Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 9
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Llynara commented on the Part 8 thread that she likes DigiVault Stardomes, and even has instructions on converting it to Iray! I'm thinking about getting it too.
So it was Llynara? Good. I thought I was having a(nother) senior moment.
Horse out at the barn is doing okay, I took one of Stetson's high velocity fans down from his stall and rigged it to a ladder to blow directly on the horse at the stall door. She won't move over to stand in the middle of her stall, she's staying at the stall door, wanting out. Once I got the fan going, she pulled up her upper lip and was playing with the air, and calming down- cooled off nicely too. No food until tomorrow.
I'm on my way to mom's for a few hours, she's being a real trooper to try and walk to the dining room, but she is at the far end of the wing furthest from it, and it's a long way. She has made it several times, but one day had to be wheelchaired down, and some of the other days they bring the food to her room. She may need to move to specialized care soon. So tonight I will put out feelers to see what she thinks, she is one brave lady and isn't afraid to admit what she can and can't do. She had a knee replacement and it has been extremely painful since the fall. She will turn 90 in December and tries so hard- it may be time to let others over there take some of the struggle off her. I can't walk her to meals three times a day, and she's (rightly) afraid of falling when trying to do things. That knee could give way any time too.
Anyway, won't be online much tonight but will be checking in.
Keep an eye on Fast Grab as it does seem to be back to changing more often. For a week or so, it got stuck, but it seems like every couple days it's changing again. And again, if you haven't used your PC+ coupons, you're running out of time, it's already the 27th! (Yes, the end of June and no hurricanes yet. Works for me. But I don't know if people here remember that we had Tropical Storm Cindy in 2005 for the Gulf Coast, rinse repeat for 2017. But I hope that's where the resemblance stops, as Hurricane Dennis was a Category 3 (strong, almost a 4) in July for our area that year. It got retired, so no Dennis for us- but we don't want any "D" name coming here!)
@Novica, hey thanks for the shout out on page 14. That's so nice.
My (26 year old) son had heart surgery earlier this month (enlarged heart and a murmur) and he was in ICU for 3 days, regular room for one day and then sent home to recover. My 91 year old grandmother left this world a week ago today. My mom and I had a really nice and quiet visit with her in April, so I'm so glad I have that last great memory of her. I'll be keeping your mother, son, and you in my thoughts.
*Hurricane DestinysGarden breezing out.*
@Novica Oops! Sorry, ma'am. I jumped from Part 8 and didn't read through to the end of this one before I posted. Never mind. I'll be praying for you.
Hi guys, I'm back from moms. She walked all the way to the dining room AND back without anyone walking behind her and was in really chipper spirits, doing much better stamina wise. So, for right now, she seems more than able to stay in her assisted living apartment. There were three cardinals battling it out on the birdfeeder, and all the while one little wren just kept on eating as the cardinals were tumbling down the roof of the birdhouse and going on down to both the left and right of him! It was so much fun to watch and I'm glad mom doesn't have to give that up right now.
Thanks all! Appreciate the thoughts and prayers. They're obviously working!
@destinysgarden I wonder if your son knows my son, if he plays video games. My eldest is 25, my youngest (with the lung issue) is 23. BTW, I found the BEST coconut oil that I'm buying for my son, for the scar. It's almost odorless, and is virgin liquid and no refrigeration needed. It's made for human consumption, but the reviews were for the skin, hair, and insect repellent carrier (which is why I got it) in addition to cooking. When it goes on the skin, it feels soft as silk and like baby powder in about 30 seconds- it is awesome! I made a batch for Stetson, using it as the base carrier oil (the oil that is gentle, that the stronger essential oils "mix" with so they don't burn the skin) and coconut oil is ALSO it's own insect repellent. (I mentioned this before, Thailand's government found it + Neem oil worked 96% of the time better than a commercial insect spray with DEET.)
Last time my son had surgery, the area by the scar, and the scar, itched and pulled. So this time, instead of Maderma Advanced Scar cream, we're using this. It's found at puritan(dot) com and is called Healthy Origins 100% Virgin Liquid Coconut Oil 20 FL oz. It's $17 a bottle but a little goes a LONG way. It's perfectly clear too. I think your son will really like it, it's very soothing. That company is also where I buy the Lavender, Lemon Eucalyptus, Peppermint, Neem, Rosemary, Basil, etc oils to put in for the insect repellent.
