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Alaric for Dusk

tparo

tparo

Engaged
QAV-BEE
FL, when rendering in Iray and using Interactive you can still use different lighting, scene lights and or HDRIs you aren't just restricted to using the Sun-Sky choice.
Interactive is a more basic render you need to fiddle with the different settings to get good shadows and occlusion, it might be a bit quicker but doesn't give as nice results, in my experience it takes so much fiddling for some renders to get a good result you might as well use Photoreal mode on my machine (CPU only) a portrait render will take about 3-6 hours depending on lighting and surface settings and size, that's using Photoreal mode.
Making sure that surfaces are converted to an Iray shader (Daz supplied an Uber Iray shader and some presets) will help speed up renders, if you don't convert Iray has to take the time to do it. Lighting is important for speed as well, a dark image will take forever a well lite image is much quicker, images that are inside take a long long time as well, I tend to use HDRIs and 1 light, usually a spot light or just a HDRI (the better the HDRI the better and quicker the results). Indoor images I use 3dl, night images 3dl. I have had Iray images take 15 hours any longer isn't really possible because I can't do much else on my computer when rendering in Iray.
 
Faery_Light

Faery_Light

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
Everything has been submitted, now here is hoping my testers and I did not miss something and the promos are good.
 
Pendraia

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
Some good info there Tparo...did I understand correctly that Iray converts the settings if you don't? That explains why you still get good results if you don't convert and also explains why some of my renders take a while...lol
 
Faery_Light

Faery_Light

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
Thank you, Tparo, for that information.
I've noticed that with the latest DAZ Studio program renders look super good too.
 
Faery_Light

Faery_Light

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
Alaric is getting older, happens to us all. :roflmao:
New add-on set for Alaric I'm working on and may take a bit of time.
This set will have one face with no facial hair or brows so folks can add their own, 1 face and body with body hair or brows and no age spots, 1 face with brows and beard with no age spots.
One set will have a face and body with age spots, 1 no face beard and 1 face with beard.
I'll post more as I work.

Here are two images of my work, the morphs are from the dials in Dusk's morph packs.

Now enough work for tonight, it is movie time with Netflix. :)

Alaric-II-3.png
Alaric-II-3-01.png
 
Faery_Light

Faery_Light

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
A few more renders on this set.
These are color and larger views so you can see more of the details.
This is for an older man, 70's or 80's ans some that age have those spots.
My brother is starting to get them and I have a few small ones...sigh.
Rae suggested that I do a set of eyes that look like they are fading in color so I am trying.
These are from the age-spots option.

Alaric-II-3-04.jpg
Alaric-II-02.jpg
Alaric-II-03.jpg
 
Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Running with the wolves.
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
FL,

This looking wonderful!! And having the no-brows option is a great thing for those of us who tend to be picky about hair and eyebrow colors matching! LOL Thank you for that!
 
Faery_Light

Faery_Light

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
I have a or two question and hope someone can answer.
For Poser as well as DAZ Studio, is it better to use normal maps than bump maps?
And how ar ethey created?
 
Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Running with the wolves.
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
FL,

Whether you use normal or bump maps really depends on what you're doing. Both work very nicely.

Normal maps are created usually through a normal map utility. Photoshop has a Normal map plugin by default, I think. And GIMP has a free normal map plugin that you can download and install to be able to do them inside of GIMP (which is how I do mine).

Bump maps can be done in any image editor. The first step for either a bump OR a normal map is to take your texture map and make it greyscale. Completely desaturate it, because these types of maps work by reading the values of white/black in the image. The stronger the whites, the "higher" the bump/normals, and the more black the color is, the "lower" they will be.

For skin, either bumps or normals can work nicely - for the kind of aged effects you have here, you might actually want to do both. Experiment with it, is all I can really tell you.

Displacement was often used for the aged wrinkles and such things, but I can tell you as an end user that I absolutely HATE displacement maps on a figure skin. There are lots of good places for displacement - figure skin is not one of them, because you can't dress the ruddy figure with them in effect, and if you remove the displacement, you lose the details.

Bumps and Normals are your best bet with figure skin, in my opinion, as they will give you the extra detail on the texture that you want, without impacting the user's ability to dress the figure.
 
Faery_Light

Faery_Light

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
I made some normal maps to try and I like them better than bump maps.
is a head shot with a normal map applied.

Now I need a better beard and mustache to work with, this one looks greenish and it doesn't seem to work trying to change it.
I like the idea of just a heavy stubble but can't get it to work for me.
Trying to get the neck and face to match like they should is very hard.
Also thinking of changing the eyebrows, I do not like these.
I think I need a good texture partner on that. :roflmao:
Alaric-II-3-05.jpg
 
Faery_Light

Faery_Light

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
Ahhh, got a new resource to work with, it was for M5 and doesn't say for him only so I used the neck parts from the head and body and some stubble from a photo to create a new bead and mustache.
Now on to making some good normal maps and finish him up.

Still waiting on my horse set, need a Poser tester still.

I think this looks much better, this is the no age spots option.
Now time to stop work and relax before sleepy time.
Alaric-II-3-06.jpg
 
Faery_Light

Faery_Light

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
Now that I have a Poser tester for my horse set I am back at this one.
I am trying to match seams on the neck and head for the beard by doing 3 face spaces at a time on the maps.
If I knew how to work the painting to object in Blacksmith 3d I'd just do it that way. :confused:
It is hard work but it looks better than just painting over the seams. :coffee::coffee:
 
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