Ronin, Xeno, and a lot more!

Been busy ... fiddling with IRay, trying to get it to play nice. Sorta halfway there, although we're not seeing the glorious skin tones that are definitely possible:

Right now, what I can squeeze out of IRay using Michael 4 is like ... "raytacing on steroids." These are seriously nice renders. They're not photographic by any means, but very nice renders. Have been reading on forums and tutorials, and (most old hands at this say) it comes down to needing to buy all the maps and shaders in the world to get those glorious skin tones. And here's the stumbling block: there are no shaders available for Michael 4. They only entered the repertoire with Genesis. The old figure is pretty much abandoned as per specialist shaders, which means that coaxing photographic results out of IRay with Michael 4 is probably not possible. I can maybe improve on this a bit, but to get astonishing results, we'll need to look elsewhere.

Try this for size, for a start:

I did this in 2015, in Reality/LuxRender. In Reality, it's just a few clicks to configure it, and you can re-re-readjust the lighting on the fly during the render. This was done with Reality 2.0. The current version is 4.3; and I got this result in about two hours flat, including posting the model:

To my eyes, this looks better than the IRay render of the same character (same skin map, same lights, same everything). The Lux Render is actually tickling the line of being photographic ... and the software is 100x easier to use than IRay. Soooo...

Just waiting to get the bugs ironed out. Waiting for tech support, but they only write/reply once per week, and this is taking forever. *Sigh* Anyway, at least I've learned the Studio 4 interface backwards and sideways while trying to coax a decent render into being!

And in the course of mucking about, I found some extremely rudimentary morphs that allow you to at least make Genesis look like an adult rather than Peter Pan:

It still looks like a cartoon of a human, but at least it's not an adolescent body form now. What really is creepy is, if you "hide" the costume so as to see the torso, there isn't a detail on the skinmap. No freckles or hair chest, sure, I can see the sense of that. But the Genesis doll has no nipples, which looks ... creepy. You can put body builder muscles on this guy, and he has no nipples. You don't realize how odd it looks till you see it. I guess mammals are as mammals do! 😮 Alas, to do much more with Genesis, you have to chuck a lot of money at characters, toupees and costumes. Right now, I don't have the cash, it's as simple as that! You'll have to bear with me while things chug along as fast as they can. Blame the dentist, LOL.

Also -- something very exciting is happening:

Yes!!!! There is a new Mel Keegan book on the way! This is fabulous news, and it's been a thrill designing the cover. I did most of it in Bryce 7 Pro, working with an old image from years ago, which was re-edited to take out the ocean, move the mountains and so on, so that the background started life like this, kinda like a Chris Foss book cover from the days of yore:

...before it went into Serif to have the byline added, then into DAZ Studio 3 to have the character rendered, then into Photoshop to be painted, then back into Serif to have the title overlaid. There might be some nips and tucks or tweaks to be done to it later -- I have all the files, it can be adjusted at whim -- but the author is delighted with this design. And so am I!

That's all from me for today. More soon ... still experimenting at full throttle!

"Best Laid Plans" ... and the wheeze of the week. Really.

This one, I would have to call "Best Laid Plans," or "Another Fine Mess You Have Gotten Me Into," because of the look the angel is giving the hero, and the way it looks like the hero is trying to fast-talk his way out of a mess he's landed them all in! Where's the little green vamp? Taking the picture, maybe? Or is he the only one who got away and might come back with the cavalry and rescue them! Gotta love this. So have a closer look:

Nothing fancy: good old raytrace out of DAZ Studio 3 ... no fuss, no mickey mouse, just reliable work first time, every time. Meanwhile --

I managed to find and load the Genesis 3 base figure today. I did the male one, because after window shopping the 3D stores, I'm sooooo tired of looking at babes in nonexistent costumes. So here is the Genesis base figure, in an IRay render:

It's the skinny little boy on the left. The child on the right is the original Genesis base. I don't know why I expected more! This would be the time when you go shopping and lash out tons of cash you don't have, to buy characters to click into place (the whole thing is plug and play, from automatic lights to pre-set cameras, to auto everything). It's a bit disappointing for an artist. I guess I'll spend A$60 and buy the Body and Face morphs for Genesis 8, and make my own characters, then drop another $125 or so on some decent skin maps, and then a ton of bucks on costumes to fit; and then A$75 on the Reality plugin ... are you adding this up?! In short, it's going to be a while, because these are big investments, and frankly, the dentist made off with all my money a short time ago. Ack.

