Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 9
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Thanks! The storms are just crazy anymore. Not the kind of records one wants to break
Wow! thanks fisty! that worked really well! The knee guards had a bit of an oddity when I posed G8, but I fiddled with the x and y rotation and kinda got them looking good. I forgot to load the belt when I was testing it tho, so I'll have to redo it. My eyes are too old to figure out WHICH bits of the armour are there in the different loadable presets - the pop up icons are WAY too small for me to see what's there and what isn't. The chest armour is definitely a pain when posing the figure - it juts out a lot and you have to try and compensate for how large it is when posing arms with guns etc. As you can see here, the gun I chose it too long and the back of it disappears into the armour LOL. I used a pose from Porsimo's Obsidian Weapons pose and prop pack. This is a rough test render just to see how it went - I'd love some extra textures on this, but given that it's been out a while and no-one has done add ons, I suspect there won't be any (and looking at the texture maps, I can see why!! That's just...scary).
@SereneNight I was kinda hoping you had it, so I could browse your gallery for inspiration. I adore your sci fi art, it truly inspires me.
YAY!
Here's a few things that I don't think have been showcased yet:
Moondance
Made with:
Ver nice Llynara! The rim lights look like something I should get.
Since I'm not getting into Genesis 8, there's been less new items for me to buy in this sale. I'm sure that will change, but in the meantime, I'm taking a look at what I've bought but haven't used much or at all.
I got My Camel Camelia HD sometime back. I didn't have a good enviornment for it until I got Dry Mud Desert. Then Nomad for Genesis 3 Male(s) and Female(s) seemed a good outfit for a G3F figure. When I first loaded all these, my system came to a crawl. Even small changes in camera position or a a pose led to a lot of lag. Even turning off textures in the viewport didn't hep. When I looked at my system memory, all but about 35 mb of 16 gb or ram was free, so there was a huge amount of page swapping going on. Turns out both the camel and the nomad outfit have lots of high resolution texture maps. Scene Optimizer to the rescue! I cut the resolution on the clothing textures and the far mountains by half which totally took away the lag. Since the clothing items are not that close to the camera, having 2048 textures instead of a bunch of 4096 textures was not a bigh tradeoff.
Here's a 3DL render (the camel and desert are 3DL products, the nomad clothing is Iray). The sky and lights are what comes with the desert product.
Here's an Iray render letting the system apply the Iray uber base. The sky is one of the sunny Skies of iRadiance. You'll notice the textured mud surface of the 3DL version has disappeared.
There's an addon to the original mud desert which restores the textured mud: Dry Mud Desert Iray and Add-ons . Here's a second Iray render which shows the result (the sky is that wich comes with the addon). The lighting is a little brighter than the 3DL render - I think if it was toned down they might be pretty close.
@rgcincy LOL take a look at this post! The camel and mud flats. And I mentioned how MY computer came to a crawl! (welcome to the Slow Camel Club) Interesting to see the Add-On, I have that but haven't used it.
@llynara Beautiful, I can almost feel the breeze!
Irma tidbit:
Now 15 million people in Florida without power, according to CNN just now. 1 million in Georgia.
90% of homes in the Keys are destroyed or severely damaged.
I HAD to look it up- Ernest Hemingway's house and all the cats are just fine down in Key West!!!!! Great News!
A few more renders using Project EYEray - this time on a G8M. He's FWSA Zander with the Dylan beard and the Super Messy Updo .
The first is a "realistic" iris texture, then one of the rainbow-type ones. Finally a side-view to show a little more of the hair. I t has quite a lot of movement morphs (as well as a number of fit adjustment morphs, some of which were useful for Zander as he has a rather different head shape to the base G8M) - I've lengthened the tail and moved it a bit..
Nice render. I love Arki's outfits, that one is in my mental wishlist too (awaiting a suitable sale - maybe soon...?
)
I love this render too - really pretty. I have the 3Delight version of the Rim Light Rig, but have wavered on the Iray one (so far). Nice work fitting the clothing (I read about how you did it in your own thread)
@RGcincy - nice camel pics. I did a render with that clothing set yesterday and also had a viewport crawl problem - now I know why!
