CWRW Product Previews

[phdubrov]

Quick Daz Strands hair vs LAMH IMHO :
+ more stable (but still not rock stable, two crushes and some render glitches in a couple of hours, so probably still need to save-a-lot-on-every-step)
++ styling tools with some collision detection (not bulletproof, but helps a lot)
+- open triangle prism vs ribbon - on a fence here, I'd like to have options
++- only guides in preview - a major plus for no tricks needed, but a lot of area rendering when tweaking
- density in strands per guide leads to a lot of math, like LAMH approach here more
+ a lot of tweaking options

Should be at least as good as LAMH for coats IMO.

 

[tparo]

Quick Daz Strands hair vs LAMH IMHO :
+ more stable (but still not rock stable, two crushes and some render glitches in a couple of hours, so probably still need to save-a-lot-on-every-step)
++ styling tools with some collision detection (not bulletproof, but helps a lot)
+- open triangle prism vs ribbon - on a fence here, I'd like to have options
++- only guides in preview - a major plus for no tricks needed, but a lot of area rendering when tweaking
- density in strands per guide leads to a lot of math, like LAMH approach here more
+ a lot of tweaking options

Should be at least as good as LAMH for coats IMO.

Personally I feeel that the ability to render in Iray without exporting a big +

 

[carmen indorato]

Are you not aware that the Hivewire figures work in DS. And people wonder why its a common misconception that Hivewire is Poser only, a myth probably bore out by all the negativity towards Daz and DS.

Yes! Very much aware. Hivewire is a source of great product that is cross platform which I think was a great business move, a move I wish DAZ had pursued. And it seems you did not read carefully all my post or, perhaps in my dotage, i did not clearly state my case. Still does not lessen my personal experience with DAZ as a content creator. As I said I have been a DAZ product consumer since the release of P4 and was always the staunchest supporter. As i also said I have purchased thousands of dollars of DAZ products there so that I think that alone qualifies me as a DAZ consumer in good standing and a content user well versed in the breadth and scope of their product lines. With that said, for every well supported products sold, there were also many that fell short of that whether they be DAZ originals or products created and sold by third party content creators. It is those products I felt had more potential and and were NOT supported, I am referring to. Although it may have been a good business move on their part, I still felt GREATLY let down when they stopped support of Poser and stopped providing their great content for Poser users.
Because I have not been able to learn D/S......my tired brain does not wrap around learning curves any more, I do not have a clear insider understanding enough to compare new content to older Poser base content. So my only point of reference has been the many years of having been ONLY a Poser content user. All I have had to go by re the product renders on their pages and from those images I have gleaned my opinions.
As far as seeming negative about D/S I am not. I just have not used it to be so. I am negative about content I have seen there that was less than what I felt they were capable of producing.

 

[carmen indorato]

The Daz Dog 8 isn't clunky to be honest its pretty close in quality to the Hivewire dog and has other breeds so unfortunately its usefulness is greater. And where do you get that Daz doesn't support its figures. Most of the bases are released with more content than other figures get in years.

I am referring to the DAZ dog 1 not the second releases which I can not use. Compared to the HW dog, though unfortunately not too many breeds or add-on morphs have been created, the DAZ 1 dog is clunky and not as well made AT ALL. the HW dog is far superior.

 

[carmen indorato]

I don't have any negativity to Daz and still shop there on a regular basis but I only buy Poser content so I tend to search for Poser items and scan those few artists that still produce content for Poser. Due to this fact I have little basis to make any comparisons between Poser and Daz figures. My own personal view is that a lot of people are not anti Daz or Hivewire3D but in the 'I tried it once and didn't like it camp'. They tried the original Dawn and didn't like and has either forgotten she exists or assumed nothing has changed, a common human trait. That and the belief that Dawn does not work in Poser limits the potential customer base for Hivewire3d for, good as any animals are the first draw for many artists are the human figures. The only way this is to change is for the Hivewire team to continue to produce top quality figures and for the rest of us to show that, not only do the figures work in Poser, they are stunning in DS too.

Many 3D artists run on a very tight budget and are not going to buy something because of the hype, those of us already sold on Hiveway quality need to show what can be done with the figures at the hands of the average user irrespective of the program used.

From my POV another problem is the product pages not offering much variety in character possibilities in the images they post there. Seems more variety of product images highlighting the breadth and depth of a product would help sell them better. Also it is nice the vendors like H/W do have showcase galleries for say DAWN or Harry but it would be nice if they also offered hot link on the product page for a curious possible shopper to go and see ALL the possibilities used by the many artists that have purchased the product and used it in their work to help decide buying or not.
Another thing is usability. For the type of imaging I do DAWN has never been an option if for no other reason other than her built in limitations. It was a limitation set in place by the content creators and their right to do so but it affects marketability...in my opinion anyway.

