Novica, Serene Night, & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 3
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I am aware that these light sets that come with Daz Studio are:
Alchemy Chasm
Omnifreaker Uber Area Light and Uber Environment 2
edit:
Of course, dzDistant, dzPoint and dzSpot lights are included.
Hope this helps.
Toulouse Hair For Genesis 2
I'm not finding a link for this, so maybe it's just in a bundle. I'll search more later.
This hair goes on easily and without any tweaking necessary for the Nova figure. It's short, spunky, and just plain fun. It would also look good on the men and children.
That hair is nice. IT should be in Genesis 2 female Starter essentials. Haven't tried in on a male yet. Might look good. =-)
:ahhh: New Avi! :)
:ahhh: New Avi! :)
Yeah, I was trying to change my avatar last night and it wouldn't change. I opted for this one, and I don't like it. I'll probably be reverting back to WW. =-)
Today’s Review:
Tech-Staves
http://www.daz3d.com/tech-staves
By: Daz, Valandar
Future Wilderness
Iradian-Dario Pesce
Kergan-Dario Pesce
This is an unusual collection of pole-arms with a slightly toony flair, rooted in a classic sci-fi styles. You get 3 weapons: a jet staff, a psi staff, and a blaster staff. Each staff has a corresponding ‘blast effect.’
I’m going to state early on that the Psi-staff, (which is the one I pictured with the female alien), is my clear favorite. It has nice slick lines, scales down well, and has a reasonable level of believability. The other two are quite bulky and seem less realistic which is my preference for sci-fi weaponry.
The great news, however is that the tech staves are customizable. Using metallic shaders, you can add a lot of zip to these pole-arms, using the multiple mat zones to color and doll them up. And believe me, there is a lot of detail on these weapons and lots of mat zones which I think is great.
I encountered some problems using this product which you should be aware of.
These weapons are not smart props. They load in the area of the right hand, but you must parent it to the hand, and position it yourself. You must also parent the blaster effect. so my suggestion if you intend to use these effects is to load them with character and weapon zeroed out, and parent the blast effect to the weapon before you pose. You can leave it hidden until you want to use it.
They are thick. You will have to reposition the hand and fingers, and perhaps scale the weapon down for smaller characters. Unless your character is incredibly strong, I would recommend making it smaller, as big and chunky just doesn’t look believable to me.
Any pose set that features pole-arms will work with this set, however, some adjustments might need to be made to position the staff at the correct angle.
I’m glad I tried out this product. I think the psi staff has a lot of potential and I’m going to enjoy messing around with it’s material zones.
There is one staff here that I did not picture, the rocket staff. You can see this staff in the product promo art.
Images
1,2, The psi-staff
3, The Jet staff recolored using shaders
:ahhh: New Avi! :)
maybe he means his too!
Changed my avatar to something funnier-looking than Curly. :)
I like those characters and poses you're using in that review. I think the Tech Staves were originally a freebie.
Yes, I love alien characters and Dario makes some of the best and they are for genesis, so you can use the skins for other characters. Would love to see more sci-fi skins and wonderful characters like this sold here. =-)
The poses are actually: Michael 6 Shochi Poses by Muscleman. Some of them worked well for these exaggerated alien figures. =-)
http://www.daz3d.com/michael6-shochi-poses
Dea Araneam Hair
Evening Gown For Genesis 2 Females
http://www.daz3d.com/evening-gown-for-genesis-2-female-s
I've rendered this hair a few times, different lights, same results. I'm showing you the Dea Araneam Hair under the exact same lights (character in same position too) so you can compare it to the previous hair. Toulouse Hair is very crisp, strands well defined, I like it. This hair, if striving for a glittery sheen, seems to me to give it a crumbly appearance. On the right, you'll see the particles and that the hair is not fluid like the strands above the face and to our left. The shading rate still .20 and other settings on very good/excellent. To be fair, this is "out of the box" (but so was Toulouse.) This light setting is a good one to showcase skin materials and hair, so when I'm getting those crumbles it isn't the lighting. It happened with all the light setups that I tried.
