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SKYLAB CHAT
- Thread starter skylab
- Start date
OMG, I so remember that painting on his easel in that photo.
Nice. 
A lighting tutorial is one of those things on my "do it in between content" list. There are some really nice ways to control and affect shadows and whatnot in DS... I have always found the DS lighting rigs SO MUCH better than Poser. Maybe it's just how my brain works, but the Poser lights always left me feeling like I was taking a blindfolded stab in the dark with a sharp, pointy stick and praying that I didn't stabinate the wrong thing! (And yes, I had about that much luck with ever getting GOOD lighting out of Poser, too - tutorials or no!)
Sky, you'll find that poses for any of the Genesis/G2 shapes tend to translate well to other shapes. Manual adjustment is almost always needed in certain places, depending on the shape in use when you apply the pose. Usually hands where they meet the thighs, or lowering the figure up/down from the "floor" depending on the height... stuff like this. But that is unavoidable because the shapes do affect proportions of the figure, so no single pose is ever going to apply exactly perfectly to all shapes across the board. I even have a note about this in Nataani's readme file for Dusk - that poses will most likely require some manual readjustment in a few places, depending on what morphs the user has active on Dusk at the time they use the pose. So, a pose that I built on my Blake (Genesis 1), will work just fine on Michael 5, though you might have to adjust M5's arms/hands since Blake is so much shorter than M5... stuff like that.
Oh - and while I'm thinking about it - in regards to the auto-fit to get clothing from Genesis to the G2's or vice versa...
1.) Select the auto-fitted clothing in your SCENE tab.
2.) Go up to the top of your DS window and click on Edit --> Figure--> Geometry --> Apply Smoothing Modifier.
3.) Then go to your PARAMETERS tab (making sure the clothing item is still selected!) and expand the "General" category listed on the left side of your Parameters tab.
4.) Now click on "Mesh Smoothing."
The two items you want to pay attention to in here, are "Smoothing Iterations," and "Collision Iterations." The default that Studio applies when you first add smoothing to a figure or object is 2 Smoothing Iterations, and 3 Collision Iterations. You can increase the number of iterations in both sections to smooth out the cloth on your figure. This is especially helpful for clothing that you have cross-fitted from one figure to another. Sometimes you don't need to change the numbers from the default; other times you might need to increase Smoothing Iterations to about 5 or 6, and Collision Iterations to about the same.
Warning : The higher the Iterations number, the more slow-down you might have while posing. If you experience too much lag/slow-down in your window while working on the scene, you can TURN OFF the Mesh Smoothing, by clicking the button under "Enable Smoothing." This will disable it, so you can pose and set up your scene normally. Then, when you're ready to render, just remember to go back to the clothing item and click that button again.
The button I'm referring to is here :
Another tip regarding fitting clothes, hair, hats, etc...
Look under your Mesh Smoothing (the item must have a smoothing modifier applied!), and you should see an option labeled "Collision Item." Now, by default, clothing will have a collision item set to the figure you've conformed it to. So in my case, the screenshot I posted up above, you'll see "Collision Item" and it's currently set to "Nataani."
If you click this button (where it says "Nataani" in my screenshot) you can choose a different item for the clothing to collide against. This is helpful for fitting things like belts over the top of shirts, or hats onto hairs, things like that for layering purposes. It's not perfect, and the object can ONLY be set to collide with ONE item in the scene. But if I'm driving myself nuts trying to fit a belt across a layered vest or shirt, I just change the collision item option for the belt, so that it's colliding with the SHIRT instead of Genesis, and this usually helps for layering quite a lot.
Anyway. Sorry if I overwhelmed you. Just figured I would put those little tips up there, as it's something I use a LOT in my work, since I auto-fit things from as far back as Mike/Vicky 3 to Genesis 1... LOL
A lighting tutorial is one of those things on my "do it in between content" list.
