Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 7
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Kalea 7 Sleek Chic (Gen3F) Hanna Hair (Gen2, Gen3 V4)
I had featured Kalea before, but it's been awhile so doing a few more. First one is the reposted one. My image name says OOT Space lights so it would be HDR 360 Environments Space (for D.S. Iray) lighting.
Had to smile at the Sweet Chic product, you sure get a wide range of materials- from the glimmering gold to the whatever-that-is-but-looks-like-the-sixties material. Then the cutout outfits can be used for futuristic scenes. So many options!
In case anyone's wondering about render time (keep in mind I have a good speed on the Alienware51) I did the Momiji Tree and the Realistic Grass Evolution (NOT the low polygon version) and for both of these together, loading every grass section there is (front to back, all of them) at 700 x 700 pixels it was 14 minutes 38 seconds. Impressive! Just used the default Iray lights. (This makes me feel like I am looking through 3D glasses. Those leaves! My eyes don't seem to focus LOL)
I have a lot to catch up on here
. I thought I marked this thread so I would get notices on new posts.
With the extra discount dropping the Pro bundle down to $37 for 11 items (about $3.35 per item) I went ahead and bit the bullet. So showcasing Lucian. First of all, the quality is a bit disturbing to me. The fingernails- how can you possibly render this man without seeing that glaring blue-green result? It's in the promos, it would be hard to miss. I went and changed almost every color in surfaces (to white, lighter blues, pinks.) I also want you to notice the- wait for it- green eyebrows under Painter's Lights.
The mouth is a bit harder to pose, it pulls a lot easier with a bit more pucker than I'm used to. I don't have men with that shape of mouth, so variety may be a good thing. Not sure. You can see how the ends really pull out into the face. The area naturally indents under the lower lip, so it makes it a bit "different" to work with posing.
I do like the chiseled jaw.
The hands are too large- these are at 75%- what do you think?
Anyway, would I recommend him? For a dour person, yes, or one that isn't super expressive with the mouth with the more-closed positions. But you may have to postwork the eyebrows (green, seriously?), will definitely have to change the nails, and watch for resizing the hands. I'm not very impressed with whoever tested this before release frankly.
DarwinsMishap is releasing Parker for Lucian, and he is looking good. (LOL, Parker, don't know about DarwinsMishap, we haven't met, but the avatar's adorable!) Be sure and pop into D.M's thread here in Art Studio and see what the cross with Parker and Gianni looks like. Awesome!
Lucian 7 Jonas Hair Norseman (Gen3M) Akira Hair Arabian Prince (Gen3M)
Thank You @xmasrose. Is there anything with lighting, shaders, or effects that you would love to have but dont see in the store? Very cool how inspirational this thread is. And I feel the strong urge to get back to work.
I was hoping to see some renders with the star ring prop, the trans map on that one was challenging...to get stars and a little bit of glow around them.
Your image: The drop shadow on the face and hands looks like its falling in the same angle as the figure and wings so my guess is its from the same light source hitting the hair or wings.
I couldn't recall if anyone has showcased Abel yet. Here's a couple of renders. Shown as he comes other than with new expressions. Overall, I like the older and more gaunt look. Because of the facial features, most of the expressions I tried required fine tuning as he has a default grumpy look that makes smiles look forced.
The biggest issue I had with Abel was that several of the shirts I tried had fit problems at the shoulder and even Zev0 Fit Controls could not correct it. The front and side headshots use Peasant Shirt for Genesis 3 Males and I only had to expand the overall shirt size slightly for a good fit. For two Genesis 3 shirts (Casual Style for Genesis 3 Males, Mobster Outfit for Genesis 3 Males) the shirt would appear OK in the viewport but render in Iray with patches of skin showing near the shoulders. I could not find any combination of Fit Control, smoothing, or collision iterations that would eliminate the skin. I did find that a shirt for Genesis 2 (Eldritch Seeker, used in the full body view) did work with Fit Control to eliminate the skin. May just be my lack of skill, but it was frustrating that standard items had issues. I did not play around with the body morphs to see what those might do.
Great to see Abel showcased. I like him but find his eyes a bit weird and the way the shader has been done they don't reflect much.
