Glass Block Bathroom

[Doodle Designs]

I searched the Daz document center and found this info on adding metadata:

Adding Metadata to Products * [Documentation Center]

Now I just have to read it and figure it all out.

I'm wondering, if no one here is familiar with metadata, does that mean that HiveWire doesn't require it for their product submissions? (And so I don't have to bother to read how to do it? )

 

[Pendraia]

They haven't asked me for it. I don't think their products include metadata...

 

[Doodle Designs]

That would be a relief! Wasn't looking forward to what looks to be a very tedious process.

 

[Doodle Designs]

I made another 360-degree animation, this time in purple and with the twins and triplets all actually animated - and a little fun background music too.

Can't help myself - love to fiddle with animation.

Twin #1 sure likes to fuss with his hair - even with as little as he has. And watch out for triplet #1, she's a bit overboard with the hairspray. *cough* Looks like triplet #2 caught the camera person in the act! But she doesn't seem to mind. Triplet #3 is just mellowing out while poor twin #2 - seems like he partied too hardy last night!

Oops! forgot to turn the whirlpool water on.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

I'm wondering, if no one here is familiar with metadata, does that mean that HiveWire doesn't require it for their product submissions?

I have never supplied any metadata with my products, and I have never been asked to do so, either. Not sure how much that helps, but it has never been an issue with my items.

 

[Doodle Designs]

Good! That's two votes for no metadata - three including mine - so I'm not going to worry about it.

Ignoring metadata...

 

[Doodle Designs]

I have a question for someone who would be in the position of approving a product for sale on HiveWire.

Are the textures that I have good enough? Someone, who shall remain nameless (no one on this forum), said that the textures weren't good enough - that I needed to "really push the reality". I don't know yet what they meant, but it has led me to wonder if I had gone with maybe only one or two texture sets along this line:

These are actually test textures that I had come up with way back when the shower was the only part of the bathroom that had been modeled. Once I had created the whole bathroom, I began to doubt myself that two texture sets were enough so I wound up going down the path of creating the 13 texture colors.

Did I wander down the wrong path? Should I have stuck with the two original textures?

 

[Gadget Girl]

I have a question for someone who would be in the position of approving a product for sale on HiveWire.

Well, I'm not a person who would be approving things for sale on Hivewire, but I think your textures are great and certainly good enough for sale.

If you want some slightly more constructive criticism, you might consider is adjusting the bump/normal maps a little, at least on the sets that have tile with grout. Usually the edges of tiles are slightly beveled down towards the grout. Actually you have this down really well on the first image with the diamond tiles, but the other tiles seem a little too flat.

All that being said, the glass blocks seem to me to be the main selling point, and I'm sure a lot of work went into those shaders, and those are just amazing. Also, with the above comment about the grout, I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking closely trying to find flaws.

 

[Doodle Designs]

Thanks for the encouragement.

Those renders are from years ago and only test renders. I do have bump maps for both textures and will be tweaking them if I decide to sell them.

 

[Doodle Designs]

My beta testers have been hard at work and have found several issues - thankfully minor. In the meantime, I've been creating renders, including animations, for the product page.

One thing that has always bothered me about the renders is that the grout seemed to me to be too bright and where you are looking through the glass at the grout, it appeared more pixelated than seemed right. This was especially noticeable in the animations where this caused a "sparkling" effect that I found very annoying and unrealistic. In addition, the color of the GB tended to bleed into the grout. In the past I had tried a number of things to correct this, but nothing worked.

Then, after looking at a test animation, and feeling annoyed once again, I had an epiphany and suddenly knew (or rather hoped) what I could do to correct this problem.

It worked!

Also, me being me , I couldn't help but fiddle with the GB bumpiness pattern and I'm finally happy with the results.

Here's an animation with the grout fixed:

(I don't like what YouTube did to the quality, but...)

I also fiddled with the render settings and found that turning Progressive rendering on produced much better results than lowering the shading rate. AND - it rendered in much less time! No more four-day rendering times for a short animation! The render time is one-third what it was with the shading rate set to 0.25 - and the reflections were better!

All three of these renders have the ray trace max set to 4. Look at the reflection of the door, where the difference is most apparent.

Progressive OFF, shading rate 1 (default). Render time = 2 minutes 36.81 seconds

Progressive OFF, shading rate 0.25. Render time = 6 minutes 55.83 seconds

Progressive ON. Render time = 2 minutes 9.2 seconds

After seeing these results, I have to wonder why Daz didn't use progressive as the default. I get that needing a quality reflection isn't often needed, but still, the progressive render took less time than with the shading rate set to the default and the quality of the render is at least as good (possible a tad better) in the non-reflected areas, so why use the slower alternative? Anyone know the why Daz chose to go with progressive off?

 

[Doodle Designs]

I'm finally finished with the glass block bathroom. Thanks to my beta-testers!

I've created most of the promo images and have my faster computer rendering the final (I hope) animation which I figure will take about 24 hours.

In the mean time, I decided to start working on another texture set for the bathroom. This one is very different from the original textures. I call it, the Upscale Bathroom.

I also plan on creating matching textures for the towels and other items in the two accessory packs.

I may create a few more textures along the same lines too. Depends on time.

 

[Gadget Girl]

I really like that tile and the marble counter tops. Looks great.

 

[Doodle Designs]

Thanks!

I've made some changes and am creating matching textures for both accessory packs.

I'll post pics when ready.

 

[Doodle Designs]

I've finished (I think) the new textures for the bathroom and for both accessory packs.

This is the bathroom default. There are a lot of MAT choices so the customer can make their own decorating decisions too - like other wall colors, solid marble rather than tiles, etc. All of the accessories shown in these four images come in four matching colors, which I've mixed.

Here's the second accessory pack.

I plan to make one more texture set before I submit everything. I thought having a couple extra texture sets might make getting the bathroom more appealing for people who may like them better than the textures that come with the bathroom. It also makes it possible to have more products for a value stack.

 

[NapalmArsenal]

Gorgeous work!! Love the look of this! and the accessories are really a nice touch!!

 

[Doodle Designs]

Thanks, NA!

I finally was able to upload a video to YouTube that will be used on the product page. It's 720 HD and took over 7 1/2 days to render for a 1200 frame, 90 sec. video! Poor computer!

 

[Doodle Designs]

Despite many interruptions over the past few months, I was finally able to finish the second set of textures. They are in beta-testing now.

 

[Doodle Designs]