February, 2020 - DAZ 3D New User Challenge - Lighting and Light Effects

Smoerebroet

testingtesterson35 said:

@Smoerebroet

That's a really nice looking render you posted. I'm very curious as I use Cinema 4D for modeling as well (and Zbrush), but have only been doing it for a short time. I've been doing 3D art for about 1.5 years and modeling/texturing for about half that time... Do you model in C4D, and which render engine do you use with it?  Also I was wondering what kind of work are you referring to when you say you work in a ;"lean" 3D art area... do you work with autoCAD or something?  I too find that I get better renders with DAZ than I can get with Cinema's native engines. (I don't know if I'd say that about everything when using Octane or Redshift though). ..Octane for Daz is now free for full version also though btw. 

Thank you very much. IT's very long time ago that I used C4D or any other 3D program. I can't remember if I used a special render engine. I wasn't very effective with modeling too. But was quite ok for my study stuff. XD Since 2007 I work in a specialised shop for alcohol. So no 3D art, but whisky solutions.:D Since I use DAZ I reactivated my old cinema just for morph and obj/fbx adjustments. At this render I tested photozoom for a larger material at the crown. I used the original material and made some bump and displacement maps online. (Found that link somewhere here.) At the moment I'm fine with the iray-render engine, I'm also to lazy for redo the materials. And ... some years ago I bought a Radeon card (I'm not at my computer now,but I guess it's something with ..480). As long there isn't a engine that support this I have no reason to change it (engine). I think to get a Nvidia card now, but the costs are twice to a Radeon.

0996ps

testingtesterson35 said:

@TristanQEverett

The full working version of Octane is now free only for Daz and Blender. For all other programs it is still paid only. Btw I was going to comment but you seemed to have already gotten a lot of feedback on your images… all your finals look really nicely done. What you did with the Night Lounge was very impressive. I have it and remember converting all the lighting manually and it didn’t look anywhere near as good as you got it to appear. A very involved task as there’s so many different kinds and qualities of lights in that environment. The poses look just right for dancing in a club, and you blended the multiple figure sets together really cohesively. 

Thank you very much and more feedback the merrier.

testingtesterson35 said:

Also, I think it was you that said you wanted to do original content design on an earlier post… Just wanted to say you should get going with it, try blender sooner rather than waiting. It’s never too early to start learning modeling, texturing, etc. You definitely have some strong artistic prowess so I would encourage you to give it a shot. If you can model a chair, you can model a table too… which means you can then also model other interior items like a shelf and bed… which means you can model a room. A couple of these, and some basic props, windows/doors/walls will be very simple, you can do all these from basic primitive shapes, which means you can model a house. You’ll be able to do it faster than you think I bet, just start small like a chair, side table, or shelf.  If you can model one house, you can do multiple, and before you know it, you’ve made a neighborhood/city. There are easy to follow tutorials on how to model ground terrain/grass, etc. using the free plugins with blender… and I mean EASY for someone like you. You can also sculpt your own custom character morphs with blenders new/improved sculpting tool… starting with a G8F base model you export from Daz. Sky’s the limit.

I bought Blender and Unreal Engine tutorials in Christmas sale and I did try blender a little. I feel like its just a matter of time to model and the actual problem is the reference part. How am I to build something grand without first having knowledge of it and so I looked a bit around on google to see what catches my eye and I did find something nice to make in the long run. Next, I need to be sure I make something original so I will have to first draw some rough(bad drawing) sketches and plan out in advance. Modeling, I am confident it will be easy but why I am not modeling so far is because I am not sure how to get textures to work in iray. I do not know if iray uses some special textures or if I can import textures from Blender and if they work in Iray. I did try creating materials in Unreal Engine once and it was really hard to do and I wonder if creating Materials in Blender will be equally hard.

One major problem is that I do not know how to make blender files work well in Daz Studio. In that night lounge, I noticed that objects seem like they were made in Blender and imported, adjusted and organized in Daz(Speculation). One of my friend has serious skill in Blender but he lacks confidence so much that he always says this won't sell on Daz even though his work is almost perfection. The problem is he is having a hard time making something unique and original. In February, he made props for a crime scene, a cabin in the woods(looks like house though), 3-5 houses and recently a classroom. He even gave me a file from one of his early house to test in Daz and it was wonderful and some of the problems I saw were intentional cause he wasn't serious when he made that house.

I encouraged him a lot and he is motivated a bit now and doing one serious project after lot of convincing but still he is taking too long to make his mind about selling on Daz so I think I will have to step up my game and learn blender myself and now that you have made a valid point about how its never too early, I think yes, I must do it before its too late.

And some test render of his house and I am not sure this was original and probably just a test of raw skill(and test of my shading skill) in Blender but now he is making original stuff. Also, I have hidden half of the house because I was doing shading surface by surface and kept the parts that weren't shaded hidden.

Edit: I am also wondering if I should buy some merchant resource Iray shaders in case I make a model using those shaders and sell the model with shaders included.
Edit: Classroom model but half of the stuff is hidden again.

DAZ_ann0314

February 2020

Showcased Participants for the February Lighting Challenge
 

daer-thing

 

TristanQEverett

 

sueya

Showcased Participants for the February Lighting Effects Challenge
 

Olo_Ordinaire

 

LaPartita

 

t0mg

New User Welcome
 

Smoerebroet

 

AndyMerzTV

 

sueya

Thanks everyone. I was surprised and pleased for my image to be chosen for the showcase.I have learnt a lot from this challenge.  Congrats to all the other winners. 

0996ps

FIrst-time participation and first-time win. I am feeling nice. XD

sueya said:

Thanks everyone. I was surprised and pleased for my image to be chosen for the showcase.I have learnt a lot from this challenge.  Congrats to all the other winners. 

I am glad you are also in showcased.

daer-thing

Congrats everyone and thanks for showcasing my image! :D

t0mg

Congratulations to everyone and thank you so much for showcasing my render!

alex86fire

Congrats to all!

Great renders!

eligodesign

congratulations to all winners :)

Smoerebroet

Oii, that's Surprising. A week off for holiday and then my first render is showcased. :D Thank you and to all other participants: Congratulations! And even yours is not choosen: There will always be another contest. (I think.) Greetings