Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 7
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LOL, I realized that right after I posted it- was SOOOOO tired. If you look, the post was edited at 4:22am, and let's put it this way, have you ever gone into a store to get one item, bought a lot of things, then left without the item you went in for? I went to edit the post to take that one line out, edited the other paragraph instead, and forgot to do what I was editing to begin with! I was really busy when Lilith came out so her release didn't really stick in my mind, I was actually off the computer quite a bit (for once!) But I got to thinking, "Wait a minute..." when I saw the hair in the Pro bundle and recognized it as being previously published. So no, you aren't being deprived of an orange bar LOL.
So what are you folks buying? The two things I really wanted was the UltraScatter for instancing (which I've never done before, should be fun) and the Aging Morphs by Zev0. (for Genesis 3) I did get Teen Girl Heels because as the title says, they are elevated shoes but not spikey and tall, and have cute materials. Great for dressy or casual. These would go nice with the Sunny Dress And Shoes (which those shoes definitely are spikey) and perhaps 9-10 year olds could wear them. (See Barbult's cute render of the dress, several posts back.)
I did get both the PlanetX-2 and PlanetX-3, Crescent Cove, FM Gym
One product to take a look at is the Couples' Run Poses- nice variety there!
I'll render some ladies I haven't done yet, that are in the featured stores, since I have the lighting already set up for the most part. Really have to do Zbrush today but I can do portraits at the same time. That (what looks to be) simple scene I did yesterday took me hours. Oh, btw, I took the materials from the Supersuit and applied them to the red leggings from the Jackyline outfit on these. In the scene previously, I hadn't (they were red though.) So to be clear, those leggings/pants are Jackyline outfit, with Supersuit (or one of the Supersuit products) materials applied.
So as promised, this is FWSA Imogen from that scene. I couldn't think of who she was triggering in my mind, her nose is tilted slightly more at the tip, but she reminded me of Melissa Ordway. Thin the bottom lip and she'd resemble her even more. I like the materials, and as usual, the thicker eyebrows. If you use the Supersuit red, I would darken the red of the shoes. Shown out of the box and they are a tad too light.
If you render a llama every day you'll get a daily llama (sorry, puns are my thing ... ;)
Was ready to use this morning but when I open the Tesla L and D, I'm getting a message that it can't find the file 'leathernormal' and five other files. There is no Readme or instructions on the Product page where to find these files. Was this really sold incomplete?
I picked up Ultra Scatterb(thank you posting that I would have missed it). Was high on my wishlist and Knights Academy uses it for extra grass. Also picked up Malachi by Darwins Mishaps, his men are fantastic and his tatoos totally rock. I also picke up Soreya she was on my wishlist and I have Rune 7 as well, although I often pick up characters without owning the base as long as they are compatible with the base generation character. Also picked up Fast Fog from SickleYield, super easy to use although the render I did last night really made my poor laptop struggle (its most likey the laptop, and not the fog) I will try it on my pc hopefully today. Also Jewels of Dawn per your recommendation, I had not seen those and am glad you pointed them out.
Also picked up the Fairy Scale IBL that I am excited to try out as well as the Fantasy Tower Bridge.
First up is GDN Erika. Again, the eyebrows caught my attention. She's for Gen3F.
Tip: If you are doing a dark scene and can't see your prop that you are trying to get ground level (even with the Head Lamp ON, which is CTRL+L) simply go up to the Surface Tool (the three sheets of paper above the viewport) and click on your prop. It will be outlined in yellow/orange for you and then you easily lower it to the ground plane or wherever you are putting it.
I decided to do a scene after all. This is keeping in the Halloween spirit. Back in awhile!
Ah, thanks Novica - I did notice your post saying you'd been up and rendering from early till late, so I can understand the tiredness!
I'm about to go into the store to pick up a couple of things mentioned here - the George Expansion, maybe Jewels of Dawn (I like Fisty and Darc's jewellery a lot but ws short of funds when it first came out) and maybe the Fog thing too. I made a modest cash injection on the 19% GC day which is supposed to last till the end of November, but I suspect it won't! So I'm trying to persuade myself that I don't need DG's Tropical Fabric shader presets because I've got so many sets already. But can you have too many? Oh, no!
That fog product got me wondering- why not use Photoshop and create fog/special effects on planes? I have all of Ron's brushes. But I think trying transparency maps and tackling figuring it out is not something I want to dive into right now, I am getting sidetracked. But if any of this is helpful?
So I typed in make planes transparent in Daz Studio and found this:
Transparency maps How To Make A Transparency Map
A Transparent PNG on a plane
So I looked at this product which was mentioned in a thread, it's 3DL but maps can be made with it for use with Iray?
This mentioned a free shadow catcher.
