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Made some changes to my claymation series for the film noir challenge. There were three categories (B/W with liht gel, pinup/portrait, and homage to a book or movie). I decided to have a Hanna and Barbera claymation theme for all of my entries, as discussed above. Rachel the red haired racketeer wreaks havoc at the north pole. All figures and props are originals. Here are the final entries.
B/W with light gel, the Fred Estaire claymation north pole postman gets drunk with a crumpled picture of Rachel and he on vacation.
Pinup/Portrait - Rachel the redheaded racketeer uses Fred to get his postal uniform and snow vehicle to get up to the north pole.
Homage to movie / book. Rachel the Red Haired Racketeer instead of Rudolph the... She wants Santa's naughty lists so she can run an extortion ring.
A tip by JoeQuick for using the puppet Felton with G8M. Seems like it would be useful for any extreme morphs.
Some NAE pieces I put together for the film noir challenge.
She is not intimidated or impressed with this guy's gun. Doesn't even drop her cigarette.
and here is the femme fatale's ex husband. He's not easily impressed either.
And this is an NAE for the noir cigarette seller ladies, like the one used by Sidney in Sweet Smell of Success
And I did this next image for the RRRR challenge with the theme of 404 not found. Daz Studio render.
And this was done for a side challenge in the Carrara forum to make and render something delicious.
Caves and overhangs are one problem, but another is lack of vertical resolution when you start making high terrains such as mountains or cliffs. (I've tried making horizontal "cliffs" and putting them on their side, but that still wasn't very satiscactory)
For the shaders, a working start point:
Metalicity = 0 (only needs to be 1 for metals)
Base Color = colour map
Glossy Roughness = 0.4. Lower is more glossy, higher is more matte (if you have a roughness map, set the value to 1)
Base Bump = bump map
Normal Map = normal map
Unless you're getting into more exotic materials - fluids, glass, anisotropy etc - that's really all you need to worry about. You can have both bump and normal maps in Iray, but you don't have to. I suspect the big problem you're going to run into with that size of terrain is your shader will look good for distance renders, but will look rubbish close up (your effective resolution may be in feet per pixel, not pixels per foot!) There are ways around that with procedural shaders, but that starts to get quite complex!
Thanks, TangoAlpha. This refers to the terrain from the previous page, I assume. I've abandoned that particular workflow and am trying out PD Howler as an alternative terrain generator and texture creator. Have some travels coming up, but I will report on the Howler landscape experiments when I get back later this month.
Haven't updated my Studio thread for a while. Need to get back to doing regular renders to try to learn this software. In the meantime, I'm brushing up on my prop/figure creation tools. Some can be found in the thread to encourage creation of content for males. I am slowly going into the details of modeling, material zones, uvmapping, transfer utility, weightmaps, adjustment morphs, and DForce. For this shirt project, I am using Hexagon and Studio.
You can find the detals of the golf shirt project here. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3806031/#Comment_3806031
Here is an intermediate stage of my current project - a golf shirt. By intermediate, I just mean that I haven't added important details like wrinkles, folds, buttons, etc.
Thank you, @IceDragonArt. By following Sonja's advice, I cleared up a ton of space on my computer. Uninstalling and reinstalling with (delete packages after install) checked has made a big difference. Took a long time, but it was definitely worth it.
Most welcome! I know when someone told me about it I was like, well, THAT was useful lol. One of those odd little things you just don't know unless someone asks the right questions I guess.
Been doing more experimenting than rendering these days, so here are a couple of quick tributes to Mike Hoffman fantasy art.
Here is a try for something suitable for the cover of a new Dark Shadows series. Also posted in Book cvers thread.
I still don't have a good grasp of the principles of Iray surfaces. Modeled the tree with the cut and the tree stump. Shaders are pretty dam awful. The Brute 8 with the lumberjack outfit, Morenus hair, and Odin beard.
A quick homage to one of the all time greats. The theme this month for the Carrara challenge is pioneers. This is not an entry but I wanted to doodle this morning.
I like the book cover concept. I can't help with the shaders, I don't know enough about how they work in Studio to be of any use. The only shader tree I really understand even remotely is Carrarra. I'm really hoping that real life will slow down enough after we get back from vacation to be able to get back to learning to model. Its tugging at me but there are only so many hours in the day. Pesky day job just sucks up too many hours lol. And I really like the look of the black and white, it has a very early tv ad feel to it which I really like.
Love the film noire renders. In the femme fatale, guy with a gun is a cutout? Such crips edges to both. That's Cararra? Have *got* to solve CPU going into turbo mode. No Cararra or Bryce.
Even 3DL in DS needs to be very small pixel dimensions.
Have some thoughts about goofy looking wooden surfaces in IRay if interested. Am too chicken to suggest anything. You've been into 3D how long? : )
best
--Bruce
Thank you, Sonja and Bruce, for your constructive comments. I need them desperately, which can be especially seen in the problems with the shaders in the lumberjack image.
Sonja, I hate it when the day job gets in the way. Learning to model can be very liberating, so I hope your time allows it. I'm relatively comfortable pushing vertexes around, but now need to invest time in uvmapping and shaders. There is always more! Part of the issue with the shaders is learning both the original program and how it translates to Studio settings. My tree models looked a hell of a lot better in the original program.
Bruce, please, don't assume I know anything. Constructive criticim is always most welcome. If you have suggestions or can point me to better resources for anything, no need to hesitate.
Safe assumption you have quite a bit more experience than I do. : 0 !
You’ve probably already tried these, but on off chance...
