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Working with M3 today! The ladies are lonely, it was time.
First Up: Uzilite's Sade for M3
It's a unique and gorgeous outift that has never been made for other generations. Not all the textures convert well to Iray, but it's one that makes me seriously think about learning how to texture stuff so I could create some new ones. The only other outfit that looks even comes close to this is Uzilite's Marquis for M4, which is also a stunning piece of work. I've been slowly picking up Uzilite's stuff as it goes on sale (which is not that often.) I really wish this PA was developing items for newer generations but having fun playing with the older stuff. All of the outfits are beautiful, have tons of morphs and are designed to work together to create a wardrobe. Very innovative and fun. I wish this was being done for M7!
Hair- He's wearing Marios Hair by Neftis. I have an extensive collection of old Neftis hairs I picked up for M4. I'm thrilled to see that most have fits for just about all of the Generation 3 figures. I found the OOT Shaders are too soft for some of them, so I'm playing with others. I think these are the IDG shaders.
Skin- Let's face it, M3 and V3 look like space aliens loaded out of the box. Their default skins look pretty bad. I used the Hi Res skin from the M3 Universal Texture Pack instead. It's got some great settings and is actually many skins in one because you can change the skin tone. There are ten options for that, and I'll show more of them in upcoming renders. The eyes looked very flat, so I stole some from Christian's texture. We'll see him next. I do wish M3 had better eyelashes. M4's is gorgeous on his default skin. I've got a few other M3 characters to try out, and H3 has some I believe.
Morphs- default M3
Lighting- Sveva Lumiere Portrait Lights. Lights just seem to bounce right off the Generation 3 skin, even with Anagenesis or other Iray skin shaders (I used those here.) So I'm having to turn the lights way down on them otherwise, they're blown out. I'm sure that has a lot to do with the render and lighting capabilities they were originally designed for. Would be interesting to see how they look in Poser (especially Superfly) as well.
Click for larger pics.
Next: BAM3 for M3
This is part of the mix and match wardrobe that Uzilite designed for M3. There's a weird quirk so far in all the pants from this line. They autofit very strangely. Best way around it is to make sure M3 is zeroed to the default T-pose before fitting these to him. Otherwise, it's a mess.
Unfortunately I cannot seem to get some of the clothes in this set to look normal. They do weird things and the shape doesn't render well in Iray. There's some strange shaping going on in the shoulders, but that looks like it's M3 himself that's doing that. I tried adding some bulk to the second picture. The default M3 shoulders are just screaming to be covered, but the jacket looked so bad I had to turn it off.
That's the Christian texture for M3. There are no morphs with it, but the texture also works on H3, F3, and D3. so that's a plus. He looks pretty good in the BOSS portrait studio, and I managed to get a G3M hair on him by positioning it first and then parenting (not fitting!) to the head. Clothes aren't as forgiving, but at least it works with hair. Dynamic clothing might work too, will try that soon as I just got the Optitex plug in and need to see if it works.
Note: These are grainy. They were taking forever to render for some reason and I ran out of patience. Most of this stuff renders extremely fast, so I don't know what's going on with that. I'll let one run later when I'm not at the computer. I got tired of waiting after rendering so many times trying to get them to look decent. UGH.
Next up: High Fantasy for M3
I picked this up for 70 cents on a blow out sale day, and am really surprised at how well it renders! I haven't done a lot yet, just tossed on Anagenessis and Uber, then stuck an HDRI in here (turned WAY down due to reflections on the skin). Haven't played with posing, lighting, etc. Yeah, it needs work, but this is a pretty big set. It comes with 2 full characters, elf hair, and a lot of clothing and many texture options. And poses too! I'm really pleased with the Aragorn-like character. His morphs and skin are pretty good. I stuck Ajax hair on him (it's not on quite right, didn't notice till after the render, sigh.) Their eyes look flat, but that can be tweaked.
There's a matching V3 set that's just as big, as well as a prop/scene bundle. I grabbed those too. I'll put them together and tweak, then put up some renders.