Yeah, I've also been sick about a month with congestion, can't shake it, been to the doctor and already done antibiotics, he should have done the steroids at the same time, but am trying those now. I may go see an allergist, I know we can get allergies later in life so will rule that out if I can't shake this.
The Tropical shaders remind me of the Fabricator ones and Totally Bazaar. Thinking about that, can UberBase be applied to shadered fabric surfaces? My mind is totally lah-lah today. So use the Fabricator then apply Uber?
fyi- If you folks are PC+ members and haven't visited that forum in awhile, it would be nice to send thinking-of-you wishes to Jen, who had to have her foot amputated last Sunday. There's a thread over there.
Here's GDN Erika in front of Old Mausoleum (just slapped the Uber Base on it for Iray render) The ivy is flat and not great. Good for a fast background in creepiness. She's wearing Nox Hair and Champion Outfit (which I think will look good with pants.) Going for the almost dusk look to wish you a Happy Halloween tomorrow! (Tip- put brush colors in your character's hair. See the tips- orange and yellow?)
And a different makeup and different hair transforms GDN Erika to a sweetheart. Shown with Jade Tiger Hair with its own shaders. Under the Jade Hair in Parameters, there's only messy and shorten bangs left and right for morphs. (Not impressive.) For Style, Pony Hang Straight. So knowing there was a lot I wasn't seeing, I went back to the Daz Studio Formats>blah blah and in the hair folder, the poses are THERE. Just so you know.
Also, if you like the fog product,that got me thinking about light streaks. The Godray product by ThePhilosopher has some nice comments in the New Users contest. It goes down to $10.78 with a new/debut.
Here is the page for the fundraiser for Jen, posting it out here for those of you who can't get to the PClub thread. Here is the Deviant Art page she wrote, explaining what led to her losing her foot.
This is my GUESS at what Haven is supposed to look like. I applied the Haven body shaping preset, which also affects the Haven head shaping. Then I dialed the Girl 7 head shaping value down to match the Girl 7 body shaping value so both were 37.5. She is wearing the Missy dress and armbands and Kara Hair. The necklace is from Fisty's Jewelry Basics. Of course I used V3Digitimes Iray Smart Converter on the skin, like usual.
I get paid tomorrow so will be donating then. I just can't believe it, such gross negligence....
Such a horrible situation.
Barbult made me buy it!
You little stinker! You got me back for the Sunny outfit! Your Kara Hair looks so much more natural than the promos- so I've got it in my cart. (Heads up folks, it's only $3.46 w new/debut!)
Your Haven looks right, and quite cute. Thanks for showing her the "right way." I also like that necklace, nice dainty touch and very classy.
Hee hee, turn about is fair play, they say. I used some of the provided Kara Hair morphs to make it less "puffy". It is not my favorite hair, but it's OK for variety. At such a cheap price, how can you go wrong.
Have you tried the new Daz Deals Browser Add-on feature to add up how much you've spent at Daz? Do you suppose you've hit 5 digits yet? I'm **only** in the low 4 digits. Yikes! that is a lot of money.
Well... I need to cut my spending way way way way down now. I sincerely wish I did NOT know how much I have spent. Ugh.
Here is my Haven morph guess with the Garden Outfit. It is a nice outfit and comes with several texture choices for each clothing piece. It includes boots (not shown in this render). BUT I hate the crotch fit. I tried it on an unposed unmodified G3F and it still looks pretty bad in the crotch, to me. I wonder if Fit Control can help that?
Nice render barbult. I particularly like the dangly bracelet!
Since Karen is on sale this week, along with her friends, here is Frida for Karen 7 with Alliance Outfit (which Novica made me buy a few days ago
), and Force Hair. Karen's friends don't have much family friendly clothing, so that is why I chose the Alliance Outfit for this thread. I had a bit of pokethrough on the Alliance jacket with the Frida morph, so I added a Push Modifier and set the Mesh Offset to 0.01. That took care of it. I also had some pokethrough with the Force Hair. I turned on smoothing and also set FHMExpandAll morph to 2%. That fixed that.
All of the textures here on the skin, hair and clothing are as delivered by the product. I did not have to modify them for satisfactory results. Frida has some of her makeup, lips, and nail options applied. I did find a bug with one of the Frida makeup options applying settings that didn't match the body, so I'll be submitting a help request for that.
By the way, the HDRIs that I've been using the last few days are from HDRI Haven. Since I purchased them, attribution is not required, but I though you might want to know. Since they are not Daz products, all you get are the HDRI files. You have to plug them into the environment map in Render Settings and adjust the other environment and tone mapping settings yourself.
Edit: I forgot to mention that the pose is from Supercomic Poses for Karen 7.
Yes, the product provides the capability to have those strands hang down like that. It makes a much more natural look when you can approximate gravity by moving things around.
Well, one way to look at that- at least you win tons of contests and get rewarded for using the content- you are a great promoter for the products and are very talented. I laugh a lot at what you come up with for RRRR.
