The old Anne Marie Goddard Digital Clone for Victoria 3 has soem lkmitations, as do at least some producs from Flipped Normals. Note that you don't need the Interactive License for 2D renders in any event, that is for including 3D data and textures in a game or the like as data, rather than as pre-rendered artwork.

Kainjy said:

Tranquillo.. non ti devi iscrivere, al massimo accettare il cookie e poi puoi premere su download. Si i G8 possono avere materiali 3delight ma li devi convertire tu.. inoltre se provi ad applicare una skin di victoria 4 non ti va perché le UV e le surface sono diverse. Questo pacchetto ti crea una seconda pelle su cui puoi applicare tutti i materiali di V4 senza problemi (perfino i preset per truccare la faccia). È simile a questo prodotto DAZ: https://www.daz3d.com/legacy-uvs-for-genesis-8-victoria-4

Allora, intanto ho iniziato a installarlo; ho usato DIM e ha funzionato senza problemi. Poi dal content DB manager ho creato un prodotto, così me lo vede anche dallo Smart Content. Ho aggiunto "Wearable" alla fine del nome così resta più immediata la distinzione del fatto che è un "vestito" rispetto ai materiali di superficie veri e propri. 

Tranquillo.. non ti devi iscrivere, al massimo accettare il cookie e poi puoi premere su download. Si i G8 possono avere materiali 3delight ma li devi convertire tu.. inoltre se provi ad applicare una skin di victoria 4 non ti va perché le UV e le surface sono diverse. Questo pacchetto ti crea una seconda pelle su cui puoi applicare tutti i materiali di V4 senza problemi (perfino i preset per truccare la faccia). È simile a questo prodotto DAZ: https://www.daz3d.com/legacy-uvs-for-genesis-8-victoria-4

Kainjy said:

Buonasera (o forse sarebbe meglio buonanotte vista l'ora).
E' da un po' che non scrivevo perchè ho avuto da fare in questo periodo. Per farmi perdonare vi lascio un freebe fatto da me (compatibile con Install Manager):

https://we.tl/t-9RwJ7Vyzos

Si tratta di una skin per trasformare la G8F in una Victoria 4:

• Prendete la G8F/G8.1F
• Gli applicate la pelle (come un vestito)
• Al vestito applicate uno qualsiasi dei materiali di Victoria 4 e riavrete i vostri vecchi materiali di V4 applicati alla G8F (o 8.1F).

Essendo un vestito, esso si adatterà alla figura sottostante, per cui tutti i morph che applicate alla G8 avranno effetto anche sulla pelle. 
Per posare la figura ovviamente basta mettere in posa la G8F (non la pelle). Non abbiate paura di testare anche le espressioni. Così potrete usare i G8 anche con 3DeLight.
Si tratta di un pezzo di un prodotto che mi hanno scartato (non sono interessati a prodotti 3DeLight) per cui lo metto freebie.. intanto ve lo lascio, nel fine settimana lo carico su R.
Provatelo e fatemi sapere cosa ne pensate che eventualmente correggo i bug. 
Vi lascio un'immagine dove potete vedere lo stesso materiale applicato a V4 e a G8F (non posso mettere nudi)

Grazie mille! 

Appena riesco a provarlo ti do riscontro. 

NotAnArtist said:

outrider42 said:

NotAnArtist said: stuff

...

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

...

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

...

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

 

Wow, your points wipe my points! Maybe I just have some 'love' left over for the Daz team, or maybe I'm insane. I mean, me, defending a corporation?

Seriously, I think my point was that I assume the PAs also get paid more from sales of their old products when they're sold for more, same as the new stuff. I love the PAs, so that's who I felt I was defending. If the corporates get all the booty, I'm out'a here!

I would love the Daz techies as well if they'd provide us with something for higher quality rendering that wouldn't put many of us in debt, though. There are people working on iray, why not give some love to Filament as well, considering the increasing stress we're under? It would help ALL of us in one way or another, PAs included, as I've already been redundant about.

