Twilight at the old sanctum

Now we're cooking. So many experiments in this one render -- and they all worked out. This is Michael 8 standing in DM's Abiding Sanctum, with Iray lights set, and Iray creating the sky (iue., "Draw Dome" is turned on). I've also changed the shaders on the costume; the DOF is set on the camera ... and the whole whole thing rendered in six minutes while the computer stayed cool as a cucumber!

I'm juuust about through the experimental phase, in many ways. Everything is working just fine, and I've also thrashed out how to get the third party content to install properly, and (just as important!) be FOUND after it's installed! Turns out, it's the SAME file path to install both DAZ Studio Content and Poser Content. Studio reads the content differently and pushes it into two different menus, when you come to load it into scenes (which I wish it didn't), but during installation, it's the same file path. So we're happy here.

Next, I'll be installing lots and lots of third party content (something like 250 items), and then ... we're good to go. This is juuust starting to turn (back) into real fun! 

Touching base ... have been soooo ill!

Forgive me if I'm reposting some eye candy from long ago -- some of it eight years ago! I've been ill. Very. Anybody out there ever had gastro? The real, genuine version ...? Uh huh. Few times in the last week, I thought it would be easier and kinder just to roll over and die quietly! Anyway...

One doesn't get to make the decision in these cases, so there really was nothing for it but to lie there feeling like the living dead, and eventually get well! I suppose I'll live after all. So --

-- just reposting some images that haven't been seen in months and years. Easy to forget them! And I'll be posting fresh pictures as early as tomorrow. Ooooh, the images I have dancing in my mind's eye right now. Just need the time (and energy) to render and paint. Stay tuned ... and sorry for disappearing on you for ten days.

Sports car in Iray ... and luck with a great skinmap for M4 in Iray, too!

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:

Catalog image. See this.

It's low-poly enough that even my old system was able to render the car and set in an hour, and when I added the Michael 8 figure, plus hair (Shavonne) and costume (Cool Style) and a shader on the shirt, and a chrome shader on the wheel rims, I went to 90 minutes. The car still only $12.95. and -- thumbs up on 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!

The render from hell. Seriously.

The render from hell -- no, not this guy, above. That's a Genesis 8 character based on the Michael 8 skinmap, Varun hair and a lot of dial-in tweaks to make a new-ish face and body -- dead easy, with a couple of Merlin's trees set in the background plus the raytrace of the Moon Gate you saw the other day blurred down  and set as a backdrop ... two hours cooking in Iray, and I haven't done anything to it. Nada. That's just the raw render. Okay, soooo --

This was the render from hell:

...this was a render that just didn't want to be done. Studio 4 crashed repeatedly, and since I can't save a file out of Studio 4, every crash meant starting from scratch; then, the textures drop out on the Xurge 3D costume and have to be reconfigured every time ... and the lighting gave me hell. The Ferendir skinmap that rendered so beautifully the other day looks plastic on the older human figure. The elf looks okay, but what's going on with the human?? I got this two-hour raytrace out of Studio 4, then it crashed yet again and I said, stuff it. I am NOT doing it over. Sometimes you just can't win. I suspect there's something "wrong" with the lights, making the skinmap look plastic on one figure, but I don't have the time or patience to start yet again. We'll try a whole new project tomorrow, and run some experiments.

So, just as I switched back to raytracing when Iray was jerking me around, this time I switched back to Iray when 3Delight was jerking me around. The results are pretty nice ... though I do admit, the Iray shot is soooo simple, while the raytrace was many times more complex. If Studio hadn't been crashing, I'd have worked it out ... if I could save a file in Studio 4, I'd have worked it out. As it is, what you see is what you get. I'm not 100% happy with it, but it's not bad, so... there you have it.

Try again tomorrow. 😐

Moonlight, swordsman -- the Genesis figure in place of Michael 4. Whoo!

Only one image today, because it's been rendering all day! As promised yesterday, let's repeat the process and see about the starlight, or moonlight, Iray project, but using a Genesis 8 character rather than the old Michael 4. The beauty of the Michael 4 figure is that it renders so fast -- this would have taken about 45 minutes. Then again, you wouldn't have a figure that rendered with this kind of integrity. Flip back to yesterday's moonlight shot and compare. Sure, that's a heck of a nice render too, but this one is a knockout. Moonlight, starlight ... got it.

For those of you who're rinkering with Iray right now, and ready to give up (I know, it's a bear) ... the trick is, it's done half with an environment lighting (ie., an image used for IBL lighting) and half with a single spotlight. And this seems to work every time, so -- happy, happy.

