Knittingmommy's Laboratory

Knittingmommy

Thanks, Sonja.  I don't know what I would do without those filters now that I've found them. I love playing with them.  :)

wgdjohn

Knittingmommy,   Very good.... loved the original but the effects stepped it up another level. Kewl.  I grabbed NIKColor Effects... hopefully I'll not need anything but PS CS5. I've given  up on PS since I only upgrade and not pay constantly to use a program... I use Paint Shop Pro.

Tell me  I'm confused you said Zevo's Aging morphs?  What did you use it on?  I would think that if for the little girl Zevo's Growing Up Morphs would be used?

TabascoJack

Knittingmommy said:

So, awhile back I was working on postworking an image and Serene Knight gave me a great tip on making and using an overlay for highlights and stuff.  You can find that information over on her thread SereneKnight's Sci-fi Fun.  I ended up making a copy of my image and turning an overlay to enhance the image and make certain colors really pop in your image.  Thank you, Serene Knight, because that was a great tip and not one I had ever heard of, yet, in my postworking research.  It really enhanced my image which I then entered in Zev0's aging contest.  I didn't win, but I had great fun using those aging morphs!  :)  I'll have to show the before and after images of that picture sometime.

Anyway, that got me to thinking.  If I could do that to brighten things up or enhance sections that I wanted to enhance, why couldn't I do the same with deep dark shadows that I wanted to enhance?  Turns out, there is no reason why the same technique won't work with shadows.

Here is my original image that I experimented with recently:

It's a little washed out and not quite what I had in mind when I envisioned this image.  So, I took it into GIMP 2.9 to see what I could do with it.  Unfortunately, I don't have this working in Linux quite yet so I had to take it into the small Windows 7 I installed for those tough to do in Linux programs until I get them figured out.  I am not giving up those NIKCollection filters now that I have used them!  I'm a little addicted to playing with them.

I took my image into the NIKColor Effects filter and converted my image to B/W and used the Dynamic Contrast to get this image:

Here is a screenshot of the filter in use:

I turned that High Contrast image into an overlay and set it at about 67%.  

I basically just moved the slider up and down until I got a look that I liked.  I combined the two images and I really liked the effect.  I got this:

which I posted over in my gallery and to the NPR thread.  I also posted to the PC Anniversary contest because I had qualifying items used in the image.  I'm pretty happy with my final results with this experiment.  :)  I'll be even happier when I can get the NIKCollection working in Linux.

 

edit: added links to Serene Knight's thread.

 

Looks fantastic, @Knittingmommy

Knittingmommy

So, before my whole Windows 10 went crazy thing, I had learned a new trick with DS.  Now, call me crazy, but I had always just used the spot render to test out certain areas of my renders to double check how textures looked.  I did not realize there was more to this handy little tool than just drawing a little square in your viewport and seeing how something looked in that little square.  While reading another thread somewhere, don't remember where or I would link it, I discovered that you can actually have your spot render render to a file just like a normal render.  What?  You say?  Yes, you can have that little bit that you are spot rendering go to a file with just that little bit rendered inside something that is the size of your render.  Imagine the possibilities.  So, before I show you what I ended up doing with that little bit of knowledge, I'm going to actually show you how to change the spot render to go from viewport only to a new window because that took me a little bit of research to figure out.

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the Tool Settings tab.  It isn't part of the default tabs in most of the workspaces.  I can't live without it and use it daily.  However, if you aren't familiar with this handy little tab and it isn't loaded on your tabs, just right click on the tab space and select Add Pane (Tab) and find Tool Settings in the list to add it to your workspace.  

Once you have it in your tabs, select it and choose Spot Render in the list of tools available.  There are two options Viewport (which is the default) and New Window.  Choose New Window and you are done.  I don't think it saves this as a permanent setting.  It reverts back to the default when you close DS so if you need to do a spot render as a new window, you will need to go in and change it in each session.

Once this is done you can use the Spot Render tool (little camera with the arrow) at the top Viewport if you have tool icons showing.

Or you can find it in the drop down menu under Tools>Spot Render.  