One is a render, the second is a screenshot of the closeup- not wasting my time for the rest of it to come in, the hair right now is unacceptable. (image is 300dpi) You can see the hair really needs smoothing- those sharp edged strands on our right are simply "in your face" and not realistic at all. This is to show you the first results. The smoothing was default at 2 (and ON) and collision was 3.
Ravenhair did a beautiful job on the evening gown. You'll love it and it's a PC item! Be sure to load BOTH the items that say gown- one goes under the sheer overlay. My first render was "interesting" without it. Put out the red light, plop her in the district, and she'd be ready to go!
Tested smoothing all the way up to 14, collision up to 45 (various levels tested.) The results are the particles staying pronounced. Anyone else have this hair? I don't have anymore time to mess with it. I don't know much about smoothing and collision however, so any suggestions are welcome. Smoothing type was Base Shape Matching. I haven't changed any of the default settings.
All I can say is you've seen other hair with this light setup (many times) and they render beautifully. I did this under a different light set, same results. I may need some guidance with the smoothing settings so we can do a fair review of this hair. If you have it, please render it and show your results. Would love to see some good ones, the hair is fun! I definitely hope it's something I am doing. :)
Hmm. The hair in the promo art has a similar look. Could be how it renders. It does seem starchy on top in all the art images.
What happens if you turn off cast shadows on the hair?
Perhaps some light from below might help. it looks very dark in the back.
Yeah, but the lighting wouldn't change those sharp "ribbons." Smoothing didn't soften them either. This is the smoothing 14 and collision 27. Interested to see what other people render.
Ive got to get busy on the RRRR the rest of this week so can't use the studio to mess with this anymore, except I am going to try and MOVE the hair to see if maybe it was the way it loaded, and do a spot render. Only if that changes it, will I post. This obviously is a render, not a screenshot.
I was looking at that render when I noticed that the shirt clings to her uh.. chest tightly. Sill mesh smoothing. lol Thanks for posting the render. Suffice to say, the shirt shows of her curves nicely.
Edit: I clicked "post" too soon.
Toulouse Hair is nice. It renders fast on a single-core computer with shadows on.
I will do a render real quick of the hair I really, really like- will probably use for Oceana. Note you can keep the top headpiece of the other hair, it is not attached, so if you don't like the hair the headpiece and necklace are nice. BTW, there are many pretty jewelry color options for those stones, a wide variety. The one shown is the default, as it went with the neutral earth tones very nicely.
Thanks for taking the time to show this. The jewelry Is beautiful and I agree with you about the hair. Can the jewelry props be used with other hair?
LOL, we're cross posting. I just addressed that. :) Yes, and the headpiece is gorgeous IMO.
I will also show you the gown, it is really nice. It will be awhile, doing the head shot first, then will do a full length for everyone. I really like earth toned garments.
Thalia Hair
http://www.daz3d.com/thalia-hair
Fast becoming one of my favorites for classy. My character Oceana's hairstyle (coming soon- to battle SeaNautica in the RRRR thread.) Very elegant, classy, but can be everyday. Or every sorceress's :)
Renders FAST with excellent settings used, highly recommend. Took under 10 minutes, and that's with the evening gown, etc all in the scene. Grab it! For me, if I didn't have it, would be 51% right now. Is a DAZ3D so your monthly PC would apply!
Same lighting. SMOOTHING ONLY 2. COLLISION ONLY 3
http://www.daz3d.com/thalia-hair
Want to also point out the vendor did a nice job with the collar spikes- they did not dig into the chest. You may want to keep an eye on that depending on if you have layered clothing, but I found that particularly nice not to have to redo a render due to "uh-oh-spikes-in-chest."
Here's one of Thalia Hair I did yesterday. Decided not to go with a dark color as it's too close to Ariadne's SeaNautica, unless I tweak the blue some more. That character is a hodge podge, so don't ask who she is as I can't remember other than I started with Olympia, the bust looked whacky, Nova and a few others are thrown in the mix. Can't remember whose makeup has the blue dots and the wisps around the eyes. (This render was just for me originally- Was just twiddling.) Again, you'll love Thalia Hair- great colors!