More tomorrow, I guess. There just isn't any more time today to do anything ... this was a looong render. Well worth it, though, right? Right.

What I used here...

Genesis 8 male
Michael 8 skinmap
Custom body morph
Custom face morph
Elan hair for G8
Legendary Swords prop
Ivy props from the Reparation set
Pedestal and planter from the Mirador set
Backdrop, blurred to be out of focus
One very blue IBL environment image
One orange (!) spotlight
DOF and big virtual aperture on the camera, to match the backdrop blur

Shake and bake. Set that to cook and come back in six hours. One becomes very adept at thumb twiddling. My kingdom for a faster computer! Anyway -- good results are their own reward. I like this. I also like the character ... will use him again soon!

And so to bed ... yawn.

Sunlight, moonlight -- and a pirate, in Iray

Natural sunlight ... and pretty darned convincing ... I even remembered to have the character squint a little, which he would in these lighting conditions. I'm very impressed with the Michael 8 skinmap -- I rarely if ever use the M8 face of body morph, but the skinmap itself is wonderful. This face and body you see here --

-- is a dial-up / dial-down of so many different features to create a new face and form. I'm glad I got the G8 head and body morphs; they make it so easy to create new characters. There's only one light on this scene, representing the sun; the rest of the scene was lit with IBL lighting to "fill in" the environment. It works well. The magic is in the details:

So, having got the hang of conjuring sunlight in Iray, let's test the theory with a completely different scene and see if it works every time! Try this -- a (very cute) pirate:

And this lighting trick -- the balance between a single distant light and a specially chosen IBL environment light -- does work every time. The character is interesting: mix and match. This is what happens when you apply the Kingston skinmap and Rex face morphs to the G8 base!

And you have to admit, that's extremely ... appealing. A bit of set, a couple of props ... a shader on the shirt; Varun hair styled differently from the previous project. Very nice indeed!

So, okay ... that's sunlight. How about starlight, or moonlight? I don't have it completely worked out yet, but early experiments are promising. I used Michael 4 for this, because I wanted quicker renders. The lower-poly figure renders in a quarter the time:

I think I'd buy that as starlight or moonlight, and this was done completely in Iray, rather than just rendering the scene as it comes, then creating starlight in Photoshop. Sure, you can also do it that way, but I'd love to know how to do it "properly" before I start to cut corners. Neat. I resurfaced Merlin's Katana with new shaders, and that's a backrop rather than a bit of set. This image rendered in about 45 minutes, as against six hours for the guy sitting in the field, and 150 minutes for the pirate. You might remember the figure and pose from a couple of other renders across the years ... the original 2010 picture, and the Lux Render version from something like 2015. Now, what about if we put a Genesis 8 figure into that project?? Hmmm!

One more image for today; just a bit of creative doodling:

Couldn't resist! "Then something happened that the ring did not intend..." It's based on a photo taken at Hindmarsh Falls a couple of years ago. The stream was running, deep in the chasm, and Dave and I did a couple of "ring" images as a chuckle. I promptly forgot about them, and only found them this morning while I was clearing flash cards, setting up for the Grampians trip we're about to take (leaving this time next week). Just had to do this...

Alas, computer problems again: I've lost my connectivity on the desktop, 100%. So I can't buy anything new from DAZ until I somehow (how???) get the computer back online. It might end up going back to the workshop. Until then, I'll just be working with the new things I've bought since May or so, and also working through the dragon's hoard of old 3D assets that I bought back in 2013 and couldn't install for want of harddrive space. The new shaders resurface the old models beautifully. Can't even think about tackling the computer till we get back from this trip, so I don't expect to be back online with my desktop till October. Rats. 😮

Take two ... I survived! ... and I like the way this renders up...

Genesis 8, wearing Michael 8's skinmap and a tweaked, adjusted face. The Crimson Seas coat and the Varun Hair. Depth of field is turned on and very effective; and I do like the way this renders up. The GP Character eyes are set to a kind of hazel --

-- and they catch the lights quite well. It's only when you start to play around with expressions that you realize the face is not what you'd call classical, or perfect; which I think makes it seem all the more realistic. Though I could wish there had been a way to work with the Rex skinmap! Next time.

In fact, I could wish there was something along the lines of a Hispanic skinmap for Genesis 8, or Michael 8, without having to drop a ton of money. There is one, a whole character, Diego 8 --

Catalog Image. See this...

