Interesting how people are doing different takes on theme.  I'd have never come up with post apocolyptic but makes sense if we don't do anything about CO2...

Been looking for a good read and hate picking out a book only to find it's #3 in a series.  Start at beginning on this one!

Anyway to topic:

Concept art for now.  (Obviously needs *lots* work.) 

Hill country in central Texas is only nesting habitat in the world for a handsome little fellow called the Golden Cheeked Warbler.

Conservation groups won a court victory just last week against State of Texas.  Our esteemed attorney general  wanted to open up its protected habitat for developers.  (The state had argued the endangered species act was government overreach, species no longer endangered, etc.)

https://travisaudubon.org/uncategorized/texas-judge-upholds-endangered-species-act-protections-for-golden-cheeked-warbler

Don’t have bulldozer prop, so used “road roller.”  For some reason, it reminded me of an old Joni Mitchell song.

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot... ”

So I’m calling it “Big Yellow Taxi”

Joni released that 49 years ago and still holds true in my opinion.

Thankfully not for our fine feathered friends here in central Texas. 

----

--Bruce

What I don't have is a mid century street with just shops...like a downtown shopping area like a lot of medium sized towns in the U.S. used to have. I still think a vintage Art Deco Miami street would be fantastic or even a Key

You can build this fairly easy with some of Dreamland's City Blocks... 1, 7 & 8 in particular, but a quicker and cheaper solution is https://www.daz3d.com/mountain-valley Just take out the BTTFure central plaza and building move one of the the opposing streets closer to the one on the opposite side.  Repeat with the other two sides and place them end to end and you've got two blocks worth of street.   

Biggest issue I have with mountain valley is that I could not use it without thinking of Back to the Future, whose town square is almost identical (which I am sure is not a coincidence)

Edit: Just noticed you already mentioned that, sorry!

What I don't have is a mid century street with just shops...like a downtown shopping area like a lot of medium sized towns in the U.S. used to have. I still think a vintage Art Deco Miami street would be fantastic or even a Key

You can build this fairly easy with some of Dreamland's City Blocks... 1, 7 & 8 in particular, but a quicker and cheaper solution is https://www.daz3d.com/mountain-valley Just take out the BTTFure central plaza and building move one of the the opposing streets closer to the one on the opposite side.  Repeat with the other two sides and place them end to end and you've got two blocks worth of street.   

I'd like to vote for Union Terminal in Cincinnati, Ohio.

If you think it looks familiar, here's why (https://www.wired.com/2014/10/super-friends-hall-of-justice/). More info here (http://myunionterminal.com/).

 

...lovely old station as well so pleased they restored it. 

The only real similarity to the JLA headquarters is the central arcade. 

Unfortunately the only model I could find is for Sketchup which would require conversion and often models have issues with the mesh like reversed normals.

I felt that the Admiral's cabin would not be complete without a cup of coffee.  If @TangoAlpha agrees, I will share a Carrara file with the coffee mug with his fleet's logo.

.

great stuff, nice to see a few tailor mades :)

Old post I just found

A few different treatments of PhilW's excellent City Central Night scene.

Rendered out firstly as a Toon1Part111 render, then rendered out several different passes and combined with postwork in post.

It renders very fast as you don't need anti aliasing on :)

Much use of the index pass to help isolate the different scene objects.

 

 

 

wowww this went to the top of my pwersonal most awesome renders list  omjee the ambience 

thank you Mystarra - it was a lot of fun doing that - it's a great set by PhilW

Me too! I love that whole selection of renders! Bravo Head Wax!

Your UberFan - Dartanbeck

ha ha thanks Dart - you have style and taste :)

I feel good 

used Phil's Oceans for this one

a man of many talents Stezza - no history book is safe I take it ? ;) Love the concept and delivery

Old post I just found

A few different treatments of PhilW's excellent City Central Night scene.

Rendered out firstly as a Toon1Part111 render, then rendered out several different passes and combined with postwork in post.

It renders very fast as you don't need anti aliasing on :)

Much use of the index pass to help isolate the different scene objects.

 

 

 

wowww this went to the top of my pwersonal most awesome renders list  omjee the ambience 

She's got a big head, but I know a lot of people who have big heads (in comparison to their bodies). Head Propagating Size can always change it on a Daz character.

She can pass for Hispanic, Central Asian, or Mizrahi Jewish. Thanks for the renders, Divamakeup. If you have a closeup lying around, could you post it?

