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Show Us Your Dawn Renders!

Glitterati3D

Dances with Bees
Thank you I am always grateful for any praise and/or suggestions but coming from someone with your skills always has that extra edge. My intent this year was to try and understand superfly better and take a little more care with my renders in an attempt to add a little more impact. I have a long way to go but the comments here suggest I am on the right track at least so it helps to spur me on.

Thanks again for taking the time to comment.

The only suggestion I have, if you can, turn off Cast Shadows on the eyelashes. They sometimes put a really heavy shadow under the eyes.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Still playing with ideas, change of background, change of expressions, oh and change of hair. This is Juni hair by biscuits, first time I have really used despite the fact I have had it for some time. I think it has potential but I need to work on the style.

New Forest Juni HW.jpg
 

Lyne

Distinguished
HW Honey Bear
Nice, Hornet, as always...very cool necklace too, did you make it? I recognize Fabi's necklace, but not the cool bird pendent!
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Nice, Hornet, as always...very cool necklace too, did you make it? I recognize Fabi's necklace, but not the cool bird pendent!

Thanks, the bird pendant is from Fabi as well, it is included in Zoobling II collection but I have played with the textures a little.
 

Lyne

Distinguished
HW Honey Bear
XdressedForDawn.jpg

I did use the Courageous Sash for my Dusk Centaur (Xdressed it TO Dusk for that),
copied all morphs from original clothes to Dawn/Dusk stuff...also used morph tool
because the bottom front of the gown bulged out for some reason. I'm pretty pleased
with today's work! ;)
 

Hornet3d

Wise
I am still playing with ideas, looking at what is in my runtime and trying to understand superfly a little more. I have a vast collection of hairstyles for V4 that I have collected over the years and I have been trying them out to see how they work on Dawn, and my character in particular, and how they work in superfly. One discovery I have made is that, when I created my main character I inadvertently gave her a long face. I know a few years ago I created quite a discussion as some thought her head was out of proportion with her body, bit like me she had a big head. I played around for some weeks to reduce the size and got to a point where I was happy. I now think this was due in part to her long face. I believe this has two side effects, one it means default expressions do not work and hairstyles don't always work either. I knew the hairstyle I have been using (HR-099 by Ali) has a lot of volume on the top of her head and now I find without that volume she looks weird, again like me but then I am losing mine and sadly I cannot dial it back in.

Another discovery I have made is that a lot of the old hair products used a glossy and a few other nodes plugged into the alternate specular. I am not knowledgeable enough to know why this is the case but it appears to be a common approach to a lot of the products in my runtime. What I do know is that superfly does not like this and the end result is always a hair colour that is ghostly white, irrespective of any other colour plugged into the defused. I guess this is due to the reflection being blown out in superfly. I have also found a lot of the hair styles have hair strands with very abrupt kinks in the stands and it does not look particularly realistic. In products that have small amount I have managed to correct this by smoothing with the morph brush but on some styles it is too widespread for this to be practical. I would be interested in why this happens and possible cures.

This is All Time Hair by 3Dream and Mairy which I purchased in 2010 and it has this the alternate specular problem that I have tried to correct. I notice that the hair is still on sale and it clearly can be used with a few adjustments although I am not sure I have it right here but at least it has colour even if the reflection is off.

New Forest All Time HW.jpg
 

Hornet3d

Wise
I am just about coming to an end of my experiments with woodland renders, superfly and character changes. The character changes are subtle and probably not noticeable other than in a side to side comparison with the exception of the hair. In addition to the colour change I have added the hair shader from Bagginsbill which, I cannot begin to understand, but found easy to use and tweek. Although not shown to the full effect here, due to the subdued nature of the setting and render, the shader can give a lovely sheen to the hair. This is probably not the best hair to use the shader on if you are looking for a photorealistic effect but I have no doubt with the right hair it photorealistic is possible. For me the aim was not photorealistic but more believable and I wanted limit the changes I made to the character. Even with this hair the shader does reflect (excuse the pun) the environment so much better and make changes to colour and specular so much easier. I now have two more hair styles, also using the shader, that are consistent with her short hair so I can drift from one to another as the mood takes. Of course along the way I have picked up the 'narrow shoulders' from Ken 1171 Designs so although not used here, as it is a portrait, that will be used along with the other changes to Caoimhe. Just one or two renders to complete and a clean up my WIP folders and back to some sci fi renders, well that's the plan at the moment.


The New Caoimhe HW.jpg
 

Glitterati3D

Dances with Bees
Hornet, with the glossy hair. Yes, on most of the older hair styles the AltSpecular really blows out the hair. What I do is I use EZSkin3 Hair on the hair. Not the scalp, as that really blows out, but all the hair "parts" get EZSkin3 hair settings.

It's fast and easy to do.

With the hair selected, bring up EZSkin3. The hair won't have a default setting so you need to go into the Editor mode.
EZSkin3Hair-1.jpg


In the editor select the hair parts you want to EZSkin.
EZSkin3Hair-2.jpg


And, for the final step, ensure the All Others option is checked and click Apply at the EZSkin main menu.

EZSkin3Hair-3.jpg


I find that the hair renders much faster and looks much better in Superfly when doing this. Sometimes, the AltSpec is still so high that I go into the advanced material setup and simply disconnect AltSpec completely. You will get specular on the hair because Superfly does specular by default.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Hornet, with the glossy hair. Yes, on most of the older hair styles the AltSpecular really blows out the hair. What I do is I use EZSkin3 Hair on the hair. Not the scalp, as that really blows out, but all the hair "parts" get EZSkin3 hair settings.

It's fast and easy to do.

With the hair selected, bring up EZSkin3. The hair won't have a default setting so you need to go into the Editor mode.
View attachment 37620

In the editor select the hair parts you want to EZSkin.
View attachment 37621

And, for the final step, ensure the All Others option is checked and click Apply at the EZSkin main menu.

View attachment 37622

I find that the hair renders much faster and looks much better in Superfly when doing this. Sometimes, the AltSpec is still so high that I go into the advanced material setup and simply disconnect AltSpec completely. You will get specular on the hair because Superfly does specular by default.


Thank you for that, and the step by step process which is what I need. In one sense it is not really fair on the vendor to expect any hair to work with a Poser render engine that was not even thought of let alone in existence at the time the hair was created. On the flip side some of these styles were really good and if they can be given a second life with the little bit of extra work as you have laid out then why ever not.

Thanks again for the information my knowledge of superfly continues to grow thanks to you and the many others here at Hive that have guided me through some of the hard bits. I am very grateful for all the help.
 
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