Quote - > Quote - Lux won't do this (two media) in one go

I'm interested in what this means. Can you elaborate?

Thanks.

Hi Paolo,

I tried to do a render with the camera/view partly 'submerged', so I positioned the camera accordingly, looking a tiny bit up.

That setup surprisingly gave me a render 100% above the water surface.

I thought "maybe it's the procedural ripples, and the camera happens to be in a low area by accident".

So, for the next render I lowered the camera a bit, just enough to be sure a part of it would always be below the surface, and I got a render 100% submerged. Again, not what I wanted.

Then I tilted the camera up a tiny bit, without moving it, and I to my amazement got a render 100% above water again!

This led me to my conclusion Lux can only 'look' through one frame filling medium at a time. Not strange when you think about it, but a pity non the less (if indeed true).

I ended up compositing both versions in Photoshop, but I flipped the underwater scene up side down, and used the warped reflection on the surface for the submerged part, because the true view was too clear and not 'underwatery' enough to my taste.

Dirty tricks all over this time, sorry, can't help it ; )

Cheers!

SPLASH!

Lux won't do this (two media) in one go, but, as some will say: "Photoshop's your friend".

: )

Cheers!

Great chair!

Sure, a few more vertices for the seat would have given a nicer looking deformation, but as you can see from my small but ever growing collection, I've been having my share of fun with that particular piece of furniture : ) 

Thanks for sharing it Michael!

Cheers!

Practice pose with those difficult Genesis shoulders.

Shoulder blades are another area that needs some TLC from DAZ.

Anyway, hope you like it (in all its simplicity) ; )

Cheers!

Quote - This is a work in progress tribute to Boris Vallejo titled "Soap / Counterfeit Lover".

I still need to create a small prop that will go over the right hand and add soap suds on the body, and there's a slight problem with the hair but I'm pretty happy with how it's coming along

I hope you don't hate me for saying this, but to me it looks like she is about to fall over.

Guesstimating her center of gravity and the location of the vertical axis where her supporting foot most likely is, she looks somewhat unbalanced.

And yet another challenging pose : )

I really-really enjoy the way LuxRender lets you adjust (or completely change) the lighting balance during/after the render process.

Cheers!

Quote - LOL, nice pose, talk about easy access, LOL.

I always turn off limits when using genesis as most poses don't fully pose when on. I did notice that genesis bends differently than V4 in the shoulder area so to get extreme poses you have to pose different parts to get realistic poses.

Also on the chair, not sure if intentional, but shouldn't there be material zones other than red?

I think this girl knows how to defend her 'comfort zone'. An 'access denied' response from her probably breaks your nose (or worse)  : )

The human shoulder is a pretty complicated mechanism, so I'm not surprised DAZ had to cut corners here. I just didn't expect that a reasonably common arm position would be so difficult to arrange.

The red chair is indeed intentional. I'm still suffering the consequences of an 'old school' (european) design education many-many years ago. You know: 'Less is More', 'Keep It Simple Stupid', that kind of arty-farty stuff. Stuck in a rut, can't shake it off. Please try to ignore it ; )

Cheers!

Quote - Erik, very nice pose and lighting.  If I tried that, I just know the chairs would slide apart and I'd be flat on the floor in the blink of an eye.

Thanks Xandi!

Hey, what about this then, could you do that one? ; )

Placing your hands flat on top of your head, with your elbows pointing forward isn't too difficult to do in real life, yet I have to brutally override movement constraints with Genesis to make it do that. Am I doing it wrong, or does Genesis indeed have a 'shoulder problem'?

Cheers!

Hey guys, how about this for a pose : )

I really like this one a lot!

Cheers!

Quote - Just wanted to remark on a couple of image sizes common today. HD @ 1080p is 1920x1080, while 720p is 1280x720. These are common sizes used for current  TV sets. Print is, of course, a different medium altogether.

Cheers.

As you may perhaps remember the reason for me to start using DAZ studio and Reality was to merge 360x180 degree panoramas with (scanned and/or sculpted) rendered 3D content.

For this to work my renders need to match (or rather exeed) the detail resolution of those (70 Mp) panoramas. After some experimentation I found that 3840x2400 (twice my screen size) 'fits' nicely. Larger would be better, but these dimensions yielded acceptable results.

However, playing with DAZ Studio and Genesis just to see what I could do with them (now that I had them anyway) turned out to be just too much fun! Now I can't stop making renders that have almost nothing to do with what I originally intended it for : D

But even for these images I still want the resolution I am used to; it's sooo much easier to edit them, AND if needed they can be printed at a reasonable size.

So, why not?

Cheers!

Quote -   Any particular preference for wanting your render that large? It will add a significant amount of time to smoothing out a render to 'crispness'.

Well, 3840x2400, that's a mere 9.2Mp's, kind of tiny compared to what's considered to be 'normal' for digital photographs these days, even for smartphones. Besides, imaging technology that only allows me to make postage stamp sized prints (@ 300 ppi) goes straight into the bin. With these images I'm trying to find practical limits.

Generally I'm prepared to wait if the results are worth it, but unfortunately for now there's only one way to find out if they ever will be, and that's to wait...and wait...and wait ; )

Cheers!

This one now had 73 hrs of render time (764 Spp), clearing up, but not quite there yet.

System specs: Intel i7 950 (@3238MHz), LGA1366, 24GB DDR3 SDRAM Triple Channel.

(my renders are 3840x2400 px. , that alone must be a significant factor)

Have a great weekend all,

Cheers!

With enough light you can even do high speed photography in Reality/LuxRender!

(sadly 25 hours of rendering is not nearly enough to get rid of all the noise in water, I'll replace it with a better one later)

Cheers!

LuxRender compatible replacement water plane for El_Lee_victorian-era-inspired-tub_67105.

As promised here's a link to the .obj file I made for the tub:

http://www.erikleeman.com/ZIP/LuxRender_water_surface.zip

Original file: "El_Lee_victorian-inspired-bathtub-add-on-faucet-and-water-plane_67135"

Artist Elisa S. "El Lee" Royo Of Rebel Clan Studios™ LTD. Copyright January 2012©

Do not use the original water plane (that comes with the tub) in combination with pret-a-3D Reality/LuxRender.

Notes:

When I merge El Lee's tub from the DAZ Studio content library onto the stage it has the following default parameters:

ytran -77.36 yrot 90.00 scale 30.0%

I adjusted the new water plane .obj to fit the tub in this position and size, so it can be easily parented to the tub.

Happy rendering!

Erik

Hi Doc,

I'm working on a new water surface that (hopefully) allows concentric ripples.

The appearance of the Lux water surface seems to depend on the topology of the mesh, and unfortunately the cleaned original one generates very unnatural looking waves around the girl.

If I manage to make a better one I'll upload it to my website for you (and others) to download.

Cheers!