Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 8
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SC Joy with Dax Hair (Gen3M/F), the lights are a bit rosy (Painter's Lights) so that explains the eyes and teeth. Dax Hair is a cute short style. Her eyebrows, though, are definitely redder than the promo shows. Wearing i13's Hoodie, I love that the hood goes down with a slider, very nicely. Since the product isn't shown, not linking it right now. Joy is still 70% off, in Fast Grab. Site changes over in less than an hour, don't know how long all of these will be available.
Note the asymmetrical eyebrows.
Wow Luci45, love the fireflies and the creature creator, fantastic lighting and posing. I got yours added to the summary post.
Oh cool. Thank you, Sonja! :) I appreciate it!
Oh wow, I should start reading what's included. Esprit d'Autrefois has INTERIORS WITH PROPS. I was wondering if that window was a fake image of a shop within, and lo and behold, I went in the store and could be seated at a real table. The candy store has props too. So while this is still in Fast Grab, I wanted to get this posted. Small renders to get them done, most only at 70%. One ghost light to show the candy store interior. Read the product description to see what other props are included.
The trolley does have an interior, it rendered black for some reason and I don't have time to mess with it (4:30am) It's VERY tight in there to get any shots anyway. It's got red bench seating.
Click to enlarge.
Inside the restaurant. Click to enlarge
Not real, just an image.
Surprise! Just one ceiling ghost light, nothing fancy.
And there's more than this, but you get the idea. The candy store is fully "stocked."
Also, the perfume store has indoor props, a counter, bottles, etc. Will render and show you that later. G'nite/morning!
An old Daz Studio render (Iray) of the Poser version of Esprit d'Autrefois purchased at RDNA.
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/108473
Your welcome Diva!
Those renders make me wish I did more modern renders Novica but I don't do enough of them to justify buying it even in fast grab lol. I have the other one whose name currently escapes me,I think its by Faveral, and that pretty much covers what I need at the moment.
Novica, you were successful getting me to spend $$'s. Thanks for the renders! I picked up Laurana last night and Esprit d'Autrefois this morning (still available as of 10 EST). I would have never guessed about the interiors from the promos.That was my biggest shopping day since the sales ended in December.
And did you noticed the thread almost doubled in size yesterday?
Isidorn's Top 3 for January
In no particular order:
Solitaire by meipe : Render and another Render . Although this is mainly a bedroom with poses product, it's actually only the Teddy Bear from the product that I've used. But it has a multitude of material zones and is poseable, so it's worth the price on its own, imo.
EJ Narumi for Genesis 3 Female(s) : Render (she's the one to the right) I have a feeling she will give EJ Atsuko (the one on the left) a run for the money on being my most featured model this year.
Zombie Walker : Render To qoute the product page: "Zombie Walker is a complete character, clothing and hair set for Genesis 2 Male." It also comes with 3 poses.
I hope I did this right. If not, please let me know and I'll correct it.
@isidorn- got it, you did it right. I like your choices, and I don't think those have been showcased before either. Thanks for showing us! I don't have a particular EJ favorite, I'll have to peruse through those and feature a few.
Rich- if you mean the thread doubled in size in pages, that's because I couldn't get off the thread. (sigh, but happy sigh) Nice to have an active thread. Today is Zbrush though, although I rendered a few right before I got off the computer yesterday and will post those this evening. Headed out the door.
Just grabbed Alieta from FastGrab. Was unsure whether to buy but happy I did. I might splash out on one of the others while they are still in FG. Any preferences. Here's Alieta with a touch of Zev's youth morph.
I haven't posted anything here in a long time, but now I got to go and praise the Moroccan Courtyard http://www.daz3d.com/moroccan-courtyard.
Its a neat Architecture where parts can be used single as well and it comes with a water/landscape environment with three render settings as well as six camera presets. The light in the presets gives a nice atmospheric feel to it. The textures are nicely done, the bougainvillea flowers are flat planes but from most angles that works alright.
With the given things one can get renders looking like the promos, nothing else needed!
So I can fully recommend this one by Bitwelder (up to now the only one I own), only drawback is, its Iray only
LOL, she looks downright devious! Or fake-innocent, you know, like "Oh, that wasn't ME. I didn't do it. It was Marble."
So far as Fast Grab, Rich showcased Hemlock Folly if I recall, and that's a nice set. Medieval Hall and Garden is a big set, with a lot of opportunities, and for that price is a steal. Even if you don't do medieval, it's good for tourist scenes.
