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I cannot disagree with you for one second based on the image you showed. Simply remarkable.
Regards,
Richard
Thanks a lot, Richard.
I have only recently bought Corel Painter 2019 in the bundle offer.
I will play with it more, because I like the results, so far.
Very nice.
6R
Thanks a lot.
video
exporting an Ansel 360 as an exr from Gimp improves the lighting with it as an environment dome considerably
Will try that this evening (unless something comes up as it often does). Seem to have got to the quality limit with OBJ imports into FS, so possibly need to go back to trying to improve the quality of backdrops & domes being imported into DS from FS.
Regards,
Richard.
Tried it and still got a completely black image from Ansel.
Wendy, were you taking a 360 jpg and converting that in GIMP rather than exporting an exr? 'Cause if you weren't, there must be something up the creek with my system because I only ever get solid black .exr files from Ansel.
Richard.
Yes the jpg
sorry the exr already is an exr and as you said black
That makes more sense.
However, in my defense I must say that I have heard of the dynamic range within an exr file being expanded by a sizable factor and embedded data being emphasised. When saving a 'Depth Canvas' in DS then applying that to make depth dependant fog is one example I can think of, so you could well have been talking about something like that. I'm not terribly 3D surface modelling savvy, so I'd not have known about it.
I have asked in the forum at itch.io about having a choice of saving 360 degree panoramas in EXR format,
directly from Flowscape, but has not received any response, yet.
Ansel is broken on my computer at the moment, because I need older Nvidia driver
to run Reallusion programs (iClone 7, Character Creator 3).
These programs does not start at all, when the newest Nvidia driver is used.
Last time I have tried EXRs saved from Ansel, they were all black, as well.
I have written a tutorial on how to convert an SDR panorama into an HDRi on my DA page, and it isn't even vaguely similar to the methods discussed in this thread. http://fav.me/ddiwbvq . This works for panoramas exportred from FS as well.
Never had an itchy brain, sounds horrible. Hope you get over it.
The result, though, is admirable. Will try something similar.
Regards,
Richard.
Thanks, and yes, itchy brain is a constant and pervasive burden. But, I will perservere. This alternative is much worse.
Great tutorial and tips.
Regarding problems with DS export of Hair via OBJ to Flowscape. One workaround for the back culling problem is to duplicate the Hair, use Geometry Editor to flip the normals of the 2nd Hair prop, export in as an OBJ, delete it from the scene and reimport the OBJ with the flipped normals, parent it to your figure and now ready to Export via OBJ to Flowscape. Not perfect, but not bad.
Also, can anyone recommend a Photoshop workflow to combine a typical Diffuse image map and Opacity image map into a single PNG tranparent/alpha image? I think that is what is needed in the Diffuse channel when exporting to FS.
Thanks for the info about fixes for the hair.
I do not know, how to do combing of Diffuse and Opacity in Photoshop, but in Gimp, it is very easy to do.
Below is a tutorial, I have found for doing this in Photoshop:
Thanks Artini, I think "transfer layers apha channel" is just the thing I need. This will allow me, hopefully, to get better hair imported into FS by using a transparent PNG in the diffuse channel on export.
When exporting from DS to FlowScape via OBJ, one problem to contend with are surfaces and materials with opacity or transparency maps. FlowScape's OBJ import handles transparency via alpha/tranparency PNG image file in the Diffuse channel.
In DS you may find in setting up your OBJ export that the image in the Diffuse Channel is not a transparent PNG, rather, DS is handling transparency via a grey scale image in the Opacity Channel.
For FlowScape you need to combine the color image in the Diffuse Channel with the grey scale image in the Opacity Channel to make a PNG file with alpha/transparency, and stick that image into the Diffuse Channel before exporting.
An easy way to create that combined PNG file is as follows:
1. Save the color Diffuse Channel image and the grey scale Opacity Channel image to a folder of your choice.
2. In DS start a new scene and do a CREATE | NEW PRIMITIVE | PLANE. Select the Plane and rotate the Plane so that you are looking at it's face.
3. Go to the Sufaces tab and select the Diffuse Channel of the Plane's Default material. Now drag the color Diffuse Channel image into the Diffuse Channel slot.
4. Now Select the Opacity Channel and drag the grey scale Opacity Channel image into the Opacity Channel slot.
5. You should now see the combined image on the Plane in the Viewport. Rotate and/or flip the Plane around so that it looks like the original images.
6. Go to the Render Settings Tab, choose General and set the Dimension Preset to 1:1. Set the resolution desired and render as a PNG.
7. The saved PNG file with alpha/transparency can now be used in the Diffuse Channel of your OBJ export.
BTW, the above method is basically how you can make a "billboard" with transparency for use in FS, just duplicate the plane and move it slightly, reverse the plane's normal and export!
