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Solved Songbird ReMix Question (DAZ Studio)

Joe Pingleton

Joe Pingleton

Member
I was wondering about about some problems I am having with "Songbird ReMix" in DAZ Studio. In the promo images the birds had fluffy feathers on their bellies and neck and in DAZ studio they are not there. (see attached image). Also the wings sometimes have little squares on them in DAZ Studio. Additionally I get a "Can not find file: raven.jpg" error when I try to load the "American Robin" materials.

Has anyone else had these problems of have any tips for resolving them?
 
Miss B

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
I'm going to have our bird man, Ken Gilliland check in to your query, as these are his products.

I can tell you that he's updating a lot of his older products for use in DS, so please post here which particular bird set these are from so he'll be able to answer your question(s) for you.

Oh, and BTW, welcome to the HiveWire forums. :)
 
Miss B

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
OK, that will help Ken respond to your query. I know he's in the middle of updating a lot of old sets for DS, but just don't know all of the ones he's already done, and which are on the list to be done. He can best answer that for you next time he's on the forum, though that might not be until later tonight, or tomorrow.
 
Ken Gilliland

Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
Hi and I'm sorry to hear to here you are having difficulties with Songbird ReMix. Let's go through the issues...

The reason for you not seeing the fluffy feathers is that you have to activate them through morphs. The majority of the Fluff feathers are found in the Hip and Neck section in "Action Morphs".

Capture.JPG

As for the Raven texture, you found an error in the set (I thought those references were corrected years ago). I think the only one which is the American Robin.
Either go into the material editor and change the Iris material diffuse texture from "Raven.jpg" to "amrobin_m.jpg" or download the attached file (at the bottom of this post).

For the small squares on the wings, I assume you are doing Iray renders. Physical renderers like Iray and Superfly have trouble with the super thin feathers. When the feathers bend, there isn't enough geometry to compensate for a smooth bend, hence the backsides of the feathers interfere with the front sides. If you try rendering the model in 3Delight (or Firefly in Poser), you'll see there isn't an issue, because they are much more forgiving renderers.

...but we'll get you an Iray render and there is an pretty easy solution to this. With the model loaded, go to the Scene Tab and click the little box...

Capture.JPG


Go to "Edit" --> "Geometry" --> "Convert to SubD". Now, your model will be in SubD and ready for subdividing. Go to the "Parameters" tab and in the model, select "General" --> "Mesh Resolution". Turn the "Render SubD Level" to "3" (that will take care of the little blocks). I like to change "Edge Interpolation" to "Soft Corners" as well.

Capture.JPG


If ever you get an exploding model (geometry going crazy) in SubD, switching the Algorithm from "Catmark" to "Bilinear" usually solves that issue.

All of these issues will be solved by years' end when I complete the massive 1,000+ bird update I'm currently working on. The update will include having support for all 4 renderers (Iray, Superfly, 3Delight and Firefly), All morphs and control in the Body section of the model for easier access, translucency added to the feathers and much, much more. Updates, as always, are free to my customers.

Since you have the Songbird ReMix base set, you might want to get all the freebies I have for it on my website (look under downloads).

Hope that helps :)
 

Attachments

  • American Robin-M.zip
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Last edited:
Ken Gilliland

Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
Yes, I've done that before with some success... but two things-- Poser 10 doesn't always subdivide right. In Poser 11, they fixed that.... and in Firefly there's no reason to subdivide, the wings render fine. In Superfly, they can be an issue that subdividing corrects.
 
Joe Pingleton

Joe Pingleton

Member
Thank you for your kind words and hard work on products for us to play with. I got your owl around Christmas time and couldn't resist adding to my aviary during the Audubon's Birthday Charity Sale. Hopefully I will get a chance to try your other products soon. I have been updating the older versions to Iray and can't image your job of updating a 1,000 + models. The one's you have updated already are magnificent. ;)
 
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