would go with a desert and/or scifi scene so that made up my mind. Then again I have some elves that would do in a nice forest (so I'll get that eventually).
That is a very good point and pretty much how I've been reasoning when resisting to buy these products. But this thread has now sold me on the forest...
I must say, the enchanted forest wasn't at all what I expected. None of the trees have tops, so you cant go that far out, and everything is so dense, I found it really difficult to move around, let alone light it or add characters. I see others have mastered it, but I couldn't.
BTW- enchanted forest revisited (the image above) is return to the enchanted forest, which is a different prop- (A better one in my humble opinion.)
I have only used the Enchanted Forest once. It was a really hard one to render trying to figure out camera angles, lighting, and such. However, it turned out to be one of my favorite renders. It was definitely worth the effort.
That is nice. I think that kind of picture really plays to the strengths of the forest. The forest is great for close up detail like this, but a bit more limited if you want to use it for panaramic shots. I wanted to have a forest battle with multiple characters fighting each other, and couldn't get it to work for me.
Have you considered 'Forest' which is currently on sale:
http://www.daz3d.com/forest
I haven't- thanks for the link.
I would also love to try some of HowieFarkes' forest scenes, but I need to get carrara first for that- and probably a new computer :p
That Enchanted Forest looks really nice. I'm still new to Daz (and StoneMason's work) -- does this require any extra light or texture setup if I were to render it in IRay?
@knittingmommy: Lovely render. REally like the lighting.
@JeremyD: Enchanted Forest predates IRay so you would need to use the Iray Ubershader on things. It's really simple to apply in this case. 1. Select everything in the scene. 2. Go to Shader Presets > Iray > Daz Uber and control-click on the Iray Uber Base. A dialog box will pop up with some choices. Select Ignore under the Images dropdown. This will keep the existing textures but use the Iray shader.
If you use the lighting presets, the lighting MAY automatically switch to Photometric (Iray) mode. if not you will have to do the switch yourself or replace the existing lights with photometric spots. The Enchanted Forest also includes a sky dome which you will need to delete before you render. Sounds like a lot but this is fairly typical for pre-Iray content. Not really that hard and you get good results.
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Thank you! That doesn't sound too bad. So very close to pulling the trigger and grabbing it while it's on sale.
Because a set has a lot of trees doesn't mean you have to USE all of them. Simply click the eye next to the item in Scene tab and poof it away. Be sure and open the groups so you can test each item and turn it off. I eliminated fallen logs and trees to get a nice, more open area. My gal was kneeling in the scene, so I slid the ground plane over as there was a rock that I wanted to keep. You can move things around.
This doesn't deal with the shader issues, but Dreamlight has made a set of lighting presets for Enchanted Forest:
http://www.daz3d.com/iray-presets-for-ds-enchanted-forest
No idea how good or bad it is, I'm afraid.
When doing Iray renders of Stoney's forest sets use the main Sub-D on just about everything.The displacement in Iray won't cut it like it does with 3DL.
We probably have different ideas of size. I do tend to do more closeup shots for most of my renders. I haven't really gotten in to large complicated shots quite yet, although, I have a few in mind with a couple of sets that I've gotten recently. So, for my uses, yeah, it is quite large. For someone, who might more complicated scenes requiring long distant shots, no, it may not be quite large enough.
P.S. You're welcome. Always happy to help if I can. :)
That is true. Every tree and rock is it's own object, so you really can customize the set.
I'm also curious to know that.
when I see the term sub d, I immediately think of Subdivision (mesh smoothing) but I was not sure if thats what he meant or not as he mentions Displacement in the same sentence. [shrug]
Sub-d (short for sub-division) makes daz multiply the number of polygons in an object, extrapolating the shape it would have had. Sometimes, the results are nicely smoothed and round edges, and sometimes a cube turns into a sort of ovoid with badly stretched surfaces, depending on the amount of detail on the original figure. To apply a sub-d setting, select an object, go to the edit tab, geometry and convert to sub-division, then, in the parameters tab, a new section will appear to allow you to select the level of sub-d applied and shown on the viewport (if your computer is not a time-travelling beast from the future, you should keep the visble settings low so as to not bog down your system with the excess of polygons).
In 3Delight, sub-division mostly helps avoid jagged lines or square-looking meshes in close-ups, but Iray (as far as I understand it, please correct me if I am wrong) cannot apply displacement maps if there aren't enough polygons in the mesh, so sometimes you'll need to apply the appropiate level of sub-d to a prop before it starts looking as it should.
Yes, SubD is subdivision. Iray needs the mesh to be quite dense if you want displacement to work properly, so you usually have to subdivide or set a higher level of subdivision on all objects using a displacement map when you render with Iray.
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To get displacement working in iray you also need to set the subd displacement level in the Iray surface settings. I'm finding that 3-5 works well