Use your cursor to draw a little box around the area you want to render and you end up with something that looks like this:

You need to save your spot render as a .png file to keep the transparency if you want to use it in postwork like I will be showing in the next post.  I don't think the forums keep that transparency aspect and the background is showing white.  My copy saved as a .png shows up with a clear background all around the spot render, though.

That's it for where to find the spot render.

 

Knittingmommy

So, now you know where it is, how do you use it in postwork?  Well, here is one way and why I chose to do it this way.  

I had this render which I thought turned out really well with the exception of just a couple of minor problems.  The render took a long time to render and I was approaching a deadline because this image was for Zev0's Aging contest and I was running out of time.  

If you look closely, I have a problem with her eyelashes.  I'm not quite sure how I managed to do a full out render and not notice that, but it happened.  I needed to fix that.  I also didn't like the light behind her as the light I put in there was a little too visible if you know what I mean.  I needed to fix that.  Finally, I really did not like the color of the drink.  I was thinking some kind of cranberry alcoholic beverage, but that just ended up looking kind of gross.  So, I wanted to change that drink, too.  So, I fixed those things and made three different little spot renders of each thing I needed to fix.  You can do similar fixes with your any of your scenes.  Hopefully, you've saved your scene with your camera settings because everything else needs to be the same as your original render.

Here are each of my fix files:

I took all three of those files and opened them as layers in GIMP with my original file.  I added a mask and deleted the bits I didn't need around each of the spot renders that I didn't need and merged them all together.  

I ended up with this:

For anyone who doesn't know how to do this in GIMP, I'll post an in-depth tutorial soon about how to play around with these things inside GIMP.  Let me know if anyone has any questions.  :)

DarwinsMishap

Knittingmommy said:

So, before my whole Windows 10 went crazy thing, I had learned a new trick with DS.  Now, call me crazy, but I had always just used the spot render to test out certain areas of my renders to double check how textures looked.  I did not realize there was more to this handy little tool than just drawing a little square in your viewport and seeing how something looked in that little square.  While reading another thread somewhere, don't remember where or I would link it, I discovered that you can actually have your spot render render to a file just like a normal render.  What?  You say?  Yes, you can have that little bit that you are spot rendering go to a file with just that little bit rendered inside something that is the size of your render.  Imagine the possibilities.  So, before I show you what I ended up doing with that little bit of knowledge, I'm going to actually show you how to change the spot render to go from viewport only to a new window because that took me a little bit of research to figure out.

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the Tool Settings tab.  It isn't part of the default tabs in most of the workspaces.  I can't live without it and use it daily.  However, if you aren't familiar with this handy little tab and it isn't loaded on your tabs, just right click on the tab space and select Add Pane (Tab) and find Tool Settings in the list to add it to your workspace.  

Once you have it in your tabs, select it and choose Spot Render in the list of tools available.  There are two options Viewport (which is the default) and New Window.  Choose New Window and you are done.  I don't think it saves this as a permanent setting.  It reverts back to the default when you close DS so if you need to do a spot render as a new window, you will need to go in and change it in each session.

Once this is done you can use the Spot Render tool (little camera with the arrow) at the top Viewport if you have tool icons showing.

Or you can find it in the drop down menu under Tools>Spot Render.  

Use your cursor to draw a little box around the area you want to render and you end up with something that looks like this:

You need to save your spot render as a .png file to keep the transparency if you want to use it in postwork like I will be showing in the next post.  I don't think the forums keep that transparency aspect and the background is showing white.  My copy saved as a .png shows up with a clear background all around the spot render, though.

That's it for where to find the spot render.

 

Crikey- I've been trying to figure that out for months.  Thank you. XD Up until now, I've just re-rendered entire pieces. lol

IceDragonArt

Me too!  Most helpful!

Knittingmommy

So glad to be of help!  :)  Handy little bugger when you know how that works, isn't it?  It takes very little time to render a little one inch square at full out resolution, too, which is SUCH a time saver and you don't have to render the whole thing ever again as long as the camera is the same place as the original render and you don't make any major changes with the lighting.  Major lighting changes can really throw off the shadows of the spot render and things won't match up quite as well.  For little stuff, though, AMAZING!