 

[carmen indorato]

I never cared for DAZ's marketing, and said so numerous times on the DAZ forums over the years. I found it too heavy handed, with too many constant sales with constantly fluctuating sales prices. Too many times, I'd purchase something on sale, only to have it go on a deeper discount sale the following week. But that's neither here nor there. While I always felt DAZ products were high quality and shopped almost exclusively at DAZ, I can't speak to DAZ's current quality because the DAZ vendors pretty much stopped supporting Poser with new content. That's why I stopped shopping at DAZ, and no longer consider DAZ a viable brokerage anymore. Granted, I'm also not a fan of the current owners or current management. But again, that's neither here nor there.

I think people are able to create amazing art with both DAZ Studio, just as they can with Poser. I admire anyone who is able to effectively use and understand both Poser and DAZ Studio. I can't. DAZ Studio makes little to no sense to me, and I find both DS lighting and the workspace confusing. I couldn't use DS4 on the monitor I had at the time it was released, and was never able to get enough workspace without having to constantly open and close panels. That might not be an issue anymore now that I have a wide screen monitor, but I doubt DS has gotten any easier to learn for ME. And I started out with DS and used it for a good year regularly, and Poser intermittently so you'd think it would be Poser that had me scratching my head in dismay. But I finally realized Poser clicked, DS didn't, and that's all she wrote. Well, not really, because I continued to try to use DS for some years until after DS4 came out.

We can all speculate as to who is encouraging the falsehoods about HiveWire, HiveWire figures, and what software HiveWire does or doesn't support. But it's all just speculation. All we can do is to correct that misinformation when we encounter it. I believe most people who continue to spread this misinformation have never bothered to try the HiveWire figures. Some of those people are Poser users, some are DS users.

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me that people who support HiveWire would be actively involved in harming HiveWire ... which is exactly what that misinformation is intended to do.

There may be some pernicious folks out there who for whatever reason want to bash a company because they have nothing better to do. That kind of troll has ALWAYS lurked in the Poser/D/S forums and always will. Many of them In my experience don't even do 3D or use either app or any of the supporting products therefore disqualifying their stupid vapid trolling of either. But as much as I am pretty vocal about daz and their marketing choices and product creation choices etc, it is in the end MY OPINION which in the greater scheme of things isn't worth a dingy bat!
We will all try a product or app or watch a movie despite what all the critics might opine which is the way it has always been and will always be...thank GOD!.

 

[carmen indorato]

Carmen Indorato said '' So they sell their tired old animals. Except for a few most fall much short to yours Chris and those D/S users have to use something....right?''

This implies that DS users can't use the Hivewire animals.

I wsn't trying to imply that at all. What I was trying to say and apparently poorly, was that they may produce large volumes of work and supporting option and perhaps make a release look complete like their new dog or horse or whatever, that doesn't make the product better, just offering more options immediately. But if the options they have or can get for their app of choice or render needs ar just those easily found and available then tht is what they have to work with. Beggars are never choosy. Case in point ContentCreators had a variety of products for Poser but the quality of their offerings was rarely of decent quality. Yeah I could go there and find a duck but the quality of the duck was never or rarely as good as might have been offered at DAZ except perhaps DAZ didn't have ducks of any kind. So if I needed a duck for a render I was stuck using ContentCreators ugly badly made duck. FRUSTRATING at the very least.

Likewise if I need a bulldog and none is available for the H/W dog at time of my need then I am stuck having to go elsewhere for a bulldog breed OF ANY QUALITY is available. If H/W had a bulldog breed then it isn't without a doubt I would purchase it here otherwise i would have to go to DAZ and get the next best thing that can be used in Poser.
I hope i clarified my point?!

 

[carmen indorato]

I stopped shopping there for some time but then I found that I could pick up some old, but high quality content, from those vendors that are now only working with DS at 55%- 75% discount. A prospect I decided not to give up on. There are also some vendors making great poser content, Petipet, Merlin and Jack Tomalin to name just a few.

I have not seen any newer work by these creators in a while....unfortunately....seems they have ALL gone to the D/S side.

 

[Miss B]

I have not seen any newer work by these creators in a while....unfortunately....seems they have ALL gone to the D/S side.

I happen to know that Jack Tomalin, my second favorite DAZ PA is still creating for both DS and Poser. Only his Iray add-ons are for DS only, but those aren't the base products, just add-ons.

