Would you find these promos useful?
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,773
When I'm considering a product, I would really like to know how many material zones an object has and what can be hidden or retextured easily. I made this for the G2M Royal Guard because I had no idea until I bought it that there was a nice tunic underneath. "Clay" renders are nice, but I think these sorts of renders might tempt me to buy things I might not if I thought I could use them for kitbashing. It also might prevent a lot of the "can someone render this...?" questions that pop up after some product releases. Do you think these would help in your decisions to buy a product or do you not really care?
. Thanks for taking a look.
(btw DAZ, feel free to use these images for the Royal Guard if you want)
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Comments
Extremely useful, and totally helpful in decisionmaking!
I should have mentioned it above, but another thing that could really help boost a product's popularity is if there are renders showing it autofitting well to the opposite gender. You wouldn't have to show it if it was really distorted by the breasts/lack thereof (because that wasn't the intent), but if something did auto-fit nicely, showing it off would be a big bonus selling point.
They might help, but I'm not really certain what percentage of the time they would make/break a sale. I don't know that it happens often, however I did recently look at a product and waffle because I really just wanted the boots but I couldn't tell if they were part of the pants or not (and if they were a separate material zone, that would be good enough since I could then hide the pants part).
I would find that extremely useful.
Yes. Too many mens products are one material zone making them kind of useless. I'd like to know this in advance so this would be great info.
Fisty and Darc often show a promo with material zones. I find those very useful.
I take it even a step further and apply a light checkerboard texture so the quality of the UV mapping is visible, very important for shader presets/kitbashing.
(Glad someone notices, fastbike) =)
yes, absolutely. very helpful. :)
YES! For sure! I love kit bashing (I think that's the term right? Mixing and matching different outfits and props and stuff?), so product images like that are a big help. Some of the vendors are already doing something a bit simlar:
I'd like to see them push it a little farther like you illustrated - showing even the different surfaces that can be customized. I figure that's probably pretty difficult to do though -or maybe not so much difficult as time consuming.
Great idea, SnowSultan! That would be very helpful.
Glad to hear many of you would find it useful. Divamakeup, it's not too much trouble and I'd could probably do it for any PAs that might be interested. I'm working on making some presets that would speed things up for making those sorts of renders anyway.
+1
As I've just gotten more unto kit-bashing, there have been several products where knowing what flexibility the product's mat zones could offer would have made the purchase decision easier.
I was going to say to do something like that. I know I once I had someone thing that the material zone example was an addional texture...
Extremely useful! Just today I was considering buying an outfit and wished I could see how the material zones were set up, I am surprised it's not shown more often in promos.
I like to use shaders a lot, especially for metal and leather. Promo images that show the material zones would make a big difference in my buying decisions. Had the Night Guard had these promo images when it was released, I might have bought it! (For now, it will have be content to sit on my wishlist.)
Add my vote for this. If I were selling a product, I would want to showoff everything I could, even if only one or two more people would buy it as a result.
OT, I would also like architectural/nature sets to have a long distance render so we can see the full prop. Additionally, in the actual product I'd like an Iray logo on the thumbnail of all Iray elements so I don't have to mouseover and read the fine print to differentiate from 3Delight.
Another thing I'd like to see would be close-up renders of textures that are rendered with the default HDRI and nothing else in the scene - clean renders of textures that will look EXACTLY the same on everyone's system. I feel like I'm taking a chance every time I buy a texture because they're always shown in colorful promo images with hair, clothing, and other elements. Here are five examples of Janna for G2F, a very good texture that I've used often.
Very useful and I have always kitbashed but with doing more iray lately, I have tons of great shaders so material zones are my new friend!
Just picked up lots of V4 3delight stuff to use in g3 iray all bashed together.
I've been saying for a long time that promos for objects, particularly clothes, would be more useful if an image showing material zones was included. For environments, I like to see a shot from above where the camera has been pulled right back to show the full extent of the model. I love looking at a lot of the promo artwork, but I'm always more likely to buy if I'm shown full details of what I can do with the product, rather than just what the PA has done with it.
Definitely would like to see this more, and also with the UV grid as Fisty does.
Here's the checker texture tile.. I have a big pack of them over at sharecg with numbers and colors and stuff but this one is best for promos, it's visible but doesn't overwhelm the view of the mesh or the colors of the matzones.
(usually best to tile it 2 or 3 times for clothing 'cause the squares are kinda big otherwise)
Absolutely.
Sometimes it is not immediately apparent what is actually being sold. After that has been determined, not always possilbe to be sure what's included, or not.
This, so much this.
+10 in case you missed the sentence above.:)
When I'm buying the character, the main part I'm buying is the texture; those that hide it rarely get me to buy it. This doesn't matter what age the character is meant to be; textures were created by using adult references; I want to see the details, as shapes are very much secondary, and even tertiary.
Yes, the material zones images would be very useful.
I also appreciate knowing about fitting to the opposite sex as well. Some outfits used to come with 'premade' breast shapes built into them and would look ridiculous and you couldn't get rid of them. Not sure if content creators still build in breasts or just allow clothes to fit naturally to whatever gender they're used for.
How to put this..
OH HELL YES!!
The default HDRI is dire for most skin tones. Your never going to convince people that they must show a character in the worst light rather than the best light.
Yes, material zone promo pics would be outstanding.
So, I am going ot have to agree with Khory here. the default HDRI is awful by itself.
Honestly, I do not try to hide anything with my promos. I usually use plain white lights and an HDRI that is mostly only effecting the lower areas. I do want my pictures to look pretty and be a fine representation of what I do. I love doing skins and they are my favorite part of what I do. I see all the areas that you would like exposed and I know that I make an effort to show all these areas in my promos. I always want to show the hands, torse, feet and face. I always try to front and back with as much exposed as possible.
So maybe that suggestion isn't directed specifically at me, but I wanted to let you know that I care and I try to provide useful promos, not just fancy ones.
Another YES vote!