When all else fails -- shaders!

 

Very seldom does something defeat me, but this did. The assignment was to reconfigure the Xurge3D Medieval Royalty costume for Iray. It shouldn't have been difficult, much less impossible. It's designed for Poser, but in a raytrace it looks very good in Studio --

I did that back in 2019, in Studio 4.12, albeit as a raytrace; so I know what it's supposed to look like! I tried everything. I mean -- everything. No joy. So in the end, what can you do?

I hit three different shader packs for this: one of the leathers, one for the fabric, one for the metal. Some things are destined to give you an afternoon-long fight, and in the end, you wind up what you could have done in the first place, in ten minutes! Next was to install an old set, DM's The Lair --

-- and this also was a tussle. What you don't realise in a raytrace is that this set is HUGE. It's like trying to illuminate a soccer pitch! Anyway. I did get it sorted in the end, and learned a thing or two while I was at it. Next ... merge the Michael 4 in costume into it:

You'll need to see that at full size to see the details, they're not going to come out in the small-size that can be accommodated on the page here, but I uploaded it large. I'm not unhappy with the render, but it's nowhere near as dramatic as it ought to have been, and the more I messed about with the lights, the more drab and confused it became. Hmm. In the end I settled for this, which isn't bad, and I'll come back to the project later. Well, fiddlesticks. Some days, it's just not going to go according to plan! 

Serendipity! Okay, call him Curt ... and fitting Genesis 3 hair to Michael 4 -- easy.

A few very minor adjustments to his nose (which I thought was too large), and here he is, in his own photo shoot. Talk about serendipity! If you haven't been following this -- "the story so far." Wanting to break Jarrat and Stone out of storage (you know -- from Mel Keegan's NARC, nudge, wink), I loaded up a Michael 4 and applied the Jarrat character preset. If this were Studio 3, it would have worked, but in Studio 4, I didn't get Jarrat at all; I got a whole new character, s Studio 4.15 interpreted the preset, got it wrong, and produced...

And I like what I'm seeing -- a lot. This is a beautiful new character, and he wears the Genesis 3 hair as if it were made for M4. Okay -- let me write a little about how to fit the G3 hair to M4, because I suspect a number of people will be trying to do it, and it can be extremely fiddly.

• Load your M4 figure in the 0 position, meaning 0 valued on every transformation parameter. Unselect the figure. Load the hair into the scene without anything being selected. It loads also on the 0 position, just too low to fit the M4 -- meaning, if you jog it up till it looks good, the scalp cap will fit. You might need to jog the z (back/forward) parameter to make sure the back of the head is well covered; when it is, the hairline should be right. Do this in the Perspective view, so that you can swing the scene around easily without moving the M4 at all. Lastly, in the scene menu, select the hair prop and drag it upward throug the list till you can drop it onto the M4 'head' list item. This will parent it to M4, and now you can adjust the styling and colour to your heart's content. For the best fit, use Genesis 3 hair on Michael 4 or Victoria 4.2 ... and enjoy!

And we call him Curt because Mel Keegan has just given this face and body form the nod ... this is Curt Gable, the Athena's Third Officer, soon to move upwards through the ranks as the series develops! Very neat indeed!

Second major thing fixed today:

Yep, the problem with the visor on the HAAS Armor helmet, by Xurge3D, was caused by an opacity map which Studio was reading incorrectly (it was original configured for the Firefly engine, in Poser, maybe ten years ago). Basically, I just deleted the opacity map from the "Cutout Opacity" channel in the Surfaces pane. Now, if I want a semi-opaque visor, I can either drag the slider to 75% or whatever, or else apply a glass shader. Great -- with this problem answered. I can load the rest of the Xurge3D content without a qualm. 

Hello, beautiful ... but not what I expected! And breaking the armour out of storage...

