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There should be a lot more pictures like that on the front page. No slight to sci-fi renders, but not everyone's interested in doing those. Pictures like this beauty was what pulled me towards 3D.
BT Dubs, I like the short hair you're working on!
Thank you, @Fishtales.
Thank you, xmasrose.
Aww. Thank you, @TigerAnne.
(I think my age is showing… I have no idea what "BT Dubs" means. But I'm happy you like the short SBH hair!)
Oh, it's just a silly way of saying "BTW." Dubs means "double-you."
Still working on the SBH short male hair. Here is a closeup of the new hairline and part:
And here is the same hair on several figures; Sanjay 8, Maxx, Ollie 8 and Tween Ryan 7.
Congrats! Always so exciting when that happens!
Love this!
@IceDragonArt, Thank you.
You know me, I don't usually do postwork. I really should spend more time learning the techniques. If I knew what I was doing, I'd probably do more postwork! lol
I know. I spent (and still spend) a fair amount of time on you tube - Photoshop is a lot like Daz, always more to learn lol.
Well I#m late to the party but congrats to the front view from me as well.
You've been doing great with the short hair, how did you manage to asfe it as a preset to be used on hte others figures?
@Linwelly, Thank you. It felt pretty awesome to see it there. It's been replaced already. Looks like Daz is changing every week, whether that's new or not, I have no idea. But I noticed they are using more images then I've seen in the past, 5 instead of 3. I like the idea that they feature more images, and change things up every week. It gives more people the opportunity to see their artwork featured.
As for the hair, I used a scalp from one of RedzStudio's hairs. She packages them with the fiber hair parented to a mesh scalp. The scalp was for G8M, so it fits on any G8M, (or G3M by changing the Scene Identification.)
One of my favorite PAs, GypsyAngel, needs help. I find it heartbreaking that someone so talented, who brings us, (me, anyway,) a lot of joy in the form of beautiful characters for images, may have to call it quits over something as basic as a good computer. (Read all about it here.)
Two and a half years ago, I splurged and bought The Beast. A 31-hundred dollar investment in a hobby! I wanted dual video cards, but just couldn't afford the extra $700 dollars at the time. It's already showing it's age, and I'm looking hard at adding an RTX card to beef up the rendering… for what amounts to a toy!
Today, GA needs a new computer. Her 10 year old computer died. Her most important tool for her livelihood is gone. Without it, she can't create new products for you and me to buy. Without it, she can't pay her bills. Without it, she can't afford her oxygen concentrator, (without that, she struggles for every breath!) So she rented a computer for $200 a month and created two new products, (which are now available elsewhere.)
If I had the money, I'd buy her a new computer. And I'd buy her a portable oxygen concentrator, too. (No one should have to struggle just to breathe.) But I don't have that kind of money, so I made a small donation instead. A drop in the bucket. But a full bucket is really just a bucket full of drops, right? So I hope and pray for more drops, for a bucket soon filled…
And a new computer for GypsyAngel.
That is so BEAUTIFULLY stated.
Thank you.
Arrrgh!
I did a second image for Llola's monthly challenge, one for the PFDLives edition. I wasn't completely happy with the results, but I was running out of time, so I posted what I had, and decided to improve on it for a new render to post here.
The scene uses a number of trees in the background, which I placed using Ultrascatter Pro. And that pushed the scene onto CPU Only rendering, so I had split the scene into two files for rendering. It occurred to me, after I posted the original on PFDLives, that I had the Instancing Optimization set to Speed. So I combined the two back together and set the optimization to Memory. And I was able to render the scene with a few other changes, as one render. Yay!
However, the memory optimization messed with the hairline and skin of figures I had in the foreground. So I set it back to Speed to spot render those. And then I made some more changes and did several more spot renders. Well, guess what? "Speed" changed the lighting in the interior of the scene and all of my spot renders, (representing many hours of rendering,) are completely unusable! I have to re-render all my spot renders with Memory selected, except for the humans, because they don't render well. So the humans have to be render from head to toe.
Several days work for naught…
If I were to buy some of Gypsy Angel's characters from here, amounting to say $50, how much of that would go directly to her?
@TigerAnne, As long as they aren't Daz Originals, she'll get 50%, or $25.00. Daz gets 100% of Daz Originals, as they own them outright. (That's how they can get away with giving DOs away, or discounting to 80% and more.)
