Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 7
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I like the one on Deviant art better....
LOL, a lot of fig leaves required, eh?
Oh, sometimes I just laugh at myself. Keeps me sane. So I'll share a "duh." You know, it's when you know something and forget to do it? Like, working hard on Depth of Field, and you just aren't happy with the amount of depth (fuzziness) in the background, so you keep moving the camera and changing the inputs.
Instead of just moving the scenery back a tad.
DUH. (Anyone admit to any DUHs that you do?)
Raoul coming up. I got the Ivan HD so he'd look the way he's supposed to.
And yeah, the scene has DOF.
My "duh" is posing. I can spend an eternity posing parts of a character that end up outside the render window or hidden behind other body parts or props.
LOL, yeah. I've done that too- changing the camera angle and it wouldn't have mattered if it had been posed or not perfectly. Especially hands gripping something. Nice to know someone else is proficient at that! (And wouldn't it have looked GREAT if we could have shown it?)
Okay, here is the bad boy Raoul on Ivan HD and yep, thought I'd play with the iRadiance Light Probes since i have all the sets. If you don't have all of those, take another look. Seriously. I've linked to the first set, which I'm going to use. Set is DM's Grotto. Hair is Gothic Male Mohawk- and the sides don't match the top so I had to play with colors.
First, where is it? In Content Library, Light Presets>DimensionTheory>iRadiance Light Probes. I used Probe 6 Soft. I turned my Y Dome Orieintation to 230, which has light from our left. Then in Utilities I don't remember which one it was, but it increased the Environment Intensity to 2. That's it! Render number one. That's got the dramatic lighting, and I love using rotation 230 for under the uplifted arms shadowing and overall side lighting. (I use 230 to 260)
Okay, now let's play. Added a distant light to our right. Lumens 280,000 (always a good starting point) with a white-yellow. Now, remember my golden rule (no pun intended) If you want to light your person well and have a light prop in the background- darken it to avoid washout. I had already increased Crush Blacks and lowered Burn Hightlights in Tone Mapping. The first render had more gray added to the Diffuse (In Surfaces) and this one I had to go even more, using a medium gray! But see how well it held the colors and didn't wash out? I also increased the Diffuse Roughness on both of them.
So the second render shows you the Probe with only one distant light added. You can see how easy the Probes are to use! (And yeah, this is when I did my DUH an hour ago and was piddling with the DOF camera instead of just moving the set back a tiny bit!)
I like Raoul's skin tone. But those eyebrows are quite strongly arched. That is a look I tend to avoid. Do his brows ever go down?
I've got him posed with Expressions (the glare/furious type) so they are raised in those renders. Am in the middle of doing a closeup but when that stops, I will check for you.
Yes, you can move the brow inner and the brow outer. The first render is the one that was in progress, with the scowling. I'll do one with the brows tweaked.
Keep in mind these lights are yellowish.
This is Willow, who we've featured several times before. Wearing the new Gossamer outfit, minus the collar, which is almost impossible to use with most hair products unless you spend time tweaking them a lot (that collar sticks straight up. Frankly I don't like it at all, so glad it's separate.)
I have a question on the DOF. In my notes somewhere it says if you move to the top view you can see the box that shows where zone is. However, I seem to have lost that box and don't know how to turn it back on so I can see it again. Or maybe I am just crazy.
One of my biggest duh's is a. turning that stupid headlamp off and b.getting everything positioned perfectly with my default render camera and wanting to go in and tweak something and forgetting to switch to perspective view to do the tweak and messing up my perfect angle. And never being able to get it just right again lol.
You do have the Render camera selected when you change to the top view to see the box for the zone?
http://flipmode3d.com/depth-of-field-daz-studio/
I do have the camera but don't think I had the actual frame selected. Will give that a try thanks!
I tend to view my render with the perspective camera, then highlight the depth of field enabled camera, so I see what I am doing with it. When it is selected you can sort of see whats going on there a bit better.
I do the same as Serene Night. Use the perspective view, center on the object that I want to be in focus, and then highlight the camera I'll be using to render. You should see the DoF frames. Adjust focal distance to put desired object in between the frames. Changing F/stop will increase/decrease the size of the gap between the frames. You can also set the camera parameters under "Scene View" to change the color of the DOF frames (like I did below)
In regards to forgetting to switch to perspective mode, and then moving the camera by mistake, which I've done countless times....someone finally pointed out that you can lock the camera (using Edit->Object->Lock) once you've gotten it set up correctly. That will keep you from losing that perfect shot.