The same is true of Merlin Studios and Petipet. Their newer products are for DS and Poser. There might be one or two that are for DS only, but most of their products, even their newest products, are for use with both software apps.

The only PA that disappointed me was Stonemason, as he hasn't created anything for Poser in a long time. Then again, his products have gotten so expensive, I wouldn't be able to afford them in any case.

 

[CWRW]

So first bit of playing with the new DS Strand Based Hair (SBH)

These are very quick styling- mainly been messing with the density and shader and all that. I will talk about the differences and pluses/minuses IMO in another post, both from an end user's point of view and from a content creator's point of view.

These are SBH:

Same scene/lighting etc but with LAMH (yes more "finished" but still a decent comparison IMO):

 

[NapalmArsenal]

SWEET!! Joe Pingleton over on Deviant Art did some using the house cat Pawsterity and also Noggins Hampster looks awesome on the hampster Hamateurs

Liking how yours looks on the horse!!

 

[CWRW]

So some thoughts on using the new SBH (these are just my experiences from today and are my opinion only

HUGE advantage to SBH is the fact that it is native/no need to convert to OBJ etc for iray. One can also save the file and go back and tweak to one's content. It does make a somewhat large file- this above scene/file is 11.1 MB (consists of a body SBH and a mane/tail SBH)

End user- def above applies. I haven't seen all that much improvement in rendering times over LAMH myself. But one can of course have multiple haired figures using SBH which is a big advantage.

From a content creator's POV: (and in my case, mainly animals, so "fur" as opposed to a hair style for people)

REALLY missing the ability to have symmetry in choosing areas to generate guide hairs. On the other hand one can do a very quick, down and dirty selection of material zones. In this case, "Coat". In LAMH one can also pick "COAT" (or Fur Body etc) and then deselect the polygons where you don't want guide hairs - that is how I normally start a new LAMH preset for an animal.

Using a paintbrush to select areas to populate hair is weird to me as LAMH one picks polygons using lasso tools. It's not bad- just takes some getting used to- will need to try it with my tablet and see if I can make more refined "density maps"/be able to get more detail there exactly where I want it. But it is pretty fast (again the moving around and zoom is kind of clunky to me tough- I am sure it will get more familiar with more use.)

In the styling I do miss LAMH's ability to use a lasso instead of a rectangle in selecting guide hairs. The zoom/moving around isn't as nice/more clunky somehow- not sure why- one zooms in and out a lot when making these things.

Also I really miss the LAMH ability to just select say "Head" and style that. One HAS to use the somewhat clunky guide hair selection tools within the whole body of the animal which can be tricky. I also miss LAMH's "taper" a lot.

The shader is a bit odd in that I am really missing translucency/that is sort of making me nuts. Also I am not getting the underlying texture map to always "pick up" the way I want. More messing to do

Even after nullifying a lot of settings one still gets a more contrasty look to the hair/a lot of shadows. Def playing with density can ameliorate that to a degree.

Both have the ability to make as many hair groups as desired. Def. LAMH makes picking hair density a LOT easier.

Being able to go back and forth between editing the hair and doing renders is a big advantage to SBH for sure.

Crashing- SNH has not crashed at all for me. I very rarely have crashes in LAMH though. My Mac Pro Tower is 9 years old so I am not using anything too fancy. I DO have a lot of RAM though and a pretty decent processor.

So long story short, as an end user I can really dig the SBH. As a content creator I still prefer LAMH. For myself as an artist using these products, I also prefer LAMH's look better at this point. That could change as I mess with SBH more.

Anyway just some thoughts after messing with both.

 

[CWRW]

And of course LOL I will have to figure out how to "package" an SBH product. Not much idea yet how that will work...

I need to get back on texturing now

 

[L'Adair]

[snip]

Using a paintbrush to select areas to populate hair is weird to me as LAMH one picks polygons using lasso tools. It's not bad- just takes some getting used to- will need to try it with my tablet and see if I can make more refined "density maps"/be able to get more detail there exactly where I want it. But it is pretty fast (again the moving around and zoom is kind of clunky to me tough- I am sure it will get more familiar with more use.)

[snip]

I've only tinkered with the new toy, but I did notice the Mohawk included in the dForce Essentials has a Selection Set that was created, imo, in another program, probably Photoshop. If you look at those images, (they look like a transmap,) the lines are perfect, like something created using the pen tool. I mention this as you can get some really precise control if you use the object/figure templates and create your selection set(s) in a graphics editor and then bring them into the SBH editor.

Here's an example of Joe using a greyscale map to control hair length, in the thread over at Daz.

