MD is doing a wonderful job. As an 'Easy Scene', this was quickly put together (30 mins), but took 5 hours to render. I probably will change the textures and the blurred flowers on the right, though. And the guy needs hair. Any other comment welcome, as always.
We're still in the Roman times? It's really nice. The meadow and the sky have a very optimistic look.
I wonder though if you could remove blue flowers from the foreground. They are quite tall and seem a tad intrusive.
Wonderful my friend, looks very good!
Sweet :)
Personally I like the snap shot aspect of this image. The elements are not overly placed for the composition, the image seems spontaneous and natural, the flowers out of focus participate in it and don't bother me. I have no idea if the aspect of the skin could be improved or if it is currently a limitation of the software? I like the textures and folds in the costumes.
Sweet!! Makes me curious about Marvelous Designer...
Oh yes. The difference is easy to see about using Marvelous Designer.
Very well done....family Stripe...heh
You are certainly hitting the mark with these designs, now fabric choice will enter the picture. There used to be some pretty cool filters that did burlap, cotton and rough weave. At this distance probably not that urgent, but stripes were rare I think. If they are just a band of gypsies in the hills 1900s, the fems are okay, but toga style for the guy, nope.
So did you go with the hobby license or pro? I didn't read all of it seeing the pro price, but you would probably do well with it. :)
Great fabrics! Really opens up a lot of new possibilities. I like the snapshot quality of this, too. What on earth is he carrying? Looks like he could use a little help.
Luvs, maybe the licensing has changed since you last looked, but MD now has Enterprise and Personal licenses (also Academic). There is no distinction made for the personal license between pro and hobby. If you are a one-person shop, you can still use the personal license.
Wow, extreme idyllic and optimistic. I like that. and in fact great work on the people!
What do you mean by the aspect of the skin, Jo? I'm sure it can be a better by using the glass shader with subsurface scattering, but I didn't bother because of the distance.
Luvs; Steve is right, you can get a personal licence. And the group is Roman, so the guy can perfectly well get away with his tunic Indeed, the thing to do now is find nice (Roman) fabric designs/textures, and learn to make proper patterns, or find some on the web. And experiment more with the presets of fabrics (50 or so!), which names' puzzle me mostly.
I deliberately overdid the size of the sack he's carrying, to add some subtle humor. Probably his wife's wardrobe.
Here's close-up of the guy, with his new hairdo. No subsurface scattering, though.
Quote from: Dune on May 25, 2020, 02:07:12 AM... Probably his wife's wardrobe.
...
He really looks like he is :D
Quote from: Kadri on May 25, 2020, 07:41:37 AMQuote from: undefined... Probably his wife's wardrobe.
He really looks like he is
That was my first thought! ;D ;D ;D
I don't know if it's possible. The impression that the skin is not natural does not only concern this image but in general what I have seen with Terragen. Sometimes the reflection of the light makes me think more of a wax or painted surface. Anyway, technology is always evolving and one day it will surely be misunderstood.
Definitely a good decision to make use of MD. :)
As for the skin it's not only subsurf scattering that improves skin shading
generally. One could improve skin by painting more elaborate maps,
taking into account regions where the skin is greasy and where not
and regions where the underlying bone structure is more visible, than
elsewhere and and and....
But that would be really time consuming and that is a huge problem
for this kind of illustrations done by one man only.
Just my opinion of course.
Quote from: Dune on May 25, 2020, 02:07:12 AMWhat do you mean by the aspect of the skin, Jo? I'm sure it can be a better by using the glass shader with subsurface scattering, but I didn't bother because of the distance.
Luvs; Steve is right, you can get a personal licence. And the group is Roman, so the guy can perfectly well get away with his tunic Indeed, the thing to do now is find nice (Roman) fabric designs/textures, and learn to make proper patterns, or find some on the web. And experiment more with the presets of fabrics (50 or so!), which names' puzzle me mostly.
I deliberately overdid the size of the sack he's carrying, to add some subtle humor. Probably his wife's wardrobe.
Here's close-up of the guy, with his new hairdo. No subsurface scattering, though.
He is not amused with his workload...
Indeed, I've been messing with procedural skinflaws, but use only a basic reflection (which I'm also struggling with), so I might dive into better mapping/reflections. But as Jochen states, it's all so time-consuming.
Your "homo digitalis" are really not bad, they look quite natural so I wouldn't bother. :) Perhaps a few drops of sweat running from the forehead would do the trick?
I've been testing sweat before. Difficult to get really watery drops on a skin, as it's only bump that can be accomplished. The perfect way would be another object or pop of drops. I did however mask in some more (quite subtle) 'flat' drops of sweat on yet another figure.
As direct from life! Great!
Perhaps you can get sweat like I get reflecting parts in some of my objects if I can't separate them: I create a mask (opacity image) for the reflecting area and set opacity to inverted in the main object. Then I copy the same object and deselect inverting so I hae only that specific part as a single object to let it shine and reflect.
