Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 7
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I'd mentioned a page or two ago about taking some of the torches and lights in Balneae and adding them to Platea to get a night scene.....
Here it is:
Oh that is gorgeous!
The Dream Home is all encompassing, I have it all (just not starting there yet.) One character's family in my book lives there, but I want something totally unique so am kitbashing for another set. For Dream Home, I remember going nuts with furniture, then of course getting eclectic, then I believe there was London...
Did they ever work out the making-it-fit-together-right?
And those torches really set the mood, well worth adding! Beautifully done.
I haven't run into any issues with things fitting together. That said, I rarely use the whole thing as it's just so big. But I've gotten some nice renders out of it, especially the great room.
Thanks for comments on the Platea night scene!
I really appreciate you mentioning rooms that don't have separate walls that can be hidden. Especially in iray, you need to be able to lower those walls and hide things you don't want.
I think this should be mentioned in product descriptions because that is a return-factor for me.
Another approach may be the Iray Section Plane. I've written up a short note on it.
The Geometry Tool might work. Click on the wall and choose connected and then hide geometry. That should work unless all the pieces are connected :)
Started with an experiment with Refraction and Reflection. Three cubes stacked inside one another; outside one 10M, 1 division, Thin Glass Shader; next one 9.995M, 1 division, Thin Glass shader; next one 9.9949m, 1 division, Dispersive Water Shader and added a bump map. Using the Geometry Tool I selected the two front and back faces of the water cube and removed the bump shader; selected the two back faces of the inside glass cube with the Geometry Tool and made them into a surface and with the Shader Tool used the Ceramic Tiles Small Shader; selected the top faces of the two glass cubes with the Geometry Tool and hid them. Lighting is Sun and Sky with the Dome set to draw. Added the figure and then had a fun moment and added the shark :) Turned on the Architectural and Caustics Samplers. I knew it would take a while to render but this is eighteen hours in at 80% and it is still running :)
Cool!
Does anyone have falling leaves? http://www.daz3d.com/orestes-falling-leaves
I admit I'm curious how it renders in iray.
I'll put a link to this in my first post of the thread. One question (and I'm not technical): Can't the distortion / effects of the focal length be balanced out with the other camera settings, without creating the plane?
I do. Hang on.
LOL Fishtales, you just HAD to add a shark!
I've spent two days going through some of my sets, and saving you some time here are some handy notes. These are individual items that can be kitbashed into other sets:
Single door with handles on both sides: The Laundromat
Doors that open: Bright Loft, Coffee Shop, Neighborhood Bar BUT Coffee Shop doors OPEN BOTH WAYS, swing in or swing out. Very few do! Also:
Flat Roof to kitbash and add second story: Coffee Shop
Drapes that close: Touch of Class Bedroom (Double set)
Handy pane of glass: Neighborhood Bar
Open Sign: Neighborhood Bar, Laundromat
THIS IS FUN- if you want to have scaling blinds, to put on other windows: Dean's Office.
Quickie 2 wall setup, with walls having 2 material zones: Getting Ready (And of course, the products that make rooms and vignettes)
Long rounded awning: 40's Bus Station This set really has neat sections, those front rounded sections are neat too
Props:
Lit Fish Tank: Late Night Fantastic
Giraffe Sculpture: i13 Comfortable Living Room
Looking for a clothes hamper with clothes hanging out? i13 Shower Set.
One that you wouldn't know is artsy, with easels and busts, because the title doesn't give you any clues: i13 Visions in White.
Falling Leaves rendered with the default Iray light, Environment Intensity 1.06, Film Iso 145, nothing fancy.
The first one is out of the box. Then UberBase (out of the box.)
I do. They look the same color wise in Iray as they do in 3Delight, but it uses bump maps and they don't convert exactly. For some reason, the Iray Uber Shader changes the bump down to .98 for the bump maps. However, changing back up to 98.1 which is what they are set for in 3Delight doesn't actually do much for the bump. I thought, since Iray does better with normal maps, that I'd take the images and make normal maps. These are easy to do in GIMP, but the normal maps don't seem to help the bump either and, while the leaves look great when it comes to color, they look flat in renders. I mostly use them when I DOF on and most of the leaves are going to be blurry anyway. I don't know if there is a way to convert them to Iray so they look more three dimensional. I used them in here if you want to take a look at them in an Iray render. Not my best render, but you can tell what the leaves look like.
@TabascoJack: Those lights from Belneae look like they will be useful for many sets. Thanks for showing. THe info on the Iray Section plan is also a great tip. Thanks!
@Novica: Your explorations are very useful. Wish there was an easy way to keep all your info accessible as it tends to get lost fairly quickly in the thread.
Thanks for showing those. I agree may look nice depth of fielded but don't have as much realism as I had hoped for.
