Another beautiful character. I'm wondering what her country of origin is meant to be? She looks central European, but with a name like Misumi, I wonder, especially as you have done something to give her eyefolds that hint at Chinese/Korean eyes (note that Japanese eyefolds are not the same as Chinese). Please don't take this as criticism, as it's not. I like this character, and expect to buy it, credit permitting.

And, as for those eyefolds, you must have worked hard to overcome the geometry restrictions. Great job!

I'm not in favor of reviews, and the reason is that angry people leave more reviews than happy people do. 

That's not my impression from what I see on "the other site" (I've read reviews for thousands of products there). The vast majority I've seen there are positive. But then, I'm only going for top quality and usually have a good eye for it, so maybe it has to do with the products I look at. But that would also mean that the reviews are fairly reliable, I think.

Just checked my cart over there where I currently have 6 items, in total they have 24 reviews, all positive with 5 stars, not a single negative one.

6 items giving an average of 4 reviews; not worth reading imo; on such small numbers can't make a realistic evaluation. I like 100 plus reviews; 100 is a minimum. They are worth considering then.

And the idea of gettng that many reviews for a product here at DAZ is extremely unlikely, to say the least.  Most products on Amazon have less reviews than that, even products that vastly outsell anything sold here at DAZ, and Amazon aggressively nags for reviews, sending e-mails requesting feedback for months after the purchase. 

There was actually an interesting post over on Amazon Seller Central a while back asking about the corellation of reviews to number of purchases, where the person asking for the information had a medical device that was selling multiple units a day yet had only aquired 3 reviews in all that time.  You can read through the thread here https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/number-of-reviews-as-a-correlate-to-number-of-sales/329779 but the general response from both Amazon and other posters was that a vendor would be doing good to have a purchase to review rate of 0.5 to 1% (one review for every 100-200 copies of an item sold) but other vendors posted review rates that were even lower.  From what I understand, selling a thousand units of anything here at DAZ is considered to be doing quite well, so it would be unreasonable to expect the majority of products sold here at DAZ to get more than 10-20 reviews over their entire lifetime in the store.

     

I hate public toilets.

Why is there large gap at the top and bottom? Is the material so expensive?

Is it so we share the experience?

I could give you several reasons,  but the main one is usually ease of cleaning,  you can hose the floor, or use a powerjet or even just sling buckets of water and it will go easily from one end to the other.   Sometimes floors are very slightly sloped towards a central open drainage pipe.

There's a third one now, for Genesis 2 and DSON. You only have about 15 minutes if I am guessing the time right? It's 5:15pm Central here. 

...so can he be mixed with G3 characters?

You have to morph transfer. Here's a quick test render of G3M with 40% Lee 7 and 60% Floyd 8.

...very nice. 

One combination I need to do is for one of the central male characters in my storyline, Lord Marshal Trevor, who is the head of Net47, London's most important independent news network. Needs to look older but still "dignified" and "a bit dashing" (the Floyd/Edward mix in the promos comes close but can't afford another character set just for one person).

Very interested in this nifty new one by xtrart-3d

https://www.daz3d.com/x-fashion-justice-outfit-for-genesis-8-females

None of the promos show the back, and we know the PAs like to sneak impractical fashion holes into practical garments.

Anyone have this set? Can you please report all-round unholeyness if such empty spaces are indeed absent?

And check those flat boots. SciFi kitbash central!
 

Yeah, yeah, I decided to stream.

Basically, what this stream is about,is I have made an original geometry male and female figure, and lots of props for them. I load in the figure in DAZ Studio, and load in the props, then I take the result in ZBrush and sculpt on clothing, armor, hair, and the like, and convert it into a tabletop miniature you can print on a home 3D printer. Very often, I'll take requests from the audience, as well, to determine what to make.

The primary stream is on Sundays, at 8 PM Central US time. On Sundays is when I usually sculpt a full figure, and the result will be available as a free download on Thingiverse.

Thursdays at 8 PM Central Time is more of a 'utility' stream, where I make more props and weapons, as well as further FBM's for the figures to better represent other races, humanoid monsters, and the like.

