Not sure if the best forum or not but here goes...

As I work more with Daz and try to expand my skills, I'm discovering an area where I really struggle. I have the worst time getting camera framing and even remotely good looking renders in tight spaces. When I say tight spaces I mean, for example, the cab of a vehicle or the corner of a room. I've been using the Ranger SUV and trying to set up shots inside that thing is a nightmare. I'm also really struggling with lighting in those same enclosed spaces.

I know this is vague, so I'm not really expecting "answers" but if you all know any tips or tricks for shooting in enclosed spaces - or any good tutorials for this topic - I'd appreciate the help.

How about this: https://www.daz3d.com/marielle-hair

Or some of these: from a google search for 'medieval hair 3D DAZ model'

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1AVNG_enUS686US687&sxsrf=AJOqlzXsf-oM-d3if2qdyRFzedVzX0vZTw:1675968701438&q=medieval+hair+3d+daz+models&tbm=isch&source=univ&fir=IulC_xDEfcsMGM%2C2XRQ53sydOCHQM%2C_%3BiBk-nmTQRTiWbM%2ChEytl69hf8X4fM%2C_%3Ba_7_ZOafiMX7wM%2Cy9kIRPA9OsEIYM%2C_%3BLRXKqfv3l2mKIM%2CB-AVgLnFvdcXcM%2C_%3B7WlbBVEnSICuyM%2C6G2zs0d8jMyRbM%2C_%3BegkWZzueLz15zM%2CSETYDeF8LFJcZM%2C_%3BZ5nHlRLVae7aNM%2CyTP6YahAwOFa8M%2C_%3BoOfeuHQmq2KgGM%2CZmFAURPfNlUCuM%2C_%3BCbzt25g1orDf4M%2CcWfeqLKVYIR83M%2C_%3BxcXtXsDaMb_Y_M%2CBiOoFcLj2yC29M%2C_&usg=AI4_-kS_5-AZITZ94mVJdq1ZYsv_nZm2mw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjIhur4jYn9AhVuPUQIHXTbAHMQ7Al6BAgJEDo&biw=1424&bih=668&dpr=1.35#imgrc=7WlbBVEnSICuyM&imgdii=cEB2KJMTnyILWM

Yeah, it could very well be done to bugginess. July was too early for me but I do have 4 posted from August - as far as I can remember I don't think I posted anymore that month so I don't think any are missing. Not that this means much since the forum bugginess is always somewhat random.

I would like to think that if any moderator action was taken then you'd get an email relating to that to explain things and/or they would be in a de-published state (as you already mentioned) with a note in the moderator feedback box. So presumably if you had no notification like that then it's probably OK to re upload those.

The other thing to ask is: did you actually definitely upload them to the Daz Gallery? - perhaps you only uploaded them to a gallery on a different site and never got round to posting them here?

DoctorJellybean said:

The crash occurs in Iray and not Daz Studio when "Transmission Color" has a map applied. To prevent the crash, remove any map applied to "Transmission Color". It has been reported to NVIDIA.

I truly wish I could hug you right now, going crazy with this problem of Daz crushing, I knew it was the shaders but cannot figure out what it was and your solved it all! Thank you so sooo much and thanks to anyone else in this forum for the precious help.

Hi mindsong, thanks for your feedback. I must say I'm pleased I posted here. I've been working solo and it's great to be able to express my thoughts technically with like minded people. Your points about Hi-rez, I'm old school web and I'm not about to go changing to the 50% mobile gadget users, who can't even use the web, they can't even say application, too many syllables, they can only say "app". Leave the politics alone. Talk tech. 4 times oversize means exactly what I say. Suppose I do a full screen image (width 1920 px), I then do a render at 4 x 1920 which comes to 7,680 px wide RIP, save as TIFF and that renders and comes out at about 32M at system resolution 96 dpi, MS Windows, my system. I then work on the TIFF at that size, doing "inking" at 700 x magnification in Photoshop. The "inking" can become laborious sometimes if I've got a lot to do. Otherwise I don't mind the work. Sometimes I enjoy it and I'm starting to get a bit bold with it and creative after a lot of experience. I see it as a comic skill I need to develop. I'm OK with it and it's working well. If I was going to change anything I'd go with a vector program such as Adobe Illustrator. Vector drawing is so much better than doing it in raster. Alas, I don't want to spend the money and then I've got to learn how to drive the dang thing. Also there'd be a change in style and I want everything to remain fairly consistent in standard. Thanks for suggesting other programs, but for now I'll stick with what I've got.