My pleasure! She's very fun to render - I think she's a great character! :)

I'll see what I can do about a lose up. 

She's got a big head, but I know a lot of people who have big heads (in comparison to their bodies). Head Propagating Size can always change it on a Daz character.

She can pass for Hispanic, Central Asian, or Mizrahi Jewish. Thanks for the renders, Divamakeup. If you have a closeup lying around, could you post it?

Anyone wishing to understand what is happening in central North America with the recent frigid temperatures should cease believing that the term "Polar Vortex" is applicable. That term, which is actually a weather phenomenon, has been misused for some time now by news and weather media to try and dramatize the events in order to increase audience and sell advertising. Any news media that does so should be rewarded by being ignored, having demonstrated either an ignorance of what they are reporting, or blatantly and knowingly misusing the term. Many people who are experiencing the cold hardly need anyone dramatizing it, especially for material gain.

Although it won't help anyone to deal with the bitter cold, know that anyone south of the arctic circle is not experiencing a polar vortex, but a southerly movement of an arctic airmass. Not as catchy, but simply the truth. It is neither a vortex, nor can it be "polar" at all, since that would only apply to something near to or over the north pole. So it is incorrect on two counts. Somewhat ironically, it is actually a weakening or absence of the real polar vortex that exists in winter over the north pole. The weakening is usually caused by above average temperatures there, releasing  a southern flow of frigid air. The vortex is caused by extremely cold, dense air over the pole in winter that gives rise to strong circular airflows around the pole (thus the term vortex), and that tends to draw air inwards, keeping arctic air in the north. If the air over the pole warms, the vortex is weakened, allowing frigid arctic air to flow south. The weaker the vortex, the further south it will tend to penetrate. As counterintuitive as it may seem, it is actually warming in one place (in this case over the north pole) that causes it to be colder someplace else - in this case central North America. The next time you hear a news reporter or weather reporter referring to your cold weather as a "polar vortex", you should really look elsewhere for your news and weather.

Keep warm. Limit exposure and dress for the weather, not fashion.

Experiment: Add Life to the Urban Sprawl 3 Big City

Urban Sprawl Big City looks pretty sterile. There are a few little trees, but you can't really see them. The roads are empty; no traffic. There are no pedestrians, but they would probably be too small too see anyway.

1. Add Traffic
   • OMG - it has taken me hours to place cars and trucks and busses in these Urban Sprawl 3 roads! My first thought was to use UltraScatterPro to scatter traffic on the blocks. After trying to create distribution maps and selection sets to constrain the traffic to the road areas, I realized that you can't scatter instances of instances, so I threw out that idea. I had to place each car, truck and bus individually (each is a prop from either Urban Sprawl 3 or Urban Sprawl 2) on the 10 blocks that I would later scatter into the big city. Of course I don't want all my cars the same color, so I applied Iray car shaders to most of them. The roads are three lane one way roads, which complicated things further. I'm sure some of my vehicles are going the wrong direction. Even after hours of placing vehicles, it still looks very sparse. I get very little pay off for the hours spent! Can you even see those tiny specs?
   • The fact that you can't scatter instances of instances also explains why I see so few trees in the Big City. Most of the trees in Urban Sprawl 3 are already instances created by Stonemason. So, they don't show up in my UltraScatterPro instances.
   • 
2. Add green space
   • We need some parks in this city
   • Create a new scene (so it is easier to work. The big city scene is slow to work in.
   • Load one of the Urban Sprawl blocks
   • Delete all buildings in the central area.
   • Change the shader on the paving to a grass shader
   • Put some trees and bushes in the scene
   • Add traffic on the streets
   • Delete some buildings on the outside of the block to make more grass area in the block
   • Run Scene Optimizer to reduce textures
   • Save the scene(Green Space scene)
   • Open the Big City scene
   • Merge in the Green Space scene
   • Put the Green Space block in to the group of blocks that get scattered with UltraScatterPro
   • Select the existing UltraScatterPro [M] scatter group
   • Run UltraScatterPro
   • Set Preview instances to Full
   • Click Matrix Scatter
   • Evaluate the position of the new parks (Green Space) in the city
   • Change distribution, scale, and/or rotation seeds and scatter again until a satisfying arrangement is achieved
   • 

Now I am trying to convert Country girl boots and I asked the script to use the foot dialogue box and it didn't even come up, it just said the boots converted in 4 sec.  It seems that after I converted a few thing quit working correctly as the first few outfits and shoes converted ok.

