Answering DAZ questions!

[Deleted member 833007]

Holloweenie I am trying to use a gen8 model and clothing that uses a geoshell but when i try to render it in Octane the texture doesnt show up but if i remove the shell it becomes ok again any solution?

 

[Holloweenie]

Holloweenie I am trying to use a gen8 model and clothing that uses a geoshell but when i try to render it in Octane the texture doesnt show up but if i remove the shell it becomes ok again any solution?

I don't use octane at all so I can't help you with that, sorry

 

[Deleted member 833007]

another way to put a character/prop somewhere in the scene easier, you can hold down the left alt key, and drag the prop/character to the location and drop it where you want it to load.

i've got a question i'm not sure if this is the thread for it, but not sure if it warrants a thread on its own.

i recently upgraded my pc big time, mainly to get more out of daz studio. going from a 4 core intel, 16gb ddr3, 980ti, to an 8 core amd 3800x, 32 gb ddr4 ram, and a 2080 ti.

my problem is some characters i've created are very slow to move around, pose, adjust etc. there is lag and delay, even rotating the viewport and adjusting sliders etc. i've noticed its on the characters that have HD morphs added, at least i think so. its strange because i can load a character with tons of alterations and have it work fine, crystal smooth etc. but other characters lag everything out.

i was wondering if you or anyone has come across anything like this, and is there a way to get stuff to run smoother?

this is just normal texture shader viewport, not iray or anything.

Give Scene Optimizer a Try.

 

[Holloweenie]

Holloweenie followed your tutorial as best I could (for a first timer). 2.5 hours to 100% render (i7 4790k and GTX 1080). Stock background that came with Daz; I didn't have any good room assets when I started on it today. I'll have to get some...

Your thoughts? Be honest (this is for anyone with daz experience, feel free to critique); don't worry about hurting my feelings

Personally:
-I think it's too bright; needed to play with the lighting a lot more. Either the spotlight or the plane light above needed to be turned down... maybe even both. The difficulty in that is, I can't "actively" work in iray; I have to work in texture shaded. I flip into iray and everything slows down (I'm thinking about buying a second 1080 to run in SLI; assuming that'll help a lot?).
-There's an issue with the pants fabric (I think?), in two places it looks like there are different fabrics being used... I'm assuming that's either a lighting thing, or intended by the asset. I can't really tell which, and I haven't gone back to play with it yet, since this just finished rendering.
-She's cute... Sorta. I think facial details like eyes, lips, makeup, and expressions are probably the next thing I need to start playing with. I (gasp) wish her bosom was a little smaller. That's gotta be in the body sliders. They look a little... large for her frame.

It's a decent start, you learned how to add in objects and characters and setup poses and the camera. I can't say I'm fond of the actual character but that's all personal preference and it just takes time to learn how to create good characters. I would suggest using reference images and trying to recreate faces to better understand all the little features of a person's facial structure.

The lighting is very bright. One thing to keep in mind is that iray has to simulate light bounces on all the different surfaces and materials so a material like tile is going to be more reflective than carpet or wood. Also lighter surfaces in this case white, will lose detail and look very bright when being over lit. You can better understand this by looking at her pants, even though the leather is very glossy and reflecting a lot of light, the surface is dark and retains the details better than the wall or the floor. What I would do is lower the main scene light by about half and use a spot light for the main light source on the girl.

Ignore the rushed quality, but I remade the scene and lit it with a point light set to sphere as the main "ceiling light" and a spotlight above the character behind the camera looking directly at her chest to make sure her head and legs both get lit pretty evenly


By using the spot light on the girl as the main light source over the room light it makes it so the character is lit up without washing out the room in light. If you are creating and environment that you plan on making multiple renders in for a game or whatever, then you will need to figure out a way to light the room so that all angles will look decent but in my case for this render I'm only rendering from this angle so I setup the room light in the back corner behind the camera.



