Knittingmommy's Laboratory
Knittingmommy
Posts: 8,191
Okay. So, I've held off starting my thread for a long time. For those who don't know me, I love experimenting. I love DAZ, but I will never be a great artist. I do, however, love the process. Unfortunately, I have a lot of experiments that I'm not comfortable putting up in my gallery as I do have some rather interesting flops. I love taking a product I've gotten and putting it through its paces. I love the process of making things work the way I want and not necessarily in the way they were intended. I just put one such image up in my gallery and it really shouldn't be there as it isn't my best work nor does it show off the great work of the PA who created it. Since I would still like to have the image around, but don't want to keep it in my gallery, I'm starting my own thread. Anyone entering this thread should be warned, you won't always appreciate what I do with a product, but it might make you think. This thread is in no way intended to always show off a product in its best light so don't make any buying decisions based on my flops. I apologize to any and all PAs in advance for anything I may do to your product.
So, I'm starting with the image I want to get out of my gallery. I've recently been playing with MortemVetus products that I had purchased over at RDNA (link is to their DAZ storefront) before the merger. They have all managed to make it into my Product Library and into DIM. Now, I have nothing against M4 characters. I managed to get M4 quite cheap when I first started out and there are a lot of quality characters for M4. However, I do love all of the toys that I have to go with my Genesis 2 figures. I have muscles, veins, shaping, and conversions. Tons of things I don't have for M4. So, I had to try out converting Daemones (one of my favorite MortemVetus characters) to G2M. The conversion did not go without problems. I, however, think I've gotten most of the issues solved. The main problem I had to deal with is that the skin didn't exactly work straight onto G2M. I had to load it onto M4 and save it as a .duf materials preset so it could be loaded onto G2M. If anyone knows of another way to do this, please tell me. The original skin is in a poser format and I couldn't get it to load directly onto G2M.
Second issue is that I loaded the expression INJ in with the other morphs while doing the conversion with the GenX Converter by Dimension3D. There was a major squinting problem that isn't in the M4 version of Daemones. I have since redone the conversion without the expression INJ and it looks much better. I'll be doing a render with the new version soon. Overall, I like how Daemones looks on G2M. One just has to be careful of those eyes and any facial expression you add to him. I'll have to do some more experiments with him, as I think, if the eyes can be deselected and the squint put in manually on G2M, the figure will work much better. But, it wasn't a bad first try.
So, first image is a side by side comparison of the two figures. G2M is on the left and M4 is on the right. G2M looks slightly slimmer to me, but overall very close.
Second image is the one I put in my gallery and wanted to remove. I put a different skin on the G2M Daemones figure when I was having issues getting the original skin to work. The skin is one of my favorites, Jepe's Madoc with Iray presets. Unfortunately, he definitely has an unintended sleepy eyed look that gets worse when you dial in any kind of expression. He is a little too pretty in this image and looks much younger. I absolutely love the original skin that comes with Daemones so will have to do more tweaking to get it looking great in Iray.
edited to add links and vendor information
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Comments
Shush now! Don't say that. But other than that, I approve of this thread.
Just being realistic! Thanks, Isidorn!
****** Turning Into Links Post ***********
Since I forgot to save a post for links, I'm turning this post into a links post. The following are helpful links and direct links to various topics withing this thread. I'll add links as I go back through the thread to find them all.
