Congrats cambert! I totally agree that less is more and it's quite an achievement to get a good low light render in Luxrender, so really well done. Even more so with a render with a male subject.

They are calling it Release Candidate which is a bit more than a beta (although still technically beta) and it should only have the sort of bugs that final versions get released with anyway (that could be a big "should", of course).

There are a variety of caveats so I would read the changes carefully (frankly, I would read the whole thread that jakiblue kindly linked to) before upgrading. The one that was intially stopping me is that 3rd party plugins will not work as yet, although the SDK is out so this should not take them long. However, after having read that thread I may hang fire even longer until the issues are better explored and explained.

It will replace your current version and as far as I know you cannot run 4.5 and 4.0.x on the same instance of Windows (presumably Mac, too).

Oh, and it's Pro. I'm wondering if there's only going to be a Pro version from now on.

But anyway, on topic: that Ctrl-E didn't do anything for me, it could be that my shortcuts got wiped (I lost a few of them a while ago, such as Ctrl-Z). What actual command or whatever is Ctrl-E supposed to invoke? I have that script that Adam wrote, and that has always worked for me, but I'd like to know about that command.

You can map a mesh in many different ways on any model, and if a texture was made for one map it won't fit properly in another. V4, M4, K4, M5, etc., all have different maps, so you have to tell DAZ which one to use.

In the attached image (click to enlarge), you can see that the texure doesn't fit the model. That's because it's an M4 texture and Genesis is set to V4 currently (which is the default for the Genesis base). You can see the dropdown list at the bottom, which is showing open. If I select Michael 4 from that list all the textures will magically fit. Note that I have all the parts on the left selected (just click Genesis at the top and they will all go yellow).

Yes, indeed. Hide everything in your scene tab that is not in the camera frame, unless it is required to create shadows. Anything hidden in this way will not be sent to Luxrender and will reduce the memory requirement. Note, though, that although making surfaces null materials in Reality will save wasted sampling, the mesh is still exported, so it does not reduce memory requirements.

Although Reality does a good job in reducing such things when it converts materials, keep an eye on diffuse colour to make sure it is not pure white (255, 255, 255) as this is very wasteful, and unnecessary, and keep specularity very low, even on a fairly glossy surface. If you are using metals (which are fantastic) you might think about sacrificing some polish to avoid reflections on adjacent surfaces (say if it is jewelry next to skin). Typically with gold they look like red or orange speckles and never seem to clear up. You can also have this problem with non-metal texures with high specularity.

The cube trick really works. I use it by default, and although it cannot be used in wide open scenes (without postwork), I prefer tightly framed scenes in any case and use it for both indoor and outdoor scenes.

Quote - Thanks for the comments guys. I'm still debating on if I should go sci-fi or gothic or both.

Both!! I'm a huge sci-fi fan and I only ever wear black! Very nice work, and it's interesting to hear how the improvements in 4.5 are working out. I'm waiting for the Reality update for 4.5, but I'm really looking forward to trying it out. The pendant looks wicked in every sense of the word. Jewelry is always handy to use on its own as well as with the original set, so it's a good addition.

Could you be more specific about what you mean by "3rd party textures" (e.g. what product) and explain what is going wrong when you try to apply them? It really doesn't matter who makes the textures, by the way. I've never had a problem with applying textures to Genesis (apart from knowing you have to change the UV Set when appropriate). I'm sure your problem can be easily solved if we know exactly what it is. To be fair, Genesis was a complete mystery to me for quite a while, so I can understand you not being able to get your head around it!

Geometry shell is a technology that makes a second copy of a model (e.g. a Genesis or V4 character) which surrounds the original, and at the same time the original is scaled down slightly, so it becomes like a second skin, but so much more versatile. It has its own texture surfaces, so you can set these to add texture effects and blends to the original model. You could use it to make a character glow, add hair, moisture—whatever you might imagine. If you've ever seen Jepe's body jewels and tears, "body hair suit" and tattoo system, it's like that, except much easier to manage as it takes a lot less resources than simply loading another copy of your character. It's also going to be a great help with blending textures with Geografting.