An example how I did that with a basketball, where I wanted to let the orange area be reflecting and the line not but it was one single object:
Zwischenablage-2.jpg
Zwischenablage-3.jpg
A wonderfully done image all around, but the guy's facial expression really brings it to life lol. If only the rest of his family was just as sassy... ::)
Thanks. I tried merging by a dotty mask, which works kind of the same (I don't want the skin under the drops to not exist at all, so I think the opacity trick won't work here, unless perhaps only used on the drops... though I think I tried that, mmm). The problem is that I don't want skinpores' bump in my drops, and it's hard to match the bump/offset. You easily get a tiny ridge around the drop. I have experimented earlier with a surface layer (after the default) masked by dots and set to smooth (all bump out), and add tiny drop-bump and reflection there, but that gives the same difficulty. I may have another go... must be a way....
As far as I know sweat, slime, sputum and the like are usually
done with a separate object. Although this might give that
AO outline problem again in TG.
Nicely improved skin on the fat lady btw. :) .
Yes, just thought about that this morning, so I will make a copy of the face only, and probably have it procedurally 'dropped up' for a watery bump effect. See what that does. It's a bit of work of course... if I had to do that for every figure. A simple procedural way on one object may be handier, but it's a nice experiment.
Made the lady as a couple of parts now, cape can be replaced by scarf.
Quote from: Dune on May 29, 2020, 01:26:29 AMMade the lady as a couple of parts now, cape can be replaced by scarf.
Always a good idea. For security reasons too. ;) I actually did the same a few times with my houses.
I am sure not your answer, but I got a nice glisten effect on the frog skin with the old dew drops clip, a merge, and a lower reflective value and a mask. Is your face a separate shader or an all-in-one UV map which adds to the fun?
Great work - these figures are terrific and the clothes much improved.
Thanks.
@luvsmuzik; that's what I did, kind of, but it's the bump that gives me trouble, not the reflection. I have to smooth out the skinbumps where the drops are, and that is pretty hard. An extra face with opacity mask and glass shader didn't work either, always got these dark drops, even with shadows of the new face off. It's not important.
Great work and figures! :)
New guy. Smoke sucks, flames can be better, but it's for distance anyway.
Nice! :)
Another guy.
Looks good.
Such great detail. You've really begun to master this.
Edit: Ulco, how large are your image maps? I keep mine to 1K or smaller to speed up load time. I'm not sure how it might affect rendering. Most of the small details get averaged out, which is OK if the figures aren't in the foreground. Just curious.
Thanks.
The DAZ body maps are usually 2048, but occasionally around 1K (LZW compressed tiffs, which I prefer, or the original jpg's). For close-ups the bigger maps are way better, also for bump (greyscale). My own maps (cloth textures and such) are between 1 and 2k, sometimes bigger. I don't think it'll change rendertime, only loading takes time, but that's only once.
OK, thanks for sharing that. I've been using png files lately for all textures. Used to use uncompressed tiff but may experiment with compressed tiff.
The nice thing about Substance Painter is that everything is procedural up till export. So you can paint at 4k and export anything, so it's easy to adjust the final level of detail.
I don't think with current machines the size of textures matters very much, unless of course you have to import hundreds of them.
Substance painter sounds good in that respect.
Well done my friend! :)
Very nice!
Ulco probably does not have to do this using DAZ or Zbrush, but Steve are either of you retopologizing your clothing mesh? I am experimenting again ....lol
I listened to Steve, and keep the topology as is from MD. Retopogy in ZB is a bit awkward, and even smoothing the mesh in ZB messes (logically) with the poly-assigned texture; makes it wobbly.
I stopped using the squaring of the mesh in MD as well, no need. So, now I use default point distance 20, and when finished, set it to 10, or 8, have it update a little, and save.
I do use Poseray to recalculate smooth normals, while I'm at combining figure, (ZB) hair and garments anyway. I can also more easily check if my textures come out nicely, and resize if needed.
You used to be a seamstress, weren't you, luvs? So you're probably good at making patterns. Do show what you're experimenting with! Making patterns is the hard part now, for me.
QuoteI am experimenting again....lol
Excellent! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
The consensus seems to be that if you are doing animation or further work in ZBrush then the garment should be retopologized to give you a good, clean quad mesh with regular edge loops. Which means a certain amount of manual work. (MD's quad conversion doesn't cut it.) There are some good YouTube tutorials on how to do this. The latest version of MD has a new remesh/retopology tool, which might speed things up but I haven't tried it yet.
For now I'm leaving everything as MD exports it, as triangles (as Ulco says, with a particle distance of 8-10), which works fine for still renderings.