Remember, even if you don't use Generation 3 at all, you can steal their clothes, hair, skins and morphs! You need Gen Iconic Shapes for Genesis to get clothing to the Genesis figure and then you can either autofit to G2 from there or use Wear Them All products to get them to G3. You can use GenX2 to move character morphs and Cayman's LegacyUVs for the skins. Hair is easily adjusted- don't fit it, parent it, then scale, squish, etc.
EDIT: Just discovered handles in the tunic to adjust it for the pose. Very nice! I've re-rendered it with the correction and left the original attached below.
Interesting. I've been picking up V3 & Aiko3 characters and clothing but haven't touched the guys yet. Watching with interest!
Nice to see some interest and links to various M3 and V3 products, and what works and what to watch out for. Keep 'em coming!
You're very welcome! Glad you're enjoying my strange little project/obsession. It's really fun to rediscover these things, and you can't beat the price!
Quick Peek: High Fantasy for V3
One more before bedtime, still rough. I just threw Uber on everything (no hair shaders at all here) and hoped for the best. I can make it prettier later, but couldn't wait to share more about these sets! The V3 one is HUGE, and kind of confusing as to where to find it all. You definitely need to have patience, and if you have any experience with Poser or simply don't use smart content, you'll have a head start finding things.
There are two beautiful LOTR look-alike characters for V3: Tariena (Arwen) and Edana (Aowyn.) Tariena is shockingly close to how Liv Tyler looked in the movies. Whoever created this character did a very nice job. There are no hairs in this bundle, but there are many textures for the MFD as well as tons of add ons- boots and shoes for each character, sashes, battle armor, a crown, sword, etc. I did a quick retexture on the sword, but it needs to be redone. The crown isn't anything to write home about. Here's a render I did of the RDNA Morphing Fantasy Dress. It has a prettier crown and looks more "Elven." I think I'd rather steal that crown and use it, LOL.
Pants- you may be as confused as I was to discover two textures for battle pants, yet no actual pants. How is V3 supposed to go to battle without her pants??? Took me a little while to figure out these are second skins. And they work great. They may give you errors about not knowing where to find stuff. It's all there, but I think there's a glitch as to which folder it looks in for one of the subtextures (something about subarmor.) I had to tell it where to find it after checking the DIM for the location.
MFD- I counted 14 different textures for the MFD in this set- entire dress textures, not partial ones. There's also textures for the V3 Hooded Cloak and the Morphing Fantasy Mask. All of them work on other generations of those items- right up through G3F. I can do another render with V7 and V3 again sharing the textures across the MFDs tomorrow. Those are really fun.
Oh, and there are 6 poses in this set too. A steal for 70 cents!
I'm pretty sure I picked that up yesterday or the day before. That's cool it looks great. And you are right it looks just like Liv!
This one is missing the image for me. Otherwise, I really like what you're doing with the M3 and V3's!
Hmm, that's really weird! All I did was link to the attachment on the post. I can see them im my browser but one of them wasn't working in my phone. I just updated the link and can see it there now. Let me know if you're still having trouble seeing the pictures.
Found an interesting discussion here in the forums on Iray shaders and older models and another one here. Glad I'm not the only one wanting to bring Gen 3 into Iray! They really are well made, and much can be tweaked or shaded or retexured if needed.
Going to continue to play with the shader settings to see if I can make Generation 3 look better. I don't think the Anagenessis is fully applying, probably because the material zones/names/etc are different. I need to dig into that huge Anagenessis support thread and try to figure it out.
EDIT: Actually, may not need to do much digging. There's a link to a freebie script in the first Anagenesis post by DimensionZ. It's for all non Genesis figures. You do have to own NGS Anagenessis 2 for it to work. It's worth every penny. Downloading the free script now and will take it for a spin.
Holy crap! The freebie script works wonders! Still figuring out the eyes, but this is pretty awesome! Here's Vega for V3, before and after using the freebie script. Now I've got to go re-render everything, LOL. I'm posting the recipes for how and where to do this in the next post below this one.
