Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 9
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I wanted to mention this particular billboard- the XfrogPlants Billboards: Prehistoric has an interesting plant/bush that you may use for weeds or tropical settings. It's the last thumbnail. It's "airy" looking and wouldn't distract from your main characters, seems like a great filler for near the ground/medium height.
Has anyone tried Restaurant Poses (Gen3M/F) because all I have are hand poses, and looking at the files list, I don't even have Couples or Customer Poses sections.
The beast is tied up right now, but from DIM, I can see files for Couples, Customers, Staff, Males and Females that are installed. I use the defaults, so those files are in /People/Genesis 3/Poses/Restaurant Poses, with separate folders for Couples, Customer Poses, and Staff Poses.
ETA: Looking at the product page, I don't even see any hand poses for that product, just full body poses. Same with the file list. I wonder where those hand poses came from?
London Apartment- Lounge Area Desidora for Genesis 3 Female(s) Pixie Bob for Genesis 3 Female(s)
Shearling Outfit for Genesis 3 Female(s) Relaxed Poses for Genesis 3 Female
I'm trying to showcase things that I buy during the sale, so when they come back on sale you can snag them if you like them. If the thread surfers can also help showcase things in the sale, it would be helpful. I got sidetracked with billboards so cramming a lot of products into one render. (set, character, hair, outfit and poses)
First of all, the stairs and hand rail have their own material zones so those can be removed. I personally dislike stairs that aren't encased, too dangerous and doesn't look real to me. So the vendor was smart to give us that option (they would be on the far wall.) I want you to take a look at the details in the pillows-- there's quite lovely details in the fabric. This again is Pro-Studio PORTRAIT lighting, with the ceiling of the room turned off.
Edit- love that curved set of shelves in the wall!
Heck if I know. I have hands but nothing else!
Well, I figured out where those hand poses came from, after seeing the icons above... the Restaurant Props product.
So I'm thinking you haven't actually installed the pose package. Do you install manually? There are seven products in the Out to Dinner Bundle. You may have inadvertently skipped the one. (I'm assuming you bought the bundle, as you have both the pose pack and the props pack from it...)
Nope, DIM. And they're installed. It says Restaurant Poses Genesis 3 Male and Genesis 3 Female It wasn't the bundle, I bought these today. (Well, yesterday, but still today for me as I haven't gotten any sleep yet LOL)
Hmmm...
Was DS running when you installed them?
If neither of those work, try shutting down your computer and restarting. (It's pretty amazing how many computer ills can be fixed with a hard reboot.)
And if that doesn't work, I'm all out of ideas.
A first try (for me) with Old Chap. I really like how he looks. Not sure I'm quite as convinced about how Hair Set for G8M looks. Might need some fiddling with to look really good close up? The only fiddling I did was changing the colour, as gray wasn't a colour it came with. Oh, and loading any of the provided materials/colours for the hair resulted in an error message about something DS couldn't find, but I don't remember what it was about. Seems to be a versatile set though, as it comes with hair for all kinds of places of the body.
The T-shirt is from the Genesis 8 Male Mega wardrobe and lights/background/render settings are Scintillant Portrait Lights.
Have been watching with interest. I've had to scale back my purchasing quite a bit so I don't really have much new to share. I have discovered that Sim Tenero's randomizer works just fine on G8 though and the product Mutations for G3F also works fabulously on her. It did take me a bit to figure out exactly how to use the Mutations as far as which part goes on the character and which part goes on the geo shell. Not the vendor's fault, they have the directions linked on each page, and once I actually thought to LOOK at directions it was quite straight forward. I can't remember if anyone showed Mutations or not but its quite a nice product. It has a snake setting, fire, stone and metallic as well as a separate metallic scales overlay.
This character is G8F run through the randomizer, using the 200+ morph pack and add on as well a bit of she orc from Raw Art. And then her skin is done using the Mutations snake option. You can hide and show different parts of the mutated skin which makes it pretty versatile. This is the same characte but with two different skins under the geo shell. Please ignore her feet going through the ground, it was very late lol. Click for full size, you can see the scales better.
What timing! Last night I was going through my structures using Ati's browser plugin and found I had a city set I hadn't ever used. In fact, it was hard to find as the file list in readme is dead and it doesn't show in Smart Content nor in the Content Library under the normal folders. That's because it's in a higher level vendor folder called D2C. When I saw the PA was 2 create HB, and knew from looking yesterday the numbered vendors show up at the end of the list, I figured it might be in mega flash grab today and it is.
