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Daz Studio: Rigging Custom Characters – Adjust Rigging to Shape

December 5, 2017 4 comments

In this video I show how to quickly and easily rig custom sculpted characters using Daz Studio’s Adjust Rigging to shape tool. You can also use this technique to adjust rigging for morphs as well.

Skill Level: Intermediate/Advanced

Daz Studio: Mastering the Fundamentals of Iray Lighting and Rendering Webinar Released!

October 23, 2017 2 comments

Mastering the Fundamentals of Iray Lighting and Rendering

My first webinar, Daz Studio: Mastering the Fundamentals of Iray Lighting and Rendering was just released recently!

I’m extra excited about it’s release because it’s my first ever webinar! Plus, I snuck in a few treasures I discovered recently like render canvases and how to improve viewport performance with the NVIDIA Iray drawstyle by setting it up so it doesn’t have to reload the textures every time you make an adjustment!

So, if you weren’t able to join the live session you can now purchase the recorded version!

For more information and to see what all I cover check out the product description in my store.

Thanks for checking it out!

DAZ Studio Quick Tips: Editing/Fixing Morphs – How to Remove Unwanted Vertices From Morphs

October 23, 2017 Leave a comment

In this video I show how to remove vertices from a morphs influence. This can be useful if you want to break a morph in separate individual morphs by body part, accidentally tweak a part of an object you didn’t mean to, or to break a full body morph into separate head and body morphs.

Skill Level: Intermediate/Advanced

Help Shape the Future of LayLo3D.com

October 11, 2017 Leave a comment

Now that my summer busyness is coming to an end I’m looking forward to having more time to render and work on my website. This winter I want to spend more time creating renders, tutorials, YouTube videos, and products.

With that being said, I put together this short 5 question survey to get a better idea of how I can best serve you.

I would really appreciate it if you would take a minute or two and answer the following questions.

Thanks!

LayLo

Create your own user feedback survey

Unlock the power… One render, unlimited lighting possibilities – My Webinar, this Sunday

September 21, 2017 Leave a comment

One Render Enless Possibilites

I’ve been polishing my webinar over the last couple of weeks and I have to say I’m super excited. I’m kind of thinking that titling it as “Mastering the Fundamentals” might have been a bit of an under statement… I have a tendency to get “carried away” and this webinar is definitely not the exception.

In my mind the objective of this course has always been to empower Daz Studio users to “know what tools are available, have a basic understanding of how to use them, and have the confidence to play with some features you didn’t know existed or were convoluted.”

With that being said, I don’t believe that I’m the best lighting and rendering artist out there, I definitely need more practice… But, one of my characteristic strengths is being able to wrap my head around complex topics, like say for example…physics. I also have strong organizational skills. So, it is my intention with this course to stay with original goal which I stated earlier.

Working towards that objective I now know that I should have broken the course into two parts, one to focus on lighting, the other to focus on rendering. Since I already gave my word that by purchasing one ticket for the complete course you would learn x,y,z, at this point breaking the course into two parts isn’t an option.

Working with my producer form Digital Art Live we decided to add a supplemental prerecorded video to touch on the basic basics that a lot of average Daz Studio users probably already know, but new users would find helpful, to save as much time as possible for the meat of the course.

Now that I’ve written an essay on some of what’s been going with this course, I’m really excited to announce that I will discussing an additional topic during this webinar, Render Canvases!

As part of the “know what tools are available” objective for my course, I decided it wouldn’t be complete without some dedicated discussion on render canvases. To be honest, I always assumed Render Canvases were something they’re not and always had in the back of my mind, “one of these days I should figure them out.” Well, with the goal to be thorough with this course it gave me that final push to “figure them out.” And, I have to say, “I’m super excited about Render Canvases!”

That is why even though this course was already on the long side, it was worth it to me to make the necessary changes I already talked about above to be able to include Render Canvases in my webinar.

Render canvases allow you to render the influence of each light in your scene to separate layers and then using a simple photo editing program (or if you want to get fancy you can use a dedicated compositing program like Nuke or After Effects) you can adjust each of their light intensities separately without having to re-render! This is a game changer for me, I really can’t say how excited I am about them, LOL.

I will be demonstrating how to use them effectively, how to trouble shoot common problems associated with them, and finally, how to use the individual layers within an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop. In fact, for my demonstration I will be using Photoshop, but I know there are a lot of other less expensive image editing programs that you can use to achieve the same results.

Anyway, I’m super excited about this announcement, sorry for the lengthy write up I just couldn’t resist telling someone…

I hope to see you on my webinar! 🙂

Get tickets over at Digital Art Live!

Until the next time…

Total Rendering Time: Around 1 hour 30 minutes, I forgot to write it down again…

Software used for scene compilation: Daz Studio 4.9.
Rendered with NVIDIA Iray.

