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I finally had a chance to play with some of the morph dials that came with Bugga Boo! Lady Littlefox included a lot of dials. So much fun to play with. I did a Bugga Boo Elf.
Just having a little fun with Bugga Boo. Here, she's wearing the skin and headdress from Aureska for Zelara 8. I think BuggBoo makes a pretty good alien
And more Bugga Boo goodness! This one took a little more work because System 46 didn't play nicely with BuggaBoo's surface modifier. I had to start with G8 and then add in the BuggaBoo morph before adding the surface materials to the System 46 wardrobe. There was something weird going on with the opacity of the surfaces otherwise.
I'm starting the process of relinking some of my gallery images. Unfortunately, I won't be able to fix all links. Those images that were in replies will continue to have broken links. Also any images posted to my threads by other uses will also continue to have broken links since I can't edit those posts. I guess all the images in the gallery got new ID numbers when the new gallery was uploaded. Users also got new ID numbers. Luckily, I had never put a link to my gallery in my signature, but that would have been an easy fix. Not so much with all the broken links in the thread. Luckily, most of the images in my thread were WIPs so I uploaded attachments and hadn't linked to a gallery image. It was only final images that ended up being linked for the most part.
Man, you're a more diligent person than me. I'm tempted to just leave the thread as it is. Perhaps I'll just update the links on my favourite images. We'll see.
Lol. I'm not sure if diligent is exactly the right word. I just hate broken links if I can fix them.
This is the first chance I've had to explore the new materials on the Genesis 8.1 upgrade. I can't say I'm all that impressed. I did however buy a couple of PA figures that use the new materials for the 8.1 figures, and those I like.
Here's a side by side comparison of what I've done so far. The morph is a mix I did so no specific characters. The lighting is the same in both images. I did change the clothing as well as the materials for the second image because I wasn't happy with the outfit I'd picked for the first image with Genesis 8.1. Post processing is exactly the same for both images. Overall, I love the skin done by Marcius. I have two other 8.1 female figures and I have Micheal 8.1, so I'll be rendering those soon.
Genesis 8.1 Base Skin
MR Layla Skin by Marcius
The last few weeks have been frustratingly busy. I purchased a new 4 TB hard drive for my computer and decided I needed to put all my Daz assets on that drive because my C drive is smaller and getting filled up. I had a problem doing this since I was using Connect for most of my installs. So I finally decided to drop Connect completely. I was getting tired of all the errors that happened because Connect would mess up. Then when it kept insisting on looking at where the old directoy was, I washed my hands of it completely.
In the end, I had to do a completely clean uninstall of Daz Studio twice. The last time, I just started installing with Install Manager. Not even using Daz Central. I would have used DC, but there's no button to click all the selections when you sort. How could they not have that option? You have to go through and click install on EVERY SINGLE ITEM! No. Just no. So Install Manager is my main installer once again.
I think I've got everything sorted out again. I'll be curious to see if I still get the duplicate errors I was getting while using Connect. Or the errors where it said something was installed, but I couldn't access it without uninstalling and installing again. So frustrating!
In other news, I finally got a new graphics card. When I first bought this computer to replace the one that was stolen, it came with no graphics card whatsoever. Just the onboard graphics that comes with the motherboard. I ended up adding a really OLD nVidia graphics card from my husband's junk pile because it got me the right version of OpenGL to run Daz Studio, but it was too old to do much and had practically no memory so my computer was still using CPU to render. So my husband found a deal on a GT1030. It's not ideal, but have you seen the price of graphic cards lately? The one I really want is in the thousands of dollars. I'm saving some money for it, but it will be a while before I've got that much squirreled away.
I did a test render last night of The Pweek to see how my new card compared to using CPU. OMG!!! The difference in time was startlling. I've only ever rendered using CPU the whole time I've used DS. On my old system I had a Radeon card and while it did pretty good, it did mean I only rendered in CPU mode. Render times weren't that bad, definitely faster than my current system.
Here are the shocking stats:
Render time on the old nVidia card I just replaced:
2021-04-29 00:08:04.741 Total Rendering Time: 10 hours 9 minutes 11.12 seconds
Render time on the new nVidia GT1030 card I just installed:
2021-04-29 23:07:58.240 Total Rendering Time: 1 hours 36 minutes 14.27 seconds
Now on my old system, I probably could have rendered that in CPU mode in half the time as my current system in CPU mode. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford to replace my old system with a comporable system and I was in a rush because I needed a computer for my work. The plan was to slowly upgraded the computer as needed.
One thing I still need to do is get a new drive to replace my C drive. The thing is old and literally sounds like it's grinding whenever it gets acessed. So I'll be getting another 4TB hard drive next month and I'll go through the fun of swapping Windows 10 over to it. I'm not looking forward to that. Such fun! Not.
Can I say how shocked I am that this cute little guy is apparently no longer available in the Daz store? Such a shame! I'm glad I got him when I had the chance. I don't recall who creator was. I might have to go looking through the file to see if they have a new store somewhere else.