Thanks for your comments. I stand corrected, or at least a bit tilted :)

Simple question, would you prefer to sell 5 units for $2.50 profit, or 20 units for $1 profit? Since these are digital items, it can be easily argued the individual prices are not as important as the overall revenue generated, especially on a product that has been out for several months and has exceeded its typical new product window.

While selling a product for a bit more sounds like a great boon for the seller, if people balk at purchasing that item, is it really such a great thing? I obviously want to support the PAs, too. But I cannot imagine that they are genuinely making more profit off the $5 grab bag items, for the reason we have discussed at this point.

Going back to Steam, there was a small indie game that got marked down to $1 for a weekend sale on the Steam front page. That was a 95% discount on a game normally priced $20. However, the game sold more during that weekend that it did in its entire existance previously, and the studio in turn made more money that weekend than they ever did as well. Additionally, this gave the small studio a lot of exposure, with more people getting to see their work, this in turn had more people interested in their next project. This $1 sale put the team on the map. I cannot locate one of the articles that covered this story, but it happened a couple years ago.

I did find this statement by Valve's President Gabe Newell, who founded the company in 1996. Valve owns Steam, and their success helped set a lot of standards in digital sales. Few people are as well versed as he is on this subject. This comes from a keynote in 2009, which I will also link here. https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/02/19/dice-2009-gabe-newell-keynote-transcript

"So let's talk about something else. One of the things that really sort of annoys me is the inefficiency of pricing that we have in our industry. And I'm always sort of arguing about whether or not we're pricing our products correctly. So it was nice to actually do an experiment last Christmas. So this is sales for the eight days before Christmas and the eight days after Christmas. After Christmas we implemented discounts. And so the minimum discount on Steam for all the products was 10 percent. We saw 35 percent increase in sales, not in units but in sales. In real dollars or euros or whatever. And the interesting thing is if you want to 25 percent off, you know, every publisher and developer got to make its own decisions about how it wanted to participate. If you go to 25 percent, you see this huge factor of 7 increase in the revenue you're generating. Clearly there was some function that was going on there. Then you go to 50 percent, still seeing increase. That's great. But you go to 75 percent off. And people are making almost 15 times as much money by getting to what apparently is a much more natural price point for our products and our content. This is something that you're going to find that's true of all of these emerging platforms. It gives you much better tools for thinking about experimenting with and managing your business."      --Gabe Newell

I know that Daz3D is not Steam. But I think this gets the point across very well, and I have often compared Daz sales with Steam sales. As Gabe stated, the items that went to 75% off generated almost 1500% more revenue than they normally would. This drastically dwarfs the other discounts mentioned. Soon after this experiment Valve would become known for huge sales with crazy discounts, even 90% discounts on some software. So Steam quickly put this data to use and expanded on it. What this shows is the power of a sale price point that becomes an impulse purchase. The steep discount was not a slap to the face of those games, it made them 15 times more money than usual! Steam figured this stuff out way back in 2009. Steam is a little different than Daz in that they do not do big sales all the time. They have frequent small sales that are focused on a few games, often on weekends, but they only have 4 big sales each year, seasonally. So most games are at their full price for extended periods of time, and I mean months, not a few days, in contrast to the laundry pose set I screenshot earlier. The laundry pose set was never full price for more than a few days in row at any time the past year.

Richard Haseltine said:

outrider42 said:

NotAnArtist said:

I guess I should have made my earlier points here more in the form of a question. Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??

Again: There are other, more supportive things that could be done for customers like us, while the prices do necessarily remain higher.

Make changes to the software so that we can be more productive with it being less expensive to do so. This is the only thing they could be doing to compensate for our "misery" with inflated pricing.

As I said earlier, I've been working with an old, weak machine. I don't care what the prices of props are because I have little reason to buy them as long as any possible use of them is so extremely limited by the cost of rendering!

