@KnittingMommy, @Linwelly, and @MattyManx, thanks for the technical suggestions for DForce and post-DForce simulations.  I will be taking advantage of your ideas even if it does not look like I paid attention in this next update. After participating in Arki's DForce webinar, I went back and made a few improvments to the mesh of the dress.  In particular, I created a separate material zone for the trim underneath the collar, which I used to hold the collar more firmly in place but still allowed the central ring of the collar to remain flexible.  I also applied a sitting pose preset.  This is NOT the final pose, it is just a test to see how the dress behaves trying to get to a sitting position. Overall, it did OK, but there is some poke through on one breast and near the knees.  I think following the suggestions offered by the aforementioned mentors and giving the simulaiton more time between poses will take care of the poke through.  I'm calling this a nice step along the way.  I can now have an ancient Egyptian drummer in a seated postion to go with the modern guitar player and two other ancient Egyptian musicians.  Expecting a snow day tomorrow so should have some time for a better update of the actual pose within the actual scene.

@MollyTabby - that looks like a good pose to work on.  The bends should present a nice challenge.  Looking forward to your progress.

@Sueya - Nice progress.  I don't have any better suggestions than Daybird and KnittingMommy offered.  

@Night678winG - very impressive set of poses.  I like the expressions also.

@Tynkere - Looking great.  You are at a stage where you are perfecting the background elements. I am jealous. I still have 3 figures to pose.

The advantage of raytrace over PBR is that you have so much control over what lights do so you can fake whatever you need. While with PBR you use "real" lights and cheating is harder or even impossible in some cases. As I said, I believe each engine has its strong and weak points depending on what you need.

Agreed! And Petercat, sorry for the long sidenote!

Nah, it's cool. This thread became a spectator sport for me a while ago. What was I talking about in the beginning?
Oh, yeah. Predatron stuff not working in older Studios. Nevermind.

Although I'd still like to know why it's only the ground, and was it intentional?
I wish Predatron would chime in, because if the problem wasn't intentional, maybe
they could fix it for the stubborn among us.

Maybe they built it, tested it in 4.10 and said "Good to go!" without even
realizing that it doesn't work in older versions.
I have no way of knowing, or asking.

One thing I just noticed about your original render - at least the tree & swing set (I don't have the other set), is that there is a central grass bank upon which the tree & bushes sit, and this is missing from your render: the tree is clearly floating above that base level.

Yeah, I forgot about that. That one grass patch killed the render also, but the other grass didn't.
That's why I'm wondering if it's unintentional.

Love your products, BTW. Now create more, I have a sliver of a gift card yet to spend.

The advantage of raytrace over PBR is that you have so much control over what lights do so you can fake whatever you need. While with PBR you use "real" lights and cheating is harder or even impossible in some cases. As I said, I believe each engine has its strong and weak points depending on what you need.

Agreed! And Petercat, sorry for the long sidenote!

Nah, it's cool. This thread became a spectator sport for me a while ago. What was I talking about in the beginning?
Oh, yeah. Predatron stuff not working in older Studios. Nevermind.

Although I'd still like to know why it's only the ground, and was it intentional?
I wish Predatron would chime in, because if the problem wasn't intentional, maybe
they could fix it for the stubborn among us.

Maybe they built it, tested it in 4.10 and said "Good to go!" without even
realizing that it doesn't work in older versions.
I have no way of knowing, or asking.

One thing I just noticed about your original render - at least the tree & swing set (I don't have the other set), is that there is a central grass bank upon which the tree & bushes sit, and this is missing from your render: the tree is clearly floating above that base level.

For me it is easier to have all products / assets under that central location (My Library) which I want to have included in my scenes.

So I installed all (and I really mean ALL) products out of the DAZ and all other shops, incl. freebees, under that central location.
For the usage it doesn't matter, which vendor or community delivered the assets. It must be found under a central entry point !

I have been debating for a while now to move EVERYTHING into one directory. Its a pain sometimes to scroll to all the directories to find what i need when i mix stuff installed with DIM and manual inmstalled stuff from other sites.