Lighting is the most annoying thing to learn and it will take a lot of time since every environment is different and you need to account for your camera angles and surfaces in the scene as well as time of day. I'm still not a master at lighting and I've been using daz for almost 4 years. Just keep working with making scenes and lighting for different moods. I would recommend doing environments only for practice just so you can render quickly and get a feel for scene lighting before working with characters.

Here's a preview of a room I was working on recently and how I lit it to blend natural light and the ceiling light to make it feel natural

 

[Deleted member 833007]

I don't use octane at all so I can't help you with that, sorry

its ok mate..I figured it out!

 

[Yonamous]

Holloweenie followed your tutorial as best I could (for a first timer). 2.5 hours to 100% render (i7 4790k and GTX 1080). Stock background that came with Daz; I didn't have any good room assets when I started on it today. I'll have to get some...

Your thoughts? Be honest (this is for anyone with daz experience, feel free to critique); don't worry about hurting my feelings

Personally:
-I think it's too bright; needed to play with the lighting a lot more. Either the spotlight or the plane light above needed to be turned down... maybe even both. The difficulty in that is, I can't "actively" work in iray; I have to work in texture shaded. I flip into iray and everything slows down (I'm thinking about buying a second 1080 to run in SLI; assuming that'll help a lot?).
-There's an issue with the pants fabric (I think?), in two places it looks like there are different fabrics being used... I'm assuming that's either a lighting thing, or intended by the asset. I can't really tell which, and I haven't gone back to play with it yet, since this just finished rendering.
-She's cute... Sorta. I think facial details like eyes, lips, makeup, and expressions are probably the next thing I need to start playing with. I (gasp) wish her bosom was a little smaller. That's gotta be in the body sliders. They look a little... large for her frame.

You can drastically reduce render times by using GhostLighting instead of scene lights. It's not as good as scene lighting, but the pay off is that it doesn't take near the same time to render. The other downside is the time it can take to place the Ghostlighting around the scene wherever there should be a light source. You'd also have to set your Auto Headlamp to never as Ghostlighting doesn't register as a scene light. Ghostlighting is a must for people who don't have great GPU's, although yours is pretty good one.

There are other tweeks you can do as well to reduce render times. Scene Optimization, and removal of stuff that isn't in the shot (stuff that would cause a shadow to appear in the shot should stay). You also don't really need to go to 100% render, Max Samples and Render Quality are what really count. I usually go from 1000 to 2000 Samples at 50 to 100 quality.

 

[PJWhoopie]

Quicky question.

I am following along with your tutorial... and almost from jump street, I've got a question.

When I start up my daz and added the G8F, it didn't look like yours. I poked around and realized that my SHOW ASPECT FRAME button wasn't on. So I turned it on.
Is that what I am seeing, because later you talk about Iray Preview Mode and I am not sure how we got there....

When I turn on my show aspect frame I have a longitudinal rectangle, like for a portrait... yours is horizontal. I googled and checked the daz help, but I can't find anything specific to changing the aspect ratio of the ASPECT FRAME...

What did I miss?

 

[Holloweenie]

Quicky question.

I am following along with your tutorial... and almost from jump street, I've got a question.

When I start up my daz and added the G8F, it didn't look like yours. I poked around and realized that my SHOW ASPECT FRAME button wasn't on. So I turned it on.
Is that what I am seeing, because later you talk about Iray Preview Mode and I am not sure how we got there....

When I turn on my show aspect frame I have a longitudinal rectangle, like for a portrait... yours is horizontal. I googled and checked the daz help, but I can't find anything specific to changing the aspect ratio of the ASPECT FRAME...

What did I miss?

You need to change the global dimension under render settings on the left. Look at the left of this screenshot, under general in render settings you can select a preset aspect ratio or set your own.

 

[shao0647]

You can drastically reduce render times by using GhostLighting instead of scene lights. It's not as good as scene lighting, but the pay off is that it doesn't take near the same time to render. The other downside is the time it can take to place the Ghostlighting around the scene wherever there should be a light source. You'd also have to set your Auto Headlamp to never as Ghostlighting doesn't register as a scene light. Ghostlighting is a must for people who don't have great GPU's, although yours is pretty good one.

