Songbird Remix's Product Preview Thread

[Ken Gilliland]

A couple Iray renders... one showing a close-up of the Milkweed Caterpillar (that turns into a Monarch Butterfly) and the other, a bunch of spiny elm caterpillars emerging from an elm (they turn into Mourning Cloak butterflies).

 

[Miss B]

The Milkweed Caterpillar looks like a Tiger skin, and big game cats, like Tigers, are my favorite animal skins.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Yes, it's a striking looking caterpillar... I wanted it in Volume One just because of its stripes... it turning into probably the most recognizable butterfly (Monarch) was a plus

This caterpillar project has lined up a ton of new models I wasn't planning on doing right away... Butterflies, a Milkweed plant, maybe a tomato plant and some of the moth counterparts to the caterpillars I've created

 

[Flint_Hawk]

I'm looking forward to these!

 

[Ken Gilliland]

a couple more in Iray... the Black Woolly and the Western Tent Caterpillar... while the Black Woooly and the Woolly Bear (Black with orange in the center) are friendly to handle caterpillars, the Western Tent isn't-- handing it is like grabbing a bunch of stinging nettles.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

I've been extra productive lately... Caterpillars and the add-on set are in beta and will hopefully get a December release. My Butterflies base set is almost done and I'm working on the add-on set for that (because I need to know I have all the morphs I'll need in the base set for future sets).

The butterflies base set will contain 4 butterflies with m/f markings (Monarch, Viceroy, Western and Eastern Tiger Swallowtails). The add-on set will have the American Lady, Mourning Cloak, Red Admiral, Gulf Fritillary, Cabbage White. Gray Hairstreak, Alfalfa Butterfly and Purple Emperor. Here's a sneak peak at the Poser version of the female American Lady.

 

[JOdel]

Excellent! Been a long time coming. (Not that there aren't butterflies from other artists, but not the butterflies *with* any of their caterpillars.)

 

[Flint_Hawk]

These are amazingly realistic! They will be the best ones out there!

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Thanks... realism is partially due to my photography. I've used the photos (as references or a base) to help get the wings right. Almost every butterfly I've slated to do has frequented my garden. You can see the non-bird wildlife we get in our garden here.

Why have butterflies been a long time coming for me? Well, you have to remember back to 2014 when I did the first Nature's Wonders set, Giant Moths. The moths were specifically done because there were no moths in our 3D world to feed to my Nightjars and Goatsuckers. There were plenty of butterfly sets. Over the last 9 years, Nature Wonders sets have been mostly been created as support for my bird sets or other existing NW sets. Butterflies is no different. Caterpillars were created because they are a favorite food of Cuckoos (my latest bird set), and now that I have caterpillars, of course you need their counterparts... the butterflies.

Here's most of the butterflies (Dorsal side) in the Base set...

 

[Miss B]

The Viceroy in that last post are the most familiar looking to me.

 

[Flint_Hawk]

That's an impressive collection of critters you have had visit & you are very lucky to have all of those butterflies to model for you!

 

[Ken Gilliland]

lol... you can probably see where I get my inspiration from... the biggest secret to getting wildlife in your yard is planting native plants. Only 10% of native insects are attract to non-native plants. If you plant non-natives you generally get invasive, imported insects. Insects provide the start of the food chain for all the other critters, thus native plants, attract native insects which in turn attract native birds and other wildlife. This means pesticides are rarely needed because that "circle of life" thing keeps everything in check.

 

[JOdel]

I recognize them all, but then I'm also local. I remember that Mourning Cloaks were fairly common when i was growing up in Monterey Park. But I don't think I've seen any of those for some time here in L.A.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Here's the Red Admiral...

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Here's yet another... the Gulf Fritillary (this one is pretty common in our So Cal yard)

Here's the real thing in our yard.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Here's a few more...

 

[Ken Gilliland]

I wasn't expecting Caterpillars to be released until December 30 as part of a special promotion, but someone at Renderosity jumped the gun, and caterpillars are now slowly inching their way to everyone's content folders.

Nature's Wonders Caterpillars

 

[Miss B]

Well, not quite that far, but they're definitely sitting on my hard drive.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

I just finished the main promos for the Butterfly sets (which should hatch from their chrysalis state in mid-January)

 

[Ken Gilliland]

DAZ Studio version of Caterpillars v1....

for some reason, none of the "haired" caterpillars are moving (no bending, twisting, etc)... I have no idea why or what happened to them, they were working fine through beta and QA tests.

In any case, I loaded the base model that does work, transferred the character and material settings to each of the 4 "haired" caterpillars along with the strand-based hair and re-saved them. They are working (again) now.

I sent Renderosity the new DAZ Studio file and it should be up on their server later today (the full version). For those who don't want to wait for Renderosity-- I've placed a "patch" file on my server... Note: this only contains the "Fixed" files-- this is not the full version

http://www.empken.com/downloads/files/KenGilliland_NW_Caterpillarsv1_DS_FIX.zip