I have been hesitant as i feared assets not being loaded properly (unable to find) but from what i get that should not be the case. Maybe i should just go for it. Its more then often i use DIM and non DIM stuff together.

Footsteps in the Snow, Sand or Mud - Part 2

j. Select the plane and from the main menu choose Create/New Push Modifier Weight Node…

k. Select the push modifier in the Scene pane, then go to the Tool Settings pane and select the Node Weight Map Brush. Halfway down the tool pane click on Add Map button next to the box that will show <New Push Modifier>. Set the value of the new push modifier to -6 (to compensate for the +6 Collision Offset we used earlier).

l. Go to the top view. Click on the Geometry Selection Mode (the first of the far right icons at the top of the pane). Right click in the viewport and choose Geometry Selection/All. Next choose Weight Editing/Fill Selected… and enter a value of 0%.

m. For the following steps, access the pop up menu by right clicking in the viewport and then selecting the appropriate command.

n. Set Selection Mode to Marquee Selection. Hold down the left mouse button and select the central 75% of the plane. Choose Geometry Selection/Invert Selection so now the outside perimeter is selected.

o. Click on the Paint Brush mode (the second of the far right icons at the top of the pane). Set the sensitivity to 0.6 and paint a red edge along the outside of the plane.

p. Choose Weight Editing/Smooth Selected… and enter a value of 50%. This will smooth your painting from the edge into the middle of the selection.

q. Go to Perspective view and look at the edges of the plane. Use the weight brush to touch up edges so they disappear beneath the surface. You may have to adjust the weight map value from -6 to -6.2 or more.

A spot render showing the plane blended into the ground:

A spot render showing what it would be like without the push modifier:

r. Copy the ground texture to your plane. You may have to adjust tiling and other surface parameters to get it to match. If all is done right, you’ll have a final result that looks something like this.

Areas for improvement:

1. Some of the steps are smaller than the others. I would rotate the figure or change the right leg position on those.

2. The footsteps don’t have enough of a foot shape (more important if bare feet in sand). Start with a higher resolution plane.

Since weight maps can be a bit tricky to paint, I've attached a .duf file with a 100 division plane with the weight map I used to make this scene. [EDIT: I updated 3/19 as the original did not include the dForce modifer. Now when loaded you'll have the plane, dForce modifier, andpush modifier with weight map all ready to go.]

Another nor'easter on Tuesday.  This makes 3 in about 2 weeks. First one knocked out power for 5 days and came on just in time for the 2nd one.  I'm so over winter already.

Someon has ticked off Mother Nature... :-/

 

it not nice to fool mother nature.

heard a mourning dove this morning, was a mournful complaint about the cold.

Mourning doves are very successful birds around here.  There's a large tree outside my window that is a favorite location, right before dawn I get 3-4 of them cooing away.  Very pretty birds, as well. :-)

...I miss the sound of their cooing, very comforting. Heard only one in all the time I've lived here and it was near the business park where I used to work on the far west side of the metro area.

Awww. :-( Right now (8:05am) I hear mourning doves, a hawk in the distance, and a few crabby grackles.  The grackles ruin everything... :-/

They're kind of cool looking, with that irridecent blue, green or purple...but they swarm and eat all the seed in my bird feeder.  They seem to go away for the winter, but they're back now.

Dana

Ours here in Austin make odd noises, like shorting elecrical transformers.  Very alarming! Bzzzzt crackle CAW! :-O

Yes, sort of a metallic kind of klink.  Very odd.  They scare away nicer looking and smaller birds from the feeder.  But they scare easily themselves.  I just go to the kitchen window and wave an arm, off they go.  Once I saved one that was caught in my neighbor's stockade fence.  He apparently slipped off his perch on top of one of the pickets ans down between two of them.  His leg was caught.  I tried to reach for him to lift him up, but it pecked at me and tried to scratch me with the loose foot.  So I came back, got a table knife and a piece of cardboard (as a blinder) and slid his foot up and out from between the pickets.  Off he went, withough even a thank you!   

