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I am but a poor boy, so I don't render that way.
My GPU has 6GB VRAM, so if I want to stay within that, I plan my shots to work as follows:
It took practice to enjoy working in this manner, but I've been doing it long enough now where I really do enjoy it. I'll often render Rosie's scenes multiple times from different angles, using different lighting, etc., to work in entirely different environments.
I own Scene Optimizer, but haven't got it into my workflow after I killed something with it. Don't recall what I did. Here's my method instead:
You know how I'm always talking up DIM and how much I love it?
I use it to find the texture maps folder for the product I want to change. Scenery for me is mostly just background art, so while I want it looking great, I don't need 4K maps on something tiny.
I use an app that's free, but has a commercial license as well: Irfanview
I use that as my default image viewer. It's fast, has editing capabilities, and it can do Batch conversions with lots of possibilities. I'm going to pay him for the commercial license soon, just because I love his work so much! Anyway...
I do it this way so that I don't have to reallocate every map maually. The product will automatically pick the one that resides in the original folder.
There have been times when I changed my mind and wanted full resolution back again. This is easy. Just open the New Folder in a separate window, delete the reduced ones from the main folder, and move the originals back where I took them from. Alternatively, we could simply reinstall the product.
Mid shots of Rosie (just above knees to the top of her head) by themselves take about 40 - 60 seconds per frame the way I have my Rosie scenes saved.
Close-ups take a lot longer, so I plan those to render when I'm going to be gone most of the day or longer.
This environment is awesome. I love it. So I just let it render for a couple hours after which time it was 40% through fairly default Iray DS settings. It looked great at earlier stages, and it gets somewhat better if I let it go longer, but I did this one only for that above message, so a couple hours was good enough this time.
I have a lot of Andrey Pestryakov's environments and they render Really well, without taking too long. Andrey includes some wonderful lighting and render settings presets that taught me a lot about tweaking my Iray experience. The massive scenes, like Valley and Hills, Mountain Lakes and Forests and Medieval Lands are enormous, but are very nicely designed to render very well and pretty quick.
My first from Andrey was Temple Cave. I loved it so much I started collecting. Man... I really like this stuff!
For this one I used one of the presets from Stones and Structures, and replaced the water plane with The Philosopher's iReal Ocean system, so the water is animated.
Renders really well! I used the water shaders from the Stones and Structures water plane, and disabled the ground from iReal, as well as scaling it down to turn the Ocean into a stream.
Oh... I should mention that the iReal water is instanced a couple times to make the length of the stream, and the wonderful atmosphere is just Iray's matte fog.
Like I said before, Andrey's lighting presets are really nice to work with, and have taught me a lot. Dimension Theory's lighting kits (I really need to get more of these) also have presets that I learn from as I try them.
Sometimes I'll just load these lighting presets into my base character scene (I know my own Iray settings) and compare the changes - and learn from that.
I have some more sky systems that I like as well - aside from HDRI packs.
SickleYield has her SY Sky System Iray, which uses the Iray skydome/sun system with mesh atmosphere and clouds - handy for making motion skies as each atmospheric element can be scaled, moved and rotated separately.
Magix101 has unique ways of working - always has. His Iray Worlds (and the SuperPak add-on) is really freaking cool! Lots of skies, lots of horizons, and it's own Sun light object. Lots of presets for manipulating the many various options, but we can also get down and dirty - hands on! Yeah... all of the horizons you see in the promo images are included.
SY Sky System Iray ^
Busy, busy. Fun fun!
I ended up giving the Off Road Sci-Fi Car the wheels from dzFire's Baja Bug and added a little bit of cybernetic charm - the pink graphic on the frame's mid section there.
Again, I Love Linday's Animation Four-Wheeler Template! If you haven't tried it, and now decide to, I have one huge word of advice: Watch the tutorial videos provided. Where we load the template (Vehicles > Linday) we also have script icons that we can click to launch the tutorials and demos. I watched them all before I even tried using it, and I'm so glad that I did. They help illustrate how powerful this cost-effective toolkit really is!
So that's why this image doesn't fill the screen its in. It's part of an animation.
I'm busy rendering another aniMation I made using Linday's system. That's when I got kicked out of my GPU, which would take this relatively short render session and make it go on for hours. It was the Cybernetic graphics I added! In this image (above) there's just the one set of graphics - pink. For this next one, I added the blue graphic to go along with her Cyberpunk pants. Well it was adding this extra graphics that put me over.
