Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 7
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Shena Hair will be good for kids. Love the bangs! It's in a featured store.
Be smart- if you are getting the Anagenessis product with that extra 15%, when you are in the featured artists' stores, filter by Daz Originals and get that 40%- not sure how all this is multiplying out, but tested FWSA Cai and she's $3.89 Remember, if you don't like the materials, you can use someone else's on the figure. And if you do like the materials, you can use them on someone else.
Edit- here's all the ones that will plummet from that vendor, filtered by DO. Lien went to $1.79! Makaio is $3.87
I am disappointed in the anagenesiss product personally. Did not see an improvement on my favorite skins. Maybe female skins will look better than the two I chose that were male.
Which two male skins did you choose, if I may ask? I haven't had much time to play with it yet, but I did a quick test of the Anagenesis 2 shaders on RawArt's Anicinabe texture and I like the results so far.
Gianni was one. first it makes the skin quite a bit paler. There is also some shine added to the lacrimals? Which reflects white for me.
I find the lips and eyes are darker than I personally like and did not care for the nails. Then again I already know how to tweak the eyes to look shiny and wet. I added pores but honestly can't see a difference even set on the largest settings. I tend to like to tweak my skins though by adding color to diffuse and changing up the eye options. This may be designed for those who do not already make their own adjustments. I would be interested to know how to preserve my own tweaks and use the product. I will try it on a female skin next
I did buy it, as the extra 15% off added up to enough savings to make a dent in its purchase price, I picked up more of FirstBastion's sets and some really cheap characters and clothes. I have a brilliant (as usual) question- I'm not understanding why it's so great to be taking out image maps, if I am understanding that correctly. I thought more was good. Not sure I'm understanding the "one diffuse in all figures."
And someone said in this post it replaces the Genesis 3 characters' UV map to Base and Victoria 7 and so I guessafter you apply the shader check the character's UV and ensure you keep it the same before you tweak? I really, really need to be studying Zbrush but I guess today I'll take a look at this and bungle through it. I am the least technical person on this planet.
SereneNight, let us know what you think after the female products. I am going to use iRadiance Studio Lights I think. If I can even figure any of this out, I will post a before photo and after photo of what I do.
Change of plans.
All portraits lit with iRadiance HDR Mesh Lights but using Modifier Rotation B from iRadiance Studio HDRIs for Iray found in Content Library in Light Presets>DimensionTheory. (In case you don't know, you can use the rotation modifiers from the Studio ones for the Mesh lights. Neat! The brightness will probably work too. Both are under the Modifiers in the Studio product.)
To get these results:
1. have your figure facing Front.
2. Add one distant light (using your view, so directly Front) and in Parameters, put it at 190.5% intensity, Lumens 15,000. Leave your light WHITE to compare your results between the shaders.
3. Create a camera and be sure to turn off the headlamp. Next, set your Focal Length to 100 so your characters are not distorting with these closeups. (between 90-125 is recommended.)
4. So you can easily duplicate this (if you like the results) I am leaving the Film ISO at 100 and only moving the Exposure Value. For Brooklyn, it's 13.85.
5. These are all 415 x 575 pixels. Be sure you have turned up your Max Samples and Max Time.
Starting with Brooklyn HD for Victoria 7 Lips 02 Makeup 03
Hmmm, The forum image looks much redder! So this is the default. Going to go try the N.G.S. Anagenessis 2 Revolution (A2R from now on, this is a ridiculously long title.)
The A2R default. Hmmm. Well, at first look, I don't like the overall color, too green, or the lips. So now I am seeing if I can select certain surfaces and omit the lips and eyes. We'll see. EDIT: NO YOU CAN NOT. It ignores what you tell it in Surfaces! Okay, game on A2R. I'm going to see if I can go back and apply the lips from the original, and see if it will override the A2R shader.
Edit: While you can apply the original lips back, you will get a lighter color for Brooklyn. Don't know what it will do for other characters other than to say the color WILL be different if you apply the original lips again. For this character, to keep that 02 shade, change the Diffuse Color to 245 / 214 / 204 and Translucency Color to 248 / 228 / 224
So with the default lips over the shader plus my Diffuse/Translucency changes to them (because it would NOT let me choose the surfaces when A2R was applied) I then applied Medium Pores.
So I reset everything (undid all my lip tweaks) and went to Glossiness and applied two things: Fix for Lips/ Makeup and also Lip Gloss Female. It's rendering, but I can tell you already that going back to the original lips was better. Not sure what it would be like to do the original lips and use this for a glossiness tool, but you probably could. So this is with A2R and the lips presets in the product. I don't like it at all.
