I Don't Wishlist Stonemason Products Anymore
Faeryl Womyn
Posts: 3,628
in The Commons
I bookmarked his entire store lol Love the newest release https://www.daz3d.com/jungle-construction-kit-03
The quality of the products makes them useable even in real life movies. I thought he products were amazing when he first started putting them in the Daz store and they have become so much better over time.
I wish I had more money, I would buy everything in his store. lol
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I love Stonemason's stuff - I just don't have need for some of his favorite genres. But I buy all the Stonemason products that I think I can reasonably use.
At the risk of sounding like a hater, stonemason has been making stone/rocks the same way for years and years. In an age where photogrammetry rocks are the norm, I dont think it's "acceptable" to do those lowpoly jagged grey rocks anymore. And thus i disagree with OP that his environments are movie quality - only the SciFi ones are that standard. He really shines at the SciFi environs, while more natural environments usually look more akin to video game quality. And with video games moving to higher poly assets (e.g., Nanite), that might not even be true anymore.
I load Stonemason sets and scavenge light fixtures, props, and decals to use elsewhere. Here's a chalk hopscotch decal I took from City Courtyard.
that's never been an issue for me as I usually add more stones, moss, etc using replicators
at least if I am using Octane render in Carrara
I also ramp up displacement as Octane loves displacement and Stonemasons texture maps are pretty awesome
a fair few I don't have which is not that many, are in my wishlist simply because sales
interestingly it's mostly ruins I haven't got
not wanting to sound like a cop-out but it's a stylistic choice, I've always liked that hard faceted look you can give rocks when setting the material smoothing slider to zero, plus I enjoy sculpting the rocks in ZBrush.
however I have done and continue to use photogrammetry for some sets, recently I've used photogrammetry to generate models from stone walls I built when working as a stonemason..this one for example I built about 25 years ago:
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/93420/i/acottageinthecountry03daz3d.jpg
this one I built about 12 years ago:
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/93779/i/thebackstreetsofoldkyoto04daz3d.jpg
I don't know about anyone else, but this might be the absolute most outstanding reply I have ever seen posted by a PA in the forums. :)
I second @barbult: what an awesome scene!
Great composition and the image.
Defininetly
@Stonemason, now I know the source of your PA name. Lovely work. I have 18 of your products left to buy of your store. I love the rocks, stone work, greenery, sci-fi, historical, towns, cities, ... everything you have put your love and skill into.
@xyer0, thank you for a smile this morning. That scene reminds me of summer days in Los Angeles in the 50s/60s. Great work.
Mary
Full disclaimer, ignore my comments if you please, but just know that they are intended as my honest impression. To me that still looks very stylised. Of course if it's an artistic decision, people are free to do as they please and you have attracted many fans doing so. If I was going to use that scene for photorealism, i would probably end up replacing the wall with something else.
This is intended as an example only, and there are probably better examples: here
It may just be the render you showed, but to me the wall looks like an image projected to a plane (still photogrammetry I know) rather than something that a modern photogrammetry scanning technique would produce.
I would expect a stone wall to have more visible displacement. Similar to this (again this is just the first one i found on sketchfab intended as a demonstration, probably there are better ones): here
I realise it's not a competition but Strangefate had a stone wall in the Medieval/Fantasy Bedroom that I can only assume used a scan as the base for either the mesh or the material, and it looked perfect. I also realise that to produce this level of displacement necessarily requires highpoly, but even medium poly with baked Normals might yield good results. If that means heavy instancing and reducing scope of Environment to fit on GPU, personally I would prefer higher level of detail than vast environment.
In this post I sound like a crazy Photogrammetry truther, as if i believe only photogrammetry can produce good results - that is not actually what I am saying. Im saying in an online marketplace where those assets are common and where videogames look indistinguishable from real life, the bar for photoreal environment design is higher than ever, and low poly blocky rocks will detract from your otherwise good environments.
I love the quality of Stonemasons items. He avoids triangles, which makes it much easier to use his stuff in Cinema 4D and Blender.
If I want more details, I can add procedural materials in Blender. Would love to see some native Blender items, but that is probably something that Daz would not sell here.