So I used to method I just outlined above using Irfanview to reduce the size of the graphics which turned out to be 5,000 x 5,000 px! For such a small detail, I can reduce that to 25% the original: 1,250 x 1,250. Now AgitatedRiot GPX 2060 is kicked in! Woot!!!
Linday's kit takes care of:
Along with the excellent video tutorials, this thing is So Worth It!!!
Being a Carrara artist, I never looked at this twice. When this came out I had already animated vehicles to work in my scenes without issues - just the initial learning curve. When I started trying to animate in Daz Studio and it came time to add a vehicle to the scene, I remembered this right away and bought it, along with the add-on aniBlocks for Urban Sprawl 3, which I don't have. I figured I can watch the action from above and build a city around it. We'll see.
After I got it, even though I own most of the cars that he provides preset builds for, I wanted to create my own aniMate car using the template.
Dartan's vehicle is dzFire's Baja Bug. I love it, so Dartan does too! I mean... I are he, and he are I!
So that was my first pick. Although the wheels that come with the template system are Gorgeous with a capital G, the wheels that come with Baja Bug are a genuine favorite of mine, so I followed Linday's instructions and used those.
For that, I loaded the Baja Bug, selected one wheel - in the Geometry Editor I selected all of the parts that I wanted, inverted the selection and deleted the rest of the car. After making sure that I had what I wanted, I saved it as a prop. Linday's instruction took me the rest of the way with adding them to the template for use with a new aniMate vehicle.
Linday is also responsible for making Rosie's hair (which was the One reason why I decided to start learning how to work in Daz Studio) and the cool shirt she's wearing - as well as other attire that she wears from time to time.
Rock On, Cars! Be... ALIVE!!!
Anyone reading this thread, who might be interested, here are the essential tutorial videos
Setup Tutorial Part 1 - Basic out-of-the-box useage (really simple, yet very powerful!)
Setup Tutorial Part 2 - Using the Template to build your own aniMate vehicle
Setup Tutorial Part 3 - Creating and Using Custom wheels (I only used one wheel, and made instance for the other three)
For working with the Camera aniBlocks for the Car Chase (in Urban Sprawl 3) add-on (This is Really Quite Cool!)
...and if you haven't seen the promo for the Car Chase add-on, you're truly missing out.
Check this out. Three different car chases between two cars (each). Each also have three to five camera motion aniBlocks to capture the action. Also included are two new preset cars: Car Mark and Army Hybrid Vehicle. The main kit comes with presets for Car Ranger, Army Truck 1930, 1936 AM Sedan, Luxury Car 1950, Family Car 1950, Pickup Truck 1930 and Delivery Sedan and Wagon 1930.
Don't worry if your car or vehicle isn't in the list. This template system is So Easy to use, we just can't mess it up!
Check this out!
Thanks Linday!!! Love ya FOREVER!!! Thanks!!!
Got Terradome 3? This comes with the main kit!
This one, where she's leaving the scene, helps to show the cybernetic graphics I've added to the frame
I Love Howie Farkes!!! Carrara and Daz Studio! Tango Alpha too! Great guys... Great Artists!
Yeah, I want to eventually collect Urban Sprawl 3 (and 2... well... all Stonemason!) but I know I don't need it just yet. Like you, I'll be making my own 'sets' that I can load in and render. It would also be fun to just render the whole darned thing - go on vacation while it renders! Actually, I have "After the War" which is pretty massive, and it renders fine in both Carrara anbd Studio.
I have both HitFilm Express and DaVinci Resolve. I really like Resolve, so that's where I do most things. HitFilm Rocks too, though... so I do like to use both, when I can. Totally allergic to Adobe's subscriptions, so I don't use any of that. Afinity Photo totally rocks and I love my Project Dogwaffle Pro: Howler (PD Howler).
I love DzFire's work. I never have a problem buying from him. I Love that Forsaken Village and Keep series. They, too, render really well in Carrara and Studio. I don't mind doing my own instancing in Carrara. In fact, I've always considered that part of the fun.
So here's Rosie and her car, the way it looks right now. I'm sure I'll tweak it here and there.
