NEW! Novica & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 6

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,552

    I never use content which requires attribution. It saves me a lot of time and energy. wink

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049

    I never use content which requires attribution. It saves me a lot of time and energy. wink

    That's one way to do it, for sure! Since I have some, I have to be forever vigilant.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859

    I think I'll go the same route as Serene Night. I have so much stuff from here to use that it doesn't make sense to mess with the linking. I don't rely on the scenes anyway, they are only for the distant background and are DOF'd so no sense in using them. 

    Fishtales- do you ever adjust the shadow intensity with the Environment setting submenu that has Ground>Ground Shadow Intensity?  I didn't know that was there until a few days ago, I've been using Crush Blacks. Wonder what kind of difference there is- or if it's the same thing.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,552
    barbult said:

    I never use content which requires attribution. It saves me a lot of time and energy. wink

    That's one way to do it, for sure! Since I have some, I have to be forever vigilant.

    It is the only way that works for me. No way am I going to keep track of all those things I need to attribute. Plus there is plenty of stuff that doesn't require attribution.

    I purged my runtime of items that require attribution. To me, requiring attribution makes it an un-free item. I don't have time to be someone else's advertising. wink

     

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049

    Oh, I'm excited! I just got a response to my Uniform Dress bug report that says it has been updated. I'm downloading now. If it is truly all fixed, that will be an all time record fast response, I think. I'll check it and report back...

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,039
    edited March 2016
    Novica said:

     

    Fishtales- do you ever adjust the shadow intensity with the Environment setting submenu that has Ground>Ground Shadow Intensity?  I didn't know that was there until a few days ago, I've been using Crush Blacks. Wonder what kind of difference there is- or if it's the same thing.

    The quick answer to that is yes on all of them. I lower it to get a grey shadow to match the shadows on the HDRI or raise it to get a harder shadow if the shadow doesn't ground the subject. I also use crush blacks, burn highlights, distant light and any other light that helps with the overall look. The HDRI is usually only for ambient light as there are very few with a bright enough light source that works on its own. I find most need a little help.

    This one for example which I just rendered, I stopped it at 60% hence the noise, has a point light above the car pointing down on it as near to the ambient light as I could get it and the shadow set at 1.10. There was good shadow coming from the HDRI itself but the car looked flat and needed some light on it to make it flash :)

    Click on image for full size.

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    Post edited by Fishtales on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859

    I purged my runtime of items that require attribution. To me, requiring attribution makes it an un-free item. I don't have time to be someone else's advertising. wink

     

    LOL- I've found my twin! I make the car dealerships take off all that advertising garbage from my vehicle. I told one salesman, "Either take it off or you pay me $250 a month for driving around and advertising for you."  They couldn't get it off fast enough!

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,039
    edited March 2016

    Strange things happening here. I set all my images to _blank so they open in a new window but all those I posted aren't doing that. When I go in to check, they are already set, I then save without doing anything and then when I click on them they open in the new page as they should.

    Post edited by Fishtales on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,552
    Novica said:

    LOL- I've found my twin! I make the car dealerships take off all that advertising garbage from my vehicle. I told one salesman, "Either take it off or you pay me $250 a month for driving around and advertising for you."  They couldn't get it off fast enough!

     

    yeah, I don't like the strings attached fake gifts. I also find it pretty amusing the things people want to be cited for.

     I did run into a problem with one person wanting to use an image of mine commercially about two years ago . At the time, I did use freebie content. I had to list things to be cited in the piece.. It took hours to find the freebie content readme's some of which were unclear or just said 'have fun' or 'email me' In the end there were a couple props I had no licensing/usage for that I could not find. 

    In the end, it cost me the use of the promotional image, which was disappointing. That spurred me to delete uncertain content, even stuff I really liked.

    Even some pa's at stores at Rendo have restrictive terms or aren't clear in their freebie usage. Some pa's gift you an item when you buy another item... But the licensing terms are vague.

    I shy away from most freebies. I think it is wrong to call them free when they aren't.

    I wish folks would put clear licensing in their freebies. "Commerical use okay, no attribution required" is the only thing I will ever use.  

    I get why people want attribution. But my experience is people don't want to look at urls when buying your work. They will shy away from using your work if you have too much in the way of things that need to be attributed. =-)

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    Novica said:

    LOL- I've found my twin! I make the car dealerships take off all that advertising garbage from my vehicle. I told one salesman, "Either take it off or you pay me $250 a month for driving around and advertising for you."  They couldn't get it off fast enough!

     

    yeah, I don't like the strings attached fake gifts. I also find it pretty amusing the things people want to be cited for.