@DarwinsMishap  Crikey!  Sounds decidedly British!  :)  Cute, too!

 

edit:  I just noticed I messed up the order of my screenshots.  I'll try and fix that tomorrow when I'm not quite so tired.  I'm headed to bed.

Knittingmommy

So, I was playing around with Nuggets by TheDarkerSideOfArt.  I wanted him as soon as I saw him popping up in the gallery before he showed up in the store.  I think he is the cutest thing!  Mr. little grumpy Nuggets.  I paired him with Staci from 3D Universe and I don't think he is very happy to be the focus of her attention.  :)

I did a little bit of magic with GIMP and NIKColorEffects.  I actually have three different layers going on this image.  I used the Cartoon filter in GIMP and two different layers from the NIKColorEffects.  I really like the final effect that I managed to get.

Knittingmommy

Aargh!  Been struggling with a render all morning.  I think I have it all set the way I want and the render looks good so far.  It might still be a little bit too dark, but I'll see what it looks like once the lighting all settles out and stop it if I need to.

While I was doing all of my fiddling, I realized something that hadn't occurred to me before, although, it probably should have.  That auxiliary viewport is actually a viewport just like the main one.   It just has the IPR render thing in there.  But, I realized that I could set my perspective view up so that what I want to move is in the auxiliary viewport and then have my main viewport looking through my camera.  I found this useful today because I was moving things around, but not all of the objects' transform tools were visible while looking in my camera view.  I really wanted to move things while looking in that camera.  

Now, I know most will say, "Why not just use the slider?"  Well, I tell, you some of the sliders just don't work well in DS while running in Wine.  When I first got everything installed, thought the slider problem wasn't that big a deal.  They seem to work just as well in Linux as they did in Windows.  Which, sometimes, is not all that great for minute movement.  I find moving things exactly where I want them with the transform tool to be so much quicker.  However, it isn't always accessible depending on how you are looking at the object.

But, then I see that the transform tool shows up in the Auxiliary Viewport.  So, I tried moving it.  What do you know?  That actually works!  I know, small victories give me thrills.  :)

IceDragonArt

Knittingmommy said:

Aargh!  Been struggling with a render all morning.  I think I have it all set the way I want and the render looks good so far.  It might still be a little bit too dark, but I'll see what it looks like once the lighting all settles out and stop it if I need to.

While I was doing all of my fiddling, I realized something that hadn't occurred to me before, although, it probably should have.  That auxiliary viewport is actually a viewport just like the main one.   It just has the IPR render thing in there.  But, I realized that I could set my perspective view up so that what I want to move is in the auxiliary viewport and then have my main viewport looking through my camera.  I found this useful today because I was moving things around, but not all of the objects' transform tools were visible while looking in my camera view.  I really wanted to move things while looking in that camera.  

Now, I know most will say, "Why not just use the slider?"  Well, I tell, you some of the sliders just don't work well in DS while running in Wine.  When I first got everything installed, thought the slider problem wasn't that big a deal.  They seem to work just as well in Linux as they did in Windows.  Which, sometimes, is not all that great for minute movement.  I find moving things exactly where I want them with the transform tool to be so much quicker.  However, it isn't always accessible depending on how you are looking at the object.

But, then I see that the transform tool shows up in the Auxiliary Viewport.  So, I tried moving it.  What do you know?  That actually works!  I know, small victories give me thrills.  :)

This is super useful!  Moving stuff and having to shift camera views all the time drives me batty.  So much easier to pull or push things where I want them than fiddle with the sliders. 

Knittingmommy

So, it took me ALL day to get the Google NIK Collection working in LInux.  I had gotten the darn things working in wine as standalone programs, but hadn't gotten them to the point where Gimp could call them.  It literally took me working on this all day between laundry and housework and voting to get this done.  Of course, the major hold up was that one little thing that I didn't know you had to do that was causing the main, but I'm assuming everyone who deals with python scripts knew so they didn't bother to say that you HAVE TO TURN IT INTO AN EXECUTABLE!!!!  Arrgh!!!