This version of Rosie (Rosie 7 Final?) includes my full system of aniMorphs + for G3F, the Genesis 3 & 8 Face Controls with my own new aniMorphs for that, a new system I've created for dForce assistance using wearable presets to perform various tasks, like set shaders to new dForce values, change (even animate) some of her shapes that work with dForce for its specific task, or sometimes add collision objects which are animated to work with the hair. For example, I have one for extreme action that keeps her hair from exploding (most of the time!!! LOL) and others for when she styles her own hair during an animation. ike, when she's pissed, she'll tuck her hair back behind her ears, grin, and start shooting. It's fun to watch!
All of her various outfits are now set up as Wearable presets that apply the entire costume as well as set her up for the very first dForce run. Then I turn those settings off, make the hair visible and it's ready to simulate.
It's really nice to have this all setup like this now. It enables me to animate her completely before adding all of the weight. Run a few simulations - all of which are fast except for the hair, which is fine. It goes along well enough for how much I love the hair!
EDIT:
I was mentioning up a few posts how this new costume looked funny at first because, with her other costume she wears Genesis 8 Female boots, and the shoe portion ends up under her foot. Instead of messing around with the fit of the boots, I made a new surface for the parts of Rosie's legs, feet and toenails that are under the boots - and I just turn that invisible and the shoes of the boots animate just fine. But it made it necessary to shorten her legs and shrink her feet.
So when I put on this Complicated Eve variation, her legs were short and feet were little stubs!
With this new Wearables system, I have it set up right in the outfit preset to set the legs and feet to their proper length/size and set the appropriate settings for her new "Hide Legs Under Boots" surface. That is an amazing time saver in its own.
Oh, and the car animations I did today turned out very nice indeed! Happy Joy!
Cyber-Rosie 7's Current Default Arsenal
Preliminary work cyberpunking Stonemason's Urban Sprawl (first one - no longer available)
In the background, right side between some buildings you'll see a dark skyscraper all lit up. That's from MAGIX101's Iray Worlds Skydome - the expansion pack. So is the sky. I turned the luminosity waaaay down on the sun light included with that system.
Urban Sprawl loads and renders fairly quickly due to the genius design of the thing - at some cost.
All like-styled windows truly are the same window. And there are no "Nighttime" versions of it. So the lit up windows we see are from other buildings I've been cautiously adding.
This environment is meant to be a place where I can shoot car chase scenes and such. I already tried the Car Chase aniBlocks but the scale of the blocks is way off.
That's okay, however, since I can position the animated vehicles where I need the to be and film them where they do fit the scene.
Okay, I have to leave my rendering machine alone for now so I don't have an image to share just yet, but I cannot wait any longer to talk about this:
Have you Ever wanted to render a Real Car Chase in Action?
OMG!!!
I just got Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 3, which I have a forever list of great things to say about. What an amazing thing this is!
Well I immediately made an aniMate 2 version of Kookn'Fat's The Nemesis in Cop mode using Linday's Animation Four Wheeler Template, added a Michael 5 driver and saved the template as a Scene Subset.
Now this goes right along with Linday's awesome instructions, which he provides links to directly in the product library folder... Nice Freaking Touch!!!
Rosie is now being chased by a rather cool looking cop, and she's deploying evasive maneuvers to try and ditch him.
So now I load in a block of Urban Sprawl 3, drag the timeline scrubber a bit to observe how the cars are moving, and set the first block about where I think it should go. Then I added three more blocks to form a big square chunk of city. Oh... cool... they come populated with the nicest low rez vehicles I recall ever seeing! Next I made instance nodes of each of the blocks, and added one more set of blocks to the south due to the path of Car Chase Camera A - I wanted more depth there.
Quick Iray test (after saving the scene, of course) and... Wow! Iray's using my RTX! That's incredible once you see how massive and detailed this freaking city is!
Linday has very helpful instructions. Go to his YouTube channel: Linday3D and watch them. Once you know what each of them talk about, you know where to go when you get to that point in the process. You'll see what I mean if you try this stuff. It's So Cool and actually super easy - with a requirement of observation, reaction and a mild dose of patience.
I grouped all of the Urban Sprawl blocks to make it easier to finalize the position vs the animated car chase, which was a simple process of making changes where I see the need, then copying that key frame to the start and scrubbing through more, checking for things that don't line up.
