Thanks fior any help,

Brian

Image removed http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3279/

Create a cube primitive, any size, 1 division. This creates a 6 poly item.

Render in 3Delight, Progressive ON, default everything else.

Now, go and turn it into a subdivided object, then click the gear on the subdivision sliders and unckeck 'Use Limits'.

Set Subdivision to 9...this turns it into over 1.5 million quads.

The first render, at base resolution,...about 7 seconds.

The second render at SubD 9, 1 min 55 seconds.

Now, leave the render settings the same, but go to Advanced and turn on "Render to RIB"

Repeat. 

Now rendering the RIBs...

First render, base resolution.  8 seconds.

Second render, SubD 9, 12 seconds...or almost 10x FASTER than rendering IN Studio!

found windows and doors in (exterior) Sheriff's. no bars for the windows.

the banditos are escaped

.

am i missing the bars or there is none?

thanks. :)

I haven't noticed other people complain about Daz Connect speed in the forum. Is it just my computer, or are you experiencing the same slow Daz Connect service?

What I'm basically doing is loading CR2 and HR2s from my old Poser-compatible /runtime folders into Studio and then resaving them as .daz and other formats, but I want to edit the reference paths so they point to a new geometry file in my sorted Connect folder structure and not to those in the old Poser /runtime one.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

The program itself not in my Product library as a download.

Actually, I don't violently object to letting DAZ Connect install the program. I just flatly refuse to deal with encrypted content at this point. And I intend to hold out as long as it's possible. I prefer to manually install everything, and make a back up on a separate drive, too.

 But I don't see any way to actually download the program. There's a link to a tiny file called 1_12000.sep, but I have no idea what that is or what I'm supposed to do with it.

Frankly, I'd be willing to pay for a CD or DVD to be burned and mailed to me. That way I'd have a clean backup copy automatically.

Thanks for any help!

Brian

I rarely use Genesis 2. Most of my library is built in Genesis 1. For Genesis 1 the aging morphs are in the Parameters tab under Actor. For Genesis 2 I cnnot find the dials at all. Not in the Parameters tab, not in the Shaping tab, not anywhere. I can find a couple of all or nothing presets under Shapes (not Shaping), but I don't want presets, I want dials.

Where have they hidden the dials? I know there've got to *be* dials, somewhere.

ETA: There are indeed dials.  I suspected that as soon as I posted something and made a fool of myself in public they'd come out of hiding. And they did. They've been split up between Full Body and Head, rather than being all together in one place. But they are still there. I knew they had to be *somewhere*.

Feel free to fill the thread with kitty pics.

I'm aware of three methods, and there may be others. Each has its pros and cons, so pick the one that works best for your scene.

Method 1: Refraction Weight/Index. After applying the Emissive shader, dial both the Refraction Index and Refraction Weight to 1.0. 

Method 2: Barely Visible Opacity. After applying the Emissive shader to the mesh, dial the Cutout Opacity to 0.0001. This makes the mesh invisible in most renders.

Method 3: Iray Matte. This requires first applying the Emissive shader, then going to My Library/Scripts/Utilities/. Double click on the Create Advanced Iray Node Properties icon. In Display/Properties for the mesh object, turn Enable Iray Matte to On. Depending on the positioning of the mesh, you may also need to set refraction index/weight as in Method 1. 

The three methods do not behave the same way. A quick recap of what to expect:

1. Mesh lights don't cast shadows onto the Iray virtual ground. This is sometimes desirable, and sometimes not. If you do not need or want ground shadows, use methods 1 or 2. If you'd like to have ground shadows  -- for example, they're useful when post-compositing onto backplates, to add realism -- opt for method 3.

2. Highlights and reflections from the mesh are diminished when using methods 2 and 3. If you need to preserve the strength of the light in a reflection or highlight, opt for Method 1.

3. Method 1 works when the camera is on the non-emission side. If the camera is on the emitting side, you will see the light.

Whatever methods you use, be sure to apply the Emissive shader from the Iray DAZ Uber collection. Don't try to use another type of shader, then manually "dial in" the Emissive property. This can leave the shader with conflicting settings that could affect the results. The special-purpose Emissive shader has all the options correctly set.

