Quote - mousso Here is a render I made with Reality/Lux. It baked for 2 days :)

Oh wow! That is stunning!

Quote - Here is a render I made with Reality/Lux. It baked for 2 days :)

That is fantastic!

Quote - > Quote - I've used Flinks rain successfully several times; convert the material to Water in Reality (leave as Clear water) with the ripple all the way down to zero. You can add a bit of color but I try to get it as close to the environment it's sitting it, if not just a straight puddle or whatnot. The preview box will look black, but it renders fine. 

For the puddle obj's, you can set it to SubD through Studio with edit--Geometry--Convert to SubD. This may or may not trip the vertex winding in Lux, but I've had some that do and it renders fine regardless.

Matter of fact, I did one yesterday that ran the error and came out fine. Post a pic in a minute. 

Thank you for helping superboomturbo. I tried the settings you suggested and no luck. I get this warning with both the imported OBJ and the pz2 in Lux: Parameter 'reject_warmup' not used

Shape #0 (plymesh): Inconsistent vertex winding in mesh, aborting subdivision.

I guess I just have to give up splashes in my scenes.

I dont know why my text became dark O.o

For the material that uses the displacement map, click on Modifiers. Set Subdivision to 2 or more, and select the Use Micro facets box. That will get rid of the Inconsistent error and renders it.

Quote - > Quote - If you have any issues with the Reality fog, let me know... I've spent a bit of time with that one! `¬) (certainly with the image above, it may not give the results you expect!)

Have always admired your renders mbin, and your The Secret Place render is spectacular! Actually have a scene set up on stand by, which I was hoping to get a similar fog effect as you have in The Secret Place, but inside of a large hall. The hall has stained glass windows, which are actually just planes with textures of a stained glass window on them. One question I have off the top of my head, would the windows work as light if I set them to light with textures in Reality? That alone, I realize is not enough light, but if I left one wall open behind the camera and added a sun, would that reflect enough light for the fog prop to give the desired affect? Any advise you give would be much appreciated!

Thank you for the complement! That was the result of my first attempts to understand the fog prop and took several weeks before I 'got' it! http://fav.me/d3i4weh

I wouldn't leave a wall open and use a sun, the fog is a very 'excitable' prop, and you will almost certainly get a 'white out'. With using the fog prop you need to consider that it will 'fog' were ever a beam of light is, if your light source produces multi directional light, then the fog will just appear as a big white cube. Also not sure about setting the planes to be the light source, as you will need to create the tight beams.

A simple test would be to load your fog prop and then insert a spotlight. narrow the beam of the spotlight to be 5-10degrees and point it into the fog. Render to see the result. If you then widen the angle of the spot, you can parent a plane to be in front and apply an alpha map. this is much better than having multiple spots, as the light will be broken up into beams. I have a complete series of tutorials in my scrapbook at Deviant art, (as well as in the tuts section of the Reality plug in group) The above is illustrated here http://fav.me/d4jvkiw (if you have not seen this before, following the links will give you the alpha map used and further ways of using the fog prop)

In relation to your question on stained glass, I have wanted to do a 'final render' in the manner that you indicate, but several other people have mentioned wanting to do the same and I have not had the chance to do a proper scene. However I did demonstrate how this could be done, and it also refers to Paolo's original tut on using the fog prop. It will give you the effect that you arre looking for I think? The problem that you may have is getting enough illumination if you do not want to have only the rays visible, as the more the light bounces around, the more the scene will have a tendancy to white out again. I had considered doing a two layer render, with one layer without the fog prop, and the other layer with the fog prop, leaving all other lighting the same. This should allow the two layers to be blended to get the effect you want. The only issue may be that as the light scource needs to be quite small for using with the fog prop, it may lead to harsh shadows. It would be worth trying it though.

To get the result you want with your stained glass, then here is the link to the post, which contains the description as well as a link in the comments to Paolo's fog tutorial. http://fav.me/d4xnsra

I have included the image below... and I look forward to seeing your results! `¬)

 I'm glad you like my angel render. Thank you :)

@Doc

There is no displacement material. I applied the Water mat in Reality without ripples. Should I try with Flinks materials?