I have finally put together a small machine to replace my old, overheating one. It will only handle musical hobbies. It will not handle iray or several tools any better than my old one. Why should I spend money on an outrageously expensive system? I'm only a hobbyist!

I'm frankly amazed at the complaining over prices in this thread. It's like some here are more addicted to buying things than they are to creating things! My only wish is for Filament to be made as fast yet attractive as it could be, and my purchases here will remain at minimum until that happens.

I'm looking at the larger picture, because we're heading for some possibly very bad times.

Prices on Steam are basically the same as they have been for, oh, 10+ years. So I don't buy this argument for one second. These are DIGITAL assets. When you buy gas or food that is product with a finite distribution, and it all has pricing coming from the components that make them a finished product. 

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

Now perhaps the rent went up for Daz. I can get that. But again, as I said earlier, if this was just one thing it would be accepted. If the prices went up a little bit, it would be accepted. But the prices on offer are not even close. We are talking a 2.5x price increase on grab bag items.

2.5X!

That alone outpaces the rate of inflation. Then you add all of the other stuff on top of that, and it gets to be pretty outragious.

You cannot spin the discount being less than some previous discounts in similarly structured offers as the price rising - the base price on these items has not, as far as I am aware, increased. That doesn't mean you cannot comment on or complain about the offer compared to previous offers, but it is not a price rise.

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

And if most people are hobby users, who is going to get hurt more by an economic downturn? Are people going to skip gas or food to keep buying digital goods?

Um, no. Descretionary spending is the first to get pulled back in any downturn. 

So in reality, can Daz truly afford to raise prices? I don't think so. But as I also said earlier, the success of the sale will determine the answer.

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

Semantics. With all due respect, the sale price is the price of the good at a given time. Sure, there is a normal price (which BTW prices on new items have indeed increased,) but the sale price is a price, and those prices have gone up. If you are selling items for $4.99, then $4.99 IS THE PRICE, temporary or not. A number of these items were $1.99, or $2.99 in past sales. THAT WAS THE PRICE.

That is not spin. This is the website where a common catch phrase amung forum users is "There is always another sale". So much so that the sales report thread, which is regarded as an **official sales report thread** according to Daz own staff, has "There is always another sale" in the thread title with a cute little 'TM' in the name as well. Sales are so common that they put 'TM' in there as joke, as if the term is trade marked by Daz3D. That Daz3D staff openly participate in a thread with this title is in fact a form of approval by Daz3D and its staff that sales are so common that they can place a 'TM' sign on them. This is just one of several such threads which I am sure many of us here have seen at one point or another.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/474281/new-2021-sales-thread-report-issues-here-there-s-always-another-sale/p1

I can also point at the screen shot I posted of the laundry pose set in my previous post. The point on the price chart moves CONSTANTLY, because the item is constantly on some kind of sale. That item is frequently on sale, and this is true for many items in the store. Saying the normal price for the laundry pose set has not gone up during this time...I would consider that to be spin, because the item is rarely sold at normal price. If an item is on sale all the time, the normal price is really not valid in this conversation, is it? If an item has a $100 price tage, but is on sale frequently for $25, is that really a $100 product? There are numerous debates that can be had around pricing structures like this, and I would think you would rather not wish to engage in them here.

It would be a massive understatement to say that sales are a massive part of this website's success. I think we can agree on this statement. Otherwise I rather doubt that Daz would have so many sales in the first place, as they have a new sale practically every day with few exceptions.

So with all of this in mind, when we the customers see the sales get progressively worse, we the customers take notice. Thus the large forum opinion of the March Madness sale in this thread as being shall we say, lackluster.

I also stated in multiple posts that ultimately the sales data would determine the success of this new strategy. If I may project a little bit, I would consider the new grab bag price of $3.99 as jusitification for the past 8 pages of posts including mine.