How to get Bear Clan Regenesis transferred to Genesis 2
Dimension3D's thread for GenX - Goes to another thread
GenX2 Update/Genesis 3 - Goes to another thread
Delete Unwanted Morphs from your GenX2 Eperiments
Knittingmommy's Wolf Fur Settings
Why Knittingmommy Loves Fit Control
Linwelly's 3Delight Shadow tips
Totte's Filter Forge Tutorials - Outside link
Linwelly's Fix for my Wolf Problem
My First Video Experiment in Iray
An Intro to How I Do My Wolf Fur for Iray
Linwelly's Mini Tutorial for Shadows in 3Delight
The Ice Cream Parlor Incident or My First Experiments with NPR
Rendering LAMH Presets in 3Delight by MN-150374
TabascoJacks Tutorial on Canvases - Goes to another thread and is a small part of a larger tutorial that is definitely worth a look
Experiments with Tone Mapping and Tonal Rage
Uberenvironment2 Made Easy by MN-150374
Some Simple Postworking Fixes in Gimp 2.8
The Making of a Harley Quinn When You Don't Have One
How to Dress a Harley Quinn With What You've Got
First Experiments with Google NIK Filters in Gimp 2.9 Beta
Some Filter Forge Experiments
My Two Year Anniversary Post
The Start of the Jaguar Sadie Saga
Jaguar Sadie's New Fur Installment 1
More Filter Forge Experiments
Jaguar Sadie's New Fur Installment 2
Iray Trick for Changing Render Settings Without Stopping Your Render
Jaguar Sadie's New Fur Final Installment
Even More Filter Forge Experiments
Filter Forge for the Dark and Creepy Toon Vampire
200 Plus Morphs for Genesis 3 Female Experiment With Genesis 3 Male
Filter Forge and the Toon Western
Jaguar Sadie's Final Render or Knittingmommy Gets a New Avatar
G3M Tries on Body Hair for G2M and Genesis
First Experiments with LineRender9000
LineRender9000 Meets Filter Forge
Windows 10 Crash and Linux to the Rescue
Playing in Gimp or How to Turn those Test Renders into Art
Playing with Will Timmins Suggestion for Outlines in Gimp
Using Little Postwork Tricks Serene Knight shared with Me
All About that Little Spot Render Tool and the Amazing Things You Can Do With It
So You Spot Rendered Something, Now What?
Eureka! Playing Around with the Google NIK Collection in Linux!
Hospital Experiment using 1stBastion's Buildings Hospital Emergency 3Delight Edition
VR Contest Entry and Mini Tutorial
Introduction to Gimp 2.8
Bonus Gimp Tutorial - OMG, I lost my Toolbox! What happened and how do I get it back?
Gimp 2.8 Intro to the Tools
Using Genesis 3 & 8 Face Controls on Stylized Characters with Bigger Heads
Woot so glad you finally did this!!
Yeah, I figured it was about time. I have a ton of images that never make it into my gallery, but they were fun experiments so what better way to immortalize them? Besides, someone might find some of those experiments useful. Some of my skin tests might have to go over on my DA account with links, though, as not all of them would make it past the TOS here. I mean skin tests mean lots of skin and sometimes those pesky clothes just get in the way.
Of course, I would put a nudity warning up with the link for anyone sensitive to those types of images.
Glad you dropped in to give me a buzz! I'll be putting up some of my Skin Builder experiments so let me know when you are ready to see how that Save and Share works. We can test it out.
Will do. I need to go read up on that as well. I lost the skins i had done on the pc so will have to go and cook up an new batch. Of course, I didn't think to just save them to a separate folder. Oh no, that would be too easy! lol.
Nice to see you finally decided to join us, I#m planning on going more experimental as well and the mortem vetus stuff is worth being tested and shown. Amd don't be shy about your artistic stuff, I think you can do art, and the main thing is to have fun.
Honestly I think if you take something from your head and put it out there in the world its art. Is it good art? That's totally subjective in my opinion. I have seen art that sells for a boatload of money, that people rave about how good it is and I am quietly sitting in the corner thinking "what is WRONG with all these people, that is one of the ugliest pieces of art I have ever seen" lol. So, I like your art what i've seen so far and I will probably like it more as time goes by. I think you have a good eye and I enjoy your stuff so who's to say it isn't art?
Well, thank you. Isidorn has given me grief over the way I worded that bit in my first post. I do have to say that I'm in it for the fun and, if it ends up being good, I consider that a bonus. Of course, you guys haven't seen some of my worst flops, though, either. I keep those to myself! I'm glad you like what you've seen. And, as @Isidorn reminds, me I have won a contest and placed in a couple so not all of it is horrible.
Actually, Isidorn said it was good, I paraphrased.
And, yeah, I've seen a boatload of art that I just can't figure out why people think it is so great and pay ridiculous amounts of money to get. I guess it takes all kinds!