I think I already did that a few months ago but will give it a go again.

Quote - Here is a render I made with Reality/Lux. It baked for 2 days :)

That is an exceptional render! Very beautiful indeed! :)

Quote -  I'm glad you like my angel render. Thank you :)

@Doc

There is no displacement material. I applied the Water mat in Reality without ripples. Should I try with Flinks materials?

I think I already did that a few months ago but will give it a go again.

There is a displacement map somewhere in the scene which is causing the error, check the other materials.

Quote - Here is a render I made with Reality/Lux. It baked for 2 days :)

Fantastic image!

Quote -

Here is a render I made with Reality/Lux. It baked for 2 days :

Holy smokes!  That is stunning.  Hope to see more of your work here soon.

Quote - Here is a render I made with Reality/Lux. It baked for 2 days :)

WOW!   Gorgeous girl, render and lighting......

Quote - Here is a render I made with Reality/Lux. It baked for 2 days :)

!!!!!

Seriously, I was about to wave the BS flag til I zoomed in and saw a few tell-tale speckles of noise. 

Un-freakin-believable work here!

I'm pretty sure I downloaded the Reality-enabled photo lights that John so graciously offered us, but I can't find them in DS.  Can someone tell me the file names, or give me a link so I can DL them again?

Thanks!

Quote - I'm pretty sure I downloaded the Reality-enabled photo lights that John so graciously offered us, but I can't find them in DS.  Can someone tell me the file names, or give me a link so I can DL them again?

Thanks!

Look for a folder named WDJ in Poser Formats - Props.

Mousso, that's a beautiful image.  I just love it!  What sort of lighting did you do for it?

I'd love to see more renders like that.  You inspire me.

Quote - > Quote - I've used Flinks rain successfully several times; convert the material to Water in Reality (leave as Clear water) with the ripple all the way down to zero. You can add a bit of color but I try to get it as close to the environment it's sitting it, if not just a straight puddle or whatnot. The preview box will look black, but it renders fine. 

For the puddle obj's, you can set it to SubD through Studio with edit--Geometry--Convert to SubD. This may or may not trip the vertex winding in Lux, but I've had some that do and it renders fine regardless.

Matter of fact, I did one yesterday that ran the error and came out fine. Post a pic in a minute. 

Thank you for helping superboomturbo. I tried the settings you suggested and no luck. I get this warning with both the imported OBJ and the pz2 in Lux: Parameter 'reject_warmup' not used

Shape #0 (plymesh): Inconsistent vertex winding in mesh, aborting subdivision.

I guess I just have to give up splashes in my scenes.

I dont know why my text became dark O.o

I'm not sure why you're getting those errors. What kind of lighting setup are you using? They may be rendering, but if your light is quite dark, they won't show very well until around 700 samples per pixel. 

I don't recall the Flink's products loading with textures or displacement maps, however, they DO load with a very low opacity. Check the alpha channel in reality and make sure its raised to 1.00. Flinks loads around .30 (30% in studio) by default.

Should have baked for 2 more days but I'm impatient. I never finish my renders. Unless its in poser hehe

@Xandi

The lighting setup is crazy lol Very unprofessional. Here is the screenshot in DS. I used mainly sunlight with very little skylight, the front, top, side and back are meshlights. The background is converted to light too. I had to put a black plane behind it because the sky washed the colors out. Then I just played with the intensity of the lights. I used advantx200 CRF too.

@superboomturbo

Yes the opacity was 20% but that wasn't the problem. Its the subdivision. If I set it to zero Lux wont cough it out. It just looks bad :/

I dont know how it will look in a scene. Probably wont see much of it.

Thank you for all the help :D

Quote - Here is the splash render without subdivision :/

I dont know how it will look in a scene. Probably wont see much of it.

 

Thank you for all the help :D

Always!

Touching again on the water prop, I've noticed the mesh in studio is very squared. If you get into the edit tab and drop down to Geometry, there's an option to convert to SubD (subdivision) directly in Studio, which smooths out the props, or the rain at least, very nicely and will translate along to Reality and then Lux. Lux will apply a default loop subdivision automatically, further smoothing/refining the mesh. I've gotten excellent results with this method. 