COMING UP: Changed to lip shade 05, it's a bit darker and you do have to contend with that A2R change to the lips-and changed Glossy Layered Weight from .30 to .64. Then for the skin, changeTranslucency Color (from a vibrant orangey-whatever that color) to this:
For subtle changes: a pink of 248 / 228 / 224
For shown below: 230 / 114 / 91 and change Reflectance Tint from blue to less blue by using 169 / 186 / 181. You can tweak some more by adding more pink, I think I will keep tweaking and put in another post. She's still too green for me.
So not a one click solution for light skins.
Okay, couldn't stand it.So I changed the Base Color and Glossy colors (just playing) to a light pink (to combat the green/blue) and FYI, change glossy on lips to a light orange instead of white, when you have fair complexioned people/light brows/hair. You'l get a more subtle hue. The lips above have that done already.
So A2R is found in Shader Presets>NGS etc. Here's what it looks like when you open it. Well, I'm not lost SO far lol.
So first, I am double checking the UV used. It is Base Female.
Okay, I clicked the Genesis 3 above, got a cute popup for happy rendering with my new skin.
EDIT: See above. Lots of additional information added.
BTW, the forum IS changing the image color. While she was rendering, I put her up next to the forum image because when I posted the last ones, I thought, "When that was rendering, it sure didn't look like that." And my monitor has nothing to do with it if I am viewing BOTH images on the same monitor, any wrong callibrations would be affecting both equally.
And then posting these, WOW- they totally changed!!!! They didn't look like this when I had them in Corel Photo Paint!! I am looking at them now, and they look exactly like the images posted while rendering and in the forums. What the heck is going on with forum images?
So I rendered her with the hair and expression so you can make an apples to apples comparison of what I tested so far.
First the original. Then A2R with major tweaking, putting in pinks. Last was the original A2R colors.
There may be some potential there, but I wonder why it turns so green?
Someone else on the Commercial thread mentioned it first- so I knew it was coming. Any light colored skins are going to go that way. I am rendering her now with different lights so you can see how she looks with changes in several of the settings. I will say this- it does make the characters look less "clay-like" or ruddy. I'm doing another tweak then I'll show you the closest I can get to something that is "acceptable." (IMO) (and based on the lighting used.)
Okay, if Top Coat Thin Film is 0, does Top Coat Thin Film IOR do anything if it has a number there?
Here's Brooklyn with many tweaks after using A2R initially. I would add bump to the lips (remember I went back and used the original, on top of the A2R's) I haven't a clue what that is over by the brow on our right. I used the default Iray lights (as everyone has that.) She's also too ruddy. This product is NOT a one click solution in my opinion.
Since SereneNight is getting a weird color Gianni (join the club) I want to take a look at him too. First the original. Next A2R. UGH.
Now I am going to go tweak.
I have always had a very firm policy for this thread that I don't provide all the details of a product, with respect to the vendors who put in the hard work to formulate these type of products. So if you don't own the product, you won't have all the settings to duplicate the results. I am providing what to CHANGE in the setup only. That's enough for you to see if you want to BUY the product or to get results similar to these.
I'll show you my experiments. Not saying you want this necessarily, but these show you the direction the skin tone goes and you may say "Aha!" and start from here.
This one changes the translucency weight back to .65 Translucency Color 129 / 97 / 48 SSS Reflectance Tint 169 / 144 / 123
Glossy Color 177 / 175 / 174 and Glossy Specular 224 / 230 / 237
THEN:
Keeping that, now change Transmitted Color to 237 / 197 / 162 and you'll get this second one.
Next, I changed the SSS Amount back to 2.0, which was the original's setting. THere was no change, trust me, I loaded it and clicked back and forth. So don't even mess with that.However, the Top Coat color is a game changer so here's what you get if you go towards a brown, try color 63 / 52 / 37. The skin will go more yellowish and a bit more intense in color.
So the second one has a Translucency color of 129 / 70 / 58 which is reddish-brick, but the SSS Reflectance Tint, I changed to a yellow green of 188 / 181 / 105. The Transmitted Color is still 237 / 197 / 162, Glossy Color is still 177 / 175 / 174 (grayish) and Base is white. This seems to take some of the red out.
Here is a Gianni I am happy with. (I don't care WHAT you Generation 3 Male lovers say, I hate the arms! That one shouldn't cave in like that, he'd be rushed to the hospital. Genesis 2 Males have much better arms!)
I'm not typing all those up, but this is your color palette in case you like him. (Don't ask how long it took to get this combination, if you look at the variety, you'll see what I mean!)
Looking good! I like your alterations to Gianni 7's skin.
Did you ever get anything worked out? (I tried this for you, you know. You've helped me out so much in the past
)
You did a great job, thanks!
No, I admit I became frustrated with the product.
When I bought the product I thought it would make things easier for me to improve skin textures with a mouse click. but sadly it seems to make things far more complicated as it requires tweaking to look like the original figure skin. I bought the product because I don't particularly like tweaking skins myself and wanted to enhance my existing characters with more details. I never dreamed that in the process the pigmentation would alter radically.