 

First, the good stuff: the Xurge3D armour installs smoothly, loads perfectly, resurfaces easily, and renders beautifully in Iray. "Mirror black armor," all that kevlex-titanium ... sound familiar? Look familiar? It should! Sooo, I was inspired to break Jarrat and Stone out of storage along with the armour, and things didn't go quite as smoothly -- more on that in a second! The HAAS amour itself is great, with one exception, a problem I couldn't solve today. I'll take another crack at it tomorrow. In Studio 4.15, the helmet visor is ... missing. Yup, gone, not there. Say, what? Now, we know this suit has a great visor. This is the raytrace done for Event Horizon a few years ago --

Same armour, just different configuration and surfacing. Check out the helmet visor -- all present and correct in Studio 3. But in Studio 4.15, the exact same prop loads without the visor. It'll have something to do with incompatible opacity masks or some damned thing. I'll need a couple of hours and a clear head to work this out. Hmmm. Tomorrow. So, getting past that, I left out the helmet and thought, I'll render Jarrat wearing the hardsuit with the helmet off, right? So --

I go to my folder of Character Presets, load a Michael 4, merge the preset onto it, and I get --

-- somebody else entirely! I mean, he's beautiful, and renders marvellously from every angle; and he's wearing the Varun Hair for Genesis 3 as if it were made for him. But that ain't our Raven 9.4, not by a long shot. The last time you saw Jarrat and Stone in fresh renders was 2019, and this one here might have been it --

Well, there's another Bermuda Triangle style mystery. Though some sorcery and alchemy involving two computers, two versions of Studio and some old project files, I was able to get out Captain Jarrat back (phew!) ... now this was what I'd been expecting, and it's well worth seeing at full size:

So I was able to recover Jarrat, and had a chance to play with a great cotton shader by TwiztedMetal, for the tank top, and re-re-reworked the Mon Chevalier hair, which suits this character so much (and which renders well in Iray, if you just change the lighting model to matte!). Tomorrow, I'll see about working out the problem with the helmet visor; and if I can't, I'll figure a way to either make something to fit the helmet and do the job, or else work out a way to paint it in Photoshop -- which I do not want to do, because it turns into a major painting assignment every time the armour is rendered. Argh.

In the meantime, we got Jarrat (as I said, phew!), and we also scored a new and very attractive character, which I like a lot! Serendipity, I guess. Tomorrow, helmet or no helmet, I'll try from Stoney. Stay tuned. 

Installing third party shaders in DAZ Studio 4.14 ... done!

One thing at a time! I wanted to be sure all the old Studio content has installed properly, so -- can we get Victoria 4.2 to load properly, and render nicely? Answer --

-- yes. That's Victoria 4.2 rendered in Iray, with one of the old costumes given a makeover with Iray shaders, Not bad. In fact, the low-poly models render FAST; just keep in mind that when you get very, very close to them, Iray shows up all the cockroaches. You will see polygons, if you get too close! So keep these figures for background scenes, presumably.

The next question was, since the old 3Delight render engine is exactly that, old, does that mean simpler renders -- raytrace! -- will go fast, because they're not Iray renders? Answer -- a resounding no! Not only do raytraces take about 4x longer than Iray renders, when you see the results side by side, they're disappointing...

 That's still just the old low-poly Michael 4, wearing Neftis's Mon Chevalier hair (which is a Poser prop), and Xurge3D's Mediaeval Royalty costume (also optimized for Poser). So the surfaces had to be adjusted for Iray, which turned out to be tricky but far from impossible. The thing is that M4 renders up quite nicely in Iray ... in four minutes. The raytrace is cartoonish, and was at least 20 minutes, even with The Hulk running "high and hot." Hmm.

I rather think I'll be sticking to Iray from here on out. So that's another question answered. Next: how in the hell do you install all your Renderosity content into Studio 4.14, under Windows 10? I knew the answer to this for Studio 3 and Windows 7, but this is very, very different. Well, one step at a time. I installed a pile of shaders first, and it turns out, they work just fine. So far I've applied them to many props, costumes and so forth, and they look a treat:

I did the ground, the column and so forth, in shaders to make the simple old props look good. This little scene here has 10 props and four lights ... I think I've got the photometric lights worked out (bear with me; I'll write about this as we go, when I'm sure). Right now, the only thing I can pass along with confidence is the answer to this:

Where do you put third party shaders from Renderosity into DAZ Studio 4.14, to have they work properly?

Here's the file path:

C:\DAZ 3D\Applications\Data\DAZ 3D\My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime --

After which, copy shader sets (or packs) into Runtime\Iray or Runtime\Shader Presets.

It gets more complex if you're installing props, because you need to know if the assets you're installing are DAZ 3D format, or Poser format. In the case of the Xurge3D (Poser) costume Michael 4 is wearing here, I've got it to work, but I want to check the installation process a couple more times before I quote you exact addresses. It can be bloody confusing!

More experiments to come. I need to thrash out a lot of questions about lighting, and then I need to install about 500 Renderosity items, from shaders to lights to poses to hair to costumes and props. This will take a wee while. Patience! 