On your light setup for that spectacular image, that certainly is a convoluted setup! But who am I to argue? The results speak for themselves! 

Quote - > Quote - I'm pretty sure I downloaded the Reality-enabled photo lights that John so graciously offered us, but I can't find them in DS.  Can someone tell me the file names, or give me a link so I can DL them again?

Thanks!

Look for a folder named WDJ in Poser Formats - Props.

Thanks, Doc.  I found them, and loaded the softbox into a scene, Then went into Reality, and sure enough, Reality seemed to recognize it as a light.  So I cranked the output up to 2000 Watts as I usually do with Reality meshes, but when I ran a render nothing showed (all black).

So I stuck one of Paolo's softboxes in at 2000W and it rendered fine.  What am I doing wrong, shouldn't John's softbox work about the same as Paolo's? 

This is where I pass :lol: When it comes to softboxes, I'm clueless. I don't think I have ever used them.

John     I returned your site mail.......

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - If you have any issues with the Reality fog, let me know... I've spent a bit of time with that one! `¬) (certainly with the image above, it may not give the results you expect!)

Have always admired your renders mbin, and your The Secret Place render is spectacular! Actually have a scene set up on stand by, which I was hoping to get a similar fog effect as you have in The Secret Place, but inside of a large hall. The hall has stained glass windows, which are actually just planes with textures of a stained glass window on them. One question I have off the top of my head, would the windows work as light if I set them to light with textures in Reality? That alone, I realize is not enough light, but if I left one wall open behind the camera and added a sun, would that reflect enough light for the fog prop to give the desired affect? Any advise you give would be much appreciated!

Thank you for the complement! That was the result of my first attempts to understand the fog prop and took several weeks before I 'got' it! http://fav.me/d3i4weh

I wouldn't leave a wall open and use a sun, the fog is a very 'excitable' prop, and you will almost certainly get a 'white out'. With using the fog prop you need to consider that it will 'fog' were ever a beam of light is, if your light source produces multi directional light, then the fog will just appear as a big white cube. Also not sure about setting the planes to be the light source, as you will need to create the tight beams.

A simple test would be to load your fog prop and then insert a spotlight. narrow the beam of the spotlight to be 5-10degrees and point it into the fog. Render to see the result. If you then widen the angle of the spot, you can parent a plane to be in front and apply an alpha map. this is much better than having multiple spots, as the light will be broken up into beams. I have a complete series of tutorials in my scrapbook at Deviant art, (as well as in the tuts section of the Reality plug in group) The above is illustrated here http://fav.me/d4jvkiw (if you have not seen this before, following the links will give you the alpha map used and further ways of using the fog prop)

In relation to your question on stained glass, I have wanted to do a 'final render' in the manner that you indicate, but several other people have mentioned wanting to do the same and I have not had the chance to do a proper scene. However I did demonstrate how this could be done, and it also refers to Paolo's original tut on using the fog prop. It will give you the effect that you arre looking for I think? The problem that you may have is getting enough illumination if you do not want to have only the rays visible, as the more the light bounces around, the more the scene will have a tendancy to white out again. I had considered doing a two layer render, with one layer without the fog prop, and the other layer with the fog prop, leaving all other lighting the same. This should allow the two layers to be blended to get the effect you want. The only issue may be that as the light scource needs to be quite small for using with the fog prop, it may lead to harsh shadows. It would be worth trying it though.

To get the result you want with your stained glass, then here is the link to the post, which contains the description as well as a link in the comments to Paolo's fog tutorial. http://fav.me/d4xnsra

I have included the image below... and I look forward to seeing your results! `¬)

 

Mbin, thank you so much for all of this! The result from the last render with the stained glass windows is exactly what I'm looking for! Will follow all your advise and all your links and will post the results.....It's Thanksgiving this weekend here in Canada, so it will have to wait till next week some time....

