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I love the plushies scene! That's so cute! Nicely done, Knittingmommy! :)
Oh I like those! I really like the last one the juxtaposition of the two different styles really appeals to me.
Nice to see you back! I was wondering what happened, but then lots of people are so busy over the summer so I figured you were actually spending quality time with someone! :) Thanks for the nice comments about the plushies. I really like how they looked with the shaders I used.
Thanks! They were on my list forever over at RDNA and I never got them. I was so happy to see them migrate over here. The plus was I got them much cheaper here than they were over there.
That final image sort of surprised me. I really like how it turned out. Using that loop tool in GIMP was a pain in the neck to use around each of those plushies, though, to mask each one off to bring out the underlying image. I finally found a couple of decent tutorials on using render passes and canvasses so I'm going to give those a try on my next attempt to do something like that where I want mix two differing styles. We'll see if it make things easier.
Installment 2 update. It doesn't look like this is getting posted tonight. I'm about halfway through the process, explaining each step as I go and I have about six screenshots to go with the explanations so those who wish to follow along can do so with their own furry character. Anyone wanting to put LAMH fur on any animal would basically follow the same steps I'm taking in this tutorial. We might have to do an actual hair for a two legged figure after we are done with Jaguar Sadie.
I'm putting the tutorial to bed for tonight and I'll finish up and get this posted when I get home tomorrow. This installment takes the longest because I'm explaining all of the different buttons for growing hair and then grooming the hair. Once those initials steps are done for the first shavegroup, the rest of the shavegroups will be quicker to show because the I will have already laid the ground work for the first group. I would stay up since I'm a night owl, but I have to take the boys to their early morning karate classes in the morning so it is getting very close to my bedtime tonight. Have fun peeps!
Jaguar Sadie's New Fur Preset Installment 2:
Step 1:
Presumably, you saved your character as a Scene or Scene Subset. I may have forgotten to indicate that step in the first installment. If you didn’t, then just load up whatever character you were working on in the first installment and then save as either a Scene or a Scene Subset. You’ll need to have it as on or the other from here on out. Once you have your figure loaded up into DS, go to Create New>Look At My Hair Object to bring up the LAMH workspace. Find the drop-down box for the figures in the top right corner. Underneath that drop-down box are three icons. Click on the second icon that looks like a little file folder. This is the load file button and it will bring up a pop-up box where you can load previously saved preset files. I will load up the save file from the previous session for JS.
Step 2:
The first thing we are going to do is grow the fiberhair on the surfaces we have in shavegroup#1. This is the shavegroup which will grow the hair for the neck, torso, hips, and legs. Jaguar Sadie has short hair so we don’t need it to be very long. Look at the screenshot in the box that says Styling. Those two boxes with the numbers determine the length of the fiberhair and the number of points each fiberhair has. I’m going to change the first number to 3 which is what the length of her hair will be in centimeters. I’m going to change the second number to 6 so each of our fiberhairs has 6 points or places where the strand can bend. Now push the button next to the number boxes. It looks kind of like 3 strands of hair. The button will grow the hair. If you decide you want your hair longer or short once you see the green guide hairs sprout on your figure, you can change the numbers and regrow the hair until you get it the length you want. The longer the hair length, the more points you want on the hair guides for styling purposes. For shorter hair, use fewer points. AM’s user guides suggests never going down below 5 points for any hair length.
Step 3:
Groom the hair. In our case, we want all of the of the hair in shavegroup #1 to head in a downward direction. We could just click on the brush tool (looks like a comb) and start combing all of the hairs. Believe it or not, that is what I did before I figured out the easy way to do this. In the Styling box are all of your d-formers which help to style the hair. The first is called spherize. It has a slider tool and x y z option. The default is y which will cause the hair to go in a downward direction. This is what we want for the hair in shavegroup#1. So, I’ll move the slider to the right until the hair on JS hangs down close to her body. You may have to move the slider to the right several times until you get the hair to hang just right. Get as close as you can. Anything else can be fine tuned with the brush tool. If you move the slider to the left, the hair will look as if it is growing upwards. This would be good if you were doing a hairstyle where you want the hair to defy gravity.
Step 4:
See what it looks like. Once you have the hair spherized the way you want, you may want to see what it is going to look like. You can do this without going into DS. Below the d-formers is a little button with an eye on it. Click on the button so it is lit up and you will see a representation of what the fur will look like on your figure. You can adjust the density while in preview mode, too. Move the density slider next to the Preview button and you can adjust the amount of hair your figure will have while inside LAMH.
Step 5:
At this point you can style you hair and play with all of the tool in the Styling box with all of the other d-formers. Since JS has short hair we don’t need to do much other than use the spherize to quickly get the hair to do what we want. You can also Frizz up the roots and the tips of your hair. I'll have to do another tutorial with a hair that uses these tools and explain them further when we are done with JS's fur. For now, just play with them and see what they do.