I just open the diffuse and opacity maps as layers in gimp
add transparency to both
select the black of the opacity map by colour
merge layers
cut selected
deselect
export as png
I tried something slightly different this evening. I used FS to create a background... Not sure it was quite what I wanted, but as a first attempt doing it this way, I'm moderately happy. I did two versions of the background, the first had the figure imported, so I could overlay the figure in DS, then once the right size & orientation, I swapped to the version where I had deleted the mesh, and hopefully benefitted from the better DS rendering.
Regards,
Richard
Another, different way again. Background in FS, figure in DS, combined in PSP 5.
Regards,
Richard
Just a note, for those experiencing issues with Ansel overlay not working--and, sorry, this is not about those horrendous black EXR files, I found that the fastest solution for me was to uninstall the current GeForce Experience (only that, nothing else), go to Nvidia's website, then install from the https://www.geforce.com/geforce-experience/download page. I can't promise this works for you, but I found a solution on YouTube, tried it, and it worked. This is that solution.
Thanks for the tip. I have only tried GeForce Experience, that is coming with the driver. Will have to test it on my computer.
I'm still digesting the thread, and I can already tell I'm going to end up owing Richardandtracy a truckload of thanks, but I did see and want to reply to the Win10 thing.
Always, always, always, it depends on what computer configuration you have and what you do with your computer - what you run, how you run it, etc.
I run Win10 64 bit, and I work it hard on a very wide variety of graphics software, and I have had exactly one "Well, I'll be damned, it crashed." crash in... Trying to remember how long ago it was. I was still in the living room because I hadn't finished the office yet. It's probably right about five years ago.
I've had individual programs freeze up maybe... A dozen times in those five years? And that's almost always (read: always, as far as I can tell) because the software vendor has released a bug or three. easily 90% of those freeze-ups have been DAZ Studio, a newly released version of Photoshop, or an old version of CorelDraw.
When I was a kid, if a (known, especially) dog snapped at you, the adults would say "Well, what did you do to it?" not "OMG, what did it do to you?"
In the case of almost every modern operating system and commercially available software package, when someone tells you it's terrible and unstable and crashy, the first question should be "Well, what did you do to it?" - whether it's running it on bad hardware, running it with bad software installed, or running it with bad user practices in general. Win 10 runs on over 800 million actively used machines. If it were anywhere near as bad as the vocal minority makes it out to be, that simply wouldn't be the case. People would switch. Mac, Linux, Android - there are options.
@DigitalSteam and @OnlyLuvsCatz and @ anyone else interested--
I'm an ardent Win 7 user from wayback, and I've been with Microsoft since the days of Windows 3.x and DOS, when one had to write their own config.sys and autoexec.bat files to run games well. I feel I can speak in response to this, although I'm hesitant only because it seems a hijack of the thread. I absolutely refused to upgrade my personal computer to Windows 10, even though every other computer on my home network has been running it for some time now, until last month when I built a new PC. So I empathize with those who dread the move, while having some knowledge about 10 across multiple machines at the same time. I would never dream of telling people who were being forced to do something they didn't want to do that if something goes wrong somehow we should ask what they did to cause the problem.
Just so you understand my level of knowledge, I've run Vue with render cows on my old network, always done my own network maintenance and diagnostics, and adjusted over the past 30+ years with each major change, whether I liked it or not, that Microsoft has implemented. I've been on Windows 95, 98, XP, Vista, 7, and now 10, in addition to the older bit already mentioned. I recall the many headaches caused by corporate self-interest, and often without any really apparent reason, though I'm sure they had theirs. For example, when I upgraded to Windows Vista, I was forced to lay aside my Panasonic Toughbook CF-08 Display, which cost me $2500, as it would no longer work in the way it had so easily done with Windows XP because of discontinued functionality in the Windows OS. My current network is configured using a newer router/modem and an older linksys router configured to hide itself out of the way and allow smooth communications between all 4 PC's. I was greatly aggravated by the MS decision to pull previous home network functionality, regardless of what some say. I have not been able to configure my current network to allow all of the PC's to see the printer I've been using for the past ten+ years. If I get the one that currently is missing it to see it, the other one that finally I was able to get to see it no longer does. I can find no explanation for this quirk apart from this--the two systems I have problems getting to see the printer are upgraded from Windows 7, one when 10 was first released and the other just a few weeks ago. I've been round and round with the articles and advice on the web to no avail--and many others who have this particular printer have reported issues since upgrading to Win 10, so it isn't just me being thickheaded.
So, yeah, while DigitalSteam is right in that it greatly matters/depends what you do with your system--if you have a new system and mostly do simple point and click stuff, my experiences with 10 tell me you will likely have no issues. However, if you are like me, and you make use of a variety of machines for more sophisticated scenarios, your mileage may GREATLY vary. Having said all of that, although I'm regularly irritated with Microsoft for the little stupid bits they simply must foist on me as a user, I'm not ready to give up, move to Mac (I will not be giving up Nvidia anytime soon), I cannot see playing my entire Steam library through WINE, and have absolutely no interest in attempting to use Android for anything more than servers and cellphones. To say there are other options greatly ignores the reality of learning a new way of life, abandoning all of one's software investments--or the majority at least, and suggests that one cannot or should not complain when a company you're supporting with your hard-earned cash does something completely boneheaded and inconvenient without the slightest concern for how it impacts your daily life.