Finally got all the parts for my new computer ordered yesterday.. finally tally is
  Mobo Asus M5A97 Amazon 94.7 CPU AMD FX815 Amazon 189.99 Vid Card Powercolor AX7750 Amazon 111.99 Heat Sink Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO Amazon 30.99 RAM Corsair Vengeance Black - 16gb Amazon 88               PSU corsair cx600 amazon 74.75 Case coolermaster Elite 430 amazon 41.98 DVD     22.5

Fans I got from a shop here that sells 'em pretty cheap.. 2-120mm and 1 200mm

Total..  688.27

Down side is amazon's "standard" shipping won't get the parts here til next Friday.  But, I've been waiting nearly 2 months since I pulled the trigger on the decision to build this box.  My brother-in-law already wants to give me $1k for it so that he can flip it and sell it to one of his customers.  Might take him up on it and buy all new parts again and make a fast $300 profit.

Latest submission to my rendo gallery.  This one cleared up so fast I thought the ttl number of passes was a typo.

Quote - Latest submission to my rendo gallery.  This one cleared up so fast I thought the ttl number of passes was a typo.

Very nice indeed!

$300 profit? You could spend that on more memory, or a second monitor :)

Doc.. my bro in law owns a puter shop about 40 miles from here.. he sells 4 or 5 complete boxes a week(tiny town in a tiny county but he's the only shop around).  I might build and sell boxes through him for a while.  The rich redneck farmers in his county think they all need the biggest and newest to track their crop prices.  So, this could be a steady income for a while.  I'm going to keep selling boxes until I have enough profit stocked up to build a beast of a box.

That and there's always ebay

and stupid me.. i could have gotten a trial membership to amazon prime and gotten free 2-day shipping instead of the crap 3-5 day shipping i paid for.  imma call amazon today and see if i can do it after the fact, it's saturday so nothing will ship til monday.

(By the way, I haven’t yet upgraded to DS 4.5 and Reality 2.5.  Anyone here who can tell me what the additional benefits are to doing so?)

Here’s a little one that was inspired by the old Tarzan novels (I’ve actually been reading them from Project Gutenberg).  Yeah, it’s a mostly naked Vickie with a sword.  So sue me.

Thanks, Doc.  I found them, and loaded the softbox into a scene, Then went into Reality, and sure enough, Reality seemed to recognize it as a light.  So I cranked the output up to 2000 Watts as I usually do with Reality meshes, but when I ran a render nothing showed (all black).

So I stuck one of Paolo's softboxes in at 2000W and it rendered fine.  What am I doing wrong, shouldn't John's softbox work about the same as Paolo's? 

Just spotted your post, the sets I make are props, they are not really meant to be light sources, they are just bits and bobs you'd use in a scene.

I formated my PC recently and have only installed the basics at the moment, but if I remember rightly you have to set the difuser material to mat translucent so the light can shine through it, the same way you would set a lampshade.

Lampshades, that gives me an excuse to show a lamp I did the other day. Not a freebie or for sale, this is just for my on-line buddies.

The fx-81xx multi thread perfomance has greatly improved with the Win7 updates.

I'm up 30% compared to performance in January.

FX-83XX series Piledriver CPUs are out in the next week or two. The A10 range of APUs are available at ebuyer. They contain up to 4 piledriver cores but with a 75xx series GPU in the package.

Thats a very nice lamp John!

Haven't been able to look at the challange thing for a couple of days. But last night spent a few minutes on it. I did realise why it seemed as though the plasma emiter only gave out light around its base; It actually does give light evenly, it looked that way because the glass is actually a solid ball of glass - not hollow. So the slight tint to the glass meant the light could hardly get through the thickness... setting the glass to 250 solved that. Also made a new texture for the paper, at least that one seems quite straight forward... just a pity they are not individual sheets. I tried a textur into the book cover 05, but did not know how to view the uv map unless there was an image already associated, so did a quick scan of a cover and its edges and simply plonked it in the texture... of course, its then possible to see the uv map, (but only if the image in the texture channel is big enough... anyway, its stil not really obvious as to how the texture is mapped.... (I have also noticed that three of the book covers seem to render black, regardless of the colour that is set?) this was the result of those minor tweaks...