Now here's what I didn't describe before, and this came as a big surprise to me, I discovered by accident, when going from 4 times oversize back to correct size for use in Flash I discovered that instead of saving the smaller (1920 px) size from the original Daz TIFF render in Photoshop as I did, I now reduce size in believe it or not, truth, I use MS Paint! Yep, old clunky MS Paint. Believe it or not, modern MS Paint has been improved. I discovered that it's default resolution is 144 dpi, excatly twice the standard MAC and web standard 72 dpi. I also noticed that it increased contrast very slightly increasing drama in the graphic and comics thrive on drama, as well as sharpening and defining the "inking" better. IMO, Photoshop tends to give a softish look which is appropriate to photography. So now, I render 4 times up, do Photoshop work at that size, save the TIFF, reduce the size in MS Paint, save as PNG, import to Flash, do the text etc, then export finished PNG from Flash at 72 dpi, then put it through TinyPNG for web use and bingo, high quality useable web graphic. Sounds complicated but when you do it as much as I do when in full production it's just an easy standard procedure. I'm going to stick with it. I also keep all the files carefully at the big size, because one day, probably never, maybe I might go see you print guys for doing a book and I've got almost high quality print ready material. Also to add, there is some spin-off graphic work from the comic which I can market as wall art done at 300 dpi, which I do.

I won't be putting up my links here because I don't think Daz will appreciate me doing self promotion through their forum. Regards.

Richard Haseltine said:

Pickle Renderer said:

You'd think it would be a very simple caching operation wouldn't you. 

 

Whatever's actually going on under the hood has long baffled me.  I've written software that parsed and indexed huge sets of files with links before (in this case engineering diagrams, component libraries and so on), where it took quite a long time at startup if components had changed (with a progress bar to show how far along it was) but that took a few milliseconds thereafter.  Relationships between components don't change that often, so of course the cache rarely needed to be rebuilt.  When it did you could go and make a cup of coffee and it'd be done by the time you returned.

Did they have links to links to links...? Since more than one morph may drive the same ERC link, and since the destination may drive other ERC links in its turn, this isn't a matter of links between separate lists as you appear to be describing but of propagating self-linking within a single list of items.

From experience I have found that almost all relationships that look like a tree with each node visited multiple times, as you are describing, can be flattened into a single pass.  For example, you can flatten an octree into a single array, making in-order operations on its nodes very fast and cache coherent (pre or post order if you like, depending on how you construct the structure).  In general for optimising things like this you need an acceleration structure, and those almost always involve finding suitable hashes.

My most recent adventure in data structures was a time ordered sequence where I had to determine everything between two time points.  This structure was pretty big (millions of elements) and not in time-order ("almost" in that order but no guarantee something wouldn't come in out of order) so I couldn't use lower or upper bound.  What I did instead was a single pass over all the nodes to build an unordered map of vectors of pointers and another vector of unordered maps of arrays of vectors (yes, really).  I should probably describe the intention and what the data was but it's not really relevant and would take too long.

Point is the structure allowed me to turn a very slow operation (low seconds) into a very fast one simply by replacing what was a longish search operation with a couple of dictionary lookups and a couple of array index lookups.  I even replaced the string keys with pointers to strings, as I had another structure that held the strings that I knew would never be moved.  "Insert" on the structure during live operation was slow (~10 ms), but inserts didn't happen very often so that was OK.  Lookups on this acceleration structure were unmeasurably fast, i.e. < 1ms, so it could be used for drawing a 30 fps UI component.  The time constraint really concentrates the mind doesn't it.

Anyway point is this, Daz can do it I'm sure.  It's simply a question of investing in it.

youdummy said:

TJohn said:

The rumors of this thread's death have been greatly exaggerated. 

"Killing a person slowly is no kindness." -- Robert Heinlein

killing a forum thread is not fun as posting in said thread is more fun! 