Plants and landscapes I do in Blender native or with a huge collection of XFrog stuff that I own, but I love the medieval and victorian style buildings and stuff.
Same here. I have all the jungles and ruins I need, but I wish Stonemason sold stuff like this–from their Gallery:
I'm trying to get them all, but he keeps releasing new scenes and products faster then I can afford them.
Gladly, they do regularly show up at discounts, so I'm about halfway there.
Today I learned that Stonemason was actually a stonemason! Mad respect. I built a drystone retaining wall once in my life, and it came out adequate, but I decided that was the sort of physical labor I was going to pay younger, hardier, and more capable humans to do from then on.
Not to wade further into this but I honestly don't know that I would be able to tell any quality difference between the low drystone wall in Cottage in the Country and the one on Sketchfab, not at the size and resolution I normally do working renders. As long as they don't look like a stone texture on an obviously flat surface, I don't care. I have a set of stone wall mats that are actual photographic textures--dude went out and took shots of real walls and made JPGs of them. They're beautiful and detailed, when viewed by themselves ... and they look absolutely horrible in renders.
Yay, Stonemason, for setting the bar so high on photorealism and optimisation!
Thank you so kindly, @barbult, @mding, @Artini, @memcneil70, for your kind words. Ms. Mary, that was my goal; so, thank you for letting me know it worked. The HDRI wasn't great for skin, but it made everything else sparkle, so, I was forced to zoom out for a wider scene.
I'd also like to have elements like these. These are the kinds of things I have to go to KitBash3D and TurboSquid for.
That's funny being as he works in the movie industry
Me too. I can totally use things of this sort.
While I can't find them, I know there was a number of threads, one here in the Commons, and many in Product Suggestions we have all added to with detailed requests for normal/average buildings for our environments. I am terrible at locating threads like that, even when I have been reading them faithfully at the time. But there was a wide range of requests from around the world for real world, normal buildings/architecture for real people. There were also some great 'out there' requests too. If we keep asking, maybe we will see more. They always include normal cars, clothes, hair, and what have you and especially for common people throughout all possible eras.
Having the product the picture is from and looking at the wall in question without any textures, it is absolutely not a flat plane.
I find it funny how people talk about whether or not something looks real.
This looks like a few barrier fences people have built around where I live (people seem to have an aversion to building houses on flat ground lol)
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/93420/i/acottageinthecountry03daz3d.jpg
An this type of wall is what an old neighbors house had on the outside. They liked the stone walls for siding because the stones retain heat and helps keep the house warm.
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/93779/i/thebackstreetsofoldkyoto04daz3d.jpg
I'd say his products would have no problem fitting into the real world and can easily be used in movies and games.
we have those cleverly stacked mortar free stone walls in the Adelaide hills downunder too they have survived 2 centuries so far so the settlers knew what they were doing
Those types of stone walls are still being made to this day. It's been a technique for centries buy most cultures at one time.
Yes yes yes! Stonemason, good sir, are you still listening in ...?
yea I've had a few requests for that one..it was just made for fun but it is also based on an existing business so I wouldn't be comfortable selling a model of it, here's a street view of the original building it's based on.. https://www.google.com/maps/@-43.5354699,172.6581344,3a,60y,140.34h,94.41t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3oi8BbkH02cwZRclKLqwWA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
also here's a street view of the stonewall I made(twice) for Country Cottage, It's a dry stone wall meaning no mortar or no concrete, still amazed it survived the thousands of earthquakes we had in CHCH
https://www.google.com/maps/@-43.5986684,172.6071495,3a,75y,181.03h,80.83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sB4ZvHNEZz9e2ez9ei_QO7g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
I do plan to do some low rise every day urban environments, I know a lot of people want that sort of thing..maybe one day soon I'll get around to it.
Would it not be possible to release it with a new texture and some subtle structural tweaks that would be fine surley just saying?
This sort of "ordinary" roadside achitecture is very very usefull roadside shops petrol stations and if the singage are decals and even better but no graffitti
Wallet says hi!....
Mine is cowering under the bed