I used Grantham suit and it worked OK but other clothes had the problem you mentionned.
Thanks folks, he had not been rendered that I can recall. Good to know about the clothing difficulties. I'll be honest, when I see unique characters, and characters I remember, I think of when we showcased the Morris M4 men and these came to mind:
Falcon
Malachi (I like the shadows under the eyes, not a another pretty boy!)
And I was looking for a gal last week and finally found her- From Liquid Rust for the Generation 4 (you can GenX) here's a fun gal with thick eyebrows: Naiad
and when I found her, this made me do a double take- Calvin for V4 (yes, a MAN)
BUT the main store I want folks to peruse for some really neat men (we showcased him for three days on the thread IIRC, and I have ALL the store, many of us started collecting once we found the store and showed them) is Phoenix 1966 store. LOVE those dudes!!!!
I have most of Phoenix1966 store too, really like Agnes!
So, I just went through all my orders for the PC Club sale, and WOW. I bought over 600 items! I lost count after 500. Scared to actually total it all up, but I will say I hit some serious deals. I found DAZ in December of last year, so there was a lot of older stuff on my wishlist. I hit the BYOB and category sales hard, plus the $5 character deals. I think I cleaned out the Vintage and Medieval categories! I also picked up a lot of fantastic deals on G2 stuff, as well as some of the less expensive new stuff to get the discounts, plus a lot of good vendor sales. I have a lot of Jack's, Marshian's, Traveler's and Darwin's stuff now, plus a huge amount of RDNA bundles that came over from Arki and many other talented artists.
So I'm in seventh heaven, but can't remember half of what I've bought. I think I need to spend a couple of months just playing in my runtime. Most days I only spent between $3 and $10, a couple of days were WAY more than that. I probably spent several hundred dollars, spread out over a few paychecks, and pinched from here and there. I might as well sign over my royalty checks and my paychecks to DAZ! Most of it can be written off for the book covers, website and promo art I'm doing, but I'd buy it even if I couldn't.
Honestly- it's easy to spend that on cover, web and marketing design if you hire someone else and then have none of these goodies to show for it! So yeah, I'll justify it if I have to, LOL. But I'll admit, it's an addiction/passion that I love and a stress reliever. Whatever works!
Probably my favorite item, that I now use all the time is NGS Anagenesis Revolution 2. Those shaders have made a HUGE improvement in how I render. I also picked up more of Dimension Theory's Soft Light Probes, and they are fantastic. I love Titus-F, he looks great. Darwin's guys always look good. I'm happy to have many more Genesis 3 guys and gals.
Stuff to try: I have a ton of Iray shaders to play with and many older sets that can be retextured. I've got a ton of scripts to try- such as Batch Render, Skin Blender, Instances Plus and Mask & Mutiplass.
Time to stop shopping and start rendering, but I am waiting on a few releases to hit the store (Damen and Parker for sure) for some projects I have in mind, Sigh. I don't think it ever ends! I need more hard drive space, which I could afford if I stopped buying stuff!
Edit: I added it up. I spent about $1200. Wow! I'm not rich. I am frugal and will pinch things I don't care about to have the things I do care about. But dang, I didn't even know I had $1200 to spend! Not anymore! LOL
Well, with the BYOB you can be excused for racking up that total- 8 things for $2.99 adds up and they had a good variety.
Those bundles were a nice opportunity, glad you were able to scoop some up. I got Girl 7, the rest I had or had gotten items from the bundle that I wanted. If you got quite a few bundles, those alone will keep you busy for awhile!
There were so many freebies too- I was keeping an eye on the threads that were listing them (and thank you to the folks who were keeping everyone up to date on what they were seeing.) I also had some fun with the $4 category (that dropped to $2.70 on some days.) I think that ran up my total. I'm afraid to count, even though i tried to show a bit of restraint, some deals were too good to pass up. I hope you also got the gift card so you could get your products with that discount too. Once you render, let us know what you think of the products if you get a chance.
Sure will, Novica! I can't even keep track of everything I got, but I spent carefully and really scoured the store for the deals, contemplating what I was buying. Last month was a three paycheck month, plus had some nice extra $$$ that came my way, so I was able to swing it. I don't regret it. Got some fabulous deals to keep me happy for a while (though I'm still working my way through the Dreamlight 90% off tutorials from the after Christmas sale last year!)