Here is where you can lower the density

since the forum wont let me post a screen capture...in your surfaces tab, select all the fur surfaces and scroll down to "Additional PR Hairs Density (cm^2)"   in the purple dials.....you will see 50 as the value, make it something lower till you find a setting that works for you

Hylas said:

Ok, so here's a hypothetical, pie-in-the-sky use for the blockchain.

My boyfriend and I were looking for a Joni Mitchell album and realised that her music is not on Spotify. We found it on YouTube. And we had a short discussion about which is the worse corporation, Spotify or Google. We concluded that we don't know which is worse (prolly Google), but they are certainly both bad.

So, what if musicians would store their music on the blockchain.

Now, in the present reality this would not work because the blockchain can only store tiny bits of information. It can't even store a JPG and it cetrainly can't store an MP3, let alone Joni Mitchell's entire discography.

But let's imagine a future in which this is no longer a limitation. I imagine each song being stored as a smart contract. The smart contract is set up by the artist themselves (or the label, if they're working with a label). The user pays 0.0001 ETH (or whatever) and the smart contract plays you the song. The ETH would automatically be distributed between the artist and whoever else has a claim, according to how the smart contract was set up.

We would be cutting out Google, Spotiffy, Apple, and the likes in the process.

I don't know. My understanding of the technology is still relatively limited and I'm open to arguments against the scenario I'm describing here. Let's debate! :)

Most likely you'd be downloading it off of Open Sea/Some Other Crypto Startup or future Google/Spotify/Apple's centralized NFT exchange. Centralized NFT exchanges don't exist because because the asset itself isn't on the blockchain, they exist because it's the easiest, safest way for a nontechnical person to get their product out, minimize the technical and security risks of handling the payment or product themselves, and boost the potential number of customers who may see it as far more people will go to Open Sea than some random dude's website.

After all, there's no reason Joni Mitchell can't sell her music directly off her own website now - no blockchain needed. She'd just have to manage all the technical and security concerns herself (or pay a third party), and hope that all of her fans who wanted to buy her music went to her website. Same way no one has to upload their videos on youtube to put their videos online. They could put them on their own website - Google Search would still show them. But if they want their content to be seen by a larger audience, benefit from algorithms that can potentially recommend their videos/products to viewers, if they don't want to manage the technical stuff themselves, centralized platforms are inevitably where they will flock to.

Similarly, if you wanted, you could delete your social media accounts (if you have any) and replace them with your own personal website or blog, but it's easier for friends, family, and any potential new friends or followers to find you if you're on a site where other people already are. A lot of small websites from before social media was big are gone, and have been replaced by accounts on centralized social media platforms.

Also, when you say "The user pays 0.0001 ETH (or whatever) and the smart contract plays you the song" does this mean we don't get to download the song and listen to it whenever we want? In this specific implementation, the blockchain is now DRM that charges us everytime we listen to music?

Hello all, not sure if this is the correct forum or channel to post this in, but I was hoping to get some help identifying a few outfits. I came across these images while looking through renders of outfits/armors, but the authors didn't list what outfit/armor was used in the display photos. I have also contacted the creator of each display picture, and have yet to hear back. I'm hoping that someone here recognizes them.

Anyhow, I appreciate everyone's help regardless of the armor/outfits being found or not, thank you so much!

https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/56955/i/fantasy-dark-knight-armor-for-daz-horse-2-03-daz3d.jpg

https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/21674/i/00-main-soldiers-of-magic--serpio-poses-for-genesis-2-males-daz3d.jpg

https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/21674/i/07-soldiers-of-magic--serpio-poses-for-genesis-2-males-daz3d.jpg

https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/21672/i/daz3d-soldiers-of-magic-serpio-pop09.jpg

zmaxwilson said:

Hi folks, me again. Thanks for kind words. ...

Thanks for the update/info. I believe you can post links to commercial resources, so long as they don't compete directly with DAZ-Studio's offerings - which is a fair/rational policy. The mods in here will be sure and edit or ... your post if it is found in violation of their terms, so you might give it a try, although a quick web search brought tinypng's main site right up for me, adding a .com to tinypng, etc. :) Thanks for the pointer. And I didn't know png could be lossy. 2M to 500k is great.

