Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 12
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Okay, I've decided against spending a lot of time posting screenshots, as I can just easily tell you why NOT to buy the Topaz Mask AI
Picture a bird sitting on a wooden perch. It's a pretty blue Quaker, for those of you who just HAVE to have details LOL.
Why Mask AI is a bad idea-
It removes areas you don't WANT to have removed, when you are postworking/finetuning. Example: you use a red color and brush over the area you want removed. So the bird's BEAK still had some green background around the tip of it. I used a teensy weensy size 8 brush (on a 1000px image) and ZAP! the outside edge of the bird's CHEST disappeared too! In case you're thinking this must be a radius issue, no. It didn't do that on other touchups using the exact same brush. In other words, this thing is so inconsistent it isn't even funny. I touched up the top of a branch running horizontally, and it didn't take out the bottom line of the branch. Moving down the branch and doing the exact same thing, POOF, there goes the bottom of the branch THAT I JUST LEFT. Geez- it's totally guesswork as to what is going to happen and I'm not keeping this.
Not to mention the "doesn't save" issue.
Back it goes!
Pointing out another little goodie- I almost passed this one up until I saw the INTERIOR. Mely3D does another outstanding job with details! Take a peek at Military Aircraft 117. 70% off at the moment.
Here's a quickie with the Topaz Mask AI and it actually did an okay job. Also, what your dual viewport looks like. You can easily see what you need to remove and where you need to add an edge back. I went back and took out some flowers in our upper left.
No clean up postwork, aka I didn't take out the light edges/outline from the background. Total time: 5 minutes.
Edit- had no problem this time with the saving. I used Photoshop, went to filters, Topaz Labs, then the Mask AI opened in its own entity, not in Photoshop. No problem saving, I tested several things. So now I'm a bit conflicted. If they get this fixed, or you get a great deal later on another product as an owner of this, it may be worth keeping. Who else has tried this program? I think there's a seven day free trial, and I'd sure like some other folks to test this due to my innate ability to mess things up with technical stuff.
A quick note on UltraTrees - it's sensitive to where the files go. It failed when I tried to hand install folder with the UltraTreeCreator scrift in the directory I use for trees. The script appears to be path dependent and needs to be exactly as it comes. So a word of the warning to those who install by hand.
Did you see where someone says some people are getting it for $33. That would be more palatable than $50 with all the folks that are saying it feels rushed and unfinished.
On1 PhotoRAW added an AI selection/mask last year. Even the demo videos, they'd paint over something (a tree, a dark bank against a light ground) and it would chop off parts of the object being masked. It seemed to do a worse job in most of their demo images than a basic channel mask would have done, and didn't do any better on the things I tried it on - I haven't tested it in the newly released version yet to see if it's improved.
Was that taken from a plain background or a complicated one? Wondering what the original image looked like.
@firewarden A plain gold, pretty bright. It would have shown up as very light around the edges had it not been masked.
Thanks! The shopping cart on Topazlabs is working again, so I'm checking out. I found a coupon that gives another $7.50 off (MSJPHOTO15), which is decent. Discounts are good, LOL.
I don't know if the ReMask 5 has the different options, but the AI has the blurred edges to soften your results. Probably good for hair?
I have no idea what Foreground Recovery and Defringe do. Didn't see a change. The Edge Shift is rather neat, you can expand, or quickly SHRINK the edges. So this is fast for if you go along the OUTSIDE of the items then all you have to do is shrink it- but it does the entire thing.
I'm going to be running errands all day and tonight, so won't be online until later.
Hi all! Sorry I haven't been around much lately, and with NaNoWriMo coming up, that will probably continue, unfortunately. I did take a moment to test the V5 skin (Elite V5 Nichole) that's in the weekly freebie pile on G3F (using CaymanStudio's product, I believe there's a G8F version as well) in ColmJackson's Render Studio. Morph is Kallisto. I think it holds up pretty well. It comes with .duf settings, so you can apply it directly to G3F/G8F after using CaymanStudio's products, no tweaking or resaving needed.
That looks good.
I have a lot of Elite Skins from V4/M4 Era as well and used the Texture Transformer at Renderosity by BlackSmith to get them up to Genesis 3 in DAZ Studio. Once at Genesis 3 then they work fine with Genesis 8 too. I then use Control-LMB trick on a DAZ Originals Base Character from Genesis 8 and select 'Don't Replace the Images' to apply G8 shaders to the old V4/M4 texture materials. The total cost of the Texture Transformer & all the plugins can be expensive if you don't get them on sale. The main reason I bought the Texture Transformer was to get the 'Metropolitan Series' at Renderosity and the 'Elite Series' at DAZ 3D to Genesis 3. From the Metropolitan Series the London Set, the Dublin Set, and the Edinburough Set in particular have gotten a lot of 'ewws and aahs' in the forums and the galleries in the past from various folk. The Elite Set can be bought individually or as sets at DAZ 3D. I think I've got both Elite Sets (as in V4 and M4) in the past as freebies in fact. If I haven't then I've only a subset of of those.