Daz Studio: Mastering the Fundamentals of Iray Lighting & Rendering – My First Webinar Coming Soon

September 4, 2017 Leave a comment

Daz Studio: Mastering the Fundamentals of Iray Lighting & Rendering

Not too long ago I got an invitation from Digital Art Live to do a webinar. After some brainstorming and conversation with one of their producers I decided I would do a Daz Studio webinar on lighting for, and rendering with NVIDIA Iray. The course is titled Mastering the Fundamentals of Iray Lighting & Rendering.

First of all, I want to reassure everyone I’m still planning on doing more free tutorials on my YouTube channel. The summer rush of construction should be slowing down here in the next couple of months, and honestly, I’m looking forward to a breather. It’s been an extremely stressful summer for me on top of the usual busyness. I’m also excited to have more time for my 3D stuff.

Mastering the Fundamentals of Iray Lighting & Rendering

This course will be a fairly comprehensive introduction to the various methods Daz Studio has available to light your scenes. I’ll also be going over a lot of various render settings, especially those pertaining to the Environment dome. And, as we go, I’ll be sharing various tips and tricks along the way.

Some of the topics I will be discussing:

  • Scenelights
  • The common parameters scene lights share
  • Creating a basic Three-Point Lighting setup
  • Lighting scenes with HDR Images
  • Lighting scenes with the Sun-Sky system
  • Light producing meshes using emissive shaders
  • Creating glowing objects with SSS and/or translucency
  • Basic render settings
  • Configuring render settings for HDRI Lighting
  • Configuring render settings for the Sun-Sky Dome
  • Plus a few tips and tricks related to these topics

Get tickets over at Digital Art Live!

Total Rendering Time: Around 1 hour 20 minutes, I forgot to write it down again…

Software used for scene compilation: Daz Studio 4.9.
Rendered with NVIDIA Iray.
Sculpting done with ZBrush 4R7

Image Credits:

Kaira HD Now Available!

August 16, 2017 Leave a comment

Kaira HD Now Available!

Kaira HD for Genesis 3 Female & Genesis 8 Female now available!

Her release is extra exciting to me because she’s my first Daz 3D character!

She was actually released on August 1st of this year, but I’ve been so crazy busy I’ve just now finally got a chance to give her a shout out.

Unfortunately, her original release promo where you could buy her and one other item released that day to get 40% off has expired 🙁 , but she’s still currently available at the 30% off introductory pricing.

Kaira is one of drb7364’s original comic book characters. He messaged me a while back about commissioning me to do the art for one of his comics. It’s still planned for a future project, but unfortunately right now isn’t the best time for either of us.

He creates NSFW comics, check out his Patreon here.

Let me know what you think!

Total Rendering Time: 18 minutes 29.74 seconds. 95.12% of image converged.

Software used for scene compilation: Daz Studio 4.9.
Rendered with NVIDIA Iray.
Sculpting done with ZBrush 4R7

Products used in the image:

Dragon Priestess 2

July 25, 2017 2 comments

Dragon Priestess 2

Here’s another image of Kaira done up as a dragon priestess.

She’s made it through testing, hopefully she will be releasing soon. 🙂 I made both a G3F version of her and a G8F version. They may vary slightly.

Let me know what you think!

Total Rendering Time: I can’t remember, I rendered it too long ago…

Software used for scene compilation: Daz Studio 4.9.
Rendered with NVIDIA Iray.
Sculpting done with ZBrush 4R7
Layered over a background I created with Photoshop.

Products used in the image:

Dragon Priestess

May 31, 2017 Leave a comment

Dragon Priestess

I’ve been working on some tattoos for Kaira. This is her with all of them applied.

Let me know what you think!

Total Rendering Time: 8 minutes 7.4 seconds. 100% of image converged.

Software used for scene compilation: Daz Studio 4.9.
Rendered with NVIDIA Iray.
Sculpting done with ZBrush 4R7
Layered over a background.

Products used in the image:

Vacation Interrupted

May 17, 2017 Leave a comment

Vacation Interrupted

Parameters Tab
Vacation Interrupted Parameters
Genesis 3 Female Body Morphs Jezebeth for Anneka Demon and She Devil Mika 7 Genesis 3 Female Body Morphs Jezebeth for Anneka Demon and She Devil Cathy HD for Victoria 7 FWSA Frida HD for Karen 7 Karen 7 Aiko 7 FWSA Kajiko HD for Aiko 7 Shape Shift for Genesis 3 Female(s)

My latest leisurely render. Inspired by a drawing I stumbled upon by Armando Huerta.

Let me know what you think!

Total Rendering Time: About 16 minutes. 99% of image converged.

Software used for scene compilation: Daz Studio 4.9.
Rendered with NVIDIA Iray.
No post-work.

Products used in the image: