Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 12
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Call your local television station that has an investigative reporter and have them follow up by putting the city workers in the spotlight who are not doing their job. :) Send a copy of the letter with the invitation to the reporter to the MAYOR.
Call your local television station that has an investigative reporter and have them follow up by putting the city workers in the spotlight who are not doing their job. :) Also, put it in writing, and send a copy of the letter with the invitation to the reporter to the MAYOR.
Okay, I have a fun challenge for you. Pick a character and do a main promo for him/ her, doing it in a style similar to one of your favorite vendors. So something you haven't done before. Or, you can just try the style below.
I picked @GypsyAngel and used her new dude (released a day or so ago elsewhere) and did a multiple image within one. It was fun! To get that background Ferran, I desaturated him (black and white) then using Corel Photo Paint I put a frosty see through color over him (green to match the background and lights.) I rendered each Ferran separately, and rendered the background separately too. The men are both transparent background pngs. So give it a try, it's really FUN!
Ferran also comes with a scar across an eyebrow, making him a seasoned, tough dude. I wanted him to be smirking as he raised his fist, like, "Seriously?" and I love the end result.
That'll be a fun challenge. It can be difficult to copy a render when you don't know all the settings they used.
OK, I did a render in H&C's typical high contrast full body portrait style they often use in their ad copy in the DAZ Store with an thematic embellishment for the product I used in the render that they made.
Products Used:
1) M3D HD Hero Shapes for Michael 8 (head only)
2) Super Natural Brows Merchant Resource for Genesis 8 and 3 Male
3) Tousled Hair for Genesis 3 and 8
4) JM Red Blue [DAZ Light for Iray] (freebie)
5) The Unused Railway Bridge
6) Alistair HD for Genesis 8 Male (the skin material set only)
7) Film Noir Portrait Studio
8) H&C Police Uniform for Genesis 3 Male(s)
Oh, wow. What a gorgeous guy! GypsyAngel and DarwinsMishap(s) are my two favorite vendors for male characters. I won't be able to enter the render contest you've got going, @Novica, so I think I'll have to try my hand at a promo for one of Gyspy's Boys! (Might be tomorrow, if hubby whisks me off on day road trip, as he is "threatening" to do!)
I love the Noir!!! Challenge well done.
Thanks. I had had that light set for the longest time and was going though all the "Light Presets" in the Content Library tab and tried the red - blue freebie iRay preset and thought well that reminds me of a police car, so I thought I'll do a cop, then I saw the Film Noir that is associated with the detective shows & that finished it. I wasn't sure if the Film Noir would add anything to the render but it actually made the entire render a bit unique.
I recommend everyone go through your Light Presets & Lights folder in the Content Library tab from time to time - so much good lighting ideals in easy to use presets that mostly don't show up in your Smart Content tab.
I was going to ask you how you did your render cause it is so fancy but then I thought "she's done a lot of work so, no, I am too lazy!" It is very nice though.
Hey Miss Novica....do you know if we need to load both parts of the Goddess Braids in the DIM? I see one named regularly, and one that says 1 of 2. Seems a bit of a heavy load at 600MB or so each. I wondered if they are both needed.
Hmmm. Let me go look in DIM.
@zai Well, they each say 1.9GB and one does say 1 of 2 and the other one doesn't say anything, so I'm assuming that would be 2 of 2. Interesting that it isn't labeled as such. I would only be guessing if I said you needed both, but yes, I did install both and the hair worked. You could always try just doing the one labeled one of two and not doing the unlabeled one? Let us know how you fare. And welcome to the thread :)
@nonesuch00 I'll be happy to explain it. :) It's really easy, actually. It involves doing 3 renders, so not a hard process, and with only characters, doesn't take long to render either.
I think this will work, I'm trying to remember exactly how I did it. If you don't strip out the cameras and lights in Scene, you end up with duplicates, so pretty sure I took those out when I saved as a Scene. You can do a subset, but it's easier to go up to File>Merge and just use scenes when you've only got a character.
Here's the procedure-
TIP: After you get your foreground character in place, select your camera in Scene. Go to parameters and lock the locks so you don't forget and accidentally rotate your camera to get a better view. You want that camera locked so that foreground dude doesn't get moved when you are positioning the background one.
1. Bring in (I'll use Ferran's name to make it easy) Ferran#1 that is your FOREGROUND dude. Dress him, pose him. To make it interesting, have a 3/4 turn or something different than what you're using on the background Ferran. A different expression too, for versatility. Save as (example) SCENE 1. This can have all your cameras, etc- because you're going to be bringing these back.