Ctrl-Z will also reset the camera back if you realize it soon enough... and yes, I've done it many times, myself.
Awesome thank you so much on both fronts!
Well, okay. In DIM, the "i" information button for Doctors Office takes you to the wrong page for a ReadMe. It takes you to Heated Debate Poses.
Maybe the Doctor's office doesn't accept your insurance card? That could lead to a heated debate.
http://www.daz3d.com/ly-amorette
http://www.daz3d.com/frawn-hair-for-genesis-3-females
http://www.daz3d.com/growing-up-for-genesis-3-female-s
http://www.daz3d.com/growing-up-skin-merchant-resource-for-genesis-3-female-s
http://www.daz3d.com/anabelle-outfit-for-genesis-2-female-s
http://www.daz3d.com/cherish-for-anabelle-outfit
Ha ha, aren't you funny!
She's adorable. So is your avatar! (Like he's laughing at your joke!)
I am going through all my sets and looking at what I have, testing a few. Nature-Grotto is one I bought recently. There are a lot of things to like about Andrew's products, you really get your money's worth so far as the amount packed in. In this one, I am not a fan of the flattened ground vegetation (really dislike it, waaaay too flat!) and the ground plane. The plane looks like it has dark striping from the repetitive texture lining up. And it just looks really flat. (This is all out of the box.)
The good news is all the plants are grouped so you can translate (Y) and pull them up. I didn't test adding bump to the ground plane, but as usual, it's always an option. Be sure and turn things off that aren't in your scene view, I have a very fast computer and this took awhile to render.
I darkened the rocks (medium gray) otherwise they were washing out. The water will appear lighter with more light. Promo shots will give you a good indication of what to expect.
The set is huge. With more lighting, the water would lighten a bit. Wasn't going for a perfect render (obviously) but sharing what the set looks like overall. A lot of effort was put in to give you many different angles to shoot from, and get a totally different looking scene. The water reflects extremely well.
Wanted you to see how tiny Edgar is! Can you spot him??? Huge set!
Speaking of which, he has saggy pectorals, is a nice run-of-the-mill-not-buff character. I did change up the chest though, it was so saggy with the shirt, that it was distracting to me. I used the Iray Tropical Fabrics Shader and matched the plants in the background just for kicks (first render.)
Nice job on the little girl Tjohn!
I've had that set (Nature-Grotto) wishlisted for a while. I have several of the vendor's sets, they all have lots of vegetation which is good but it makes them slow to render.
Talking about slow to render, I did what I thought was a simple scene with Konstantin, George and Gentleman's Game Room. Too big for my 2gb video card, so it would only render using CPU. Using the Iray Memory Assistant, it turns out Konstantin and the mobster coat (both of which have high subD settings), use up 1 gig just by themselves. George uses up another half gig. I played around with reducing subD settings, turning off unneeded items and doing composites with spot renders, but it was a pain to deal with. I think I'm going to look into a higher memory video card after the new Nvidia versions gets Iray support in the fall.
That's one of the best looking Georges I think. Those coats look very real. Wow, that's some file sizes! If you were to show people those glass items alone, they would think they were REAL. Our vendors do such a spectacular job with glass! (lol, Iray helps a little...)
So happy 4th of July tomorrow! My favorite church billboard last year was "Those who drink a fifth on the fourth, may not come forth on the fifth."
This slipped past me, is not just a coat, is the pants and shoes too! One of the featured stores.
@ RGcincy: thank you. I really like your render. Reminds me of "The Godfather".
Thanks for pointing this out. I picked this set up. Looks fun.
I'm also messing around with the fiber mesh eyebrow product from RedzStudio on rendo. I really like this product. Does a nice job of adding some hairs to the brow line.
It's also the shirt, which I really like. Very casual. Will keep an eye on your thread as usual to see the eyebrows, but be sure and tell us that you're using them or I won't know!
Some Bedrooms and Buildings
Products that don't have separate walls are in red, as in warning! You can't expand width/depth, must scale the entire thing.
