Using female materials on male figures

with help of UV transfer utility for Genesis 3 figures from Daz3D

2022 March 27

This discussions refers to Daz Studio work environment and Daz3D content.

I found some very interesting geoshell versions of female fantasy/sci-fi content which would work well for my projects involving male 3D figures. I discovered that workflow must happen in a sequence of steps and it is linear and sequential. I detail the procedure as follows.

Load the base male figure.

Apply the male character shapes and textures.

Apply the UV swap utility.

Load the female geoshell bearing the special character.

Select the geoshell in the scene hierarchy, and apply the female character materials.

Done.

I had earlier mixed up some of the steps and ended up crashing the software.

Anyone claiming to be able to render HDRI in Daz Studio is BS-ing

2022 March 28

If anyone claims they can render an HDRI image in DazStudio, they are Bovine Excrementing. There are 4 formats DS saves renders in: JPG, PNG, BMP, and TIF. The TIF format used by DS is 8-bit. OK, let's get down to the tech talk. You can try to combine renders of differently tonemapped (simulated bracketed) scenes into an HDRI using an external software. The information in JPG, PNG and BMP are not worth using. The information in DS TIFs are not 32-bit, so it is a bit of a wall to scale, if you want to create worthwhile HDRIs. Remember, an HDRI is a file format. You can import five BMP files and output one HDRI but it will not have the amount of information to make it a functional HDRI file ! It won't light up your scene, hence the typically greyish cast of your subjects and objects in your lousy HDRI-illuminated scene. You can import ito your HDRI creation software 5 bracketed tonemapped renders in TIF format to create your HDRI - and sorry, but it still be a lousy HDRI. The simple reason is the DS TIF is 8-bit TIF.

My various approaches to creating transparencies for card or strip hair

2022 May 21

This post is more for my own reference:

https://www.facebook.com/juniperchew/posts/10223105071668449

Discussion under this post contains method by 3D CG artist Dawn Clement.

https://www.facebook.com/juniperchew/posts/10223142357160563

https://www.facebook.com/juniperchew/posts/10223141408496847

My method based on EASG's method.

https://www.facebook.com/juniperchew/posts/10223165398216575

My method using spline tools of Clip Studio Paint EX

Creating a conforming non-continuous figure with multiple parts and materials

2022 June 02

These are my production notes fo a slightly challenging modelling and rigging project. I created one conforming rigged figure of mutiple parts with their own material zones. Software used: Shade3D and Poser 12.

Creating arm accessories - an iterative process

Use LH dev object

create the accessories and create materials for each geometry

export without welding or export as individual parts

import into Poser 12

export as one OBJ without welding and retain groups

re-import into Poser 12 without welding

use LH Dev object and go to fitting room

Use both prop and LH Dev Obj as zeroed

Create figure

transfer morphs, auto group, etc

Save the newly created CR2 into library

Start a new scene with LH at L'Homme Size 0.5

Load the arm accessories CR2 (it will load at L'Homme Size 0.0)

Conform the arm accessories CR2 to the LH in the scene. It will conform correctly. Also, because no welding was done during the steps involving export from Poser and re-import, the materials are retained for each part of the accressories. We can make some parts invisible.

#3D #CG Now that I have sorted out the process for getting multiple unconnected meshes with separate materials into a rigged group that conforms to L'Homme, I will use my own geometries !! Have no fear. Your precious Dev OBJ meshe will not spawn derivative meshes !! #Poser12 #IntellectualProperty

Palms and Soles for dark-skinned characters

2022 June 14

Have been in CG for almost 2 decades. A couple of bugbears which have been discussed in the annals of community history: (1) epicanthic fold for East Asian characters, and (2) lighter palms and soles for characters of very dark skin complexion (i.e. some African, South Asian and Pacific Islander ethnicities).

Some effort at creating epicanthic fold morphs have been made (including by myself), but in the main, much misunderstanding of the eyefold persists, the solution being slanted eyes or makeup that draws in the fold - still a failure for authenticity, but things have got better, no doubt.

The latter item will always be a problem unless independant material zones can be created for those areas of skin surface. But this has not been done as far as I am aware of, because most solutions rely on image texture input to the skin shaders. This approach becomes more problematic when applying PBR skin shaders. The palms and soles of dark-skinned characters are not the same colour as their back of hand and top of foot. Time we collectively try to do something about this.

Procedure of Volume to Mesh in Blender based on Steve Scott's Youtube video

Notes made by Juniper Chew, 13 October 2022

1. Assume there is a mesh in the scene. Convert the mesh to smoke using Quick Effects, under the Object dropdown menu in Object mode.

2. Select the smoke domain in the Hierarchy window.

3. Go to the Physics Properties tab.

4. Save the scene, at this point !

5. In the Physics Properties Tab, Bake The Cache, by exporting all 250 frames to a folder of your selection (you will look in this location later). Note that the Format Volumes option is OpenVDB. (UPDATE: actually, only need 40 frames' worth toget effective fog mesh)

6. Press F3 and type in fluid.bake and Bake All.

(UPDATE: I have had trouble with this step. The reason is:

"the cache type is set by default to "Replay". Replay does not provide any caching at all; it's used for instant replay. If you want to bake data, you should change cache type to modular or final (for final baking all physics) " - see https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/181499/bake-data-button-not-visible-in-fluid-options )

7. Clear the scene of all items except Camera and Light.

8. In Object Mode, Add | Volume | Import OpenVDB (drop-down menu options). Get the same OpenVDB file saved from earlier in step 6.

9. In the hierarchy window, select the imported fluid_data item and go to the Properties Tab (it has a cloud-type icon).

10. Select or check the Sequence Box.

11. Type in 250 frames

12. In the main scene, add another mesh (for example, the default cube).

13. Select the cube in the Hierarchy window.

14. Go to Modifiers.

15. Select Volume To Mesh.

16. Select the dropper to assign the target object. Touch the fluid_data item with the dropper icon to make it the target object.

17. Still with the (cube) mesh selected, add another Modifier: Remesh.

18. I try Smooth instead of Blocks (which Steven Scott used in his Youtube video). Move along the timeline to see how the shape changes occur.

19. In the Hierarchy window, select the fluid_data item and make it invisible.

20. Done.

20. Select the mesh, and export that to get the fog mesh. I made the mistake of exporting the fluid_data !

Some images of my smoke to OpenVDB to mesh in Blender3D,

with meshes usable in Daz Studio Pro ( meshes hould also work in Poser 12.x)

So why am I being stubborn, it would seem, to create a fog mesh ? One alternative is using the good old textured planes approach, which is an approximation but really not wholistic in a sense for the 3D scene. The other alternative is using volumetric virtual fog which eats up computation memory or which simply cannot be done depending on hardware. I figured that using approximations of cloud volumes in the form of geometric mesh would be a good middle approach. I am grateful to Will Timmins for his procedural cloud shaders. I still have to adjust these manually, depending on my fog mesh, but it's a great launching point.

So, at this stage, I have several mesh fogs, and I wish to test them with specific source lighting inside the meshes. I decided to try using iRay spotlights in addition to HDRI 360 illumination (which really only makes sense if it is night-time HDRI or concert stage HDRI). I have some renders showing my experiments with the fog esh and lighting:-