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Love your "Family" image!!! Realy beautiful work and I love all the attention to detail you put into it.
I thought I'd let you know- there is a very easy way to make the male anatomy go away on the Mule Deer Buck:) Just dial "mare" under HW Horse->Body->Torso->Mare and voila!
I can hardly believe you have no post work - incredible render. Also, what a good idea to render something, then zoom in and out and crop new versions focusing on the areas/dimensions that you want.
@CWRW, Thank you!
I actually started with the Mare morph, but for whatever reason, it didn't work as expected. (I suppose if I went back and tried it now, it would work perfectly… Just gotta love computers and their penchant to thumb their digital noses at users!)
I figure it's a one-off, so no big deal. It didn't need to be perfect, just move things enough to hide the anatomy without affecting anything else. I was more particular about the top of the head. I'm so excited about all the deer products coming out. Whenever they arrive, the doe and fawn will go from shop to cart to runtime in a heartbeat!
Thank you, @Worlds_Edge.
There is some postwork, actually, though not much. I did touch up a few places where the front grass object intersected itself and the tree. They were minor, but I could see them, so they had to go. And the transition between light and shadow on the buck and doe needed softening. It's especially obvious on the neck of the doe in the Before of the second comparison image. That would have been softer had I used the LAMH fur, but at that distance, I didn't think the trade off in render time was worth it.
I did render it in one pass. Took about 25 hours with my GTX1080. Not sure how much the LAMH fur on the buck affected that.
I picked up Mousso's Melanthe the day of release. Really hard to pass up 50% off stacking with the intro and member discounts. (I find it hard to resist Mousso characters in general.) Decided to use her for an impromptu challenge over in the PFDLives forums, and I was so impressed with the face, I had to do a WIP render. And then I couldn't resist adding a bit of postwork to the image.
Here's the original WIP:
And here's the Photoshop postworked version:
Well, more fun and games with Melanthe. The challenge on PFDLives was for the May Show Off Thread. The challenge was simply, black. I had a wide format image in mind, but as the deadline approached, I chose a different camera angle and dimensions, with a closer shot of the figure:
Anguish
(The link goes to the DA page for this image, where you can see it at full-size, 2000 x 1800 pixels)
I really wasn't happy with the waterfall and the river in the background. What river you ask? The one that didn't show up, behind the waterfall. Which explains why I wasn't happy with it. I didn't like the way some of the damage on the stones looked blurry, and the Ivy vines were too low-poly to look good this close in. I tried to give her dirty feet from all the walking she much have done, but that doesn't look good, either. (imo) As it is, though, I barely got it posted in time.
Once it was posted, I went back to the wider format, but that also meant the camera was further away from Melanthe, and the dark "makeup" around her eyes did not look good at all. With some help from photoshop and Ron's Blood brushes, I created my own alternative makeup. Problem was, the "paint" went over the eyebrows. I ended up using the no-brow option and adding a new eyebrow layer with help from Skin Builder 8.
Loss
Notice the different waterfall? I used boulders from Rock My World to to turn the canyon into a cliff, and applied a different waterfall from Sy's iray waterfall product. UltraScatterPro spread the moss on the far shore and the grass and weeds on the ground behind the ruins. I added SubD to the Ivy vines, and reworked the dirt on her feet. I also added road dirt to the hem of her dress.
Really liking these images, and Family is just amazing!
Thank you, @Noswen
My latest image, for Llola Lane's monthly challenge, takes this month's theme "wood" to an extreme: Everything in the image uses a wood shader!
Wood
As you can imagine, some things were easier than others. The sky in the background is a plane primitive. The foundation under the building consists of two cube primitives. The tablecloth is a high-poly plane primitive I used dForce on to drape over the table. The leaves of the tree and the leaves of the potted plant weren't difficult, but I did have to add back in their Cutout Opacity maps, and with the potted plant, I also put back the Normal map.
The building wasn't as straight forward as it looks. I used the Geometry Editor to create new material zones, so I could apply the wood grain along the long side of each piece of wood, and so the wood inside the arch followed the curve. The chairs were like the building, requiring new material zones so the grain followed the long edges. Then I created new material zones for the cushions so I could use the tile offset parameters to line up lines as close as possible.
The plate of food probably took the most time. I used one from Delicious Dinner Props, but had to replace the plate because the material zones wouldn't take the shaders. Probably a simple fix, for someone who knows modeling and UVs. I opened the food texture in Photoshop and using layers and copies of the wood shader texture maps, I "painted" different shaders onto the image based on the food they represented. Then, after testing a few different ways of adding in the color from the original texture, I applied the texture as another layer in Photoshop.
The first image above is how it appeared in the render. The second image is with just the shaders. And the third image is with the original texture in the Diffuse Layer Weight and Diffuse Layer Color parameters, with weight at 0.50 and Diffuse Layer Weight Squared set to Off.