2. Now, strip out cameras and everything except your character and clothing and hair. Save again doing "Save As" and name it Scene 2. (You can also do a scene preset.)
3. While in Scene 2, do File>Merge and bring back in Scene 1 (that has your cameras and everything) Now you have two of your dudes. Move Ferran #2 to the background and pose him. Keep the foreground Ferran where you can see him. I did a bit of overlap so the foreground Ferran covers the background one a bit. Note in particular the hair overlap.
I tried DOF but like having him clear so I can put a color over him to fade him in postwork.
4. If you want to do a background in the studio, you would go to Environment >Type>Backdrop>Browse (by clicking on the down arrow that's on the left) > choose a background. Personally I like doing a plane (Create>Primitive) then going to Surfaces and adding it in the Base Color option.
5. Render ONLY the Forefront Ferran. No backdrop or background, no other character. SAVE AS A PNG WITH A TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND.
6. Then take him out and render the background Ferran, no background or backdrop. SAVE AS A PNG WITH TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND.
7. Render the background. (Again, as a PNG.)
8. In your graphics program, open your rendered background. Then IMPORT the background Ferran. I use Corel Photo Paint, so all I did was hit DeSaturate and all the color was taken out.
9. Next, while still on the background Ferran- Effects>Creative>Smoked Glass and I put a light green over the background Ferran.
10. Then I brought in the foreground Ferran by again using Import, and with that selected, did my usual lighten/contrast/shadows/midtone correction and sharpened him a bit. Done!
Now, if you don't have a graphics program, you can accomplish the same thing with atmospheric effects such as smoke or fog planes in front of the background Ferran. Or, you could perhaps do a plane colored light gray or white (select it with the Surfaces Tool (which looks like three sheets of paper) and then reduce the opacity so it's see-through, and render the background Ferran.
Well, being a stickler on eyebrows I'm finding them getting really splotchy, too asymmetrical, and/or too thin for my liking. (I'm also worried about the trend for lawn-mowered bottoms of the eyebrows. Hair is VARIED and not cut straight across like a yard. Not saying that about today's offerings, that has been in previous new releases.)
I normally pick up characters released with a new character release, but the only one I'm getting from the Teen Jane Pro Bundle sale is Shenequia. (The main promo does no justice to her IMO. Take a peek at the second thumbnail. HOW ADORABLE!!! The eyebrows are realistic -although they do look almost exactly alike.)
So today I'm finding more from the stores than the new releases. So would like to point out Cherubit's characters. Picking up Hikaru, Emma, Morgana and Greg.
And checking on something, so don't check out yet- I want to mention outfits here which have textures elsewhere, if you'd like to capitalize on that. Some gorgeous offerings. Back in a few.
Here's a few of the ones in today's stores to note where you get a lot of bang for your buck due to other materials elsewhere.
From Arryn/Onnel are Alexa Outfit, Dorothy Outfit, Dianne Outfit, Isabel Outfit, Keira Outfit (but look at these textures now too)
Nikisatez has Bandeau Twist Bikini, Fashionista Outfit, High Neck Bikini, the dForce Kaftans, One Piece Bathing Suit, Stylish Workwear Edit: also Fashion Sophisticate Outfit
It seems to me that the Arryn/Onnel outfits come essentially untextured (solid plain colours really don't count for an item they're charging money for), so to get any bang for your buck you have to look elsewhere. But "elsewhere" is an awfully big place, care to narrow it down a little?
Starts with an R and ends with osity :) Wishlist and wait for 50-70% off too. Happens often. (For future reference, that's the ONLY other place I shop.)
I Pm'd you to make it a bit easier.
It's 5:15am and I'm on a different sleep schedule at the moment (to maximize the cool mornings and go to the barn. 107 heat index today so I am going to go feed Stetson and get him out in his pasture by 6:30am instead of 8am. Gives him longer to enjoy himself.)
So won't be here to answer any more questions for awhile. :)
@Novica, You know me. I'm a brat. So I thought I'd grab Ferran and see if I could out-do your "promo". It's a new release, so I figured I had enough store credit to cover the cost. But it's not there. At least, it's not in her store here on Daz! So I reread your post and this time saw that Ferran is on that other site, "elsewhere." Looks like I'll have use another character, so there goes my mini-competition with you. (Kinda like the one you had with RGCincy a year or so ago…)
Hubby did, in fact, take me on a road trip yesterday. We left around 1:30 and didn't get back until almost 11:00. Put another 330 miles on the rig. It was a beautiful day for a drive, and the traffic was much lighter than I imagine it will be today. Sadly, some of our favorite places, like Hwy 242 through the Willamette National Forest, were marred with stark reality of what a forest wild fire can do. Miles of denuded trees, blackened stumps and debris… A familiar road that felt like a stranger in several places.
