(Released) Materia MeshMaker plug-in

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Comments

  • ThyranqThyranq Posts: 584
    edited February 2021

    Everythings seems to work fine, but when it finishes calculating the blobs, I get a message saying that it could not find file "...DAZ3D/DAZStudio4/Plugins/MateriaAM/resources/Snowmat001.duf" then says that it couldn't load selected shader, but it works anyway.

    Any idea what that's about?

    Post edited by Thyranq on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    edited February 2021

    One of my first experiments with the shader. Have no idea, how to use the plugin, yet.

    A little strange, when applied to digits - part of the snow just levitate above them.

    image

    Robot02pic03.jpg
    1920 x 1200 - 743K
    Post edited by Artini on
  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,942

    galien said:

    Interesting product.  I look forward to seeing what I can do with this on it's own, and in combination with Fluidos.

    One question: when I click on the "live" and "overlay" buttons, there's no visual indication of whether they are toggled on or off.  In the videos, these turn gray when you click on them.  I wonder whether this is due to the workspace settings I have, or is everyone seeing this?

     

    I get this too 

  • Thyranq said:

    Everythings seems to work fine, but when it finishes calculating the blobs, I get a message saying that it could not find file "...DAZ3D/DAZStudio4/Plugins/MateriaAM/resources/Snowmat001.duf" then says that it couldn't load selected shader, but it works anyway.

    Any idea what that's about?

    Check that folder, see if the file is really missing please.

  • galiengalien Posts: 136

    Catherine3678ab said:

    galien said:

    galien said:

    Alessandro Mastronardi said:

    galien said:

    Interesting product.  I look forward to seeing what I can do with this on it's own, and in combination with Fluidos.

    One question: when I click on the "live" and "overlay" buttons, there's no visual indication of whether they are toggled on or off.  In the videos, these turn gray when you click on them.  I wonder whether this is due to the workspace settings I have, or is everyone seeing this?

    Can you show a screenshot of what your workspace looks like? Thanks

    Screen shot attached - live is toggled on, overlay is toggled off and both look the same.

    I think that it started off as City Limits (Lite), but has been tweaked over the years.

    If others aren't seeing this, then it's a Daz Studio issue rather than a problem with your plug-in.  The buttons still work, I just have to remember which state they are in.

     

    In my setup, they show blue when on, and grey when off.

    Thanks, that's helpful.

    I think that I've found the cause.  DS has three built in styles.  The toggle buttons change colour with "Highway" and "Main St", but not with "Darkside".

     

  • Artini said:

    One of my first experiments with the shader. Have no idea, how to use plugin, yet.

    A little strange, when applied to digits - part of the snow just levitate above them.

    image

    Two things to check for those letters... try to set accumulation to 0% and if that doesn't suffice, in the Materia snow shader, under Displacement, try to experiment some values for the Displacement minimum.

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 7,991
    edited February 2021

    A few quick test renders:

    n.b. for the curtains where the existing geometry is I gather too narrow, solution was to put a slipcover rectangle over the top, make the snow, hide the slipcover and resize the "soap" :-)

    Of the "alien plants" - things like this have too much geometry BUT a nice warning pops up so one can decide whether to go ahead and burn the HD or skip it ;-) So I'm thinking that for very bushy scenes "slipcovers" over those types of mesh might also be a good idea. {for those of us without huge computers}

    Preliminary tests show it is pointless to send this mesh over the bridge to Hexagon which massacres it. BUT D/S exports out a very nice mesh [I used the Carrara settings out/in}. n.b. Shaders do not export with mesh of course. So for making any snow props one needs to reapply the snow shader.

    That is one awesome shader too!

     

    Soap on Shower Curtains.png
    700 x 700 - 404K
    Makes for some fantastic clouds.png
    700 x 700 - 238K
    Alien Plants with Snow.png
    700 x 700 - 587K
    Post edited by Catherine3678ab on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    edited February 2021

    The plugin is actually even more interesting.

    The tree with large animal preset applied.

    image

    Tree02pic01.jpg
    1920 x 1200 - 892K
    Post edited by Artini on
  • Catherine3678ab said:

    A few quick test renders:

    n.b. for the curtains where the existing geometry is I gather too narrow, solution was to put a slipcover rectangle over the top, make the snow, hide the slipcover and resize the "soap" :-)

    Of the "alien plants" - things like this have too much geometry BUT a nice warning pops up so one can decide whether to go ahead and burn the HD or skip it ;-) So I'm thinking that for very bushy scenes "slipcovers" over those types of mesh might also be a good idea. {for those of us without huge computers}

    Preliminary tests show it is pointless to send this mesh over the bridge to Hexagon which massacres it. BUT D/S exports out a very nice mesh [I used the Carrara settings out/in}. n.b. Shaders do not export with mesh of course. So for making any snow props one needs to reapply the snow shader.