It's possible if one did all the rest of the maps that I didn't do like specular and diffuse, that they leaves would improve, but I haven't tried it since that project. I ran out of time and I haven't gotten back to playing the leaves more. At this point, if you want a lot of realism in Iray, these leaves probably won't work for you. At some point, it's slated for experimentation to see if I can get it to work better, but it's a little farther down the list.
Don't forget to check Fast Grab before the site turns over in about 20 minutes. There's a lighting product and a character that you might like, I just got them but don't have time to render for you. DA's Real World light product does easy latitude longitude lighting with a click and I had it wishlisted. Also got Vincenzina. If you want them, hurry, don't know if the Fast Grab will change. (Edit- and you can also use your PC coupon to get $6 off, if you're buying any other items to add up to $18. )
This is Vincenzina with that lighting, but I changed up the Environment Intensity and quite a few Tone Mapping settings because I deliberately used a Dawn setting. The Real World lighting is rather fun, you have clicks for Dome On and Off, setting the time of day, there are strips going across the continents and you can click and choose where you want to be, or choose a specific country. You can choose how much Bloom, etc. Easy to use.
I changed the White Point to a blue (from white) to take out some of the yellow in the skin (and perhaps the lighting) I also reduced the glossiness of the lips. Hair is Kylan Hair.
Hmm, that third thumbnail promo in Aave's hair product looks weird. The hair is coming out from her collar, there are strands connecting but only thin ones, one section thickens and I'm wondering if it can be that wide from the strand it comes from. Anyway, it might be an optical illusion but sure looks strange.
I was on Amazon yesterday from 5am until 4pm in the afternoon, figuring out Fire tablets and Kindles. It was their Prime day and I bought several Kindles and tablets to test my book on (whenever I get it done.) I've heard the kindle previewer isn't an exact science, and before I release anything, it's got to work across multiple devices. It's hard doing flowable content with images but fixed isn't supported across all devices (older ones I think.)
And not funny but Amazon had problems all day, with people not being able to add things to their cart! EDIT: Oh for gawds sake, I went to check on the orders and three had all been cancelled, but the fourth one went through. Same bank account, and the fourth one was more expensive than two of the others combined! MORE TROUBLE with Amazon's cart. So already called customer service and an account rep will try to fix it.
Agree. I'm not sure I care for this hair to be honest.
It's a good idea, but it seems to have very hard angles in a lot of places in a way that natural hair wouldn't. Across the three associated products (the main one and the two add-ons), I only saw a couple of images that I wouldn't have felt the need to give extensive postwork to. The mention of it working with UHT2 was interesting, but most hair products do until you use the color mixer to get something with different coloured roots or tips. It's only then you find out that the UVs are laid out in the wrong direction, so I'd have liked to see a more obvious use of the color mixer rather than just one shade over the whole hair (as well as an indication that the hair has more than one material zone). I'd have also liked to see the strand sets that were mentioned highlighted in some way.
The promos leave me asking more questions than they answer, but if 'What's Hot' is to be believed then it's a popular purchase and we might get to see what others have managed to do with the product. So far, I'm not keen either.
I think any vendor tackling long hair is brave, lol. There's so many places things can go wrong! But yes, have to say I like the frizzled one better than the straight edition.
Penthouse Living
I think this product has the best swimming pool water EVER. (Strong statement from someone reviewing products for three years.) No tweaking. Mostly the lights that came with the product. Easy smeezy and gorgeous set. Normally I might fiddle with the midtones, saturation, contrast etc but this is OUT OF THE BOX. Great for late evening romantic renders/ casual renders after dark. Whatcha think about that swimming pool?!!!!
I don't like that brown door, looks totally out of place. Should be a white-gray or something to match the chrome/white scheme.
I sincerely hesitated on the hair as well. I am waiting to see what others do with it as well.
The pool looks fantastic!
There are 4 material zones in the main hair and 2 in the strand sets, the mats are laid out in a manner that works well with UHT2. Slosh was kind enough to do this render to show what he was able to achieve with UHT2 on this hair.
Slosh did well there. Thanks for the reply, Aave.
Thats a better representation I think thanks for sharing that one Aave! I do like all the different morphing/posing options that come with this hair especially the lying down ones and the ones the hang down when leaning..
Free spirit hair is done differntly then other hairs. There is the main hair and then several additional layers that the end user can choose to use or not use. They all have the same movement morphs but can be adjusted seperately. So you can spread the hair out better. And then there is also the two additional morph packs that add even more. You can do a big head of hair or a lot less with it too. Each layer has its own mat zones so you can colour it how you wish just with the included colour presets or be even more creative with UHT 1 or 2.
Here is a render I did last month when Aave gave me a copy of the hair. All layers were used and morphs dialed in differently to help spread it out more.
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/176036/
Those are definitely really good renders- shows the hair in nice detail. I particularly like the ends in the angel one, very floaty, wispy. And in Aave's, it's nice to have thicker hair (have enough of the thin, scraggly looking ones.)