bandolin said

Quote - Your images are quite impressive DustRider. If you achieved that in DS with no 3rd party add-ons I'd be confident to give DS another try.

Thanks for the compliment!

No plugins were used, but I did use a Photo Studio from DAZ for lighting (http://www.daz3d.com/shop/inaneglory-s-photo-studio/). This same lighting could be achieved using UberEnvironment2 and UberAreaLights - which are included in DS4 Pro. The Photo Studio lights are UberAreaLights, InaneGlory just took all the work out of doing the set up yourself (and added some very useful photo studio props and materials). I did modify the lights a bit from his default setup/values. The image titled "Bridget Practicing Her Craft (final)" was done for a contest where the requirements were that the image had to be rendered in DS 4, with no post work, and I followed the rules (didn't win, but learned a lot and had fun - so I guess I really did win).

All of my DS4 renders, with the exception of the one Reality/Lux render are pure DS4/3Delight renders. The Sienna renders used the included UberEnvironment, and no purchased light sets. For "Character WIP, and the "Practicing Her Craft" series I used Photo Studio for lighting. I did do some adjustment on materials/shaders on all of them, so they aren't 100% out of the box renders, but no special tricks. The skin shaders use HumanSurface Shader (HSS), which provides several additional settings (like SSS) that aren't included in the base DS materials. With DS$ Pro - HSS is included as well.

bandolin said

Quote - My interest in DS was sparked by the Genesis models since they are not available to Poser.

Genesis is really amazing ... and fun! Genesis was the main (only?) reason I finally sat down and began to really learn DS. I'm glad I did. The render speed can be a bit frustrating compared to Carrara, but DS 4 Pro has a lot of nice features, and I like the results I can get from it - especially with Genesis. In all of my DS4/Genesis renders, Genesis is wearing V4 content (except for the V5 Elite Ponytail). Not all of your V4 content will work perfectly, but most of it should, so you have an instant wardrobe for Genesis if you have stuff for V4/M4.

I'd say give it a try, and feel free to ask questions (I'll be off line a lot next week).

Good Luck!!!

 

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