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My understanding is that it is part of DAZ (the company) just like DS (DAZ Studio) is. If you check out the store page for Morph3D, you'll recognize many assets:
https://www.morph3d.com/store
And, if you look here, you'll recognize a ton of PAs (scroll down):
https://www.morph3d.com/about
- Greg
Did someone say they wanted to start dirtying up some clothing and stuff? What fun! I've been known to poke holes and add some grime to a few digital things in my library. I'm more than happy to have people explore doing just that on my thread if they want. Sounds like fun. If anyone wants to use my thread for texture experiments, go ahead. I'll even join along. :)
Yeah, Sonja mentioned it last night, and I encouraged her to pick a product that has template files with it so we could all work on a project together, and see what we can learn collectively. Hopefully, somebody has a clue how to do this kind of thing.
I don't want to hijack Mario's thread with unrelated stuff, but who better to offer some advice? I think I have a lot of tools to get the job done. Just lacking the know how.
I absolutely adore the dents and dings and worn look you're giving the armor. Too many armor pieces in the store look like they've never seen a day of battle. Your worn and battle tested armor looks AH-MAY-ZING!
And it kind of reminds me of my old days of playing Warhammer! lol :D Fantastic!
I have to say that I'm loving the new materials pack! This set is awesome! It will be a nice addition to the armor. I haven't started mixing them up yet but the straight renders from the first presets for each color look very good. I thought the red was going to be my favorite, but I'm really liking the Apothecary Complete the best so far.
Glad to hear that :)
I was playing today with mesh lights again and came up with an easy to setup ring of light that helps with renders I think (and those ugly crisp shadows). There's a few tricks and settings I want to try and see if they work before I celebrate, but I might re-render some of the promos with it if I have the time.
I'm setting up the disc with material presets for different times of day and weather, so you can easily apply them based on your current scene.
Here's a test, now and below the old image. I left the distant lights on at 50% strength because they still added a nice touch to the metals... and I'm re-rendering her yet again because now I don't like the position of her left eye and forgot to turn on the strands of hair on the sides :/
Old one
Your render is looking great!
I've been spending my spare time (lol a rare beast) trying to get a good handle on lights in Iray, too. I'm assuming that you already know that you can use cutout opacity (set really low - "0.000001", etc.) on emissive materials to avoid rendering the emitter if you want? I was surprised when I found this out, as it seems to be decidedly *not* physically based, but it works. I wouldn't be surprised if this goes the way of the dod in future releases of Iray.
Also, I've been working on a script to easily create/control arrays of lights (spot and point) as an old-school way to render soft shadows. My preliminary tests show that these resolve faster in Iray than when emissive materials are used in scenes with volumetrics. Of course, one major advantage to using emissive materials is that they can be used in conjunction with Sun/Sky in the same render, unlike other lights.
- Greg
Greg - I figured the cutout opacity value thing yes, but I kept being paranoid about side effects and still ended up just adding a black image to it to make it transparent.
What I've been using is that ring shaped mesh with morphs to change the angles of the faces and divided into 6 materials (FrontLeft, Front, FrontRight etc) to which I give different emissive values.
I also UV mapped it to match the orientation of the Daz Iray skybox HDR (just mapped to the upper half wher the sky always is), that way I can use the HDR sky as a light source too at any strength without changing the brightness of the sky itself. I don't know if I'm missing something, but the enviro HDRs in Daz's Iray don't generate much light, and if you up the values, they become overbright and the content's lighting is still too low.
I know started to add some floating small geo to the ring that I can use as hotspots or to mix in another color to the light coming from that direction.
All very simple right now and I'm thinking of adding some other stuff for more control, but it will do for now.
Being able to control arrays of lights would be nice, I initially wanted to create a curved wall of lights, but it's way too much work to manipulate/edit them.
I totally agree with what you're saying about how much light HDRI's throw off vs. how bright they actually appear. One thing that I have done in the past is render just the HDRI alone from the camera's view and save out a 32-bit EXR (this is quick since there is nothing in the scene). I then adjust the exposure down to taste and re-save the file (still 32-bit). Finally, I apply this file as a backdrop in DS (under the separate environment tab - not under render settings). If you do this, you can now solve the issue you've described and get more light in your scene without blowing out the BG.
It's a little clunky and backdrops don't play well with volumetrics. I like you're solution better - thanks for sharing a little bit about your process.
- Greg
That is a lot of work Greg :)
I've been messing around a bit more with emissive textures. Just waiting to hear about a release date for the armor and texture pack.
Looks like it's just about ready for a quench!
As far as the amount of work goes, as you might have guessed, I scripted it. In my religion, it's a sin for a cpu/gpu to execute an idle instruction . . .
- Greg
Whoa that's really cool! I suck at lighting so I have nothing to add to the previous discussion lol. Although I read everything that I see in the various threads about lighting in the hopes that some day, it will all come together in an understandable manner.
The Kadis armor is out now!: http://www.daz3d.com/strangefate
Congratulations on a truly exceptional product and texture pack, Mario!
- Greg
I'd love to test or create promo renders for your future products. You create some jaw dropping, "must have" items.
Congratulations! I was thrilled to see some of my promos used, too. It's a great day! I hope it does well. It's an awesome set. You do great work.
Congrads Mario!!! You do the most detailed work I have ever seen!!! I hope it sells out for ya!!!!
I would love to be a test renderer for your next set of products Mario!!
Congrats Mario I hope it does really well. It was really awesome to see some of our renders in the promos as well, although its hard to not get good renders from this armour. Truly a work of art.
New stuff!
I couldn't decide what to do next, so I ended up doing a bit of everything... instead of a specific set, I'm doing all sorts of gear that can me mixed and matched, 'army builder' gear of sorts. It's meant to play well with the Brutal weapons so it's somewhat over the top too. Some of the gear looks a bit off on the plain G3 male figure but I'm hoping that it will look fine once it's brought into Daz and applied to more appropiate physique.
Still lots to do. So far I have around 10-12 helmets, from classic Conan-ish to Warhammer styles and about the same amount of shoulders (soon). I'll probably end up with around 10 chest belts/harnesses too, but less gloves, boots and jewelry/bracelets as those don't define the look as much as the other pieces.
Wow! Those are going to be fun! Love the idea too of having them mix and match, so much versatility!
Wow, that is some set you're working on. Look great and extra kudos for giving the ability to mix and match.
You are SO GOOD at this! The amount of detailing is insanely good! I hope most of that has their own material zones - you know how the community loves to kit bash and change colors of cloth panels and metal surfaces and what not. :)
If you need a beta tester, please keep me in mind!
Holy Wow! This is really incredible...I'm always amazed at the level of detail you put into your work!
That last piece of head gear with the teeth is awesome! Love the way the horns are strapped on and the follow the contour of the jaw. Looking forward to seeing what it looks like all textured up.
Glad to see you're still around and creating, Mario.
- Greg
I am excited to see some new products from you Mario.
I hope you are hard at work on some new stuff?
Sounds great. I'm looking forward to seeing what you've made.
Hey, still at it... just have to finish another job first, then back to this...
Really glad to hear this!
It is great to hear your still at it Mario!!!