hehe, I guessed you might be joking.

I've not even thought of upgrading yet, I've barely got the time I want to be able to spend using DS let alone installing a new version, got to work at 7:30 am today, left at 8:15 pm, was home 10 mins then got called back again, finally got home at 11:15 pm - lots of long days at work (6-7 days a week most the time) and not enough free time at home sigh

Anywhoo, time for bed, g'nite all.

Abi.

Wholly molly thats long hours night I can play with my stuff at work tee hee

Think I've finally got my workflow dialed in on this whole texture creation deal.  I was trying for a latex look overall.  The background for this shot was actually a photo my wife took at the beach here in Muskegon.

Quote - Think I've finally got my workflow dialed in on this whole texture creation deal.  I was trying for a latex look overall.  The background for this shot was actually a photo my wife took at the beach here in Muskegon.

Texture creation is quite finicky at the best of times. I've found if you're creating a one-off for a character or prop that exists in studio, getting the seams hidden is a big time expenditure. If you have studio open and your prop/figure/___, save your texture as an alternative title and use the surface refresh thing on the Surfaces Tool as you advance, so you can see where everything fits. Also on the texture itself, adding a border around the main image helps hide seams and defines a better fit.

Add: Not sure if you've seen or are familiar, but Blacksmith 3D is a wonderful tool for creating textures from photos and UV mapping from scratch. It's a fairly cheap utility if you don't have the megabucks for Studio Max or Maya, etc. They're also developing a modeling tool in the future, which looks quite useful

Quote - Goodnight

Nice, not quite "red room of pain" though, I'm intrigued what the next one will be

Abi

Very nice room, Doc! Rather curious as to where you picked up that rug!

(To clarify for you fifty shades readers, I really do mean the one on the floor  )

The bed sheet tester is oh so yummy too!

SBT.. I actually do my texturing in photoshop swapping between 2D and 3D mode on the fly.  It's the tool I have on hand and from what I can tell of blacksmith from their site.. it does all that blacksmith does and does it with the added power of all of photoshop's abilities, plugins, filters, etc.

Sharky, what version are you using? I've got cs5.1 and never really bothered to explore its full features. Perhaps I should, as I had no idea it did 3D like that! 

SBT.. I'm using cs5.. Texturing with a base v4 with a decent skin texture on with whatever clothing i'm going to be texturing is pretty easy.  If you wanna try it out.. lemme know.. it's a bit more involved than just a GenX tutorial so we can figure out some way to connect and I can give ya the highlights.

Here's a screenie of the 3D interface..  

Click the pic for the full size shot.  I haven't even explored what all you can do in 3d mode.. although I do know that you can paint directly on the model in diffuse, spec, trans, bump, gloss and reflective modes.

Basically what I use it for is to create my trans maps.  I just load a semi transparent copy of the original mesh's template.  Then I open it via the 3d interface and make my alterations.. it's automagically updated in the 3d interface and vice versa.. if you paint directly onto the model.. in whatever mode you're painting in it'll automatically update whatever maps are included in your obj's mtl file.  It makes creating trans maps a breeze.

This may have been widely known; but, it is a technique that I just learned.  It's for getting nice tight lines in my trans maps.  Once I get my trans mapped all chopped up and looking approximately like i want.. i gaussian blur it to like 2.8 pixels.  Then I go to levels and move the sliders for black and white levels each progressively closer to the center until my edge is nice and tight again.  No jaggedy crap anymore.  Learned that while perusing tute vids on clipping masks.

Can you load clothing meshes into it as well?

Reggie.. yes.. anything that you can save/export as a dae, u3d, or obj can be opened in photoshop.  CS5 and later does it for sure; but, I'm not so sure about earlier versions.  Just too lazy to open them up since i have them back to cs2 on drive right now.  It supports diffuse, bump, trans(opacity), environment, reflection, illumination, gloss and shine maps as well as adding specularity, ambient color and refraction to any map.

You just gotta watch out because when you open your map from the interface it opens as a *.psb file which is photoshop's temp file type.  You can edit it as much as you want but when you're done editing you have to save it back as a jpg, tif, png or whatever your maps are.  Otherwise I'm pretty sure you're going to be losing your work.

Quote - Here's a screenie of the 3D interface..  