Anyway, hope your son takes it easy and rests, and so glad you got to spend time with your grandmother. Memories last forever so I'm glad you got to make those.
Heads up, one in Fast Grab I think you'll like- Polish's Summer Island. Fast Grab sure is changing frequently- a good thing.
A gentle reminder- you might not want to buy all the PC+ items that you want (the new ones that came out today) all at once. Remember, there's sales that give discounts when you "add a new release" to the cart. A special thanks to @fredwinkler for releasing a character for the PC+ members. I'll pick him up in the next day or two.
If you're shopping right now and not sure about Ilithyia I am going to buy her in a few minutes and will render her for you. I don't normally commit to doing that, but I don't think that main promo is showing her very well.In my opinion, one of the thumbnails shows her a LOT better. I am going to pick up the two sets to drop things to 50% (so not buying HD characters paid off, I'm sticking to my "sets" focus) so am getting the castle and throne products too. (Not rendering those right away though. Working on packaging Rendo files.)
Anyway, check back in about 45 minutes and I'll have that for you. I'm up this morning because it dawned on me the person feeding this morning may or may not know that horse who was sick (and is stalled) only gets half her pellets this morning, so I got up after five hours of sleep to make calls before he fed this morning. Then wide awake.
Ilithyia for Genesis 3 Female(s) Talisken Hair and Character for Genesis 3 Female(s)
And this is why I initially said I wasn't going to do a Thread 8. That "have for you in 45 minutes" at 8:27am took until 2:10PM because if I do something with tweaks, I have to be happy with it. When I did the default character, I personally didn't like the mouth. And the expressions I tried didn't impress me. (Keep in mind when you try different ones, you may absolutely adore them.) You may really like her "as is" so this is just my personal preferences. So I changed her mouth and got rid of the long curves extending way out. Here you go! First, the original, no tweaks.
A LOT of tweaks to the lips. My version.
Ilithyia for Genesis 3 Female(s) (my tweaked version) Talisken Hair and Character for Genesis 3 Female(s) Party Gown Outfit for Genesis 3 Female(s)
Now to look at her outfit. The Party Gown has amazing textures.
She definitely looks better without the "long curves"... with them, she looks more like a caricature.
I started a scene yesterday with a home-brewed morph of Aibell on G8F, and I put her in that dress. It really is amazing. Lots of morphs and poses. And for little tweaks, you can adjust translation, rotate and scale per bone in Parameters!. Shoes don't fit, of course. (I need to follow @sickleyield's tutorial... It's one of many things on my To-Do list I haven't gotten around to doing!)
We all are more than happy that thread 8 happened and if you have real life stuff to do, or get caught up in stuff, I, for one, am not going to be complaining lol. I am very grateful that this thread is here and am happy with whatever is posted whenever.
+1
Thanks guys. It's just my personality that it really bugs me to start something and not be happy with it, that I can't focus on other stuff anyway. So I just shuffle things around or change what I'm doing. I know you've been-there-done-that.
I have used Emma and Jordi's Scarf Braid Hair in both these images. This hair is very versatile - there are 20 different hair colours and 9 different scarf options.
There is also a pair of earrings in this package. Both the hair and the earrings have a good number of movement morphs. I have also used blondie9999's Essential Aiko Poses For Aiko 6 There is a good variety of poses in this package and they can be used with any Genesis 2 female figure.
Ditto! Might take me forever to write that. Been in the garden most of the week, which is why I haven't posted as much. Trying to take advantage of the good weather while we have it, and working my way back to catching up here.
What? You mean I have you beat over there? I've got more than 70 for this year alone.
Lots of bargain shopping!
NGS Anagenessis 2 will do Iray conversions for just about everything under the sun. There are three scripts- Genesis, G2 and G3. Use Genesis on Generation 4, it works beautifully. I actually use it on Sebastian for G2M as well, because he uses Michael 5 UVs. Otherwise, he looks weird with the G2 script. He is on my next cover, so I've had a lot of practice with that model.
There's also a manual script to apply Anagenesis to non Genesis characters. I've used it successfully on Generation 3. Giselle3000 is using it on sets in our Hidden Treasures thread. You can really do some cool stuff with that. Note: Anagenessis 3 is apparently in the works and will take a different approach. I love Anagenessis 2 and use it constantly.
BTW, glad to hear your son and your mom are doing better.