Great minds think alike
I do agree with what you said a year ago, Dry Mud Desert is a good set. And now you can see the camel with hair. I like the mud look of the 3DL version better, which is to be expected since it uses displacement which is not as effective in Iray.
ESA Europa Corridor Lilah for Genesis 3 Female Liv Hair (G3/ G8) Attica (Gen3F) Ren for Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 Males
Sci-Fi Settler for Genesis 8 Male(s)
Unless I'm mistaken (always a possibility, although the product page matches what I am finding) Europa Corridor would have been returned. It is unfathomable to me why vendors do large groups that can not be broken down, and makes the rendering times extended. The way things are grouped (with the exception of the outer shell) you will probably need both A and B sections activated as each contains part of the floor. So in my opinon, the groups leave a little to be desired. (And again- why group everything? You have outer shell, then section A, section B. THAT'S IT.)
If you don't have a great computer, I personally wouldn't recommend this set. Definitely don't turn the quality up, past one. This is only 1.25. (which explains a TAD bit longer render times, but not THIS much.) So I tested the contribution of the set to the render time. I did the full render of Corridor + Characters, vs just the characters- and CLOSEUPS of the characters, which add to render time. Even though it's a closeup, nothing was removed from the characters. They still wore their full set of clothing.
So, look at the render times (with a very good, fast computer, most scenes like this take me an hour or less, with closeups of multiple characters in a scene on the high end of that) of the corridor plus characters: (and outer shell is OFF)
4% at 31 minutes
9% 44 minutes
42% 2 hours 2104 iterations (compared to 47% in only 23 minutes for closeup characters)
73% 3 hours
91% 4 hours 40 minutes
Shut it off at 5 hours, 94%.
Just characters- and closeups:
47% at 23 minutes
58% 31 minutes
64% 38 minutes
69% 44 minutes 1008 iterations
74% 49 minutes
77% 1 hour
89% 1 hour and a half, cut it off.
Other comments- I definitely like Lilah's eyes a lot more than Silivie's, (my render a page back) It's a matter of personal preference but I like a sharper variety in the iris flecks. Lilah has Thorne as a contributor and perhaps Thorne did the eyes as they are definitely different. (Also take a look at Cordia instead of Silvie. Cordia has a bit more detail.)
Ren (by DarwinsMishap is in the pike, I am a tester. I still like the "regular guy" look, and he also comes with the dark goth like I showed in the Mayan Render.
Irma Tidbits: As of 8:30pm (Sept 12, Tues) it's astounding- the power companies are AMAZING!
now 4,745,599 out of power
400,000 in the last HOUR got power
30,000 in Miami Dade got power in just the last hour!
I really like that hair and beard- the beard really seems touchable! Nice variety of eyes too. Thanks for showing us more of those.
In case you are waffling on the iray rim lights, I used them in my magic render with the Corvus outfit as well.
Thanks, and what great renders, everyone.
Rich- I love the comparison between the two sets. I have the 3Delight version and I love it. I haven't bought the Iray version yet, but it's on my radar. Love the camel and nomad clothes.
Melanie- great render of Zander. What lighting did you use there? You've got a wonderful, soft, sunny effect there that I really like.
Novica- Wow, Ren looks great here. Somehow I missed that Attica set when it came out. The red textures for it are really cool.
Something interesting about Dry Mud Desert- it works great as a background if you render it in 3Delight and then use it as a background in photoshop. I did that here with Raj for G3M by Redz. He's one of my favorite G3Ms. (Note: no postwork in this one. I got lucky and the lighting in both renders matched pretty well.)
Heads up- (Hey Rich, here's another one for you to look at with a surprising goody in it) Hobo Scene Props has a dilapidated train and a small section of tracks!
I like it because it has an OPEN box. It's in the Mega Fastgrab, you can get it for 75% off if you get a new release. (I like the dressing rooms. I have a couple shops, but no dressing rooms. Going practical.)
I really like those renders with Ren, Novica. It appears to be a natural conversation going on between them, which can be difficult to do with posing (for me) at times. Well done.
Thanks. Didn't I say? (looks back and checks) Ah, sorry I usually remember to say what lights I used! I can't actually remember, and don't have my DS PC on at the moment but I'll try and remember to check later.
