Old OBJ models and new shaders ... it's an adventure in Iray, with results that can be astonishing ... or not so good. Depends on a lot of random factors. The question is always on my mind, "What can we do with the old generation four models, since almost everything I have was designed for Michael 4, and while the new Genesis stuff is terrific, I just don't have another three or four thousand dollars to spend on renewing everything in the 3D cupboard! So what do we have here? Well --
This, above, is Iray's rendering of the Jagger skinmap for M4; he's wearing Neftis's Ricardi hair and Sickle Yield's track pants; but I resurfaced the trackies with Iray shaders, so they look pretty good. The results here are not so very different from the Genesis figures -- with one exception. M4 ain't as posable: wait till you start to bend the limbs, and you'll soon see that they don't bend realistically; they just sort of fold, and tend to crease, which Genesis limbs usually don't.This effect is very, very noticeable with Victoria 4, also --
Now, this is Victori 4, wearing the HR Donna skinmap, and one of the Neftis wigs ... it's actually more of a test of the costume, which is one of Powerage's old fantasy sets, the Fantasy Cult costume. It depends on metals and transparency maps, and it was never designed for Iray! But it turns out the transparency maps worked wonderfully in Iray ... the metals? Nope. So I resurfaced all the metals with a gold shader from Mech4D's immense pack of shaders, and the result is actually very nice...
 |
The crystals are a prop from an old fantasy collection, Magic Containers, which I think came from Renderosity about the time Noah was launching his ark. Obviously, it was never going to work well in Iray, but I used a volumetric diamond shader from Mech4D's collection (from DAZ), and the result is very nice. I can use this prop, and many others ... we're happy!
The Elven Merchant Ship was from Renderosity too; and I'm not enormously fond of this prop, which is why I've never used it much. It was made using textures rather than materials, so the surfacing on it is disappointing; and no templates were provided, so one can't go in and paint a material. Soooo ... I put it into silhouette by placing the key light almost behind it, and did some overpainting in Photoshop, which increased the realism. Cool.
On that render, the water was the big, big challenge. I don't own a "water prop" (yet) for Iray, and of course it's totally different trying to work with surfaces in Iray than in 3Delight. This is an Iray render, so ... what the heck was I going to do? Well, displacement maps DO -- NOT -- WORK in Iray. Or, if they do, I haven't found the trick, and I don't think anyone else has. Normally mapping works, but it won't get you where you need to go, if you start out with a created primitive (plane) and try deforming it into a choppy surface with a displacement map. No joy there. Harrumph. So (he he he) I used an old OBJ I made in, and exported from, Bryce 7 Pro, about eight years ago. Mmm. The "water" is actually a terrain, onto which I slapped one of Mech4D's volumetric water shaders. Even then, it took one heck of a lot of work with all kinds of maps to break up the surface and make it less than a mirror. There's a trick to this, which I have yet to learn ... but this is quite nice, so I'll post it and make notes to myself about figuring this out!
And lastly for today, after all that pushing and pulling with old models, I wanted something that would make life a bit easier (especially since it's over 100 degrees in this neck of the woods, and almost too hot to even think, much less wrestle with problems). So this is a set called Shady Haven, from DAZ, already configured for Iray. I have an environment light and one spotlight set, and this render, at very high resolution, took about fifteen minutes. Next, I'm going to see what happens to the render times we we stand a couple of Genesis figures in the set. So --
Let's have a closer look at how Iray handles the Jagger skinmap on the Michael 4 geometry ... and then I'm going to get a cool drink and relax in front of a fan. Yes, the a/c has been blasting away since before dawn, but it's just too hot. One thing that's definitely on my agenda: a new monitor. I'm still using an LG monitor from 2010, and it runs so hot, it feels like you're sitting in front of a heater! Not what you want, in this weather.