@DestinysGarden Hugs to you! Sounds like a tough time there. Sorry about your grandmother and glad your son came through the surgery. My oldest will be 27 next month (and my youngest will be 4!) Oh, and my grandpa just turned 93. He's still kicking, just not at high these days.
@dawnblade Thanks for the link. I didn't know if people still read my art thread. Glad it's helpful. DigiVaults had mentioned doing the stardomes for Iray. I sure hope he does. Those would be great!
I stayed away from Rendo on purpose, actually had some willpower believe it or not. I went from March through May in 2014 without a single purchase. I tend to shop by store over there, so I wait until a favorite vendor goes on sale then concentrate on just them. Example- when I picked up all those vehicles and the yacht.
Bless @Silver I never knew there was a flyout for the render window! Try it. When you are rendering, over on your far left in the middle of the window, you can open that up. She mentioned the noise and bloom settings that can be adjusted while rendering. (I don't know if that restarts your render or not, I haven't tried it.) I'm playing around with settings from the pixel filters thread.
For you folks with slower computers who can't really run a lot of tests, I'm doing that for you today (while also working on files.)
I chose something hard to light (a white wedding dress) so we can see if there really is a difference with all these settings. The images won't be gigantic, but large enough for you to click to enlarge and see better detail. You can also download these to put in a graphics program and click back and forth (so the same image appears to change, as opposed to having two windows open where you're going back and forth, if you get what I mean.) I've got to do some other things this afternoon, but I will be testing various things that were posted in that thread.
Just had a thought. If anyone else wants to play along and test the same things- I'm doing a portrait with Joy in the wedding dress and veil, in rather soft diffused lighting. So nothing dramatic/stark. (So if you wanted to test that aspect, may be fun. I'm just letting you know I got the "softer" portrait type going.) Needs to be either a closeup or waist up, to show material of clothing. (Which is what I'm doing. Try to pick a really textured clothing item.)
Here's what I am testing first: (in Render tab, Progressive)
Rendering Quality: do one at setting 1.0 then at 4.0 Note a few of the time settings. A 2.0 supposedly doubles the 1.0 times. Note the iterations also. I am focusing on seeing anywhere from the 70%-80% timeframes (I am not sitting here watching these suckers every minute.) When we tested render quality a couple years ago, we didn't think the difference was enough to warrant that 4 setting.
So any you do of those, please label the title as Render Quality 1 vs 4 and don't change anything else so the variables are constant. Same view, same lighting, everything else the same. Have fun!
I really like that outfit too, I haven't rendered it but own it. It makes a scene a bit more family friendly and a lot of people wear coverups as they're walking on the beach. So it makes beach scenes a bit more realistic IMO.
Render Quality 1 Vs 4
Settings: Film ISO 165, Exposure Value 14.14, Shutter Speed 171.03
The Burn Highlights was lowered to .16 while Crush Blacks went to .20 The shadows on the flowers got too dark when it went higher, when using this light (from Pro-Studio.)
So these settings will be used on all the test renders. The Honey Bun hair had smoothing added, Glossy Reflectivity was increased and the Top Coat color changed on Joy. I added bump to the lips and changed the glossy color to a yellow instead of a dull blue, so we could easily compare what happens.
Update interval was left at 5 seconds, that impacts your time. The shorter the time, the longer it takes (correct?) My computer is really fast so that doesn't affect me much, but I may change that to 10 after I do the tests. What do you have yours on?
First, Default. Quality Setting 1.
82% at 5 minutes, 703 iterations. Done by 6:25
CLICK TO ENLARGE, CLICK AGAIN. 1200 pixels. Focus on the mouth and dress details on the chest. Be sure and look at the breast seam on your right, I lined that up to be exactly on the curve so you can see if it gets crisper.
Second, Quality Setting 4.
39% at 8 minutes (compared to 82% at only 5 minutes) and 1169 iterations
70% 13:30 1842 it (iterations) 85% 18:00 2573 it (18 minutes compared to around 5-5:30 for 82% on setting 1)
98% 32 minutes 4451 it
Then at 99% it got nit-picky and stayed there from 34:30 to 38:36 minutes, when I shut it off at 5358 iterations and 99.52% converged.
38 (rounding it) - 6 means 32 minutes longer.
CLICK TO ENLARGE, CLICK AGAIN. 1200 pixels. Focus on the mouth and dress details on the chest.