Step 6:
Grow hair on the other three shavegroups. When you select another shavegroup, the hair guides that you’ve already grown turn blue. Select shavegroup#2 from the drop-down menu. While none of the follicles look red, our shavegroup is there. Select 3 for the hair length and 6 for the points again and push the button to grow hair. The arms now have green hair guides which indicate they are the group currently being worked on. The hair guides for the body are blue.
With the spherize tool, I’m going to change the x y z from y to x. Move the slider to either the left or the right. For now, I’m moving to the left which lays all of the guide hairs along JS’s arms to the left. Right now it looks kind of funny because the hair on both arms are going in the same direction. When we get the hair laying the way we want, go down to the buttons that say LR and RL. These are the mirror buttons. If you had all of the guide hairs go to the left as I did then you are going to mirror from left to right using the LR button so that the guide hairs on the other arm now lay in the opposite direction.
If you make a mistake, just regrow the hairs and start over for the current group. There isn’t an undo button, but you can regrow guide hairs for just the shavegroup you are working with.
Shavegroup #3 is JS’s feet. For the feet, put the x y z for the spherize tool back on y. Move the slider to the right so the guide hair will surround the feet.
Shavegroup #4 is JS’s tail. Using the spherize tool, this time change the x y z to the z. This will move the guide hairs on the z axis and we want to move the slider to the right.
Save your work if you haven’t already. I try to save after finishing each shavegroup. I also save in successive files. So, for each shavegroup, I have a save file with the name of my file and the number for the shavegroup. This way I can easily go back if needed at any point in the process without having to start from the very beginning.
Installment #3 will deal with density maps for the rest of JS’s head and then we will move back into DS to see what JS’s new fur looks like in DS.
I hope everything makes sense and I explained it well. I have found that I don't like doing tutorials on the fly like this. It is an unusual case, though, as this was my first time ever making a preset and I figured others would be interested in my mistakes as well as what went right. Normally, I would do the tutorial and then post it, not do the tutorial as I'm doing the project. I will say that I managed to crash DS no less 5 time while doing this tutorial in LAMH. I'll have to figure what it was that I did that caused the crashes and let Kendall know if it is something that is repeatable.
For the arms, it took me quite a bit to figure out the mirror thing to get the guide hairs going in the opposite direction. I had to regrow the hair 3 times just to figure out the proper direction and figure out how to use the mirror button to get the look I wanted. The user guide that I have shows a totally different way of doing this. I'll be asking Alessandro and Kendall about this once I make sure I have the absolute latest user guide. I know they are constantly updating LAMH which is a good thing, but I'm not sure when the user guide was last updated.
You will make mistakes! I sure did! If you do, just regenerate the hair for the group you are working with and groom it again. I regrew the guide hairs for the feet about 5 times before I got it right. Remember to save and save often.
Really appreciate this; tutorials take an inordinate amount of time.
Thanks, @nicstt! I hope it helps you out. I know this tutorial/walkthrough is with a Genesis figure, but the next one will be G3 figure. I'm dying to try and get a decent FiberHair hair for my guys. We'll see how that goes once I'm done with Jaguar Sadie. I hope to have the last installment up in the day or two.
Oh, wow! Thanks, Will! And, welcome to my world! I have a render running right now, but when it's done I'll check that out and I'll fix that error in my tutorial with a screenshot. I really appreciate the help. I'm just blundering my way through things and hoping it helps someone. As much as I have been playing with fur in LAMH lately, I figured it was time to figure out how to actually do a preset!
I've been working on a sexy guy scene for a few days now and I swear trying to get the eyes just right was a pain in the neck! They probably still aren't perfect. I'm 20 hours into the final render which is finally up to 97%. It is times like these that I really wish I had an nVidia card and could make use of the GPU. I really like how it is looking. I used my own G2M character that I created with a Darius 6 skin with a couple of small tweaks. I aged him up a little with some Aging Morphs 2 for Genesis 2 Males by Zev0. So, I'm working in Blender today to try a little more modeling. I was going to work on some jewelry, but I found this really cool looking tutorial for making bread. And, since I love food:
I'll post the results when I'm done! I'm pretty sure my render will be done sometime today so I should be able to go into DS and start working on Jaguar Sadie's last installment and get some fur on her face later today.
That looks really good. I'll keep an eye out for your model and render!
Hi KM, that is some awesome work you have accomplished with LAMH, I don't have the full program yet but when I do (hopefully during the PA sale) I will be back in here to follow your tutorials. Great work!
Hopefully I won't be missing too much DAZ time in the next couple months as I start a new job after labor day weekend ( Sept 5), so I will be moving to a new city and am in the middle of selling my house, finding a new one, packing, and training staff to take over my position here. Keeping my fingers crossed that everything transitions smoothly.
@Kharma I'm still working on the last installment, but it should be finished soon. Then, I'm going to do an actual hairstyle on a human figure and see how that goes. It will all be waiting for you when you get the full version.