The address for the stream is:  https://www.twitch.tv/valandarthered ; , and below are a couple sample prints of these miniatures. They are printed on a moderately inexpensive FDM printer, showing what you can do without a super expensive resin printer.

Please be aware my camera is potato. The prints look a LOT cleaner in person. :P

Thank you so much, @Kismet2012. That means so much. I appreciate your comments and I'm thankful for the suggestion concerning a suggestion. Will do. 

 

I like the way you have concentrated the image to the action of the individuals.  Your shooter's pose looks good to me ( but I will leave any critiquing of posing there to those that are more knowledgable ) and I like the flying casings.

A suggestion of the outside world beyond the window is probably all you need.  Some grass or something. 

Looking good.

 

@daybird - Thank you so much for the input. Makes me feel much better. I've been very concerned about my direction with this. I want to thank everyone who gave me feedback on it. I feel like it's so much better than it was, and that's due in large part to the wonderful insights of the people in this thread. You know who you are! 

Now, about the arms. I struggled much with the posing. The left hand/arm/gun is actually aimed just above the headshot zombie's face, to account for recoil. The right hand/arm/gun is actually just above the creepy kid's face. I didn't have the heart to put a bullet in her. How goofy is that? Still, I'm not sure what to do... Right now, the bullet hasn't impacted anywhere visible. It's passed through the lot of the zombies without striking any of them. I thought about trying to put a bullet hole in the doorway trim or in the wall near the door, but in the end, I opted to leave it as is and leave the question to the audience about where the bullet went or ought to go. So, to ensure I had the guns accurately posed in terms of aim, I put a camera in between where the eyes would be of the target and aligned the gun to aim into the camera. With the headshot zombie, I chose a point just above the head, central-facing to the gun, where i imagined the eyes to be. Then I moved the hands, guns, and somewhat the arms slightly to compensate for the recoil effect. I just hate to kill creepy kid. Even though she's not real, something about pulling the trigger on a child just stops me in my tracks. I wonder, too, if our heroine/hero would pause as well, in spite of her hardened exterior/jaded outlook. What do you think? Where did the bullet go?

 

Wow,wow,wow, that rocks! 

Great improvement with the whole scene.

Her pose and position is nearly perfect. You can change her right arm position a little downwards, so that it points more more to the headshoted zombie. 

The different color outside the window makes even without a scene a big different. 

That is really a fine work for this month contest. :)

Anyone else who cares to chime in is welcome to give me feedback on this variant of the image. What are the obvious issues you see that maybe aren't as visible to me now that I've been staring at the same things for so long? How do you feel about the lady's outfit? What objections do you have to this pose and image? What would make it better?

Sometimes it is good to take a break for a couple of days.  Work on something else or nothing at all and come back with fresh eyes.

Thank you so much, @Kismet2012. That means so much. I appreciate your comments and I'm thankful for the suggestion concerning a suggestion. Will do. 

 

I like the way you have concentrated the image to the action of the individuals.  Your shooter's pose looks good to me ( but I will leave any critiquing of posing there to those that are more knowledgable ) and I like the flying casings.

A suggestion of the outside world beyond the window is probably all you need.  Some grass or something. 

Looking good.

 

@daybird - Thank you so much for the input. Makes me feel much better. I've been very concerned about my direction with this. I want to thank everyone who gave me feedback on it. I feel like it's so much better than it was, and that's due in large part to the wonderful insights of the people in this thread. You know who you are! 

Now, about the arms. I struggled much with the posing. The left hand/arm/gun is actually aimed just above the headshot zombie's face, to account for recoil. The right hand/arm/gun is actually just above the creepy kid's face. I didn't have the heart to put a bullet in her. How goofy is that? Still, I'm not sure what to do... Right now, the bullet hasn't impacted anywhere visible. It's passed through the lot of the zombies without striking any of them. I thought about trying to put a bullet hole in the doorway trim or in the wall near the door, but in the end, I opted to leave it as is and leave the question to the audience about where the bullet went or ought to go. So, to ensure I had the guns accurately posed in terms of aim, I put a camera in between where the eyes would be of the target and aligned the gun to aim into the camera. With the headshot zombie, I chose a point just above the head, central-facing to the gun, where i imagined the eyes to be. Then I moved the hands, guns, and somewhat the arms slightly to compensate for the recoil effect. I just hate to kill creepy kid. Even though she's not real, something about pulling the trigger on a child just stops me in my tracks. I wonder, too, if our heroine/hero would pause as well, in spite of her hardened exterior/jaded outlook. What do you think? Where did the bullet go?