There are some really nice ways to control and affect shadows and whatnot in DS... I have always found the DS lighting rigs SO MUCH better than Poser. Maybe it's just how my brain works, but the Poser lights always left me feeling like I was taking a blindfolded stab in the dark with a sharp, pointy stick and praying that I didn't stabinate the wrong thing! (And yes, I had about that much luck with ever getting GOOD lighting out of Poser, too - tutorials or no!)Sky, you'll find that poses for any of the Genesis/G2 shapes tend to translate well to other shapes. Manual adjustment is almost always needed in certain places, depending on the shape in use when you apply the pose. Usually hands where they meet the thighs, or lowering the figure up/down from the "floor" depending on the height... stuff like this. But that is unavoidable because the shapes do affect proportions of the figure, so no single pose is ever going to apply exactly perfectly to all shapes across the board. I even have a note about this in Nataani's readme file for Dusk - that poses will most likely require some manual readjustment in a few places, depending on what morphs the user has active on Dusk at the time they use the pose. So, a pose that I built on my Blake (Genesis 1), will work just fine on Michael 5, though you might have to adjust M5's arms/hands since Blake is so much shorter than M5... stuff like that.
Oh - and while I'm thinking about it - in regards to the auto-fit to get clothing from Genesis to the G2's or vice versa...
1.) Select the auto-fitted clothing in your SCENE tab.
2.) Go up to the top of your DS window and click on Edit --> Figure--> Geometry --> Apply Smoothing Modifier.
3.) Then go to your PARAMETERS tab (making sure the clothing item is still selected!) and expand the "General" category listed on the left side of your Parameters tab.
4.) Now click on "Mesh Smoothing."
The two items you want to pay attention to in here, are "Smoothing Iterations," and "Collision Iterations." The default that Studio applies when you first add smoothing to a figure or object is 2 Smoothing Iterations, and 3 Collision Iterations. You can increase the number of iterations in both sections to smooth out the cloth on your figure. This is especially helpful for clothing that you have cross-fitted from one figure to another. Sometimes you don't need to change the numbers from the default; other times you might need to increase Smoothing Iterations to about 5 or 6, and Collision Iterations to about the same.
Warning : The higher the Iterations number, the more slow-down you might have while posing. If you experience too much lag/slow-down in your window while working on the scene, you can TURN OFF the Mesh Smoothing, by clicking the button under "Enable Smoothing." This will disable it, so you can pose and set up your scene normally. Then, when you're ready to render, just remember to go back to the clothing item and click that button again.
The button I'm referring to is here :
Another tip regarding fitting clothes, hair, hats, etc...
Look under your Mesh Smoothing (the item must have a smoothing modifier applied!), and you should see an option labeled "Collision Item." Now, by default, clothing will have a collision item set to the figure you've conformed it to. So in my case, the screenshot I posted up above, you'll see "Collision Item" and it's currently set to "Nataani."
If you click this button (where it says "Nataani" in my screenshot) you can choose a different item for the clothing to collide against. This is helpful for fitting things like belts over the top of shirts, or hats onto hairs, things like that for layering purposes. It's not perfect, and the object can ONLY be set to collide with ONE item in the scene. But if I'm driving myself nuts trying to fit a belt across a layered vest or shirt, I just change the collision item option for the belt, so that it's colliding with the SHIRT instead of Genesis, and this usually helps for layering quite a lot.
Anyway. Sorry if I overwhelmed you. Just figured I would put those little tips up there, as it's something I use a LOT in my work, since I auto-fit things from as far back as Mike/Vicky 3 to Genesis 1... LOL
You nailed it, Miss B.
That was always how he came across to me, as well. Purposely soft-spoken because he just plain out didn't want to raise his voice for one reason or another. Given some of what went on when I was younger, I found that soft-spoken tone (even if it was carefully, and purposely sculpted), to be a huge relief from the yelling and hollering that was often going on around me. It was one of the other reasons I liked having his show on, actually.
Boy did they ever!! That calming effect worked very, very well on me when I was like 8-10 years old...
skylab
Esteemed
Thanks so much Seliah for the tips on auto-fitting...I wondered about some of those settings. And you can never give enough tips...I need all the help I can get...haha.
