TEW Render Videos/Tutorials (Tips & Tricks)

[LoNdOn]

http://i761.photobucket.com/albums/xx252/LoNdOn_BeAsT/TEW%20Render%20Creation_zpsva5dxw3s.jpg

 

Hey all, I just created a video today of how I go about creating renders for TEW 2016 and it got me to thinking. Everybody on the forums has a pretty distinctive style with their creations and in most instances it is easy to identify who created which character based on a number of criteria such as pose, lighting and realism to name a few.

 

Based on the variety of creators showing their work on the forums I thought that it might be a good idea to initiate a thread where the aforementioned forum members can post links to videos on rendering, or supply posts with handy tips and tricks for getting started with some of the software frequently used such as Daz3D. This might prove especially useful to newcomers interested in getting started in render creating and can also assist more experienced users in picking up new ideas, or assisting the flow of their creative juices.

 

I myself got started thanks to a fantastic tutorial posted by Trell a number of years ago. (Link below)

Trell's Render Tutorial - http://greydogsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=144099

 

The video I recorded today is a quick look at how I create a new character for my database. I hope it is well received and more will be in the offing.

 

How To Create Characters/Renders For TEW 2016

 

I hope this idea picks up with the community and others get involved with how they go about rendering.

 

Link to Daz3D

http://www.daz3d.com/?utm_campaign=DAZ%203D%20Brand%20-%20Worldwide&utm_adgroup=daz3d%20-%20exact&utm_keyword=daz3d&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_matchtype=e&gclid=CJmj0riby8wCFYTGGwod_S0Jjg

 

All the best.

 

Video List

 

How To Create Characters/Renders For TEW 2016 -

How To Create Characters/Renders For TEW 2016 #2 -

How To Create Characters/Renders For TEW 2016 #3 -

How To Create Characters/Renders For TEW 2016 #4 -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujCgICZEUtU

How To Create Characters/Renders For TEW 2016 #5 -

 

 

Notable Websites (Freebies)

 

ShareCG

Renderosity

RuntimeDNA

DeviantArt Daz3D

DeviantArt Poser

Daz Forums

Most Digital Creations

 

Some sites may require registration to download.

[Dave_Scott]

Do you have a direct link for Daz 2016?

[LoNdOn]

Do you have a direct link for Daz 2016?

 

This is the link to the site. I will add it to the first post.

http://www.daz3d.com/?utm_campaign=DAZ%203D%20Brand%20-%20Worldwide&utm_adgroup=daz3d%20-%20exact&utm_keyword=daz3d&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_matchtype=e&gclid=CJmj0riby8wCFYTGGwod_S0Jjg

[Dave_Scott]

This is the link to the site. I will add it to the first post.

http://www.daz3d.com/?utm_campaign=DAZ%203D%20Brand%20-%20Worldwide&utm_adgroup=daz3d%20-%20exact&utm_keyword=daz3d&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_matchtype=e&gclid=CJmj0riby8wCFYTGGwod_S0Jjg

 

Thank you! C:

[vampmon]

Fantastic idea! I've tried to learn how to use Poser more times than I can remember with no success at all.. have had Daz suggested to me nm but never really looked into it. May well download it if this thread takes off as there are a few custom characters living in my head that I'd love to bring to life!

[lr10540]

I'm waiting for the download to finish. I've got a little less than 1MB left. I'm curious as to how it works. I'm more of a hands on learned, so I'll have to make some incredibly ugly ass renders until I finally start to grasp it, if I even do!

[LoNdOn]

Fantastic idea! I've tried to learn how to use Poser more times than I can remember with no success at all.. have had Daz suggested to me nm but never really looked into it. May well download it if this thread takes off as there are a few custom characters living in my head that I'd love to bring to life!

 

It's got a pretty steep learning curve initially but after a while, you start to pick things up and it gets easier. It is a fun process. I think a few other renderers will have sage advice for the newer Daz3D users which will make for interesting reading.

 

I'm waiting for the download to finish. I've got a little less than 1MB left. I'm curious as to how it works. I'm more of a hands on learned, so I'll have to make some incredibly ugly ass renders until I finally start to grasp it, if I even do!

 

You will get the hang of it for sure. My first renders were pretty poop so there is no shame in trial by error. Keep me updated

[lr10540]

Does the free Daz download come with default lighting, or do I have to find some to download?

