A new round of RRRR is here and  this one may be slightly more unhinged than usual.

The theme for this round is:
Swimsuit Babes

Yes, exactly. Sunshine, swimwear, glamour, disaster, absurdity, confusion, romance, chaos, or all of the above. Whether it turns into beach beauty, poolside mayhem, jungle pin-up nonsense, post-apocalyptic bikini racing, or a completely doomed tropical picnic is entirely up to you.

Check the Entries Only thread, first post, for an example of how to post an entry.

RRRR stands for Random Runtime Roulette Renders, and it is a contest that has been running for almost fifteen years now, on and off. We invite anyone to enter, especially all the newer users who have shown up over the years. This is not the usual “make a very nice render” contest — this is more about telling a great story, often a funny one, through your render.

How does it work?

For this round, the pull rules are a little special.

You must use:

• at least one animal
• at least one land vehicle
• at least one set of food
• at least one april fools release item
• plus 2 random items

And because this is a special round:

Lucky Bastards are counted twice.

That means that for this round, each Lucky Bastard gives you two extra random pulls instead of one.

So your base pull is:

• 1 Animal
• 1 Land Vehicle
• 1 Food Set
• 2 Random Items
• 1 April fools item
• + 2 extra random items per Lucky Bastard

Who can play?

Anyone can play!

How do you prepare yourself for play?

The rules are very simple, but first you need to have all your items in some kind of order in a text file, dumped from your itemized history into a text file or spreadsheet. Remove things like software, gift certificates, special plugins, and items that will not work in the software you use.

For example, if you have items for Poser, Bryce, or Carrara, and want to use DAZ Studio, remove those other items from your list. If you have loads of older figures, M3, M4, a ton of non-Iray stuff, and you only want to use Studio with Iray, remove the junk from your list first.

Then use a randomizer to randomly pick items from your list (your Runtime/My Library) for your pull. You can use items from any store. Build a scene using those required items plus anything else you want to add to make the scene work, tell the story, or make it even more ridiculous. For newcomers, I warmly recommend looking at previous contests below to get ideas for how this usually goes.

Working randomizer:
https://www.random.org/integers

Redraws

There are some situations where you are allowed to redraw. These are:

• You pulled something that does not work: broken item, wrong version, wrong software, etc.
• You pulled a software item, add-on, or anything that should have been filtered out from the list.
• You pulled only gigantic environment props and cannot reasonably build or render a scene without crashing.
• You pulled an item you have already used in two RRRR renders in this contest and that was randomly picked both times. Three is the curse rule!
• You pulled something for one of the required categories that clearly does not fit the category after all.

Lucky Bastard Rule!

I say this again:

If you have Lucky Bastards, they count twice in this round.
 

Normally, each LB gives one extra pull.
In this round, each LB gives two extra random pulls.

Explanation of Lucky Bastards

Lucky Bastards, or LBs, are a form of handicap system that makes the contest a little more difficult for those who have won before.

This round, the handicap is extra evil, because April 1st seemed like a good day for bad decisions.

How to play

You pull, you compose, and you render.

Post your image and your pulls in this thread.
Do not miss that part — entries without pulls posted in this thread will be disqualified.

Then the entry should also be posted in the Entries Only thread.

Bundles

If you pull a bundle, use two or three complete items from it, or more if you like, but you do not need to use all of it. Only picking a hairpin from Victoria 8 Pro Bundle is too little.

Clarification: A bundle still counts as only one pulled item.

Poses, expressions, and textures/colors

If you pull a pose pack, expression pack, or texture/color pack, you only need to use one of them, not all.

For example:

• If you pull 500 Expressions for Genesis 8 Female, use one.
• If you pull 128 colors for Frappe Hair, use one.

Accidentally breaking the TOS

If your entry is removed by the forum mods because it accidentally, not deliberately, broke the TOS, you do not have to redo that entry. You may move on and make a new pull.

The rules of madness!

Now you have successfully and randomly picked your items, make a scene. You may add other items as well, but the ones you picked should be prominent, important, or cleverly used.

Render it, post it, and make us all laugh, cheer, groan, or question your judgement.

Remember, the renders must still follow the forum TOS.

Because this round has a theme, the render should in some way connect to Swimsuit Babes. That connection may be glamorous, comedic, weird, action-packed, romantic, absurd, or catastrophically ill-advised.