Besides which, Studio 4.10 is doing very weird things. Right now, on top of not being able to even find most of my content, when I try to save a file, it does this, which I have entitled "Wheeze of the Week:"

That collection of boxes stacked on top of each other is supposed to be Michael 4! This is what I get when I try to save my work ... so I can't save anything. So shelling out a ton of money before these problems are solved is not a wise idea. And tech support write to me about once a week, so it's taking a very, very, very long time to get anywhere. Hey ho. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm playing with the interface, learning it ... figuring out the lights and so forth. What I'm holding out for is to eventually see the kind of render quality you hope for -- like this catalog picture from Renderosity:

Intensity 2.0 IRay Lighting

...I guess many (most?) people give up trying to figure it out, and just buy the lights, buy the shaders, buy the cameras, buy the skin maps, buy the pre-set characters ... everything automatic, plug and play, click, click, click, render, done, sign off on it. Hmm. I've been hoping for more.

We soldier on: I'm not going to give up till I see what tech support can do for me, and I will chuck some bucks at Genesis, but only when I know I can save the work. And I'll probably cut a long story short and go right to Reality after all, which I know and trust from years ago. In the meantime --

Thank gods I still have Studio 3! And I'll probably continue to run it for a long, long time, because oodles of my content seems to be incompatible with Studio 4.10! If I ever want to use truck-loads of stuff I've bought across the years, it's Studio 3 or bust! 😡

A comedy of software errors. And fireflies.

Okay ... so now we're starting to get to the bottom of why DAZ Studio 4.10 is such a mangled mess on my computer: the Install Manager stuffed up the job royally. Almost nothing I'm supposed to have is available, and what is available is in weird places ... like, a pair of boots in the ANIMALS folder, and a crocodile in the PEOPLE folder ... most stuff is still just plain missing. The Install Manager put the incredibly outdated Michael 3 in the Genesis 3 folder (!), and lost Victoria 3, Michael 4 and Victoria 4 altogether. I am searching everywhere for content that's scattered like confetti! And often, when I do find something, I get error messages that boil down do, "Sorry, the stuff you bought years ago ain't compatible with this version of Studio, tough luck." OMG.

Today, however, I stumbled over the installers for a very basic, plain set of shaders for various materials, so decided to slap the Simple Skin shader on Michael 4 (since Genesis 3 isn't available yet), and see how it rendered up. Not too bad, but it doesn't bear close inspection. Either Michael 4 doesn't render very convincingly in IRay, or ... what? The render is full of "fireflies," if you look in the darker areas. These are sparkles where there should be resolved, finished pixels. In Reality, this issue is addressed by letting the image "cook" a lot longer. Soooo...

I was going to set up the same shot, above, to render for 3x as long at a higher resolution, but when I reopened the file after dinner, I discovered that Studio hadn't saved it properly: all the geometries were lost, and instead of Michael 4 loading, a curious figure built of primitives (cubes, spheres and cylinders) loaded in his place. So the file for the above image is gone. Aaarrrgghh. Give me strength.

Having run out of time, I just slapped a really quick shot together and rendered it THREE ways: with and without the Simple Skin shader, and with 3x the resolution in the render (which blows the render time to kingdom come, incidentally). Result: you cannot tell a difference, none at all, between shots where you use the shader or not on Michael 4; and cranking up the render resolution and cooking time made no difference whatsoever. Here's the best IRay could do with poor old Michael:

That's at massively high rez, and rendering forever. Hmm. It could simply be down to the fact that Michael 4 was never designed to be subjected to the rigors of this kind of rendering. Mind you...

AT a detail level, when you look at the hands and the venous mapping (and ignore the fireflies in the shadowed area), it's impressive. Look at the fingernails for a start, and tendons in the wrist. That is very good. There are forums full of people tearing out their hair, trying to get rid of what they call "grain" in their high-rez renders (unfinished cooking among the pixels, is what it is), and there's ten different ways to tackle the problem.

Suffice to say, I've had enough for today and will try again tomorrow, with a different project.

DAZ tech support dropped me a line again this week, and I might be one (small) step closer to getting the teething problems sorted out. There's a procedure called Database Maintenance that might go a long way to fixing the trouble ... but I'll need pro advice before I go there, because apparently it can also create a complete shambles. And I'm exhausted. So -- we wait a bit longer!

Meanwhile, living in hopes that all this will come right in the end, I've been window shopping at Renderosity...

PHX Nate for Genesis 8

SAV Ades

PHX Sean for Genesis 8

Now, there is the problem of getting third party stuff to land in an accessible place inside Studio 4.10, so you can find it, load it and work with it ... but since most of these renders, above, are carrying the "DAZ Studio /IRay" labels," I'm going to assume the designers have the installation all worked out. Please gods, they've got it worked out. I think I shall start with ONE model, and get it up and running ... take notes, and then try another. One step at a time, right?