[ThomasRiordan]

I'm waiting for the download to finish. I've got a little less than 1MB left. I'm curious as to how it works. I'm more of a hands on learned, so I'll have to make some incredibly ugly ass renders until I finally start to grasp it, if I even do!

 

Everyone starts out with ugly ass renders. I just came across a disc containing renders of some of my first TEW renders the other day and they were so god awful it wasn't funny.

 

As far as tips...

 

If you find yourself using the same lighting the majority of the time. Create a scene with just the lights and the default camera in it. Save it as a scene and set it as your start up scene unless you render other stuff more often. You can set it by going to edit - preferences - check load file and then navigate to your scene.

 

Opacity on the surfaces tab is your friend. If you find you have something that you need to remove parts from such as making a jacket sleeveless you can look to see if the sleeves have their own material node and just set opacity to 0% or if not just go into uv view by clicking where it says default camera and select the object. You can copy and paste this into a paint program, crop it, scale it and then make you own opacity map by making what you want to see white and what you don't black. You can also use the materials in the diffuse color as a reference to make what you want in the opacity map, just be careful not to save over your original.

 

When doing a pose it's best to start with just the base figure you want to make the pose for. Under environment set the background to a picture of someone doing the pose you wish to make. Then you don't have to flip back and forth between Daz and your reference. Save the pose as pose preset.

 

Not so much a tip but a gift. I made a microphone for use in Daz Studio. While this was made for use with the Genesis 3 Male it will work with other figures you just have to pose the hands yourself and make sure to parent the figure to the hand before apply a preset pose. Let me know if you have problems since I THINK I zipped everything. All you have to do is unzip it to Users\Public\Documents and it should install fine. I've included a few textures to get you started. Enjoy.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v197/ThomasRiordan2004/Daz%20Microphone.jpg

DOWNLOAD

[LoNdOn]

Does the free Daz download come with default lighting, or do I have to find some to download?

 

In the latest edition of Daz, the default camera has a headlamp which acts as passable lighting initially.

[lr10540]

JSilver and jtlant's alts are the ones I find myself using the most. I don't know what I like so much about their renders, but what kind of lighting do they use?

[Trell]

Awesome work on the video London, I'll have to watch it again tomorrow and try to see if I cant figure out how to use Daz 4

[lr10540]

I'll have to watch again too in order to figure out how to use it. I was so lost and confused. Then on top of that, I only had 2 hair styles to choose from. I don't understand it at all. I tried going off of Trell's little tutorial but the menus aren't even close. Took me a while just to find a body to start with.

[LoNdOn]

JSilver and jtlant's alts are the ones I find myself using the most. I don't know what I like so much about their renders, but what kind of lighting do they use?

 

JSilver actually uploaded a couple of the light settings he uses. One of which I used in the video. I believe he posted it in either the WMMA4 render thread or the TEW 2013 re-render thread, but I believe it was the former.

 

Awesome work on the video London, I'll have to watch it again tomorrow and try to see if I cant figure out how to use Daz 4

 

Thank you Trell. The layout is a little different but you do have the option to edit the default to the set up I had which should be more familiar to you. James0 is the one that pointed me to the old style of layout.

 

I'll have to watch again too in order to figure out how to use it. I was so lost and confused. Then on top of that, I only had 2 hair styles to choose from. I don't understand it at all. I tried going off of Trell's little tutorial but the menus aren't even close. Took me a while just to find a body to start with.

 

It can at times feel like you will never get the hang of it, but take your time and try not to get frustrated. After a while it will become easier as you get a feel for things.

 

I plan on recording/streaming another video tonight covering rendering a little later on. I will be sure to add the video to this thread as well.

[LoNdOn]

Everyone starts out with ugly ass renders. I just came across a disc containing renders of some of my first TEW renders the other day and they were so god awful it wasn't funny.

 

As far as tips...

 

If you find yourself using the same lighting the majority of the time. Create a scene with just the lights and the default camera in it. Save it as a scene and set it as your start up scene unless you render other stuff more often. You can set it by going to edit - preferences - check load file and then navigate to your scene.

 

Opacity on the surfaces tab is your friend. If you find you have something that you need to remove parts from such as making a jacket sleeveless you can look to see if the sleeves have their own material node and just set opacity to 0% or if not just go into uv view by clicking where it says default camera and select the object. You can copy and paste this into a paint program, crop it, scale it and then make you own opacity map by making what you want to see white and what you don't black. You can also use the materials in the diffuse color as a reference to make what you want in the opacity map, just be careful not to save over your original.

