Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 12
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Not ignoring you, I just haven't converted any poses in ages. I have too many for each generation to have to convert I guess LOL. Anyone else tackled these?
Not a problem at all. It's only because of the three day weekend that I even have time to consider the sales. I know that the PC+ sales and then the Christmas sales are awesome. I won't cry if I save money during the PA sale. Stay safe!
This is TOO funny. Let it load up, then go to 4:30 and listen to Conan doing the weather over in Iceland (for real.)
hahah omg.. that was hilarious!
I just now for out something interesting. I was rendering an indoor scene in iRay that I was using DAZ Studio lights for and not emissive lights. I noticed how bright the lights were compared to the way I usually struggle to get indoor light that is bright enough to suit my tastes.
Well, having an insomnia type day I decided I'd work about more on the scene - it's my DAZ Gallery Christmas Card already if you can believe it - when I noticed spectral rendering was disabled so I enabled and started rendering. Uh, my bright indoor lighting was suddenly orders of magnitude dimmer. Nothing else changed.
So lesson learned - if your scene is too dim & you have spectral rendering enabled - turn it off. Likewise, if you have a scene you feel is too bright - turn it on.
I'm thinking it won't have a great effect on Sun - Sky lighting, emissive lighting, or HRDI lighting but for DAZ Studio light objects it does. Try them all & find out!
What is spectral rendering supposed to do?
I thought it was supposed to do better light & color consistency with real nature and real film and that might be well the effect but the only thing my eyes actually noticed was the light in the scene looked orders of magnitude dimmer.
I'm so sorry about Anubis. And am hoping everyone stays safe and damage free if you are in the path.
Well, good news on Dorian for Florida anyway- it keeps dropping in strength and now "only" 110 mph. Much better than 185 mph. That certainly took the forecasters by surprise. NONE of them predicted that strong of a storm (which is of course concerning.) They were talking more of 145mph max. I still have all the windows open from days ago, and it's not even funny to see how off they were on the intensity. I did learn one thing- that HRWF model is really good- it showed the storm slowing down two days before the other models picked up on it. So in addition to the GFS and Euro, what for spaghetti lines on the HRWF. I hope I got those letters right!
Thank God for our Coast Guard, they're already flyiing Jay Hawks into the Bahamas and plucking people out of the water and off roofs (who are exhausted and many can't help themselves.)
Could be their model has equations & variables predicated on this type of storm while other models would have equations & variables that would be better at forecasting other storms.
Anyone else mostly sitting out this PA Sale? It's not due to the products offered, I've picked up a couple and wishlisted a lot, but I'm not buying a couple things to get 50% off. With hurricane season, I'm more aware of having to spend money on supplies and possible repairs. Plus, I just don't need anything anymore. I don't like the trend of the lawn-mowered eyebrows across the bottom of brows, and some brows have all hairs being a bit too uniform for my personal preferences. So thought I'd take a look and identify characters with brows that are acceptable to me or that I really like, and ask you to ideintify which characters have brows you like. Pick three or more! I'm going to go take a peek at my Product Library.
Separate question- what are the last three females you bought?
Last three females I bought were:
Sienna HD (G8F)
Apollonia HD (G8F) Knowing I may have to postwork the ends of those brows.
Daphne HD (G3/8F) Haven't seen brows like that, from what I can tell, and am curious.
None of these are my favorites though. Will post those after I dig a lot deeper. I've got too many to actually narrow it down, but I'll link some that I really like.
I've not been buying a lot either - partly because I am in fact trying to cut back a bit on buying stuff I end up never using, partly because my DAZ external disk needs replacing (it is working intermittently at the moment, but I don't trust it enough to try a backup for instance - and it's not the cable, since it's just the same on other cables, and other disks are fine on this cable). All this is made a lot easier because I finally got to grips with Blender to the point that I look at things and think 'I might be able to make that eventually' (Blender 2.8 is great, though I'd already got deeper into 2.79)
Last three females I bought:
I'll figure out the answer to your question in a bit, but I wanted to mention Sienna HD doesn't have a "no-brow" option in her materials… but that's because she doesn't have painted on brows at all. She comes with fiber hair brows. If you want to change her look, it's real easy to just load a different set of brows. I'm actually working on a review for this thread using Sienna…
My last 3 female purchases were:
I am not making a lot of purchases either.