The contest categories!

There are two categories:

• Best
• Funniest

Every image will compete in both categories.
The contest starts today, April 1st 2026 and ends on April 1st 2027 23:59:59 Local Daz time
Lets play!

Freebie Challenge April 2026 - FREE FOR ALL!

Denizens, it is your corporate overlord. I'm back once again, and I bring with me the usual array of lacklustre prizes, shoddy house-keeping and poor communication. This year, competitors, I gather you all into the thunderdome, to compete amongst friends and enemies alike. The prizes have been doubled, the rules are thin on the ground, and danger is ever present. This years April competition will be the equivalent of a rage room, where you can cast off the shackles of your occupational oppressors and express yourself to the fullest. Grab your nose, your shoes, and your unicycle denizens, because you're about to enter the clown car of April. Be careful, it's a free-for-all that only a fool would consider.

TL;DR: Render whatever you want. The more chaotic, the better. It's a free-for-all, after all...

Rules:

1. Minimum of 3 freebies.

2. A Maximum of 5 purchased items.

3. Genesis and its standard morphs are fine.

4. If you postwork your images, provide the base image.

5. You can use AI for post-work, upscaling, colour work etc, just go easy and stick with the spirit of the competition. 

6. All Daz ecosystem programs are allowed – Bryce, carrara etc (Even poser, If you behave yourself)

7. Images pictures are subject to Daz TOS.

8. No max Entries on this one. I can't count. Do as many as you want.

This Freebie Challenge will end April 30th, 2026 @ 23:59 Daz time.

First Place: $30 store credit from KindredArts
Second Place: $20 store credit from KindredArts
Third Place: $10 store credit from KindredArts

Please post your entries in the entries thread below...

ENTRIES THREAD

A LOVELY LIST OF FREEBIES YOU CAN USE!

free at 3DUniverse website

Nubbles by @3DUniverse

and with some minor adjustments seems to work fine in Carrara 

Steve K said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

...

and that video is now done

hope sharing here as well as Art Studio not spamming 

especially as Carrara not used 

Nicely done, pretty mind bending, e.g. the smoke   Nice music, also. 

+1

WendyLuvsCatz said:

...

and that video is now done

hope sharing here as well as Art Studio not spamming 

especially as Carrara not used 

Nicely done, pretty mind bending, e.g. the smoke   Nice music, also. 

no doubt Carrara users are awesome 

and that video is now done

hope sharing here as well as Art Studio not spamming 

especially as Carrara not used 

Diomede said:

I was using 3D again quite a bit back when the new year started but really fell off. Will be using Carrara again for a couple weeks then back on the railroads of America for long stretch. But when I use Daz3D products (which is becoming less frequent), I am more likely to use Carrara than Daz Studio. Nothing against Daz Studio, but Carrara's all-in-one approach is generally worth more to me than the other advances Daz Studio has made.

Agreed.  But I am finding cases where the Daz Studio product with iRay is very nice, like I mentioned for backgrounds for Carrara animations/images.  For the attached image I have both Poser->Carrara versions and DS versions of the diner, but the DS version looks great and has all the lighting done.  The other components are Poser format items in Carrara.  BTW, the image was for a contest "Luncheon Mystery", the caption is:

Bad Directions
"This is NOT Altair VI. Give me a new course. You should try the burgers here, though, wherever this is."

Coming Soon: Reverse modeling some of my own models.

There are now various image-to-3D mesh functions running about. I found one that works with ComyUI and Hunyuan3D checkpoint. Will be taking some renders of stuff I modeled in Carrara, and then feeding the renders to the mesh creator. Check on quality and efficiency - do it myself vs mesh creators.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

been a bit quiet here

I admit I only briefly opened Carrara the other day to load a DAZ Studio set that needed too much work

I was using 3D again quite a bit back when the new year started but really fell off. Will be using Carrara again for a couple weeks then back on the railroads of America for long stretch. But when I use Daz3D products (which is becoming less frequent), I am more likely to use Carrara than Daz Studio. Nothing against Daz Studio, but Carrara's all-in-one approach is generally worth more to me than the other advances Daz Studio has made.