 

When doing a pose it's best to start with just the base figure you want to make the pose for. Under environment set the background to a picture of someone doing the pose you wish to make. Then you don't have to flip back and forth between Daz and your reference. Save the pose as pose preset.

 

Not so much a tip but a gift. I made a microphone for use in Daz Studio. While this was made for use with the Genesis 3 Male it will work with other figures you just have to pose the hands yourself and make sure to parent the figure to the hand before apply a preset pose. Let me know if you have problems since I THINK I zipped everything. All you have to do is unzip it to Users\Public\Documents and it should install fine. I've included a few textures to get you started. Enjoy.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v197/ThomasRiordan2004/Daz%20Microphone.jpg

DOWNLOAD

 

Awesome work with the microphone, sir. I have downloaded and added to my library.

[lr10540]

I got as far as putting hair on a character but I only had 2 to choose from and I couldn't change the color. Where do I get all the stuff you had in the video?

[LoNdOn]

I got as far as putting hair on a character but I only had 2 to choose from and I couldn't change the color. Where do I get all the stuff you had in the video?

 

Where you found the hair, if you go back to the category where it says hair or prop, or figure, (whichever the case may be) there should be a category that says either Pose or Material. It should be in one of those folders (assuming there are preset colour options for that item.

[ThomasRiordan]

Where you found the hair, if you go back to the category where it says hair or prop, or figure, (whichever the case may be) there should be a category that says either Pose or Material. It should be in one of those folders (assuming there are preset colour options for that item.

 

With older hair it might just be faster to go into the surfaces tab and change the diffuse map if one is already set. Clicking on the image should take you directly to the materials for that item. A lot of the older items have weird naming issues where some people would call it BubbaHair and then put the materials in poses under StevesHair-Mats-BubbaHair rather than just naming it BubbaHair Mats or Mats BubbaHair which is really a pain in the ass when you're new and have no clue what you're doing. Genesis figures and newer most people have just started putting the mats with the hair itself so you just expand the tab and it's there if there are any.

 

In terms of hair being under the figures tab the reasoning for that is most of the time the hair under figures makes use of morphs and can use the fit to option where hair placed under hair has to be parented to the head. You can just go in and manually move all the hair under figures to the hair folder either by moving or placing a copy in the folder. This cuts down of having to weed thru a bunch of stuff when looking for hair.

 

I don't know how things work with the smart content though, never used it since I already was used to where everything was by the time they added that.

[LoNdOn]

I don't know how things work with the smart content though, never used it since I already was used to where everything was by the time they added that.

 

The same is applicable for myself in terms of folder organisation. I don't use the smart content setup.

 

In other news, here is video 2 where I create 3 female characters:

 

How To Create Characters/Renders For TEW 2016 #2

 

Hope you enjoy.

[lr10540]

I guess I'll keep playing with it when get off work and watching whatever vids you post.

 

How do I get more options? Do they all cost money?

[ThomasRiordan]

I guess I'll keep playing with it when get off work and watching whatever vids you post.

 

How do I get more options? Do they all cost money?

 

Freebies

 

ShareCG

Renderosity

RuntimeDNA

DeviantArt Daz3D

DeviantArt Poser

Daz Forums

Most Digital Creations

 

Some sites may require registration to download.

[ThomasRiordan]

Here's a few little tricks for getting different skintones without paying for them or having to retexture an existing texture for your own use in renders. As we all know the world is a multicolored place and Daz only really comes with a standard white skin tone which is fine if you want to make only white men and women, but if you need diversity here's a nice little trick for the Iray shaders that will allow you to get diversity for nearly free (you of course have to pay for content with Iray shaders if you can't find any for free).

 

But the secret to this is the surfaces tab. If you don't have a surfaces tab you can find it by going to window - panes (tabs) - surfaces. Drag it over under one of the other tabs to dock it for future use because you're going to want to use it.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v197/ThomasRiordan2004/Example%202.jpg

 

Now select your base figure. In my example it's the Genesis 3 male with the Iray shaders for Michael 7 loaded. But as I've mentioned it's just vanilla white guy so every character I make with these shaders is going to be vanilla white guy. But if you click on the surfaces tab you'll see the name of your figure (usually) but if you expand that it will give you things like default, skin, nails, skin-lips-nails but what you want is surfaces and you want to select by cntrl+clicking the arms, ears, face, legs, lips and torso. You can also select the eye socket which is basically that area in the corner of your eye next to your nose that gets crusty when you sleep. Probably good if you're doing large renders but if you're just doing 150x150 for TEW if someone can see it's colored differently they're too damn close.

