Kit-bashing and other esoteric stuff
cclesue
Posts: 420
in The Commons
I'm assuming kit-bashing is using bits and pieces from disparate products to produce a different render. This is something I want to do but much of what I need to use is from older M4/V4 products but wish to apply them to g2/3 figures. What's the secret to apply these items across figure platforms. I had a fair handle on using Poser but still a Studio newbie.
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Wear Them all, creates auto fit clones for V4/M4 to G3. G3M version and G3F version. I think, you can fit V/M4 stuff to Genesis natively, then save it out as a "wearable preset", then fit that to G2M/F.
However, shoes tend to be iffy, or just crumple/warp terribly. Heels especially.
Bookmarking this thread as I'm eager to see the replies. People throw around terms like kit bashing like it's the easist thing in the world. I know what kit bashing means in terms of model building from back in the day, but it seems to be a bit more complicated in the 3D context, especially when you start dealing with items from different generations.
I guess I have been doing it for awhile, so to me it isn't hard or complicated. Just load several different items, either for that figure or autofitted from another generation if you have the clones and see what works/looks good together. Shoes will always be the biggest issue since they don't autofit well at all. It helps to know how modeling works as sometimes you need to edit mesh, merge meshes, etc. Also knowing DS more than just load and render helps also as sometimes to need to parent items instead of fit to, etc. I also use the smoothing modifier and the deformers quite a bit.
Here is an example. I have a winter scene I am working on. The figure is G3F, the jacket and boots are for G3F, the pants for V4, the top for Aiko 3, the scarf is for M4, the hair and cap are V4 that I had to remodel a bit
Okay, if you want to fit V4 to Genesis 2 Female you should consider getting this product:
http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-for-genesis-2-female
It will not only let you autofit V4 clothes directly to G3F, but contains the UV's for V4. This means you will be able to use V4 textures on G2F. (It also comes with a morph shape for the stock V4 character, so you can make G2F's proportions looks more like V4's. It will NOT allow you to transfer any morphs from V4 characters to G2F). There is a separate product that does the same deal for M4 to Genesis 2 Male. You don't have to go through any of this if you want to just use Genesis, but you didn't mention Genesis in your query.
Regarding kitbashing, your understanding is right. You are basically choosing to apply different elements from different clothing/prop sets to your character. You could use, say, the M4 bodysuit as the base, some of JoeQuick's free sci-fi armor over that, and then top it off with some G2 helmet/visor combinations. I would go a step further and customize the existing textures so that the color schemes are pleasing to me and the final result doesn't look slapped-together from spare parts.
For certain things, like helmets, belts, capes, or hair, I would rather load them without my figure selected and then parent them to the appropriate body part of the figure. Sometimes these things distort and look rubbery when autofit. Shoes tend to fit OK if they are flat-soled as a rule but heeled shoes/boots do not. Incidentially, by using parenting you should be able to use any hair product on any figure to an acceptable degree.
Kitbashing could also refer to taking the textures from one character and applying them to a differen character's morph. I do this a lot, taking M4 and V4 textures (usually by MortemVetus or P3Design) and applying them to Genesis 2 characters.
I've fitted M4 outfits to G2Male, saved the outfit as a "wearable" for G2M and then used that outfit on G3Male. About 75% it works very well. Shirt collars tend to deform, and sometimes the crotches of pants do, too. It also depends on the poses you put your character through. Weirdly enough, I've sometimes been happier with the way the M4 clothes fit G2M than on the original M4 figure!
That's some seriously beautiful work!
Kit bashing is a blast I do it all the time. if your going to kit bash cross characters you will need some tools to help you accomplish it.. all for mentioned tools above will do the job great.
Kit bashing environments to make them expansive can be a little tricky at first . but you can create some really neat stuff by combining content for environments. it just takes a little practice.
Thanks, hopefully the full render will turn out ok once i get the environment finished.
I do a lot of kitbashing. But mine is mostly architechural. I did have a project last year though, demanded a fair amount of bashing together characters -- and then having to dress most of them. A couple of them ended up consisting of mainly the clothes, with, iirc, not much of anything inside of them. You would think that would make things easier. But it doesn't.
It was an Oz book. The cast of the Oz "universe" is teeming with grotesques, and living constructs. And, even though Neil's designs for most of the characters -- certainly all of the ones in Baum's own 14 books -- have been public domain for decades, no one has reproduced them for 3D. There are a fair number of spinnoffs. But not direct copies of John R. Neil's originals.
Most of the figures that I had to put together were for just one illustration, but a couple of the one in that contined through the book. The Woggle-Bug was the absolute worst to work with. Which is hardly surprising. He's based on Noggins's Insect-I-Vore. Using the Wasp predominately, but with the Roach antenae added in, and two invisible Genesis 1s for the arms. There is a primitive oval smoothing out the chest/thorax. The coat, vest and neckcloth I'm pretty sure are all from the SickleMar sets and everything tied together with shaders. Boots, gloves, garters, and hat are all brought in from other sources. My shader work wasn't complete on the gloves in this reference shot.