Interesting workflow you describe in your efforts to maximize your quality from end-to-end. You mention 4x oversampling - do I read this as 4K renders resized back to 1080p? Coming from a print world (and photo world - hence my appreciation of your lighting) that's the kind of 'quality insurance' thing I do in my workflow, as well as using lossless PNG/tif/tga - as-well-as lagarith, Cineform, MagicYUV, or HuffYUV for animation video-files (generates a *lot* of data...). Per your workflow, I'm also starting to wonder if once we get back to webbing our output for the inevitable audience of the future, are all of these Hi-Rez intermediates really worth the trouble in a side-by-side compare? lol... My old production habits will die hard, but my personal phone and tablet browsing habits are starting to make we wonder if the time, storage management, and disks... are costing me more then they're helping. Not ready to surrender yet, but I'm looking at all inputs (like yours too). Add to this stereo vr360 imagery in video... and ... ug.

FWIW, you mentioned doing post line-work on PS - have you messed with 'line render 9000' here at DAZ, the VSS author's inverted geoshell freebie from the top of this DS forum thread, and/or the built-in 3DL line-generation render resource in the base DS install (found in the render settings, render scripts dialog menu)? There are some IRAY options too, but I've had the best luck with the 3DL variants, each with its own trade-offs... Track down the technique/product specific forum threads for the best sources of examples and discussions/successes/frustrations/etc. Most of these can do lines alone as separate image for layering/post-editing, which my be a nice hybrid for your current workflow and maybe save you some time. In some cases, if enabled, the line-only render-pass image is saved somewhere in a DS working directory as part of the render/compositing process in DS, but it can be grabbed after the render if you dig around a bit. I learned this somewhere on the forums, so you might poke there if interested.

best,

--ms

If you check out HH's thread in the Commercial Products forum: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/616561/hh-belle-for-genesis-9-commercial/p1 you'll see he talks about the outfit that he's working on. It's likely this choker is part of that outfit so it may be just a case of waiting :)

Hi folks, me again. Thanks for kind words. Thanks should go to John Monk for creating the tutorial.

Re Mindsong: Definitely correct. Lighting is critical. Small variations change what you get and it's difficult to know exactly because the shaders don't appear in the Viewport. You have to do test renders. Sometimes you get it right straight up. Sometimes I've spent hours in complicated scenes with multiple characters. Often I'll end up with 2 or 3 renders in that case, which I merge together in Photoshop. It's tricky getting lighting right, but I have an advantage from previous experience as a photographer, a long time ago. I pretty much know what I've got to do when I set up the shots. Next point, I have 6 episodes online right now you can access for free, but I wasn't sure what the rules are here about third party external links on this forum. If it's OK, I'll put the link up. Let me know if it's OK or not. Next point, TinyPNG, I prepared a detail (see attached) from one of the scenes before and after their processing so you can compare and evaluate the difference. My biggest issue is gradients. They convert the graphics to indexed mode. This saves enormous amounts of file size by linking adjacent pixels together if they have the same or nearly same values instead of having individual values for each and every pixel. This works best for images with large flat color areas. Not so good if the image has a lot of tiny details. Not 100% sure, but it's something like that. I'm no expert. Anyhow you can see that indexed color doesn't handle smooth gradients very well. Disappointing, but I live with it because it's not that big an issue for me and I'm happy to compromise to be able to run the comic online. In the attachment I also noticed there's been a slight color shift too. I'd never noticed that before I prepared this test image. TinyPNG are free and open 24/7 online. Go there, no need to even register, it's free and open to anyone. There's a limit on how much you can do before you pay, but it's a very generous limit. Again I haven't given a link to them because of forum etiquette, but if it's OK I'll gladly promote their link. I think they're great. I love 'em. And lastly, Q-32. I knew about the computer when I googled the title to check I wasn't stepping on anyones toes by using that name. That computer's very old now and I figured nobody would get upset about it, but good call on your behalf. The Q is code in the comic for Quality. The star, Vicki Dixon, is the thirty-second victim of the evil doers, hence, she's Q-32. The previous Q-Girls have all been deceased in experiments by the mad professor. And this is just the beginning! No end of scope for horrors to come. Poor Vicki!

