Anyone have HiveWire Horse?
DrowElfMorwen
Posts: 539
This horse and all the stuff that can be done with it looks VERY impressive. Even more than the DAZ Horse (I have the latest). But does anyone know exactly how good it is? I'm thinking of buying their breeds pack: Off Site Commercial Link removed by Moderator.
Post edited by Chohole on
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I've seen a variety of posts in various places extolling its virtues.
I'd try asking on rendo or runtimedna forums if no one here (that owns it) responds.
Moved to the Commons as it isn't a product suggestion.
I have the Hivewire Horse and most of the DAZ Horse 2 collection. Aside from the comparisons in this review:
http://www.cwrw3d.com/blog/harry-vs-the-dh2-a-head-on-comparison
You will find that for most renders you will not see much differences. The Hivewire Horse has several strengths, one being that it has a native version for DAZ Studio and Poser and a much fuller wilder mane, but there is free mane with a wilder look for the DAZ Horse 2.
As far as saddles go, Hivewire took way too long to provide one and even today I think we still don't have the Western version of the saddle. I got tired of waiting. For my war renders a saddle was very important and not having one meant no Harry in my cavalry war scenes.
The Harry Horse in itself is fantastic, providing a different look from the DAZ Horse breeds. The mane and tail are also well done.
It renders okay in Iray, and currently doesn't have Iray settings (but then, so doesn't have the DAZ horse - adding normals would be a good start for that).
On the downside of things is that there isn't much poses around to get Genesis&co on the horse (Dawn-only poses), and there's not much in terms of accessories available.
Here's a render I did using 3Delight, a while ago: https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/42171/
It's a magnificent horse, but support products are slow to arrive. When they do, they're terrific. But at least it's being supported. There's very little, if anything, new from DAZ for the DAZ Horse 2 (which is also excellent) since its initial release.
The current lack of a western saddle, though it's been close to completion for probably a year now, means I haven't used it often. The products are labors of love, not due dates, and when finally released are close to perfection. But I'm so tired of waiting.
So I actually still use the old MilHorse.
And for me, the most fun I've had with the Hivewire horse has actually been the ToonHorse morph for it by 3DU.
I have both and to be honest prefer Harry (the Hivewire horse). I find the main and tail much better and so much easier to pose. I've used the armour etc from the Daz Horse 2 on Harry by parenting and fiddling it wasn't too bad. Dawn poses can be used on Genesis with a little tweaking.
Like Spit one of the things that makes Harry very awesome is the 3Duniverse toon morph.
A couple of renders
A few more
Hi,
I have both Hivewire Horse (Harry) and all it's morphs as well as DH2. I prefer Harry. He has more realistic bends particularly in the joint areas over DH2.
Trish
I like the horse Harry, but when I bought him, there wa no tack.
That is something that has always been useless on DAZ horse (both versions), was the difficult to pose tack, and riding bareback looks odd to me.
How is the new tack for Hivewire Horse? Does it work?
I like Harry, although I don't do many horse renders. Lots of good add ons for him, and CWRW (hope I got those initials right) is a great texture artist. She makes his wonderful coats and manes.
I found that I was buying the same textures twice. I don't know how it happened but I think the site didn't handle bundle purchases right.
dbb
Did you contact them they would I'm sure have sorted something out for you.
Jan19 I'm not sure what you mean I don't think that the Unicorn or the Foal need any extra's to make him work - which pose sets are you thinking of?
It's probably the most advanced horse model on the market at present. But like everyone says, tack is still mostly missing in action. They did finally bring out the classic tack set which will do very nicely for reasonably historical scenes and people have had fairly good luck fudging Daio's Native costume set and the Milhorse tack for work with it. But it does take some tweaking.
Sparky from Philosopher's Egg has done some very interising add-ons for the Hivewire Horse. A Skelehorse, a Kirin and a Kelpie.
On the whole, morphs and skins are very well supported, and a pretty good array of basic poses are available. But there are still a handfull of breeds in development which haven't come out yet, and the continuing problem of tack.
The reins are excellent (from the Classical saddle). They are a dream to pose with the morphs alone. I've only done a short test, and that was a while ago though...
That being said, the Daz Horse 2 has so many great "outfits", props and accessories, which the HW Horse lacks, so it's definitely not obsololete, if one can forgive the DH2's awful, awful mane. (Which I have seen the Uber Hair shader used on which seems to improve it!) Anywho...
Thanks for asking.
I regretted that sentence five minutes after I posted it. I've edited my original post, and this one, because it appears I'm not thinking what I thought I was thinking. In other words, I messed up somewhere.
The han you everyone for the posts! I have Daz Horse 2 with an updated mane and tale set. But the versatility in breeds and textures far beats what is available for the DAZ horse 2. And as long as they have s classic tack set, it'll work for me. The unicorn, the draft horses and the skeleton horse are what i really want. And the foal is very cute. I will have to buy Harry :D
They are all gorgeous, all the different morphs and breeds. :-) The mane styles I really liked -- the curly manes looked like silky hair to me. And the coat textures glow, they're so pretty.
Again, sorry, I didn't mean to put my foot in it the first time.
He is on my wish list.
I have Harry and like him :-)
I also have adh3d's horse
as well as Daz's horses
though as stated HW Harry is lacking in saddles :-(
...
I have Harry and the texture add on packs, as well as the Kirin, Kelpie and Unicorn morphs. I still need to grab the Toon version but overall I really like it. The breed textures and the keplie are what sold it for me.
There are pose sets that come with the foal which are foal type poses, the other poses still work but the foal ones are the types of things a foal might do, which are always useful.
I can highly recommend Harry as he bends beautifully. He has also been set up so all the morphs for the mane can be accessed while still having the horse selected it makes it very easy to pose the mane.
This is an iray render...can't remember if I applied Ubershader for iray or not...sorry.
This is Harry done with the Iray diamond shader.
@DrowElfMorwen,
If you are seriously considering Harry, I noticed he is currently on sale at the Hive.
Trish
Yes, you are right, Pen, thanks.
I just opened DS, and tried some of the CWRW (hope I'm getting those initials right!) horse poses on the unicorn. They worked fine.
I was using Poser pretty exclusively at the time, so maybe it was the Poser version I had a problem with, when it came to interchangeable poses. Or maybe it was something I was doing wrong. I don't seem to have the foal installed in DS, so can't test him, but in DAZ Studio, the CWRW horse poses do work with the unicorn.
I'll edit my other posts to reflect the fact that I'm muddled headed on this issue. My apologies.
No problem Jan...and no need for apologies.
I don't get to work with horses in my scenes, very often, but when I do, I enjoy Harry a bit more than DH2, also. He poses better. And it's really not too hard to fit DH2 tack, or any other tack from older horses. I still prefer to embellish the mane and tail in Photoshop, though.
Some of my covers with horses ... the first four are Harry and the last one DH2.
Just did this render with Harry and the Classic Tach. I wish that the reins could be posed individually though, but it's nice other than that.
I bought him because the breed shapes look more realistic. DH2's draft horse just doesn't look as good, and I was very unimpressed by DH2's unicorn. Harry also has a foal which I don't have yet. Bought the whole package on sale.
I have DH2 as well, and tried some of the DH2 poses on Harry - sorry they don't work. Harry has one less or one more bone in his spine and he completely warps from the abdomen on back.
This link will explain the bone structure to you more... http://www.cwrw3d.com/blog/harry-vs-the-dh2-a-head-on-comparison