-- but that's going to set me back about A$65. Right now I'm looking around for a nice olive skinned map, like Italian or Greek, something not as glaringly white as so many of the Michael 8 skinmaps seem to be. I have about seven skinmaps for M8 or G8, and all but two are positively Nordic. There's this one, Sanjay, which is Subcontinent --

Catalog image. See this ...

-- but again, you're looking at AU$65, because it's a whole character which is a lot more than I might have wanted to pay for a skinmap. You're kind of hoping for something closer to $20.

Anyway, when I feel a lot better than I do right now, I think I'll have a look around at the DAZ/Iray content at Renderosity, and just pray that the designers have the installation pathway worked out, so that Studio 4.11 can find the files. The Poser pathways won't work. Xurge uses those. They work in Studio 3, like a charm, but Studio 4.11 is a whole 'nother animal. Rats.

Okay -- now, tea and pills.

Autumn woods and creepy cloisters

Just two images today ... because I'm soooo sick, I'm about to hit the deck. There's a whole lot of sneezing going on in Australia right now, and at least for me, runaway allergies have turned into a major sinus and throat infection. So I'm calling it way early today. The experiment this morning was to render the figure separately from the background. It works.

I did the bottom layer (the woodland) in Photoshop, from a picture captured in Belair NP last fall. Finished with that, I shipped it in as a backdrop and posed a new character in front of it (that's still the Michael 8 skinmap and Varun hair, which render very well. Then, when that was done rendering, I shipped it back into Studio as yet another bottom layer, and added the bushes in the foreground. Since the PNature props don't even install into Studio 4, much less render properly, I did the top layer in Studio 3, as a raytrace with one light set. So --

If it's going to be sets rendered separately and used as backdrops, that's fine. To get a feel for this, I used one of the Sveva images, from Renderosity, which are retailed for exactly this purpose ... I also did it as a raytrace, because to get the hang of this took about 200 test renders; and Iray is sooo slow, I'd have been testing till next year! Result --

A neat Gothic fantasy where the line between foreground and backdrop has been confused, or hidden, with various props. I added the Michael 4 and costume (my own character -- you might recognize him, though I did change out the hairstyle), plus the bench, lantern, the ivy in the foreground, and the floor. Everything else is a backdrop. Having got the hang of it, I'll try it in Iray next, and we shall see!

So, just the two images today: Iray pretending to be a photograph, and a raytrace pretending to be a painting! I like them both. Must admit, the Iray render is pretty convincing, and since there was no set to render, or foreground, it finished in about two hours even on my old PC. Hmmm. Interesting.

And now -- pills, and crash. More soon, when I've returned to life!

Glamour in Iray ... check this out!

Just one image today ... because it's been cooking all day, and when Iray is running, it commandeers the whole computer. But you have to admit, the result is worth it!

This is actually a slightly tweaked version of the Dae morph, wearing the Michael 8 skinmap, and the Varun hair; the costume is the Cool Style outfit, but I changed the shirt to a silk shader. Set a couple of lights ... and went away for about six hours. Patience, grasshopper! Take a closer look:

It actually doesn't get very much better than this. This one is terrific, if I say so myself. And I do! So I didn't get the chance to play around with the Palladio ancient Greek garden set: one thing at a time, and when you set up an Iray project, you have to be willing to wait for it to cook. Tomorrow: Greek garden. Being an old, low-poly set, it ought to render up quickly, too.

Some of the new sets ... whew. They're motion picture quality, but I know for a fact, I couldn't render them. I'm put them on my wish list, but it's actually pointless buying them until I have the new system. Christmas 2020. What did I say about patience? It's this kind of thing:

SE Asian Temple: catalog image. See this. 

It's gorgeous, but if I tried to render that --??! Ye gods. Not on this computer, guys. I think the whole thing would spontaneously combust. Here's another one that would blow up my hardware:

IG Iray Dawn to Dusk Lights. Catalog image. See this. 

As I said -- motion picture quality, but not for this computer! End of next year, we'll chuck some serious money at the challenge and see what happens with a new one. I don't mind long renders, if they finish up properly. Fingers crossed!

The good news that I'd like to share is that the new Mel Keegan book uploaded to Amazon Kindle and Smashwords yesterday. This is well worth sharing! XENO ... thrill a minute stuff:

It's a good, long "meaty" read, too -- so much in it. Find it at Amazon, or if you have a problem with Amazon, it's also at Smashwords. Just a heads up: being a Mel Keegan novel, it's a glbt read ... as well as absolutely sparking science fiction. Not one for kids, if you take my meaning.