     I did run into a problem with one person wanting to use an image of mine commercially about two years ago . At the time, I did use freebie content. I had to list things to be cited in the piece.. It took hours to find the freebie content readme's some of which were unclear or just said 'have fun' or 'email me' In the end there were a couple props I had no licensing/usage for that I could not find. 

    In the end, it cost me the use of the promotional image, which was disappointing. That spurred me to delete uncertain content, even stuff I really liked.

    Even some pa's at stores at Rendo have restrictive terms or aren't clear in their freebie usage. Some pa's gift you an item when you buy another item... But the licensing terms are vague.

    I shy away from most freebies. I think it is wrong to call them free when they aren't.

    I wish folks would put clear licensing in their freebies. "Commerical use okay, no attribution required" is the only thing I will ever use.  

    I get why people want attribution. But my experience is people don't want to look at urls when buying your work. They will shy away from using your work if you have too much in the way of things that need to be attributed. =-)

    Excellent points!

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859

    Hmmm, question. If the headlamp is on when "there are no scene lights" does that include the IBL lighting if I have Dome and Scene and Draw Dome ON, with a map in the Environment Map?  I'm trying to figure out if that contributed to my lighting. I don't have anything else in the Scene, just the IBL from the Environment Map.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    edited March 2016
    barbult said:

    Oh, I'm excited! I just got a response to my Uniform Dress bug report that says it has been updated. I'm downloading now. If it is truly all fixed, that will be an all time record fast response, I think. I'll check it and report back...

    Well, my test is done. Some things were fixed. Some things were not. All in all, I think the product is much more usable now.

    These are the bugs I reported:

    1.  Poses>By Function>Grasp has two icons for Right Hand Grip Duster.duf. What is the difference? When the Duster is selected in the Scene pane, both Right Hand Grip Duster poses show up in Smart Content as being compatible with the Duster, but only one works. The other displays an error message when it is applied. What is wrong? Is one of the poses supposed to be compatible with G3F instead of the duster? Both poses seem to work now when applied to the duster, but Daz did not answer the question about what the difference is. Both poses seem to do the same thing.
    2.  Utilities>Visibility has two icons for each action. I assume one is for Iray and one for 3Delight, but there is no way for a user to distinguish which is which. Fixed by moving the icons into the Materials category and subcategory of Iray or 3Delight.
    3.  Nurse ID Badge.duf is in Lost and Found. Fixed.
    4.  When Maid Head Band is selected in the Scene pane, Smart Content>Materials, Files, Filter by Context checked, shows only 3Delight materials. Iray material is not shown. Instead, the Iray material for Maid Head Band is shown as compatible with Name Badge. Fixed.
    5.  Iray material icons have no text or symbol to distinguish them from 3Delight materials. This makes selecting them from the Content Library Product display difficult. Not changed. If you don't use Smart Content and prefer to use the Content Library>Products view, you will have a hard time. 
    6.  All 4 surfaces of the Socks Iray materials use very high SubD Displacement Level (value of 4). High surface SubD Displacement like this is very resource intensive in Iray. It seems unwarranted for a pair of socks that are unlikely to be the center of focus of a render of this product and may even be half covered by the shoes. Not changed. Workaround if displacement is causing too much system load: Just turn off displacement in the sock materials when using the Iray materials. I don't think you get any value from it in a normal render.
    7.  Nurses cap Iray materials render very gray, not white as shown in the promo images. I noticed that the base color is set to a pretty dark gray. Why? Not changed. Workaround: Change the Base Color to a lighter value, like the value used for the white dress.
    8.  The white socks render yellowish and splotchy, not white as shown in the promo images. The gray socks Iray material also renders splotchy. I think the splotchy issue is caused by a bad UV map. UV map was fixed. Color is unchanged. In other lighting I guess it looks OK, so I won't worry about it. My lighting was probably mostly to blame for the yellowish tint.
    9.  The socks also have a poke through problem sometimes. You can even see it in the store promos. Not fixed. Workaround: hide the character's feet and toes and/or use the FBMExpandAll morph on the socks. Turning off displacement may also help.

    (TEE HEE - forum spell checker wanted to change FBMExpandAll to Bedpan. laugh)

    Post edited by barbult on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    Novica said:

    Hmmm, question. If the headlamp is on when "there are no scene lights" does that include the IBL lighting if I have Dome and Scene and Draw Dome ON, with a map in the Environment Map?  I'm trying to figure out if that contributed to my lighting. I don't have anything else in the Scene, just the IBL from the Environment Map.

    I don't think HDRI or emissive surfaces count as "lights" to turn off the headlamp. To be in full control of your lighting, turn the headlamp OFF in the Parameters pane.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859
    barbult said:
    Novica said:

    Hmmm, question. If the headlamp is on when "there are no scene lights" does that include the IBL lighting if I have Dome and Scene and Draw Dome ON, with a map in the Environment Map?  I'm trying to figure out if that contributed to my lighting. I don't have anything else in the Scene, just the IBL from the Environment Map.