Before: pretty good, has a porcelain look, beautiful in a fragile way:
After: Could compete with the skin of ANY G3F. OMG!
Using Anagenessis Shaders on Generation 3, Part 1
NGS Freebie Script Recipes: What to apply where
Ok, so I think I've got everything correct. Making notes for myself and anyone else trying to use this script. It involves creating a manual folder and copying shaders there that shade the eyes, skin, etc. Here's what I did for the above render.
For V3 and M3:
Use the Manual NGS Shaders new on:
Cornea: LCornea, RCornea
Iris: LIris, RIris
Lacrimal: Lacrimal
Mouth: Inner Mouth, Gums, Tongue
Nails: Fingernails, Toenails
Pupil: Lpupil, RPupil
Scelera: LEyeWhite and REyeWhite
Teeth: Teeth
NGS Shader_New: EyeSocket, Lips, Nipples, Nostrils, PubicHair, SkinArm, SkinFeet, SkinForearm, SkinHand, SkinHead, SkinHip, SkinLeg, SkinNeck, SkinScalk, SkinTorso
Notes:
Here's Vega with her new settings next to V7. I thought she looked a little dark, so I adjusted the gamma on her skin maps to 2.0 using the trick DarwinsMishap showed me. I like the results. A setting of 1.5 put her close to her original pale color. Anything lower makes her look like a china doll. It's a great effect that can come in handy for the right render.
Before Gamma Tweak:
After Gamma Tweak:
In all fariness, I could use Anagenessis on V7, but I like her better without those shaders. I think Anagenessis really shines on figures who were not made with Iray materials.It's outstanding on M4 and V4. I'm thrilled to get it working on V3 and will redo my M3 renders next.
Between you and IceDragon, your filling up my wish list of fantstic older things. :D
Hee hee, that's good! Then you'll be ready to pounce during the next blowout sale!
So my progress with M3 is much more of a battle. Some skins look downright awful, others give errors with the script. The eye shaders don't want to load at all. I managed to get everything but the eyes shaded on my High Fantasy M3s, Naiar (Aragorn) and Aredhel (Legolas.) The script does some crazy things and then gives some error. If I ever want glowing zombie eyes, I could use it. (It's grainy, just a preview render.)
I discovered some different eyebrow mats for Aredhel, but when I load them, the freebie shader script doesn't like it and the eyelashes look like thick eyeliner. I don't think they're loading right, but he doesn't look bad. Just got a bit of guyliner going there. The skin on them looks pretty good with the shaders.
The script also errors out completely on default loads of M3 and V3 for some reason. Seems to work on add on characters that have their own textures and maps. It really doesn't like something about the base characters. Needless to say, I don't have a formula that works well for M3 yet, but when I do, I'll post it.
Your welcome DeathbyCannon. Always happy to help someone else spend their money lol. Seriously though make sure you wait for the sales cause you can pick them up for pennies on the dollar. Especiall the PA and PC+ sales.
Llynara odd that the M3's would be more difficult than the V3's. Did you try the Anagennesis for Genesis on them? Just wondering if a different part of it might work better.
Yes, I tried it on all of them before I did any Iray renders and I didn't get errors, but I can tell the scripts never fully load. When they do load right on other characters, their appearance changes in the viewport and they look more cartoony because of the shaders. V3 didn't do that till I added hers manually. M3 is the same way, but those eyes are just giving me nightmares on some of them. And then there's Christian for M3. He is advertised as a high res texture, but he looks very painted in Iray, and even worse with shaders. He's got some really weird seam issues with those shaders too:
He looked really sunburned here, but his eyes gave me no trouble at all and look good (maybe I can use them on the other guys):
So I turned down his gamma and he still looks horrible. The NGS_Shaders_New should not be use on M3 lips. They're fine on V3, but that's why his lips look so weird. Use the Mouth Shaders instead (which is what I did above for the other guys.)
But you can see some strange seams too, even though the gammas match. But if you look at the nails, they're weird too. It looks to me like the script didn't load the shaders fully. It's really hard to tell. The freebie one doesn't give you any confirmation like the main one does. I'll see what I can do with him soon. He's actually got a decent texture. Maybe a different set of shaders would work better on him.