Dana

Dana

Here we just shoot grackles with a BB gun.

Not that I approve of it but when I was in college the powers that be in the University thought that it would be elegant to have peacocks wandering the campus grounds.  They made beautiful photos for the brochures sent to the prospective students and parents.   But anybody who has lived around peacocks any length of time knows they are worse than cockatoos and macaws, being 10 times bigger.  Everything that comes out of them is bigger including the noise.  They're like geese with a siren.  The dorms of the college backed up to the Florida swamp which is where the peacocks went to roost at night up in the trees level with the 2nd and 3rd floor windows of the dorms.   That would be OK if they just sat there silently but they apparently feel compelled to have conversations anytime they are awake.  Finally someone (not me) had enough of the incessant screetching and we heard shotgun blasts and the screetching stopped.  I don't believe the college ever restocked their peacocks.

...when I lived in New Orleans, they roamed freely around Audubon park across from Loyola and Tulane Universities. Yes pretty, but so obnoxiously noisy.

When I lived in Winter Park (just above Orlando) there was a park with peacocks in that area.  I've forgotten the name of the park but it was well known.

Hmmm, it seems in the decades that I've been gone from Florida, peafowl (cocks & hens) have proliferated in the central Florida area.  Children being attacked by peacocks in parks and people complaining about them scratching paint from cars and causing traffic jams in other cities. https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/residents-say-peacocks-are-taking-over-winter-park-neighborhood

They just need more huge snakes, giant monitor lizards, and gators. Should fix the bird problem ASAP. :-/

For me it is easier to have all products / assets under that central location (My Library) which I want to have included in my scenes.

So I installed all (and I really mean ALL) products out of the DAZ and all other shops, incl. freebees, under that central location.
For the usage it doesn't matter, which vendor or community delivered the assets. It must be found under a central entry point !

Another nor'easter on Tuesday.  This makes 3 in about 2 weeks. First one knocked out power for 5 days and came on just in time for the 2nd one.  I'm so over winter already.

Someon has ticked off Mother Nature... :-/

 

it not nice to fool mother nature.

heard a mourning dove this morning, was a mournful complaint about the cold.

Mourning doves are very successful birds around here.  There's a large tree outside my window that is a favorite location, right before dawn I get 3-4 of them cooing away.  Very pretty birds, as well. :-)

...I miss the sound of their cooing, very comforting. Heard only one in all the time I've lived here and it was near the business park where I used to work on the far west side of the metro area.

Awww. :-( Right now (8:05am) I hear mourning doves, a hawk in the distance, and a few crabby grackles.  The grackles ruin everything... :-/

They're kind of cool looking, with that irridecent blue, green or purple...but they swarm and eat all the seed in my bird feeder.  They seem to go away for the winter, but they're back now.

Dana

Ours here in Austin make odd noises, like shorting elecrical transformers.  Very alarming! Bzzzzt crackle CAW! :-O

Yes, sort of a metallic kind of klink.  Very odd.  They scare away nicer looking and smaller birds from the feeder.  But they scare easily themselves.  I just go to the kitchen window and wave an arm, off they go.  Once I saved one that was caught in my neighbor's stockade fence.  He apparently slipped off his perch on top of one of the pickets ans down between two of them.  His leg was caught.  I tried to reach for him to lift him up, but it pecked at me and tried to scratch me with the loose foot.  So I came back, got a table knife and a piece of cardboard (as a blinder) and slid his foot up and out from between the pickets.  Off he went, withough even a thank you!   

Dana

Dana

Here we just shoot grackles with a BB gun.

