My first Prop - The Forgotten Chapel - WIP [Commercial]

2

Comments

  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    @Zev0

    I thought about a gothic stone ornament thingy for the windows. And yes, i need a lot more debris and broken things - and weed, but i spare this for the end. :)


    @Gedd

    I know. Like i said, right now i do the modelling and diffuse etc. And to save time, i have nothing else to render (like AO, reflections or whatever :) )

    @Szark

    don't spoil this excellent modelling and texture work by using desaturated diffuse maps to make the Bump, Displacement and Spec maps

    Could you explain this please?

    As far as i understood it, nearly all bump or displacement maps originate from the according diffuse map. You can blend things out, strenghten other areas or add extra detail etc, but the foundation is the diffuse... or am i wrong?

    Thanks!

  • ShaneWSmithShaneWSmith Posts: 636
    edited December 1969

    Very nice. Looking forward to seeing the finished version! :)

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    @Szark

    don't spoil this excellent modelling and texture work by using desaturated diffuse maps to make the Bump, Displacement and Spec maps

    Could you explain this please?

    As far as i understood it, nearly all bump or displacement maps originate from the according diffuse map. You can blend things out, strenghten other areas or add extra detail etc, but the foundation is the diffuse... or am i wrong?

    Thanks!Yeah sure. No not wrong well depends on how well you know your image software. What some vendors do is to take the already made diffuse map and turn it in a greyscale image, job done which many of us don't like to see.

    The best way to make proper bump and displacement maps is by using something like zBrush for example which lets you apply the desired bump and displacement effects independently from the diffuse map,

    Or making the bump and displacement maps at the same time as the diffuse but not from the diffuse, making sure each effect is the proper level of greyscale. Just turning a coloured map in greyscale and tweaking it really is not the desired way for quality products IMHO.

  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    @canberra_boy

    Thanks!

    @Szark

    Well, i will create the bumps and displacements before setting things up in poser and daz. Wish me luck :)


    Added some more debris. Next will be the windows, then a few plants, re-adjusting some textures, creating all other needed maps and bringing it all into poser and daz - well, at least i have a plan :)

    ForgChapelWIP18.JPG
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  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Good Luck.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,034
    edited December 1969

    ...that is looking really good. I could see my Leela hiding from a Serb Patrol in the corner behind the cross.

  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    @Szark

    Thanks!

    @Kyoto Kid

    I will try to prepare the right corner behind the cross with more greenery etc. tomorrow. Should become a nice hideout.

    Thanks!


    Added a few plants today. Tomorrow i will test the ivy generator - in case the geometry will become too heavy, i will have to try it by hand.

    ForgChapelWIP19.JPG
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  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited November 2012

    Luck you don't need it really......loving the whole thing.

    Ivy Gen the standalone version or do you have one for Lightwave?
    From memery the Ivy Gen standalone is pretty good depending how many leaves you attach, how lush you want it to be. Have you used it much? I played with it a while back and found I had to invert one of the axis on export before loading it in the Ivy Gen. But being my age I can't remember which one. :)

    Post edited by Szark on
  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited November 2012

    I will try this one:

    http://vivec3d.com/3d-ivy-generator-2012/

    Do you mean something else? (looking for IVY Gen now on google ...)

    I am not sure if theres a lightwave plugin version for this generator. I never tried it myself, but i read somewhere on the forums, that it produces heavy geometry.

    Thanks.

    Post edited by drakken3d on
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Yes that one...it has been around for a while and updated

    No I don't know if it can be used in LW, I would guess not. I was asking if you had a plug-in for LW that you would be making the Ivy with. I sometimes forget we all are not native english speakers....sorry about about that.

  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited November 2012

    Hey Pete, no prob :)

    I bet i write a lot of funny things from time to time either, but well, as long as i get the point across ...

    It is a standalone program. I tried to get some ivy into my scene but it was all too heavy - and finally, i saw the bluescreen again :)

    So i got rid of the ivy and call it done for now. Next step is to get all into poser / daz. I have daz studio 3 and poser 7, so these will be the lowest versions it will work in.

    The coffin and its top will be separate objects, so that figures can be placed inside. The set should work even without the coffin.

    I will have to buy some small proggies too. UV mapper and two from Jack Tomalin, for creating the poser files etc.

    BTW, i thought it would be better to have no groundplane because now, you can place it into wherever you want (urban environment, grassy env, etc). Am i right?

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    Post edited by drakken3d on
  • Joe CotterJoe Cotter Posts: 3,259
    edited November 2012

    Szark said:
    ..The best way to make proper bump and displacement maps is by using something like zBrush...

    Blender also can do this and has 3D brushes like zBrush for creating the texture used for displacements. Not nearly as sophisticated as zBrush ofc, but it's free.
    Post edited by Joe Cotter on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    And Blender, in my opinion, is one of the best UV mapping programs around...

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    and you don't need UVmapper to Turn Off Normals as Blender can do it. :)

  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    @Szark

    Well, i bought it and it found a few errors modo seems to have overlooked. So i think the more softwares look for errors (and find them) the better :)

    Right now i am trying to get the whole thing into poser. It seems, that i can only have the same texture map as bump and displacement in poser, which is weird. The displacement thing does not work that good, so for future projects i think it would be better to do things like the ornaments arount the sarcophag in zbrush and do the normal map thingy :)

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  • Joe CotterJoe Cotter Posts: 3,259
    edited December 2012

    It's looking very good. :)

    Post edited by Joe Cotter on
  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Gedd!

