How truly kind of you to respond with helpful suggestions and explanations. I appreciate it! Please take a look at my response below.
Am I the only one have trouble with the Enchanted Island product in DAZ Studio? When I opened DAZ Studio 4.0 after installing it, I thought “Oh Good, metadata!”. But the metadata seems to be way wrong. The things don’t show up in the Smart Content in the categories shown in the Readme. (At least we got a readme file, though.) I am also having trouble with statue shadows showing up on the sky background. My render also shows dark vertical lines in the curves of the sky corners when using the supplied camera preset. Am I doing something wrong?
I also don’t understand why the Content Library shows two icons for +AFullStatue.pp2. If I browse to file location, one is in My Library\Runtime\libraries\props\ART_EnchantedIsland\Instances and the other is in My Library\Runtime\libraries\props\ART_EnchantedIsland\Parented. What is the difference and how do I know which to use?
And what is that Gum prop for?? That one is a real mystery to me. I don’t see it in the promo images.
Thanks for any enlightenment you can offer so I can get better usage from this neat freebie.
(Edited to add render showing the dark vertical lines in the day sky .)
On the questions:
The smart content it seems you resolved without me so no need to answer that one but in case, it looks like they moved stuff and the paths may have been wrong in the original readme.
Yes I guess DAZ moved things and then modified the readme file later, because the first one I exported to PDF had the wrong categories listed. The second readme file I exported had the corrected categories. However, the metadata was not corrected to work right with the Smart Content tab. In order to make the items show up in the Smart Content tab, I had to use the Content DB Editor and change the asset types. All of the PP2 files were typed as Preset->Materials and the PZ2 files were typed as Prop (exactly backwards as far as my understanding goes). Also, the camera presets were typed as Camera instead of Preset-Camera and the light presets were typed as Light instead of Preset->Light. As soon as I changed those things with the Content DB Editor, the Enchanted Island props, materials, cameras and lights showed up for me in the Smart Content. I’d really be curious to know if the metadata worked (as delivered) with Smart Content for anyone else.
On the difference in the two +AFullStatue files, the ones in the Instance folder just load and move around all their own though, in Poser, the ones in the parented folder will parent themselves to the ground so that if you move or rotate the ground your entire scene will all move and rotate with the ground. In DS this is done a little different though and so I don’t think those files parent in DS though they may. In case not, to parent the items to the ground in DS you just load all the props into the scene and then shift click them all and then drag and drop them to the ground props name in the list of your scene editor (hopefully I got that pallet name right…I primarily use Poser so my DS lingo can be a bit rusty LOL so if I said the wrong name please someone correct me) I do have a video of the general process though on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n-3JcTZ6mc
It’s done with a staff and Genesis in the video but the principle is the same.
Thanks for that explanation. Since I’ve never used Poser, I was not familiar with those directory conventions. Yes, if I parent the statue to the ground and translate or rotate the ground, the statue moves with it in DAZ Studio. If I morph the ground using your supplied morphs, the statues do not move with the undulating ground surface, but you didn’t say that they would, so I guess that is not part of the parenting behavior..
On the gum, it was kinda a fun jokey reference to the movie A Night at the Museum. In it there is an Easter Island statue that keeps asking for Gum and so as a joke (and kinda on a dare) I through it in just for fun as a kinda homage to that movie
Oh, that’s clever. I guess I haven’t seen the movie - sounds fun. Thanks for the explanation. I can see that gum coming in handy for kid renders, too. Nice of you to throw it in.
As for the shadow on the sky plane, sadly I wasn’t able to tell Poser not to cast shadows on that plane and if you can do so in DS I wasn’t sure how…my solution had been to pull the statues a bit forward away from the sky or to just not use the sky plane at all and add in a backdrop for the sky instead if moving the items forward didn’t work for my composition. On the lines, the light uses Uber Environment I believe it is called and so sometimes you can get lines etc like that when the quality is set lower. Not knowing how robust everyone’s graphic cards may be, we left the quality setting lower I believe so people could adjust it to the setting most optimal for their system. You can change the quality setting though on the light and that should remove those lines. If not, please let me know and I will have one of my testing team that is far more familiar with DS take a peek at it to see if they can sort out what the issue might be
Thanks for the UE2 tips. I changed the shadow bias back to the default value. That seemed to help some, but not enough. I was able to eliminate the dark vertical lines by also changing the shading rate in UE2 and the Advanced Render Options. Looking good now.
So sorry for any confusion. If you have any other questions or still run into any trouble using the set, please let me know
I really appreciate you taking the time to help me understand how to get the most out of this fantastic freebie. It is so unique.