Not that I approve of it but when I was in college the powers that be in the University thought that it would be elegant to have peacocks wandering the campus grounds.  They made beautiful photos for the brochures sent to the prospective students and parents.   But anybody who has lived around peacocks any length of time knows they are worse than cockatoos and macaws, being 10 times bigger.  Everything that comes out of them is bigger including the noise.  They're like geese with a siren.  The dorms of the college backed up to the Florida swamp which is where the peacocks went to roost at night up in the trees level with the 2nd and 3rd floor windows of the dorms.   That would be OK if they just sat there silently but they apparently feel compelled to have conversations anytime they are awake.  Finally someone (not me) had enough of the incessant screetching and we heard shotgun blasts and the screetching stopped.  I don't believe the college ever restocked their peacocks.

...when I lived in New Orleans, they roamed freely around Audubon park across from Loyola and Tulane Universities. Yes pretty, but so obnoxiously noisy.

When I lived in Winter Park (just above Orlando) there was a park with peacocks in that area.  I've forgotten the name of the park but it was well known.

Hmmm, it seems in the decades that I've been gone from Florida, peafowl (cocks & hens) have proliferated in the central Florida area.  Children being attacked by peacocks in parks and people complaining about them scratching paint from cars and causing traffic jams in other cities. https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/residents-say-peacocks-are-taking-over-winter-park-neighborhood

..more cool old milwaukee architecture:

The Mitchell Building (looks more like it belongs in Vienna)...

The Milwaukee Soldiers Home...

The Tripoli Shrine...

Wisconsin Gas Building...

..and yes the flam on top lights up at night...

The Central Public Library (originally the City's museum)...

The Imposing County Courthouse...

The Pabst Theatre...

Inside...

In spite of some of my faves being lost to the wrecking ball and a lot of new sometimes ugly development that tried to change the face of the city, a good number of really classy buildings remain and have been restored.

...guess reminiscing comes with the territory of getting old...and maybe just a touch of home sickness after four decades.

Every time I see announcement of a new kimono, I'm full of hopes, but no, it's mostly the short, sexy type I can't use. And while SF bodysuits for men look decent most of the time, these for women either have nonsense holes or clearly emphasize the breast or crotch area or both. I'm fed up with his. Is there really no market for decent female clothes? I would really, really love to see alternatives! Or clothing which kitbashes so well that I could put together any variant between sexy and practical work clothing.

+1

I've been hoping for a good dForce kimono (and haori, and hakama, and happi, and .....well, you get the idea) with proper obi and makura for a while.  I understand the whole bikini-skimpwear thing sells.  But realism has benefits too (if for nothing else, for contrast with the central figure in skimp-wear).

We've seen plenty of long, flowing gowns and such in the past.  They are more complicated than skimp-wear, to be sure.  But with some work, morphs and transparent sections could transform a full formal kimono into a skimpy yukata.  Then you have the best of both worlds.  Just have to be careful with texture distortion....

Thanks Theros, you are correct, I don't know much about all these specs but I found this great page under DAZ Help Center and am reposting a much better version of what I did before.

If you want to add to any of this or correct it please do. The Help Page is here: https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207530513-System-Recommendations-for-DAZ-Studio-4-

__________________________________________________________________

OK, thanks everyone so far for your input.

Let's try and make a list of the minimum to better  requirements to be able to make a single photorealistic render in Daz Studio 4.8 to 4.10.

Much of the information below is taken from the DAZ Help Center page found here (January 6, 2016) :
https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207530513-System-Recommendations-for-DAZ-Studio-4-

1GB free hard drive space for installation

PC Desktop (see note below line for some MAC specs).

Windows 7 to 10

RAM:  8 to 16 GB - (DDR3  or  DDR4 ?) are OK, but DAZ recommends 32GB for a minimum, or 64GB, but this will have little to no impact on your render time.