Once that was done, the script showed up in my Gimp filters so I could start making changes based on the errors I got.  Most of it was just making sure it knew where my version of Python was and where the NIK Collection was located.  I now know a whole lot more about scripting in Python than I did when I woke up this morning!

I thought I'd share my test images.  I was playing around with Gwenbleiz and Sickleyield's new Fast Fog Iray yesterday and ended up with this image:

Original:

Here are the test images four main NIK Filters I've been mostly playing around with working in Gimp 2.9 (Linux version) calling the Google NIK Collection in Wine:

NIKAnalog:

NIKColorEffects:

NIKSilverEffects:

NIKViveza2:

Now that everything works, I'll have to take my image in for real and play around with actual postwork to see what I like.  These are okay, but I'm not sure I like them that much.  I think I can do much better.  I was getting tired after trying all day to get this working that by the time I actually had the image in the filters, I didn't really want to do a lot of experimenting. Maybe tomorrow, I'll be able to look at it without cringing.

Knittingmommy

And another postworking tool has been successfully installed in Linux under Wine.  I got my Filter Forge up and running.  On caveat at the moment is that I can't download any new filters yet and only have the filters that come with Filter Forge.  I need to first see if I can find out where the filters are kept and see if I can copy the filters that I downloaded in Windows and stick them in the same directory in the version running in Linux.  If I can, that will save me having to download again all of the filters that I have already searched for and downloaded when I was running it under Windows.

Filter used:  Watercolor Frame

mjc1016

If it's running in WINE, then they should go in the same spot as in Windows (where FF installs them)...probably <fake_drive_c>/users/<you>/Application Data or something in Linux, if they go in your AppData/user profile in Windows.

Knittingmommy

mjc1016 said:

If it's running in WINE, then they should go in the same spot as in Windows (where FF installs them)...probably <fake_drive_c>/users/<you>/Application Data or something in Linux, if they go in your AppData/user profile in Windows.

@mjc1016  Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're right.  I just have never had a reason to go looking to see where the filters actually got stored before.  I just downloaded filters and hoped the browser to program thing worked.  Which apparently, it is not doing in Chrome at the moment.  Chrome won't even download in Windows cause I checked my little drive that I have set up with Windows 7 for those pesky programs I don't have working yet.  Up until tonight Filter Forge was one of those that I now get to cross off my list.  I'm going to have to try another browser to see if that works.  I'm pretty sure I was using Chrome to download filters in the old Windows install, but for some reason it isn't working now.  I'm thinking I don't have some vital plugin or app or something installed yet.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, though.  Having that idea of where to look confirmed should save me some time.  :)

Knittingmommy

I spent over an hour trying to research and figure out how to convert .mt5 to .mc6 files so DS can use them.  Then spent a little more time tracking down why DS STILL can find the textures it needs for my beloved Plushies!  I love Plushies and I have them all now.  When I was rendering in Windows the first few times, textures didn't matter because I was using Iray and used my own shaders on them.  The one or two times that I rendered in 3Delight, I don't remember having this problem.  Turns out, that in Windows, DS could still find the base texture cause Windows doesn't care about case.  Turns out that in the .mt5 and the .cr2 files they are looking for the base texture in 'textures:Littlefox...'  when the textures are actually in 'Textures:Littlefox...'  Linux is a case sensitive system and it doesn't like that.  It won't find the files if the exact case doesn't match.  I have a lot of these .mt5 and .cr2 files to fix.  I'm not great with scripting, but it looks like I'm going to have to try and make two scripts to make all of the changes in the .cr2 files and then make changes in the .mt5 files and save those0 files with a .mc6 extension.

That whole thing messed up my plans last night for a render I had in mind.  I ended up playing around with @FirstBastion's 1stBastion's Buildings Hospital Emergency.  I got it the day it was released, but this is the first chance I've had to play with it.  I did a couple of test shots with the 3Delight presets in some of the cameras provided.  I love FirstBastion sets!  This is a great one.  After I finished doing test renders, I took one of the images into Filter Forge and played around.  I used some of the filters that I hadn't played with much because they do better with buildings than with figures.  I got some really interesting looks.

