Look At My Hair: Sasquatch An Evolution In DAZ Studio Characters

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Jim Willey

Sasquatch by RawArt with Look At My Hair (LAMH) for DAZ 3D

Plugins like Look At My Hair are taking DAZ Studio 4 to new levels.

Look AT My Hair for DAZ Studio is changing Hair for good

Here comes RawArt’s Sasquatch for Freak 5 (current introductory price $9.07). This furred humanoid, a possible missing link to humanities evolutionary past, is a fantastic example of just what is possible with the recently released Look At My Hair for DAZ Studio 4.5 (also on special at thirty percent off), and the first comercial use available on the DAZ 3D store.

Plugins of LAMH’s calibre are bringing new possibilities and functionality to DAZ Studio that, for the most part, are only available with much more expensive programs. For those interested in seeing some of the plugin’s content in action a free LAMH viewer is now available at the DAZ 3D store. “The Look at my Hair Player allows you to load most pre-made Look at my Hair presets or .duf scenes, modify color and shader properties, hair count, thickness and render!”

Check out this Tube clip of LAMH designer, Alessandro Mastronardi, using the plugin to turn and elephant into a mammoth.

Garibaldi Express Hair System: a new challenger

LAMH is not the only recent hair tool for DS. Garibaldi Express Hair System For DAZ Studio came out not long after LAMH. Gabibaldi isn’t among my tools but taking one look at the promo images I wish it was. While both programs have good external interfaces for creating hair on any mesh surface (just about anything you could import into DAZ Studio – furry car!), watching the beta video (which might be a little outdated considering the product is now at full version) I can’t help but be struck with a grass is greener effect.

The only real downside to these products for most of us is that they will take some time and perserverance to get the results we want, but for those who do hang in there, wave good-bye to traditional hair props with their transmaps and geometry that often looks funny when viewed from certain angles. Now if only these were dynamic models. That would truly be a revolution for DAZ Studio users. But then again the persistent user will find that the system allowes for a level of on-the-fly customisation that just isn’t possible with traditional hair props. With the included tools it is possible to create hair poses to meet any conditions imaginable. It is fantastic to see so many high quality plugins for DAZ Studio. It is undoubtedly a sign of even better to come.

INFINITO: Terrain editor and creator for DAZ Studio

Another great DS plugin by Alessandro is INFINITO, which brings terrain generation and customisation to the game. Typically this meant exporting DS scenes to other programs like Bryce, Vue, Carrara, or any other program that has detailed terrain generation features.

Infinito terrain generator plugin for DAZ Studio promo image

Luxus Updated

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Jim Willey

Joy of joys Luxus has just been updated with some very nice fixes. For those closely following the Luxus discussion thread on the DAZ 3D forums will have no doubt have already excitedly taken note of the recent update. Included in the fixes were depth of field, and gamma corrections. The translation of UberSurface settings, ones related to SSS in particular, are also likely at the top of users wanted list. I am looking forward to testing out the new DOF support. I don’t think a simple one to one translation from DAZ’s unrealistic camera to the Lux camera will carry too well, so I’m hoping SphericLabs took this into account when implementing the feature.

Full list of updates included in Luxus 1.0.0.4 as copied and pasted directly from the forums.

* Gamma – Colors are now properly linearized. This is important, everyone is encouraged to update and to click on Reset To Default at the bottom of Render Settings.
* Depth of Field values are now passed into LuxRender and work.
* Accidental resuming when overwriting is fixed
* Autotranslation of UberSurface tweaked in regards to the Gamma changes and to favor subsurface color.
* Transmap issues improved
* Extra Command Line for passing command line arguements to LuxRender. This allows advanced control of number of threads and even theoretically master/slave rendering control.
* IES lights files belong on the area light(in the material light section) and work.

Here’s a little something I put together with the help of Luxus the other day.

Test of the hybrid GPU/CPU engine and IBL Image has been postworked for the sake of dramatic representation.

See my Luxus pseudo review for some early impressions of the program More on Luxus coming soon.

Reality Is Dawning

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Jim Willey

I know I’ve been talking Luxus up a lot lately (still got some more to come too), but I can’t say I’m not excited about Reality 3. According to a recent statement presented at The World-wide PoserExpo Online Seminar, R3 for Poser (later posted at Pret-a-3D) will be released on April the 8th at a discounted price of $39.95 (usually $59.95). SIDEGRADE AVAILABLE for Reality 2 owners just $14.95! You’ll be able to get your fresh baked copy from Renderosity, RuntimeDNA and Pret-a-3D. Pret-a-3D is apparently the only site that will be handling the tasty sidegrade option.

I’m sure that I’m not in the unique category of user that have both Poser Pro 2012 (or P9) and DAZ Studio, but prefer Studio for whatever reason. The question for us is, “how long are we going to have to wait for our version of the program?”. According to an dated FAQ posted on the front page of Pret-a-3D we can expect to wait about two months Post Poser release, but that was with an expected Poser version release date of November 2012… Does that mean it is closer or further away now? The same? I shall try to find the answer. [edit: Paolo Ciccone, developer of Reality just kindly provided us with an answer – see comments – saying the DS version should be available in about three months).

There is a lot to get excited about with the new Reality release, not least of which is the very cool feature that lets Reality talk to Poser’s node based material system and, as best as possible, produce Lux equivalent materials. Check out the Reality 3 preview for more of the goodies – alt text if you don’t want to sit through the YouTube presentation.

Mercenary Masks Now With DAZ Mats!

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Jim Willey

This all started a while back when I saw a journal post by Retro Devil (who strangely enough is the artist most directly responsible for me bumbling into 3D) over at DeviantArt. He was looking for someone to take on the task of converting Poser materials for his new prop to DAZ Studio. I thought why not and took up the challenge. The materials only work with Studio 4.5 – sorry to the 4 and 3 users. I forgot that once something’s done in 4.5 there is no way back to older versions 🙁 The package also includes full metadata (bonus!).The new mats can also be obtained from ShareCG.These materials contain a lot of raytraced surfaces, so watch out. Swapping these for an environment map would be a good idea for older rigs. I may do an update for that in the future.

So, if you own the prop why not download the materials and give them a whirl, or if you don’t yet own Retro Devil’s Mercenary Masks why not go grab a copy and get rendering.

Hopefully this will be the first of more free files added to the site.

More demonstration images coming soon.

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