I think the thunder has finally stopped here so I might try and run another conversion attempt. Still trying to fix those eyes in Daemones on G2M.
I, actually, managed to get my other wolf pose done for the new user contest and posted so we'll see if anyone has suggestions on improving it. I saw where Design Anvil came out with that great Wolf 2 Expansion Set and I was a little worried, since I've been doing wolf poses for fun to give away, that no one would want my freebies when I finish all of the poses for AM's Wolf 2. But, luckily, it looks like most of the poses will still be unique. I didn't see anything in the promos that are duplicates of what I already have done or of the ones I have plan to make. Hopefully, some people will still find them of use once I finish them. I do wish I could make morphs. I would really like to take that wolf into Hexagon or Blender and try to make a proper snarl with the muscles in the snout all crinkly (probably not a real word, but it fits). I do have to say that his pose pack looks pretty good and the eyes are kind of cool.
Crinkly is a real word I believe and I would love free wolf poses. I am sure there will be plenty of other people who will want and appreciate them as well. I think sometimes we are our own worst critics. I don't like most of what I do either. But I still have fun doing it so I will keep doing it. Although, I have some major flops too lol.
You want flops? Boy could I give you flops.
Very few of us can be totally objective about our own "art". I have had images I was so proud of, post them and all I get are crickets. Other images are so/so and for whatever reason they resonant with someone, or sometimes even a few someones, who take the time to comment or fav, or whatever.
Well, that's good! I was planning on having you test them out for me when I was ready to package them up.
I imagine that is very true, both being able to give me flops and the part about being objective. :)
Well, the storm here ended and I was able to do some more experiments with Daemones since we never lost power. I managed to get rid of all of the eye morphs for the squint that doesn't play well with G2M. Then I was able to dial back in an expression very similar to the one that came with Daemones originally. I'm quite pleased with the results. The added benefit of doing it this way is that all of the eye morphs are now controlled with the G2M morph dials so I can also dial out any squinting that conflicts with an expression. Now I can control the amount of squint with the G2M controls and dial it in and out depending on the expression.
I ran another side by side comparison with the expression INJ loaded onto M4 and a similar expression dialed into G2M which I think got really close to the original. I'll let you guess which is which.
I ran a render without the squint just in case anyone wants to see what that looks like.
Now please bring out those "flops" so we can laugh honestly tell you that they're not that bad at all.
If I'm going to be a critic regarding the Daemones renders it would be that I think his eyes are in so much shadows it's hard to see the eyes at all. It makes it kind of look like he's squinting even in the render where he doesn't. Seems to be a side effect of his eye sockets being rather deep in his skull, so I can image it being troublesome lighting them properly.
I think the lab idea is great! Congrats on starting it Knittingmommy. Your Daemone character is really shaping up nicely. I also picked up a whole bunch of the Mortem characters during the sale because there's just never enough unique rugged grisled characters out here, though I'll probably be using them mostly on Genesis, (the path of least resistance) and I'll dial spin in some face morphs to make them unique.
Hey congrats on being picked for the newsletter! Great job! (ha, and you don't think your art is good!) And I would be most happy to test them out for you.
I might bring out one or two flops. It is always possible. :) I tend to agree with Daemones' eyes. I tried a lot of different lighting and it was really hard to tell because the shadows really seem to settle into those eyes. Of course, when you want a dark, mysterious character, this is a plus. However, when you want to show off how the eyes really look, it makes things rather difficult. I did run this close up render.
This is what he looks like straight out of the converter with all eyelid morphs removed as well as the one squint morph. I think part of the reason shadows settle into his eyes so easily is the more pronounced brow. It seems to hang over his eyes creating that great shadowed effect. I'm working on a step by step post for anyone who wants to try converting Daemones to G2M. It isn't complicated, but I imagine anyone who hasn't used the converter before might have problems. I'll list in there all of the morphs I deselected to get the effect I got with my final attempt.