First attempt at the High Fantasy V3s. No script errors but I'm not sure it's loading everything. List of issues/notes:
Comparison, before manually doing the shaders with the freebie script. I actually think they look pretty good without them. I like how pale they are.
Scouring Daz and the rest of the 3D universe for Generation 3 stuff. So much is already gone. Trying to find the best ones that are still out there. Definitely found some interesting stuff:
After so many failures, nice to have another success. Azrea for V3 renders beautifully with and without Anagenesis. No errors, no problems at all with any of the various shaders. I used the same configuration as I did for Vega above with no problems. It makes me wonder if these were newer figures compared to the other ones I've been doing. The textures on both are excellent.
Note: Azrea comes with Sylph, another V3 elf character. I'll render her very soon.
I gave Christian another chance, because he is a cutie. I felt bad about making him look so hideous. I applied everything the same way I did with the V3s and had no texture errors at all. He looks better in BOSS, and I don't see the seam issues I had earlier. There is definitely a learning curve here!
His eyes are gorgeous in both renders. Now, if i could just get rid of the red. OMG, it looks like someone barbecued the poor man. Or he fell asleep in the sun all day long and now has sun poisoning. It's painful to look at him like that. The non-pink/red areas actually look decent. I'll have to see if there's a way to take out the redness in the settings. Changing the gamma might help.
I stopped this one early so it's grainy. Time for bed!
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/viewport_tools/joint_editor/start
Thanks, Kerya! I'll check it out.
Some Gen 4 Love
We interrupt this program to bring you the hunky Kitt for M4 from Illusion Designs. I've never seen him in Iray before, so this was a fun walk down memory lane. There are some slight seam issues in the shoulders with Iray, but nothing that can't be fixed with a little postwork.
Kitt was one of the first 3D characters I ever bought. He comes bundled with Esther for V4. Both are well made characters and are on the cover of my first book. It was actually that cover that led me here to DAZ. I'd spent months looking through stock photos for my hero and couldn't find anyone even close. I looked through so many pictures that I can now pick out just about any book cover with a guy on it, and tell you where they probably got their stock images from. Some are used over and over again, and I didn't want that.
A friend and fellow author suggested creating him in 3D. I hired her to create this cover for me (below.) It's not exactly what I envisioned but a good start after months of frustration and a bad experience with a well known (and expensive) cover designer. Kitt was the closest at the time I could find to my hero, Brett.
I spent a lot of time looking at the DAZ models and was amazed at what could be done. I was hooked! Ten months later, I designed the cover for my second book, Unlucky Charm. A lot of happy accidents there, but I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out. Now I'm trying to finish my third book and the cover. Hopefully soon on both accounts.
I'm also redoing Crazy's cover to look more like what I had originally envisioned. I started this one last fall, but got stuck on how to approach the bottom half, which has a sweeping Midwest landscape. Here's the top half:
I'm hoping to get this done soon and release the print version of that book. It's been well received and people have been asking for it. For the new cover, I stuck with M4. That's the base with default skin and a few morph tweaks. The woman is Vyktoria's Sabine for V4, a very beautiful and expressive character. I still love my Gen 4s. They are far from obsolete!
Llynara asked me if I wanted to post my tips for using Gen3 in this post, after I gave some tips in a facebook group :). (ohh I'm from Sweden, so there might be misspelling and strange grammar, just ask if something looks odd)
I still use A3, M3 and V3 alot. I started with poser in 2003 and over the years I have bought alot more then I want to admit :P. To make a long story short, I decided to try use what I already have insteed of buying new. And well I got tons of things for the gen3 people. So here is my small tips on how get the most out of gen3.
* Textures:
I very often bring the skin texture into Painter (my fav 2d software, any will do) In painter I give the texture more contrast. The head texture; more contrast + painting 3 color zones.