 

Wow,wow,wow, that rocks! 

Great improvement with the whole scene.

Her pose and position is nearly perfect. You can change her right arm position a little downwards, so that it points more more to the headshoted zombie. 

The different color outside the window makes even without a scene a big different. 

That is really a fine work for this month contest. :)

Anyone else who cares to chime in is welcome to give me feedback on this variant of the image. What are the obvious issues you see that maybe aren't as visible to me now that I've been staring at the same things for so long? How do you feel about the lady's outfit? What objections do you have to this pose and image? What would make it better?

The reason for the high percentage is simple really.

If a 3D modeller has his own website and its store, it's unlikely that he is going to sell many if any. Big sites like Turbosquid acts like a central marrket place.When someone is looking for a 3D model to buy, it's one of the first places they will visit.

Long story short, the volume makes up for it.

In return, Turbosquid, Daz, and the like handle billing, basic support, and chargebacks if any.

 

Welcome to the Noir Challenge!  This month we get a little thuggish and explore the smoke-filled (originally B&W) vision of crime and corruption made famous by Hollywood in the 1940's and 50's.  In this Challenge, you can choose from three different categories, and enter up to three renders. 

Postwork is permitted.  But this is a Carrara Challenge, so working as much as possible in Carrara is encouraged.

 

The Skinny

 

You can enter renders in three categories.

Category 1:  Render a black & white image in the Noir style.  The subject matter can be anything, from any time period, but the idea is to apply lighting, poses and props in a way that creates a "Noir mood."  Such a mood is easier to grasp by actually seeing  examples, so check out the post below.  And keep reading, as some elements of the style are discussed in this post as well.

In this category, there is a specific Carrara function requirement.  The image must include the use of a light gel. (Cripeman gel tutorial here)  In the light gel drop down menu, the choices are Blinds, Formula, Gradient, or Map.  These different light gel variations allow you to create venetian blinds or other interesting high contrast shadows which commonly give structure to a Noir image.  A parallel in the  traditional art world is the style is known as Chiaroscuro, which means "pictorial representation in terms of light and shade without regard to color."

 

Category 2:  Create a classic Film Noir character portrait or pinup.  Choices include the cynical Private Eye, the Detective, the Femme Fatale, the Crime Boss, the Gangster's Moll, the Goon,  and so on.  There is no specific Carrara function requirement; B&W and color are both OK.

 

Category 3:  Make an homage to a famous Film Noir movie or hardboiled detective novel.   This can include recreating a specific movie scene, a book or magazine cover, or a movie poster.  Or, you can create an homage to the Noir/detective genre in general, and make up your own image.

There is no specific Carrara function requirement; B&W and color are both OK.

 

The Big Scheme

 

The term "Noir", which is French, has a variety of meanings.  For this Challenge, it is connected to "Film Noir," which means "dark film."  In 1946, a French film critic coined the term to describe the hardboiled Hollywood crime melodramas made at the time, but the term wasn't adopted by other critics until decades later.

In a Noir movie, the hero is cynical, the women are of questionable virtue, and greed + jealousy + murder are all typically central to the plot.

The 1940's defined the Noir style, with movies like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, and The Postman Always Rings Twice, all filmed in glorious black and white.  However, many elements of the Noir style - dark mood, high contrast dramatic lighting, archetypal poses  - can be found in later decades as well, with color films like Farewell My Lovely, Mulholland Drive, and Chinatown.  And further, the Noir style has spread across many genres, including science fiction (Blade Runner).  These later films are often referred to as Neo-Noir.

 

But what, you may ask, does all of this have to do with "dreams" in the title of this Challenge?   For those who may be unfamiliar with classic Noir movies, click on the video clip below from The Maltese Falcon.  (Spoiler alert if you've never seen it!)

 

 

The dream quote is a variation of a line in Shakespeare's  play The Tempest:  "We are such stuff / as dreams are made on."