That is what I was wondering about after seeing a few examples.That manual topology method looks very difficult, and that would be like designing the garment from scratch after the fact, imho. I can do this in Blender or similar 3D program and use a shrink wrap, but all clothing turns out skin tight if fitted to shape and the vertex offset is difficult to figure for me anyway. This seems to be where I get hung up on avatars or models is the animation part with the armature parenting etc....I get a good garment in an a-pose or a t-pose, then even when done by Mixamo or independent, the garments and avatars do not always do as expected. I will keep fiddling as that is the fun part, many tutorials to check other methods so no loss. :)
The MD experts seem to agree that CAD pattern method is the way to do MD rather than standard dressmaker patterns of old, but I get the methodology anyway since I have a little 3D knowledge and blueprint experience also. For example, IRL sleeves usually are not a symmetrical pattern piece, with a larger curve to the backside and easing of the curve with small gathering stitches to allow for natural stress on the fabric by arm movement. Lucky for me I do know fabric weights and wefts and grain so there I may have an advantage, but I am still looking for burlap bag or flour sack for a few things, haha.
Keep up the great work!
Nice job Ulco, as always. I really envy your skill with human modelling. ;)
Did you try DAZ, luvs? And Andrzej (did I spell that right?) too. It's free, so there's no obstacle. I know it's put down as kind of low quality stuff, but with a bit of extra work you can get pretty decent characters out of it. My main reason for using it is the internal rigging and ease of setting poses.
If you make a figure, have it animated in a few frames from a base T-pose (with slightly hanging arms) to your final pose. Export both. Import T-pose (in meters) to add garment in MD, have it draped, etc, then import the posed figure as morph (which than has the same poly values, and such), and MD does its magic. Pull a little at the garments to get it perfect, change particle distance from 20 to 10 or so, select all, export all selected as (multiple) obj, import in Poseray (you can import a few obj's at once, to be merged automatically), do materials to groups, set all invisible, make groups that use same texture visible, merge and set its name. Some groups may require welding and recalculating of normals, so do that. After all groups done, do groups to materials, then export. Then in TG make all shaders. That's my workflow in short.
Quote from: Dune on June 09, 2020, 04:14:41 AMAnd Andrzej (did I spell that right?) too.
Spelling is correct. ;)
I am familiar with DAZ Studio and know how to use it for posing etc. I have no assets though... apart from the basic, free stuff that comes with installation.
I guess that, was I was meant to ask, was; where do you get raw, human models from? DAZ store? Other shop / software?
DS store is prohibitively expensive. ??? And obviously you can't make 20 different humans from the pool of four free, basic figures... or can you...?
Assets are indeed a problem, either expensive, or bad. I altered my basic DAZ clothes in ZBrush, but that's not perfect, hence my choice for MD.
But the humans in my case are made from just the one Genesis 1 basis (which is free), which has morphs for fatter, thin, muscular, etc. I have found some more morphs on the internet, and I made some myself in ZB. So you can make plenty of characters!! Perhaps also if you have access to another modeling software, you can alter the face afterwards, or before and save as morph, etc.
QuoteThis seems to be where I get hung up on avatars or models is the animation part with the armature parenting etc....I get a good garment in an a-pose or a t-pose, then even when done by Mixamo or independent, the garments and avatars do not always do as expected.
Have you tried recording the animation inside Marvelous? The avatar needs to be saved out of another application in a format such as FBX or Collada that supports animation. Then import into MD. The start frame would be the t-pose. Once the garments are designed you can record the animation and export an OBJ sequence.
I've never used Mixamo so I'm not sure how it would be integrated into this.
Ulco, apologies for the (continuing) hijacking of your thread. Maybe a separate MD topic in Open Discussion is called for here.
I don't mind, just keep on discussing :)
For more human variations one could try 'Make Human' also.
Should be compatible with DazStudio.
Quote from: Dune on June 09, 2020, 09:16:49 AMBut the humans in my case are made from just the one Genesis 1 basis (which is free), which has morphs for fatter, thin, muscular, etc. I have found some more morphs on the internet, and I made some myself in ZB. So you can make plenty of characters!!
No kidding... :o So all that diversity is available with just Genesis 1 in place?! That would be marvellous!
Hehe, unfortunately, I have no idea how to make morphs or where to get them royalty-free. But recreating G1 figure could still be fun and, I guess, pretty much enough for my needs (mostly people in the distance.)
I must admit that I have also been tempted to try out Make Human, like j meyer suggests, though remain somewhat unconvinced... Perhaps I will give it a shot after the Contest.
EDIT: Oh... just read that the MD license costs $490. ::) Not in the nearest future, I guess...
Morphing is not that hard. If you export a low-res(!) Genesis 1 from DAZ and import it in any modeling app (ZB of course being perfect, as you can move the whole lot, but LW or Blender should also be possible), you can move (welded, or they break) vertices about, like making a hooked nose, or pointy chin, whatever. Save again, and in DAZ import as morph.
The guys are having fun fun with their horse ;) Just a quick import and render.
Not only great (artistically speaking) but kinda humorous too. :)
The sitting guy's face just screams "How did I get dragged into this?". ;D
Excellent use of cloth...I am sure the capitain' thinks that was a waste of a valuable commodity! ;D
Nice :)
Let me guess . . . they're names are Larry, Moe, and Curly, right? :) Great scene and detail.
Here's another fun compilation ;D