    That is one awesome shader too!


     

    thanks for sharing your experiments!

     

  • Artini said:

    The plugin is actually even more interesting.

    The tree with large animal preset applied.

    image
     

    very well done Artini. Just something I wanted to share: once you guys have generated the mesh, try also to customize even more tweaking the snow shader applied to it. Especially tweaking noise layers scale, seed and displacement will allow you even greater and diverse results. 

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 7,991
    edited February 2021

    Catherine3678ab said:

    Lovely, it works in D/S4.12 :-)

    Alessandro Mastronardi Are we allowed to share the mesh along with whatever else it is we are sharing. For example snow peaked mountains?

    ... or to edit the mesh into other things for a share? No big plans at the moment but am curious.

    Here's a few more renders.

    About the "live" button, whether it is on or off ... it's often "live" anyways even from the 'off' position - but not always. Sometimes I make some changes and as soon as the mouse is released, poof - it starts remaking the snow. Other times everything just stays the same - ? how supposed to jog it into action - although hitting 'new' always does something.

    There is a learning curve to this to find the best arrangement of snow however it is not suitable for "any and all mesh" - seems to want to read over way more mesh sometimes than others BUT that particular mesh [that I gave up on] was in an old scene set and there could be reasons not visible. Or my lack of my experience ;-)

    For the snow over the lamp post - I did adjust the lighting and opacity for the lamp and made the snow a little bit transparent.

    You know this all is just begging for a good ol' Snow Fort fight scene!

    streetlamp.png
    700 x 700 - 213K
    Snow on Urn.png
    700 x 700 - 324K
    Snow on Urn in Ruins.png
    700 x 700 - 785K
    Post edited by Catherine3678ab on
  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,942

    A few words on what each of the sliders do would be really nice, sorry but some (most?) are just not obvious to me!

  • Alessandro MastronardiAlessandro Mastronardi Posts: 2,593
    edited February 2021

    SimonJM said:

    A few words on what each of the sliders do would be really nice, sorry but some (most?) are just not obvious to me!

    I think they are explained in the YouTube movies, did you take a look at those?

    in case they don't suffice feel free to email me for more info.

    Post edited by Alessandro Mastronardi on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528

    Alessandro Mastronardi said:

    SimonJM said:

    A few words on what each of the sliders do would be really nice, sorry but some (most?) are just not obvious to me!

    I think they are explained in the YouTube movies, did you take a look at those?

    in case they don't suffice feel free to email me for more info.

    I think, it will be even better, if you would answer the questions here in this thread, so we all could benefit from the explanation.

     

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,942

    Alessandro Mastronardi said:

    SimonJM said:

    A few words on what each of the sliders do would be really nice, sorry but some (most?) are just not obvious to me!

    I think they are explained in the YouTube movies, did you take a look at those?

    in case they don't suffice feel free to email me for more info.

    I don't really do well with videos as a frame of reference work, and the ones I have seen have no verbal explanations given.

  • Let me see if I can pull a pdf quickly.

  • Alessandro MastronardiAlessandro Mastronardi Posts: 2,593
    edited February 2021

    There you go, I'll ask to have it included in the product file as well:
    Manual: www.alessandromastronardi.com/downloads/MateriaMeshMakerManual.pdf

    Post edited by Alessandro Mastronardi on
  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,942

    Thank you, very useful!

  • ThyranqThyranq Posts: 584

    Alessandro Mastronardi said:

    Thyranq said:

    Everythings seems to work fine, but when it finishes calculating the blobs, I get a message saying that it could not find file "...DAZ3D/DAZStudio4/Plugins/MateriaAM/resources/Snowmat001.duf" then says that it couldn't load selected shader, but it works anyway.

    Any idea what that's about?

    Check that folder, see if the file is really missing please.

    It wasn't, but I have it now.

    I downloaded it through Install Manager, which was two files, which didn't contain that folder or file. I went into my account and checked the manual download, and there's a third file there that doesn't list as Install Manager Ready, so I downloaded that (which was an exe file), ran it, and now it's there. 

  • ThyranqThyranq Posts: 584

    This is fantastic! 

    Just a quick little play around with it, only let it go to 100 iterations, but wow! I can really see me getting some great use out of this - and it was so darn cheap! I have to say when I seen the price for this I was shocked, I expected it to be quite a bit more than what it was. Talk about bang for your buck!

    Materia.png
    650 x 366 - 364K
  • Does anyone know where to find the tracks image for making footprints ect. I have looked all over for them and did searches and find nothing, even looked in maunal download zips and nothing there, the video shows a location that must be only on creator's computer. Any help appreciated.

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 7,991
    edited February 2021

    Robertl said:

    Does anyone know where to find the tracks image for making footprints ect. I have looked all over for them and did searches and find nothing, even looked in maunal download zips and nothing there, the video shows a location that must be only on creator's computer. Any help appreciated.