Wow, full length rendered in 8 minutes folks! So remember that gown and hair both are user-friendly so far as render time! (and with the head piece, I might add)
EDIT: That dress is shown "out of the box." NO POKETHROUGH. Gotta love it, thumbs up!
Here's a closeup of the jewelry. Note that one spike is bent, so you'd want to position your render so that isn't obvious. It is that way on the figure, the render is not distorting it. I also like the way the vendor placed the part that is closest to the throat, so that it, too, does not stick your person.
If anyone does a good render of Thalia Hair, feel free to share. :) (Or Dea Araneam)
Was the 22% on this morning? I didn't recall seeing it in the rotating banner. It's active now. (I checked at 4am, and shopped at 5:30am, didn't see it either time but I may have just missed it.) Anyway, it's active right now.
EDIT: I'm pretty sure it wasn't active because I just looked at specific prices and they are cheaper now.
I believe they extended it for a day :)
No, I didn't see the 22%, I like Thalia hair with the headpiece. =-)
Don't know if this is causing the bending, but have you selected that collar and checked the Parameters for Actor morphs? Sometimes things Fit To a bit too strongly and warp the mesh.
That's really nice of them. To do that during Snowball Savings and let it stack, helps offset some of (what seems to me) to be higher prices on some of these outfits that only have one or two pieces and nothing else. I noticed some chat about that over in the other forums so I guess it's not just my perception.
Hmm, there are two products named Mystic Hollow, be aware of that in your Product Library. Thought I was going NUTS.
http://www.daz3d.com/mystic-hollows link has the s on the end, the other does not. Both named Mystic Hollow though.
http://www.daz3d.com/mystic-hollow
Going to list what I'm surfing through that I like. Some I already have but thought I'd share.
Esha:
http://www.daz3d.com/patchwork-shoes-1 Genesis 2- good sandals! 7.95
http://www.daz3d.com/patchwork-shoes-2
http://www.daz3d.com/princess-asia
http://www.daz3d.com/precious-princess These are just so classy!
http://www.daz3d.com/cool-baby If you have 3D Universe's Toon Baby, check this out!
Godin: like the eyebrows from this vendor. My favorite, and would make a good "teen- tween" :
http://www.daz3d.com/vh-lucia-for-victoria-4
http://www.daz3d.com/wharf-construction-set-piers To make your own piers
http://www.daz3d.com/nasha-hair another for underwater. Very few have such a "off the forehead straight up" look.
Still surfing.
Hey tjohn-
I had tested the Actor morphs, and gone into the sliders (you wouldn't believe how many there are!) but when you move the spikes, it' almost always moved the collar too. When it didn't it took it down into the chest when it started straightening out. You could probably play with it but I suspect it would take awhile. "Front Web Out" lifts all of it, and in combination with the Actor Victoria 6, to get it straight, the collar went WAAAAY wonky at the front. But that's good to keep in mind! I remember on some things, and forget on others. This one I had remembered.
Something to warm up the Winter a little. :)
Surf's Up!
I was trying to give Michael 6 HD with the Bjorn texture a tan. Did you know he had veins on his hands?
By the way, baggies (swim trunks) don't count as skimpwear do they? ;-)
My feelings is swimwear is not skimpwear. The only swimwear that qualified to me, are thongs or outfits so skimpy as to be an afterthought.
That's a nice render. I love the rich tone of that skin. Very nice and natural. Love the hand veins.
Here is an image of Talouse hair on m6
One thing I have an issue with applying M4 skins to M6 is the eyebrows. They become too high and arched much more than I would prefer. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear it. This is okay if I'm making Namor, but otherwise, I want a less arched brow for men.
I think that hair looks really good on the males. :)
I just found Blaine Hair, for anyone interested in another mermale hair (and mermaid- shown on both genders.)
http://www.daz3d.com/blaine-hair