My 3 last female purchases according to the purchase library :
Pixel HD for Genesis 8 Female I liked the shape of her face, she has fibermesh brows so it's easy to change. In addition she has 3 levels of translucency and shine.
And older characters that were on a deep sale :
Rune 7
Ophelia 7
And from Rendo : Amanda for Genesis 8 Baby (the Sixus one)
https://www.daz3d.com/frostine-for-tika-8
https://www.daz3d.com/tika-8
https://www.daz3d.com/ginevra-hd-for-genesis-8-female
And I've seen little to tempt me in this sale, apart from a couple of things that I had wishlisted. I've no need to replace my Genesis 3 Centaurs with G8 versions, and most of the other new products are pretty average.
The only thing that could tempt me to the G8 Centaur is https://www.daz3d.com/solar-wardens-for-genesis-8-male-centaur
Didn't get a lot of items.
I think the only centaur that doesn't have the abrupt human/horse transition (and I don't only mean texture-wise) is the Maxx version. He's kinda nice and the most 'believable' as centaurs go, but as I don't have Maxx or the brute, I see no reason to get any of the centaur items, really.
I did get a few items that I would have gotten anyway and a few wishlisted items that were now a good deal.
I don't buy characters often, if I do, it's mostly because of theri skins. Latest female cahracter I got is apparently V8. I assume that's when she was for free :) And then some of the base G6 ladies (Gia dn Josie), presumably also freebies or near freebies. Not sure that counts as purchases.
That's not an easy a question to answer. Do I include females I bought because a third product made the total purchase price actually go down? Do I include the free starter bundle I picked up with the coupon when Diego was released? I decided to limit the three to females I purchased because I liked them well enough to buy them at release, which doesn't happen often.
Starting with the most recent:
I'm also not including any of the Centaur 8 products. I bought the Pro bundle because the price was better than getting the male items I wanted a la carte. The female C8 stuff was just a bonus.
The last three I bought (slight cheat as the last was actually two characters):
Circe for G8F (in a 60% flash sale - I needed a DO to use my PC+ coupon for August, so she only cost me 15c really, at which price I thought "why not")
Mika 8 (free starter bundle with a coupon) - ETA: Ah I suppose that was two characters too, since the bundle included Juniper for Mika 8
Dragon Empresses (part of the Dragon Empress bundle which despite only being 50% off I had to buy something to use my PC+ $6 off $18+ coupon before the end of August)
August was the first month for ages that I struggled to use my PC+ coupons till the end of the month, due to a combination of avoiding carts with freebies in them and not having a lot of funds to spare because of currency exchange difficulties (don't ask!). I had to give Diego 8 a miss because of the funds problem, so I'm hoping he'll have a good price sometime in the Christmas sales.
My funds are back to normal now, but I've still not spent very much in the PA Festival. I bought one Debut item last week (a PC+ one!) to get a freebie, then at the weekend I picked up three because I really wanted one of them and with that $17 credit-back offer I effectively got it at 65% off with the other two items totally free. That was a nice deal.
My last female purchases, over the span of about 9 months were not female models but products to use with female models:
Scandalous Makeup Set
Autoface Enhance for Genesis 8 Female
Skin Builder 8 for Genesis 8 Female
Toon Generations Mega-Bundle for Genesis 8 Male(s) and Female(s)
That's all since January 1st so not much as you see. It's why I'm not longer getting banners on the release of new Pro Bundle. I've also either bought or got free Victoria 6 and a few other prior generation female characters but since I favor toons and cleaned house with the Edie 8 & Girl 8 Pro Bundles last year it's slim pickens for me. I instead have interest in products that lend customizability, uniqueness, and realism to my existing realistic G8F characters like Autoface Enhancer for G8F from D.Master and Skin Builder 8 for G8F.
Speaking of scandalous, I've actually spent about $100 on this PA sale but alas, I am spent out. I've bought (although I think technically the Roderick price is new product pricing not PA Sale pricing and the Crazy Chef Bundle pricing is Labor Day Sale pricing not PA Sale pricing):
Jepe's Roderick for Diego 8
New York Stores
New York Brownstones
New York Street Props
New York Street Lights
New York Hot Dog Cart
Sslyther
Crazy Chef Bundle
The Harpwood Trail - Mallard Pond
Scandalous Makeup Set
So since the last pro bundle I bought in Aug 2018 I've mostly bought, at up to 90% of purchases, toons, sets and utilities like Skin Builder 8.