Well, scrub up then, @KA1 :) I'm all for anyone posting experiments they may want to share. I love experimenting and I would love to see renders or techniques someone has tried. The more unusual the better. The only thing I require is that if anyone posts something they have to be able to tell us how they did it. I don't want any mouth dropping renders, want to give it a try and then have someone say, "Nope, my secret." This will be a full disclosure thread. And, yes, as much as I may shiver at the thought, I will probably have to include any flops I made with my experiments. In the interest of full disclosure, mind you.
Thanks, @FirstBastion ! Yeah, I don't think there are near enough grisled characters out there. One thing I loved about RDNA over the last few months was the whole Badlands thing they had going on and all of the great @MortemVetus characters that fit in so well with that. There have been a few here in the DAZ shop like Ragnar by gypsyangel and believe me I have bought most of the ones available here when I could. It is nice to suddenly have a little more variety. If my experiments with G2M are any indication, I think a conversion to Genesis should work out nicely. You'll have to post and let us see how it goes.
I've been thinking about starting this thread for awhile. I've done some very strange experiments with some very cool effects. I was just a little reluctant because I wasn't sure anyone would be interested in my attempts to do the strange and unusual. Don't get me wrong, I do have normal renders. However, I'm still new enough that there are lots of techniques I haven't tried and I'm always asking myself how I can take something that everyone else has and make it a little more "me". And, I have a general propensity to bang things up and make them look not quite so new. I know not everyone is going to like what I come up with, but it might spark an idea and get someone going in a direction they didn't think about before. Also, I didn't want this thread to be in any way like @Novica 's thread which I find very useful. She has been around for a very long time and there is no way to compete with her wonderful thread. I love knowing that I can go to her thread if I have problems getting a product working the way it is supposed to work. I can usually find the answers there and if not I can post and someone will be able to help me out. But, her thread is all about reviewing products and making them work the way they were intended to be used. That is definitely not what this thread is intended to do.
Now, I realize I started with something pretty straight forward and nothing too out of the ordinary with my first posting, but this is what I happened to be working on. I had these great @MortemVetus products moving into my Product Library with the RDNA store merger and wanted to see how my favorite characters look in Iray and converting the figures was an opportunity to play with the GenX script which I hadn't used yet. Today, I'm going to be working on Lily Fae for Kids 4 another great figure by MortemVetus. I'm curious to see how well she converts to G2F and I want to see her in Iray.
While I might post a few of my WIPs, this isn't really a WIP thread. So, I'm hoping others might be willing to contribute to the thread as well. I can't be the only one here in the Forums who loves to experiment with their products. I'll try to remember to put in the links to products I'm working on, but if I forget someone can remind me.
And, FB, I have a few experiments on my HD I might have to pull out of storage for you. Let's just say, your product catalog was not safe from my experiments.
I love experiments, and am totally looking forward to what you come up with.
I used to run a contest here at DAZ3D where the main objective was to tear apart my sets and use them in different ways from how they came out of the box.
"Mix and mash it up" contest http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/18493/firstbastion-s-mix-and-mashin-itup-after-the-prizes/p1
I had not seen that thread! A little before I started, but that would have been something I would have loved doing. Just looking through the first couple of pages, there were some really interesting ideas in the there. I'll have to take a longer look when at the rest of the pages in the near future. Thanks for sharing that or I might have never found that on my own.
Experiment renders are often teh most fun ones to do. Daz is really one big game to me personally.
And hey, what is art anyway? I'm no artist (either) I just dabble a bit and fool around. It's about ahving fun and the stuff you posted here is worth havign a look at, so thanks for sharing!
Have fun on your thread!
That's the most important thing.
Thanks. I'm glad others might be interested in the things I'm doing. I never know if other can benefit from the things I'm trying out. I guess we'll find out.
That is the plan, Novica! I love having fun. And, like I think I said somewhere, I love the process almost more than the end result!
I thought the tutorials that they came up with were great, everybody helping each other learn new possibilities. Very creative stuff.
Yes, from the little I saw, there were some great step by step, "this is how I did it" type instructions which I think is great. I'm going to have to allot some time to go through at a leisurely pace so I can read all of the 'how I did this' stuff.
