CWRW Product Previews

[Janet]

Looks good! But I am a little confused- this is the Mil Horse, not Harry, and not the new wings- I thought that was what you meant

Derp. I'll try this again.

And the movie says available at HiveWire. Always - always something to fix!

 

[CWRW]

So now I have a new (refurbed) MacBeast with a Radeon RX 580 8GB and 64G RAM I thought I would revisit the Daz Studio Strand-Based Hair. I think a lot of my frustration from before was because it really didn't work/play nice with my poor 1G video card on my old machine.

So I aim to try to finish styling this and figure out how to make it distributable in some form. Mainly not crazy about the fact I can't seem to lighten the mane and tail but otherwise, eh, not yoo bad... I still like LAMH better for the look of it but yeah SBH is a lot easier to use.

So here are some iray WIPs from today- max render time was 15 minutes. ( For comparison I used my LAMH foal preset, same light and all- max render time there was 8 minutes, but of course I had to do the obj conversion for iray too which was about 5 or so minutes)

Using Fabi's Zen HDRI's and a few simple spotlights:

 

[CWRW]

FWIW this was done on my old machine back in 2019.

 

[Miss B]

New machine render is a vast improvement.

 

[Dakorillon (IMArts)]

Fantastic! Those are so gorgeous!
Congrats on the new machine! Looks like you have stepped into the 21st century! lol
I can't wait for you to finish your tweaking!

 

[Flint_Hawk]

That must be quite a machine! Congratulations!

 

[CWRW]

tx all! Some more "side by sides"... doing this to show you what I see as I learn/what my own machine can do (non-PC/non-NVidia) and let folks make up their own minds what they want.

LAMH - approx 5 mins to convert to iray obj and assign/edit the iray shader then 15 mins to render:

SBH, no time needed to convert. then render 90 mins:

I will make the SBH available in some form. You choose

 

[Janet]

The one thing I don't like about LAMH is that it doesn't play nice in animations. I found that out after doing a set for AM's squirrel. Sounds like he's using strand based now.

 

[Miss B]

I haven't used DS 4 in quite some time, but just looking closely at those two renders I have to choose LAMH, because it looks like real hair over ALL of his body, not just in certain parts. The need to convert only takes 5 mins., and I'm willng to spend that time as opposed to a 90 min. render with SBH versus a 15 min. render with LAMH. Just my 2¢, FWIW.

 

[CWRW]

The one thing I don't like about LAMH is that it doesn't play nice in animations. I found that out after doing a set for AM's squirrel. Sounds like he's using strand based now.

That is interesting on the animations- I wonder if that is true also for using his Iray Catalyzer deal too. What does it do? crash? Or does the hair end up looking weird or something?

I have a few of his products- they come with an "old school" LAMH version (for 3Delight), Iray Catalyzer version of LAMH and the new SBH hair too. I have a lot of respect for him for doing all that work. I am really impressed how closely he has been able to match the SBH versions to his LAMH versions. I still need to learn the styling tools of SBH. What I have seen so far just is not intuitive to me like LAMH's are.

 

[RAMWolff]

Harry for Poser will not have these nice pony mane and tail options though, correct?

 

[CWRW]

I haven't used DS 4 in quite some time, but just looking closely at those two renders I have to choose LAMH, because it looks like real hair over ALL of his body, not just in certain parts. The need to convert only takes 5 mins., and I'm willng to spend that time as opposed to a 90 min. render with SBH versus a 15 min. render with LAMH. Just my 2¢, FWIW.

Yeah I like the LAMH a lot better too. I also may not be using the SBH right- I need to go back in and look at what I have done/my settings etc- these were made more than 2 years ago, ot long after it came out and I didn't know ANYTHING about it and have not been modified since.

I do wonder if someone with a more Daz Studio "compliant" PC machine with the correct NVidia card might get a lot faster results. I don't know. That is why I mentioned what my Mac has vs what a large majority of 3d folks use. LOL Dan tried to talk me into getting a PC with a NVidia card, but I just couldn't do it LAMH seems to do well on Macs.

 

[CWRW]

Harry for Poser will not have these nice pony mane and tail options though, correct?

Correct, at least until when or if I figure out the Poser Hair Room or Rendo improves it/hopefully makes it easier to use. Sorry!

 

[CWRW]

So on another note, I wanted to share this recent pic of my adopted lion Gus! He is doing so well now at the Sanctuary- he has his own pride now -with 2 other white lions to boot! He got to be the "cover boy" on the latest edition of their magazine. :-D

 

[Miss B]

Ohhhh what a cutie he is.

 

[Janet]

That is interesting on the animations- I wonder if that is true also for using his Iray Catalyzer deal too. What does it do? crash? Or does the hair end up looking weird or something?

I have a few of his products- they come with an "old school" LAMH version (for 3Delight), Iray Catalyzer version of LAMH and the new SBH hair too. I have a lot of respect for him for doing all that work. I am really impressed how closely he has been able to match the SBH versions to his LAMH versions. I still need to learn the styling tools of SBH. What I have seen so far just is not intuitive to me like LAMH's are.

The renders always crash.

 

[CWRW]

So I've been meaning to post these later SBH attempts. Got busy dealing with other things in life..

So again I am again thinking "garibaldi"/ds sbh hair really is a lot more for use in making human hair. I watched a very good long video tute on it and now have a much better understanding of it.. But what that also made me realize is that the selection tools and the styling tools again are a lot harder to use for fur as opposed to human hair on the head. Also there is no mirroring of your stylng etc which is a mega pain for fur...as well as no ability to "turn on" selecting only the hairs facing you as opposed to the ones on the other side you can't see. Again a mega pain... Obviously some PAs at Daz have figured out how to work around those things but ugh...lots more work. And I still can't get it render very fast...so I'm not sure how much time I will spend working up SBH for our HW critters. I WILL continue to do LAMH presets. One I want to start work on is for our Gorilla for Dusk.

I will make this foal SBH avaiable at some point when I figure out how to distribute it, for those who prefer SBH.

Also FYI I finally was able to do a load of updating on my cwrw3d.com website. I mainly need to add a Dusk/Dawn section to the products page But of course everything is at Rendo now so going there is always a good idea The only thing is that is unique to my website is some older Mil Horse and DH2 products.

 

[JOdel]

Which materials are you planning to offer with the strand-based hair? Most of the artists doing hair over on DAZ are only offering Iray, but I see that AprilYSH is still doing 3DL matts for all her stuff. Whether it's strand-based or not.

 

[CWRW]

Good question! Seems like the default is iray. I haven't tried doing 3DL versions yet. Not sure what the base shader might be for that. I am not looking to sell these, so they may just be iray. But I will take a look and see what I find out.

 

[CWRW]

Hmm.. so the shader calls itself "Blended Dual Lobe Hair". Nothing about iray or etc. Will try a render in 3DL next.