Finally, a heads up to a whole line of products I've been ignoring from Colm Jackson. Although I've spend a bit of money of lighting solutions in DAZ Studio for the iRay renderer those products are nice but still too limited. I was wanting atmospheric foggy and dusty lighting with many colors that is cinematic in appearance. That's what I was trying for in my renders of police at night with just average results instead of cinematic results. Anyway, I'll be buying these products in October if that's when the end of the PA Sale Catchup date falls. Check these out:
Render Studio Iray
Render Studio Iray 'Scenes'
Render Studio 2.0 - Volumetric Plus
Render Studio 2.0 - Production Scenes
Cinematic Light FX plus Atmosphere
Bokeh Studio HDR
IDL BURLESQUE
As you see, it you have the BOSS Professional Portrait Studio products, the Ultra Genesis products, and the now discontinued Painter's Lights products, with these added, you really ain't wanting for much in the way of just about any lighting look that you desire. You'll have to make up something weird on your own.
I still lack a good comprehensive rain product though.
Last Three
https://www.daz3d.com/tanith-character-with-outfit-textures-for-genesis-8-female
https://www.daz3d.com/sienna-hd-for-genesis-8-female
https://www.daz3d.com/janet-for-genesis-8-female
Edit to fix links
Sienna HD For G8F | MMX Blended Dual Lobe Hair Shader Toolkit for Iray | Retro Hero Hair for G8/G3 | dForce Urban Adventure Outfit for G8F | School Girl Poses for G8F
The MMX Blended Dual Lobe Hair Shader Toolkit for Iray was developed specifically for and works best with Strand-Based and dForce Hair. But it will also work on fiber hair, and trans-mapped hair, with varying degrees of success, (or failure.) As my library doesn't include many dForce Hair products, and I'm still stumbling around in the SBH Editor, my primary focus for now is how it works with fiber hair, and specifically with hair from RedzStudio, who typically uses multiple material zones.
I applied two different brunette shaders to Hair01 and Hair02 material zones, and an orange shader to the Hair03 zone for "red" highlights. I'm afraid the indoor scene mutes it, but I still think it looks very realistic. I was just tinkering with the full presets. There are so many options, it's mind-boggling. I think I'll tip her hair another color and try another render after the one I'm doing now is complete. Maybe hot pink…? (Or maybe not.)
I like the look of the Urban Adventure Outfit. The gloves alone are worth the discounted price I paid. However, I don't like that the buttons aren't using Rigid Follow Nodes. That's personal preference, but if you look at the second image, you'll see the buttons are floating away from the vest, after draping the outfit to the pose. The belt and buckle are not separate, either, (which I know is common,) but that big buckle intersects her skirt and legs in the sitting position. Aside from that, I had no problems simulating the outfit out-of-the-box. and I really like the way the shirt and sleeves move in these poses.
The pose in the first image is from the School Girl pack, though I modified the right arm significantly, and turned her head and neck to look in another direction. The hand was hiding the expression, so I moved it down. Other than that, there are only small tweaks to accommodate the thick soles of her boots. The student desk and chair props come with the pose pack. as well as the other items the artist used for posing, including a bicycle and parallel bars! (The expression is all my own.)
The set is a kitbash of old/older products. The classroom itself is no longer available.
This image links to the full-size image, 2k x 2.6k. You can also see a complete list of products used on the gallery page, here.
This image also links to it's full-size image, 2k x 2.6k. And you can see the complete list of products used on the gallery page, here.
I should have mentioned, this outdoor lighting does a better job of showing off the pale, freckled skin. I didn't make any changes to the materials, which I might have tweaked otherwise. I really like her fingernails, too.
Nice work
She's got the expression that says someone just told her she was there to learn
Robert,You linked these from your Product Library instead of the product page. Can you fix please?
I don't have DE Elina, Ginevra, or Dragon Empresses. If you folks ever get around to rendering them, feel free to share here. (Or anyone else who wants to render them.)
Sorry about that
Done
Thank you, Robert. And I added the second image. Don't miss that one, it's closer in, and you can see more details of both the hair and the skin.
Looks real good IMHO