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Songbird Remix's Product Preview Thread

Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
The Vintage Furnishings set finally cleared QA and is in the store rounding out my releases for 2022... that;s right no more releases this year ;)

Vintage Furnishings

I have been working on the updates to all the remaining Hawaiian items (Hula for Dawn, Royal Hawaiian for Dusk, Weapons of Lua and Hawaiian Voyager). The Hula and Royal Hawaiian sets will also be reintroduced to support G3, G8 and G9 models (DS/Iray only). I'm guessing most, if not all of this will show up late January in the store.
 

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
I just went through all my emails before logging off for the night, and at 4:01pm today, I got a notification that you had a new product in your store. I'm signed up for vendor notifications for those I purchase from regularly. ;) Of course, I already new about it, but for those who aren't here every day, that's a great asset. :)
 

Sunfire

One Busy Little Bee
QAV-BEE
Contributing Artist
I keep forgetting to let people know that I've released new things. So I hope my fans have that notification on for me. :)

Those notices have gotten me into tight spots. Vendor I like puts out something I really like... then I go trying to figure out how to get it. This time it was easy, I had enough credit at Rendo to get it. :angel:
 

Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
For this year-- I have only 8 updates to do in my catalog. Half of them are close too ready (the Hawaiian items) but we're going to have to wait a bit for their release because the Hula skirt will be reworked by Ryverthorn (whose helped me on Hula) once she finishes her current project. I originally was going to resurrect the M4/V4 and Genesis1/2 versions (which were retired at HW), but decided instead to create new G3-G8-G9 versions which use D-Force for Royal Hawaiian's Feathered Cloak. The Iray versions of these and the Dusk/Dawn Hawaiian sets are stunning.

Here's a sneak peak at the G8 version of the updated Royal Hawaiian, Weapons of Lua and Hawaiian Voyager. I used the UltraScenery Tropics set along with some SBRM Hawai'i birds for the background.

RH for G3-8-9.jpg
 
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Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
While waiting for beta checks and the Hula portion of the Hawaiian sets to get done, I've turned my focus to getting my "Pixel Downs Racetrack" set updated. I'll probably end up updating (and finally getting on the Renderosity store) Nerd3D's starting gate for the set too...

..but it looking at my Pixel Downs working geometry folder, I found a partially done model that I had originally planned as an add-on set for the Racetrack. Since my wife had to go into the office this weekend (and I was a little bored), I decided to tinker with it and see if I could make something of it.

What is it? An add-on on Grandstand. It's a little polygon heavy despite me trying to keep it light (200K), butI think it will really add to the set. Below are some captures from my modeler
 

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Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
Thanks... I put in three types of seating; boxes around the finish line (first image), clubhouse chair seating and simple bench rows (the cheap seats :) ). At the far end of the Grandstand I have a large flat area in front that will be "Clocker's Corner" with tables and chairs for restaurant service (seen in the third image)
 
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Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
At the far end of the Grandstand I have a large flat area in front that will be "Clocker's Corner" with tables and chairs for restaurant service (seen in the third image)
I was JUST looking at Screenshot 3 and said to myself, all four look great, but I'm really liking number 3. Thanks for mentioning what it's going to be. ;)
 

Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
I was JUST looking at Screenshot 3 and said to myself, all four look great, but I'm really liking number 3. Thanks for mentioning what it's going to be. ;)

The patio cafe area is partially inspired by Santa Anita Park's Clockers Corner. You can go there for breakfast before the track opens and watch the morning workouts.

I'm pretty close to done modeling and doing UVs. I do need to puts some additional doors, entrances and some stairs to the track level.

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Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
thanks... I had to rework all the seats today--- ugh! I turned out that my chairs were a little too big for the standard human model so I have to drop the seats by about 25%. That of course meant I had to add in more seats to complete the rows since they were smaller and that added another 80K of polygons. I think I'm going to piece out parts of the model as optional loads to cut the polygon size. This will be primarily the seats (which are the bulk of the polygons).

