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As someone who used to write documentation, (the boss would hand me what the engineers wrote, and ask me to rewrite it in English!) I can tell you it's really difficult to keep on top of a program so large, when it changes as much and as often as Daz Studio... Maybe that's why those other softwares are so expensive... the companies have to pay for their dedicated team of technical writers!
I'm working with the Crystal Dragon now. The skin is tricky to light well, so I'm trying a bunch of things. Here's my first test render, and it's not great. Skies of Iradiance plus some golden spotlights which I thought would work well on the dark skin but don't in this case. Too many shadows too.
I sent Evan for G3M to round him up and the big guy wasn't very happy. Hard to get a good shot of him when he loads at 400%. So I shrank him down and we stuffed him into the studio. The render is cooking now. LOL
me too I have tons and tons of dragon content . I was wondering though can you hide the crystals if you just wanted to use the skin texture with out the crystals in this set? it may make this a more useful set if you can use the skin without the crystals. this is in my cart i am just debating whether i can use it or not. i have tons of dragons stuff now but i lack good dragon skin textures that is why i was wondering if you can use this with out the crystal addons anyone have this set yet?
We sedated him with pizza for his glamour shots. Here he is with the black skin preset, taking a nap on the Ultragenesis glass floor under Sveva's Lumiere Pro lights. It's an HDR with photometric spotlights. The crystals look pretty good up close. and you can compare the reflections with that of the glass. There's no postwork here, just a straight render.
I'll render some of his other skin options in other poses, as well as doing some different angles. (click and zoom in for more detail.)
Actually, the fact it is free in this case is irrelevant. To get any realistic use out of Studio requires some expenditure of either time or cash, and invariably both.
It is meant to be a medium to showcase said content; IRAY itself seems to be a very capable engine, sure it is new, and perhaps - or perhaps not - missing features. It is still very capable.
Yes, I would like buy into that, and certainly pick up an item or two.
Can't give you proper muscle bending, but the PBReal Iray Black Dragon package has physically based iray materials for DAZ Dragon. These can even be combined with the crystal dragon.
Fair point.
Going for a weathered look is all well and good. I'm competely behind that, but my undertanding of the point of using PBR is to simulate physically-based, real-world materials. From my point of view, that doesn't mean creating or settling for crystal shaders that look like weathered plastic. Here's an example of what I think of when I imagine weathered crystals:
http://sgjgems.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GJPD00014-11-pcs-lot-rock-crystal-clear-quartz-cluster-points-pendant-sets.jpg
Nice. Good to know. Thank you.
The guy behind the keyboard. Having a pathtracer doesn't prevent from doing non realistic renders. The good question is : does the promo correspond to what the artist had in mind? Second question : did the artist want to achieve a realistic look ? Third question : has the artist any interest in realistic render when doing the promo or did he/she just try to make a good enough promo image to go with the product ? Fourth question : what does a "realistic" crystal dragon look like ?
Just an iray quickie below. Shaders from Nvidia vmaterials
Now that's what I'm talkin' about! Thank you!
/Will Smith impression
Here's the Crystal Dragon with blue skin and ice crystal presets. Don't trust that crocodile smile...
The fact that Daz Studio is free is quite relevant to Daz3D, the company, I assure you. If it were a paid for product like 3dsMax or Maya, there would be sufficent income to hire documentation writers and such. There would be more funds available for support and training. But there is no direct income from Studio, thus every hour they invest in developing and supporting it is a cut into the profits they receive from the figures. So the motivation for providing supporting materials to the degree that professional tools have is greatly reduced.
Love those colors. I think this is the best combination.
Truth? Most raw gemstones are ugly and dirty and look nothing like the beautiful stones they turn into. I've taken raw gemstones and finished them into the final gemstone and most of the time, you would never know the two were related...
Okay now I am super intruiged by that one on the left There looks almost like there is some heterogeneous volumetric scattering going on there which I had thought was not something that Iray could do yet...
Also a fair point. Of course, depending on the stone/crystal as well. Flourite can look and feel waxy even when highly polished and when its not, given the right lighting conditions, can and does look like plastic lol. I do get your point though for the type of crystals they seem to be trying to portray they could have used a better shader.
@AllenArt "BTW Fisty, those earrings are gorgeous ;)"
While I fully agree, I feel it's only fair to mention that your jewelry is awfully good as well
.
FWIW, lots of talk about realistic dragon skin. Having never seen one, I'm not willing to speculate on what that may look like, be capable of, or whether dragons polish their crystal.
