Xmas in July video

uploaded this yesterday but was too tired to share until now

I found trying to generate an Ai sing about it almost impossible, it really doesn't understand the concept of the Southern Hemisphere having Winter in July let alone having an alternative Xmas celebration 

I put this here because although the cats were all Carrara furred and rendered Virtual World Dynamics clothed png series reused, it's really just a collage of stuff including yours truly looking bewildered (no fake teeth) accidentally videod in slowmo on my iPad to make me look even more bewildered 

Welcome to yet another round of RRRR. This time we're having a theme, and the theme is Unusual Laws / Refused Sports. This time too we have two parallell themes, you can render one3, the other or both in your entry,

RRRR stands for Random Runtime Roulette Renders, and it's a contest that has been running for over twelve years now, on and off. We invite anyone to enter, specially all those new users who have shown up the past years. This is not the usual make a very nice render contest but more like tell a really great story, often fun, with your render!

How does it work?
Make your pull of 4 items, and if your any Lucky Bastards, you pull one extra item per LB.

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 the itemized history into a text file or a spread sheet. Remove things like software, gift certs, and special plugins from the list and items that wil not work with the software you work with.
 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 all the junk from you list. 

Then you use a randomizer to randomly pick items from your list (your Runtime/My Library) for your start pull . You can use items from any store. Now build a scene with those 4 items plus any other items you want to add to make a fun scene. For newcomers I heartly recommend looking at the previous contests below to get ideas how you can do this. 

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

There are some situations where you allowed to redraw, these are:


- You pulled something that doesn’t work, broken thing, only works in a version / software not used etc etc, or you forgot to remove that item from you list even though you knew it wont work, or figure that out later.
- You pulled a software or add-on to a software or anything you should have filtered out from the list.
- You pulled only huge environment props and will not be able to render a scene without crashing.
- You pulled an item you already have been using in two RRRR renders in this content and that was picked randomly. Three is a curse - rule!

Lucky Bastard Rule!
I say this again: If you have Lucky Bastards, you pull one extra item for each LB you have, simple as that. 
Explaination of Lucky Bastards. 
Lucky Bastards, or LBs, are a form of handicap system which makes the contest a little more difficult for those who have won.

Current Lucky Bastards Standings

How to play?
You pull, you compose and you Render. You post your images and pulls in this thread (Don't miss that, entries without pulls and posts 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, but 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, an expression pack or a 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.
Accidenty breaking the TOS
If your entry is removed by the forum mods because it accidentally, not deliberate, broke the TOS, you do not have to redo that entry but can move on and make a new pull. 

The rules of madness! 
Now you have successfully and randomly picked your items, make a scene, you can add other items as well but the one you picked should be prominent or cleverly used. Render it, post it and make us all laugh! Remember though that the renders must follow the TOS of the forum. As we have a theme on the contest, the render should in some way touch that theme. 

The contest categories! 
There are two categories Best and Funniest. Every image will compete in both categories.

Contest duration!
It starts now at Friday July 25 - 2025, and will go on until Sunday September 28, 2025 at 23:59:59 local DAZ time. 

This months sponsors so far:
Totte (Code 66) is sponsoring with two items from his store
Elliandra is sponsoring with two items from her store
3Diva is sponsoring with two items from thier store
Dartanbeck is sponsoring with items from his store

We want more sponsors!

Do you want to sponsor the RRRR?
Please chip in a gift card sponsorship, sponsors can play, they should play, they are even extra encouraged to play, as sponsors always plays for keeps.

Maximum number of entries? 
For this round it will be a maximum of 12 entries per player.

So, good luck and start your render engines!

Stezza said:

where's the kaboom!

You know you could of done that in Carrara faster than an illudium q36 Explosive modulator 

keep up the good modelling 

Thanks Stezza and thanks again for the Marvin model !!! I'm sure an experienced Carrara modeller could have ripped the Ray Gun out real quick, but I had fun making it in Blender.

Next up a Toon Rocket ! Looking at getting a model out every couple of days.

where's the kaboom!

You know you could of done that in Carrara faster than an illudium q36 Explosive modulator 

keep up the good modelling 

Ray Gun complete - now for the Carrara conversion.

A few years ago I acquired a PC that handles iRay just fine. However, the GPU is a 1060 (plus?!). I'm sure that GPU will soon become deprecated (is that the word?!) and won't work in Daz Studio 2025. And it might not work in future versions of 4.X

I expected this to happen eventually. I already had this computer for about 4 years. Time moves on and technology needs to keep up. It's not easy for people like me who live on a limited, fixed income.

Now comes a time to at least map out a plan. If I "won the Lottery," what would I do?!

As it stands the 50 series of nVidia cards is not a safe bet. We'd be stuck using DAZ Studio 2025. But it's still in Alpha testing. I don't want that kind of limitation.

I don't really want to hold onto an outdated version of DAZ Studio just to keep my old computer viable. 