I'm wondering if anyone can tell me how the UV maps work, I was under the impresion that the uv map showed the geometry of the object overlayed on the image loaded... it does seem to matter that the image needs to above a certain size, as if it is small, not all the uv map is shown... so not sure how you tell what size the texture needs to be? - I expect there is come easy menu item in daz that displays the size or something that I don't know about! It would be easier than the trial and error method I am using of loading a blank image into the texture in Reality and then checking to see if the uv map shows up, and then changing the size to see if there is any difference?!?

I looked at the book one, and the book geometry does not seem to be clear from a blank image, so I added the colours and charcters to see. It would seem the majority of the cover is the centre section, but not sure about the uv lines with gaps and so on, it is not clear from the blank image at the bottom as to the area. Is it really this hit and miss, or am I missing something obvious and simply making it hard for myself??? (it also seems to be reversed... so will have to remember that for the book writing!) I have also highlighted the issue with one of the black books... it seems the texture is almost visible, and shows up in the reflection. Not sure why that book from theat group is so dark? Any ideas? (there seems to be one book from each group that does this...) I wonder if this is a similar issue to the fact that one of the radio areals also does this???

...I've also just noticed that some of the sheets of paper that belong to 'LoosePaper' are also coming out black... If there is some issue here that is causing this that I have no control over, then it may not be worth carrying on with this... Is anyone else having issues with the items in a group not all taking the same texture information when it is set? I know the aerial issue has been seen... This isn't the latest download of yours Paolo, but I think the only change to the previous one was the renaming issue? ...perhaps I will download the latest just in case... `¬)

Quote - Latest submission to my rendo gallery.  This one cleared up so fast I thought the ttl number of passes was a typo.

Very nice, I like the lighting a lot.

Quote - Ok, so I’ve been a bit too busy to be posting (that, and the network at work is very restrictive).  Of course, that doesn’t mean I haven’t done a few renders in the past few months. 

(By the way, I haven’t yet upgraded to DS 4.5 and Reality 2.5.  Anyone here who can tell me what the additional benefits are to doing so?)

Hey John, so nice to see you again. I was wondering what happened to ya.

DS4.5 has several bug fixes that you might find useful. Reality 2.5 is the version that works wit that, no special features just a recompilatioin to make it work with the latest from DAZ.

Cheers 

Attached Link: Passengers

Quote - > Quote - Ok, so I’ve been a bit too busy to be posting (that, and the network at work is very restrictive).  Of course, that doesn’t mean I haven’t done a few renders in the past few months. 

(By the way, I haven’t yet upgraded to DS 4.5 and Reality 2.5.  Anyone here who can tell me what the additional benefits are to doing so?)

Hey John, so nice to see you again. I was wondering what happened to ya.

DS4.5 has several bug fixes that you might find useful. Reality 2.5 is the version that works wit that, no special features just a recompilatioin to make it work with the latest from DAZ.

Cheers 

I'm only kinda back.  The next semester starts on Monday, so I'll only have intermittent time to do things.  This semester is Differential Calculus, Data Structure for programming, and Operating System Concepts.

Yeah, My time will be pretty much gone.  That, and the girls are getting bigger and want more of my time, and work is getting busier.

Quote -
 

I'm only kinda back.  The next semester starts on Monday, so I'll only have intermittent time to do things.  This semester is Differential Calculus, Data Structure for programming, and Operating System Concepts.

Yeah, My time will be pretty much gone.  That, and the girls are getting bigger and want more of my time, and work is getting busier.

 

Look on the bright side: December 21, 2012 is right around the corner! 

Personally, I do believe the world will be in for a rather large disappointment as the gears on the clock keep on grinding away. 

Quote - Look on the bright side: December 21, 2012 is right around the corner! 

Personally, I do believe the world will be in for a rather large disappointment as the gears on the clock keep on grinding away. 

Awwwww...

All that digging for nothing? At least buying the Christmas pudding wasn't a mistake.