Click the pic for the full size shot.  I haven't even explored what all you can do in 3d mode.. although I do know that you can paint directly on the model in diffuse, spec, trans, bump, gloss and reflective modes.

Basically what I use it for is to create my trans maps.  I just load a semi transparent copy of the original mesh's template.  Then I open it via the 3d interface and make my alterations.. it's automagically updated in the 3d interface and vice versa.. if you paint directly onto the model.. in whatever mode you're painting in it'll automatically update whatever maps are included in your obj's mtl file.  It makes creating trans maps a breeze.

This may have been widely known; but, it is a technique that I just learned.  It's for getting nice tight lines in my trans maps.  Once I get my trans mapped all chopped up and looking approximately like i want.. i gaussian blur it to like 2.8 pixels.  Then I go to levels and move the sliders for black and white levels each progressively closer to the center until my edge is nice and tight again.  No jaggedy crap anymore.  Learned that while perusing tute vids on clipping masks.

That looks really cool, and I don't have to spend extra to play with it! I'll get with you a bit later. Too tired to concentrate at the moment :-) 

Weird. I was rather curious, so I opened cs5 and dinked around. Strangely, there's no 3D option in my menus. I googled a bit and found that the 3D mode seems limited to the Extended version, which I'm pretty sure I have. I'll have to check my dvd's and see what version I really have, but unless switching to 3D mode is hidden somewhere, I'm beginning to think I have just the premium suite and not Extended. Wah wah :-(

Quote - > Quote - Goodnight

Nice, not quite "red room of pain" though, I'm intrigued what the next one will be

Abi

Very nice room, Doc! Rather curious as to where you picked up that rug!

(To clarify for you fifty shades readers, I really do mean the one on the floor  )

The bed sheet tester is oh so yummy too!

Thank you. The rug is in The Library, over at DAZ.

My next render is cooking, should be posted sometime tomorrow or Sunday.

Simple test of 4.5's geometry shell rendered as hyper realistic glass in Reality 2.5

Sweet! You just turned the shell into glass?

Yep, just set all it's mat zones to glass with reflection at 255 255 255, transmission at 255 255 255 and Set it to crystal IOR which I think is 2.0

SBT... can you send me a screenie of your photoshop screen.  Your menus across the top should be file|edit|image|layer|select|filter|analysis|3D|view|window|help

If you have CS5, I think the 32bit version may be extended, the 64bit may not.

Penny just found out the Kathryn has 50 Shades of Grey on her Kindle reader app.

Lock up your V4s, V5s and any other female character you may have!

Quote - If you have CS5, I think the 32bit version may be extended, the 64bit may not.

64Bit is extended, I had that.

Quote - > Quote - If you have CS5, I think the 32bit version may be extended, the 64bit may not.

64Bit is extended, I had that.

I sit corrected!

quickest way to tell if your version of PS is 3d capable is to just look at your menus.  there should be a "3D" up top just a couple to the left of filters.  there is also a "3d" listed in your PS windows that can be opened to access all the textures on whatever obj you're working on.  that being said, the version i'm using is cs5 extended.

Has anyone else had any problems with luxrender 1.0rc3? If I am just rendering a single image it works great.  But last night I started rendering an animation, reality 2.5 exported everything for lux, and the first two frames rendered great.  But half way through the 3rd frame, there was a sudden spike where I went from 14% mem usage to 100% mem usage and it froze.  I was rendering to a limit of 60 samples.  And I have 32G of ram.  So after I rebooted my computer, I restarted my the render from the third frame and put the rest in the queue, and it crashed again 3 frames later.

It's official--dark scenes really suck.  I wanted shadows and mood but Lux didn't want to give me a clean image with dark lighting. Took me days of adjusting (and compromising) to get what I have here and I'm not totally happy with it. 

and for the record.. for cs5.. the whole suite is or is not extended depending on what version you have.. i have creative suite master edition so all the stuff i have is extended.  3D is available on both 32bit and 64bit cs5 extended.

just checked adobe's site and sbt you were correct.  3D and image analysis is only available on extended.  it should tell you on the startup splash what version you have.. if not it's definately on the Help|About popup

ugh.. render baked all night.. at first glance it looked pretty dope.. nice bright shiny ultra glossy gold latex.. looked closer as something was pricking my "that just don't look right" nerve and discovered that.. while testing newly made textures, i loaded the wrong bump map.  8 hours of processor time down the toilet.