The set's name is La Piazza Realistic Mediterranean Town. It's a pretty extensive city. Here's a 3DL render (I haven't tried Iray yet) overlooking the center. The background hill and sky is part of the set and the lighting is what was comes with the product. It renders quickly in 3DL (1.5 minutes). I did find as I do with all 3DL shaders that I had to reduce specular from 100% on all the surfaces, but that takes less than a minute to do (highlight all the items in the Scene Pane, highlight them all again in surfaces, and set Specular to 0-5%).
EDIT: For those interested, there's 3 more views located in this post.
@rgcincy Dang Rich, that actually looks like a photograph! Particularly the tower on the right. And it happened again- I'm thinking wow, gotta get that. I already did and just haven't done it yet. And heavens, trying to render all this M.F.Grab stuff is going to keep me busy, as that's the section I'm focusing on.
@icedragonart Wow, just wow. That bluish/purple sheen is quite a nice touch. She's just so unique! That outfit has nice details in it too, and it looks very fluid with the energized pose. Very intense! Thanks for sharing- and rendering things you've had for awhile is actually great- doesn't have to be new, between all of us we're getting good coverage- it's covering the vendors in general, due to the stores and Mega Fastgrab.
I'm not seeing a lot of it because I own quite a bit after five years of shopping and scooping up bargains. I was tickled though- I picked up that Coast Guard Cutter and Slosh's Nursery- both at 75% off! Yes! Rich did such a neat render of that ship, it was hard to just wishlist but I didn't need it then. Still don't but at $7.49 the cutter was a no-brainer. The Nursery went to $5.49. For my toon characters to ride in style, after YEARS I finally picked up (and don't laugh) Teuf Teuf ($4.24) and the texture set. ($2.23) Have had that sucker on the wishlist so long I finally felt sorry for it, and 75% so no more reasons for it to sit there. Have you ever wondered what people would think (who don't engage in this hobby) if they looked at your cart? My combination was a military ship, a baby nursery, a toon car, pigtail hair (Short Pigtails (Gen3F/Gen8F), and clothing. (FG Ultra Tee (Gen8F)
Other weird combinations were those Xfrog billboards, (so plants) baby toys (free), Medieval training- another one that paid off to wait- it's PC+ now-, and dance poses. Someone would wonder (rightfully so) what theme that has in common. (Answer, none.) I guess someone could waltz over to medieval training area and toss baby rings at figure instead of shooting arrows at it. (shades of RRRR!) If they missed the mark, they'd have to wade through the Xfrog bushes to find it.
Has anyone had trouble with Merrick for Michael 7? The survival skin won't load for me, even after re-downloading it manually. I like him too much to return him, just wondering if there's some known issue with that alt skin.
Desidora For Genesis 3 Female Fane Hair (Gen3F)
This is not Desidora's default skin, I tweaked it for quite awhile. I also increased the bump on her lips, they're very smooth. The darker lip color is mine, I changed the base color in Surfaces. So what I wanted to test was to see how well it lit with different light settings, as sometimes tweaked skin may look good in one light but too shiny in another. This passed my tests as not being excessively oily and IMO pretty natural looking.
TIP: if you have a skin area that may seem a bit too bumpy and not matching the rest of it- mask it and apply smoothing. It will be the last two images in the next post. (You may like the irregularity, but if you don't this fixes it.)
I didn't write down which one of the Pro-Studio settings this first one was.
11R, below
14R, below
15R, below
Desidora For Genesis 3 Female Fane Hair (Gen3F)
Continuing on with Pro-Studio HDR Lights.
19L, below
11R, below Wanted to show the lovely Fane Hair from another angle.
Okay, here is the smoothed render. Just a section on the cheek on your left. If I hadn't told you, would you have known? Then look at the last one which shows the noise/increased bump. Click to enlarge both of them, you'll really see the difference!
Now the cheek, original. Too noisy.
No problem. I loaded this skin first, testing various ones, then tried the Survival one and it loaded just fine. (Rendering a quickie now)
Merrick for Michael 7
Here he is. Only took 3 1/2 minutes due to no hair/clothes.
Thank you, Novica! He looks great. Weird thing is, the survival skin is working for me now. Only thing I can figure was that I needed to close and reopen DAZ after the second time I downloaded and installed him, and didn't do that.
