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End of November. Thank you everyone for this great month! I learned a lot, both from the feedback you gave on my renders, and from the feedback on everyone else's renders.
I especially liked this month because I was always a bit afraid of shaders. ("What if I need to change render engine, and my shaders break?" "I love 3Delight, but what if I want to render a scene in Iray and I don't have the right shaders?") I got a lot more comfortable with shaders during this month, and also learned that there are indeed times when it's best not to use extra fancy shaders, just go with the old-fashioned textures. Then I don't have to worry about changing render engines either. On the other hand, there are some really useful special-purpose shaders that give such great results, I do not want to risk losing them with another render engine. (One such shader I just recently bought is the Dirt Shader, I believe it's by Stonemason. I didn't have the chance to do a render with it for the actual contest, but I love its results, and will be using it quite often in the future. I would never have gotten that without this month's topic. During the current sale, I purchased a few more special-purpose shaders, and I'm sure they will be used in renders of future months.)
I hope everyone else found this month useful, too, and learned a lot. Special thanks to all the "mentors", thank you for your time and patience this month.
See you all in December! :)
Totally agree with Ati! Learned a TON from all sides. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have learned much more quickly by doing these than I would ever have done on my own. And I feel like I am making some good friends as well. Can't wait to see what next month brings
You can submit as many images as you like to the WIP thread for feedback but as isidorn indicated, only 2 can be submitted to the Entries Thread for judging.
Ouch! Sorry about your cat. Wow! Maine Coon cats are BIG, aren't they? I wouldn't want to be around one in a bad mood...! Hope he's feeling better soon.
I don't really need to start from scratch for this model. I mapping is already done, it's just ugly. Also, I'm not that familiar with what it all means. I have the .obj file for the model, the .mtl file for the materials, and all of the texture maps in a map folder. (all 61 of them!)
I've attached one of the textures for the fuselage of the fighter. I kinda sorta understand the concept, but have no idea which parts of the texture map go with which parts of the model. If I wanted to use these to retexture the model so it had the traditional colors...mostly white with red trim...how would I go about that? I thought it would be a bit more intuitive. I could just change the color scheme to white, and put a red racing stripe down the side.
Now I'm not so sure...
Thanks for taking a look at these.
"D"
I'm coming in at the last minute with an entry for this month. I came across an old screen shot from 2006 of a character for the MMO City of Villains (if any of you remember that). The idea of updating this character took hold and here's the most recent test render, stopped at about 50% convergence, along with the old 2006 shot for comparison/hilarity.
This character (Lazlo the Evil Clown) seemed nicely suited for showing multiple materials, between the greasepaint on his face, rubber nose and skull cap, cloth hat and outift, and of course his nice shiny gun. Actually implementing all this turned out to involve a lot of stuff stacked on top of each other - geo shells! Supersuit! Layered Image Editor! The combination I'm using is probably way too complicated than necessary but it works and there isn't time to redo it and make the deadline.
There should be just enough time to change the background (going to swap out the window and wall for a bank exterior), lighting, and gun, and scoot it in right before time's up.
Thanks to everyone for the discussions this month - I learned a lot just following along.
How is it possible to do the things he's suggesting, though? I mean, how can it up the light level when it's not working with a 3d image?
You can't literally change the lights*, but you can adjust the overall tone of the image - look for a function named Levels or equalisation, for example. Using selections you can also target specific areas of the image.
* Though if you do a separate render for each light and then stack them in an image editor in screen blending mode you can directly edit the relative intensities.
Don't forget, only a few hours to go. Make sure you transfer your entries to the entry thread.
Thank you!
I am wanting to change one of them anyways so thanks Isidorn
Actually that image is the entire ship it's just one section of uv mat for the fusalage. Even though my tut uses a fur brush - it's right up your ally for this project because you're using the same principles to work on the texture in photoshop and transfer back and forth. Once you have the texture in photoshop, apply your red and white and scuff marks.
Have you ever worked with Pattern layers in Photoshop before?
So what you'll want to do - find something online CG Textures? Wherever jpg you can find that's a base color suitable for your xwing and find one that's seamless to save yourself some hair pulling. If you want to scuff it up and give it just general battle damage that would be good. Don't make it specific - like a piece behind the engines whould have smoke while the fusalage wouldn't so just keep it general wear and tear. Hold off on the red stripe for now. Once you have the jpg where you like it go Edit/Define Pattern and name it. That saves it to your patterns in photoshop.
Then open your existing mat whatever section you want to work on in Photoshop. Go to Layer/New Fill Layer/Pattern and then select the one you just made. This will put it on top of your existing texture. On the layer you just created in the Layers Panel, change the blending mode. Try various ones Screen, Overlay, Softlight - heck, I try them all to get one I like. You can see how the blending modes make it transluscent at times so it blends naturally with your texture. If you need more you can reduce the layer's opacity. That way it will blend nicely and look like it's part of the original texture. If you don't get what you want the first time around, try this same method with various images and patterns you create. You can use gradients and layer masks to limit your effects to a certain area.
Save your new texture to a new file folder with a new name DON'T SAVE OVER YOUR ORIGINALS. Sorry but want to make sure. ;) Then you can put them back on the model in daz.
Now on stuff that needs the red stripe, figure out which texture it is out of the new ones you made then you can put a new layer with the red stripe.