If Iray Uber Base not yet applied-- you've tried ‘Matte’ rather than ‘plastic’ from surfaces pulldown menu?
If Iray...
Surfaces tab ‘Base Mixing’ pulldown menu & select ‘Weighted’ rather than PBR Specular/Glossy or PBR Metalicity. Have had some success in using this option as a quick way to make something matte if it’s glossy or metallic.
If no effect, or messes other things up, 'Iray uber base' then ‘Rubber - Matte’
If too dull looking, “Plastic - Smooth” allows more options. (A lot of wood items seem to be high gloss polyurethane & too reflective for my tastes. Glossy Reflectivity at maybe .035 allows some highlights, more like what I’d see with old furniture, baseboards, etc. (# of assumptions for other sliders: diffuse overlay & Dual Lobe at zero, etc.)
Be interested to see how they tree trunks come out. Wish I could make my own stuff like that. : )
@Tynkere - thank you very much for these suggestions. I will give them a go. Don't be fooled by my post count. Most of my Daz-related experience is with Carrara. I have very little experience with Studio. Recently, I have been putting more time and effort in to learning Studio, so hopefully I am improving. Lights and shaders are my two biggest challenges right now. Obviously, I can't make a half decent render if I can't get the lighting and shaders straightened out.
I haven't checked yet, but I bet your comment about the 'rubber - matte' is part of my poblem with the tree models. Thanks again. Will circle back when I get a chance.
Creating my Claymation 3-Fingered G8M Morph
In the next few posts I will show my progress in creating a 3-fingered toon man for G8M. At the moment, I have created the FBM in my modeler and used Daz Studio tools to apply to G8M.
Loaded the G8M mesh in my modeling app (use anything modeler you want). Turned off smoothing.
Used the modeling apps tools to change the hands to 3 fingers instead of four, made the limbs very thin, made the torso rounded and formless, and made the face rounder with a bulbous nose.
Saved the mesh as an obj (remember, no smoothing!) to my Daz project files folder. Made sure scaling was appropriate.
I started a new Daz Studio scene and loaded the default G8M. Found morph loader pro in the EDIT FIGURE menu. When the morphloader menu appeared, I navigated to my saved obj file. I clicked the triangle next to my morph name to see the full menu. I changed the ocation so that it would be in ACTOR PEOPLE, but you can put wherever you want. Accepted and confirmed the creation of the morph. Found the morph in the parameters pane for G8M. Dialed to 1 to confirm that the morph changes the mesh. Note that the skeleton no longer perfectly matches the figure.
To correct the skeleton, I used the joint edtor. You can find the tool icon on the top menu, or use the top menu to naviagte to TOOLS JOINT EDITOR. Once the joint editr is activated, you should see the skeleton. Right click in the scene to brin up the joint editor menu. Navigate to EDIT ADJUST RIGGNG TO SHAPE. Accepted all changes. The viewport shows that the skeleton was moved to fit the hands.
The last step was to use ERC FREEZE so that the changes would be associated with the morph dial in future sessions. To find ERC FEEZE, I opened the parameters pane and found my new morph's dial. I right clicked on the parameters dial and chose edit mode. I then right clicked aain and in the edit menu chose ERC FREEZE. Using the menu, Imade sure that the ERC FREEZE was for the morph dial by going to where I had placed it whe I first importd the mesh using morphloader pro. In this case, that was ACTOR PEOPLE. I then accepted with my morph checked. I then saved my new morph as a morph asset, and then I saved my new character as a scene subset.
Testing
I started a new Daz Studio scene. I loaded the default G8M. I found my morph parameter and dialed to 1. I applied a random action pose. And look, the three fingered man's hand seems to have behaved reasonably well. There are some adjstments to JCMs that should be made for clothing, especially near the crotch, but I have a working toon guy.
Creating Clothing designed for Morphed Character Shape
I will be making a clothing set for my claymation toon character. In the next few posts,I will provide screenshots of how I made clothes designed for my character, but that could also be used for other G8M morphs. Pretty simple, model the clothes around your morphed figure, then in the transer utility check the box to reverse to shape. I will start with the boots.
- I started by loading G8M in my modeler and making sure that my Toon FBM was applied.
- I modeled a simple pair of toon boots around the feet and ankles. Low res boots, but I did add soles, straps, and buckles for a little detail.
- After uvmapping, I exported the boots as an obj
- I made sure to use the Daz Studio Full Scene preset because I made the boots from scratch, not as a morph of a loaded Daz file.
- I started a new Daz Studio scene and loaded G8M. I found the parameter dial for my toon character and dialed to 1. The shape changed appropriately.
- I imported my boots obj, and made sure the scale matched my modeling export preset.
- The boots load and fit the morphed G8M as expected.
- To use the transfer utlity, with my boots selected in the scene pane, I went to the top menu and applied EDIT OBJECT TRANSFER UTILITY.
- The transfer utility appears. Make sure that you choose G8m in the left column (source) and the boots obj on the right column (target).
- Click "show options" to see the full menu
- Under both the source and the target choose "Current" instead of default for the shape.
- Check the box to reverse the shape.
- After the transfer utility does its thing, the boots fit the morphed G8M.
- As a test, I dialed the G8M morph back to zero, whic is the default G8M shape, and the boots adapted to the default shape.
- I then saved the boots as their own support asset, figure.
- As a test, I started a new Daz Studio empty scene.
- I loaded default G8M.
- I navigated to my saved boots figure.
- I conformed the boots to default G8M and to my deisred morph.