Today, I'll try and see what it looks like in Iray.

Original:

Filter used: Colorizer

Filter used: High Pass and Desaturate

Filter used: mw_Aging Film

Filter used: Posterizer

Filter used: Retro Halftone Dots

Filter used: Romantic Grunge

Filter used: Shark Tank

Filter used: Tron 2.0 Legacy

I actually thing that last one could be useful as a composite layer for some highlights.  I may have to play with that soon.  I really need to track down an ambulance, too.  :)

Knittingmommy

So, I was playing around in Gimp and actually ended up composited a couple of the layers and then used the Google NIK on it.  I like what I got and even ended up putting that in my gallery.  I think that might actually be the first image that I've ever done where it has only one product listed.  :)

What do you think?

algovincian

Knittingmommy said:

So, I was playing around in Gimp and actually ended up composited a couple of the layers and then used the Google NIK on it.  I like what I got and even ended up putting that in my gallery.  I think that might actually be the first image that I've ever done where it has only one product listed.  :)

What do you think?

I like the detail you were able to pull out in the sky with the HDR effects, and that wet lens one in the previous post is an excellent effect!

- Greg

Knittingmommy

@algovinician  Thanks.  I really like how this one turned out, too. I'm thinking of doing some screenshots with a mini tutorial of how I took a couple of the pictures up above and put them together in Gimp to pull off my final image.  I decided I needed to make some nice little scenes like this for putting in picture frames in some of my scenes.  It gives me a great excuse to play around with a lot of postwork for some of them.  I need to do a few more cityscapes and outdoor scenery, too..

I like that Shark Tank filter and I thought the way I did that one image with it gave a nice effect as if the camera lens was wet when it took the picture.  :)

Knittingmommy

I've been busy on a couple of projects.  Just finished up my entry for the VR contest last night/early this morning.  Here is the link if anyone wants to take a look.  I'll post it to my thread when the contest is over because I have a little mini tutorial on how I did a couple of things in the render.  Finishing up the LAMH hair and beard tutorials this week and should have them posted to the thread over the weekend.  I had to finish those up in Windows because for some reason I can't get LAMH to install in Linux yet.  I've had some install issues with a few scripts and Carrara only products.  No idea why.  They just fail to install and sit in the Ready to Install tab in DIM.  I hate having to keep going back into Windows for things like this so I hope to get this fixed and have everything permanently working in Linux soon.  In the meantime, I'm switching back and forth to that little temp Windows drive for some things still.

I've been following along a tutorial I found for making mdl shaders inside Substance Designer.  Expensive program, but they have a 30 day trial which works out perfectly for working through the tutorials.  So far, it doesn't look to bad and I think I can transfer what I've learned to be able to make my own Iray shaders in the Shader Mixer.  If I can figure that out, I'll work out a tutorial because there are practically no recent tutorials for the Shader Mixer and I haven't found any at all for making Iray shaders in the Shader Mixer even though it is capable of doing so.

I've gone through several old tutorials that are sadly outdated for making 3DL shaders.  Things have moved and changed over the years with updates to DS, but no one seems to have updated any of the Shader Mixer tutorials which is very frustrating when you are trying to learn how it works.  So, my frustrations will benefit you guys soon.

Knittingmommy

VR Contest Entry

So, I did this for the VR contest that is mostly over.  They extended the deadline, but I don't know how that will work when they've already decided on some winners.  Anyway, I said I would post my image here with some mini tutorials when it ended.  I think it's pretty safe to go ahead and post this now. 

Gallery Link

I had fun with it and this really is my idea of fun in virtual reality.  I want to see my stuffed animals and other dolls come to life.  I think that would be very cool.  So, the mini tutorial. I opened up a new scene to start fresh and walk you guys through what I did for this.  I used The Enchanted Glade by ArtCollaborations.  I really like the Glade and it was perfect for what I wanted to try and do.