Anyway, if you want to take a look at Renderosity, there's some good stuff for Genesis figures. Not all of it, by any means: some of the figures/characters, particularly the males, are fairly ludicrous; but some are very good indeed; and generally speaking, Renderosity tends to be a lot cheaper than the DAZ marketplace. So ...

That's it for me for today. Tired. Time to take looong nap. More soon.

Angel and troll ... misadventures, experiments, and hilarious results

Let's do the good stuff first! A good old DAZ Studio 3 raytrace, tweaked up in Photoshop: quick to do, with guaranteeable results every time:

Boy, am I glad I still have Studio 3 on the system! Yes, I "go fifteen rounds" with Studio 4.10 every day, but it's being a bitch to work with: not working properly at all. DAZ has an Installation Manager now which purports to install everything automatically. Hunh? Well, my stuff has been placed into weird "exploded" folders, a directory structure that you can't follow or make sense of, so you can't find anything ... and 90% of the time, when you do stumble over something, although the Install Manager reported that it installed the item, it did did NOT install it, just shoved the installer into the folder!!! Then, when you click to install the older item, the program is lousy with error messages about widgets that don't work and/or are incompatible with ... whatever.

Am perilously close to the end of my patience. Also getting very tired of waiting for tech support, who have taken four days so far to get back to me on a polite, intelligent query. Puffs of steam are starting to come out of my ears. So am trying to thrash through at least some of the problems myself, with a small amount of success.

Managed to cure one of the "trip on startup" problems, so that a Genesis figure will load -- not the later, "good" Genesis figures, 3 and 8, but the original one. It looks like a little plastic Star Wars action figure:

Genesis figure, first look in IRay: underwhelming.

  I know this is the original Genesis figure, and they probably knew they hadn't gotten it right yet, but this is ... pretty awful, puppet-like:

If this is Genesis ... it looks like a Star Wars action figure doll -- and this is an IRay render. You wouldn't believe how baaaad the raytrace looked. Okay, so we want the Genesis 3 at the very least, and preferably Gensis 8. Here's the problem: The "automatic everything" Install Manager swears up and down that it installed them both, male and female. But they're not accessible to the program, being lost among an "exploded" file structure that needs fixing.

Tech support? Uh, hello, tech support? I've looked into this myself, but you soon get popup warnings about optioning "database maintenance:" this can severely stuff everything up. Not going to go there without professional advice. Still waiting... and waiting... Hence, to get good art, I've run home to Studio 3! Those traditional renders might not be trying hard to look like photos, but at least they're compelling as artwork! Bear with me: there's a loooong way to go yet.

Also, I took the plunge and experimented with bringing a TREE into Terragen ... with somewhat hilarious results. It's a nice enough render, and if the tree had been compatible with the program, it would have been very pretty indeed:

If you see this at somewhat larger size, you'll see at a glance what I mean about hilarity:

Uh huh. The tree model is, in fact, incompatible. Yes, it's an OBJ, but it's an oooold OBJ from something like 2011 or 2012. Every leaf is the size of a tabloid newpaper; and every leaf is (!) rectangular! In other words, it didn't load the transparency map that forms the cutout shape of leaves! Soooo...

Well, I learned a lot: I know now how to get an OBJ into Terragen (!) and how to position it, which was a Very Big Issue (sorted), and so forth. And I also know that the existing trees I own are not compatible. However, US$17 gets you this, at Renderosity:

That's Flink's Tree #6 pack, and it says right there on the page, it suits Terragen as well as Vue and what have you. Tempting, isn't it? More tempting than US$100 for a pack of trees from XFrog. Sure, I know you're getting twenty trees for your A$150 ... but I mean, a hundred fifty bucks?! So I might just go for the OBJ trees here, since Flink promises they work with Terragen, and we shall see!

Anyway, I've got IRay working to one degree and another, as a short-term stopgap ... because I'm not plowing money into Studio 4 before the "exploded directory" issue gets fixes, and yet at the same time it's so frustrating! So I am playing with IRay on things where you can just about get away without throwing wads of cash at shaders and lighting packs:

This is worth seeing at large size, and I'm fairly happy with it. It's an old, old DAZ model -- the robot; and it rendered up rather well. That IRay render took about an hour. Tomorrow, I'll experiment with rendering using the NVIDIA video card rather than the CPU. I haven't done that so far because (!) every time I've tried it in the past (albeit with Reality), it's crashed the system. Didn't want to go through that today -- too much aggravation with trying to find the Genesis figures (where did the Install Manager put them???) and trying to make sense of things that didn't install at all, and others that installed, all right, only to be incompatible when they unpacked! Frustrating? You could take a bite out of the furniture.

LOL, more soon.