I was recalling how the store was three years ago, there were some really super deals! I spent a lot my first year/beginning second year. I can't believe I started during the Genesis time period. I bought a lot of Generation 4 things too. Most of my spending was buying PC stuff, catching up on it because I didn't own anything. So yeah, I know what you mean about the expenditures, and for me, it really varies depending on the structure of the sales.
Remember the period of time when people had to spend alot to trigger the deals- aka the snowballs? You had to earn 5, 10, 15, 20. (and bundles were only ONE snowball. Never figured out that logic, other than they didn't have the ability to program it.) That's a LOT of products to have to buy to get to the "next tier" even with 1-2 cheap ones in a group of five. But once you managed to snowball to the top tier, the prices were extremely good. So I tended to spend during those because they also rewarded buyers of this and that (figures) which gave you even more. So my spending always seems to be splurt...nada...splurt...nada. For November, now I am at nada. BTW, when does this sale end?
I do know I am going to try to do a lot more sitting out on the next Generation, whenever it's released. I've collected so many characters I can't use what I have now. Has anyone ever figured out how many characters we have if we take all the Genesis skins and put them on each one of the Genesis 2 people, using the 2's morphs? Then the 2's on the 3's? Heavens. Mixing morphs and skin, I'd have enough to populate the planet LOL.
I'll be busy rendering stuff I got this week for awhile- a long while- as I did go for the gift card at 19% off.
She forced me into buying the Alliance outfit as well.... lol
Well, at least I am in good company!
Here's another character friend of Karen 7. This is Arianna for Karen 7 by Raziel and Silver. In this image I didn't modify the skin, but I did change the fingernails and toenails to Scatter Only instead of Scatter and Transmit, to match the rest of the skin. On Scatter and Transmit it had a blue SSS Reflectance Tint that was making the fingernails look blue to me, so I changed it to what I preferred in my scene.
I tried the two elf ear morphs provided by the product, but I did not like them. They may be OK for distant views, but they look very choppy and rough in closeups. I don't think it is user error, because all I did was load the figure and double click on the ear shaping preset. The problem may be a general lack of geometry in G3F ears that make ear morphs not work well (just a guess). The elf ear renders also show off a mismatch between face and head that I think is due to the bump maps. In the UV space, the head takes up much less space that the face. That needs to be taken into account when vendors are making the bump and normal maps, or situations like this occur where the surface doesn't seem to match. As long as you are not doing extreme closeups, or if you cover it with hair, you may not notice (I didn't until rendering these ears).
Also used in this image are Eclipse Outfit, which fits well and looks great. I did use a little bit of the Loosen morph to fix a tiny bit of pokethrough on the Arianna model breasts.
The hair is Augusta Hair for G3F, a PC+ refit. I'm not too thrilled with it. It didn't fit the Arianna head very well (too small) and there was no morph to generally enlarge it that I could find. I had to fiddle with temple morphs to approximate a fit. I tried changing the smoothing from Generic to Base Shape Matching, and all sorts of wild triangles appeared on the screen, so that didn't look helpful.
The Iray texture looks too plastic and shiny in this light, to me. I think it might look better if I turned down the Top Coat Weight; it is set to 1 by the Iray material preset.
Edit: I forgot to mention the pose again. This time it is from Dark Spell Poses for Genesis 3 Female(s).
Aw thank you! I seem to remember something about elf ears on a character not morphing well but I can't for the life of me remember which character. Gen 3 for sure. Something about stretching and the geometry not conforming nicely. If I can track it down I will but its been a couple of weeks. I like the outfit and especially the boots on it.
Those ears don't really excell during closeups, agreed. With a softer light maybe someone could get away with it. (LOL- like, DUSK.) I love the Eclipse Outfit, I featured it when I did the Photoshop plug-in renders about six months ago. It fits well and looks very sleek. Nice render!
What is the difference in the Smoothing options of Generic vs Base Shape Matching? Generic is just more vague where base shape uses the base figure mesh?
I think that generic is just a basic smoothing of the mesh. I think Base Shape Matching tries to smooth the mesh back toward the shape of the unmorphed model. I could be wrong. I sas an explanation once, but can't find it now.
Here's a couple things to note-
As mentioned in the Commons, some of the Friends of Karen items are stacking with the additional DO discount today. (with new/debut item.) When going to the Friends section, simply select DO as the vendor. Of those three, if you want to get creative, that (ahem) barely there Sexy Bodysuit goes to $2.48. If you put the Supersuit under that and shader the Sexy one, that may be a dazzling sci-fi outfit. For under $2.50
In the build your own bundle- think outside the box.If you're trying to fnd 8 things so the prices are about 34 cents each (8 for 2.99) all those winter plants with shaders would make cute alien plants.