It was also worth starting to shoot the 2013 Penny Calendar.

...well only if you eat it four days early... `¬) Mind you I'll be happy to entertain 2013 with Penny! ...you always make me smile!

Here's how far the challange has gone, http://fav.me/d5h3csz How is anyone else getting on? ... is it as dificult as I am finding??? Will post a render in the morning of the scene, would be good to see some others too...? I'm sure this isn't as staright forward as it should be... or is that just me? `¬)

Quote - > Quote - Latest submission to my rendo gallery.  This one cleared up so fast I thought the ttl number of passes was a typo.

Very nice, I like the lighting a lot.

Paolo.. i did something with the lighting that i rarely do.. i put a single mesh at her feet shooting up at about 85 degrees.. i like how it turned out too.... i don't normally post a lot of fully clothed renders to my gallery here but that one was irresistable

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - Latest submission to my rendo gallery.  This one cleared up so fast I thought the ttl number of passes was a typo.

Very nice, I like the lighting a lot.

Paolo.. i did something with the lighting that i rarely do.. i put a single mesh at her feet shooting up at about 85 degrees.. i like how it turned out too.... i don't normally post a lot of fully clothed renders to my gallery here but that one was irresistable

Using a single light source will generally run faster... I did some test some time ago with a scene with different numbers of lights. I ended up with one light and added several planes to bounce the light to where it was needed. A shaped light (curved) also works well. `¬) ...nice image by the way!

heres the latest overnight run to 2ks/p... tried adding an image to the room, but was totally stretched and the back wall was upside down again... so cheated by adding a plane with image behind the camera and a plane set to mirror behind the table. I tried setting the room to mirror, but the mirror surface ended up on the outside of the room... suspect this issue is the same with some of the other textures, particularly as one book on close inspection has the text the right way round, and the on another from the same group it is reversed... Hopefully using particular camera angles will minimise this being noticeable... will need to adjust the image for the book pages as the text is getting stretched around the page edges, and will need some other covers to break up the sameness, as all the books are now set the same... not sure I will get much time on this today tho;-

I think I may have found what may cause the black books and aerials, etc... I went back to the original site that the files came from http://www.3drender.com/challenges/index.htm and imported the obj file. The tube rack comes in undistorted, and the liquid surfaces are also correct. I started adding some of my textures, and the book cover works. I then loaded glass, which again was ok. I selected then Hyper-real glass, and some of the books went black. Changing back to normal glass everything ok again. Selecting water as the liquid, also made black books. Changing the water to standard glass and all is ok again. Even the aerials are still correct at the moment. Also, no black papers either... I will try later on the latest scene file to see if the same thing holds true for at least the black book covers and aeriels. The only issue so far on the original obj is that the book cover against the brain jar still has its map reversed when compared to the one on the top of the pile... Got to dash now, so will check the present scene later...

Anyway, it may be useful info to anyone else if having 'black material' issues to try not setting liquids to water or using hyperreal glass... not sure how much this will affect the apearance of a final render tho?

Quote - heres the latest overnight run to 2ks/p... tried adding an image to the room, but was totally stretched and the back wall was upside down again... so cheated by adding a plane with image behind the camera and a plane set to mirror behind the table. I tried setting the room to mirror, but the mirror surface ended up on the outside of the room... suspect this issue is the same with some of the other textures, particularly as one book on close inspection has the text the right way round, and the on another from the same group it is reversed... Hopefully using particular camera angles will minimise this being noticeable... will need to adjust the image for the book pages as the text is getting stretched around the page edges, and will need some other covers to break up the sameness, as all the books are now set the same... not sure I will get much time on this today tho;-

 

Loving your latest here, Martin, and glad to see you're still refining! I haven't gotten anything started in several days as I'm rushing and writing like a mad man, trying to get a novel done before the end of the month. 

She hasn't posted in the thread in ages.. but just wanted to send congrats to my wife for getting a D|S Staff Pick of the Week for this image..

Mousso and John both got picks also.  Way to go folks.. keep up the outstanding renders.

And here's my latest gallery submission....

Attached Link: In the bus

First working render in progress