I won't speak further on this subject since this is a thread about FlowScape, a progam I've only known about for a couple of days and already dearly adore.
@Wanderer
(rock)ME(hard place)
Same history, back to before Windows, fwiw. I was first published as an "expert" (I wasn't. I was just ahead of the curve.) when Win95 came out. There's an awful lot in there that deserves a response, not least two points where it seems I conveyed my meaning so badly that you've taken an entirely different one from what I intended, and yet... It is heading directly toward thread hijacking, and that's my fault, I don't want to make it worse. :(
So, all I'll do is revise my two unclear statements, and if anyone is interested me more, msg me or something.
"There are options" isn't meant as "If you don't like Windows, hit the road!" it's meant as "There are options - if WinX were as bad as the vocal minority says, 100s of millions of people would have switched already. 200M would be front-page news, world-wide.
And "I would never dream of telling people who were being forced to do something they didn't want to do that if something goes wrong somehow we should ask what they did to cause the problem." ...Well... I mean... I didn't. I said - or, meant? - in the case of most modern operating systems, when you hear someone making a cottage industry of complaining about it in the most exaggerated and dire terms, it's almost always going to be a case of them doing something very non-standard with or to it. IOW, the average user shouldn't be afraid to upgrade because a non-average user had statistically very rare problems.
ok. That's it. Back to the much better subject. I just found out about it, too, bought it within minutes of hearing about it, and am super-excited about it.
@DigitalSteam I apologize for not understanding your meaning, but do not retract what I said. FlowScape is pretty awesome, isn't it? Right now I'm working on trying to learn all the techniques shared previously in this thread. I can't decide whether to use FS as an HDR maker for Daz or to simply go with the flow, learn how to properly set up the obj export from Daz to shoot in FS, or what. I was just getting ready to dive into learning export to Unreal. I wonder if someone who has experience bringing obj files into Unreal can comment on how the two processes differ.
Does anyone who has experience porting obj files from Daz to Unreal and from Daz to FlowScape care to comment on how similar or different the workflow is?
I get DAZ stuff into Unreal easily enough
you do need to tweak materials making two sided adding missed texture maps etc
but at least unlike Flowscape you can do that
FBX animations work fine and you can rotate bones for manual posing
retargetting to use Unreal animation another story
hit and miss on Genesis 3, takes me many goes redoing the pose translating hip etc to get it to work on the third person player manequin blueprint
Genesis 8 I cannot do at all
others seem to but I have no luck there, learning to create my own blueprint and use animation imported with it might be the only way
another software from Epic Games you can try is Twinmotion
only static imports but lots of lovely brushable foliage with wind like Flowscape and scultptable terrains, animated paths vehicles, people, furniture etc
and weather system and imports 3D Warehouse Sketchup skp files too
Cannot comment on the DS-Unreal-FS path, or if it's even possible (there appears to me no way to open the files). I might be wrong, but doesn't FS use Unity as the engine? And I thought the two were at loggerheads in terms of sharing data, both trying to make the other's data incompatible? Must admit I am speaking as an un-informed outsider who has probably grasped the wrong end of the stick, but every now & again things seem to make sense.
With regard to Windows versions; I am a mechanical engineer with little interest in game playing, but do enjoy playing with 3D images. I have used DOS & Windows as far back as Windows 2 (where it looked like what it was, a desperate rip-off of the Apple graphical interface) and have used every windows since, including the earlier NT series (but skipped Vista). I have written programs as a hobby since I touched my first computer (a Sinclair Spectrum) in 1982, and have been writing C++ programs since 1998. The first time an OS update has broken a C++ program of mine was Win 10 update 1903, optional patch KB4517211, released last month. Several of my users have contacted me for help, and the only thing I can do to help is to remove printing capability entirely, relying on PDF output only. That makes the programs work, but I shouldn't have to do it just because of an OS foul-up. With my Cross Stitch thread colour conversion & charting program, most of the users who have contacted me are older (60 to 85) computer illiterate women who simply can't be remotely guided through the process of removing an update. Those users get a genuine sense of achievement from doing the simple task of using a program that enables them to take a 2d image that they have chosen themselves and convert it into a cross stitch chart, as opposed to relying on what other people choose offer for them to buy. It is sweet & I love the fact a program of mine is helping them do something they never dreamed was possible, but problems coming from an OS update is doing my head in a bit. I am keeping my Win 7 machine offline, just so it can't be wrecked. It works, and I'm not letting MS correct that.
Regards,
Richard.
well I have many of the exact same assets used in Flowscate in my Unreal Library
people sell to both Unreal and Unity