The Enchanted Glade comes with a prop that is kind of like the Cyclorama thing that surrounds most of the landscape and has a picture a sky background on it.  

I duplicated just that sky background part for a second layer to which I added one of DestinysGarden's lovely Sci-Fi shaders.  DG Iray Sci-Fi Surface Lights Shaders has a few transparent wireframe shaders which work perfectly for what I had in mind.

I applied the shader to the second instance of the sky and ended up with a happy accident.  While it didn't look like it in the viewport, this is what I got when I did a test render.  That black is actually transparent because I saved the actual render as a .png file.  Later I added another white background in Gimp.

I'll be honest and say that I originally was planning to offset the two skies by scaling the one with the wireframe on it down just a smidge.  That way you could see all of the sky, but also the wireframe.  However, when I added the shader to the second sky prop, I ended up with this which I truly loved and thought was perfect for my idea for the image.  The white part is just an extra layer that I added in Gimp that was filled with white to get rid of the transparency and make it look like the VR room was all white walls when there wasn't anything happening in the room.

Next was Wolfie by Lady Littlefox, my Plushie with the tail problem.  For him, I created a New Geoshell.  I applied another wireframe shader to that Geoshell.  

Then, I turned off all surfaces of the Geoshell that I didn't need to be visible.  In this case, I turned off everything but the tail and skin.  If the skin gets turned off, the tail won't be visible even though it is on.

Now at first it didn't look like that was going to work because it didn't show up in my first render.  

  

However, it dawned on my that I was using a shader for the fur with Maximum Displacement bumped up to 2 to give Wolfie a nice fluffy look.  By the way, I highly recommend JGreenlees' Leather and Fur Iray Shaders.  They are awesome.  So, anyway, bumped up displacement on the underlying shader means that I had to bump up the offset of the Geoshell.  I wanted it to look like the wireframe was kind of coming out of the tail and was a part of it, though, and not sitting on top of it so I didn't bump the offset all the past the displacement.  While I had the fur set at a 2 in Maximum Displacement, I only set the Geoshell Mesh Offset to 1.

I really hope you guys all try something similar.  Have fun with Geoshells and duplicate props and see what happens when you combine them in unusual ways.  :)

 

Knittingmommy

And, I think I'm all caught up with putting links to all the tutorials and interesting bits at that beginning of the thread.  It's late and I'm getting tired so, of course, I had to have a bit of fun with some of the titles for the links.  Anyone who wants to read the titles and see how loopy I can get can see them here.  Hopefully, I got all of the links right.

FirstBastion

Knittingmommy said:

So, I was playing around in Gimp and actually ended up composited a couple of the layers and then used the Google NIK on it.  I like what I got and even ended up putting that in my gallery.  I think that might actually be the first image that I've ever done where it has only one product listed.  :)

What do you think?

Very cool to see the variations.  This shark tank filter really offer possibilities. 

 

IceDragonArt

Great idea with the room and tail! I haven't had a chance to really explore geoshells yet but that's going to have to wait a bit yet lol.  Thanks for sharing the process!

Knittingmommy

FirstBastion said:

Knittingmommy said:

So, I was playing around in Gimp and actually ended up composited a couple of the layers and then used the Google NIK on it.  I like what I got and even ended up putting that in my gallery.  I think that might actually be the first image that I've ever done where it has only one product listed.  :)

What do you think?

Very cool to see the variations.  This shark tank filter really offer possibilities. 

 

@FirstBastion  What I loved most about this experiment is that I didn't really have to do much inside DS as you did everything for me.  I used your lights and your camera presets which helps when someone like me who isn't good with 3DL tries to do renders.  You always do such great work.  It was an interesting experiment to just use everything out of the box and then see what i could with it in postwork.  I'm starting to like postwork now that I know more about what I'm doing.  Starting out with great sets with great lighting and camera presets helps make it easier for people just starting out in a render engine get their feet wet, too.