Quote - It's official--dark scenes really suck.  I wanted shadows and mood but Lux didn't want to give me a clean image with dark lighting. Took me days of adjusting (and compromising) to get what I have here and I'm not totally happy with it. 

One thing that is not always clear is that you cannot light dark scenes as they are in real life. Cameras don't see the way our eyes see and Lux works as a software digital camera. Every movie scene that is shot in darkness is augmented by many lights. The idea is to confere the mood, not to use practical light as you experience in real life. 

Add soft diffusion via mesh lights and provide a way for Lux to "see" in the darkness. Experimenting with a camera will help. Did you ever notice how cameras create grainy images in the dark? That's the camera's equivalnt of Lux's noise. It has the same origin. 

Augment the scene with lights that provide a way for the software to see in the darkeness and you will get the right results in shorter time. It will also improve the image. Very often I see "moody" scene that are just dark and hard to decypher. Cameras are not like people :)

Cheers. 

Attached Link: The dressing room

Attached Link: SubDragon

A special render for Doc, the alternative title is "Hurry up with that new render, OR ELSE!" hehe.

Enjoy,

Abi.

The final version is rendering. I could post it now, but unlike one whose name I won't mention, I want it noise free ;)

Nice render!

Quote - The final version is rendering. I could post it now, but unlike one whose name I won't mention, I want it noise free ;)

Nice render!

Surely you want it to imitate real life yes? well life is noisy!!!  what about a sneak peek? pretty please? bats eyelids  hehe

Abi.

Patience is a virtue :) It'll be posted tomorrow morning (my morning).

meaning my afternoon, you big meany!

Abi.

You are ahead of the UK? Not my fault if you are on the wrong side of the timezone.

Oh, I thought you were a few thousand miles west of Europe, well, in that case, your morning is about 55 minutes away (mine too!, Coventry), so you better get ready to upload that render!  hehe

Abi.

Coventry? Hmm. Maybe I should deliver the render in person ;)

But what if its not up to standard?   lol

Abi.

Btw. My o/h is getting jealous!  hehe

There is an o/h? Tell him there is nothing to be jealous of, I'll post it here instead lol.

him? making assumptions!?  lol

That'll keep you wondering for a while!

Abi.

PM sent to keep this out of the public domain ;)

Quote - PM sent to keep this out of the public domain ;)

LMAO, shy are we? Abi.

Edit: Replied.

Quote - A special render for Doc, the alternative title is "Hurry up with that new render, OR ELSE!" hehe.

Enjoy,

Abi.

OOO I like this one nicely done!

Quote - > Quote - A special render for Doc, the alternative title is "Hurry up with that new render, OR ELSE!" hehe.

Enjoy,

Abi.

 

OOO I like this one nicely done!

hehe, thanks, I enjoyed knocking that one together, I do like "different"

Abi.

How do I get the new Reality version for DS 4.5, Macintosh? I just upgraded from DS 4 Pro to DS 4.5. It seems to be working fine, from the few tests I've made. I expected, however, to see a notice that a version of Reality was ready for it and to download that, as has happened before with earlier versions of DAZStudio. This is not happening. 

Quote - How do I get the new Reality version for DS 4.5, Macintosh? I just upgraded from DS 4 Pro to DS 4.5. It seems to be working fine, from the few tests I've made. I expected, however, to see a notice that a version of Reality was ready for it and to download that, as has happened before with earlier versions of DAZStudio. This is not happening. 

http://preta3d.com/blog/2012/08/21/reality-2-5-has-been-released/

Thank you very much, RFreise. I'm getting Reality 2.5 now.

Hey Sharky, just got in from the hospital. I found my CS edition, and suck-be-true, its cs5.5 Design Standard Suite. Doh!!! Had I known I could use it for rendering, I would have bought the one that wasn't meant for publishing text. Sigh... 

I truly don't know on ability of just upgrading to an Extended version, as last I heard in the grunt and grumble mill, CS6 was the next in the chain with no special pricing for upgrades. 

I'd gladly be wrong if anyone knows...