New Users Contest *October 2013* ►►► WIP THREAD ◄◄◄
Chohole
Posts: 33,604
New User's Contest - October
Sponsored by DAZ 3D and ARTCollaborations
Are you new to the 3D World? Are you at the beginning stages of learning 3D rendering? Have you been around for a little bit but feel you could benefit from some feedback or instruction? Have you been around awhile and would like to help other members start their creative journey? Well then come and join the fun as we host our newest contest...
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" Shaders"
This combined contest is designed to help you when re-texturing an item, using either shaders or jpg textures
Shaders and textures are 2 different ways of creating a new look for your Clothing and/or Props and each has it's uses. As this is a complicated subject we have decided to run the Contest over 2 months, concentrating on Shaders during the first month and textures during the second.
Intent: A New Look to an older product.
So for October we are going to concentrate on using shaders. Next month we will carry on with the same topic, but use textures on templates.
Which product? The choice is yours, of course, but we do recommend that as a first try you use a product that is infinitely variable in how it can be made to look and also easy to work with.
To help you in getting the most out of playing with surfaces, we have created the following tutorials for you:
Surface Basics
DAZ Studio Uber Surface Part 1
DAZ Studio Uber Surface Part 2
Bryce Material Room Tutorial, Bryce Sample Material
In addition to the tutorials, we are also offering Masquerade Masks to you for free until the end of this month to give you something to practice playing with surface on or use in your entry for this month (though using it in your render is optional and not required) ENJOY!! and Happy Resurfacing! :)
For a list of the current contest rules, please see this thread :Contest Rules
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We would like to thank ARTCollaborations who have graciously decided to sponsor this month’s contest They will be awarding a special prize to the winners of this month’s contest. To view some of ARTCollaborations items please see their store front here ARTCollaborations Store
Closing Date: October 31st 2013
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Comments
Wee, I LOVE shaders :) Or shader presets, whatever it is called *smiles* And these masks look great, thank you so much for them ArtCollaborations *hugs Ann and Frank*
I'll second that Carola. I LOVE shaders and the Masquerade Masks look amazing.
Thank you very much ArtCollaborations for sponsoring the contest.
Looking forward to a great contest. :)
If anyone would like to see the UberSurface tutorial in forum-post format rather than pdf, you can find it here.
I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. Should be a great month
Just playing...I love shaders.
A plane primative, section of stone floor I want to get to look realistic.
Looked at the tutorial, found out what bump and displacement maps are, and made my own.
I want to learn but have no wish to enter any furthur contests. I don't know if is ok to post. If not I will play with this on my own, I've not done much with shaders, only texture jpgs and diffuse.
I used just a plain grey diffuse, no texture map. Is this what should be happening?
It's perfectly okay to participate in the WIP thread and not enter the contest.
If one wishes to participate in the contest, we prefer that you put up at least one WIP first, though it's not required.
While we do encourage people to do both, it's understood that not everyone wants to do that.
And nice job with the bump and displacement maps...looking good so far!
Very nice SGCBearcub.
I thought about playing with the mask last night but it had been a busy day at work and just trying to read and understand the tutorials took all my brain power. :)
This is something I haven't played around with yet.
This is why I am looking forward to this particular contest.
I'm glad you're still around. I like the learning (and receiving feedback) aspects of these monthly challenges, regardless of any end contest.
As for the stone floor, it looks to me that what's happening is what ought to be happening. As you've probably discovered for yourself, you can increase the effect by increasing the max and min values and also the overall bump / displacement %.
SCGBearcub, nice work, I see you have gemologica too! I could play with that all day long and not get bored.
I adore tiling shaders and have already experimented quite a bit making my own, having studied how the ones I bought work. If that disqualifies me from entering the contest, I'll just post over here.
That said, I still have plenty to learn with UberSurface (fresnel? velvet? I'm off to read the tutorials...)
This is a test render I made while working on the UberSurface tutorial. The outfit is Sickle Robe Genesis (from Renderosity).
The dark-haired figure on the left (V3 shape for Genesis) is wearing the robe with one of its default material options. It uses the DS Default Shader, not Ubersurface.