As I (currently) use a machine with <500 cores, I'm always mindful of render efficiency. In my testing, I've found a diminishing rendering efficiency in this order: Method 1, 3, 2. Rendering often takes longer when there are transparencies involved. Of course, YMMV.

For more specific steps on applying the Iray Matte Node to an emissive mesh, see this thread:

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/62433/photometric-point-spotlights-are-not-rendering-in-iray

Even for DAZ, that seems to be trawling the bottom of the barrel. Don't like it. Don't find it amusing.

How much extra will you make, anyway? $10.47 or so?

Is it worth it? That 50% off on stuff I want doesn't look as good if I have to pay to play first.

Especially since I know if I skip this sale now, the things that I actually want will be on sale again later on.

Thanks!

Brian

The Best category

Winner: Karibou - The Annoyingly Cheerful Co-worker

Second place: Chanteur-de-Vent - A Curious date

Third place: Luci45 - Triatholon (Murphy's Technology Law #23.5)

4th place divided:

Linwelly -  Not a tunnel (Law of the many Laws: The shortest way from point A to B is by GPS)

Totte - Murphy's Law on random samples - you always get the wrong samples

The 4th and 5th hade the same score, but not only that, the exact same points, 5+4+2 = 11, so there was no way to separate them even using the Eurovision Song Contest vote counting rules.

Now the Funniest category

Winner:  Gopherus - Budget Cutbacks at the Fairy Tale Castle

Second place: Karibou - The Annoyingly Cheerful Co-worker

Third place: Ken OBanion - Domino's Work For You?

4th place: Luci45 - Law of Fashion

5th place (divided as 5th and 6th had again the same score and the same points 5+4=9) This was even trickier as the 5th and past prize was split, but fair is fair.

emsim - When You're Trying to Impress Someone...

Purrkat - No good dead goes unpunished.

Big  congrats to all the winners!

And the prizes!

Winner in the Best category:
– One item from the Dumor3D store.
-- $40 DAZ Store GC

Winner in the Funniest category
– One item from the Dumor3D store.
-- $40 DAZ Store GC

Second place in the Best category:
–  Two items, no bundles, from First Bastion's store
-- $20 DAZ Store GC

Second place in the Funniest category:
–  One item from Totte's store.
--  $20 DAZ Store GC

Third place in each category:
-- $15 DAZ Store GC

4th place (Honorable mention 1):
-- $10 DAZ Store GC

5th place Honorable mention 2):
-- $5 DAZ Store GC

As we do have two splits  (this will put the poor store under stresstest)!

The split in Best will yield that 4th and 5th will get a $7.50 GC each

The split for 5th in Funniest will yield that each of the two 5th will get a $2.50 GC.

If this doesn't work, I solve it some way or another.

Please be patient, GC and prizes and contact PMs will arrive soon (not DAZ s**n) but soon.

Once again Congrat to everyone!

No I didnt forget the most important thing, the Lucky Bastards, and as we hit a new year, everyone will start off with a clean sheet, but this contests LB's will be added.

Lucky Bastard standings:

Karibou 2
Chanteur-de-Vent 1
Luci45 1
Gopherus 1
Ken OBanion 1

I hope you all enjoyed it, now planning the next RRRR ;-)

Then I closed the store tab.

Honestly, these convoluted sales are building a bigger wall between Daz and my wallet.

I've gotten pretty tired of waiting for dynamics to hit DS and frankly I don't think they every will, for whatever reason. I've used blender for fluids a couple times and it works great. Here's an example render I did of blender fluids (the wine) being able to work perfectly with shaders. This was accomplished by exporting the cup to blender, extruding the outside to prevent the mesh leaking, rendering a fluid interaction and then exporting the fluid object back into DS.

I've recently started looking into doing dynamic hair and doing the same thing as I did with fluids. Anyone else do this? Hair is much harder than fluids, but look at some of the examples of hair out there. This is one that struck me:

If anyone does this, I would love to start a discussion about it!

Is there a way of making a texture semi-transparant by default, without using the opacity slider in the surfaces tab (keeping that at 100%)?

Using the opacity slider messes up the render when using toon or cel shading because it also affects the outline, hence the question.

eg, can it be tweaked in photoshop and brought back into Daz Studio? If so, how is it done?

Thanks a lot,

Me