    This looks like a great website to get footprints, etc. from. Free account. Read the rules. Basically attribution is required, not a biggie.

    On the Tire dial, he was using black/white jpg files so that's what I made. Works great. Negative value for impressions - positive made a cutout of the tracks which was interesting. Sometimes when a vehicle is driving through snow the 'track' part will come up into the air as it is pulled out of the ground BUT that depends upon the snow type of course. Usually it just all presses downwards making for icy roads.

    https://thenounproject.com/term/footprint/3969/

    https://thenounproject.com/term/footprint/763390/

    https://thenounproject.com/term/paw-print/50769/

    https://thenounproject.com/term/tire-track/27296/

    eta: One can also get photoshop brushes at places such as DeviantArt - various artists with various conditions.

    black tracks on white jpg.png
    1000 x 1000 - 2M
    Post edited by Catherine3678ab on
  • Catherine3678ab said:

    Robertl said:

    Does anyone know where to find the tracks image for making footprints ect. I have looked all over for them and did searches and find nothing, even looked in maunal download zips and nothing there, the video shows a location that must be only on creator's computer. Any help appreciated.

    This looks like a great website to get footprints, etc. from. Free account. Read the rules. Basically attribution is required, not a biggie.

    On the Tire dial, he was using black/white jpg files so that's what I made. Works great. Negative value for impressions - positive made a cutout of the tracks which was interesting. Sometimes when a vehicle is driving through snow the 'track' part will come up into the air as it is pulled out of the ground BUT that depends upon the snow type of course. Usually it just all presses downwards making for icy roads.

    https://thenounproject.com/term/footprint/3969/

    https://thenounproject.com/term/footprint/763390/

    https://thenounproject.com/term/paw-print/50769/

    https://thenounproject.com/term/tire-track/27296/

    Thank you, these will work great. I just thought he included those he showed and I couldn't figure out where to find them, but problem solved now, thanks again.

  • Can this plugin do larger meshes other than humans, shapes and small-scale meshes? I would love if someone can post pics so I can see how well this plugin can cover, say a terrain. Would that be too much for a system to handle?

  • Alessandro MastronardiAlessandro Mastronardi Posts: 2,593
    edited February 2021

    AnEye4Art said:

    Can this plugin do larger meshes other than humans, shapes and small-scale meshes? I would love if someone can post pics so I can see how well this plugin can cover, say a terrain. Would that be too much for a system to handle?

    You can't of course generate geometry say for a terrain of 10km x 10km and expect to have quality sized to a 10cm snow ball. But if you are going to use a distant mountain covered with snow, I think it would work reasonably well. As it works great for small terrains close to the camera where you need lot of details, and it works pretty well also on small figures, like I did for a test with my amazon frog (see attached image).

     

    sshot-1.jpg
    1365 x 1014 - 116K
    Post edited by Alessandro Mastronardi on
  • AnEye4ArtAnEye4Art Posts: 702
    edited February 2021

    Thank you for answering my questions. I will for sure buy your product.

    Post edited by AnEye4Art on
  • lilweeplilweep Posts: 2,217

    Alessandro Mastronardi said:

    AnEye4Art said:

    Can this plugin do larger meshes other than humans, shapes and small-scale meshes? I would love if someone can post pics so I can see how well this plugin can cover, say a terrain. Would that be too much for a system to handle?

    You can't of course generate geometry say for a terrain of 10km x 10km and expect to have quality sized to a 10cm snow ball. But if you are going to use a distant mountain covered with snow, I think it would work reasonably well. As it works great for small terrains close to the camera where you need lot of details, and it works pretty well also on small figures, like I did for a test with my amazon frog (see attached image).

     

    that looks really good 

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 7,991
    edited February 2021

    AnEye4Art said:

    Can this plugin do larger meshes other than humans, shapes and small-scale meshes? I would love if someone can post pics so I can see how well this plugin can cover, say a terrain. Would that be too much for a system to handle?

    It is too much for D/S to handle.

    One can apply the Snow Shader though to any surface.

    Same scene, same surface selected, Snow Shader applied:

    If you try to apply it to an environment ground.png
    504 x 186 - 18K
    unfinished render to show Snow Shader at default settings over a terrain.png
    2400 x 1200 - 7M
    Post edited by Catherine3678ab on
  • Alessandro Mastronardi  Is my request with regards to redistributing generated mesh being intentionally ignored?

  • Alessandro MastronardiAlessandro Mastronardi Posts: 2,593
    edited February 2021

    Catherine3678ab said:

    Alessandro Mastronardi  Is my request with regards to redistributing generated mesh being intentionally ignored?

    not intentionally. I went back in the thread right now and found it. The geometry produced can be used for any purpose, also commercial so yes, you can share it.

    Post edited by Alessandro Mastronardi on
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