If the ones you made don't quite scale correctly, maybe the scuffs you put on are a little large for the scale or whatever. In DAZ under the Surfaces tab down at the bottom you will see Horizontal Tiles and Verticle Tiles. Making those a higher number adds more tiles therefore makes the texture image smaller. So you should be able make some adjustments there. More specific stuff will have to be handled on a case by case basis, I'd have to see it and see what you want to do with it to tackle it specifically.
And thank you, the vet can't take the cat until tomorrow but Maine Coons while large have almost dog-like personalities - so Whiskers is very very sweet no matter what happens.
Cheers,
Kath
GIMP which is free and Photoshop basically work in layers. You have your base layer that you open in PS with all of your colors. I know Photoshop so I'll relate that process but it translates to GIMP and others. Anyway, PS can do what is called an Adjustment Layer. There are various effects you can create with the different types of adjustments. Look first for a Levels Adjustment.
I hope you can read my scribbles in my screen shot. I clicked on the Levels Adjustment icon and on the flyout I will adjust those arrow sliders.
Here's the second image of what those sliders did.
It's hard to tell but he's a little bit darker on the body.
Each layer stacks and affects the layer below it all the way to the bottom. You can change this behavior by using what's called a clipping layer or clipping mask but that's more complex.
You can even change the color entirely. I used a Hue/Saturation/Lightness adjustment (HSL) to make him an ice dragon.
There are a bunch of videos on YouTube that go over the basic adjustments. If you up for more in depth work Lynda.com has great tutorials but they charge - you can get a free trial though and go through quite a bit before it expires.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Kath
We have until midnight Mountain Standard Time, right? So a little over two hours? My last render's coming along well; here it is at 66%.
Heres my latest. I've been workinhg on her hair. I added an additional morph so I could get it further to the shape I wanted. Then I used the Kozaburo morphs to finish it. I find that it is always worth checking the readme file just in case there are any morphs or other features that I may not be aware of included with the DAZ product. For the hair, I didn't realize that the morphs were in the neck of the figure.
I decided to use my rabbit figure and reduce him down to a suitable scale. I applied the velvet texture with a violet diffuse color. I decided to make the bunny violet so there was no mistaking he was a toy rabbit, and not real. I used a carnival glass shader for his eye whcih seems to work pretty well even though its small and far away.
I am going to continue on with the project. I see there are some tiny pokethrough holes in the boots (strange, I thought I had already fixed those).
:-)
Hi DollyGirl. I would be appreciative of the rouge layer please! I would like to see how you added this to your figure. Also, do you think you will be able to do the Iray version tutorial? That would be great!
Thanks again!!
Thank you too Kath! I will give this a try! Much appreciated.
I'm not too worried about entering the Competition as I think the biggest reward is all the new knowledge I have gained this month from all the awesome mentors here.
Here is my second entry. Its a toy rabbit. I created new diffuse, bump, specularity, and displacement maps in Photoshop and experimented with them in DAZ to get different effects. The inside of the bunny ears are shorter and various other areas have zero fur that wouldn't make sense such as the wiskers, nails, nose, etc. I quite like the bun!
You're welcome! I forgot to add - When working with cutouts it's generally easier to start with a simple plane rather than a sphere. The sphere is good for a lightbulb effect or a basic torch glow - stuff like that but trying to put a cutout on it can turn into a pain. Most often a plain old plane
will be the easiest to work with.
It can be a matter of working within Studio and using the settings for rendering as there are ways to strengthen the saturation or exposure. Lighting has a big effect as well. We got to close to the end of the deadline, and I see Kath explained some things as far as postwork. You can still ask in here if you'd like tips for what you can do Studio-wise.
Very nice!
Everyone has done a great job again this month.
Good luck.
Good luck to every one as well from me, all these projects have made a great development and I got a good peace of learning things out of it for myself as well.
Thank you ebonartgallery!
I think we all did good! Its was a fun month, learned a ton again. Hope to see you all for Decembers contest!
Love it! :)
Hi everyone. I'm back from my trip. Hope everyone survived Thanksgiving. I took a look and there are a lot of nice renders this month. Looks like in my rush, I messed up my second entry and entered the icon picture instead of the full size render. Oh well, too late now. Anyway, good luck to everyone. I do have a couple of favorites that I'm rooting for so we'll see who wins this month. This months theme really threw me for a loop, but I did learn some new skills so it was worth it. It sounds like others learned a lot, too. I never did get a chance to work on Dollygirl's example render, but I plan to work through that at my leisure now that the contest is over so I can figure out how she did that and see if I can get something close to it.
Glad you made it home safely! I will be doign Dollygirls example render as well as soon as I can find a bit of extra time.
I think ev1 did an amazing job on their renders and wish ev1 gl on the contest. I learned so much this month with shaders and shader mixers and how to make interesting shadows with the Mixer and how to change the clothing to something that more suits the scene. Also How to solve poke throughs and clothing mishaps with Deformers. So much more to learn about Daz and all it has to offer, the possiblities are endless it seems.
Thank you!
I had a question about your entry (which is great, BTW). I was showing the entries to my nine-year-old, and when he saw yours he was sure the blue stuffed animal was a Pokemon. Is that the case?
Thanks... and he has sharp eyes that one :) "Lapras"
Awesome! That was what he thought.
My son's expressed an interest in learning this stuff, and if there are Pokemon models out there, that would be terrific. Did you get that somewhere or did you model it yourself?
Good stuff... would have been brilliant to have Daz3D around when I was nine... still working in clay then ;)
I picked up the model from yobi3d.com and then created new materials and imported into Daz. Did a search on Doll and filtered to dae and obj.