Most of what I got this past month was less than $1 and you're right- so many freebies too! I was thrilled to pick up many of Jack's older sets with the new Iray versions as well. They look amazing. Those will be great fun to render!
Well, Pensacola was exactly 30 degrees colder last night than the night before. (Brrrr. Went to 35, was 65 previously. Nippy!
I'm working on a couple things, and looking at character noses today. And with just scrutinizing noses, I'm getting a good feel as to the variety. So got to thinking, we haven't asked this question in awhile, so let's do it-
Who is your favorite Genesis 3 female character? (not base figure, character derived from them.) Please provide the link when you post.(You just highlight with your cursor, then go up to the link and click it. Enter the URL. In the Target tab, from the dropdown, choose New Window (_blank) so when people click it, they can just x out and still be where they were in the forums.
Here's a render I just posted in the gallery, it's the top portion of my cover redo for Crazy in the Heart, the book that brought me to DAZ in the first place. Couldn't find a stock photo I liked of my hero, Brett. A friend offered to make him in 3D. Now, I'm getting ready to redo the cover the way I originally envisioned it with DAZ3D products. Hoping to have the new cover and a print version of the book out next month.
This render features:
Now I've got to do the bottom half, and then putting it all together with postwork. M4 has a tiny bit of poke through on his shirt. Working with morphs++ and clothing on an M4 is a real pain. The Toolboi set (at Rendo) had a lot of good morphs built into it to counteract this, only have to do a minor touchup, so I'm happy with it.
Beautiful! The colors are vibrant and the lighting is just delicious!
My favorite Gen3 girl is Aylin from Darwins Mishaps. Two skins, unique face, lots of options.
Well done, simple yet makes you want to go out a buy the unique character.
Thanks, Novica! I had fun with that one. Now, to do the bottom half (ugh!) and then put it all together.
Love the renders of Aylin. I haven't picked her up yet, she looks very interesting!
Yes, Aylin slipped by me too. It's so hard trying to remember interesting skins, particularly when the main promos can only show one. How do you folks remember them all? I don't even try, it's hit or miss. (99% miss. It's like, "Ohhhhh! Look at that!" Particularly true with eyes too.)
I don't know how I missed this post, we must have been posting at the same time. My favorite G3F right now is Belladzine's Esther. She was the model I used for "Kat", the main character of my dark romantic comedy series with superheroes, Black Kat. All the products I used are listed on my gallery page.
Here's the final version. I had some great help from the forum members here on the Book Cover thread. I'm getting ready to do some Christmas promos of her in the Santa Baby outfit (in black, of course!) I think I will take my new Iray Leather and Fur Shaders for a spin!
Ya Aylin has the very pale white skin and the pale normal skin with lots of make up options. But she also looks very good without make up. And her face is not a classical beauty which is on of the reasons I like her so much. She is one of the main characters in a story I am working on. She was perfect for the High Queen.
I see characters I have missed all the time lol. Now that the shopping frenzy is over I need to go back to rendering each character just so I know what I have....
I know, right? I think we need a "use what you have" challenge!
Darlin', that's what I've been doing for the past three years on this thread LOL. (Edit- well my 7 threads...)
LOL!
Thank you- and I love those renders of her.
There's always the RRRR (Random Runtime Roulette Renders) challenge over in the Commons. Not tried it myself but it does look fun, and a new challenge has just started: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/127526/rrrr-alternative-holidays-render-contest#latest
Going back through the thread- and this is rather sad. I filed a bug report on a very easy to fix problem, and it has not been done. Did I forget to mention this bug report was filed back on MAY 15TH? SIX MONTHS AGO. If they're that bogged down with bug reports...????
Amaya has arm mats for the legs in Top Coat Weight. Not hard at all to fix, and who wants a glaring vendor initial ("S") in the middle of the leg???
Maybe @DemonicaEvilius and @Silver can fix this product?
I remember this and I remember them saying something about a fix coming up right away. Apparently that did not happen? I think I just bought her over the pc or pa sales....
Yesterday I counted and I had 68 open help requests (aka bug reports).