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| Deep Shadow Map |
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| Deep Shadow Map |
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| DeepShadow Map |
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| Deep Shadow Map |
(In case you're puzzled: Genesis is a new 3D mesh technology; the base figure is packaged inside of Studio 4 -- you don't but it separately. But every single thing you want to do with it is an add-on, or a plug-in.)
But I was at Renderosity the day before yesterday, shopping for the props to finish off a commission piece, and there was this barbarian ... one look, and I was hooked. He was also on special, under ten bucks! I figured it had to be worth the risk, to find out of I could get the skinmap to work in the old DAZ, with the old figure. If it didn't work, I was out the price of a can of coffee. No biggie.
And the answer it, it does work!
The big challenge was in getting the files into the proper folders, the proper file hierarchy (or directory structure, as we used to call it back in the old DOS days. Yes, I'm afraid I'm that old), but the designer had given fair warning of this. As you know (or might), the old file hierarchy was:
users/documents/DAZ/Studio/content/runtime/...
...and after that, you copied anything you wanted to use in DAZ into Geometries, Morphs, Libraries, Textures, what have you. Tricky the first few times you did it, but soon enough, you can do it in your sleep. No probs.
With Studio 4, DAZ, in their infinite wisdom, have upended everything, changed the entire thing, so that none of the old installers will run (!), and from here on, when a third party designer like SAV wants to make something easily available for DAZ 3 and 4 (much less for M4 and Genesis), well, they're up against a bear of a challenge.
In the past, we bought a simple ZIP archive, inside which was a Runtime folder, and inside that, folders for Geometries, Libraries, Textures, and so forth. You just copy/pasted over the files and boom! You were in business. Now? That won't work. A designer would have to quite literally package the product twice, in two extremely different folder hierarchies, to make it plain-sailing for newbies... but that's not going to work either, because of the sheer size of the high-rez texture maps in a top-class skinmap. You physically cannot package that much content twice, so newbies are going to be stranded, doing some serius head-scratching.
Not being a newbie, I managed to get it figured out (as witness, the renders above), but ... gosh, thanks, DAZ. Newbies really needed this. I mean, the marketplace is now absolutely flooded to the eyeballs with easy-unpack products structured around the obsolete file hierarchy! Imagine a newbie coming along right about now ... downloads Studio 4 because it's the bang up-to-date prog, and the price is right (FREE), and then s/he is trying to shop at Renderosity, because it turns out that's where about 80% of the great content is hiding...! Total confusion.
So I'm making rude faces at DAZ for this, at the same time as giving a whopping five stars and a double thumbs-up to SAV for the Atlas character.
He's flawless. Literally. There are three face options (normal; wilder; and battle-face), and two body options (normal and battle -- ie, spattered with blood). The resolution is superb. The eyeballs are great -- in two colors and two iris sizes. In particular, I like the hands, which are battered enough to look ultra-realistic, and very, very high-rez. One runs out of superlatives.
This is the best SAV skinmap yet -- I've reviewed SAV-Eros and also Yannis in the last few months, too. In the above renders, Atlas (Conan, by any other name) is wearing SAV's Spartacos hair, set to black, and the Euros costume with elements turned off. The set is H3D's Lost Path, with some additional props added in from the Elven Shed set by DM, and the Fae Weaponry fantasy broadsword. The Greek column is from an old, old prop set from the DAZ marketplace ... is it called Eras Columns? Something like that.
The backdrop was specially painted for the occasion...
The finished renders are intended to look like art -- they're not trying to mimic photographs; and they're so clean, they didn't even need any post work. You're seeing them just as they finished off in DAZ ... they're not even raytraced, just the trust old deep shadow map on a couple of the lights.
For contrast, here's the same model, skinmap and all, raytraced in 2019:
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| Raytrace |
SAV Atlas: five stars, highly recommended, and don't be put off by the fact it'll also work with Genesis. So long as you know your file hierarchy in Studio 3, you can get it figured out in a few minutes, and then you're cooking.
The other thing I've been working on is rejacketing the NARC books ... we're getting there slowly but surely. Just ... slowly! Here's the new cover for EQUINOX:
Have been looking at Genesis lately ... suuuure, it's a fantastic new technology. But even though the basic program is a free download, you have to spend about $200 on plugins and so forth, to make it compatible with your existing content (when you've spent thousands of bucks on said content, there's no way you could afford to go back and start over with it!), and even then -- the old 32-bit systems, like mine, misbehave badly when running it. I'll need a brand, spanking new system before I can run Studio 4, which means ... oh, Christmas 2012! So till then, I'll be sticking with Studio 3, and watching from the sidelines as Genesis matures. It's still brand new, and probably has a bug or three! It'll be interesting watching it mature ... they might even be up to Studio 5 before I get the chance to upgrade!
Jade, October 10
