NEW KIDS IN TOWN
magaremoto
Posts: 1,227
w.i.p. say Hello to the guys
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Hi Guys!
hello :)
skull :-)
I'd like to get more realistic the eyes of the girl on the right, so I'm wondering if anyone has tested Look at me! Eyes in Carrara or similar products
Gkdantas has made a quite instructive tutorial on how to make realistic eyes in Carrara without buying anything:
http://carraracafe.com/real-eyes-for-victoria-4/
very helpful, thank you.
what about hair? realism is hard to achieve here; any hints?
From the distance you've shot in the original photo above, the hair looks fine. It's when you start getting closer where things begin to fall apart, right? I have been playing a bit on this on the side - seriously, yet without devoting much time, calling it good for now in hopes to pick it back up again with more time - over a couple of years now. My particular case, the mesh is spirals of mesh ribbons - where as most is just ribbons. Either way, the trick is to make those ribbons look less like thick blades of ribbon, and more like strands of hair - without over doing it - or you may just as well model it all out as hair - without the savings.
The key seems to be finding just the right mix of light and dark in the alpha map for most of these hair products. So I began playing around with those maps - and try adding them (via 'multiply' or 'mixer' so far) to various other channels in the shader - like highlight, for example. As Evil Producer has observed, I got to a point where I was totally over-thinking the thing, coming up with no real advantage.
The biggest part that threw me off is the fact that no light can pass through those 'ribbons' if they are set to cast shadows - but turning that off seems to me to be really bad - but without going too far into that. So I was trying to use translucency, transparency, and sss, none of which worked well for what I was doing... even though some of the theory seemed sounds - at times.
Allow me to back up. I enjoy casting heavy accent light from behind and to the side of the subject to really help that character to stand out from the rest of the scene. This technique has been casting the appropriate effect on everything for me except for hair. When I used the strand based (Carrara Dynamic) hair, different shader issues presented themselves - but still, the hair seemed to be the problem.
the hair that I am using for my main, Rosie, character is of the ribbon mesh with alpha map type. But the ribbons are spiraled, which makes it just right for the curly hair I need. But to get enough hair, I need to use three copies of the conforming hair, and make each copy get progressively thicker and longer. These layers of alpha, at least I think that's what it was, made the render times long. So part of my experimenting was also trying to find an optimized result to help speed the render process too.
I'll likely find something else soon. But just recently I've taken to multiplying my alpha map by the texture map within the glow channel. The bump map provided has some very different shading adding to the curls - which may also change the effect where needed - otherwise I set the brightness of the alpha map multiplier in the glow to control the brightness of the effect. This seems to assist in the render speed somehow, as well as enhancing the distinction of strands away from being ribbons of mesh. It's the closest I've come so far with this style of hair.
ah Dartan, always finds a way to add a Rosie to any topic!
Well, she IS my reason for living! Well... and I like the way she looks, too!
I was going to say, if you're not happy with the hair in your scene and it's not animated, Dynamic hair looks really good and depending on the complexity of prop hair or figure hair may not take much longer to render.
Carrara hair can look really good, too! It is quite unpredictable for animations, however.
thank you, I'm going to take into account all the suggestions provided here. The problem is the different behaviour of hair shinyness: when lit directly from the sunlight tends to white, while the reflected light from environment emphasizes their own natural hue. It's hard to find the right arrangement if you want to use the sun, easier if you use a scattered or a full white light
Magaremoto
Here are some really GREAT eyes from our Friend PhilW...
http://www.daz3d.com/bright-eyes-for-carrara
I tested them and swear by them.
I use them whenever I can.
By the way, I use you lighting sets. Excellent stuff.
Could we please have more?
More indoor sets and outdoor sets.
Thanks
thank you Tsarist, great product indeed by PhilW.
About my sets I can't find the time to perfect my products so my hope is someone could do that sooner or later by starting from these
btw mag,
Love the gang! They look like a great bunch!
they're waiting for you DB
they look forward to playing with you :cheese:
A thought for the amazing work of Stonemason and for all the PAs here at Daz.
Alright. Forget work... I'll get my skateboard!
yeeah DB
for kids it's always worth.
They'll wait anyway
...and then came Rosie!
(the Genesis 2 Female, V6 Rosie, that is!)
wip - some adjustments and a new entry
Hey DB, I love your scenes, they always prefigure adventure and exciting stories :)
In carrara 6 dynamic hair worked quite nicely in animations. I'm sure DAZ will find the issue and fix it soon.
I figure about the time pigs sprout wings.
Other wise to get good dolly hair you will need to work a bit with the transmaps, and apply smoothing to the hair. One of the issues I have found with most dolly hair is faked highlights. This will blow part of the realism because the highlight wont match the lighting. But this can also be fixed in a photo editor.
I spend a lot of my set up time fixing textures ;)
thank you for the tips Stan,
actually I am trying what you have suggested about transmaps, in particular setting up alpha and color channel too; currently I am testing the vertical scanline function on both channels; there should be a right value good enough for my shot. About textures I haven't found a ready- to use shader in carrara, ever. - but this may unleash the artist in you -
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14794/P30/
Fenric's poser shader doctor is a godsend - works on everything mostly, but might knock hair around sometimes
also Philw has a great shader plugin for giving eyes a sparkle
http://www.daz3d.com/bright-eyes-bundle
thank you Head Wax
Fenric' s addon looks interesting, I'm gonna give it a try; PhilW's bright eyes is being used for the girl on the right. Is there a way to apply carrara dynamic hair upon a transmapped mesh hair to get their shape? Doing so you have the right look on a desired haircut
You know carrara does have a 1-1000% option, it does work to push settings beyond the 100% mark.
Also note scene lights have no visible source for the eye to reflect ;)
Try this for fun. Drop in a sphere primitive. Scale it down, move it next to your render camera. In the shader room put a 1-1000% in the glow channel. Have fun :D
I've always been against fake lighting effects in the texture, so fake shine on hair and "windows" on eyes are things I try to avoid.
Make a window sized flat primitive. Find a picture of a window you like, make it fit the flat, drop it in the color and glow channel of the flat prim. Put it opposite the eye out of frame, or next to your render camera if you like.
I know some place on the HDD on that fried Acer, is a simple black and white window frames texture I've used in the past to get that "windowed" eye look using a prop.
{man I'm hoping I can retrieve that HDD, I'm not looking forward to reinstalling everything and starting over from scratch again}
Yo... that picture is very cool - I really like the hair they have. Keep it!
thank you Stan and DB, this is my latest test, I must admit to be quite satisfied by carrara and its handling of daz characters and contents. Apart from the kid in the foreground all the others looks pretty good and likely to be used after minor adjustments imo. Anyway I'm going to work on more guys and make renders at 3500x to see more details
Well, the guy in the foreground is in the shade - but what's wrong with him? I'm also very pleased with Carrara for such power. I have loaded a lot of Genesis characters in and it handles them all quite well. Using 8.5b on Genesis, I get the feeling that Carrara automatically detects when you already have one genesis figure loaded in already. Because loading a second one takes virtually no time to load. Same with the third and fourth, fifth...
Love It!
Hey Magaremoto,
Cheers & Ciao!
Dartanbeck
well I guess I have to tune up sss on face and lips; moreover hair are not realistic at all so you should teach me how to make curly hair with ribbons.
ps: don't forget you promised me to learn italian well, so that I will invite you and Rosie in Italy . I live near Rome, Rosie would love the town smile