January 2024 Show Off Thread = Portraits

[Agent0013]

You and I both look at DAZ Studio that way.


I found some tutorials for Terragen on YouTube, that shows how to use Terragen and do a lot more than I could find on my own. I noted that it uses fractal generating to make most of a scene, including clouds. There are other types of content that can be used with it, but how to import models has yet to be covered, if that is at all possible. I watched a few of the tutorials and I understand some things better now, but it is a complex program with a system of nodes that are used to generate the scene components. It's a lot like the Shader Nodes in Blender, and indeed there are shader nodes in Terragen too. That method of creating is quite complex, because you need to know what each node is designed to do, and how to plug in the connectors correctly to get the desired outcome.


Now one thing I learned about Terragen that is not like any other application I have yet used. If you generate a terrain and then zoom way out away from it, it becomes a whole planet or moon! That is pretty cool, I think. There are render settings that can speed a render up, but you lose a good bit of the quality for that speed. Now to be fair, Bryce has quality settings too that can and do slow the render down at the higher settings, but even so, that does not make it slower than Terragen, and the quality of renders done at the standard render setting level is good enough for most renders. I also learned that Bryce has resolution levels for Terrains and Symmetrical Lattices that can make what you make with them a much higher quality, so that curved areas and slanted edges are smoother; and still, it renders faster than Terragen, even with the highest resolution. So My terrain based cities and fortresses look much better now, And I also learned how to mix different resolutions to make the textures work better, by putting one texture on the highest resolution version, another on the next resolution down from there, of the same shape, and yet another on the next resolution down from there. When combined, you can make certain surfaces show a particular texture, while an adjacent surface show a different one. That makes cities look better because not all the surface areas are showing the same texture. If I were to try that in Terragen, it would either slow the render down to a crawl lasting days, rather than hours, or it would crash the program.


I do plan to buy the pro version of Terragen in the future, but before I do, I'll use the free version to gain experience, thereby making it worth buying the pro version.

[SofaCitizen]

Another portrait done. Wanted to try a "slice of life" style image rather than the "posing for the camera" style that I did for the last one.

[Agent0013]

Popeye would be proud! Well done, and I like the black and white color theme.
Now you gotta do Olive Oyl!

[SofaCitizen]

Popeye would be proud! Well done, and I like the black and white color theme.
Now you gotta do Olive Oyl!

Thank you :)

Olive may be a little trickier but will have a look through my library after work tomorrow to see if I have some suitable assets as a starting point.

[Llola Lane]

Yep yep... need an Olive... Thanks for posting Sofa... I'm so glad you are finding inspiration here.  :)

[SofaCitizen]

I think I will have to admit defeat on Olive Oyl :(  I made a couple of attempts but couldn't really get anything that close and the resulting images were not good either.

Maybe someone else can have a go?

[Llola Lane]

I think I will have to admit defeat on Olive Oyl :(  I made a couple of attempts but couldn't really get anything that close and the resulting images were not good either.

Maybe someone else can have a go?

That's ok.. hopefully you learned stuff whilst you experimented :) 

[SofaCitizen]

That's ok.. hopefully you learned stuff whilst you experimented :)

Yes, it's always good to learn things - even for the images that do not work out. There was one thing I had planned to try that I didn't get round to but I still reminded myself of some of the hair, dress and pose assets that I have which is always handy :)

[jammixx]

Here's a little sci-fi for the mix. 
   I rendered the image for 4 hours and its still not really clear.  The image is worth viewing however.

[Llola Lane]

Yes, it's always good to learn things - even for the images that do not work out. There was one thing I had planned to try that I didn't get round to but I still reminded myself of some of the hair, dress and pose assets that I have which is always handy :)

agreed!  :)