I had a lot of fun with this one:
"Love at First Fight"
Here's Darwin's Ren for G3M/G8M and Envy from HinkyPunk's 7 Deadly Sins Bundle. They both have amazing makeup options. Really fun together! I also used Marshian's Rim Light Rig for Iray. They're wearing Asher Hair and Redz's new Classic Side Part Hair.
ooooh, that is fascinating!!!! So vibrant!!
If you have shaders (or even if you just Iray Uber Base) thought I'd point this out. Sometimes when I see "Expansion" I think it's added textures, when it can be textures or props. The Mediterranean Patio Expansion has useful items that can be shadered or simply Iray Uber Based- such as a table, bench, chair, bowls- 18 props. FYI, there's a gallery render by @feralfey that got ZERO likes or comments- it's here and used the table from that set. It always ticks me off to see good renders receive zero appreciation. Comments would be nice, in addition to a thumbs up.
For $2.44 Elfridge's Store deserves a look. The revolving doors WORK, there are FIVE different looks to the store, and 26 materials zones so you can change things up. (And again, Iray Uber Base it all, for a minimum change up. Sadly it says the first in a series but there weren't anymore- or at least not still in the store.
Also, the Picket Fence, Textures and Hitch and Textures products can easily be Iray Uber Based and used, eventually I'll test it with some shaders. (not a priority, it's a do-later.)
Also, the regular Fast Grab has really changed (not sure when.) The Graceful Poses (Gen3F) has a nice variety, and there's several unique ones. (As you know, with doing female character showcases, I see a lot of poses!) The hands on these are quite nice. You also get some handy expressions, they're subtle, which I like.
Thanks, Novica! I love color, can you tell? LOL
Here's another look at a few things on sale: Ren as a G8M with Lust from 7 Deadly Sins. This is one of the Flying Fabrics, and Fabiana's Theory of Zen lighting (on sale today at Rendo.) The shaders on the fabric are from her Satin Shader .Plan. They're wearing Jolina Hair and Kieron Hair, and that's all they're wearing!
You most certainly do! The red is quite eye catching.
I've been eying SimTenero Particle Physics - The Complete Bundle since it came out, but as it was just something to play around with, I kept waiting for a decent price which it finally got to last week. Took a little bit to get it to work right (hint: read the pdf instructions!) but once I did, it's pretty straightforward to use. I resurrected an old scene of mine and added some particles. Here's an animated GIF.
@llynara They certainly look like they're having fun! btw I love the bokeh at the top of the background, nice touch!
@rgcincy Talk about fun (and yep, pdf's help!) that looks like a alchemist having too much of it.
Okay, heads up- and this is SO weird- I clicked on a Udemy (dot com) ad for a course, that says it's 85% off of a $195 course- so $29. Get this- I send that VERY SAME LINK to my son, and his is only $10 and my purple banner on the page says get 1000's of course for that WONDERFUL price of $29- and yep, ALL HIS ARE $10 each!!!!
Moral of the story- those popup banners don't necessarily give you the best price. Two, go to Udemy if you want to see if the Blender, 3D, game engine stuff is on sale. (Unity, Unreal, etc) The latter are in those thousands of $10 courses (or $29, which I refuse to get ripped off) The banner says new student discount and FORTY THOUSAND courses. (but be sure yours shows $10 as the purple banner is the exact same for me and my son- both new student, same verbage.) ENDS IN 23 HOURS. Okay, try this discount code, it showed in my son's checkout: PTOLEMY10 and one I got from another site that I haven't tried yet 12FRESH
Note I added a discount code that was in my son's cart automatically, to get the $10 course. YOU MUST HAVE A NEW USER EMAIL/ACCOUNT I think. And weird- now it shows 5 hours after I log out!!!
Edit- there's a $295 Blender course! ($10) for newbies, I just used a different email and set up a new account.
Learn 3D Modelling - The Complete Blender Creator Course Ben Tristem and 2 others $10 /$195
My first chance today to look at some recent purchases. Here is my first attempt with Old Chap by Kayleyss - the first pic is out of the box, the second I added Super Natural Brows by Redz. I like these brows - I added a few morphs to make them more old-manish - thicker, curlier and bushier. The hair is Redz's Classic Side Part Hair. I moved the hairline back a ittle too.
I've also had my first chance to try out the Yvoire set by Faveral. I really love it - there are very many nooks and crannies to explore. Here are several views - sorry for the graininess, I was too impatient to let it render to a high degree of convergence! (One day soon I hope to do a decent render of Yvoire) - click for bigger pics.
Thanks. :) I signed up for that one. It's definitely worth risking $10. ;)