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Maybe they didn't realize you wanted to? Folks can be kinda clueless...
Wait ...what? You're not going to be making any more art? Are you not going to be around anymore!?
I hope you don't leave us. I've really loved all your input and all your amazing work and shaders that you've shared with us! You've taught me a lot and I really enjoy having you around. I understand if you need a break (I've been away quite a bit lately myself), but I hope you don't leave us altogether.
I wish I were further along in the process of learning how to publish content, Will - I would certainly be interested in collaborating with you.
Diva: Nah, I'm good.
I hit a bad patch because... I mean, I have all these friends in the RPG industry, for example.
None of them have ever expressed an interest in me doing art for stuff they are working on.
I've done several submissions and gotten crickets.
Really demoralizing.
Buut... when I was ready to just walk away from all of it, someone working on something said 'hey, sure, I'd like your art.'
So now I don't feel so bad.
Hell, I was doing art commissions for INCREDIBLY CHEAP for acquaintances. And only two folks ever expressed interest, and one of them still has yet to pay me for the last one, 2-3 months back.
Oh wow! I'm SOOOO GLAD you had a change of heart! Yay! That's made my week ...month even! :D Thank you for staying. You do so much for the community. And I know a lot of people who thinks so (even when sometimes they don't say so). Many of us have learned a lot from you and enjoy your work as well as your experiments. So it's awesome that you're staying!
I know the feeling, without a doubt. I used to do really inexpensive coloring commissions (I'm a comic book artist who mainly does color work) and really struggled to get work. It's gotten much better in the past couple years, but seriously it took several years of putting myself out there before I finally started getting steady work. Stick with it if it's something you love and want to pursue. Keep putting your work out there I think you'll start making a name for yourself and making the right connections.
Thanks for staying. It REALLY makes me glad!
Thank you for caring. ;)
And I hesitated to even mention this stuff, because I just keep feeling like I'm that kid making a big noise about going HOME and sulking on the front step until a concerned friend comes over and feeds my ego.
Feeling a little sheepish
Ah well.
Nah, never feel bad about "venting" or expressing yourself. I vent frequently. It can be cathartic. :)
Playing around with the new Sketchy thing, it's very neat... but I feel happy that I think my art shaders complement it rather than compete.
That's awesome. :)
I totally agree. Particularly with the details - as the Sketchy shaders seem to focus mainly on the outer edges, while yours enhance all the details.
I do IT as a career... and it is amazing how people who work on cars for a living, you call them and tell them your problem, and they go, "Sure... I'll give you a discount shop rate..."
Then when their PC has a virus from visiting porn sites, they're like, "you just LIKE to work on computers, right?" No... my hourly rate as a private consultant is $175 an hour because I am a published IT professional who works for fortune 500 corporate IT shops. But for you, I'll give you a discount shop rate....
Plumbers, electricians, accountants, lawyers... it doesn't matter... they all think their time has a price tag but if you're an IT guy you just help friends out.
And usually... I do.
But... art is the same kind of thing. People just assume, "you LIKE to draw, right? It is more like a hobby for you..." or they don't understand why a framed original in traditional media is $500-$5000 for *affordable* art.
"It is just paint, some brushes, some paper, and your time which you enjoy, right?"
Yeah? How much do you charge an hour for your time? $75? This painting took me 2 weeks, 6-10 hours a day.
But you would think other artists would understand that. I'm glad it worked out for you, Will... but I think this is the perfect place to go to talk to people who will understand.
:)
I'm not an IT pro, but I'm good at certain things. For my true friends, I'd never charge them "money" for doing those things, like building a PC or helping out with a related issue. The same thing goes for 3D stuffs, but is broader in that I'll do freebies if I feel like it.
However, some professionals/people often do not understand the amount of labor/effort it takes to do something in a field in which they are unfamiliar. "OK, you install mufflers, right? Can you rebuild my engine for free, then?" "Good will" can go a long way and might get you a free dinner or a six-pack. But, it won't spend at the electric company when it comes down to paying your bill...
Yup. Good will is great - but ultimately, when they're expecting you to work for good will with YOUR trade or skill but they think they should get paid when you need their trade or skill, that isn't equity or good will - that is taking advantage.
Anyhow, I haven't seen Will around lately - but I'm playing around with this package...
https://www.daz3d.com/tiler-shader-for-daz-studio
And I can't find any documentation on how to use it and the screen shots describe what it can do, but don't really give any examples of how to make it work.
I was wondering if anyone else had this package and had any luck with getting it to work with anything other than the built-in props, and if so, how? Are there some tutorials that can help me better understand what the content author obviously assumes you already KNOW if you're going to be using this product? It seems like it has a lot of potential - but without some sort of tutorial... if you don't know what you don't know it is somewhat useless.
What I'm trying to do is create a primitive ground plane and add ground cover shaders (a forest floor covered with leaves). The problem I am getting is that the leave tiles create an obvious pattern over the scope of the ground plane. I figure what I need to do is introduce some noise, and I've heard Will talk about doing that before, but I don't know where to begin. If anyone can point me toward a tutorial on doing this with shaders, I'd appreciate it.
There are a bunch of pattern and random bricks in RDL, but the trick is somehow hooking that up to placing leaves. THAT... I haven't the foggiest idea how to do.
Now, you could create masks that reveal different layers over the ground, but the similar things I've done with that ... don't thrill me. Human mind is great at picking up patterns... though my experiments mainly failed with two layers. Three or more layers MIGHT be varied enough to fool the eye, particularly if there are other things obscuring it.
So, not only is what I'm trying to do way beyond my abilities, but it is difficult even for someone with a firm grasp of the techniques involved to achive.
Great. :D
Thanks for the quick answer. I think that using some dformers to distort the plane with valleys, hills and rolls and using more plant props around the scene will probably be how I overcome this for now. I'm going to stop banging my head against the wall trying to do something that is just way beyond my experience level. Glad to see you are still hanging around the forums. You were the first person I thought of when I started running into this problem.
Thank you! I suspect there is a way... I keep thinking that some vector like system would be cool, for skin as well. Where you can tell it to paint decals of freckles (or whatever) at random spots.
I'm increasingly frustrated by Iray products with incredibly wasteful use of resources (i.e.: loads and loads of maps)
i think I may start poking at WTP4 some more.
My new strategy will be much more focused, purpose-built shaders where options are limited but what's going on is more robust/complicated.
sounds good to me
This is a great direction to pursue! A few suggestions - stone walls with big blocks, like castles. Tech wall panels - maybe along with patterns there could be shader-based lights. Armor, especially used from a little bit dinged up to heavy battle-damage.
Things I'm interested in doing:
More/better rocky surfaces (although that's probably where my existing stuff is strongest)
Masonry (nothing better for sprucing up old content, and great for sprawling environments with like 50 freakin' maps. Seriously, they are gorgeous, when I can manage to render them). I think I'm going to have to cobble together my own 'code' to do this, because the existing bricks are limited.
Wooden floorboards and similar. Related to masonry. The wood patterns I have are ok, but lack the grooves to really define them as separate items. I could also really use some way to place different patterns in adjacent boards.
Ground cover, particularly distant. Building on some of the existing stuff I've made, stuff that can really work with things like TerraDome3 and piped in 3d terrain.
Ground cover, medium. Things like displaced grass, which is extremely hard to pull off in Daz (this might not be really doable, but worth a shot)
Ground cover, close. Moss, dirt, gravel, sand. Again, I have SOME of that, but taking a more focused approach might help me enhance the details.
Metals. What I have is a good start, but I realized that while 'rusty geoshell layer' is nice, 90% of the time people just need/want a quick one-shot surface.
Some of the stuff I have already can do decent tech wall panels, stone walls when the UV cooperates (cough), and dinged up armor, but I can definitely push it further. I need to particularly work with the normal calculations to see if I can tease out surface elements more (particularly for worn items)
Looks like a good plan, Will. That is all places where the bloated textures are.
Here is some playing around with existing stuff. The big drawback to the approach I've taken so far... so the landscape has two layers, TD3A land + geoshell. The geoshell has a 'snow' normal-based thing to create zones of different texture on the hills.
The problem is that that is enormously resource intensive. It won't fill up the GPU, but it does make it work hard.
I did it that way to enhance flexibility, but, again, creating a more specialized, robust landscape texture that you can place directly on stuff would be ... better.
The sky is easy, and I hope more people play with the Skydomes I have; 2000m sphere, centered on the landscape, apply Skydome/stars, give it 90% Cutout Opacity. Then use a regular Dome with sun at intensity 10 and scale 16.
Mind you, large semitransparent surfaces can also slow things down a little, but the effect is fun (IMO)
Edit: It'd help to attach the image
Well DAZ Studio could do a bit better at simulating the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Stars without an extra Skydome but I'm going to give your suggestion a try in the meantime.
Among other things, I should probably come up with a skydome that works without transparencies for stars and whatnot, but ... I like the combination of using the skydome for basic stuff (lighting and gradiations across the sky) and then adding details like clouds or stars. mmm.
I heartily encourage people to try the skydomes. They can really spruce up the simple gradation of the standard sun/sky thing. After some experimenting, I'm not sure I'm going to do much with skydomes, other than add a few options.
One thing I should do, however, is go through some of the presets and make simpler/faster running versions. Some of them run SLOW -- sure, it's still faster than running in CPU mode because the texture load blew past your GPU RAM, but ... not ideal.
Part of THAT is because shader mixer shaders aren't as flexible as standard shaders, which automatically dump elements that aren't in use.
Oh, didn't know shader mixer shaders couldn't dump elements not in use.
Nope. And you have to be careful about sucking shaders into the mixer, because anything that is not in use and dumped... won't appear in the mixer. Got bitten by that a few times.
I need to streamline a lot.
I'm also thinking of making more surfaces that incorporate grunge into them, like a skin that already includes 'dirt' in it. Hrm. I think the whole layer thing both slows stuff down and confuses a lot of users.
Hrmph. Constantly frustrated by clouds. Actually rendered clouds look way better, but -- ideally, for skydomes in Iray, you want clouds where the sky between the clouds is mostly transparent, so you can put things behind it (moon, stars, other skies).
But, well, almost no skyplates are like that. Maybe I need to play around with Carrara again...
So I'm not super thrilled about the sky, though I like the way the stars work. Without a moon, the stars are easy -- just give them a little transparency and use regular sun/sky to adjust to taste. With a moon, you have the problem of the moon being clearly 'in front' of the atmosphere. Which, well. No.
So, here, I had to use a cloud skydome in front of the moon with a variance in luminosity. The emission is white, the base color is dark blue, and an overall opacity of .4 or so. This way, the stars, which are luminosity 3, are obscured naturally by brighter clouds, which top out at 5.
It rendered pretty fast, so that's cool.