A swordsman in the snow ... whooo!

Hunting around through the "assets" I bought a long, long time ago -- and never had the harddrive space to install! -- I came upon this skinmap: Ferendir, by a designer called "SixthSense." It's a gorgeous skinmap, and renders beautifully ... though I do admit, I painted the eyebrows, which are too pale and thin for my liking; and I also applied the SAV Atlas displacement mapping on the torso and arms to bring up good venous mapping. But just take look at this skinmap in closeup -- if you can, see it at full size:

That's superb. A pleasure to watch it rendering! Using the Atlas displacement maps adds an extra dimension to it; and I designed a new face to go with this map. This is not the Ferendir face morph, as packaged by the designer. To be honest, the original face doesn't do anything for me. You might like it, and the good news is, it's still available from Renderosity.

So, not wanting a teenager, I designed a face and body I like, and came up with this:

This is what I love about working with Michael 4: it's so easy, and so quick, to get results. Sure, Genesis  can be significantly closer to full-on photo-realism, but it takes soooo long to get anywhere, especially on a slow system like mine. With M4 you can create new characters on the fly in a snap. I rather like this face -- and the eyes are the brilliant green item from The Eyes Have it set:

The hair is hand-painted, based on the old Mario's Hair for M4, from Neftis Hair Salon. That doesn't render up so well (well, it's quick, but the downside to that is, you pay for speed in low-rez results: human hair isn't supposed to go around corners, and so forth), but it does give you a good base to paint over, and ... Photoshop to the rescue again.

The snow is an old .ABR brush, Ron's Magical Snow, from the days when Ron's brushes could be used with Photoshop Elements. Alas, his new brushes need the full on Creative Suite version, or whatever it is these days ... I can't use them. I'm still running Elements 9! It works, I own it outright, and I've no reason to change it, since it does everything I want it to! The only thing is, sometimes people come along with fabulous new brushes which I can't use; but there's a free site, All Free Download (dot com), which is loaded with old fashioned brushes. They are absolutely free and this is not one of those sites plagued with viruses and such antisocial rubbish. It's perfectly safe, and the worst thing you might have to do is look at a couple of pay-per-view commercials in exchange for downloading some very good .abr brushes. Enjoy!

This sword is Merlin's Katana ... but I've been unpacking loads of props from years ago, and just discovered that I own Xurge 3D's Ranger weapons! I had no idea I had these -- expect to see them very soon. I honestly have no idea what I have stashed away from 2013 or so. Even though I didn't have the harddrive space, I shopped a lot of sales, grabbed fantastic special offers. Now's the time to bring them out, dust them off and play! The Ferendir skinmap is one such stashed item. It renders as well as anything I've ever seen, and with the pixel and shadow sampling settings cranked way up on 3Delight, the resolution is brilliant. That skin absolutely glows.

The costume is the bottom half of Xurge 3D's Medieval Royalty cossie; you saw the whole thing yesterday. Now I've got the surface texture adjustments worked out to get good results in Studio from an item configured for Poser, it's easy to work with...

And so to bed. More tomorrow! 

Moody lighting, fantasy sets ... Genesis 8 and Michael 4

Genesis 8 (the Dae character wearing Varun hair, in fact), standing in the old Reparation set -- which renders up well in Iray, by some complete fluke. Half the time, the old materials don't work in Iray; and half the time they do. Curiouser and curiouser. Anyway, this was Take One on an idea I've been pursuing for a couple of days --

Very nice render quality on that -- but the strength of the image is in the lighting and camera settings; and those I did in Studio 3 (!) before sending the whole thing over to Studio 4. In fact, I designed and built this set, lighting and camera around a scene using Xurge 3D's Medieval Royalty costume, on Michael 4 ...

Again, that's a heck of a nice render -- it's "just" a Studio 3 raytrace, because ... well, the guys at Xurge are not joking when they warn you, their costumes are optimized for Poser and may not work in DAZ Studio. Some do, some don't; and this one really doesn't. It took about an hour of working around and around it, to come up with a compromise, where the costume might not look as if would in Poser, but at least it looks terrific.

Borrowing a catalog image from Xurge, this is what it ought to look like:

Catalog image. See this.

Well, after an hour of work, I was about halfway there and decided to cut my losses and call it good! It's fairly reasonable:

...in another hour I might have got it, but I'd had enough of fiddling about, for a couple of reasons. The best I was going to get was a Studio 3 render on this, because in Studio 4 it would have to be reconfigured all over again ... and I can't save a file out of Studio 4, so any work I put into renders on that platform is ephemeral: one shot. Soooo -- I decided to call it right here and be satisfied...