On the happy side, he did take me to dinner at a restaurant in Sisters. And I saw a total of five deer grazing along the way. The last sighting was two in the same field, one doe and a young, forked horn buck. The sky was liberally peppered with fluffy clouds, the temps were mostly in the high 60s, and the sunset over the mountains as we drove home was gorgeous! (I only missed my computer a little bit…)
@LAdair
My son and his wife were in that area last week. They climbed the South Sister on their second try and spent an evening in a hotel in Bend to get a shower after 5 days backpacking (I told him I was glad I wasn't in the car with them!). They originally planned to summit all 3 sisters early in the week but bad weather moved in after 16 miles of hiking, so they went south to climb Mt Shasta where 85 mph winds called that one off. So back north towards home they did the south sister. Here's a picture from the summit of South Sister looking towards Middle and North peaks.
That's an amazing image!
(The closest I get to a view like that is with telephoto lens, from the top of the Dee Wright Observatory!)
Uh oh. I'd be in trouble LOL!
It just amazes me that with rendering 7 years, I'd never done that style before. I'll have to do more of those, they're easy relatively speaking. Render time is the only drawback, as I have to render two of them for one composite, but setting it up is a breeze.
Those mountains are gorgeous! I'm not into hiking, I did a bit when stationed at Ft Carson in Colorado- but it was more like "gently sloping trails" LOL.
This morning turned in to quite the walking workout. I did go out to the barn to feed and put Stetson (and Flash, his stallmate/girlfriend right next to him) out early. They both get brought in at noon. So if I am on an off-schedule sleep cycle and am up early in the mornings and sleeping afternoons (which works well during the summers) both the horses get an extra hour and a half turnout in the cool mornings.
But since they put the horses feed in individual buckets and in a covered tub (mice preventative) I read the bulletin board where they have each stall and feeding instructions, and so I fed all the horses, and turned out ALL of them! (A lot of walking. So hey, two goals at once.) They were all out in the pastures by 6:45am instead of 8:45am. They loved it. With it being cool, they were frisky.
When Ashley got there at eight o'clock, all she had to do was dump/change their waters and do her other chores. She did know I was doing it because I had to call her and ask where some of the horses went. I wish I could have surprised her, but at least when I called her and told her what I was doing she was happy. Several of those horses are 17+ hands. MAN, I felt like a midget. I turned to one named Prince and said, "You'd better behave. But if you don't, I won't be around to worry about it." (His head, when just holding it slightly tilted up- and I do mean slightly) was about three inches ABOVE THE TOP OF MY HEAD. I'm 5'5") Stetson is "My Pretty Pony" compared to him!
This was the evening of July 1st, with his hair down and not braided. The barn owner's husband calls him "Fabio" Morgans are known for their long manes, tails, forelocks. I was out there to clean his fan (background.) UGH. Gets filthy after about 10 days. It's a bona-fide barn fan, motor encased so no fires.
Oh definitely want to point out a post and give some congrats to Rich!
Also, if you're interested in Blender, read the post after that one.
Btw, I added this tip in the post on how to do that background/foreground combination character.
TIP: After you get your foreground character in place, select your camera in Scene. Go to parameters and lock the locks so you don't forget and accidentally rotate your camera to get a better view. You want that camera locked so that foreground dude doesn't get moved when you are positioning the background one.
Congrats to RGCincy on the webinars & that low-poly city looks great!
Fabio is pretty. Today, after 3 harrowing months the two female Indian Ringnecks I adopted and that had been attacking each other decided to call a truce and one of them decided to move into the other's cage to my great surprise. I quickly added a 2nd sleeping perch because truce or not they still aren't buddies and don't get any nearer to each other than the cage forces them too. The green gal, who I call Matey, as in pirate speak since they often have green parrots on their shoulders, was supposed to be a male (why I named her Matey to be the yellow female IRN Missy's Matey) when I adopted her otherwise I wouldn't have adopted her because female Indian Ringnecks can be violent to other birds. Male Indian Ringnecks are the most likely not to be attacked by a female Indian Ringneck but even they wisely use caution dealing with female Indian Ringnecks. LOL, I use caution too as they are flighty, skittish, and will grouchy if they don't get their way. The yellow female Indian Ringneck I've named Missy because it's a prissy sounding name and she is mean & prissy that's for sure. It also sounds like Messy which Missy is certainly good at too so it's a win-win name.