 

By the way - if you are curious whatever happened to that black bird, the story is here:

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/02/mystery-of-the-maltese-falcon

 

The Law

 

General rules.

1.  Up to 3 renders can be entered.  However, if you enter more than 2 renders, at least one of them must use the Carrara light gel effect..

2.  Images must be new (previously unpublished).

3.  Images must be "mostly" set up in Carrara.

4.  Where postwork is allowed, it must not be the dominant part of the image.  Posting images of before and after postwork is encouraged.

5.  At least one WIP (work in progress) image of the final Carrara setup must be posted to the WIP thread

6.  The winner of the "Best Participation" category becomes the next Carrara Challenge host, and sets the rules for the next competition.  But should the winner decline this honor, the winner of the next category (Best B&W image) will then get the opportunity to step forward and fill the role.

 

The Geetus

 

Once again Daz will generously sponsor the monthly Challenge.

Fenric is the PA sponsor.

 

As in all the Challenges I host, the prize format has categories, much like the Academy Awards (Oscars) and the prizes are all more-or-less equal.  An artist can win only one of the Daz prizes, but can win both a Daz prize and a PA prize.  Comments about this are again welcomed.  I explain the process in more detail in THIS THREAD.  Please read it if you have questions.

The four prize categories are:

Best Participation (cumulative images from a single artist)

Best B&W Image (Any subject, Noir style, B&W, Carrara light gel)

Best Noir Portrait or Pinup (private eyes, femme fatales, etc)

Best Noir Homage  (familiar Film Noir scenes, posters, books, or create your own!)

This translates into:

Most votes total for one artist: $50.00 towards DAZ 3D owned item(s)
Most votes B&W image:  $50.00 towards DAZ 3D owned item(s)
Most votes Portrait/Pinup:  $50.00 towards DAZ 3D owned item(s)
Most votes Film Noir homage:  $45.00 towards DAZ 3D owned item(s)

 

The Summons

 

Dates to Remember: 

All dates are Daz Utah Time http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/usa/salt-lake-city

WIP Thread Opens: Monday May 14, 2018

Entry Thread Opens: Monday May 28, 2018

Entry Thread Closes/Voting Begins: Friday June 15, 2018

Voting Ends: midnight Friday June 22, 2018

 

The Plug

 

I have added an Art Studio thread so you can share your entries with others outside of the Carrara forum.

Well, Cents are not Gauls, although the period overlaps. And Powerage does have a Gaulish village in his store on Rendo. Or did.

I was taught Gauls were a tribe of Celts like Franks were a tribe of Germans. Thanks for the pointer to the Gaulish village, There is a authentic reconstructed Celtic village museum in County Wexford, another recontructed one on Lake Constance in Germany. They even showed a bit of how metal working was done as would have been needed to make the armour in the OP post images. 

The difference between Celtic and Gallic ethnicities

---

In considering the genetics of Western Europeans it should be understood that our concept of who the Celts were and are is very much based on speculation that has circulated among scholars and academicians since 1707 when Edward Lhuyd first hypothesized that the Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons represented the descendants of the ancient tribes referred to as the "Keltoi" by the Greeks and the "Celtae" by the Romans, who learned of these people through the writings of early Classical explorers.
Unfortunately most archaeologists and anthropologists continue to perpetuate the mistaken notion that the Gallic tribes (Gauls) who later moved into the areas already occupied by the Celts were one and the same as the Celts themselves.
The actual Celts were a pre-Gallic population, the aboriginal inhabitants of Western Europe, descendants of the megalith builders whose many cromlechs (stone circles) and dolmens are found throughout the territory occupied by the indigenous Celtic people and later by the Gallic tribes who migrated into their area, introducing their Indo-European language and their Hallstatt/La Tene artwork and handicrafts to the areas already inhabited by the native Celts.
The Gallic tribes originated in Eastern Europe, in part of what was once known as Scythia, where the ancient Eastern European province of Galicia is located on both sides of the Polish-Ukraine border. While most of the Gallic tribes eventually migrated westward into what is now France as the Gauls, and parts of Spain as the Gallaeci (Galicians), eventually reaching Ireland and Britain as the Gaels; other Gallic tribes migrated eastward, settling in Anatolia in present-day Turkey, where they were known as the Galatians.