(I believe it is 50% at the otheR store, too.)
Aww, crap. All the ones I bought says "Daz Originals" in addition to "Gypsy Angel." I guess I should return them, then?
I did another image with the Hivewire Mule Deer, this time with the Red Stag addons.
The original image, below, is the one I uploaded to PFDLives, for Llola's monthly challenge over there. I ran into a few snafus, and barely got it finished in time to upload and enter. I wasn't happy with it. It just felt like "the details" of a life were missing. I didn't even bother to give it a name.
I forgot to set Instancing Optimization to Memory, for all those instanced trees, and the image would only render with the CPU. I separated the background from the interior and backyard, and rendered the two separately. When I was putting them together in Photoshop, I discovered the floor was too low. It came up to the bottom of the doorsill, but it was, visually, an inch below the bottom of the columns. The fastest fix, (and this was the last day to enter, I needed a fast fix,) was to use dForms and move the columns down to the floor. I then spot rendered and added those to the composite image in Photoshop. (Maybe if I hadn't spent a day and a half on the stained glass…!)
And this is the remake.
I moved the floor up where it belongs, and then adjusted the pose of both the mother and daughter. I'm sure liking it that pinning is working for me now. It made moving the characters up without moving their hands a whole lot easier.
I added a number of little things to give the house a more lived in look, some flowers for the backyard, and the bbq grill.
Hush, Baby
Setting Instancing Optimization to Memory, I was able to render the base image as one, but it caused some issues with the hair caps on both figures, and the skin of the daughter's leg. I spot rendered those with optimization set to speed. As long as I was doing spot renders, I added the grill, and the props on the sofa and table. That's when I discovered the indoor lighting was brighter with Speed, and had to redo all my spot renders. I also had to render some things without light or background to get pure black and transparent to use for masks in Photoshop.
All my new spot renders needed to be complete sections, not just a head, or table top. I needed, for example, the entire bodies and glass with reflections for the mother and daughter. I added the flowers last, and as I already had created a mask of the wall and doors, it was really easy to add. (To be honest, I don't know if my computer could handle this image in one pass, with all the things I added since rendering the base image.)
Anyway, last post is the before, this post is the after.
I am much, much happier with the "after."
@TigerAnne, If you like the products, by all means keep them! She does lovely work. GA won't get anything from those products now, but she was paid for them originally, and I'm sure Daz will buyout products from her again.
If you can afford a tiny bit more, even the smallest donations on the GoGundMe page will add up. If not, your thoughts and prayers are undoubtedly appreciated.
Found it!!!
Honestly L'Adair... until you pointed out the little things you didn't like.. I thought it was just fine as is. Glad you like it better now :) Not sure I would have had your patience to do all that spot rendering... Besides... Iray hates my computer :(... SO I'm jealous anyway :P
Thank you. (Although I'm not sure it's so much patience as a combination of persistence and perfectionism. If I'd had a 12GB video card, I'd probably still be working on it! lol )
I can relate on the Iray-resistant computer…
I tried to save money up to buy a new computer, but I'd end up buying content instead. So I had the computer I wanted built to order and put it on my credit card. It was much easier to pay off the card in "a few" months than it was to set aside the money beforehand. That worked for me, but I know it's not the answer for everybody.
I paid $3100 for The Beast, and have since added RAM, ($300), replaced the liquid cooler, ($99), added a 4TB drive, ($90) and just this past month, added an 8TB drive, ($155). I never did get the second video card I wanted. About the time I'd paid off The Beast and was ready to get one, the cryptmining craze spread to the 1080 generation cards, and the video card to match the one in my computer went from $400+ to the $1K range. Never did come back down. Now I'm looking at the RTX line, but not sure when I can afford to buy one… Maybe when the next generation is released!
At the very least, I won't be adding anything more to my computer until GypsyAngel's GoFundMe page reaches it's goal and GA can get her new computer and get back to creating content.
I don't use 3Delight very often, but I wanted something less than realistic to begin with, so I thought I'd start in 3DL. This is one image, before the postwork, that will be used with others inside another render.
Cougar Mom and Cubs:
The final image is shorter, but I gave myself extra room at the top and bottom so I'd have some leaway on where the top of the terrain goes.
I learned a few things doing these 3DL images I thought I'd share with you.