There are other tweeks you can do as well to reduce render times. Scene Optimization, and removal of stuff that isn't in the shot (stuff that would cause a shadow to appear in the shot should stay). You also don't really need to go to 100% render, Max Samples and Render Quality are what really count. I usually go from 1000 to 2000 Samples at 50 to 100 quality.

RE: samples and quality-

Sorry, you lost me here. Literally downloaded this app 3 days ago. Speak slower and use small words

RE: render times-

How do you decide?

I'm asking that genuinely. At what point do you look at an image you are rendering (in my case, for a visual novel- shocker, I know), and say "okay, good enough"?

Additionally, while rendering is in process, I only see an option to "cancel", not pause or stop. Is that essentially the same thing in Daz?

 

[Yonamous]

RE: samples and quality-

Sorry, you lost me here. Literally downloaded this app 3 days ago. Speak slower and use small words

RE: render times-

How do you decide?

I'm asking that genuinely. At what point do you look at an image you are rendering (in my case, for a visual novel- shocker, I know), and say "okay, good enough"?

Additionally, while rendering is in process, I only see an option to "cancel", not pause or stop. Is that essentially the same thing in Daz?

I'm not sure where you have your Render Settings Tab located, but in there, under "Progressive Rendering" you should see some options. I usually have default for all, but Max Samples and Render Quality.

As for how I decide, I usually just set my Max Samples to 1000 (if the scene has multiple characters) or so and Quality to 50 to 100 and let it run. The quality at that point is quite good and not grainy at all. It's just a matter of finding what quality of picture image you're comfortable with by just messing with the Samples and Render Quality. I'd say start at someting like 500 (Max Samples) and 50 Render Quality and let the image render. Once finished check it out and see if it's good enough, if not, go up to 1000 (Max Samples) and 50 Render Quality (or a little higher) and repeat. Keep doing that until you find the quality you like.

Also you can cancel it at any time and the current progress won't be erased. You'll be able to save the image even if you cancel the rendering.

This image is something I did using only ghost lights, 50 Render Quality and 1000 or 1500 Max Samples (Can't remember) and it didn't take me two hours and I don't have a card as good as a 1080.

 

[PJWhoopie]

Fast way back to base Gen 8?

So, I drop a Generic Gen 8 Figure in to daz... then, following the tutorial from pg 1, I go to shapes > Head > People

and, a little bit of this, a little bit of that... 10% Julia, 8% Samantha...

Egad! That is one ugly bitch... !

Undo only gets you so far... is there a way to go back to the ground zero base Gen 8 (that is removing all of my plastic surgery fuck ups)?

Currently, I can't figure that out... so I just close without saving, and open daz up again and start fresh.

 

[Holloweenie]

you could just add in a fresh g8 female or go into the shaping setting and look at currently used, then take away what you dont want

 

[PJWhoopie]

Ahhh... genius!
Thanks!

 

[rev2020]

my problem is some characters i've created are very slow to move around,

Make sure "SubDivision Level" is set to 1 under the Parameters tab
Render SubD Level minimum can be set higher but thats only for the final rendering
no need for super resolution of the caracters when you are just moving them around in the viewport.

 

[31971207]

How to choose moprh and bending packages to improve character posing and expressions?

I am looking at the Kitten character on Renderotica and looks like it uses geoshells to improve bending. It also contains a lot of morphs. Is this superior than using package combos like Auto Shape Enhancer + some other bending controls + additonal morphs (that I am still not sure which to get/use)? I don't know the technical difference between the two approaches.

An all-in-one package like Kitten certainly will be more user friendly and cheaper, but I am looking for realism first and foremost. However, Kitten's geoshell approach may conflict with Golden Palace and other meipe's products which sounds like the de facto standards for G8 adult parts based on the forum discussion. I have no experience with either so not sure if that will be a problem.