    I don't think HDRI or emissive surfaces count as "lights" to turn off the headlamp. To be in full control of your lighting, turn the headlamp OFF in the Parameters pane.

    Yeah, I know. But I opened a new scene and forgot, and didn't want to re-render the stupid thing. frown

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    edited March 2016
    Novica said:
    barbult said:
    Novica said:

    Hmmm, question. If the headlamp is on when "there are no scene lights" does that include the IBL lighting if I have Dome and Scene and Draw Dome ON, with a map in the Environment Map?  I'm trying to figure out if that contributed to my lighting. I don't have anything else in the Scene, just the IBL from the Environment Map.

    I don't think HDRI or emissive surfaces count as "lights" to turn off the headlamp. To be in full control of your lighting, turn the headlamp OFF in the Parameters pane.

    Yeah, I know. But I opened a new scene and forgot, and didn't want to re-render the stupid thing. frown

    I have followed some advice from one of the Daz guys and created a startup scene with a headlamp blocker, so every new scene forces the headlamp off. Now I don't have to remember anymore. If I can find the link, I'll edit it in here.

    Here's the link.

    Post edited by barbult on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859

    Well, it's easy to do, just turn it off in the Default Camera and over in the Render Settings under General, then save your setup as !!!!!Default or whatever so it's at the beginning of your Scene folder.  wink  

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859
    edited March 2016

    Rating: Recommend All. Nice variety of poses in the Walk Don't Run set, the hood in the hoodie can be manipulated on the top and the sides to close it toward the face. Hikari Hair goes well with hoodies/hats. I like the wrinkles in the pant legs and the detailing. Luthbell and Luthbelli always do great with details. Roisin did well in Iray and Reality.  Back Fence 2 has props that make sense and are individually moved. Recommend increasing bump so the ground plane looks like it has more depth.

    Okay, this is probably the best comparison scene I've done to see Iray vs Reality. This is WITHOUT tweaking any materials. Same lightset (one of the Outdoor Environments by Dimension Theory) with same dome rotation for Y.

    Character: FW Roisin HD (V6)  with  Hikari Hair  using Walk Don't Run poses. Set is Back Fence 2    The branches do not come with the set.

    RoisinBackyard Fence IRAY2.png
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    roisinBackyardFenceReality.png
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    Post edited by Novica on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    Novica said:

    Rating: Recommend All. Nice variety of poses in the Walk Don't Run set, the hood in the hoodie can be manipulated on the top and the sides to close it toward the face. Hikari Hair goes well with hoodies/hats. I like the wrinkles in the pant legs and the detailing. Luthbell and Luthbelli always do great with details. Roisin did well in Iray and Reality.  Back Fence 2 has props that make sense and are individually moved. Recommend increasing bump so the ground plane looks like it has more depth.

    Okay, this is probably the best comparison scene I've done to see Iray vs Reality. This is WITHOUT tweaking any materials. Same lightset (one of the Outdoor Environments by Dimension Theory) with same dome rotation for Y.

    Character: FW Roisin HD (V6)  with  Hikari Hair  using Walk Don't Run poses. Set is Back Fence 2    The branches do not come with the set.

    The Iray one doesn't look quite right. Lighting is flat. See how much light is inside her hood? I bet you had headlamp on. Do you think so?

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859
    edited March 2016

     

    barbult said:

    he Iray one doesn't look quite right. Lighting is flat. See how much light is inside her hood? I bet you had headlamp on. Do you think so?

    Yep, that's the one I am re-rendering- I did an edit but apparently when I highlighted some text I took out the next line! (that said it was the headlamp one and I'd have to re-do it.)

    Edit: This is the same ISO, same tweaking in postwork that the Reality one had (same shadow adjustments, same midtone adjustments, same highlight adjustments) so you can see what areas render darker. This would need to be lightened and the midtones changed more, even a higher ISO would be needed. But voila, no pesky headlamp.

     

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  • jakibluejakiblue Posts: 7,281
    edited March 2016

    So because I'm bored, I thought it would be fun to go through my DIM and change it to "A to Z" to check out my really OLD products - I was thinking of fitting some old A3 stuff to Star! - and I came across this little beauty. Remember the 3x3 Funcat? This cutie is so old, it still has .rsr files, plus it has MAT files for PP, P4, P5. Heh. I've always loved this buggy cos it reminds me of the Banana Splits tv show (uh oh chongo, it's danger island time! Man, that Jan Micheal Vincent was a hottie in his day)

    Recommend: YES! Good little buggy for toons. (once you convert rsr's)

    The funcat loads into 4.9 no problems at all. I changed all the mats to Iray ones - most of them are from the default DAZ Uber folder, that comes with DS. I really need a good "rubber" one, that would work for tyres and the handles on the controls. 

