Estuary

[QuinlanG]

After a few weeks of playing with the free version, feel this fake stones test is a reasonable result... though the quality of images out there is daunting.

Would like to say thank you to everyone who has so generously shared files, thereby enabling newcomers, like me, to see how things are done.  Wouldn't have got far without them.  Many thanks to everyone.

Quinlan

Estuary: render time 4.5 hours
Platform: MacBookAir6,2 i7, 2core 1processor, 8GBram

next steps: to find out how to give the rocks a bit of a wet look

[gasbutan]

Very good and photo realistic. Congratulation!

[Dune]

If you haven't been welcomed yet, here goes; welcome to the fascinating world of TG. You'll find some help here, so don't hesitate to ask.

Wet look; overall wettish look by adding a say 25% reflective shader (uncheck RT) after/under the (merged) rocks, or - for each rock specifically - after the fractals fed into their surface input(s).
Wet where water creeps up the stones: add a surface shader after the rocks (either after merged rocks, or after the surface shader having the rocks as child), uncheck color, and set max altitude and some fuzzy softness (a few centimeters with calm water is usually good). Add a reflective shader (uncheck RT will do, and renders faster) as child. Also add a color adjust, set gamma to say 0.75, and feed into the reflective shader.

[QuinlanG]

Many thanks for the kind welcome and guide on how to achieve wet looking rocks

I just hope my brain is up to it — but part of the fun is in the journey.

Cheers,
Quinlan

[DocCharly65]

Welcome here and congrats to that nice start. Looks promising

[mhaze]

Nice Start.

[Hannes]

Welcome from me as well!!
Your image is a very good start! The water's roughness is a bit too much for that kind of puddle imho. The water is quite shallow, so unless it's stormy, it would be much softer.

[QuinlanG]

Many thanks everyone.  
You seem to have a really nice group here, collaborative, helpful, and challenging in the nicest way.  Lots to study and learn.

Hope I can do you justice.

Cheers,
Quinlan

[bobbystahr]

A bit late but Welcome and really promising first image. You got some great help from Dune, can't wait to see your result.

[QuinlanG]

Many thanks Bobby, much appreciated.  With the weekend coming up I will attempt Dune's instructions

Have in the meantime softened the water along Hannes suggestion and for my own testing imported a figure from Poser Pro 11 which is/was my main interest.

The results are instructive as you can see from the zoom, very rough for some reason...

Looking at the MTL output from Poser shows only a limited subset of the shader settings have been exported  (Poser problem) and I need to look at and explore this.

Manually updating the MTL file with more refined settings, e.g., transparency, reflection, colour, and reimporting doesn't seem to improve textures however, see close up of the transparency and reflective settings on the glasses in the zoom.

Also trying to refine individual component textures in T4 resulted in my first ever crashes. 
Also, each change to a setting took 45 secs to make, which I assume is because T4 is trying to live update (?)

I've seen some results by Hannes (I seem to remember) that looked very promising, but am stymied owing to an underpowered machine, which doesn't lend itself to making those kind of changes

Now understand why most of the figures I've seen in T4 renders tend to be small.

Anyway, for those interested in such things I enclose a second render with tweaked water and a Poser import. 

If anyone would like a figure of any sort, to play around with just let me know and I can upload a zip with all associated textures in the same folder.  Small gallery at https://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/?uid=412585 for reference.

Cheers,
Quinlan

[Hannes]

The water looks way better now. Regarding the character (which looks very nice): most of the time it's not possible to import a model into TG, without setting up the shaders almost from scratch. And TG doesn't import all of them.
No idea, why it takes so long to apply the changes. Anyway try to switch the object display mode to bounding box and pause the preview. However, if you use large textures, it may take a while, until your changes are computed.
I'd love to see your image rendered with the path tracer and with a subsurface scattering shader applied to the girl. For the glasses you need to decrease the roughness to a very small value, so that the reflection isn't blurred.

[Dune]

Your figures are pretty cool! It's indeed best, as Hannes says, to import all textures by hand and set variables for the best result. That way you could for instance also add a reflective shader on a no-color surface shader with max alititude (final postion and use Y) to the lower part of her legs, where they would be wet.
For my 'dirty' ancient people I tend to add color variation through a transform shader, and little pimples and bruises, marks, and such. For your lady, I wouldn't

[QuinlanG]

Wow, many thanks Dune and Hannes for your prompt and most helpful pointers on figure textures, I will definitely look at this at the weekend as it is close to the heart

Many thanks once again, deeply appreciated,

Quinlan

[j meyer]

Hi there and welcome,
I would be interested in a closer inspection of such a Poser model,
so, if you really don't mind sharing one I'd be glad to inspect it.

[QuinlanG]

Hi JMeyer, 

Many thanks for your kind welcome, much appreciated, and apologies for any seeming lateness in replying, but as I reside in Japan there may be a fair time difference.

Enclose below links to a zip file for the object figure used, along with all the associated textures and MTL file.

Also enclose a second link to a pose of the figure in an upright position.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/avkda9lk0ypcax1/Eve%20pose1.zip?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o5mb1kjz7r9y591/Eve%20pose2.zip?dl=0


If you need anything else figure wise, or have any problems downloading, just let me know.

Cheers,
Quinlan