This is what my log file said

21:15:24 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Executing Script

21:15:25 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Selecting Preset: E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 3 Female/Clothing/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf

21:15:25 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Converting clothing from E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 3 Female/Clothing/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf to E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing Converted G3F/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf

21:15:27 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Country Girl Boots is of type Follower/Wardrobe/Shoe

21:15:28 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Copy Icons from E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 3 Female/Clothing/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf to E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing Converted G3F/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf

21:15:28 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Copy Categories from E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 3 Female/Clothing/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf to E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing Converted G3F/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf

21:15:31 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Execution Complete.

The problem is that the type is not footwear, it is Follower/Wardrobe/Shoe.  You need to use the Force Convert Footwear button.

Now I am trying to convert Country girl boots and I asked the script to use the foot dialogue box and it didn't even come up, it just said the boots converted in 4 sec.  It seems that after I converted a few thing quit working correctly as the first few outfits and shoes converted ok.

This is what my log file said

21:15:24 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Executing Script

21:15:25 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Selecting Preset: E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 3 Female/Clothing/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf

21:15:25 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Converting clothing from E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 3 Female/Clothing/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf to E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing Converted G3F/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf

21:15:27 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Country Girl Boots is of type Follower/Wardrobe/Shoe

21:15:28 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Copy Icons from E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 3 Female/Clothing/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf to E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing Converted G3F/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf

21:15:28 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Copy Categories from E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 3 Female/Clothing/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf to E:/My Daz Library/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing Converted G3F/Country Girl/Country Girl Boots.duf

21:15:31 GMT-0600 (Canada Central Standard Time): Execution Complete.

I learned a LOT about ammonoids doing this project. I mean, I knew they were 'shelled squid' and very common; like almost any sea scene in a museum from ancient times shows some variety.

But among other things:

While they resemble nautiloids in broad strokes, they are much more closely related to squids and octopi (which essentially evolved the shells into small internal pieces).

Their soft tissues is almost entirely speculation; their shells fossilize really well, but soft parts? The most of the soft tissues that have fossilized are basically smudges, and a few showing that some species fed on ostracods. So, for example, did they have suckers? There is no evidence they did, and I believe the consensus view right now is that they didn't (which is what I went with). How many tentacle arms did they have? Again, speculation, best guess assumes 10, like their close relatives (octopi again apparently evolved away two arms, squids specialized two tentacles)

Note that the many many many ammonoid fossils you can find in stores, the outer layer is often worn away or dissolved, and the conditions often create beautifully iridescent fossils. Cool stuff.

They filled their hard shell with air through a central channel as a weird floatation device, so they were probably not very fast, even with some kind of siphon. Did they orient head down, or more horizontally? Good question!

Their extinction is thought to have come at least partially from acidification of the oceans, which was hard on shell formation. They are thought to have had a longer breeding cycle than nautiloids, one reason nautiloids survived. Squid and octopi traded speed for the shells, and with the Cretaceous event/acidified oceans, this gave them a massive leg up.

Which is a shame. I would love to see a live ammonoid!

Also, working on this project made me seriously crave calamari. mmm.

Is your character positioned some distance from the center of the scene - the place where the character loads by default?

there's a bug that causes the whites of the eyes to go black if the character is moved too far away from the central point. Haven't seen any cure for it mentioned othe than putting the character back at the center and moving all the scenery relative to the figure's location.

I've been meaning to somehow make an island for a long time. I want something rugged from somewhere far north, but all the ones in the shop seem to be tropical desert islands. I suppose I could have done it in Bryce, but I just can't get my head around that software.

So, I decided to kitbash together the island that I want, from several that don't suit me. May I present The Island of the Sea God...

Also available in my gallery

The central rocky bit of the island is from Evolution Island, the beach is from Secluded Island. I've covered the join with some Rubble for Everyone, and decorated with a statue from Enchanted Island! There are rectangular markings on the sand of Secluded Island, where the beach hut and other structures stand. I didn't want that, so I hid them with a few Flat Rocks.

Surround it with Design Anvil's new Ocean, and use the background mountains from the Mountain Rite as a distant mainland and we have an island! Just needs a bit of Ron's brushwork along the shore.