Well, okay, not quite. Just for fun (ha!) I let Iray have a go at rendering this same costume, and the results are idiotic. Laughable. I actually spent another half hour trying to get Iray to "shake hands" with this costume, and it utterly refused, so -- stuff it.

The set rendered beautifully, though, so I left the set, camera and lights just as they were, deleted the Michael 4 and put in a Genesis 8 in his place ... which is where you came in, today!

The last image for this post is left over from yesterday. I didn't get to an upload because I had the headache from hell, but I did finish out the work with Xurge's Druid Shaman costume...

Now, that's a Studio 4 raytrace, with progressive rendering turned on and all the settings cranked up till it took about half an hour to render. Oh, yeah ...

I actually find myself wondering if Iray can make sense of this costume??? No way to tell, without trying it! I'll come back to this in a few days. I have a couple of things to render while they're burning in my imagination, so we'll set this one aside for a little while and come back to it.

Also, I treated myself to some new toys from Renderosity right before I came up with the aforementioned headache from hell. I'd love to get them installed tomorrow. So -- more soon!

Xurge fantasy goodies, and chasing image quality ... whoooo!

Nope, that's not an Iray render, and that ain't Genesis. That's good old Michael 4, and a Studio 4.11 raytrace right out of 3Delight, with the render settings cranked way high. Now I'm amazed. Also thrilled to bits. Take a closer look, see how the mapping renders up:

Firstly, that's believable sunlight, and the higher sampling rate brings the skin tones up brilliantly. I've dialed the render settings up so high on this, the render took a whole whopping 43 minutes, as against nine or ten for the default settings. Whooo! So, let's go again --

Wow. Seriously. The costume is Xurge 3D's Druid Shaman, which is optimized for Poser ... I only needed to overdrive the displacement mapping and dial down the specularity for it to render up beautifully in Studio. The skinmap is SAV Atlas (from Renderosity), but the vascular map is the M4 Displacement from the DAZ marketplace. The eyes are the dark brown option from The Eyes Have It (DAZ marketplace). The set is DM's Elven Shed again (Renderosity), and the trees you see here are the Deluxe Trees, also from DAZ marketplace, I think. Depth of field is turned on, and the virtual aperture is set to F/15 to get this effect. I have two lights on it, with softer shadows.

I did a tiny bit of painting in Photoshop afterward, largely because the mask needed a little help to look good in a screaming closeup. Seen very close, it's obviously made in halves and "stuck together:" the diffuse map doesn't quite match down the nose. But it's a dead easy fix in post, if you just give it a few minutes. And the costume has an impeccable fit on Michael 4. Take a close look at the sandals.

So, since raytraces are done in a lot less than an hour, let's go again with two Michael 4 characters in Xurge 3D costumes, and a set --

This time I wanted two very different skinmaps, hair, faces. Aside from a couple of "artifacts" in the render, and adding highlights to the hair, I did nothing at all to this. Oh -- I hand-painted the body hair on the paler character. Otherwise, you have two M4s, Xurge's Untamed, their Druid Shaman sans the headdress and mask, DM's Mirador set, the Aether hair on the swarthy character, the My Rock Star Hair from Neftis on the paler character. Faces and body morphs designed by me, and again, the vascular mapping is the M4 Displacement map set. (You have to be careful with that one. It has four settings, low, medium, high and super, but anything over medium crumples the mesh on the base figure, so really, only low and medium are useful.)

I switched out materials in a couple of places, changed some diffuse colors, to make the costumes "pop" a little more in Studio -- Xurge warns that they're configured for Poser, and some of the textures do render up rather flat on the default settings. Easy to  fix...

This was just a twenty minute render, even at high-quality settings on 3Delight ... no trees, LOL. Like hair, trees really slow a render down. Even so, a forty minute render is screamingly fast by comparison with anything I can get out of my old PC in Iray, so I'm happy.

Been looking at systems and components. Went to the IT Warehouse site and picked out all the components I'd like built into my new system ... added by the retail value and had to laugh. I just built a (hypothetical!) $3,030 system. We're going to have to come down to earth here, when I finally go shopping, this time next year. We'll see. For the moment, I have tons of toys to play with -- scores of things I haven't even installed yet. So -- more soon! 😁