@wsterdan I've been checking out some stuff after reading your other posts in that other board and ended up with this music video I created from the Wacky Carrara links 

Getting more and more into DS 4.24 for backgrounds for Carrara images/animations.  And really liking the one item per day for ~$2, my recent monthly credit card statement had 26 DAZ charges, most for a couple of dollars, items with a retail price of 10x that +/-.  

been a bit quiet here

I admit I only briefly opened Carrara the other day to load a DAZ Studio set that needed too much work

kickajet said:

Glad you like it and agreed about old software!

The AI stuff is scary, because they don't even need to do 3D anymore, they have jumped straight to "life-like" animation... video-generation (SORA/etc) will do more to harm artist (traditional/2D/3D/etc) than any level of AI mesh generation ever will.

That being said, the amount of 3D mesh slop out there is ridiculous and should be banned/blocked from legitamate art communities like DAZ, Blender, CGSociety, ArtStation, etc, and "creators" should be blocked from monetizing their generated "content".

 

 its a mess of triangular polygons with awful UV mapping too

I use Hunyuan 3D AI myself on my own computer, to get the general shapes of some things I photograph but then remesh it in Zbrush and Zproject the textures and UV map it in Ultimate Unwrap 3D

its AI I know but I treat it as a form of Photogrammetry because a 3D scanner is somewhat expensive or one needs an iPhone at the very least for that

Hunyuan can use front, back, left and right side images

that said, it won't replace 3D modelling in any way and I would never buy an AI generated mesh

I myself only use it for incidental background fillers based on my real life people and surroundings 

things like my house, selfies, pets and family members so far

I prefer buying proper models from DAZ and plenty of them!

and you are a Carrara user too 

I model very simple things only, admire people like you and Stezza.

kickajet said:

Started this project back in October and have been picking away at it every couple of days, posting to Military-Meshes, however the site is not very active anymore, so I finally decided to start posting here...

End goal, if Carrara will cooperate is to eventually create a multi-ship formation animation similar to this one I did with a C-130J Super Hercules... of course then I'll have to make either a P-51D Mustang or P-47 Thunderbolt to escort it.

Tools of Choice: DAZ3D Carrara 8.5 Pro | Photoshop CS 6
ART STATION | IMAGESHACK | MILITARY-MESHES

kickajet,

I wanted to voice my interest in your project. I'm an on-and-off Blender user, and never found the time to put enough effort to learn 3D modeling. I've always felt there was a dearth of examples here in the Daz Forum that showcase 3D work. And now with GenAI ... does this mean that hand-crafted 3D modeling is on its last leg? 

To the best of my knowledge, the Hex Gallery thread is the only one that's going strong. Excellent work there! The takeaway for me is that a software tool being "old" doesn't really matter as much as the vision and the skill the 3D modeler brings to the task. 

So, please, by all means, keep posting your progress.

Cheers!

Cheek guns added!... and they are posable too!

@kenmo - Yeah, my brother and I started using Carrara all the way back around version 4.5, when we had to replace an old copy of Truespace we found on our 1st computer (early 2000's) and then just kept upgrading periodically, so I've been using Carrara now in one version or another for 25 years give or take. It doesn't have the best shader, lighting, or rendering engine, but you tweak it right and it can get pretty dang good results, and the vertex modeller is probably one of the best for just straight up power/easy of use. Has some serious limitations, but none of my work has really ever pushed up against those too hard, so I've been happy staying with it.

C:\Users\Wendy your name\AppData\Local\Temp fills up and it's contents worth deleting regulary

your Carrara tmp folder too

often C:\Users\your name\Documents\DAZ 3D\DazTmp but you can choose somewhere else in preferences 

I use MS PC Manager and have it running in the backgrund when Carrara'ing etc... 

kickajet said:

Thanks!

@kenmo - Carrara... I've tried to switch to Blender a couple of times, but I'm too entrenched in Carrara and just haven't had the time to really make a concentrated effort (active duty military, so long days and unstable schedules are the norm for me)

I can fully understand. Besides why change if Carrara still works for you. I know some artists who still use Wings3D!

Cheers

Ken 

WendyLuvsCatz said:

lots of different computer media 

DAZ Studio, Twinmotion, Carrara, iClone and AI Animation and music

Wow WendyLuvsCatz great job, thanks for sharing.