Moonbeams and flutterflies ... this was fun!

 

This is the old Garden of Galahad set, which actually works quite well in Iray without any pushing and pulling on the surfaces and textures (it's odd; some things work fine, others barely work at all). That's Flink's Tree #6 (from Renderosity) on the left, imported as a simple OBJ; and the old GlowMoon prop, which works like magic in 3Delight, but doesn't work so well in Iray, so I painted it in Photoshop, after the fact. To get this effect, I parked a spotlight, very, very powerful, in direct line-of-sight with the moon, and turned on raytraced shadows. It worked! And also --

That's the right hand of Georgia for Genesis 8 Female, with nail polish switched out for (!) a car paint shader. I have two lights set, and loads of power in the Photometrics. The background is a photo I took many years ago at Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens, and the butterfly is lifted out of a 2D photo. The lens flare was added later in Photoshop, using Ron's Bokeh Brushes, from the DAZ Marketplace. This was fun!

And speaking of Georgia for G8 Female ... that's the Shaded Haven set, same lights, I just added the character and switched the shaders on the fabrics, to get a new dress. I really, really need to buy some wardrobe props for the females to wear. This took about fifteen minutes, because I rendered it BIG. In fact, at 3000 pixels wide, I was able to go in and crop a whole different picture out of the middle of it, which gives you a good look at the model and the shaders on the dress:

More soon, as work permits. I have a zillion experiments to run. Rendering happily!

The Night Before Battle

 

The title tells all ... kind of speaks for itself. What you have here is ...

Michael 4, wearing the Ferendir skinmap (from Renderosity), which has been tweaked and configured for DAZ Studio and 3Delight; and I overlaid the Michael 4 venous maps (from the DAZ marketplace), and used the Aged for M4, from the Morphs++ pack to sculpt the hands. That's Neftis's Daniel hair, set to black and made long; the loincloth from the Wood God costume -- DAZ marketplace -- resurfaced with red leather. That's the Great Sword from the Fae Weaponry prop set (from DAZ). The chair, shieldwall, props, floor and and lamp are from DM's Kerrick's Throne set. Everything has been resurfaced; a lot of work was done on the floor, to make it softly reflective. The face and body are designed by self, using Morphs++ for M4, with eyes from The Eyes Have It (from DAZ). I havwe two lights on this, and the DOF is turned on, with a virtual aperture of 30. Then I cranked up the raytrace settings to squeeze everything possible out of it, and then did some Photoshop painting, for the flames, smoke and shadows. Nice.

And I really, really like this character, so you can expect to see him again soon! In fact, I'm thinking of giving him a name and pairing him with the black horse. That would be a lot of fun. Hmmm...! 

One of the main experiments I must run soon is to see if I can import the character preset files from the old Studio 4. If I can, we can have the old characters back. If not ... well, rats. Worth a shot, anyway!

A grab-bag of goodies

 

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.

Step into my parlor...

 

First of all -- yippee: I've got raytracing working as well as it ever did, so the gorgeous "painted raytraces" I used to like so much are back on the menu. Second, I've got about forty different experiments going in this picture, and most of them worked! Imagine my surprise (shock, horror?) to realize I'd actually forgotten how to do some of this stuff, in about a year of not touching it for fear of burning out the old computer! True. I had to get in there and remind myself how HOW to do some of this. Anyway -- sorted.  

One of the best things about raytracing this time around is the speed of it. The render is done so fast, I suspect I can actually pose a crowd! If it'll do a render of some complexity, with the quality settings turned up ten notches, and finish in a few minutes, it ought to render a half dozen figures -- the generation four figures, low poly -- in less than an hour, yes? Well, maybe. But it's worthy a try. Anyway ... that's probably it for today, because I feel pretty lousy. Wore up with an impending migraine, got over than and am coming down with a sore throat. Oh, joy. So I'm checking out for today and we'll try again tomorrow ... so many things to work with, and work out. It's fun again!