Revrba79: You know your stuff alright. Totally agree 3DL is the way to go. Besides that, the renders take just a fraction of the time compared to IRAY. Both great for differnet purposes. Regards all. 

Oso3D said:

It comes up if you search in Marketplace, and my name is actually William Timmins.

https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/00Vdb/tatzelwurm-for-daz-dragon-3
 

added to wishlist and I was only going by your Facebook name which my own is not my real name either 

will know after Fridayif I can buy it

It comes up if you search in Marketplace, and my name is actually William Timmins.

https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/00Vdb/tatzelwurm-for-daz-dragon-3
 

richardandtracy, In the link you mentioned to the other forum there was a post of instructions of how someone else created thier version, I had all the needed assets so gave it a crack, and comparing the one shown on https://www.daz3d.com/perfect-wild-curls-for-genesis-8-females   with the one created through the other persons instructions , I would say she is around 95-98% there, so thanks very much. Just goes to show, I posted this and the first reply was that no one would likely remember as it was made so long ago, and I gave the idea I had up, thinking that person was right, however the next day, you come up with something that puts me right back on track, Cheers Geordie.

His didn't came up when I searched "tatzelw(u/y)rm" on ArtStation, and I can't remember Will's last name to search by artist.

mindsong said:

Enjoying this info/thread on the update. Thanks for posting your progress/experiments.

I was curious about the nature of the HDRIs you're using with AWE. We've got 'standard'  3DL and Iray HDRIs widely available as well as loads of external HDRI sources out there, etc. Add parris's (PA) "IBL master" product to the 3DL/Iray mix and the head spins a bit...

Can I ask how you would describe the most 'plug n play' HDRI format you use? Considering the collection of both IRAY and 3DL HDRI products I've got, are there any favorite conversions or setting-hacks you would recommend to get them to work with the AWE toolkit?

(If you've already covered this in one of the (your) AWE threads, please just let me know and I'll happily go find your notes. Some long forum threads I'll slog through, but I really enjoy your explorations and thoughts as you go, and always wish there were more when I get to the ends of them, with wowie and kettu's comments and insights making for fascinating - if often slightly over-my-head - reading).

tnx to all,

--ms

I'd be happy to ellaborate a bit, but not totally familiar with various exposure- etc values yet.. will probably share some test results in a while. You know, there are good and bad HDRIs. I've certainly downloaded quite a bunch from places like PolyHaven and the first thing I check is the announced EV range. The ones with extreme values I tend to ignore because it can take some serious tinkering to make them work. And I don't care much for those clear sky/sunny midday HDRIs either, blue skylight and sharp sunlight is pretty easy to set up with arealight emitters, in my opinion. 

The "right" workflow for using HDRI light, again in my opinion, would be to set up your characters and stuff using a lookdev setup with PT Arealights, that you know will give you consistant results, then set up the HDRI light and dome appearance according to those skinsettings etc. Which is what I tried in that spycar dude render;) 

Regarding actual formats: When I say HDRI I mean .hdr, not .exr, which won't work at all atleast on Mac, as far as I'm concerned. And there seems to be atleast one general rule of thumb: If you set up your surfaces using the AreaPT light, it's likely that , when shifting to HDRI light, you need to reduce atleast diffuse exposure offset by something like 2EVs. 

Since a couple versions back of DAZ studio, I always get the glossy plastic high reflective surface, on the original product as default when I load the product. It's the object, not the material only.  Doesn't matter if it is an old product or new. If it is 3Delight texture, i go to the search box in Surfaces, search (one item at a time) on gloss, specular and reflection, I set the slider to zero. I correct the glossiness in the Surfaces panel. If I use the Iray script, it ignores my changes in the 3D I made to remove "plastic". The newly Irayed stuff becomes completely high gloss weight,etc.

If in Iray, or converted from 3Delight, I go to search box in Surfaces panel, search (one item at a time) on  Gloss, Reflection, sometimes dual lobe and with hairs-top coat, and slide all those to zero.  

Sad news, thanks for the update. Condolences to family and friends, if any frequent this forum.