The blonde (V4 shape for Genesis) is wearing the robe, converted to UberSurface, with no other changes to surface settings. As you can see, it looks too glossy. That's due to the fact that the DS Default Shader and UberSurface handle glossiness very differently.
The redhead (V5) is wearing the robe, converted to UberSurface, with a number of tweaks made to various channels. The most obvious change is probably the addition of velvet. I also cut the glossiness down, raised the bump, and added some displacement (using the bump map as an impromptu displacement map. There were some other changes too, but those were the most significant.
Interesting to see the added realism that you get with velvet, even though the effect is subtle. A little later, I'll try some ubersurface experiments like in your example Scott.
First I thought I should read Surface Basics and discovered something new there -- as well as clarification of several other concepts. Excellent tutorial. It would have been so helpful to have this when I first started exploring shaders but still useful now too. Thanks Ann!
Excellent, another contest to get excited about....sweet, so here's what I'm working on, right now everything is using the default daz shaders they come with, now to play.... :-)
been playing around with ARTCollaborations masks and Bryce mats (or shaders if you prefer the term), just to show what you can do in Bryce.
Left plate as is, right plate with bump and displacement maps I made added.
The other image is Wilmap's tunic, with bump and very slight displacement. Probably too much bump. again, my maps for bump/displacement, from a shared chain texture.
When bumping that tunic I forgot a biggie, I was focused on a tree and forgot the forest. View from normal viewing distance.
Dystopian Console Station, rendered in DAZ4.6, postwork to get the bloom from the led's and screens.
Used the Polygon Group Editor Tool to make a lot of new surfaces, I came accross a tutorial from Carnite (i think) showing how to do it. Wanted to post a link to the tutorial but cant find it again (Didn't bookmark it :shut:). So if someone knows where it is please post a link and I will have another look for it.
The right plate certainly looks better than the left.
You used the editor to create new surfaces or to select/create new material zones? I looked the tool up, bit confused.
You used the editor to create new surfaces or to select/create new material zones? I looked the tool up, bit confused.New Surfaces are New Material zones. You can Add a new Surface and then in the Surfaces Tab add a different Shader or texture to the new surface.
I wanted to change the grey metalic material ror the monitors and keyboards to a black plastic and liked the result so I kept going and did a few more. If anyone wants, I could make up a tutorial but basicly with the Editor active you need to change the shading to textured wire frame then select the polygons you want and create a new surface or assign them to a surface already created.
the highlighted surfaces are new ones I created using the tool.
Another test. Boiled scale. The BP is not me, Alruna by Bobbie25. The tunic hem needs fiddling with, but I'm just experimenting.
all maps from scratch.
forgot..this is still Wilmaps Tunic from ShareCG
Continued to experiment, darkened the Alruna BP, made a steelish shader preset, unified the mishmash of metals.
Added one more image of the sword pommel. No wonder people rave about shaders. 3 clicks of presets and this improved so much it was silly. I threw my scaled leather on the hilt for fun, was amazed it worked.
Nice work!
Isn't it great? I picked it up in the PA sale and this is the first chance I've had to play with it.
This is something I haven't played around with yet.
This is why I am looking forward to this particular contest.
Same here. And the tutorials look great. I've only got through the first one so far but I found it very straightforward and well written.
This is fantastic! Now it looks modern instead of Dystopian. Very nice.
http://www.youtube.com/user/carnite/videos here are a few I found..of carnite's ....there are two about mixing textures that I found interesting....Trish
Ok, I had to take a look at the stock Console station to get a real idea of what you did. Very different now :). And happy accident, today it seems to be free! Er.. or not. It was when I looked, now, its not. Oh well, I have it now.
http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=dystopian+console+station
I think I know how to add a different texture, but I'm honestly not sure about the difference between a shader and a texture. Is a shader just the sum of Diffuse, Opacity, Bump etc settings, while a texture is just the Diffuse part?I'm confused - and I don't want to submit something based on textures, when I'm supposed to work with shaders, or vice versa :)
Yeah, it can get a little confusing fast, one way I think about it is that a texture is the picture you want drawn on the object, the shader then tells the render engine how to draw that picture, so that's where things like the bump, specularity and other maps come into play.