Trying to get some technical insights here.

 

[Yonamous]

How to choose moprh and bending packages to improve character posing and expressions?

I am looking at the Kitten character on Renderotica and looks like it uses geoshells to improve bending. It also contains a lot of morphs. Is this superior than using package combos like Auto Shape Enhancer + some other bending controls + additonal morphs (that I am still not sure which to get/use)? I don't know the technical difference between the two approaches.

An all-in-one package like Kitten certainly will be more user friendly and cheaper, but I am looking for realism first and foremost. However, Kitten's geoshell approach may conflict with Golden Palace and other meipe's products which sounds like the de facto standards for G8 adult parts based on the forum discussion. I have no experience with either so not sure if that will be a problem.

Trying to get some technical insights here.

Bend Control, Squish (Breast, Butt, Calves, Thigh) Morphs, Auto Shape Enhancer, and if all else fails... Mesh Grabber.

You can have multiple Geoshells' it's just a matter of going through the parameters and unchecking the conflics. Which in this case would be everything to do with Golden Palace, or vise versa. That way Golden Palace ignores the other geoshells or the other geoshell ignores Golden Palace.

 

[31971207]

Bend Control, Squish (Breast, Butt, Calves, Thigh) Morphs, Auto Shape Enhancer, and if all else fails... Mesh Grabber.

You can have multiple Geoshells' it's just a matter of going through the parameters and unchecking the conflics. Which in this case would be everything to do with Golden Palace, or vise versa. That way Golden Palace ignores the other geoshells or the other geoshell ignores Golden Palace.

I read the discussions of those morph, bend and shift packages and it seems that most need specific tinkering at individual pose, except for Auto Shape Enhancer. They also seems to have a lot of redundancy between them. Very daunting of choosing what to get and how to use them for non-animators.

The Kitten character in Rendeoritica seems to be Auto Shape Enhancer with integrated geoshells for better auto morphs (bending?). I wonder if this is superior for non-artists than using all the other packages, which none use geoshells. Or is it still better to use a lot of morphs.

Sorry about the confusing usage of terminology. I am not sure about the relationship of morphs and better bending. Also how geoshells can be used to improve bending appearances, and why no one else on daz3d.com is selling those?

 

[Yonamous]

I read the discussions of those morph, bend and shift packages and it seems that most need specific tinkering at individual pose, except for Auto Shape Enhancer. They also seems to have a lot of redundancy between them. Very daunting of choosing what to get and how to use them for non-animators.

The Kitten character in Rendeoritica seems to be Auto Shape Enhancer with integrated geoshells for better auto morphs (bending?). I wonder if this is superior for non-artists than using all the other packages, which none use geoshells. Or is it still better to use a lot of morphs.

Sorry about the confusing usage of terminology. I am not sure about the relationship of morphs and better bending. Also how geoshells can be used to improve bending appearances, and why no one else on daz3d.com is selling those?

Oh yes, morphs don't work perfectly and most of the time will require you to tinker with them to get the proper squish / bend look for your character.

Unless a characters bend looks completely impossible or ridiculous, I generally don't use anything other that the Auto Shape Enhancer. I mean, I could mess with a character so it looks like there is pressure on their ass when they're sitting down (Squish Morph), but I usually do not take the time. It's a lot of extra work for something that doesn't really matter; unless you're a perfectionist. If you're just doing portrait shots and not trying to get dozens of shots in a scene out, then sometimes it's worth the extra effort though.

 

[Deleted member 833007]

is it possible for the skins and mats of gen 8 to work with gen 3 i tried copy and pasting the materials from the surface tab but the body somehow manages to fallback to the gen8 morphs..any tips?

 

[recreation]

but the body somehow manages to fallback to the gen8 morphs..any tips?

What? ô.O
Textures/materials have nothing to do with morphs, are you sure you're copying from surface tab to surfac tab, and not from character to surface?