Been there, done the whole sell the house and move thing 3 years ago. I don't envy you a bit. That's a big job! We had been in our house for 18 years. It's amazing the amount of stuff a person can collect when they have a full basement to store it in! It was a great excuse to downsize! Good luck!
@Kharma I forgot to say congrats on the new job!
Oh that would be cool. I'd love to see more realistic food models for Iray.
And you know I'm looking forward to your sexy guy scene! heheh :D
Thank you! I am looking forward to a new job, new hotel, new town
Good luck, Kharma!
We moved several states a year ago, and... man, selling a house is so grueling. Hope your experience is better. ;)
Thanks very much, and yes the sale of my house is my biggest obstacle so i hope it goes well, but I don't want to sidetrack KM's thread. She is posting some great experiments and tips and tricks that I am learning alot from so I don't want to slow her down one bit
That's okay. I got side tracked by a render that I thought was going to be quick. It's still going so I can't get into DS to finish things up with other projects until it's done. So, sidetrack away! ;)
When we sold our house in NY, I was really surprised at how quickly it sold once we put it on the market and that we actually got our asking price. The longest part of putting it up for sale was figuring out what we wanted to keep for the move and what we could get rid of. We had been in that house for almost 20 years when my husband got the job offer in FL. Unfortunately, we had a full basement which was easy to store lots of stuff we didn't really need to keep anymore. I ended up putting a lot of stuff up on the local Free Ads and begging people to come get some of the boys old toddler furniture and stuff that was still in great condition.
I'm curious. What do you guys all do when you have a render that is taking forever and you can't use DS while it's still going and going and going!?!
Me, I read the forums and I'm still working on that bread in Blender. It is really taking all that I have not to just stop my current render and say "Good enough!".
I have slaves! I farm all the rendering out to other machines (I have way too many). I also have a tendency to have a bunch of projects/scenes going at once. I make a round of changes in all of them, farm out the renders, then make another round of changes, etc. Rarely render anything on the box I actually work on.
It's not a workflow that would work for everyone, but it works for me. It's necessary because 3D is what I do in my spare/free/down time as I'm working.
- Greg
Ah, what I wouldn't give to having a machine or two just for rendering so I could work on my computer for the creative stuff! :) We have a lot of computers, too. Way too many. Unfortunately, they are all being used by teen type boys who would scream bloody murder if I suddenly turned their machines into a render farm! ;) Don't think I haven't thought of that this morning while having a conversation with a friend over this very issue, though!
What I usually do while the rendering is going on and on and on is I go to youtube and try to find funny songs I can make a funny render with or I will watch an Agatha Christie Miss Marple who done it Movie I so love good murder mysteries. It also inspires me for doing my 3D Art, once I get the right kinda morphs I am going to do a good impression of my dear Miss Marple and maybe even some of the great villians in the different Movies. I just love the style of Dresses back then and even the way the men dressed. As they would say bring Miss Marple to the 3D world.
Ah, I love Agatha Christie! Miss Marple is a great character. I bet she would be a breeze with any of Zev0's aging morphs. I like Hercule Poirot, too. He's such a great character. I love clothing from the 1930s - 1040s era.
So, I had a render going and I was thinking that I needed to force it to render longer as I wanted some of the shadows to get a little sharper and less grainy. I thought I was going to have to wait until the render had finished, or stop it and resume it, and up the settings. Turns out you can do that on the fly with Iray. I had no clue! I was talking to @isidorn and he shared with me this tip that he picked up somewhere. He couldn't remember where. Personally, I always knew he was smart and I think he's smarter than he thinks he is, but he's shy and humble. ;) This, however, was brilliant and I had to share because as long as I've been using Iray, I had not come across this helpful tip before Isidorn! While I'm sure there are some Iray experts out there that already knew this one, I'm sure there are just as many of us who had no clue! Thank you, Isidorn!!!
On your Iray render window, there is this little icon that DS uses to indicate that a window can expand with another window view. I hadn't noticed it on my render window, but I had used them in other parts of DS to open tabs and other window options. If you click on that in the render window:
You get this:
Which has your Iray Progressive settings and you can change your settings there to increase iterations, quality, percentage, etc. My render was at 98% when I made a few changes to force it to render longer and DS made the changes causing my render to quickly go to 78%. Luckily, even with the changes, my render will be done soon. I have lots I want to get done in DS and renders take forever at times! :)
edit: Something to make note of, is that timmins.will says this will reset your render if you are rendering in canvases! So, be aware! I will defer to Will's expertise on that one as I haven't rendered in canvases much and I'm barely just getting started using that technique for some of my renders.
For anyone waiting on the last installment of Jaguar Sadie's fur coat, soon I promise. I just got distracted with some renders and as you can see from the time in my screenshot, some of my renders tend to take awhile.
That looks like a gorgeous render that you have baking.....Can't wait to see the finished result!
Ah, thanks! She's up to 93% so soon!
I will point out that this does not, however, work if you are using canvasses; you can change settings on the fly, but it resets the render.