Scraps, the patchwork girl, was much easier to work with. She's actually a heavily morphed 3DU's 'Toon Amy. Netherworks?'s Samedi contributed the button eyes, and I'm not sure what jewelery set contributed the beads for the teeth. I'm pretty sure the clown nose was a freebie from somewhere or other. I think the skirt is another of Sickleyields. The bloomers are from the Genesis Dreamweaver set in the PC. The shoes are from Littlefox's Notorious set. I can't remember where the shirt came from at this point. But I'm pretty sure the belt was from one of the other PC sets. I ended up using a different wig in the final version. This one didn't pose well enough.
I also had to create the Red Wagon (and the Sawhorse, but he wasn't a kitbash) this one uses 3djoji's Hearse for the main wheel assembly, his Tilbury Mood for the seats, the old DAZ Royal Carriages (the London Brown variant) for the tracings, and adh3d's 1908 motor buggy for the fenders. There is also a slew of primitives (and shaders) tieing everything together. The finished version used in the book also has some added decals.
Sometimes things you find in markets are *almost* right. Andi3D's Tinman over at RDNA came closer to Neil's version than any of the other spinoffs that I found. But he wasn't close enough. I ended up making the torso and head invisible and kitbashing in a variant (using the original eyes, nose and ears) which I built from primitives. The jaw isn't rigged, but I can move it up and down if I need to. The rest of the figure is all Andi3D's though. With a shader.
This whole kit-bashing thing started with my purchase of RawArt’s superb Anicinabe. Just no duds for it. I wanted an Iroquois or Mohawk figure so I went on line and found some art work dedicated to Northeast Native American (NA’s) If you are interested do a google for the art of Robert Griffing. (oviously the one on the gray background is my unfinished render)
For the past month or so I’ve tried various things and so far this is what I’ve come up with. I used the stuff from Cheyenne for M4. I got the chaps to work somewhat on the g3 figure although I had to hide Ani’s legs since they didn’t parent correctly. This didn’t seem to prevent posing however. The rifle is a freebie from Rendo.
Things I need: (Any Ideas)
Various colored feathers and some long Turkey feathers
Over the knee leg wraps (not chaps) Swashbucklers might work if I can fit them. (I’ve noticed any plain toed boot or shoe will look like a moccasin it you make the hard sole invisible.)
Various ear and nose Jewelry and bead ware.
Upper and lower arm bracelets.
A plain gorget.
A decent powder horn
An NA style bow (not these recurve and fantasy things)
A patch knife. If you look at the various images you will see a small sheath knife suspended from the neck. This is a patch knife used to cut the rifle patches for the muzzle loaders.
Have a look at this set
http://www.daz3d.com/efja-lbearoutfits-for-m4
80% off right now, or 96% off when also buying a new release.
It contains an Indian bow, and the loin cloth looks more like the one in the picture than the one you have in your render.
I second that! That is a wonderful product and I use it all the time. Once you get the V4 outfits onto G2F you can save it as a "wearable'. And then that wearable can be used anytime on G3F. Or even just load a G2F next to your G3F - once the V4 outfit is on the G2F you can easily add it to G3F via autofit.
I've only been doing 3D art for about 8 months, but from what I've learned so far it seems that "kit bashing" can refer to putting together items or parts of items to create something new - either a new outfit, a new character, a new environment, etc. My first "kit bash" was actually my character Athyn. She is, herself, a kit bash - as she's a G2F character but she uses G3F skin/mats thanks to Cayman Studios' awesome product. The skin/mat is a kit bash too, as it's the product of me mixing the Genesis 3 base skin texture with the Victoria 7 skin texture in Photoshop. Here's my kit bashed character, Athyn:
And this outfit is also an example of a "kit bash" as it's the product of several outfits mixed together:
The sash is from the Fair Corsair outfit for G2F (it's a part of the pants but I've made the rest of the pants invisible). The top is (if I remember correctly) a V4 freebie top from Evilinnocence. The arm and leg warmers are from the Onyx outfit for Genesis 1, as are the necklace and earrings. The boots are from another V4 outfit. The shorts are from the Magus outfit for Genesis 1 that comes with Daz Studio. And the glasses are a freebie that was made for HiveWire 3D's "Dawn" figure. The hair is a freebie hair made for V4. Most of the outfit's elements are then reshaded using JGreenlees' Elegant Fabric shaders.