Buonasera (o forse sarebbe meglio buonanotte vista l'ora).
E' da un po' che non scrivevo perchè ho avuto da fare in questo periodo. Per farmi perdonare vi lascio un freebe fatto da me (compatibile con Install Manager):

https://we.tl/t-9RwJ7Vyzos

Si tratta di una skin per trasformare la G8F in una Victoria 4:

• Prendete la G8F/G8.1F
• Gli applicate la pelle (come un vestito)
• Al vestito applicate uno qualsiasi dei materiali di Victoria 4 e riavrete i vostri vecchi materiali di V4 applicati alla G8F (o 8.1F).

Essendo un vestito, esso si adatterà alla figura sottostante, per cui tutti i morph che applicate alla G8 avranno effetto anche sulla pelle. 
Per posare la figura ovviamente basta mettere in posa la G8F (non la pelle). Non abbiate paura di testare anche le espressioni. Così potrete usare i G8 anche con 3DeLight.
Si tratta di un pezzo di un prodotto che mi hanno scartato (non sono interessati a prodotti 3DeLight) per cui lo metto freebie.. intanto ve lo lascio, nel fine settimana lo carico su R.
Provatelo e fatemi sapere cosa ne pensate che eventualmente correggo i bug. 
Vi lascio un'immagine dove potete vedere lo stesso materiale applicato a V4 e a G8F (non posso mettere nudi)

Noob question.

When buying a model from the Daz Store, like Freja 8 or Victoria 8.1, do you have to find/buy the hair seperately from what is shown in the picture of the model? Or is this something that affects only certain model packages? How do you know or how can you tell if the package has hair for the model? Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance for your help.

I'm thinking back to the VERY FIRST TIME I saw what I knew to be a 3D figure - it was Victoria 4.  And it freaked me out.  I thought "what is this?  Is this a photograph?  Is this a real human.  Is this a doll with a photograph pasted over the face?"  It was disturbing and confusing.  There was something dead about it, exactly the way I felt the flesh of the first dead person I touched with my hand (my grandfather in his coffin.)  That's uncanny valley.  And I still feel the same way.  This is just my personal artistic choice to suit my mind - when I do a render, I try to make it look as much like a photograph as possible.  Then I take the render and using filters in post, try and make the render look like a hand-created illustration.  I have hundreds of filters and other art software to alter the final render.  Sometimes it takes VERY LITTLE filtering to instantly tell viewers that "hey, this is an illustration".  I personally don't like the look of renders of humans that try to make them look like they're living.  Our reactions are cultural, and age related. If you're creating the image for yourself, then make it look any way you want.  If you're crating the image for a client, then you have to make the render look the way they want it.
 

Hello, I just downloaded DAZ but haven't had a chance to play with it yet. What I want to do is tell simple stories. I want the girls to be gorgeous and busty. I have seen some awesome renders on another site that uses a Victoria body, Mayra. Now G8 is another body type...are these two compatable? Can a G8 body morph work with a Victoria model? or clothing?

If, not are there G8 renders as good as Victoria? I haven't found any yet. I did see a listing of about 20 models on the DAZ catologue. am I looking in the wrong place?

I would love to buy a finished model tinker a bit with the body, and start telling stories.

also I need villains and I can't find Nazis anywhere. No one cares when you shoot a nazi. They are the perfect villain. I hope PC concerns didn't kill off the WWII genre. I'm at a loss for a good replacement villian

outrider42 said:

NotAnArtist said: stuff

...

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

...

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

...

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

 

Wow, your points wipe my points! Maybe I just have some 'love' left over for the Daz team, or maybe I'm insane. I mean, me, defending a corporation?

Seriously, I think my point was that I assume the PAs also get paid more from sales of their old products when they're sold for more, same as the new stuff. I love the PAs, so that's who I felt I was defending. If the corporates get all the booty, I'm out'a here!