My go to lighting in 3DL is AoA's Advanced Ambient Light. It gives a nice overall light without hotspots, and that's exactly what I needed here. However, the posed animals intersect the terrain slightly in several places—IRL, those parts would just compress, so I don't worry about intersecting that is hidden by the rest of the body—and several areas under the animals were surprisingly bright. If I hid the terrain, the light on their undersides went away.
I solved that issue by putting a bit of distance between the light and the scene, and adding a plane primitive under the terrain but above the light object.
All four animals are the Hivewire Big Cat. This is the Cougar, with three of the four using the Cub morph at 90%. The chubby cub on our right also has a heavy/bulk morph applied, I don't recall exactly which morph or how much. Just enough to make him a bit of a butterball. The poses I started with are actually marketed for the HW Housecat/Kitten, but they have been modified, in some cases by a lot, to fit the larger cats.
CWRW recently released an LAMH preset for the cougars, so decided to give my big kitties fur. That's where I ran into problems. Because all four animals use the same base figure, LAMH ran into issues applying the fur. The first cub preset worked fine, but subsequent presets didn't work. I asked on the main LAMH thread, and found I needed to use a different preset for each animal. By the time I did this image, I found just making a copy of the preset and renaming it was sufficient. (For example, "Preset01.lmh", "Preset01-B", "Preset01-C", etc.)
The other issue I ran into was reloading a saved scene with multiple "LAMH Groups". I haven't tested this with multiple animal bases, AM's bear and HW buck, for example, but with two or more groups for multiple animals using the same base, Daz Studio crashes when loading the saved file. (I had to uninstall the LAMH plugin from one install of DS to be able to open the file and deleted the groups.)
This is a limitation of the current technology, and not a major problem, (for me, anyway.) The solution is to delete the groups when saving the scene. It's good practice to not load LAMH until you're ready to render, anyway, so it shoudn't be an issue. But having one copy of Daz Studio without the plugin installed is good backup plan. I use the latest released beta almost exclusively anyway, so I unstalled LAMH from my 4.10 install.
BTW, although I have the full LAMH product, I loaded all four presets for this image, using the Pane inside DS. (I believe the Pane is the same for the free LAMH Player, but missing the button to open the Editor.)
Hopefully this bit of info will come in handy for some of you.
Oh, so that's why!
I love the cougar family. They look great in 3DL. I have a thing for cats, no matter the size.
That's a lovely image! Can't wait to see what you do with the postwork. Thank you for the explanations.
I had the same kind of crash problem with LAMH a few years ago and to reopen the file I just unchecked the LAMH plugin and restarted DS. For that you need to go to Help/About installed plugins.
I didn't even think of that! LOL I don't think straight, apparently, when I'm frustrated!
No big deal, though. I've got the 4.11 beta, and both 4.9 and 4.10 release versions installed. I keep the release versions for those times when an older product doesn't work in the beta.
And thank you.
LAMH also won't work if the figures are inside a group. Very annoying, as I like to organize my scene by using groups. But I had to unparent the animals to even load the presets.
Thank you. I'm a big fan of the felines, too. We've had as many as seven rescue cats at the same time. Sadly, many of our furbabies have passed on. We've only three at the moment.
That's just the most adorable render!
Thank you, @Hylas.
Sneak Peek at a male character in my next scene for Llola's challenge on PFDLives.com…
The entire scene is a departure for me… I'm doing it in 3Delight.
And I've only got 10 more days!
I can't remember a darned thing about 3DL, after years of using it! It's like a foreign language, if you don't use it, you lose it (or most of it. For me, it's an "all" thing LOL) I really like the cats, so laid back! And the deer scene reminds me of the deer herd who came into the pasture late evenings with my Arabian Nova. The little fawn actually came up to the barn and almost wandered inside. Mama was nervous about that of course, but the deer knew me and I didn't make any moves so baby just wandered around outside then back to Mama. I like your posing in that scene, it's very tender and respectful not to disturb the wildlife.
Thank you, @Novica. It was almost as much fun posing the cougars as it was to get LAMH to work on all four for one render.
What a wonderful memory of the deer. I've seen a few fawns while out hiking, but nothing that close. Deer are such graceful creatures, it's always a treat to see them in the wild.
I was happy with my work getting the mother and daughter to look natural together, A whole lot of tweaking this and then tweaking that. And I'm pleased you felt both the tenderness between mother and daughter, and the respect for their "unplanned visitor." Thank you.