I've been kitbashing the past week (that's why not posting much, working on the book sets) and here's what I am finding as I go. Today mostly looking at combining things, changing them from their original purpose, what can go with what, etc. As always, lthough I am giving it sincere effort to ensure this is correct, I always welcome people double checking behind me in case I'm missing something. I break it down in Scene, if I can't find something I use the Surface tool to locate it, I check Actor for morphs in Parameters, etc. I check it more than once but again, I welcome double checks.
Doing a lot of i13 since they're all together in Content Library>Environments
The Attic Bedroom I couldn't find a way to select individual walls, none listed. All the walls as one piece. I don't want to scale the entire blasted thing!
i13 New Visions Bedroom- No curtain morphs. Would have to use cutout opacity to just make them disappear. Walls are separate.
In the i13 Comfortable Living Room, the curtains only raise half up. (If someone else wants to test that to see if I'm making a boo boo- but if you undo the parameters to go past 100%, the blinds go wonky.) Has a nice "Close Blinds" morph. The set has only one window. Walls are separate though.
Classic Comfort Bedroom- if you want glass doors that open and close onto a balcony, this is the one for you. However- small thing- would appreciate vendors putting door knobs on BOTH sides of the door, in case we want to connect two of them for two rooms. What a PAIN to have to load a wall, opague out the wall to overlay just the door to get a knob (since door won't detach from wall.) So vendors- door knobs on BOTH sides of the door please! COOL tray ceiling!
i13 Stylish Room and Poses Top marks for windows and doors positioned to give you great light. There are two in one corner, nicely done! No morphs though.
i13 Visions of the Past- only has two walls, so great for lighting a room, and the walls have TWO material zones so you can use two shaders on each wall. Definitely one to pick up if you want to tweak things.
Hotel and Lounge- All walls separate. Nice to have a separate door for bathroom, does not open though. You could use it as a bedroom if you widened the set (you have to be careful there are no doors on the walls you widen, learned that the HARD way. You end up with King Kong doors.) then opague out the doorhandles and replace with other knobs. The two thin windows at the end of the room DO HAVE MORPHS TO CLOSE BLINDS (they are vertical, long) but not to pull left or right. Your natural light is extremely limited with this set as it runs very long, windows thin and at one end. (WHY?????)
Modern Loft- Again, all one piece. Outside, the tin roof extends past the wall and black beams you see in promos stick out under it. Weird.
Modern Office- Walls are separate. Exterior of building looks good. Windows everywhere. Open ended, 3 walls.
Private Party (Half red on purpose) Have a wall that creates a small room (you'll see it in the passthrough window) but in the main room, two walls are gone so a lot of light. That small room would have that wall missing too (think of it as the one closest to us, that runs all the way across.) The back wall of the big room is separate (keeping the back wall of the small room, which is good) Bad: the small room, ALL THREE WALLS ARE ONE THING. This means you can NOT take out that wall separating it from the main room, to make the main room bigger.
i13 Visions in White- Open ended, no morphs for curtains, walls separate. One wall has a lot of windows, really easy to light. It's nice and square and easy to attach to another room.
i13 Productivity Area- only one wall! Spiral stairs decor only, no ceiling.
i13 Neighborhood Bar has a regular sized door that morphs open and closed. No door knobs. Also has a pane of glass (front windows) you could use elsewhere, and an Open sign. Brick walls (and if you don't like the back one, can use one of the other ones. Walls are separate.)
i13 Late Night Fantastic- Well, if you're looking for a fish tank and a shower that's IN the bedroom....huh. The walls are one piece. Open ended (front wall gone.) Can hide the ceiling beams No morphs on window blinds, and there's only one small window. Your light will come from the front. (As facing the end of the bed.)
Getting Ready- Only two walls, not separate. Nice that they have two material zones (crown molding separating top and bottom.)
There's also the Dream Home series. Modular, so that you don't need to load the whole thing. Walls are separate. All doors are rigged. Some of the rooms have furniture accessory packs.
It takes time, but if you convert everything to iRay, you can get some really nice looks. Also, since it's PC+, it's relatively affordable.
From another thread:
Since Novica specifically mentioned bedrooms, there's a master bedroom component that has a furniture accessory pack as well.