I would love the Daz techies as well if they'd provide us with something for higher quality rendering that wouldn't put many of us in debt, though. There are people working on iray, why not give some love to Filament as well, considering the increasing stress we're under? It would help ALL of us in one way or another, PAs included, as I've already been redundant about.

Thanks for your comments. I stand corrected, or at least a bit tilted :)

You can load the Victoria 4 content through the Content Library, you don't have to use Smart Content - just remember that it will appear under Poser Formats, not Daz Studio Formats.

outrider42 said:

NotAnArtist said:

I guess I should have made my earlier points here more in the form of a question. Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??

Again: There are other, more supportive things that could be done for customers like us, while the prices do necessarily remain higher.

Make changes to the software so that we can be more productive with it being less expensive to do so. This is the only thing they could be doing to compensate for our "misery" with inflated pricing.

As I said earlier, I've been working with an old, weak machine. I don't care what the prices of props are because I have little reason to buy them as long as any possible use of them is so extremely limited by the cost of rendering!

I have finally put together a small machine to replace my old, overheating one. It will only handle musical hobbies. It will not handle iray or several tools any better than my old one. Why should I spend money on an outrageously expensive system? I'm only a hobbyist!

I'm frankly amazed at the complaining over prices in this thread. It's like some here are more addicted to buying things than they are to creating things! My only wish is for Filament to be made as fast yet attractive as it could be, and my purchases here will remain at minimum until that happens.

I'm looking at the larger picture, because we're heading for some possibly very bad times.

Prices on Steam are basically the same as they have been for, oh, 10+ years. So I don't buy this argument for one second. These are DIGITAL assets. When you buy gas or food that is product with a finite distribution, and it all has pricing coming from the components that make them a finished product. 

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

Now perhaps the rent went up for Daz. I can get that. But again, as I said earlier, if this was just one thing it would be accepted. If the prices went up a little bit, it would be accepted. But the prices on offer are not even close. We are talking a 2.5x price increase on grab bag items.

2.5X!

That alone outpaces the rate of inflation. Then you add all of the other stuff on top of that, and it gets to be pretty outragious.

You cannot spin the discount being less than some previous discounts in similarly structured offers as the price rising - the base price on these items has not, as far as I am aware, increased. That doesn't mean you cannot comment on or complain about the offer compared to previous offers, but it is not a price rise.

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

And if most people are hobby users, who is going to get hurt more by an economic downturn? Are people going to skip gas or food to keep buying digital goods?

Um, no. Descretionary spending is the first to get pulled back in any downturn. 

So in reality, can Daz truly afford to raise prices? I don't think so. But as I also said earlier, the success of the sale will determine the answer.

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

NotAnArtist said:

I guess I should have made my earlier points here more in the form of a question. Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??

Again: There are other, more supportive things that could be done for customers like us, while the prices do necessarily remain higher.

Make changes to the software so that we can be more productive with it being less expensive to do so. This is the only thing they could be doing to compensate for our "misery" with inflated pricing.

As I said earlier, I've been working with an old, weak machine. I don't care what the prices of props are because I have little reason to buy them as long as any possible use of them is so extremely limited by the cost of rendering!

I have finally put together a small machine to replace my old, overheating one. It will only handle musical hobbies. It will not handle iray or several tools any better than my old one. Why should I spend money on an outrageously expensive system? I'm only a hobbyist!

I'm frankly amazed at the complaining over prices in this thread. It's like some here are more addicted to buying things than they are to creating things! My only wish is for Filament to be made as fast yet attractive as it could be, and my purchases here will remain at minimum until that happens.

I'm looking at the larger picture, because we're heading for some possibly very bad times.

Prices on Steam are basically the same as they have been for, oh, 10+ years. So I don't buy this argument for one second. These are DIGITAL assets. When you buy gas or food that is product with a finite distribution, and it all has pricing coming from the components that make them a finished product. 

