A Genesis 8 pinup boy, in Iray ... you're welcome. And this is where my system seems to max out: it's a simple enough image, but it doesn't matter how long I leave it to render, this is the maximum amount of resolution it will do. Anyway -- who's complaining?! This is a new face, but he's wearing the Zander skinmap and the Landis hair. I rather like this face, so we'll come back to it in some dramatic context, rather than doing the fashion magazine shoot with him.
Also today -- Michael 4 gets a new pair of boots, and I spend about two hours figuring out how to get an old, old scene into Iray and configure it. Now, the render took no time at all. Minutes as a raytrace, and less than an hour in Iray, to come up with this:
And that's a very complex scene with four buildings, two figures, trees, the works. That's not a backdrop, I actually put the other buildings back there. And this, in under an hour, because they're lower-poly models. Hmm. Fascinating, innit? The trick is to get the figures and whatnot to render well --
It ain't easy to get the Generation 4 figures to render well in Iray, but there are tips and tricks you can use, even before you start investing great wads of cash in converters (not to mention putting the computer back into the workshop, because it won't connect to the internet anymore; and Studio 4.11 doesn't seem to like me just merging folders and calling it an installation. Rats). In fact, I'm fairly pleased with the way these render up. No, a Generation 4 figure is never going to look as real or convincing as Genesis 8 (duh), but ... four hours to render one guy striking a pose. One hour to render a whole complex scene. We can still have a lot of fun with scenes, just the way we used to, if I can do this right!
The new boots are Xurge's cavalier boots, and they look good on M4. I dirtied them up a bit; and I could wish the leather was more "sagged" at the ankle, creased or whatnot. For example, reference the footwear in this still from BBC's The Musketeers --
Now, that's the way boots are supposed to look, and wear! The problem is, I've never seen a pair of boots for M4 or Genesis that have the sag and wear patterns. They're all pretty much like Xurge's boots ... but for $4 in a sale, who's going to complain? Not me. Go to DAZ and search on "boots for Genesis 8," and check out the range. It's narrow, and nothing there is, really, any more impressive than Xurge's boots. The main difference is, the ones you see in the DAZ store are lashed up with Iray shaders. I rendered the boots, above, with the original Xurge diffuse maps, and they actually look good.
Off to bed now! Don't know if I'll get the chance to post tomorrow: I'll be busy getting ready for a major road trip. Dave and I are heading to Grampians NP for five days. So if I don't post tomorrow, it'll be next weekend before I'm back. Don't worry: it's just a short vacation. Like the man said in the movie --
I'll be back. 😎