You might have missed the link in my post as they are kind of hard to see here, but there is more explanation of it there:

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/63/

Like Geografting, I'm pretty sure it's going to inspire some exciting new products.

In terms of 4.5, I'm all over it. I did manage to find a computer to install it on and I'm impressed already. Plus there's some exciting developments hidden away in there that I won't be able to get to grips with until I have it on my main frame (highlights in Richard's post here—e.g. geometry shell). But I won't be upgrading until Reality is ready—and maybe Gen X (but I think I can live without that for a while).

Quote - Its more like Daz Genius--Tsssssst (injesting puff of weed) I got it man!

That really made me laugh, but somehow I don't see DAZ as a bunch of stoners—correct me if I'm wrong!

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - I even got the render idea by watching my GF sitting in a chair watching a movie, LOL.

Your GF watches movies in the nude???

 

Doesn't everyones? ;-)

Sure, but no one would want to see a render of me doing it ;)

Thanks for sharing the chairs and stuff :)

I'm an enthusiastic user of Reality/Luxrender—in fact I use nothing else. I have a powerful graphics workstation so graphics capabilities and memory are not an issue. Nevertheless I will not consider using GPU acceleration because of its limitations. In fact it can create more noise than is compensated by its efficiency, and there are a number of other issues, some obvious (e.g. limitation of GPU memory), some less so. The best way to increase efficiency is careful use of lighting. For example, use only mesh lights (and I rarely need more than two of these) and enclose your scene in a cube primitive to reduce wasted sampling. If you observe such techniques renders can be remarkably efficient without GPU contributions.

Having a 32 bit system certainly limits your capabilities. I had such a system until quite recently. I had to become resigned to being able to render limited scenes. I didn't find GPU rendering (although I had a decent card) much help with this.

Quote - The skirt gets all screwed up and that little silver bar sticking out from her back shows as part of the gloves when I click on it, although the gloves look fine. How do I make it not do that? My best guess it that it's a rigging issue where the outfit is trying to follow the shape of her body but I have no idea how to fix it.  I've tried "restore selected item pose" but it doesn't do anything like it does when I get strteched body parts on a pose. 

Yes, the autofit has weight-mapped it to the leg bones on the assumption it is part of a full skirt (although, even if it were, this would not be nice). In reality, this front panel would not move with the legs to any great extent. Fixing it is a job and a half, involving weight-mapping and possibly even modelling corrections. There's an early DAZ video tutorial series on this here. Some of it may be out of date, but it gives you an idea of the issues. Autofit seems pretty much useless, or at best hit or miss, for all but close-fitting garments, and has issues even with these (like shoes, and items with bits of topology it doesn't like). Not really sure if the improvements in 4.5 will materially effect these problems.

I had the exact same problem with this garment for M4/H4 (the figure is Genesis):

The front and rear flaps distorted just as in your skirt. I fitted it by parenting only and adjusting with the morphs. Whether this will work depends on how comprehensive the  morphs are in the garment. In this case, they were excellent.

"All Around My Hat". Click thumbnail to gallery for full size and "the reason why [she's] wearing it".

Quote - > Quote -

I was asked to redo this using DOF.  I hope this looks better.

Oh yes! This is fabulous! The DOF makes it even more photorealistic!

Agreed. It's one of those renders that makes you do a double take. I use DOF on everything. The realistic use of shadows and light and shade is another thing that makes renders photographic, and this has it!

I posted this on the thread about funny requirements, but seems relevant here:

Quote - Something else I've noticed is that I seem to be getting someone else's wishlist in the store view (such as here if you are logged in). Also, yesterday it had a link "Not <some guy's name>?" at the top, like I was logged into someone else's account, and it had his (huge) wishlist on the page. Fortunately when I went to my account details it was my account. I also bought my order twice (luckily only about $7) because the final page of the order confirmation didn't come up, and I didn't get an email. Of course, like an idiot, I went through the order again. Still no order confirmation but some time later I got two emails and the order was in my downloads twice. Zendesk isn't working so I can't report this, but it's not a huge deal—I can wait.

The notification emails didn't take that long (afraid I can't remember) but longer than usual. (I should have known better than to try the order again.)