The Pweek:
ETA: I should probably mention that the size I'm rendering is a 3333 px by 3333 px square. I'm rendering this bigger so it's still a decent size when I convert it to 300 dpi for the clipart package it's going into.
I'm rendering in GPU mode for the first time since last month. Exciting, innit?
Yes! It's nice not having to wait all day for a render to be done.
I'm excited to see what happens with an animation. I'll have to test that out soon. At the moment, I'm rendering a whole bunch of Pweeks of different hair and skin colors for my clipart store. I'll test how much quicker rendering animation is once I'm done.
Cover art for a project I'm working on that will be released in Kindle Vella when it goes live next month. While the background is stock I bought on DepositPhotos, the character is my own creation using a mixture of characters. His base started with Brandon for Toon Dwayne. I dialed him back a little and mixed in a few other characters. I really like the look of him and he's perfect for the space opera I have in mind for him.
Post was done in Affinity Photo which I've been using almost exclusively for a while now.
Gallery Link
I like your character a lot , I have a question do you have Toon Dwayne? What does Brandon look like without Toon Dwayne? what percentage of Dwanye is used?
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5481211/#Comment_5481211
@carrie58 My computer is currently rendering so I can't look at percentages right now. Once it's done, I can take a look at how Brandon loads into a scene for you. I can tell you that whatever percentage of Toon Dwayne that Brandon started with is what I went with. I didn't touch the Toon Dwayne slider. Instead, I dial back Brandon to about 40%(?) and added in a small percentage of a couple of other characters. I'll update later with exact percentages of everyone.
I do think Brandon looks pretty good without Toon Dwayne. It's a totally different look, but if you mix him with a few other characters, he's a nice character to mix in.
@Hylas I completely missed that "Dial Them Out" thread. Nice. I like what you did with Brandon in the comment you linked.
I love mixing characters to see what kinds of unique looks I can create. Unless I'm testing a character the first time, I rarely use a character straight out of the box. This is especially true for my book characters. I love making unique charcters that no on else has.
@Hylas thank you hadn't seen that thread . Got Brandon now to see what I can do with him .
Well done, KM. Wonderful cover. Congratulations on your whole project.
Thank you. It should be an interesting project. I don't know if it will make any money or not. Luckily, I have a couple of niches I write in that do well. I'm not giving those up, just adding this to the pile.
Just a little something I'm working on. This is preliminary. I'm still tracking down the perfect shotgun in my library and maybe one or two other small items.
Post-apocalyptic Granny
She reminds me of Granny from the Beverly Hill Billies!!!
Great work on all your new renders KM!!
It does make me wonder who she's bothering to curl her hair for...
I also noticed her finger is not actually on the trigger - so she's bluffing somebody?
Thanks! She does a little doesn't she? Granny from Beverly Hill Billies was always one of my favorite characters growing up! :)
I'm not sure if she's bluffing or hasn't quite decided if the person she's aiming the gun at needs to be shot or not. lol. I'm still working on her. There are some things I'd like to change up with her and flesh out. I love the character though.
I did a little more postwork on cover for my Kindle Vella story based on some advice in a cover forum. I'm not sure if it makes much of a difference good or bad. I blurred part of the background in Affinity Photo. I also added a layer behind the character, pulling in some colors from the background and highlighting him to make him pop out more. I'm not sure if I succeeded or not. Postwork is still one of those things I struggle with.
Personally, I prefer the sharp one. He looks more integrated in the scene on the first picture and more cutout on the second one. Nice picture in the whole.
Thanks for piping in on this. Yeah, I'm not too crazy with how the second one turned out. I still prefer the first version myself. I think that's the one I'll be sticking with. It's the one currently uploaded to my Kindle Vella dashboard for this project. Nothing in the second version made me want to rush to replace the first version. lol.
The warm colors of his skin in the sharp cover look better. Not too hip on the glowy outline though. Perhaps a happy medium and blur the background just slightly, or perhaps add bloom to the glowing parts of the background with maybe just a hint of blur. Keep him sharp and warm - the warmth makes him stand out more from the cool background than in the 2nd picture. No outline.
Just a couple of tweaks and you'll have it.
I don't have very many figures for Genesis 8.1 yet. I did recently purchase CB Eliza, so I was testing her out onG8.1 to see how it looks. I'm still not seeing a whole lot of difference between G8 and G8.1, but I do like CB Eliza. She's a very pretty figure and I like her skin texture. I was playing around with Quick Studio HDR Lighting by Paper Tiger. Post was done in Affinity Photo.
CB Eliza
Gallery Link
She's a pretty character, all right. I really like your blue/orange color scheme. Looks nice.
I think the 8.1 advantage is in expressions. An interesting test might be to use the 8.0 and 8.1 version of the same character and change expressions.
Nice render and post!
@dracorn Thanks! I do love playing with color. :)
I'll have to try doing a side by side comparison. I have not done that yet in regards to expressions on G8 vs G8.1! That's a great idea.