You complete lost me saying that Celts are not a part of the a superset of a culture that includes the Gallic tribes like I've always been taught. That's sort of a misnomer that Celtic are aboriginal to France, they came in as wave of migrants from the Eurasian steppes basically the same history that you gave for the Gallic tribes. According to the FTDNA that I paid to have testing done with in 2003 I'm 78% British Isles, 14% Eastern Europe, 5% Scandinavian, 2% Finn, and 1% East Middle East. That 78% British Isles you see would be the genetic legacy of the people that are not Celts and preceded the Celts and they were about a 50% - 50% mix of hunter-gatherers and farmers. They think that, after the ice sheets retreated and the lsles repopulated again, that the  50% - %50 mix of hunter-gathers and farmers came from the area of Basque Country, Spain and the Po Valley, Italy, There has been no speculation that I know of what language(s) was spoken but maybe one(s) related to Basque and Etruscan as non-Indo-European languages might be possible. The 5% Scadinavian & 2% Finn would be the Scandinavian migrants of 1000 years ago. The 14% Eastern Europe would be the Celts, a cultural superset that includes the Gallic tribes. The cultural superset of the Celts would be the Proto-Indoeuropean tribes and the 1% East Middle East work be indicative of the original founding of the proto-Indo-European cultures southeast of the Caspian Sea. Well,that there is where they now think that they originated using genetic samplying of modern people, archealogical digs, and mathematics and well as written histories and conjectores of the past such as you've sited. That though precedes Celtic, Gallic, Bulgar, and other P.I.E. tribes by a lot of time. Most longtime native people in western and central Europe have similar genetic histories although the percentages change. 

...will that only work with Bryce though?  I'm looking to create custom IBL domes for use in Daz Iray as again a standard skydome blocks the Iray "sun" so there needs to be an appropriate light source (using a Photometric Distant light doesn't have the same characteristics).

Details

Turn your Bryce scenes into spherically mapped images - for use in Bryce (and other software) as pre-rendered backdrops.

 

You don't need Bryce for this. There are camera options in Daz to turn your render into a 360 image. It is located under the camera parameters, there is a box for "distortion". Change this to spherical and locate your camera in a central location. This is a newer feature, it is only in 4.10 and one of the last versions of 4.9.

 

So you create an hdri with any scene from Daz and GIMP.

...so can you turn an old skydome into an IBL with a functioning "sun" for Iray?

DAZ has Sun-Sky for iRay already. An HDRI will always have the same 'Sun' since it's a capture of the light at a specific point in time but Sun-Sky's functioning sun is adjustable.

...will that only work with Bryce though?  I'm looking to create custom IBL domes for use in Daz Iray as again a standard skydome blocks the Iray "sun" so there needs to be an appropriate light source (using a Photometric Distant light doesn't have the same characteristics).

Details

Turn your Bryce scenes into spherically mapped images - for use in Bryce (and other software) as pre-rendered backdrops.

 

You don't need Bryce for this. There are camera options in Daz to turn your render into a 360 image. It is located under the camera parameters, there is a box for "distortion". Change this to spherical and locate your camera in a central location. This is a newer feature, it is only in 4.10 and one of the last versions of 4.9.

 

So you create an hdri with any scene from Daz and GIMP.

...so can you turn an old skydome into an IBL with a functioning "sun" for Iray?

It should be possible in GIMP if it can work on HDRI like people say. I tried in the 2.9 beta that said it could, and though GIMP loaded it I was unable to do anything with it. I really hope it works now. I have several 360 pictures I have taken with a Samsung 360 camera as well as a few video game scenes I made 360 pics with using Nvidia Ansel. Ansel is really cool because it is possible to create massive screenshots and 360 shots that far exceed the actual screen size. I have 2 games that support Ansel, Hellblade and Mass Effect Andromeda. Even though Andromeda was a so-so game the different planet scapes could make for some awesome HDRI images.

And as I said, you can make a 360 image from Daz. Its really quite easy. I forgot to say you need to make the image ratio 2:1 to fit the correct size of a 360 image. Then just render it as large as you can, as obviously larger is better.

