At last ... we start to flex our muscles with real, genuine scenes -- not just character tests and costume tests and hair experiments, but "every picture tells a story" type scenes. Genesis 8, Iray: got the lighting worked out, got the DOF (depth of field) worked out for Iray. And so long as I only muck about with the Genesis figures, DAZ Studio 4.11 will save the projects. No joy yet with saving the old figures or content. Every time I save a file, I reopen it to find a stack of boxes where Michael 4 used to be! Infuriating. (Mind you, having said that, Iray hates to render Michael 4 most of the time; it's pot luck and some of the results are just plain awful. Skinmaps that look lovely in a raytrace look like crap in Iray. So I'll probably actually stick with Studio 3 to render M4, until I have a far, far faster computer and can get Reality to work, because Reality renders M4 beautifully. One day...
For the moment, this is starting to get exciting:
These are off the peg characters -- Dae and Rex, by a designer called Gypsy Angel. Before I can start to design my own characters, I need the G8 head morphs, and a lot more hairstyles. Getting there -- one thing at a time, right?! Am juuuust starting to give up on DAZ tech support: I don't believe they know what the file-save problem is, much less how to fix it. (It might not be fixable, so it's up to me to find a work-around and just get past this. I think I'm about halfway there.)
I call this picture "Hunters" ... these guys are a team, and they're out there in the wilderness, among the remnants of a ruined civilization, tracking ... something or someone. This was a four-hour render in Iray, at which point I called it "good enough" because the last hour made no visible difference to the quality. That's as good as I'll get with my computer, and in fact, it's pretty good. I can live and work with this, so now we start to get some traction and go forward. (IBL lighting here, and complex render settings. If anyone is interested to know them, drop me a line -- I'd be glad to share what I've learned, and what works.)
Haven't posted art for a few days, because I just didn't get any results worth posting: not all experiments work, and although you learn a lot from things that don't work, you wouldn't upload the results! One thing I am working on, though, is an inventory of my "assets," being all the props, materials, poses, characters, whatever, I own. Got to do this. The whacked out way in which Studio 4.11 lists assets will make it utterly impossible to keep track of them without a list, so -- start as we mean to go on, as the old saying goes. The list is huge. I mean, HUGE. Am about halfway there, once again...
This one worked out fairly well:
That's the old Garden of Galahad set, rendered in Iray, with the lighting set up to simulate sunset or dawn. It's reasonably good, though I wouldn't say Iray really likes the old materials. It would doubtlessly be far happier with shaders, shaders, shaders ... but there aren't any for this, and even if there were, it would take all day, or days, plural, to replace all the old mats with shaders; and what would you spend the time for??? (I think I actually prefer the old raytrace, which isn't trying to be a photo, and does look rich and deep with texture and rugosity. There's a new word for you: the quality of being rugose. Look it up.)
Anyway -- more art soon. Lots and lots of things to play with! I just got some shaders from DeviantArt, and some poses from Renderosity. Must get some more hairstyles for G8, and I've been looking at these:
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| Ajax hair |
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| Landis hair |
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| Orson hair |
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| Blair hair |
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| Heath hair |
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| Varun hair |
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| Royce hair |
As I said, one thing at a time. I like the look of Varun and Landis. Have put them on the wishlist, and ... the fact is, the rolling discounts are going on all the time. Everything, bar none, is on sale, every few weeks or so. I'll just keep an eye on them and be patient!
More soon. For now ... that's it for me, for today. Yawn. Heading for bed in a few minutes -- it's almost midnight, no wonder I'm yawning!