As for that Shark Tank filter, I loved playing with that filter.  I highly recommend it because I was getting a lot of great looks with it that had nothing to do with a fish/shark tank.  There are a lot things to change in that filter and there are a ton of possibilities in there.

Knittingmommy

Ice Dragon Art said:

Great idea with the room and tail! I haven't had a chance to really explore geoshells yet but that's going to have to wait a bit yet lol.  Thanks for sharing the process!

Sonja, I'm really starting to like using Geoshells.  Timmins.Will got me hooked on using them.  He is a great source of information about them, too.  I swear that man is practically an encyclopedia of DS related knowledge.  :)  I definitely wouldn't have the skills to play with geoshells if I hadn't had a couple of great forum conversations about them with him.  I think he also has some info on his thread about them.  With the computer meltdown, I've gotten way behind on some threads and I'm not sure where he's at with his informational thread.  I need to do some catching up.

Knittingmommy

Well, I had a couple of things I wanted to get done today, but I didn't.  I started on a project yesterday that didn't quite get finished as I had a small car emergency when my battery died.  I ended up cancelling appointments and, even though Ron (my husband) took the boys to karate, I didn't quite get everything on my list done that I wanted to get done yesterday.  So, I'm a little behind today of where I wanted to be.  I even had the whole day boy free, but I kind of ended up spending quality time with my husband instead of doing as much in DS as I was planning.  We even managed to go out to lunch at a restaurant that we like, but the boys don't.  It was nice, just the two of us for a change. :)  

So, I finally got my project that I started yesterday all finished.  The last bit is rendering now and should be done soon.  It was a two step process that started with this little guy who I love very much.  I think he's adorable and cute and very grumpy and just about perfect.  So, I thought I'd share some test renders I did for the project that is currently rendering.  I saved him in .png for the transparency aspect.  You'll see why when you see the final render so I'm uploading them as .png since they don't reach the max.  I'll post my final render when it's done and show you what I ended up doing with the little guy.  By the way, this is Nuggets by TheDarkerSideOfArt if you haven't seen him yet.  I picked him up during the big sale and he is quickly becoming one of my favorite little figures with which to work.  Posing him is actually easy and I've done a few quick poses that I might share on my ShareCG page soon although he does come with some really nice poses, too.  Doing expressions on him is a blast.

IceDragonArt

Alone time with the husband trumps Daz time every time lol.  Especially when the kids are still at home.

He really is a cute little guy, almost makes me want to try some more toon style renders lol.  I will settle for enjoying yours for now though.

algovincian

Knittingmommy said:

Well, I had a couple of things I wanted to get done today, but I didn't.  I started on a project yesterday that didn't quite get finished as I had a small car emergency when my battery died.  I ended up cancelling appointments and, even though Ron (my husband) took the boys to karate, I didn't quite get everything on my list done that I wanted to get done yesterday.  So, I'm a little behind today of where I wanted to be.  I even had the whole day boy free, but I kind of ended up spending quality time with my husband instead of doing as much in DS as I was planning.  We even managed to go out to lunch at a restaurant that we like, but the boys don't.  It was nice, just the two of us for a change. :)  

So, I finally got my project that I started yesterday all finished.  The last bit is rendering now and should be done soon.  It was a two step process that started with this little guy who I love very much.  I think he's adorable and cute and very grumpy and just about perfect.  So, I thought I'd share some test renders I did for the project that is currently rendering.  I saved him in .png for the transparency aspect.  You'll see why when you see the final render so I'm uploading them as .png since they don't reach the max.  I'll post my final render when it's done and show you what I ended up doing with the little guy.  By the way, this is Nuggets by TheDarkerSideOfArt if you haven't seen him yet.  I picked him up during the big sale and he is quickly becoming one of my favorite little figures with which to work.  Posing him is actually easy and I've done a few quick poses that I might share on my ShareCG page soon although he does come with some really nice poses, too.  Doing expressions on him is a blast.

He has tons of character! Excellent.

- Greg

Oso3D

Just like to say that I appreciate users like Knittingmommy and many of the other folks here.

 

Some other corners are a little less... welcoming, so it's nice to follow things with you guys.