Going to try a Genesis (but it's 1am, actually 2am but the clocks turned back. Not sure how long I'll stay up for this.) Doing Hudson. Just keep checking back on this post, even tomorrow.
Here's the default, rendered in Iray, without the Iray materials. Next is with the Uber Base applied. (I don't know if this is how I am supposed to be doing it, but that's how I am LOL)
Oh hey, this isn't bad for out of the box. (better than the Generation 3 Brooklyn and Gianni, that's for sure!) She's dark, but at least not green! But this is before adjusting the lighting. Then I was curious- would Gianni's settings work? Not only no, heck no. You get a lobster!
So I adjusted the lighting, lowered the bump of the top coat as it is really grainy looking, and just toyed around a bit. I think remembering to adjust your lighting after you apply the shader will make a big difference.
Those colors are bizarre. Why should you have to fiddle around like that? Your final Gianni results look good, but I would never have the patience to do all that.
I'm not sure if using the vendor's light source would change your results, but I know I'm not going to be restricted to someone else's lighting so I didn't use it. And totally agree- for Genesis 3 figures, I probably wouldn't use it at all. I am sure it's just the way I approached it, BUT there's someone else over in the Commons who said they are doing the same thing (we flipped a few colors, but that was all.) Perhaps if I used the lighting I'd get different results, or tried another approach. (Not sure what approach I would try though. And it's 4:40am so probably not really thinking too clearly at the moment.) So if others are trying it and loving the product, would like to hear that side of it too. (to be fair.)
I'm keeping it because I got a gift card and other products who discounted total makes this not worth the hassle to return, and I think if I explore it
I think the Digitimes Iray Converter (Gen3) is really better (that's my opinion only.) And I have all the ones for each generation. Here's the one for Genesis and Generation 4 which I haven't tried yet. May do that tomorrow.
Aw, what the heck. I've loaded the V3Digitimes one and am doing a one click to compare. Back in a few minutes. I will post here.
First is the Hudson after I tweaked a bit, I had put it a couple posts back, but here it is. So this first one is the A2R, tweaked but not much. Second is ONE CLICK V3Digitimes (V3D) without any tweaking. Keep in mind this is Hudson, a Genesis figure, and I am using V3D's Genesis converter for Iray.
And this is a very quick V3Digitimes one, I selected my own color and increased glossiness and was just a happy camper clicking around. This was just a quickie to refresh my memory- and the product is very easy to use. (I got to this point in about 5 minutes.) So now headed to get some sleep. (Gotta love those Genesis arms. Not.)
So back to testing the A2R. Tried on Megan from Genesis, and after applying it, changed the lighting (increased it, it puts her very dark) and make a few tweaks. I'll show you the without UberBase, then with it and A2R. (I am assuming the Uber Base has to be applied first on the Genesis and non-Iray characters? I know NOT to have anything in Surfaces selected when A2R is applied.)
Use the Iray HDR Outdoor Environments lighting product for Megan (Genesis.)
First is Megan with only Uber Base applied. Then A2R applied, you can see how dark it went.
So next, did Medium Pores and adjusted the lighting. FWI, I had already adjusted the lighting and done a render (not shown) and when I did the pores, it darkened it slightly. (this render.)
Last, I used V3Digitimes product and with one click, added a bit of blue to the tone.
The title of the last file says it is A2R, and to me it looks identical to the previous image.
It is the A2R with a bit of blue added from the V3G product. If you move so you're centered directly in front of each image, you'll see a slight blue increase. Not much.
(Look near the top of the head, aka the forehead.) Here she is, final. (also, don't go by the file names. I keep them the same sometimes, so they are all located together or in sequential order.)
Novica, the a2r says it can be used on any figure - could you try it on the horse or perhaps the minotaur..or one of the daz monstrosities for genesis if you have them? I'd be interested to see how non-human figures would come out.
Sure, I'm in the middle of something but will test in about an hour for you. :)
Well, I did the Genesis 3 setting on the horse. First is Iray render, nothing applied. Second is the A2R with the Generation 3 shader added.
From loading both in my graphics program then clicking back and forth, it darkens area and there is a bit more sheen. EDIT: I am doing just the head, back in a few. So you can see a closeup.
Okay, this is with just the Uber Base applied.
This lets you see the A2R shader better. To me, it intensifies and darkens the colors.
I'm truly starting to think that it may be dependent on lighting. I've seen the promos the vendor has at his DA and on FB....and so far, I'm not seeing anything like them at all from other people. I can't see much of a difference on the horse at all and even the people you were showcasing aren't grabbing me. Other than the promos from the product itself, I truly can't see anything that makes me want the product.