How many seats are in the model? The grandstand will seat 11,508 people (108 in box seats, 3,520 in reserved seats and 7,880 in general admission seats). This doesn't include the dining area. which seats an additional 100.

I think posing, clothing and rendering a people filled grandstand would take a lifetime to do and probably black-out half the country in the process from the amount of electricity it would take.

Saying that... I wonder if you place a simple transparency plane that goes across a whole row on seats with a sitting people texture-- perhaps with a couple bends to simulate sitting and some heavy displacement-- that might actually look okay. Though you would need a "from the back" texture too if you had the camera pointed from the seats down to the track.
 

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JOdel

Dances with Bees
HW Honey Bear
Billboards. Yeah, that's probably the only way of getting a crowd into a grandstand. Someone over on DAZ has a whole series of billboard products. Different poses, different genres, etc.

The trick is what angles they might need to be from. A basic from the front and from the back might be enough as a starter. If someone wants to show people *in* the stands it might get trickier, since they'd need some side views at a distance from the foreground where their characters are. Might make sense as add-on products for someone later.
 

Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
I'm pretty much done with the grandstand model now-- just tweaking it so weird quirks in Poser and DAZ Studio are at minimums (with using minimal polygons to keep model size down-- weird stuff sometimes appears).

I threw in some base Iray materials -- no bump/normals/displacements yet-- to get a feel whether the addition/color scheme feel right with the existing Pixel Downs set and rendered it. I'm pretty happy with it-- the middle image shows the monitor that in each of the Box seats.
 

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Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
I'm busily finishing up lots of updates and new sets... first, what should be coming "soon"...
  • Royal Hawaiian for Dusk (Poser/DS) Update; now includes Iray/Superfly support and D-force cloak
  • Royal Hawaiian for G3-G8-G9 male (DS only) New
  • Weapons of Lua (Poser/DS) Update; now supports Dusk/Dawn, G3-8-9 M/F, M4/V4, and L'homme/La Femme
  • Hawaiian Voyager (Poser/DS) Update; now supports Dusk, G3-8-9 Male, M4, and L'homme
Probably mid-to-late February...
  • Pixel Downs Racetrack update; now includes Iray/Superfly support
  • Pixel Downs Starting Gate update; now includes Iray/Superfly support (helping Nerd3d with this)
  • Pixel Downs Grandstand New
Okay, now about the Grandstand... in doing some renders, I found the front of the grandstand lacking-- it looks great from the trackside but the front ground area plane cut off too close to the front wall to render it without adding something. I had originally planned, when creating the Racetrack in 2012, 5 parts; The actual racetrack, the grandstand, the paddock area, the stables and the front entrance/parking lot. I've decided to create part of the Paddock area and include it with the Grandstand. What I'll include is the paddock circle and parade route, the paddock holding stables and the horse trails to the proposed stables. Maybe someday I'll fill the rest of the paddock area with betting windows and vendor stalls, gardens and benches, etc.

But here's some renders of what I'm modeled so far...
 

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Ken Gilliland

Dances with Bees
HW3D Exclusive Artist
Updates for "Hawaiian Voyager", "Weapons of Lua" and "Royal Hawaiian for Dusk" are now available at Renderosity. Improvements to these 2012-14 sets include separate DS and Poser versions with support for Iray, Superfly, 3Delight and Firefly render engines. Most of the sets have enhanced textures, more content and more logical folder pathway system. D-force technology has been added to the cape in DAZ Studio's Royal Hawaiian set and support for most of the commonly used characters in Voyager and Lua. within the next few weeks "Royal Hawaiian for Genesis 3, 8 & 9" will also be released.

Meantime I continue to populate my already geometry heavy Grandstand with more stuff... Still working on textures but here's a couple renders of the paddock area (one using some of DinoRaul's trees).

Render 2.jpg
Render 6.jpg
 
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