@Linwelly- that's stunning- looks very real, particularly with the background. Makes me feel like I should book a vacation! I don't know how many there are, but we should make a list of low poly vegetation/flowers, because I agree with you that the vast majority of those flowers look very good/passable, but I don't like the one on our upper right. They're definitely squished.
So the question is, how do we generate a list of low poly, really realistic (or better than the squished ones) flowers and vegetation? How do you tell the polygon count, and what's considered low? (And vendors reading this, feel free to jump in and help us out if your sets/products have low polygon vegetation/flowers.)
I'll make a summary list and then put it in my References, first post so we can find it quickly.
EDIT: Second thought, we'll do two separate lists. Some low poly for backgrounds would be okay.
Low Poly Flowers and Vegetation
Interesting- a list of free plants I normally don't like to download from unknown sites though.DA is fine, but individual sites that I don't know, I don't download from.
EM- MultiRes Aspen Trees Has anyone got this to test it?
Flower Cart Passed with flying colors! Even with the cart, totally rendered, 100% in 2 minutes 45 seconds!!!!
Low Poly Trees (backgrounds?) Has anyone got this to test it?
Rowan Trees Megapak (Optimized to be as low-poly as possible) RENDERED- AGREE. And adorable!
Tropical Plants for Daz Studio And Iray Vol 1 (Says poly count has been kept down) RENDERED. AGREE. Boston Fern large group tested.
Render in a reasonable amount of time- and NOT SQUISHED:
Flander's Poppy
Rendering Rowan trees- adorable! Watching the time for a big 1100 x 1200 px, chose the dense tree.
First: 82% at 5 minutes, moves along nicely. Out of the box, rendered in Iray but without UberBase (Iray) (and yes, click to enlarge. These are going to be 1100 x 1200 to test the speed for large renders, and get the percentages at 5 minutes.) Coming up will test with Iray materials.
It increased 1% (83%) for 5 minutes, using UberBase. FYI, my minimum samples and time are both really, really jacked up. These trees both looked acceptable (couldn't honestly see any difference) by three minutes. Next, a closeup.
I only own one product by Bitwelder, the Lake Folly one, I used it for the first time yesterday and loved it. Based on that and on your image here, I think he's going to become a new favourite vendor of mine. :)
Tropical Plants For Daz Studio And Iray Vol 1
Another 1100 x 1200 px, chose the biggest clumps. Passed the test, at 5 minutes was 83% rendered, held it's own. This is not with Iray materials. (Not going to render again, it rendered in the amount of time needed.) Just ignore the fronds going through the floor, getting that one up would mean moving all these around and frankly, I'm testing render speeds, not doing artistic renders.
Novica - I like your Rowan Tree renders - that model stands up pretty well to a close-up for a low-poly tree, I may have to wishlist it. I have several of esha's other plant sets (I use the grass set quite a bit)
Linwelly - nice render. I was tempted by that new Bitwelder set but I'm still trying to save money after a crazy December spending spree and with March Madness on the horizon. I have (and love using) Bitwelder's Lakeside Folly and Crescent Cove, also Via Serena.
On the subject of saving money: grrrr! Novica I'm trying to resist those fastgrab ladies and (especially) the TangoAlpha Jackson's Field (I have the Medieval Hall and Hemlock Folly and they are great, if a bit resource-heavy). And now you've made me really look at the Esprit d'Autrefois set too!
I'd say I'm sorry but I try really hard to take everyone down with me- if I have to blow my budget, by golly misery loves company!
The Fast Grab ladies IMO look totally different than the main promo images. I didn't buy any of them when they first came out, but now Second Circle will be getting a second look LOL.
And now, if you don't have Flower Cart- this thing is a SPEEDY render! Add to any scene. It rendered in two minutes 45 seconds- 100%- compared to the previous plants! Although the vendor says not for closeups, you can get fairly closeup and these don't stand out as low polys. It was again a large render, 1100 x 1200
TIP: Darken the white so it appears white in brighter lighting- I did a light gray. You wouldn't have known if I didn't tell you- looks white.
Isn't it CUTE?!!! I can see in some of the large cities we've showcased, like Alsace, Esprit d'Autrefois, and Faveral has a large town also- Provence, that it would look good with.
EDIT: BTW, the flowers are all SEPARATE props. Very handy.
@xmasrose Thanks for sharing- the candy is very noticeable and I love the child racing inside. That would be me!