I don't use DAZ Studio all that much. Sometimes that computer just sits around gathering dust. If I spend thousands of dollars to get a new computer, will the investment be worth it?

I almost forgot. I don't use scripts. I don't buy much software from DAZ. I've seen too many apps die after I bought them Carrara, etc. And maybe I'm just to lazy to understand scripts.

Edited to fix my typos

Stezza said:

using tune from "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)"

If you like surreal compositions  
And Carrara’s spline-based charm  
If you're into morphing meshes  
With shaders that disarm  
If you like tweaking displacement  
While the modifiers play  
I'm the geek that you've looked for  
Modeling night and day

If you like rigging with soft IK  
And metaballs that groove  
If you vibe with particle sparkles  
And polys that you can move  
If you mesh for composition  
With light maps set to sway  
Let’s build scenes down in Carrara  
Where polygons love to play

Yes, I love some good UV mapping  
And some shaders with flair  
Cubic projections and bump maps  
With specularity to spare  
Let’s escape to a viewport island  
Where the spline trees sway  
And we render dreams in Carrara  
Until break of day

Nice work Stezza , going for poet laureat ! 

using tune from "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)"

If you like surreal compositions  
And Carrara’s spline-based charm  
If you're into morphing meshes  
With shaders that disarm  
If you like tweaking displacement  
While the modifiers play  
I'm the geek that you've looked for  
Modeling night and day

If you like rigging with soft IK  
And metaballs that groove  
If you vibe with particle sparkles  
And polys that you can move  
If you mesh for composition  
With light maps set to sway  
Let’s build scenes down in Carrara  
Where polygons love to play

Yes, I love some good UV mapping  
And some shaders with flair  
Cubic projections and bump maps  
With specularity to spare  
Let’s escape to a viewport island  
Where the spline trees sway  
And we render dreams in Carrara  
Until break of day

the file is there  i have a problem with dim sometimes that i dont know how to fix . a long time a go i had carrara befor daz studio and it created a location of program files /DAZ3D/carrara 8.5/DAZ3D/DAZstudio4/and the pluggins are in a folder there once using DAZ studio with DIM i found it would not put pluggins in there but that they wouldnt work unless they were in there so i just did it all manually and everything just worked in cluding the first ultra scenery and ultra scenery xt

...shoulda used

          ...shoulda used

                       ...shoulda used

Shoulda Used CARRARA!!!

That's a great catchy Jingle, should have used carrara :) 

I spoke too soon about Carrara and this is odd

while it loads and renders fine in Carrara native render

Octane it is inexplicably slow

nowhere near as slow as DAZ studio mind you but not what I expected

it is reducing estimated time as it progresses however and may still end up the 10 hours at most which is within reason

https://www.daz3d.com/the-last-vampire-hunter-hd-dforce-clothes-and-weapons-set-for-genesis-9

works fine clothes only converted to Blended weight, saved as scene subset, loaded on my saved G9

more than I can say about in DAZ Studio 

just putting it here as wasted days in DAZ studio

should have used Carrara 

Gordig said:

Has anyone checked out the polygon count? Is there any displacement going on?s

the new UI makes that harder to see at a glance in DAZ but I exported a base animated FBX and that was big but not massive 

don't recall the actual file size high around 170K I think but with a 1800 frame animation not abnormal, doesn't really give an actual indication of polycount the fact it easily loaded in my other softwares says it's not heavy at base

the subdivision and HDmorphs give the details 

but in DAZ studio dialing it down to 1 in viewport 2 in render should have fixed that,

it didn't 

I had other issues sadly with parented props as often do with FBX export depending how they are set up

but that's besides the point

polycounts below

(hate the lack of separate tab)

aside, got the outfit easily into Carrara following the usual proceedure of converting to blended weight and saving as scene subset

admittedly only diffuse maps but that was not the issue from what I can tell, Carrara also doesn't mind big maps and Octane render uses out of core too so I will add them 

Stezza said:

in the memetime

Carrara KissKam strikes! 

Kermit will file for divorce .....

in the memetime

Carrara KissKam strikes! 

Bunyip02 said:

Got the itch to do some Blender work again after watching Stezza have so much fun - will get back to the Eagle eventually, in the meantime will do some more basic models - first up - Snowman !!!

Carrara version done and attached ZIP file !!!

Stezza said:

@Bunyip02

You inspired me to cube an Olaf and added a couple of morphs.. in Carrara of course 

for anyone who wants to add more morphs or even bone him... he's in the zip 

enjoy 

Looks wonderful - thanks Stezza !!!

@Bunyip02

You inspired me to cube an Olaf and added a couple of morphs.. in Carrara of course 

for anyone who wants to add more morphs or even bone him... he's in the zip 

enjoy 

got me thinking today to get the Carrara Cube out and model a new Mr Squiggle... the one I did in 2019 was a bit blah.... 

boned and morphed and also some Carrara hair