I need to play with this some more. However, I suspect after one day, you know it much better than I do.

Like LAMH presets, SBH presets will be edit-able by the end-user.

 

[Hornet3d]

So first bit of playing with the new DS Strand Based Hair (SBH)

These are very quick styling- mainly been messing with the density and shader and all that. I will talk about the differences and pluses/minuses IMO in another post, both from an end user's point of view and from a content creator's point of view.

These are SBH:

View attachment 47605
View attachment 47606

Same scene/lighting etc but with LAMH (yes more "finished" but still a decent comparison IMO):
View attachment 47603 View attachment 47604

That is looking good.

From my POV another problem is the product pages not offering much variety in character possibilities in the images they post there. Seems more variety of product images highlighting the breadth and depth of a product would help sell them better. Also it is nice the vendors like H/W do have showcase galleries for say DAWN or Harry but it would be nice if they also offered hot link on the product page for a curious possible shopper to go and see ALL the possibilities used by the many artists that have purchased the product and used it in their work to help decide buying or not.
Another thing is usability. For the type of imaging I do DAWN has never been an option if for no other reason other than her built in limitations. It was a limitation set in place by the content creators and their right to do so but it affects marketability...in my opinion anyway.

One other forum used to have the facility to add a product link to any artwork you posted and I always found it useful to see what other artists had done with any given product and that often influenced my buying decisions. Later for, many reasons, I deleted all of my uploaded renders and I have not visited the site for years so I do not know if this facility still exists. I hope so because I am sure many vendors benefited from it.

 

[Hornet3d]

I happen to know that Jack Tomalin, my second favorite DAZ PA is still creating for both DS and Poser. Only his Iray add-ons are for DS only, but those aren't the base products, just add-ons.

The same is true of Merlin Studios and Petipet. Their newer products are for DS and Poser. There might be one or two that are for DS only, but most of their products, even their newest products, are for use with both software apps.

The only PA that disappointed me was Stonemason, as he hasn't created anything for Poser in a long time. Then again, his products have gotten so expensive, I wouldn't be able to afford them in any case.

I also miss Stonemason as he does create some great scenes and although expensive I think they are worth it if you can afford them. I have picked up most of his old Poser stuff at some great sale prices but I now think I have all that I want and there will be no more.

Petipet seems to add a new product about every other month and it usually 30% off for the first couple of weeks, I love all his sci-fi stuff and any new product usually goes straight into the cart. Jack Tomalin's products are not as frequent but they are usually vast and I love the graveyard and opulent scenes he creates. Finally Merlin seems have new products every month and I tend to buy anything in the Medieval line which is a favourite theme of his. The great thing about all of these vendors is they include the poser files, and often have separate DS and Poser downloads, so they work straight from the box while some other vendors products promoted as Poser need to use DSON.

 

[CWRW]

I've only tinkered with the new toy, but I did notice the Mohawk included in the dForce Essentials has a Selection Set that was created, imo, in another program, probably Photoshop. If you look at those images, (they look like a transmap,) the lines are perfect, like something created using the pen tool. I mention this as you can get some really precise control if you use the object/figure templates and create your selection set(s) in a graphics editor and then bring them into the SBH editor.

Here's an example of Joe using a greyscale map to control hair length, in the thread over at Daz.

I need to play with this some more. However, I suspect after one day, you know it much better than I do.

Like LAMH presets, SBH presets will be edit-able by the end-user.

Trust me- I've been following that thread and then looking at the old Garbaldi documentation to try to figure it all out when I get stuck I def. need to figure out how to import and export the maps- it doesn't work the way I expected. I did save out comments about that process from the Daz thread and will try that.

 

[Joe Pingleton]

I thought I would share my first attempt at using Strand Based Hair on "HiveWire House Cat" in Daz Studio 4.11 and Iray. No post work
Since I am not a DAZ PA I couldn't make it dForce Strand Based Hair, but I don't think it would make much difference on this short hair version. I would be so grateful for any feedback on how I could improve it.

 

[tparo]

I thought I would share my first attempt at using Strand Based Hair on "HiveWire House Cat" in Daz Studio 4.11 and Iray. No post work
Since I am not a DAZ PA I couldn't make it dForce Strand Based Hair, but I don't think it would make much difference on this short hair version. I would be so grateful for any feedback on how I could improve it.

That is really gorgeous. I wonder if its possible to make it a bit longer.

 

[Joe Pingleton]

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement and feedback.

It is definitely possible to make it longer. I was trying for short hair to learn the new hair system before trying a long-haired version, but maybe I went too short.