A character created from scratch! This is neat --

 

Spent the afternoon experimenting with raytracing ... yes, raytracing! This, above, is not a raytrace, obviously. This one is an Iray render, using one of Sveva's backdrops to save time, and a lot of Merlin's grass (from the Wild Borders set) to make the foreground and background kind of "smoosh" together till they look contiguous (I just invented a word). What's interesting about this render is that I created the figure from scratch. It uses a skinmap called called Zander for Genesis 8, and the Landis Hair for Genesis 3, but the face and body form were designed on the fly. This is good. I can do this. I rendered it at 2000 pixels high, rebalanced it quickly to brighten it up (a lot faster than trying to figure out the Gamma in Studio, though you could do it that way, if you wanted to), and called it good. Oh -- the backdrop had some work done to it; I Gaussed it quite a bit to soften it, give the impression of a focal drop-off into the distance... Now --

This one is your raytrace I'd been hoping to get raytracing working properly in Studio 4.15, and I think we can call it job done! Everything is performing properly --

-- the vascular mapping is on and working, that's Michael 4's High Resolution skinmap, there's a displacement map on the costume, custom eyes, DOF on the camera, the works. Plus, I cranked the settings up sky high on the raytrace to pump the most quality out of it that's possible. This would have been an impossible, 10-hour render on the old computer (the reason I shut it down a year or so ago). How long did this take? About twelve minutes. Yes, I'm happy. Good old Michael 4 is back. And --

-- the resolution on the Genesis 8 character is pretty amazing. I believe there's an add-on you can get, which will "age" the Genesis figure. I might get this next, because the one thing about these figures is, try as you might, you always end up with a twenty-something, or even a teen, and I tend to like a guy who looks like he's been around the block a couple of times. Let me see what I can find, something like "Aged for Gensis 8." I have two lights plus an environment light on this, and the result is pretty darned good. Good enough, I think, that if I were using a photographic backdrop, you'd have a hard time picking this for a render. You could assume it's a snapshot. More soon! 

Old props, new surfaces, and lighting fires in Iray

 

Spending a cold, wet day installing old, old props and working with Iray shaders and surfaces to bring them up to spec for rendering as we understand it today. This, above, is DM's old Fantasy Musings, which goes back to about 2012, and is actually still available. The product notes say, "The entire content of this package has been optimized for Poser 6 and above. Not tested in Daz Studio. Some materials will need adjustment." And of course, when this was uploaded, Dannie and Maforno were talking about the 3Delight render engine, not Iray! The truth is, to get it working in Iray took some considerable time, but it was worth it. It renders up nicely. And of course --

--even if you were inclined to stick to poser (I bought Poser Pro 9 and never really got into it; I didn't have any space whatsoever on my C:\ drive to install the figures and props, and Poser wouldn't load content from any other drive, so I was sunk!) ... well, if you were inclined to stick to Poser, the aforementioned Poser 6 is long, long out of date. Ahem. Anyway...

This, above, is the old Dinokonda, which I used to love rendering ... in 3Delight. I just gave it a shot in Iray, and honestly, you had to cringe, LOL. So I spent an hour with the texture maps and redid everything; I still can't get quite the response from Iray that I keep hoping for, but it's not bad. What I'm still trying to work out is gloss and reflection. Right now, it seems to be a kind of "all or nothing" scenario: if the Glossy Layered Weight controls are there, bonza. You can do it. If they're not there -- you're up the creek. I'm sure I'll find a way to do this eventually, but for now I'm pretty happy with this; It's looking almost as good as it did in 3Delight -- not quite. There's room for improvement, and the next time I'm in the mood, I'll keep on experimenting, see if I can get closer to the old work:

More soon ... now I must get some actual "work" done! It's writing and editing stuff, of course ... but it won't do itself. I'll leave you with a closer look at the part of the picture I'm most pleased with -- the flames. I managed to turn the props into light-emitting fire -- gotta like this Ciao for now...

Well, rats. Photoshop 2021 updated, and now it doesn't work!

 

Okay, that's not strictly true, but ... Photoshop Elements 2021 updated itself early this afternoon, and now every time I click the Wacom pen, Photoshop CRASHES. Five times in a row. And yes, I've updated the tablet drivers (no joy). And yes, I turned off Windows Ink (no joy). And yes, I contacted Adobe (no reply after an hour on hold on their help page. I had the presence of mind to try the Wacom pen tablet out with Krita (it works just fine), and other programs, soooo ... we know the problem is with bloody Photoshop, not Wacom. But Wacom will have to fix the issue with a new driver, because you can bet your bottom dollar Adobe won't be bothered about third party peripherals, much less old ones. Makes you want to scream yourself hoarse! So --

Here's a new Genesis 8 female skinmap: Zahara. It renders up reasonably well with minimal work; I should be able to do quite a lot with this. I treated myself to this, plus a set of eye shades and textures from DAZ, the Ultimate Eyes for Genesis. Both were on sale, so ... what the heck? We were going along quite swimmingly till Photoshop auto-updated itself, and that was the end of that! Sometimes, you just can't win. So I'm calling it a day and heading for bed!