    Funcat is dirt cheap right now - it's a good toony buggy that would work well with the toon characters etc. Once you convert the .rsr's to .png's and get rid of the extra P4/P5 mats (and keep the PP ones), then convert to Iray shaders, this beauty renders up well!!!

    PS Because it's a cr2, it installs into the Poser library - I really want to keep it in my DS library cos I always tend to forgot to go to the poser library to look for stuff. Does anyone know what i would save it as? Support Asset -> Figure/Props asset? Or something else?

     

     

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,552

    Wow, I just love coming to this thread to see all the amazing things going on here. Barbult, I am so impressed by your stunning iray renders. Novica I like to see how reality works. You do a great job illustrating the difference between iray/reality.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859
    edited March 2016

    Okay, here's something fun to see- what goes on behind the scenes. Open on the left is LuxRender, on the right is Corel Photo Paint's Adjustment Lab that I like so much. I've mentioned this before, it has all the sliders right there together for contrast, saturation, midtones, intensity, hue, etc. The sliders have already been applied in Adjustment Lab, as you slide, it changes. I wanted to see how close I could get the Iray one to the L.R. one as the L.R. was rendering. I'd say what stands out to me on this one is the amount of highlight intensity needed to bring the Iray one up to the L.Render one. There's loss of hair strands (the right side and top bangs) in Iray, I was matching the darkness of the midtones in the face as the skin is the most important thing to compare. (Shadows, midtones, intensity, lightness.) 

    What is cool is that I can move the sliders over in LuxRender and it makes the changes then and there. There's no sliders for midtones or shadows, but it's still neat to see the render change in real time from those other aspects. 

    Keep in mind the Iray one on the right already has the tuning to match the Reality one. I can take the Reality one and tune it to whatever I like when it's done.  EDIT: I had to delete the image and cut out the Roisins because it wasn't representing them well at all. I'll post the individual images in a few minutes.

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    Post edited by Novica on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859
    edited March 2016

    Iray and Reality, trying to get them as close as possible. The difference in postwork that I noted was the highlights- really had to turn them up in Iray (with Burn Highlights on 0.25, not turned down at all) and Iray had an ISO of 135 and L.Render ended up at 192 ISO (the sliders are different though- as I said, I don't have Burn Highlights or Crush Black input, so these are hard to compare. But what you can see, is when getting the shadows and midtones about the same for the skin, the Iray lost details under the hood on the hair strands which go into shadow. Also notice the crispness of the fence boards- the texture is better. The garbage bag has more shine in Iray, but remember, the highlight was turned up to 100 in postwork in Corel Photo Paint (which normally I only do about 8-15) so I wasn't suprised on that. 

    The eyes are pretty close, eh?

    RoisinBackyard FenceIRAY Match.png
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    RoisinCloseupRealityMatch.png
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    Post edited by Novica on
  • KharmaKharma Posts: 3,214

    Textures on the hoodie are different too, the one on my right is alot smoother, did you change the texture on that one or did it just render that way?

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859

    Nope, no changes on textures anywhere.

     

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    edited March 2016

    Which is which? Oh, I see it is in the filenmame,

    Post edited by barbult on
  • KharmaKharma Posts: 3,214
    Novica said:

    Nope, no changes on textures anywhere.

     

    The iray hoodie looks wrinkled compared to the reality render, I wonder what caused the difference if you didn't make any adjusments to it

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,565

    Difference in how displacement or SubD is handled?

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859
    edited March 2016

    Difference in how displacement or SubD is handled?

    I didn't do anything to either one, but here's the Reality settings. (Keep in mind I don't tweak anything other than exposure values, lights. Not into materials yet. I'll check out the studio settings, didn't change them either. It's default.

    I'll change the material to cloth and let's see what that does. Reality did it as glossy.  

    EDIT: Well, that's a NO on doing cloth. It makes it have corded sections like corduroy.

    The displacement in both is 100% but with Studio being 0.10 and -0.10  and Reality is 0.0010 and -0.0010 

    Studio: Subdivision level is 2, Catmark, Interpolation is Sharp Edges. Reality is Subdivision 0 but Keep Sharp Edges is checked.

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  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,859
    edited March 2016

    This was the Cloth option. I changed the ISO and exposure settings to show you what you can do/fine tune. See the glitter in the back of the hoodie?  My goal was to keep the detail in the left shoulder (our left.) where the light hit.

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    Post edited by Novica on
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