Ice Age Migration

[alessandro]

If I'm allowed to do some self (blatantly biased) promotion, Look at my Hair (aka LAMH) is a cheap DAZ Studio plugin that allows to fur any object that can be imported into DAZ Studio (thus not only DAZ/Poser figures/props but virtually any .obj file that you can throw at it).
The plugin has a wide set of tools, deformers and instruments to comb, cut, scale and shape hairs and afterwards you can choose to render within Studio (which uses 3Delight, a RenderMan compliant render engine), or export to a textured .obj, thus having all you need to later import your furry critter to an external application and use it.
At the following links you may find lot of information and renders about it:

https://www.facebook.com/LookAtMyHair (official FB page)
http://www.furrythings.com (LAMH blog)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc56g6BEO2k&list=PL_JdHHW5yFwbqeq6aJzKtfEdbpt9k4HY6 (1.0 tutorials)

We are currently testing the 1.07 beta which will enhance the plugin introducing several new features asked from users, one of those being an 'adaptive' .obj feature that allows to squeeze geometry size on export without much loss of quality.

[Kadri]

At which detail and AA setting did you render Alessandro?
Could you just try a crop render on the big mammoth with higher settings if you have time ?
Just curious if it can get better as it is.

[alessandro]

Now that is really nice, Alessandro. Great looking scene and terrific animals. I agree about the shininess, but I hardly dare say it. Did you say these were for sale somewhere?

Thanks Dune, my DAZ Store is at this link: http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=alessandro_AM&x=0&y=0
Dinoraul's mammoth can be found at his Renderosity store: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/search.php?adv_search=&criteria=dinoraul&dept=&type=B&page=2

The woolly rhino comes already LAMH fur presets (as you'll see the model actually includes also the white and black rhino).
Many other DAZ models, also not done by me, can be used attaching fur presets available in our LAMH library: http://www.furrythings.com/presets/
There are presets for lot of figures, humanoids, animals etc.

Mind that there is also a LAMH player which is free and allows to load and render presets (but of course doesn't allow to modify or produce hair styles).

[alessandro]

At which detail and AA setting did you render Alessandro?
Could you just try a crop render on the big mammoth with higher settings if you have time ?
Just curious if it can get better as it is.

Actually I rendered at highest setting, i.e. Detail: 0.8, AA: 0.8. So I guess it won't get better than this. It must be said also that I chose a very dark lighting, so hair strands are probably getting low occlusion shades. I'll try something else next, with brighter shading...

[Kadri]

... AA: 0.8. ...

You mean AA 8 probably ? With Ray trace objects on too probably Alessandro?

[j meyer]

Edit:
sorry ,didn't see that alessandro had answered in the meantime
         

[alessandro]

... AA: 0.8. ...

You mean AA 8 probably ? With Ray trace objects on too probably Alessandro?

Sorry, yes that's AA 8. Ray Trace objects is enabled. Here attached the render configuration used...

[Kadri]

Hmm... I see Alessandro. Thanks

[RArcher]

Great scene, the models really look quite good.  Just so you know since your are just getting started with Terragen, the sliders for your render settings (and all other settings) are mostly just useful guidelines.  You can manually enter pretty much any number if you want settings to be outside the slider range.  There are no "max" render settings, just a balance between how long you want to wait and/or no noticeable differences the higher setting you get.

[alessandro]

Thanks for the hint, then I could try to experiment with even higher GI and AA settings, and see what comes out. But I'll first check if there is a way to create a custom shader that allows to have more distinguished shading along hair strands.

[yossam]

You wouldn't consider a plug-in for Poser would you?


You could probably make a small fortune..................

[Oshyan]

Impressive result! Very heavy objects indeed, but the output speaks for itself.

Ryan's tip about using "outside the slider" settings is a good one, somewhat for render quality (but hint: don't bother going above the slider max of 0.8 for detail unless you have a really good reason), but more particularly for many other settings in other shaders and nodes. Literally every input accepts values outside the standard range. An interesting example of this is color values above 1, or very the very high light intensity values that are needed for localized lights, luminosity values for surfaces, etc.

Anyway, if this is the stuff you're producing after just a few weeks, I can't wait to see where you go from here!

- Oshyan

[alessandro]

Thanks for the hints and I'm glad you liked the render Oshyan!

[Dune]

Can you import obj's in DAZ studio Pro Beta (free) and use your plugin to fur them? That would be an interesting option.

[mhaze]

Yes you can Dune.  You can even instance .objs onto .objs