Here is example of the face color zones:
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.se/2008/05/color-zones-of-face.html
Those color zones is painted in a very faint shade and then those 3 is blended togheter to make the borders between them smooth. Then I blend the color layer to the face texture - then save with a filename so I can find it :)
Another thing that is so darn great about the gen3 is that the body texture is just one image, something I find much easier to add tattoos and such things :P
All Gen3 can use each other texture - but A3 have an extra materialzone on her legs, so in Poser or DS you have to applie the texture manually for just that materialzone. ohh and the Milbaby 3 have a slightly diffrent uv, but its easy to fix other gen3 texture to work with milbaby3, by bring the wanted body texture into a 2d software. If I remember correct the diffrent is around the neck/shoulder area.
And while you are in the 2d software, make yourself a bump texture if there aint any. The easiest way is to turn the image grey and save with easy remember name. You will need it later.
*Morphs:
There is alot of great morph package for the gen3 and what is eaven better ALL gen3 can share those morph package between them with some work. You will ned a morph package, the figure for who the morph package is done for and then the figure you want it to transfer to + morph manager 4 - http://www.morphography.uk.vu/dlutility.html.
1. In Poser or DS use the inj pose file, to get the morphs into the figure it is used for. Save the figure with inj morphs as cr2 (turn off pmd if in poser).
2: Start Morph manager 4. Click on the first "Load file" (the one to the left) Here you locate your saved figure with the inj morphs. Click open and wait, the more morphs you have, the long it takes to load.
3. Click on the next "load file" and locate you target figure.
4. In the column under the morph figure, you will see body parts. Expand one body part and you will see "Morph Targets" Right click on that and choose "Copy all morphs" The program will work a little so just wait (often will the column under the target figure turn black (dont panic) and then turn white when the program is done)
Do this for all bodyparts that have morphs you want to transfer.
5. When you are done, save as a cr2 with name you can remember ;)
Done :)
Morph manager is a darn handy program and it can be used to so much more :)
A little tips; If you are like me who want to have your morphs in groups. I uses morphmanger to create figure with all morphs already loaded, so I dont need to go and use inj poses every time I want to use a figure. I have for example an A3 figure with all morph package in the market for her + morph package for other gen figure. The morphs are then sorted into group from what morph package and then grouped into what part:
DAZ --> Head-->Eyes
From V3 -->Rayne-->Eyes
Tips 2 you can also do this on cloths, as long as giver figure and target figure share the same uv
Some morph package I totelly love and uses all the times is:
Rayne and Kioki by Capsces.
Predatron morph package for gen3
V3 Generation 2 by Magix 101
When it come to A3, melody + the furrie expansion is very well done :D
A3 and H3 toon by 3D Universe is fun too :P
*Material/shaders:
First of I'm not an expert on material noir shaders, my way is to tweak the settings until I think it looks good. I have also like zero patience when it comes to render so most of my render is in firefly or 3delight. But here is some tips, good shaders/material for like genesis or newer figures can be used on gen3 too, just keep the gen3 texture. Bump is almost a must, but keep it subtile. The point is to make the figure look more alive and less plastic. And also bring down any shine. Look at you own skin and see that it dont shine like metall or glas. :P
Play with the settings, do test renders, play with lightings, test render, change material/shaders, test render :P
if anything is unclear, dont make seanse - just ask :)
Sharing my most resent gen3 renders
First out is M3 and daz reindeer
DS render, 3delight, no postwork
Second is V3 and daz buck with the antilope expansion + Lynes new uvmapped version (transfered morphs with morph manager)
DS render, 3delight, no postwork
Closeup on V3:
Another V3
I painted the tattoos on both face and body texture
This was my first Ds render, with 3delight, no postwork (other then crop the v3 out of the image)
These are wonderful renders, Jen! Very beautiful!
And thank you for the incredible tips! Feel free to share here whenever you like. There's a lot to learn and discover with the Gen3s. I am amazed at how versatile they are, and can't wait to try some of these out! The tattoos really have me intrigued.
Edit: Posting this here so I don't lose it. Link to the skin fix for using Gen 3 skins on Aiko 3 and that extra material zone.