    Decided to add some ground. It can be turned off in Poser etc.

    ForgChapelWIP21.JPG
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  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    @Szark

    Well, i bought it and it found a few errors modo seems to have overlooked. So i think the more softwares look for errors (and find them) the better :)

    nice, thanks for reporting back to let us know.
  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 2012

    No problem, Szark :)

    So i have it all in poser. I wanted to create a few Pre-Load-CR2's to load the many parts of the model more easily, but it won't work. i have read on the smithmicro website somewhere that you have to load the parts and save them as a poser scene (.pz3), then you have to rename it to .cr2 and thats it. It works one time after doing it, but when i create a new scene, it loads only one piece of the parts i assigned to it. So i think i forgot to do something.

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    Post edited by drakken3d on
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    and two from Jack Tomalin, for creating the poser files etc.

    If you bought Prepper then you have all you need to make CR2's though for me I think .pp2 will do fine. PZ3 is a scene save format which is ok too
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Gedd!

    Decided to add some ground. It can be turned off in Poser etc.

    Dang...that's looking good...

    Add in a sky and a little 'atmosphere' and wow...

  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    @Szark

    Yes, prepper works great. But i want to have - for instance - one cr2 file that loads ten other cr2's into the viewport. That's more comfortable for the user i think (Jack Tomalin has Pre_Load_cr2's nearly in every product).


    @mjc1016

    thanks!

  • ShaneWSmithShaneWSmith Posts: 636
    edited December 1969

    @Szark

    Yes, prepper works great. But i want to have - for instance - one cr2 file that loads ten other cr2's into the viewport. That's more comfortable for the user i think (Jack Tomalin has Pre_Load_cr2's nearly in every product).

    I definitely appreciate this feature - one reason I own pretty much all of JT's stuff! :-)

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,598
    edited December 1969

    Beautiful work!

    mjc1016 said:
    Something I've played around with, a little...

    It may seem counter intuitive, but not only do 4096 maps look better,they seem to be a 'sweet spot' for 3Delight (not sure about Firefly...Poser's render engine), 2048 work well in 3Delight, too. But the kicker is, if they are in tif format they are even nicer...and overall, render faster.

    Why?

    Because tif is the 'native' format of 3Delight. TDLmake, the texture 'optimizer' for 3Delight converts everything to tif and then creates mipmaps...if it doesn't have to convert anything, that's one step saved...both the time it takes to convert and any possible conversion losses (quality of the image). In my tests, I was saving between 5 and 10 seconds...in a smaller render that usually finished in a minute or so...with a noticeable difference in the final 'look'. And when the memory 'costs' were added up...the loading of the texture, conversion and so on, the 'huge' tif file actually, when all was said and done, ended up 'even' or smaller than the others. .


    Hi mjc1016, so does this mean if we save textures as tifs that it will load quicker?

    Cheers

    Pen

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Not necessarily...but it does shave some to quite a bit of time when it comes to prepping them to render...when I was testing, the tif renders always were the fastest to complete...the first time, after that, since any additional renders of the same scene were using the already converted images, there was no advantage (or not that much of one...only a second or two on re-rendering, but 10 or more seconds on a 1 minute render is significant on the initial render...and that was single image/textures). But another advantage, even though the tifs were larger to begin with there was a smaller memory impact, because there was no need for multiple copies to be in memory.

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,598
    edited December 1969

    mjc1016 said:
    Not necessarily...but it does shave some to quite a bit of time when it comes to prepping them to render...when I was testing, the tif renders always were the fastest to complete...the first time, after that, since any additional renders of the same scene were using the already converted images, there was no advantage (or not that much of one...only a second or two on re-rendering, but 10 or more seconds on a 1 minute render is significant on the initial render...and that was single image/textures). But another advantage, even though the tifs were larger to begin with there was a smaller memory impact, because there was no need for multiple copies to be in memory.
    Hmmm...definitely worth knowing about. Thanks for the response...: )
  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    @canberra_boy

    Feature done :)

    @Pendraia

    Thanks!

    So my next goal is to set it up in Daz Studio 3 / 4.5 and then i will have to do some promo renders which may take me some time to do, because i am not that familiar with rendering in Daz Studio right now.

  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Actually, i have it in Daz Studio 3, Daz Studio 4.5 and Poser 9. Now i want to make some promo renders and a few problems arose:

    I tried to use a self-made skydome, but i did not find anything to turn cast shadows and receive lights for that particular object off, so i wonder if that is possible in Daz Studio at all?

    thanks

    Erich

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    You can only turn off "Cast Shadows" in the Parameters Pane of the selected item in Daz Studio.

  • drakken3ddrakken3d Posts: 0
    edited December 2012

    Thanks Pete. I found a tutorial about how to create a skydome within Daz Studio. For this project i think i do not need it anyway, so i spare that problem for another project.

    Attached is a first promo image. The fonts may change, but it is close. Rendered in Daz Studio 4.5 + a bit of postwork in Photoshop. I had a few tries with the Uberenvironment 2, but that was just overkill for render times, so i stuck with two infinite lights (sky and sun) + a few spotlights to fake bouncelight.

    The trees and bushes will - of course - not be included :)

    Now i will do the other promo images and the last hurdle is the meta info stuff for Daz Studio 4. Then it is done :)

    Promo0201.jpg
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    Post edited by drakken3d on
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