 

Now the setting you're going to want to play around with is called base color. From default vanilla Michael 7 the white color 1.0 which is 100% white with RGB value of 255. But if you move the slider down towards black it makes the skin darker, in my example the medium tone is 0.59 or RGB 200, the darker is 0.13 or RGB 100.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v197/ThomasRiordan2004/Example%201.jpg

 

But that's it basically one material set that I had to buy (of course you can do this with free Iray shaded skins as well) and I can pretty much make any color skin I want. If I want to make my character blue I just click on blue as my base color instead of white, as simple as that.

 

Now there are other settings in here you're going to want to play around with and play I highly recommend you do because there is a lot you can do just playing around with surfaces that people actually charge good sums of money for something as simple as colored finger nails. You select the fingernails tab and change the base color. No need for a $20 product to accomplish something you can probably do well enough for your needs just by playing. The worst that's gonna happen if you play with the surfaces is you get a crappy looking render and have to try again.

 

Now I'm sure you're wondering what do each of these things do. I'll try to explain a few of them that I know.

 

Metallicity - this does exactly what you think it does. It makes your character metallic looking. As you can see in my example below the first character is just blue, the second is blue with Metallicity at 100%

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v197/ThomasRiordan2004/Example%203.jpg

 

Glossy Layered Weight - is the amount of glossy applied to the shader. For example glossy fingernails would have a high gloss to them, so would a wet body. If your character is too shiny you probably want to turn this down.

 

Glossy Color - the color you want the gloss to reflect. For skin this is usually white but say for example your character is under a blue light source, it might be more practical for the glossy color to be a shade of blue.

 

Cutout Opacity - This is basically what Iray calls your opacity channel. 100% is solid, 0% invisible. If you apply a map to it white is solid, black is invisible, shades of grey are varying degrees of transparent.

 

UV Set - Some characters use multiple UVmaps. Genesis has been mapped to use maps from Michael 4, Victoria 4, Kids 4, etc. I think it's there by default but it's been awhile. But if you apply a map and it looks funky, try checking here to see if there's an alternate UV Map for the character base you need.

 

Horizontal Tiles, Horizontal Offset, Vertical Tiles, Vertical Offset - Basically tiling options and whatnot. If you have a funky looking texture you might check this to make sure it's not been changed from the 1.0 and 0.0 it should be.

 

Angle - The angle of rotation. Duh.

 

Displacement Strength - This displaces the map by x amount. For example water would be something that uses a displacement map.

 

And before I go a few little tipd for posing.

 

All the sliders have a lock which you can click which locks the node in place. For example you want to apply a full body pose but don't want it to muck up that hand gesture you just spent hours working on. Lock you hand and finger nodes and apply the pose.

 

The other thing is the little gear icon. This is handy for the problem of I can't reach my toes. I say that as an example but if you bend the abdomen it will only bend so far and say you were trying to make a toe touching pose well that'd really throw a monkey in the wrench. But if you click on your gear dealy and uncheck use limits, well you can now bend your character completely in half and come back around. That's one flexible dude right there. You'll often see a pop up saying turn pose limits off. This is why they get that pop up because while this is a representation of the human form, it's not really as flexible as the real human form.

[lr10540]

I downloaded the Genesis Fibermesh Beard from the first site, but I can't figure out how to actually put it into Daz to be able to use it.

I'm hopeless!

 

It downloaded as a WinRAR file.

[brat99]

If anyone has any tips.....

 

I went to the Daz webpage linked in this thread to try and download. Once I finished the quick registration so that I could download, I was then given a message to wait for confirmation email to complete and then download software. Problem is, the email never showed up. I checked inbox and spam folders and have tried several times with the same results. Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, were you able to solve the problem (hoping someone here has an idea, otherwise I'll just go through their contact us procedure)?

[lr10540]

Well I figured out how to install the beard mod. However, I couldn't figure out how to make the bear huge or just a stubble. So that sucks. I'm going to figure this out! I hope...