Okay, so I went in and played around with Lily Fae for Kids 4 by MortemVetus today. I really love this little character that Andrew and Tracey created. She is very well done and she has some slightly creepy makeup. The thing that took the longest with this conversion was tracking down The Kids 4 in my runtime. At one point, they were in my Smart Content, but then they disappeared. I have that problem with a lot of the older stuff in the Poser format. It just up and disappears. Once I tracked down the Kid 4 base and the injection morphs, the conversion went fairly smoothly. Lily Fae doesn't have any major issues that need to be dealt with like Daemones' eyes so it was basically load the morphs and transfer to G2F. The other thing that took the longest was trying to find an outfit appropriate for a young girl that I could fit on two totally different generations. I ended up using Skyler's dress and used some d-Former magic to get the dress to fit the The Kids 4 figure. I had the same problem with the hair. I used Paxton Hair. I actually thought it would be easier to pick a hair which should have fit The Kid 4, but that didn't want to fit The Kid 4 figure so I spent about 10 extra minutes fitting the hair. The hair actually autofit the G2F figure easily.
I'm noticing a slight trend here in that the G2 figures seem to stay slightly thinner than their M4/K4 predecessors. @FirstBastion you'll have to let me know if you find the same thing when you get around to converting your MortemVetus figures onto Genesis. It isn't a big deal, but I thought I would mention it this occurrence. The face morphs seem to be almost spot on and, if I didn't know which character was which, I would have a difficult time figuring out which was the original and which was the converted figure.
So, here is the finished side by side comparison of Lily Fae.
The Kids 4 figure is on the left and the G2F figure is on the right. I'm going to have to work on a render with her now that I have her saved as a preset. I'll have to think of something suitably creepy. One advantage of doing these side by side renders is that I can load all of the materials onto the original figure and then save them as .duf material presets which I can then easily load onto the G2 figure. Lily Fae comes with 9 Face mats in Poser format and 9 eye colors, none of which I can use directly on the the G2 generation. If I do too many more conversions, I'll have to do some research and see if there is a way of converting Poser mats to .duf mats without loading each one and then saving them. I'm sure there must be a quicker way to do that.
I'll be writing up a step by step for the Daemones character and have it posted tomorrow. I need to go back and re-do the conversion so I can write down the names of each of the morphs that I deselected so others can repeat what I did to get the same results if they want to give it a try.
You're right. They're a little creepy.
Great render though.
I like this one...
Also...when you were talking about good and not so good art....
I remember going to the Cleveland Art Musium and when we walked in, the first thing we saw was the modern art section. I looked at those pictures and I thought...why are these here?!?
Guess I'm not a modern art fan. There was one large square painting. It was half red and half yellow with the dividing line down the middle. I kept wondering...how much did they pay for that? And why would ANYone pay for that? But maybe somebody liked it.
@KevinH Thanks, I love a good portrait of interesting faces.
Yeah, not a big fan of modern art, either. Abstracts, also, tend to leave me a little cold.
Deliciously creepy!
- Greg
Okay, so plans today went up in smoke when it comes to finishing up the How To for converting the Daemones character in GenX. I FINALLY just finished my entry for the new user contest after a couple of setbacks. I just got that entered so I should be able to finish up the How To and post in tomorrow. It is almost done, but I need to double check some steps with DS open and I couldn't do that earlier since I was finishing up my contest render.
@algovincian & @TabascoJack Thanks for stopping by. Yes, aren't they, though? I really need to come up with a good scene for her!
Okay, I'd like to add a semi flop to the laboratory here @Knittingmommy - I picked up a Sci-Fi set from Rendo which was "not tested in Daz Studio," what can I say, I liked the set and I'm a sucker for a challenge!! Disappointingly, the materials and textures included made an iRay update a breeze, that being said the final render came out slightly bluer than I anticipated... This brought me to the Knittingmommy Laboratory - I'm posting the raw render from Daz right now and then I am going to attempt to use Photoshop/Filterforge to see if postwork can actually save the image and make it more like my original idea - this is a HUGE experiment for me as I am still a render rookie let alone a postwork newb of epic proporation - thought this fitted with the threads theme :)