Perhaps the most fun was the couple. I determined their wardrobe first. Then I added hair. I chose a bobbed style for her from Toon Generations 2, but I couldn't find anything I liked for him. As the closely shaved pate is a thing these days, I decided no hair would work just fine. Then I moved on to the pose.
I started with a pose from the Wedding Photo Shoot Poses. The pose had to be modified as without the wedding dress, the two were standing too far apart. And I wanted something romantic with a touch of sexy. By the time I got through with it, the pose was substantially different.
I didn't really like the way the shirt fit the male, so I toyed with the idea of the figure and clothing using the same shader by applying an Iray Decal Node. Unless there's a setting I wasn't able to find, and I'm no expert on decals, each object needs a Decal Node. Not difficult to duplicate and parent, but it would be sweet to have a parameter that allows us to choose to apply to just the object or the object and it's children. Something like the Instance Mode parameter for instances.
Anyway, I think the effect was pretty cool, like two carved statues that intertwined. But all the other objects in the scene had different shaders for different zones, so they looked a bit out of place. I went back to shaders on the different pieces of clothing. And in the end, I use the man's shirt, too.
Love the blood tears make up/photoshop addition. Great for vamp scenes and such.
As for your wooden statue renders - God has given you lots of patience, lol It has definitely paid off. Very neat/interesting look.
Thank you, @Worlds_Edge.
Oh my gosh, the food is wooden!
I love how it all looks, though! Amazing job!
@TigerAnne, Thank you.
I really love how you show us how you got to the rendering point!
Thank you, @Saphirewild.
(I've learned so much from this community, I feel like delving into the details of some of my images is a small way to give back. And to pay it forward. Hopefully.)
I can't believe it had been so long since I popped in here. I'm caught up again. I love all the different statue work you've been doing. This last one though is amazing! They actually look like wood carvings. Very cool. Nice work. :)
@Knittingmommy, Thank you.
I'm pretty impressed with what the Iray Decal Node can do. It's not perfect, but it can sure do wonders when the UVs aren't conducive to shaders.
So I've been trying my hand at the new Strand-Based Hair. The editor still has some quirks to it, but it's quite usable. My first attempt was using the scene file provided by Daz in the dForce Starter Essentials for the G8M and Mohawk. I used the editor to change things up and came up with this style:
I used the Shaved Hair for G3M from BlueJaunte along with the SB hair. I also saved that bleached blonde hair color as a preset.
That was a while back. I had some other projects I needed to finish. I got back to the editor yesterday and worked all day on styling a basic short hair for G8M. I created it on a scalp from RedzStudio. I used one of hers because she separates the hair from the scalp, making it very easy to delete the rest of the hair. Anyway, here's what the style curves looked like yesterday when I called it a night:
(This is a screencapture, not a viewport draw. The draw loses the curves!)
Looks pretty good, doesn't it? But the actual hair didn't look as good as the curves "advertise." So I spent some more time on it today.
I duplicated the hair object and opened it in the editor. Then I changed I changed a few things, especially the density, so it was a bit different, a bit more messy, than original.
Here's an Nvidia viewport draw of the two together:
(I used the blonde preset I created for the previous hair/image.)
I think it has potential, but I'm still not happy with it.
Quick question, L'Adair. You're good with the geometry editor. I have a pair of boots that I want to modify the surface of with a cutout opacity. The problem is the surfaces are semetrical and use the same cutout opacity so I end up with identical rips in both pairs of boots. How do I used the geometry editor to make each leg a separate surface so I can have different rips on each boot? Is that something that's easy to do? I admit I don't go into the geometry editor often because I have no idea what I'm doing in there.
@Knittingmommy, I probably don't have them, but what boots are you talking about? Even seeing the promos may help answer your question.
Flat Boots 2 for Genesis 8 Female I'm trying to do something like this:
I like the flat boots, but the way the surfaces are set up, all the cuts would be identical on both legs. I'd like to be able to use a different cutout opacity map for each leg. I think I need to split the surfaces in order to do that. As far as I know, that's one thing you can use the geometry editor for, but I've never done that.
@Knittingmommy, It won't be difficult to split the surfaces.
Once you have separated the surfaces of the boots and applied the surface materials to the new zones, you can save the scene to be merged with the existing scene. Or you can save the boots as a prop asset, if you'll need them for multiple images.
ETA: Leaving the original material zone names alone means you can apply any textures for those boots and they will apply to one boot, allowing you to easily copy and paste those materials to the other boot.
Thank you, L'Adair! That worked perfectly. Now, I can go distress the boots and add some rips and tears. Much appreciated. :)
You're welcome.
Here are some more images of the basic short hair I'm working on. These are after tinkering to come up with temple/sideburns with more hair:
Left:
Front:
And Right:
I'm still not satisfied.
Every once in a while, Daz really surprises me.
Today is one of those days:
I think they made a fantastic choice! Congrats!
Thank you, @Knittingmommy.
Nice surprise, well done.
Congratulations! Well deserved, it's a fantastic image.