Testing now- Martin J Frost, Flanders Poppy
It was 62% at 5 minutes. So these are not quite the low polys results, compared to the first group (at over 80%) but again, an 1100 x 1200 so yours will render faster when not doing large renders. And how cute- and NOT SQUISHED. Worth the render time IMO.
EDIT: This was also the largest group. There are smaller groups and individual flowers available.
All of these are beautiful! Love the flower cart and the rowan tree, and of course the Esprit and Moroccan sets! Wow!
Hmm, well I succumbed to Esprit d'Autrefois (couldn't resist after you'd pointed out how much detail is in there) and Jackson's Field (to join my growing TangoAlpha collection). And after all what are PC $6 coupons for, if not to be used before the second day of the month has finished? But I didn't pick up any ladies - I have too many (she cried bravely) and I really must keep some store credit for MM.
I like the Flower Cart - yes, it would look good in one of the city environments.
Looking at recent posts I thought I would add my favourites list for January - until I discovered that although I've done quite a lot of test renders I only actually posted a couple all month so maybe next month...
Did you do any RRRR? Those are fine too.
Very nice render!
I have Bitwelder's Via Serena which is very good too.
I've had these on my wishlist forever (I think because you've shown them before), but every time they are on sale I pass because I just don't know where I would use them. But I really like the way they look.
I'll see what flower products I have to render but it won't be for the next two days. I'm the director of a juried fine arts fair each year and starting tonight, I'm pretty much consumed with setup, fair day, and cleanup. Saturday night I'll collapse in a chair with a beer and fall fast asleep.
I just answered someone's question (not sure if this was what they wanted, but they got it, lol)
We covered this on the last thread, and dang it, I should render a bunch of scenes then use them... A reminder: If you want to use your own 3d products to make a background-
Render a scene (be aware of your size, make it large- comparable to the plane you want to put it on.) You create a primitive plane, (I did mine 20 feet) then select the plane in Scene and Surface pane, then in Surface- Diffuse, browse to the image file and put it on the plane. Then it's a backdrop.
I threw two things together, an old downtown render for the background plane, on that one I was checking out changing white points (hence the blue tones) and then I just changed the mediterranean arches (which is the actual set) to blue/purple quickly to match it. LOL, have to laugh, I wasn't trying to match the pattern on the marble with the street of the backdrop, but they go together pretty well. I just grabbed the first architecture set I found!
To make it appear like DOF (Depth of Field) blur your image before you put it on the plane.
Easy smeezy. One other tip- make sure the sunlight/lighting matches both the render on the plane, and the render of the actual set. These don't show up as mismatched that much, because it's overcast. But sunny renders will!
With the street render blurred.
Great tip, Novica! That looks fantastic, by the way.
No I only managed to complete one this time round, and there's nothing in there which I would remotely describe as a favourite! (It was a real RRRR where I used what I had to to fit the contest ethos)
This is interesting, I noticed this product (Subsurface Workshop-SSS Shaders for Iray) and did a Google search, and our dear artist Luci45 popped up- in my thread. Gotta love Google. First, here's what she did. Now, just wanted to share what I'm reading at the moment (done with Zbrush for the day, I'm getting carpel tunnel, not kidding.)
So....reviving interest in this, if you've used it or want to tackle it, feel free to post what you're doing. I'm just now starting to read all that. By golly, I'm not buying anymore stuff when I'm not using what I've already got- and never even tried it. It's ridiculous!
EDIT: I will add links here relating to Subsurface Scattering.
Raw Art's tips: 3DL
Sickleyield' Iray Surfaces and What They Mean (DA) Includes:
Transmitted Measurement Distance/Scattering Measurement Distance: These are actually different because the transmitted distance affects how far into the material light goes before it is completely the transmitted color, and the scattering distance affects how far into the material it goes before it is scattered to the SSS amount you set. The higher these are, the denser and more opaque the material looks.
For Transmitted Color to show up the SSS Amount value also needs to be higher than 0. Using SSS (subsurface scattering) at a high value with Transmitted Color gives an effect that responds to light direction and intensity more than Translucency does, but it's still the concept of light being scattered by a dense non-opaque material when it hits the surface. Don't try to use a glossy color when SSS Amount is at 1.0; the effect is unpredictable and ugly.
SSS Direction tells the shader which direction the light is scattered, toward or away from a light source. Negative numbers go toward the light source, and positive numbers scatter away from it (0 will result in almost no scattering). A recommended value for skin is -0.5.