Something I’m messing around with right now.  Have to tweak water color & opacity before I do a ‘Gone Fishing’ scene using props by that name.

Suggestions on how to make wet looking skin surface for frog?  Many products at HW are still 3DL only.  Dual lobe settings in IRay just have skin looking oily or waxy-- not really wet if that makes any sense.  

Color tweaks to "Fern Lake" water to get it more greenish as found in central & west Texas

Refract Color: .12 | .22 | .16 (99-128-112)
SSS Amount: .0010

Cutout opacity: 1 | (opaque looking water)
Cutout Opacity at .9990 | (clear looking water.  Can see gravel, fish, fish shadow, etc.)

As said, suggestions for frog skin and water opacity/color greatly appreciated.

Bruce, you are really inspiring in how quickly you are mastering Studio.  Lots of great images.  Just wanted to make sure I expressed specific appreciation for this tip on surfaces for water.  

This is version 2

I have added a pitcher and 2 glasses. I have also repositioned the lights and lowered the brightness

I have also moved the camera left and down so that the loungers are fully in view

 

That's a good improvement in my eyes.
The left girl is the most important "object" in the scene, from her central position and the lighting. The right girl's importance is also supported by her position in the foreground and the thirds rule, perhaps you can give her a bit more importance / make her seen better by a subtle additional light and playing with the location / direction of this light.
If the third empty deck chair is supposed to be part of the story, there could be something to catch the viewers eye, like a towel etc, either to trigger the viewer's imagination or to underline the intended story.

I've got some stew simmering in my slowcooker and some hot chocolate.  

We havea mid-sized snow storm to hide from.  

Winter Storm Warning

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Baltimore MD/Washington DC
1004 AM EST Sun Jan 13 2019

DCZ001-MDZ013-503-504-VAZ039-040-051>054-501-502-505-506-132315-
/O.EXT.KLWX.WS.W.0002.000000T0000Z-190114T0500Z/
District of Columbia-Prince Georges-Northwest Montgomery-
Central and Southeast Montgomery-Madison-Rappahannock-Culpeper-
Prince William/Manassas/Manassas Park-Fairfax-
Arlington/Falls Church/Alexandria-Northern Fauquier-
Southern Fauquier-Western Loudoun-Eastern Loudoun-
1004 AM EST Sun Jan 13 2019

...WINTER STORM WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT EST
TONIGHT...

* WHAT...Periods of snow. Total snow accumulations of 6 to 12
  inches expected.

* WHERE...The District of Columbia, portions of central Maryland
  and northern and northwest Virginia.

* WHEN...Until midnight EST tonight.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Travel will be very difficult due to snow
  covered and slippery roads.

6 to 12 inches expected??!!

I've got some stew simmering in my slowcooker and some hot chocolate.  

We havea mid-sized snow storm to hide from.  

Winter Storm Warning

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Baltimore MD/Washington DC
1004 AM EST Sun Jan 13 2019

DCZ001-MDZ013-503-504-VAZ039-040-051>054-501-502-505-506-132315-
/O.EXT.KLWX.WS.W.0002.000000T0000Z-190114T0500Z/
District of Columbia-Prince Georges-Northwest Montgomery-
Central and Southeast Montgomery-Madison-Rappahannock-Culpeper-
Prince William/Manassas/Manassas Park-Fairfax-
Arlington/Falls Church/Alexandria-Northern Fauquier-
Southern Fauquier-Western Loudoun-Eastern Loudoun-
1004 AM EST Sun Jan 13 2019

...WINTER STORM WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT EST
TONIGHT...

* WHAT...Periods of snow. Total snow accumulations of 6 to 12
  inches expected.

* WHERE...The District of Columbia, portions of central Maryland
  and northern and northwest Virginia.

* WHEN...Until midnight EST tonight.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Travel will be very difficult due to snow
  covered and slippery roads.

I tried setting the Horizontal Offset, but just got a black texture when I did. I'll play with it a little more and see if that helps.

Sure is! Room Creator 2 is one of the best and most versatile products I've bought. In this instance, I'm using it to build a set that will be a small office. I applied a frosted glass shader to the central door panel of the basic interior door and that's what I'm working with. I'd like to make the lower half wood, but it works for my purposes. If there was a Room Creator 3 or just an expansion to 2 with a more office/commercial theme, I know at least one person that would snap it up in a heartbeat!