By the time I was done and I watched it through the Car Chase camera it was really something to see. Rosie approaches and hits just the corner of a curb. Her front wheel bounces up and over the curb, then the rear and along with the torque spins her car out a bit as she takes off again. Really cool!
There's a particular point in the animation where I wanted to see another vehicle - this one in motion. We pass it so quickly it doesn't need to do anything special.
I grab one of the amazing buses that come with the Sprawl. As we start to see him he's moving toward us down the street a ways. He sees us now and quickly hugs to the right as he brings the vessel to a stop - but by then we're already gone.
Save Again.
For that I can render with Dome and Scene or just Scene Only, which is what I'm doing right now. I'm using the Night shaders from Stonemason and tweaked the luminosity of the Iray Worlds Skydome and Sun (moon in this case) and Stonemason's incredible mastery of Model Meets Shader shines through! That street is a work of art!!! Yikes!
Oh Crap! I started the render? I'm not done yet!
Fell fast asleep with that thought being the last think I thunk. So sleepy.
Woke up to a nice little test run animation that didn't come close to getting a tenth of the way through.
Okay continue.
Having just bought and activated Alvin Bemar's ABAS: Animated Shader System (Yaaaay!!!!) I just had to use Michael's (still set up for 3Delight) cop car as a light source!
Whoa... Thank's Kookn'Fat! Must be an animator, huh? The Nemesis has separate surface groups for all of the lights that emit! So Cool!
So I just add the new ABAS tab to my interface. I could just open it when I need it and close it again. that's easy too. But I docked mine opposite my Parameters. In the Scene tab select the car then go to the ABAS tab and create an animated shader. Since I was going to swap luminosity setting between the red and blue lights all through this ultra long animation, I opted to put my ABAS onto Record mode. Now, I've never even tried ABAS yet. First time. Alvin Rocks! He always makes everything easy to use!
Back and forth, Red goes full on (lights up the whole freaking city) as Blue hits the default 1500, so it's still lit, but not actually lighting up its surrounding much at all.
Of course I forgot to turn on the headlights. Oh... I'm using an ABAS system now, so I can't just tweak the setting. Hmmm... Let's try going back into Record mode. Ah yes!
So now I do a couple of checks with Iray in the view port (Through most of this work I just used Hidden Line Wireframe mode) and am floored by the difference that makes! I mean... this cop is chasing her around Hard! The lights flashing and moving around... So Cool! And Urban Sprawl looks Awesome as these lights show and hide it as they fly through... that multi-layer street surface just really doing its thing in the light of the giant gothic moon, the city, and Michael's awesome hot rod cop car!
Michael 5 is sporting Midnight Stories' Sci-Fi Cadet suit, gloves and boots with Space hair and a goatee. Looks awesome!
I am So 100% satisfied with all of this!
Wow. Tis just in (two days ago)
The History of Daz 3d - Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going
I'll be letting this thing continue to render as long as I can. Only doing frames 60 through 1,034 which is a lot of frames!
I normally wouldn't work this way, but I do want to have this one, long flowing sequence as one as much as I can. As the animation unfolds it just keeps getting better and better. Great action! I use Irfanview as my default image file viewer. When I open an image in a sequence folder (or any folder that has more than one image) I can hold the arrows (R, L) to run the images at around 24 frames per second. So I do get to watch the progress as it goes.
For this pass I played with my Iray options until I got something I'm happy with at around 2 minutes per frame, just a tad over. So they're rendering along, there's just a lot of them.
In the meantime I got to play drums a bit and now catching up on some of Jay Versluis' videos. These are really fun webinars! Thanks for doing this Daz 3d and Jay! Great TV!
Jay included your history of the Vicky figures with his resources. I haven't gotten to that video yet, but... woohoo!
It's not a video, but a short article. I had some nice nostaigic Daz videos in there but someoine at Daz decided to remove them from public view. So Sad. They had great old videos that should not be hidden like that. Especially from links to them.
No biggie, I guess.
I'll have to edit that bit to remove or replace them.
I should really pull out all Victorias and make a video of them! :)
Rosie 7 - Shadowrunner
Was that your animation of Rosie in the Daz ad that pops up on my android app? She looks great!
I finished watching the Black Lotus series for the third time. Thanks again for the recommend!
I don't want to highjack Dart's thread so click to see full size
but here is one of my renders comparing all the Vickies I have