I agree - the hands, head, and arms in particular are so natural
I would never be able to tell you did it that way. The figure sits on the ground just like you'd get from an HDRI. Hmmm - opens up possibilities when your system or GPU ram is overwhelmed.
I have it in my cart - the props look good for city scenes.
MelanieL - that's a really nice combo you rendered - I'll have to wishlist that beard for whenever I get into G8. Great background choice too - complements the skin tones very well.
@llynara That really is a perfect match on lighting! He looks like he should be the Scorpion King- move over The Rock! (Dwayne Johnson)
It's a beautiful day here today- balmy breezes and I am guessing low 80's but pretty low humidity.
Just checked my email. Kudos to @dreamfarmer as the WINNER in the PC+ Inspirations Contest with the "Little, Big" render!!! Way to go!
Went back and checked - I should have guessed really: it was the Classical Portrait 6 set from Painter's Lights with the Grass and Sky render setting. I use the Painter's Lights set so much, but I wasn't 100% sure because I've been trying out two other sets recently.
Congrats Dreamfarmer!
I just splurged on some things from Ironman13. At the top of the list is the Sassy Tops product. I can hardly wait to download it and see if I can use those tops under jackets and such to make something more realistic for the workplace. I just wanted to point it out, because i13's catalog is still 75% off with a Debut new release. That could be gone come Daz Midnight.
+1
I want to give a little review of Precious. I am really, really impressed. It is amazing little quadruped model with three variations so far (and a fourth due out this week). It has all the same expressions preconfigured that you'd expect to find on a Genesis figure, with an astonishing number of pose morphs (and bones), with a ridiculously small number of polygons (maybe because quads don't have fingers and toes like humans do? who knows). The Build Your Own texture kit is also impressive; I got it expecting to have to edit textures in Photoshop, but instead it uses the Studio layer editor and an enormous number of layers and opacity masks.The variations all add more to the base, with just as many pose/shaping morphs as the base parts have. I'm still exploring but I think the built-in morphs will allow for quite distinct individuals and even speciation. I have the deer, the dragon and the unicorn; I'll be getting the gryphon as soon as it releases and the PA has said she has even more species in the works. (I'm hoping for a cat or dog.) I'm REALLY excited about the potential of the model set and the possible gene-mixing.
(The below render is processed through Topaz Simplify.)
Oh and thanks for the congratulations! I was kind of startled when I saw Little, Big in the newsletter.... I keep forgetting those little winners go out to lots of people!
What can I say, Precious is precious!!!
Mountain Estate
This vendor apparently doesn't like making separate walls or ceilings. Again, I bought it with a good discount so it's keepable. The cameras really help you with this one, I'm using those to show you the set. I used Skies of iRadience Sunny Skies A with an Exposure Value of 11.69 and 239.32 ISO. You'll need to increase the ISO and then lower the Exposure Value to lighten this up, I did it in Brightness in postwork with Corel Photo Paint.
I would also darken the snow mounds to a light gray so they show as white, they have burnout (glare) easily and you lose all the detail. I didn't do that, this is out of the box. (As is everything, I would definitely increase the bump on surfaces.)
I do like the chair shape, they're not your boring, typical chairs. I do NOT like that texture on the beams above the fireplace, it's glaringly a repeat pattern and to me, doesn't look like wood at all. It almost looks like one of those earthquake tremor charts on overdrive. Don't know how else to explain it. Look at the fourth render. The materials on surfaces are so-so, nothing seems fine-tuned so far as edging.
Also, you would put scenery in this for the background, I didn't, and trees would really spruce this up. I'm not really doing this as a scene, just testing cameras and groupings.
Here's a few from the attached renders:
That set doesn't look good to me. It lacks realism and the textures are unrealistic and the furniture is blocky and dated looking. I'd certainly be returning that.
LOL you were posting as I was finishing the writeup. I noted the surfaces too, what I didn't particularly care for was also the edging, agree it seems very square-ish and basic. The textures just don't have an "ooooh" factor. That said, for what I paid for it, I can resurface and play with it. I'll have to see if I want to take the time to do that particularly with having to make material zones and separate things. (Ugh.)