The Oregon mountains picture is lovely. I hiked quite a bit in the Alps when I lived in Switzerland but alas I'd always refused to summit even the easy ones even though my brother-in-law is a retired Bayerisch mountain climber. Went pretty high sometimes though, it's fun hiking. Some people take mountain bikes up pretty high on certain trails, I guess that's why they call them mountain bikes. I'm afraid since I've moved back to the USA I've somehow developed a fear of heights even though I've not really done anything to warrant that change. Now when I get close enough to a cliff or ledge or even a window that I see down the side my ankles get so tingly it's like that 'fun fear' you feel on roller coasters even though I'm standing still. Sometimes my head gets dizzy a bit too. Very strange that change. I've always been cautious near heights but I've rappelled over the side of a 100' football stadium cautiously before so this feeling is something new and different. So i'm not sure I could even hike to Piz Terri anymore like I wanted to.
I used a DAZ Studio plane & cutout opacity instead of doing 2 renders.
Emma (G3 / G8) Alina Outfit (G8F) Alina Outfit Textures Ayako Hair (G8F)
LOL interesting that you did the opacity plane, I just finished doing Emma with one. Yours looks FANTASTIC! @nonesuch00
Two things- I really like the Alina Outfit- it has one click morphs for the dress to hike it up, blow it over, etc. That's what was used here. A one click windy pose.
Second, I really like Ayako Hair. Look at the morphs! Many options to move the hair. I did check in Scene too, and the only suggestions I would have for the hair is the ability to raise the top of the hair. There's no morphs for the TOP to do anything. I think it's too flat, would like more poof. There's also no options to narrow or widen the entire sides. But movement of the individual sections is really good, and it renders quite nicely.
If you get the Alina Outfit, get the textures (wishlist if not on sale.) Those make a HUGE difference (and remember some are also found elsewhere.) The vendor did a nice job of including both foot presets and toe presets for after you apply your choice of poses.
In case anyone is interested, when you do a plane to cover a figure like above, you must cover the entire background area- you can't just do a rectangle over the figure. It would look funny, with a rectangle ghosted lightly over the background. The entire background will become more hazy, so keep that in mind and do your background darker than what you want.
This is just using the opacity lowered to 0.050 for the plane, and making the plane white. You can do any color, but remember it will affect your background too. You can add other textures to the plane (such as hearts, stripes, etc) too. I think that's what Andy did above?
The other difference is the first one I did, I totally desaturated to make it black and white, this one retains its full color.
Emma's got a nose like Taylor Swift.
TIP: When doing a composite, leave a little sliver of background between foreground bodyparts and background bodyparts if they'e in action. I made sure that bent elbow (foreground) didn't cover over the background's gal leg which was moving backward. I also moved the background gal over so that her dress flaring up lined up next to the foreground gal's upraised wrist (instead of the background gal's arm.)That would be flesh on flesh, and the dark dress does a better job of showcasing that foreground arm.
Emma looks great. I like that style ad copy.
On mine I used a 'HDRI' freebie lighting solution from RuntimeDNA called StarLight. They gave it away free when Star 2.0 was released I think. It's really cute with Star 2.0 but I thought it made the cop seem comedic so I used it.
My opacity plane only covers about 1/2 the render but that's because the only visible portion behind the 'Cop 1' is the smaller top right hand corner of hearts.
If I had anything to change in my render I would make the plane at full viewport and tile the 55 MPH sign to repeat many times. My opacity is set at 0.55 but it might need to be at 0.6 or even up to 0.65. Too much though and the 'Cop 2' becomes too obscured. I would also make 2 opacity planes. The tiled 55 MPH Speed Limit sign opacity plane would be behind 'Cop 2' and the plain white opacity plane would be in front of 'Cop 2' as the tiled signs are a distraction to the 'ad copy product', supposing if it was actually a product.
I used DAZ Studio 4.11.0.383 to render & it took a few hours to get to 60% (2000 iterations max) but then it get stuck for hours before I noticed it was still at 60% and so canceled and saved it. Seems to be a DAZ Studio bug.
Love the Emma render!
@nonesuch00 your render reminds me of 1 Adam 12 lol (yes I'm dating myself)
Loved Adam-12!