That's it for me, for today. It's been a long, busy day and I'm going in search of a pillow and blankie. Winter has returned for a week or so ... great weather to be home and messing about with art. So -- more tomorrow!

Guy candy. Seriously.

Pirate? Moorish prince? Take your pick ... and check out the shaders on this! I switched out all the textures on the "Contemporary Romeo" costume. Silk and lace on the shirt, leather on the pants. This is actually the Rex character again, but wearing one of the alternative faces, and the full beard. Looks like a whole new character, in fact. Also ...

This is the Rex matte skinmap, with the "shine" turned off and the displacement turned on. The only thing it's short of, actually, is some veins. A body that looks like that has been worked hard in a gym, and he probably finished pumping iron about two minutes before the photo was taken. You'd see veins. There's a venous add-on for G8, and this is one of the next items I'll get.

Then --

Michael 8 ... wearing a Michael 4 shirt. Yes, Michael 4. The last place you saw that costume, Amadeus was wearing it. The only thing you can't wrangle is the sleeves: the morphs and parenting work, to make the costume fit the body shape, but the rigging in the shirt doesn't match the rigging n the figure, so it doesn't drop the sleeves over the arms. To get around this, I made the sleeves transparent. Then slapped a shader onto the shirt's body. He's also wearing third party add-on eyes, and Genesis 2 hair. I'm not in love with Michael 8, to be honest: the face does nothing for me, and the body's somewhat adolescent, but experiments are underway to adapt it. And in the meantime, there's plenty more to play with!

That's all from me for today. Soooo tired! Must hit the hay. Need sleep...

Michael 8 joins the party -- first look, in Iray

Michael 8 himself ... first look, as rendered by moi. Fairly nice renders, actually, and it's quite a nice skinmap, if very pale -- but I'm not sure I'm a tremendous fan of that body shape! It's a bit "eighteen years old next birthday." We'll be adjusting this with the body morphs ... oh, tomorrow, I expect!

In fact, DAZ was having one of their crazy store-wide sales today. I couldn't resist getting the Michael 4 Pro Bundle, which is thirteen items rolled into one (including the dangly bits for Genesis 8, ahem!). The usual price is about A$210, and I got it this morning for about A$80, which is a colossal saving. Couldn't not make the investment. The pack contains --

The M8 base figure, two other skinmaps (characters), two hair props of varying value, two packs of poses, five costumes, and the aforementioned "male anatomical elements," or whatever they delicately term the dangly bits these days. [Rolls eyes. Is prudishness on the rise lately?] So this is what you're downloading:

That's a nice library of goodies to play with. Add some really versatile shaders to this lot, and we can get some very nice results.

Speaking of shaders, I installed the pack I bought from Renderosity yesterday, and used the "rough sandstone" on the column M8 is leaning against there. That's a pack of rock and stone, including marble, concrete, bricks, pebbles ... it's going to be very handy indeed. But with some costumes to play with now, I'm going to be wanting fabric shaders. I love this:

Catalog image ... see this

Catalog image -- see this

Uh huh. Switch out the prosaic textures for something sumptuous and exotic. And do something with the Michael 8 body shape! Right now, he looks better with his clothes on ... let's see what we can do about that tomorrow, lol.

One last image for today:

This was a quickie to test a theory regarding the balance between IBL lighting and the, uh,  photometric light. And it worked! Safe to say, the lighting battle has been won. And I also stumbled over the dead easy way to get depth of field (DOF) to work. I mean, honestly -- ten seconds, one test render, and you're done.

Does anyone need to know how to do this stuff in Studio 4.11?? I still have plenty of problems about which I can do nada (4.11 will not save a file! That one is for tech support to fix, not me -- and they're not helping, not even 2%, after almost two months). But if you'd like to know the quick ways to make the new(er) DAZ do what you need it to do -- drop me a line, I'd be happy to share. You can always contact me via my gallery, and if you don't want to be bothered with emails, you can also contact me via a comment on my personal blog: put a comment, or request for secret-sharing, on this post, and Gmail will tell me I gotz a message. No problem. Comments are turned off on this blog because it was getting a lot of unpleasant remarks, being gay-friendly and dedicated to the heavy of the human form! Nooo, I am by no means an expert yet, but I've got a lot of stuff figured out -- enough to start having fun.

That's it for me, for today. Off to bed now. 'Night, all!