I enjoyed Bob Ross and his calming demeanor...by the 80's I'd begun my 30 year stretch at working in a trauma center hospital. Trauma went both ways in that place...haha. I don't know how else to put it except that....the work atmosphere was like being in a 30 year long episode of a Madea movie I feel very fortunate to have made it through that experience and still have at least two brain cells to rub together....haha. A lot of the Nursoda character comedy was based on these real life experiences, like Bad Hair Day. To the 3D community, it was just a funny looking little character, but to me, the one on the right was a real person...and I still bust a gut laughing at it every time I see it. Humor helps you get through some tough times
I enjoyed Bob Ross and his calming demeanor...by the 80's I'd begun my 30 year stretch at working in a trauma center hospital. Trauma went both ways in that place...haha. I don't know how else to put it except that....the work atmosphere was like being in a 30 year long episode of a Madea movie
I feel very fortunate to have made it through that experience and still have at least two brain cells to rub together....haha. A lot of the Nursoda character comedy was based on these real life experiences, like Bad Hair Day. To the 3D community, it was just a funny looking little character, but to me, the one on the right was a real person...and I still bust a gut laughing at it every time I see it. Humor helps you get through some tough times
Laughing is good for one's health. I don't remember who it was, but there was a famous Broadway playwright who was ill, and what he did was sit down and watch every possible comedy DVD he could find of the old comedy shows, and his health improved. I don't recall for how long he did it, as this was years and years ago, but I remember reading about it and saying, yeah a laugh a day keeps the doctor away is true.
skylab
Esteemed
I'm a big believer in humor being good for improving health.
Have a good evening Miss B....I need to get to bed earlier this evening too, as the weather is returning to what could be called normal, and I can only function so long on four hours sleep before I'll start looking and acting like Bad Hair Day....haha.
So see you folks tomorrow...thanks again Seliah....I'll save the fitting info into a PDF so I can keep it for reference. I like PDF's because I can enlarge the viewing size. You have a good evening, and I hope things go well for you as you prepare your project for release. See you tomorrow . . .
Have a good evening Miss B....I need to get to bed earlier this evening too, as the weather is returning to what could be called normal, and I can only function so long on four hours sleep before I'll start looking and acting like Bad Hair Day....haha.
So see you folks tomorrow...thanks again Seliah....I'll save the fitting info into a PDF so I can keep it for reference. I like PDF's because I can enlarge the viewing size. You have a good evening, and I hope things go well for you as you prepare your project for release. See you tomorrow . . .
Sky, Miss B, have a good night, ladies.
skylab
Esteemed
Still circling the airport...decided to do final tweaks on this project. Now maybe I can fall asleep
HIVEWIRE AND LOREZ HORSE - SLON HOLD ON
HIVEWIRE AND LOREZ HORSE - SLON HOLD ON
skylab
Esteemed
Seliah, just found your freebies at ShareCG
skylab
Esteemed
Good evening Miss B
I've installed DS 4.7 on my laptop since I observed on my workstation that I wasn't experiencing any lag when rotating the figures. It will be nice to have it handy by the bedside while learning. Am tweaking things now...getting Animate2 serial in so animation features will be available. I thought I'd always be a dedicated Poser user...some of that was due to Sarah...she just couldn't get the hang of DS and wanted to use Poser, so we sorta got started together that way. I have to admit, as I learn where things are located in DS, I'm sorta liking it, and feeling more comfortable. It helped that my content library finally populated in DS, finding my Poser runtimes, so I'm able to pull content from that familiar source now.
In thinking about the Connect feature, if I understand it correctly, a cloud feature keeps track of content, and it makes sense why it would have to be encrypted...or someone could hack the thing and make off with everything, including customer info. I really don't need that type of connection since I don't work from different locations, everything is at home, and is more like a home network. For some reason, DS 4.9 wouldn't let me get started in the program without addressing the connect issue, so I've got to figure out what I need to do in order to at least satisfy establishing that I don't need to use it, and move on.
I've installed DS 4.7 on my laptop since I observed on my workstation that I wasn't experiencing any lag when rotating the figures. It will be nice to have it handy by the bedside while learning. Am tweaking things now...getting Animate2 serial in so animation features will be available. I thought I'd always be a dedicated Poser user...some of that was due to Sarah...she just couldn't get the hang of DS and wanted to use Poser, so we sorta got started together that way. I have to admit, as I learn where things are located in DS, I'm sorta liking it, and feeling more comfortable. It helped that my content library finally populated in DS, finding my Poser runtimes, so I'm able to pull content from that familiar source now.
In thinking about the Connect feature, if I understand it correctly, a cloud feature keeps track of content, and it makes sense why it would have to be encrypted...or someone could hack the thing and make off with everything, including customer info. I really don't need that type of connection since I don't work from different locations, everything is at home, and is more like a home network. For some reason, DS 4.9 wouldn't let me get started in the program without addressing the connect issue, so I've got to figure out what I need to do in order to at least satisfy establishing that I don't need to use it, and move on.