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

Now perhaps the rent went up for Daz. I can get that. But again, as I said earlier, if this was just one thing it would be accepted. If the prices went up a little bit, it would be accepted. But the prices on offer are not even close. We are talking a 2.5x price increase on grab bag items.

2.5X!

That alone outpaces the rate of inflation. Then you add all of the other stuff on top of that, and it gets to be pretty outragious.

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

And if most people are hobby users, who is going to get hurt more by an economic downturn? Are people going to skip gas or food to keep buying digital goods?

Um, no. Descretionary spending is the first to get pulled back in any downturn. 

So in reality, can Daz truly afford to raise prices? I don't think so. But as I also said earlier, the success of the sale will determine the answer.

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

You already have the clones you need for that - they are what enables AutoFit, and you can AutoFit Victoria 4 stuff to Genesis (load the Victoria 4 iem, fit it to Genesis, and set Victoria 4 as the original figure) and then AutofIt the Genesis version to Genesis 8 Female (fit the covnerted item to Genesis 8 Female instead of Genessi and select Genesis as the original figure). Searching the store for autofit wil find most of the add-ons, which handle transitions not suported by the base content or aim to work better than the defaults.

To explain in slightly more detail: Victoria 4 products are usually not compatable with G8F. Because Victoria 4 is an extremely old character. The name "Victoria" is just the name that is used for the first core female figure of each new generation. As in Victoria 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 8.1. If you are new to this I would recommend sticking with the Genesis 8/8.1 figures since they are the most current and probably the easiest for a new user to work with. Genesis 8 Female has many add-on characters for it, including a Victoria 8/8.1. The G8F Body morphs that you linked to are ONLY compatable with G8F not Victoria 4.

Victoria 4 was released in 2006.

Genesis 8 Female was released in 2017.

Entry: 11

Title: Get away from her you b%$#t

Artist:  Bunyip02

Link to WIP: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7274496/#Comment_7274496

                     https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7277826/#Comment_7277826

Credits: Victoria 4 - https://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-2-base
             Trendy Baby - https://www.daz3d.com/trendy-baby
             Aussie Girl Outfit - https://www.daz3d.com/aussie-girl-outfit
             Tatiana Hair - https://www.daz3d.com/tatiana-hair
             Aliens Power Loader - https://www.vanishingpoint.biz/freeitemdetail.asp?FreeItemID=44
             Alien Queen - Sixus1/Antares
             Sci-Fi Hangar A - https://www.daz3d.com/sci-fi-hanger-a

Comments: Aliens

Hi, I'm brand new at using Daz3D.  My question at the moment involves the ability or lack thereof to combine products meant for different figures.  If I buy a clothing package meant for Victoria 4 (which I'm given to understand is a very popular figure to build products off of), and a set of poses meant for Genesis 8 Female, is it competely impossible to combine features from these two products on the same model?

In general I can understand some products being prorietary to others.  My puzzlement is coming from the fact that, again, Victoria seems to be a "standard" figure to use as a basis; but if products based on it are incompatible with ones based on Genesis 8 Female, and vice versa, that seems like a pretty big restriction.  This for example seems like a fairly standard product; is it incompatible with anything made for/using Victoria?

spuddy - thank you. No fisheye, rectangular 180° Bryce camera but yes, of course, you get distortions at the borders. The pole of the signpost in the HDRI is also not round. I fiddled long with Michael's distortion and matching the cast shadow with the one from the pole. Victoria is in the centre of the picture and the proportions therefore correct. Getting the shadow colours to match with the one in the HDRI also took me quite a while.

I find the haze line at the horizon an improvement but think it is a tad sharp. But I know it can be very difficult to have the haze fade upwards correctly. I hope you know that the Cumulus cloud height also controls the haze, even if the clouds as such are disabled.

The second one Waiting for the Turtle looks great, I think the colour of the rather shallow water matches the ground perfectly - and where the water gets deeper at the lower right corner really makes it look perfect - unfortunately, this makes it somehow less eye catching.

mermaid - thank you.