Here is a nice little video I found for making 360 images in Daz. It does not show how to turn a 360 image into a HDRI.

https://youtu.be/bq9_0gMI0NE

...will that only work with Bryce though?  I'm looking to create custom IBL domes for use in Daz Iray as again a standard skydome blocks the Iray "sun" so there needs to be an appropriate light source (using a Photometric Distant light doesn't have the same characteristics).

Details

Turn your Bryce scenes into spherically mapped images - for use in Bryce (and other software) as pre-rendered backdrops.

 

You don't need Bryce for this. There are camera options in Daz to turn your render into a 360 image. It is located under the camera parameters, there is a box for "distortion". Change this to spherical and locate your camera in a central location. This is a newer feature, it is only in 4.10 and one of the last versions of 4.9.

 

So you create an hdri with any scene from Daz and GIMP.

...so can you turn an old skydome into an IBL with a functioning "sun" for Iray?

...will that only work with Bryce though?  I'm looking to create custom IBL domes for use in Daz Iray as again a standard skydome blocks the Iray "sun" so there needs to be an appropriate light source (using a Photometric Distant light doesn't have the same characteristics).

Details

Turn your Bryce scenes into spherically mapped images - for use in Bryce (and other software) as pre-rendered backdrops.

 

You don't need Bryce for this. There are camera options in Daz to turn your render into a 360 image. It is located under the camera parameters, there is a box for "distortion". Change this to spherical and locate your camera in a central location. This is a newer feature, it is only in 4.10 and one of the last versions of 4.9.

 

So you create an hdri with any scene from Daz and GIMP.

Thanks I was trying to remember if that was true or not but couldn't remember so I though it better to not say anything.

It's cool though, that, and you can even change the render exposure settings in DS and get a 'theorectically' technically better HDRI using a series of DAZ iRay renders made for the same scene with 12 or 24 or whatever exposures than you could with a real model digital camera and a real scene. Of course it won't be really technically better but it will probably be a more suitable HRDI for DAZ and game scenes than real HRDIs which often ruin 3D scenes if they are exceedingly well done and adapted.

...will that only work with Bryce though?  I'm looking to create custom IBL domes for use in Daz Iray as again a standard skydome blocks the Iray "sun" so there needs to be an appropriate light source (using a Photometric Distant light doesn't have the same characteristics).

Details

Turn your Bryce scenes into spherically mapped images - for use in Bryce (and other software) as pre-rendered backdrops.

You don't need Bryce for this. There are camera options in Daz to turn your render into a 360 image. It is located under the camera parameters, there is a box for "distortion". Change this to spherical and locate your camera in a central location. This is a newer feature, it is only in 4.10 and one of the last versions of 4.9.

So you create an hdri with any scene from Daz and GIMP.

Very interesting! Its not popular here, although of course, pizza is hugely popular. I live in central. california which has more of a fishing and agricultural focus. We are not LA, and we are not San Francisco- We are the regular working class folks.

Even regular ice cream places are closing their doors around here. Most people prefer buying icecream at the store and coffee shops tend to get the business of ordinary citizens for their frappuccino and lattes and shake-like drinks.

Looking great! Didn't even notice the other two figures at first, eye is really drawn to the central character with the lighting style you've done

Complaint:  I needed the air-conditioner again last night and especially this morning.  Already at 8:00 AM it's 70F outside in the shade, my bedroom is upstairs, in the sun, and much warmer.  I guess I need to get my a** in gear and unpile all those boxes off the top of my air-conditioner, eat my Wheaties, put on my knee guards and back brace and then muscle that machine up 6 inches and back 2 feet into the window.  This used to be a lot easier 20 years ago.

So glad we have central AC/heating!  Trying not to turn mine on yet, though.  But, it's 90f out there right now!!!   ​   Fortunately, I'm not out there.  But the thermostat says it's 80 in here.  If I left my computer running all day, like I used to, I'd have no choice but to start up the AC.  But I like the "Sleep" feature in Windows.  Starts right back up where you left off, in a couple seconds.  I guess I can't wait too much longer to turn it on, though.  Temperatures will drop after Friday, a cold front coming through with rain.  At least a 10 degree drop is expected.  That will help delay the inevitable.

Dana