This environment is a kit bash of three different environments:
One of the best things to have in helping to kit bash outfits and environment is having good shader sets. Some of my favorite shader sets that have been a big help have been JGreenlees' Nature Shaders, her Everyday Fabric Shaders, Wilmap's wonderful free shaders, and AllenArt's awesome free shaders. I highly recommend them. :)
Kit bashing can be hugely fun and quite satisfying because it lets you create and render something that is unique. I hardly ever render things straight "out of the box" without doing at least a little kit bashing work to it. It can be quite time consuming to create new outfits, characters, and environments with kit bashing but, to me, it's also a lot of fun! :D
I agree with MM, very cool looking outfit and character! :) I hope you show us the render when you're done!
...this is probably my biggest kitbash job I ever did. It includes Aslan Court 2, Moonshade's diner, Preatorian Turret, and Garden Collection (the shades on the hanging lights over the booths are the Moonshade's Diner roof).
For kit-bashers looking for those weird and wonderful shapes you can never quite find.....
http://www.daz3d.com/everyday-morphing-primitives/
Nice looking character, love the muscle tone. That skin blending is something I haven't thought of, will give that a try.
Thanks. It's amazing how hard it is to find coats and jackets, especially ones that fit over breasts.
Here is the latest WIP of the environment, still a ways to go. I tried using geoshells for the snow covered trees, not sure I am happy with the effect though and it increased the file/texture sizes for instancing
Or you can buy the bundle with M4 character - http://www.daz3d.com/efja-leaping-bear-bundle-for-m4
@FSMCDesigns "Here is the latest WIP of the environment, still a ways to go. I tried using geoshells for the snow covered trees, not sure I am happy with the effect though"
I think it looks pretty good. The shadow on the snowman couls use some extra rendertime, but i think the snow and trees look quite good, as does your character.
Thanks fastbike. That was just a couple minute render to test it out which is why it's grainy. I was looking at images of snow covered trees and saw examples of lite snow and ice which was more defined and closer to what i have and then you have the big globs of snow on the branches, so I am trying to figure out which path to take. Also trying to figure out a falling snow effect without postwork
That looks awesome, Kyotokid! Much more creative than my use of Aslan Court, which is to treat it as a museum base. I haven't done any finished renders with it, but I was incorporating some of the props from the modern museum set.
http://www.daz3d.com/modern-museum
Hi
Kit bashing is VITAL to us animators who do Sci fi environments.
Since I import all of by assets fromDaz studio to Maxon C4D for rendering I have the option of splitting the objects by group upon import.
This gives us tremendous freedom to use only parts of a large Stone mason set or animate moving parts where there were not any originally rigged by the product creator.
Here are some shots of a recently completed cockpit sequence of an advanced long distance space craft in my current movie project.
It is a combo of stonemasons "greeble city blocks" for the inner hull details along with parts from the Great former Daz PA "Sanctumart"
all have there textures replaced with native C4D Procedural metals
The figure is Genesis one wearing the venerable original Supersuit
..animated Via MDD data from Daz studio.
one more..
..thanks. Did that for an RRRR challenge a couple years ago. Two of the four random picks were the Aslan Court and Moonshade's Diner sets. Great contst to test your rsourcefulness. Here is another RRRR work that used Ant Farm's "The Trench" in an fun way (did a lot of "bashing" particularly on the rear wall).
Thank you!
Your render is looking great! I really like the snow too. If you are interested in adding snow to clothes and objects, I recommend Let It Snow. I like it. :) It lets you add snow to clothes and objects and lets you add falling slow too.
Thanks Diva, turns out I actually have that product and have never installed it, go figure, LOL.
Calypso submarine, Maclean's Everyday Morphing Primitives, DZFire's lights, and a bucket o' Greebles makes a starfighter. With a Praetorian turret, of course. I swear, if it wasn't for Maclean, i'd end up watching cartoons on TV all day. And I don't even own a (real) TV!
Re: Leaping Bear bundle. I barely posted my "wanted" list when I discovered this very item so now i have the weaponry althotho I'd like an Iroquois style battle ax.
Example pics?
Here's an example of some kitbashing I've done with characters . Nothing is out of the box. This is an older render and the sci-fi idea behind the render is that music will continue to be important even in the far future when androids and other artificial lifeforms displace humans.. The pose is from DM's Tango series, and both characters are Genesis 2 characters. The male character is modified with Creature Creator to give him that bulging cranium, and his textures are actually from an old V4/Genesis set called "Biomechs" and available at Rendo.The female character's base shape is Simona, and her headset and visor are from the Technophilia Vol 1 then available at RDNA and now available at DAZ. To move her further away from the Sorayama-style look I added arms and legs from the More than Human set by DarioFish at Rendo, and used metallic shaders from the Genesis Supersuit to make sure all of her chrome matched up. The corset is from a holiday freebee from the past.
I hope you like this render!
Great composition...my eyes roam all over picking out all the little details and unique characters. I can't imagine how long it took for you to bring it all together.
Love it! For some reason (perhaps the character and color palette) it reminds me of the original Heavy Metal animated movie. :-)