I must be a member of the PC+ too long. All the PC+ Membership Mega Packs not only haven't been exciting like in years past but are (mostly) decidedly the sort of PC+ freebies that I wouldn't even bother clicking to see what's in the product. Not to say that the modeling is bad, it's good I'm sure, but if you aren't into sci-fi vehicles then you aren't into sci-fi vehicles. LOL, it is true, I have bought most of the clothing but there are still a few V4 & M4 straggler clothing items around I haven't bought and also they've added some G2F/G2M clothings to the PC+ club I'd like to buy.
If you got this message from Daz: "Our records show that you already own all of the Victoria items we are offering for free with today's offer. We want to make sure you're not left out, and that you know how appreciative we are.Just use the coupon code below to get an EXTRA 20% OFF your entire order!" note that it works on gift cards, too.
Edit to add that the coupon can be used more than once, and on PC membership.
Well, that answers that. I haven't had time to shop yet and was wondering about more than one cart.
@odaa She looks very nice, I like that combination.
I am so happy to see a new gypsyangel product in the store today: Callan HD. He's a DO, but gypsyangel and RedzStudio are the creators.
I really liked Callan, too bad that the november plat club can't be used yet lol. Don't have enough on the bank account to buy him as is right now, but hopefully I get some later today :)
Callan will be Still New when the PlatClub coupon for November is activated. But if you can manage to pick up a couple of PC+ for a Day items today, there's an extra 20% off Debut new releases. Time to play shopping cart jenga…! lol
Callan was a no brainer - Gypsy AND Redz, straight into the cart.
Huh, never mind that ... I'm picking him up for me! :) Seriously, I feel like I've won the lottery lately, this makes now 2 MALE characters in a short span of time with high-quality, realistic looking skins (including the hands, arms etc not just the faces) and interesting (to me at least) faces: this Callan, and that Stephen by Raiya (though I'm still not loving that overstated, weirdly shaped set of wrinkles in his forehead). Also, exciting to me, even though I'm not necessarily a fan of tattoos, Callan's tats look super realistic, as if they were actually pigmented inks injected into skin ;) instead of like so many characters with tattoos that look like they were laser-printed onto perfect 97brightness paper. The stubble with Callan also looks great in the promos....
~Gen
Defringe usually will take off the outside couple of pixels...you know the ones that look jaggedy and choppy on a cutout or go like bright white or black and look like they shouldn't be there? They sometimes look like sort of a halo in white or a thin black line at the edge of things things that have been masked. In PS there's an automatic version of that on the layer panel at the VERY bottom under Matting. Defringe is sort of an overall and then the other 2 options are Remove Black Matte or Remove White Matte. Those pretty much do the same, but I find are more common. I use these a lot making thumbs, especially when you resize something down small and it kind of "chunks up" with stray weird pixels along the edges. Defringe will kill your ground shadows though, if you are using it on a render with no background and just ground shadows on. Black or white work perfectly.
I'd love it if someone could ACTUALLY make a mask tool that worked. After 30 years of heavy duty production level usage of Photoshop, no one has really done a good job which is why I still hand cut pretty much all my masks. There's some simple tricks where it's quick and accurate if you know what you are doing. That and I'm old and set in my ways...LOL...Life is too short to put up with bad masking!
@zai Thanks for the explanation :)
Callan really is handsome! I see a little bit of Josh Holloway in him.
Another fun entry for the pcrendercontest2019
Description
In the night of this world there is no dawn,
There is no light and no darkness,
And in the night of this world, there is no life.
The room was full of phantoms and evil
There is no dawn, nothing comes forth,
Nothing comes forth and is lost.
The room was full of phantoms and evil
There is no dawn, nothing comes forth,
Nothing comes forth and then leaves.
But now they are afraid of waking,
They are afraid of waking,
And have gathered in the morning
For they are afraid of waking.
So you go out of them, I go to them,
And go away from them and out of them.
In and Out and Out and In,
And out of them and I have no fear.
So you go out of them, I go to them,
I go away from them and out of them,
I have no fear i send them away with my
magnifying glass of strength. less
Made with...
Nice work
Scoobey Doo where are you hiding
Was wondering if some of you fine ladies and gentleman can offer some opinions on 2 products, I am looking into.
Fluidos - I don't do animations so is this worth it for stills?
Iray Light Manager Pro
I have used light manager and find it indispensable in a scene which has a lot of lights that need changing, that included Emissive ones too. I have it as and action in the script menu so that it is handy and I don't need to look for it.
They're both great products and well worth having even if you don't do animations
Hmm, my sister just sent me an email. Taco Bell is giving away free tacos today from 2pm to 6pm in their Steal A Base World Series promotion. Not sure if that's just Florida, and if that's Central or Eastern Time (Florida has both. She is Jacksonville and I'm Pensacola, two different time zones. Drives me NUTS) So if you want a free taco you may want to check it out!