Once we're into fantasy, seems like it should be hard to say anything is "wrong". Certainly once can express like or dislike, but beyond that seems a bit shaky.
So, being foolishly willing, I didn't find the Crystal Dragon or any of the associated shaders good enough to buy (and I have a low threshold for buy). As much as I like Llynara's work, I didn't find her dragon render compelling, which for me means it's the dragon not Llynara's render. There are plenty of convincing bone, scales and gem shaders out there. I just didn't see any in this sale. Liked the poses though. As alwys, YMMV.
Well, for most a dragon is a reptile-like creature so alligator skin is expected. Maybe even a big lizard, komodo dragon if you will.
It took me a minute to realize I had real-world biases when looking at Sci-fi stuffs that didn't exist and still thinking it didn't look "real"
Also, probably heavily influenced by movies...
Hi Llynara
would you mind trying a render with the crystals turn off or hidden or is thats even possiable? I wanted to see what it look like with just the skin. I got a discount coupon But the cyrystals reealy don't do anything for me. but i do like the looks of the skins textures
Yeah, seriously Laurie, your jewelry is better than a lot of things in the store. I have those lovely bracelets, keep trying to find a reason to use them.
http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=allenart
Sure, no problem! I have to feed the natives here (they're getting restless) and then I can do a render for ya
Ivy, did you see my render on previous page? It's crystal-less
Thanks! I'm finding him a bit challenging to light, between the dark, kind of flat skins and the shiny crystals. Maybe that was the issue with some of the promos. This big guy may require some tweaking to shaders, lights and render settings to get the right balance. He looks okay in a photo studio environment, but every time I try to put him in an action render (which is where he truly belongs) he looks very flat and it's hard to get good definition.
It's only day 1. I'll keep playing.
PS I wonder what he'll look like with Iggy's gemology shaders. Hmmmm
Now I'm wondering how well the crystals will work for other morphs... more experiments!
Thanks will I missed it the first time . that texture does looks pretty good. is there a templete so you can remapp the horns . I believe i'm going to have to get this just for the skin textures :)
No clue... but it'd probably work better on less horny dragons. So to speak.
hmm. The horns ARE a separate material zone... I'll have to see if it would look decent with a different horn texture.
To the initial point, as one of those folks who was into the outdoors and rocks as a kid, the first thing it brought to mind was quartz coming out of rock, which if you do a quick googling brings up images like:
and
The attached render which uses the default material settings is honestly not that far off IMO.
I imagine, however if the first thing that springs to mind is clear perfect diamods, the materials will look more off from what pops into your head.
Now I dont think the materials are perfect the refraction ior is set to 1.33 which is the ior value of water not any sort of crystal and it uses a roughly 50/50 mix of refraction and translucency, personally I would have used more refraction less translucency and then added in a bit of volumetric SSS scattering (my material settings would be slower to render mind you)
(I will also add that the new skin materials for the dragon itself are pretty straight up fantastic, I honestly don't feel the need to tweak the skin at all, which, for me, happens roughly never)
As to limitations of Iray particularly when it comes to crystals like this, the bigest one is the lack of heterogeneous volumes at least in the ubershader (if you'll look in the first example you may note how the tips of the crystals are quite clear, while the base is more cloudy. There isn't really a good way to do this in DS, you cant control how much SSS there is with a map) But Iray is capable of truly excellent clear crystals and is even capable of pretty rad caustics (and seperation of wavelengths) with ease, which is actually not all that common among render engines.
Would you say, then, getting the Crystal Dragon would be worth it for just the materials, sans the crystals? (I assume they will work on Dragon 3...) If so, I may change my mind and grab it for the materials... Now that I know I don't have to use the crystals...
Adding refraction roughness to a nice, clear gem shader can add some realism. What's needed is a way to tie the roughness to altitude or a way to keep the roughness confined to the areas in the interior of the crystals and nearest the rock strata that they are growing out of. I've been working on a more "scratched and cracked" crystal shader on and off but so far haven't gotten anything I'm happy with. I'm sure the above is possible in Shader Mixer; I just don't know how to use it. There's precious little information on how to use it and I was MUCH better at writing out Luxrender shaders by hand. If I could do that with MDL and get it into DS, then I might actually get somewhere. LOL
Laurie
Yeah totally excellent sans crystals... but dont just take my word for it noisy comparison render time!
Now the older textures can be massaged into something a bit nicer (the default conversion shown here has pretty much no spec which is just sad looking) but even massaged I still think the new textures look way better (they look higher res too, and they're not I checked but they really do, right? its not just me?)