Iray ... a quick Bryce 7 Pro sky used as a backdrop ... sports car ... Michael 8 ... nice! This is far from the first car I've rendered, but it is the first time I've done a car in Iray, and -- I like it. I didn't even have to switch out the materials: the original materials as supplied with the model rendered just fine. It's called the f612 Italian Sports Car, from the DAZ marketplace -- I bough it about eight or nine years ago, and it's still available. Here you go:
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| Catalog image. See this. |
I can't remember the fantasy novel I'm trying to think of right now, but the name of Lackey comes to mind, and part of the blurb was, 'There are elves out there, and they drive too fast.' It was some urban fantasy, tall elves in our world. So you have got to know what I'm thinking right now. Ahem! Stay tuned.
Also -- at last! -- a little luck in the hunt for Michael 4 skinmaps that don't look 'dead' in Iray:
That's the Jagger skinmap, which you usually see on Kevin Jarrat (in the NARC renders ... one of my all-time favorite characters -- him and his other half, Stoney, nudge, wink, and cheers to Mel Keegan as the creator of same). You also see this skinmap on the Vampire Amadeus ... so I really, seriously, put it to the test in Iray the other day. I slapped it onto an old character of mine, 'The Conjurer,' and gave it an hour in Iray. Thank gods, here's a third skinmap that looks terrific in Iray. The other two are Ferendir and Atlas; virtually everything else I've tested to date will render, obviously, but the results is disappointing, especially when you're trying to render the old Generation 4 figures half the time, because Genesis 8 is so high-poly, your computer is having a hernia, LOL! Sooo...
Here's the old Conjurer character in Iray, wearing Jagger. very nice result ... I used the "hairy" and "bearded" options, which is different from Jarrat and Amadeus, who're smoothies. I like this, so now I have a pale (Ferendir), a swarthy (Atlas) and a medium (Jagger) skinmap for Michael 4, all Iray-friendly. This, we can work with.
One thing that bemuses me, though, is the way one face morph can change utterly as it's processed in a different render engine. Here, above you see my Conjurer (actually, he has a 'stage name' -- Cassandro; I guess in this render we're seeing him at home, not on-stage). That's the exact same face morph, I didn't do anything to it. But here's the same face, in LuxRender, back in 2012:
And here's the same face in 3Delight about ten months ago:
You may need to see "Snake Charmer" here at larger size to see the face clearly. I'm still shaking my head, that one face can come up looking so different as it passes back and forth between Iray, LuxRender and 3Delight. Go figure.
Anyway, we are now officially having fun, and Michael 4 has his oars back in the water, for Iray! It's taken me eight months to answer enough questions to know what I'm doing, and can do, with this computer; and we're now also officially on the count-down to The New Computer, in about a year from now. It'll either be my birthday pressie or Christmas, and since those dates are only 51 days apart, there's not a lot of difference. 😃 (Yes, I just had a birthday. Yesterday, in fact -- one of the reasons I didn't post yesterday: was out gallivanting.)
More soon!
