Over the last couple years I’ve been working on plug-ins for Maya to help make Daz Studio content a viable option for use in Maya. It’s been quite a quest. I originally started this journey to create the tools I need for my own personal projects, projects that have not yet all been revealed except to a few friends.

First, I wanted to have access to a wide variety of affordable characters and the ability to customize them quickly and easily, hence Daz Studio and Genesis 8 for Maya. Genesis 8 for Maya is necessary to be able to use all of Daz characters’s joint controlled morphs (JCMs) in Maya, so they deform properly, otherwise a large portion of their value is lost. It also helps streamline the workflow by setting up the character properly for export, it makes it easier to export additional blend shapes, and also helps make Daz Studio clothing more useful by exporting the JCMs for the clothing as well and making it easy to export adjustment morphs.

Next, I wanted to be able to use the materials for Daz Studio content quickly and efficiently. Manually converting shaders is a long and tedious process prone to error. Trying to convert an entire environment can take days, not to mention requires quite a bit of knowledge of render engines in general and their differences. This led me to start creating my LayLo3D Shader System. A plug-in I started around a year ago.

Finally, about a year later LoL, it’s getting close to release.

I would like to start to introduce what is possible with my next product, my LayLo3D Shader System.

This is a render of the results of using my plug-in to convert Stonemason’s Streets of Asia 2 from 3Delight to Arnold. No additional tweaking of the shaders was done after conversion. The only thing I did was set up an aiSkyDome light with a HDR image to light the scene and I hid the sky dome mesh that’s included with the Streets of Asia 2 environment so that it wouldn’t block the light from my aiSkyDome light.

Let me know what you think!

Total Rendering Time: 4 minutes 24.88 seconds. 95.09% of image converged.

Software used for scene compilation: Daz Studio 4.9.
Rendered with NVIDIA Iray.
Compositing done with Adobe Photoshop

This is another image of Stella, a character I sculpted from G8F with Imogen’s skin textures.

Stella is a school teacher for a comic project I was commissioned to create a couple characters for. The comic probably won’t launch for a few months still, but I got permission to show Stella off a little bit.

Let me know what you think!

Total Rendering Time: Around 20 minutes. 95% of image converged.

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

It seems like it’s been a minute since my last leisurely render. I’m looking forward to doing more soon.

I’m super excited, this image features my latest commissioned custom sculpted character “Stella” who is on the right. She is supposed to be Latina, does she look like it? I’m not at liberty to reveal all the details yet, but Stella is one of two characters I was commissioned to sculpt for an upcoming comic project. I won’t be creating custom skin textures for them, but Imogen’s skin textures seem to be a good fit for her.

The left hand character is Kaira with Samira’s skin.

Let me know what you think!

Total Rendering Time: Around 20 minutes. 95% of image converged.

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

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.

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

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

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.

This is another render of Anaria, the custom elf character I sculpted.

It seems like lately time and money have been a huge obstacle for me to work on my art.

After a lot of consideration I’ve decided I’m going to start a Patreon. I’m super excited to be able to create the art I’ve been wanting to; to turn what I envision in my mind’s eye into reality! I will do more renders, create more tutorials, sculpt more unique custom characters, experiment with different render engines, and share what I learn along the way!

This render is one of my first steps in this journey. I created it with the intention to use it as the banner for my Patreon page.

I’m not sure yet when I will be launching yet, stay tuned for updates.

Total Rendering Time: 19 minutes 18.1 seconds. 95.11% of image converged.

Software used for scene compilation: Daz Studio 4.9
Rendered with NVIDIA Iray
Sculpting done with ZBrush 4R7
No post-work

This is another render of Kaira. I’ve been tweaking her skin shaders a little bit. This is their final version.

Let me know what you think!

Total Rendering Time: 3 minutes 53.60 seconds. 95.33% of image converged.

Software used for scene compilation: Daz Studio 4.9
Rendered with NVIDIA Iray
Sculpting done with ZBrush 4R7
No post-work