Third: back to Quality Setting 1.
Used Corel Photo Paint and did Directional Sharpen at 30- that took 20 seconds.
CLICK TO ENLARGE, CLICK AGAIN. 1200 pixels. Focus on the mouth and dress details on the chest.
My verdict: Render Quality 1 plus a touch of sharpening looks better to me than Quality 4. If doing a book, it is definitely not worth my time when doing a lot of renders, to waste 32 minutes PER RENDER for Render Quality 4 when I don't see much improvement vs using a mild sharpening amount.
Render Quality 1 Pixel Filter Mitchell And Different Radius Settings: Radius .31 and Radius .70
Okay, I've spent about four hours testing all those noise degraining thingies, and zooming in like 300%, and this is what I've decided/come up with. First though- Using the Pixel Filter from Gaussian to Mitchell from .70 to 1.0 will get you sharp and not drastic, but .70 may be too sharp for you. So let me show you what that does at a low setting first. Then we'll compare a render with the Mitchell and all those
Same Settings. Back to Render Quality 1. Changing the Pixel Filter Gaussian 1.50 to Mitchell Radius .31 and that shows you how sharp/grainy sharp you it goes. (These are in Render settings, under Filtering)
CLICK TO ENLARGE, CLICK AGAIN. 1200 px
You're getting teeny tiny noise / jagged with that. So .31 is too much.
At .70 the Mitchell is much better. But let's play with the Noise Degrain settings next. (I did, for HOURS.)
Here's a good post for you that was linked from the other thread. Basically, I tried a wide variety of settings for these, and there wasn't a whopping amount of difference. I ended up with Noise Degrain Filtering 2, Noise Degrain Radius 4, Noise Degrain Blur Difference 3 and left it on Mitchell .70 I cranked some of those up to 20 and didn't have a "OMA GOSH!" reaction, I don't see a whole lot going on with this particular render. If you have a lot of light contrast, that Degrain Blur Distance should go up to 4 or 5 so it blends together nicely. (Or not, depending on what you want.)
Open the one above in a new window, then this one, and click to enlarge both and go back and forth. Not much difference, which is my point in saving you hours of testing.
So if you don't want to sharpen images, Mitchell will work for you, then the degrain will soften slightly and help blend areas of sharp contrast a bit, depending on what you choose. ("limits the influence of neighboring pixels." ) I think you'll have to crank it up a lot more than that link suggests, particularly in subdued light like this.
I started out to showcase one of the many G3F character morphs I created for G8F following Redz excellent tutorial and I put her in the same Party Gown @novica chose for Ilithyia, above. But then I read a variety of comments on how to get good results with dark renders, so I tried out the suggestion to make it brighter in the viewport and then use tone mapping to make it darker.
Respite
Thanks @novica that is great info.
My thanks too @novica. I had started testing those settings the other day but didn't get very far. I'll try your best settings on a city scene and see how they work.out.
Off-Topic: periodically I've purchased Trainz railroad simulator since it was first released in 2001. The 3D quality has steadily improved over time. Today I got the most recent version to use with my grandchildren. If you like 3D in motion, it's at a pretty good price right now. You can see a YouuTube video here.
Interesting stuff on those render settings, Novica.
I picked up the X-Fashion Turban Scarf for G3F in Fastgrab the other day and I've been trying out Draupadi again - blue-ish render is using one of the Chroma Lights settings and the red/gold one is with Aurous Lights.
The turban has quite a lot of fitting morphs and the textures are simple tiling maps which can be copied to almost anything - so they are on her dress here too.
Following up on Novica's experiments, I tested a scene with buildings where there are many sharp edges. I compared mitchell and gaussian pixel filter at 0.7 and 1.0 to gaussian at the default value of 1.5. I also tested Novica's best noise filter settings. When comparing the results, the key areas I looked at were the sharpness of the lettering in the stop and building signs, the distinctness of the pickets in the fence, the sharpness of the brick in the house's chimney, the sharpness of the lower edge of the house's window ledge, and whether the electrical lines had pixelation or not. The default scene took 8.25 minutes to render and the different settings did not change this time by much (a few seconds either way). Iray renders are 1200 by 960 pixel. Based on some other threads, image size can have an influence especially when using the noise filter. Best way to view attached images is open in separate tab and click on them to enlarge.
Gaussian 1.5: hard edges are soft throughout, lettering on signs is blurred.
Gaussian 1.5 sharpened with GIMP's sharpen filter: I used a setting of 40 for the filter (a value recommended by someone from the forums). Sharp edges, clear lettering, distinct edges in chimney stones. I typically run this filter on any architectural scenes,
Gaussian 1.0: sharper than 1.5, not as sharp as using the GIMP filter. Fence had more distinct pickets. Bricks and stones still somewhat blurred. A good choice if you don't want to take the few minutes to run the filter.
Gaussian 0.7: sharpest lettering on signs, sharper bricks and stones but now there is pixelation along the electrical lines and along the window ledges and a moire interference pattern showing in the picket fence. I would not use this setting unless you are rendering something with a lot of lettering.
Mitchell 1.0: identical results to gaussian 1.0
Mitchell 0.7: identical results to gaussian 0.7
Mitchell 0.7 plus noise filter 2 radius 4 blur 0.3: no improvement from what I could see, same negatives of a 0.7 pixel setting. Blur setting of 3 had no effect. Also tested on gaussian 1.0 with no improvement detected.
SUMMARY:
@rgcincy Thanks for testing!
It's good to know it wasn't just me in not seeing OMG results with the settings that post mentioned. (As I said, I cranked it up into the 20's and didn't have a wow moment), and I thought maybe it was my subdued lighting that was causing the ho-hum results. I kept my tests in the recommended limits, and meh. But from your tests too, it doesn't appear that the subdued lighting is the case.
Where we differ is the Mitchell vs the Gaussian- but I tested the Gaussian at the default of 1.50 (and we agreed that's softer) and if folks use Gaussian, I agree it needs to be lowered. However with my portrait, I do like the Mitchell a lot better than the Gaussian, with the Noise Filter Enable ON for all my tests. It's really good to see architectural items tested with these. Thanks for taking the time, and it took a lot of yours- I know this tied me up for hours yesterday (and I didn't post all the portraits, because frankly I didn't see one whit of difference.)
The thing I came away with- again- is that Render Quality 4 just isn't worth my time. Yet I see people with slow computers saying how renders went for ten, twelve, eighteen hours because their setting was 4. I wish they'd test it wth a setting of 1, then sharpen/ adjust midtones/contrast/shadows and see if it would work for them. Depending on the lighting, they could get different results, but this is the second time I tested it, and a few other people tested it the first time too, and got the same impression.
Fast Grab has been changing a LOT the past week! Those are pretty lights,really add to the render.
I'm constantly amazed by how many features DS has that I so easily overlook. By the way, you can also change tone settings on the fly which is a big help if you have too dark or too bright of a scene, as I usually have to kill the render and restart. I did one test where I changed pixel filter radius on the fly at about 35% convergence - it took a second or two for the effect to show (looked like it had to complete whatever pass it was on). Same for a change in Film ISO I did just afterwards. It did not increase render time.
I was tinkering with the various filter settings via the fly out. Sometimes it made the render restart, and sometimes not. Changing Tone Mapping can do that, too, (unless something has changed in the later versions of Iray or Daz Studio,) so it makes sense to tinker with these settings early on in the render. I know from experience how frustrating it can be to have a render restart when you thought it was nearly done.
I stopped using Quality a long time ago, even when I was still rendering via CPU Only. There are three parameters, essentially, that work together to determine how long an image should render: Rendering Converged Ratio, Max Samples and Max Time. Quality and the quality value affect Rendering Converged Ratio. When you turn Quality to Off, the algorithm no longer attemps to determine Rendering Converged Ratio. That leaves Max Samples and Max Time. I set Max Time to zero, which turns it off, and control all my renders by setting the Max Samples parameter.
This is usually useful when I need to spot render a correction, too. If I rendered the original image to 2500 samples, rendering the spot, (set to New Window in tool settings,) to 2500 samples should give the correction similar quality. (Not always the case, though. I've had small spot renders on a large image come out cleaner at the same number of samples.)
Before I got brave enough to turn off the Quality setting, I had a render that I thought needed more time to reduce the shine in the male's hair, so I set the Quality value higher. It didn't help the hair, (that was a gloss setting, duh,) but it really helped with the glass in the scene. After the extra rendering, you could see the reflections in the glasses and bottle. (That image is here, if you're curious. The reflections are best seen with the largest image.)