Shaders, Iray, Photoshop, and the Genesis 8 female

So -- the Genesis 8 female, with a character (face morph and skinmap) added. This is not Victoria 8; this is Georgia HD, on special the other day at about $11.50 or so, well worth the investment. This is the Bardot dress, which was free with Studio 4.15, but I changed the fabric for a shader acquired from Renderosity last lear -- Sveva's Shimmer and Shine Satin, I believe it is. This is the Shavonne Hair for Genesis 3 and 8. And this, I like.

I'd been trying to order the Body Morphs for Genesis 8 Female too, but DAZ's shopping cart was veru squirrelly. After five attempts and two rounds of emails from their5 Help Desk, I still couldn't order. Weird. I'll play around with what I have for a while, but from what I'm already seeing, I like it!

More experiments ... this is the old Reparation set, a cenotaph, wearing the Requiescat materials ... and I'd been wondering how (or even if)  it would render in Iray. Very nice indeed. I'm stumbling around in Studio and Iray, relearning a lot of what I seem to have forgotten in a year, and learning a great deal I never knew. Lots of questions remain to be answered, but I'm getting there. Slowly, LOL.

After spending weeks trying to find the tools in Affinity Photo to do things I used to do so easily in Photoshop Elements 9, back in 2010 -- and in Micrographx Picture Publisher, in 1997! -- I discovered that the tools are not actually there. (Boo, hiss, to Serif for taking the tools away that were in their early programs! Why would they do this?) The only solution to the problem was to shell out more cash and buy Photoshop Elements 2021, and then learn a new interface. Safe to say the oars are back in the water; if I had a single grumble with Elements 2021, it's that the interface seems to have been designed for children. It looks juvenile, tinker-toy, while the elements 2009 interface was adult, businesslike and professional. Go figure. I'll get used to it.  So --

-- again, piling in the experiments. Here's about forty things I used to use every day, all rolled into one, a digital abstract based on a picnic we took at Sellicks, on the clifftop, a week or two ago. The big questions were, Can I use my .abr brushes with this version? Yes? How do you install them? There's two or three ways; I might have done it the hard way, but it got done quickly. How to you access them, select them and paint with them? That was more of a challenge, and I only stumbled over the answer, with Dave's help. (If you're going through this, just ask, I'll go into this in detail). So --

This outtake from "First Snows of Winter" shows .abr brushwork (Ron's Magical Snow), and there's also a bunch of painting done on the mane ... and the mane is a CWRW addon, which needs to be manipulated ten different ways to work and look good -- meaning, you better know where the tools are, and how to use them! I think I'm just about caught up! Couple more questions to answer in Studio 4.15 ... how do you get soft(er) shadows on photometric lights??? ... and how do you use dForce for dynamic clothing, hair and props? With those questions asked, I do believe I'll be back where I was years ago, but using the Genesis 8 models and rendering at light speed. Am starting to smile now!