Graphics Cards:  
Nividia GTX 1060 to 1080 Ti
evga gtx 1060 sc 6Gb
Intel HD Graphics - 4400

CPU  Processor: (central processing unit, and storage, that comes with your computer)
This CPU spinning hard-drive is much slower than an external SSD hardrive, so loading content and scene files will be slower.
DAZ recommends 6 core CPUs are enough if you are going to use Iray (or other GPU renderer), when you get into high core count GPUs, the CPU becomes less important.
DAZ recommends an external (SSD) hardrive to keep or host all of your DAZ content and scene files on, which should be 520GB to 1TB:  https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207530513-System-Recommendations-for-DAZ-Studio-4-
AMD fx-8350 BlackEdition 4.0GHz

SSD: (Solid-state drive - storage device)  
This is an external hard-drive, which should be at least 1TB for just content and scenes, and more for lots of Iray renders.
Bandwidth is not as important as SSD storage space.

GPU (graphics processing unit = much more powerful than CPUs)
Starting with Studio 4.8 the GPU plays a HUGE role in the render time when using Iray. 
The GPU plays two roles, it determines how fast you can move geometry around in the interface and it adds processing power to the render process (reduces render time) with Iray (included), Octane (plugin) and Reality (plugin that uses Lux render).
Get as many large GPUs as you can… 4GB or memory is a minimum, over 8GB is probably not going to be needed. Core count is critical, so if two less expensive cards give you more cores than one expensive card, go for the two cards…
·        Make sure your motherboard offers at least 8 lanes of PCI per GPU installed (Ideally 16 lanes per GPU). If you have 16 lanes per GPU you get the full performance, having only 8 lanes per GPU gets you around 80% of the GPU performance, this influences the decision to buy one large card over multiple smaller cards.

Motherboard:
gigabyte 990fxa - ud5 r5
Motherboard Bus Speed
It plays an integral role in how fast your computer is, though. The motherboard is the central hub of your system, through which all the other components (processor, RAM, hard drive etc.) communicate.
It also determines which components you can use, and on an ageing system the motherboard can become the performance bottleneck itself by preventing you from upgrading to newer parts.
 Make sure your motherboard offers at least 8 lanes of PCI per GPU installed (Ideally 16 lanes per GPU). If you have 16 lanes per GPU you get the full performance, having only 8 lanes per GPU gets you around 80% of the GPU performance, this influences the decision to buy one large card over multiple smaller cards.

Core:
Quad-Core is OK, but 6 Core CPUs are best for Iray

GHZ:  4.0

MHZ:
1600Mhz

Monitor: What are good monitor specs to be able to appreciate all of the high tech hardware and Iray renderings?

______________________________________________________________
MAC:

One source suggested: (Please add to this if you like)

Intel Macintosh®
2.00 GHz Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz or faster recommended)
Mac™ OS X 10.7 or above.
2 GB RAM min (3GB+ recommended)
1GB free hard drive space for installation.
OpenGL 1.6 compatible graphics card with at least 128 MB RAM (Hardware accelerated OpenGL 2.2, or higher, compatible recommended with 256MB+ RAM)

yeah, the cool thing (landscape-wise, maybe not so much travel-time wise or when you're stuck...) about the US * is that it's so big. so vaste. here it's so populated that unless you're in the middle of the high mountains, you can't help stumbling on human structures everywhere. also you guys have the sea, canyons, volcanos..
do i guess right when i say that california has probably an excellent climate, warm all year round but not as scorching as texas?
how was taiwan as a foreigner? and hawaii?

true, when industrialization doesn't go on par with ecologic efforts, the results are catastrophic for the environment. and megapoles are not human friendly - overpopulation drives people nuts, everywhere.

always been my dream to move to sweden - sadly, no way we can all beam up there ~

* (and probably also china, russia, australia - huge countries/continents)

California, at least Central and Northern California, have a lovely climate compared to most of Texas.  The downsides are: earthquakes, fires, mudslides, insanely high cost of living.  My small studio apartment in Silicon Valley cost me US$1350 a month, not including utilities!!! No place for a low to middle income person.

I was in Taiwan when I was 7 to 9 years old.  I remember a LOT of it, the country and people made a permanent impression on me.  At the time it wasn't polluted or crowded, we lived in a house in a town outside Taipei called Pey-to, Dad hired a maid/assistant for Mom since he was off doing erm 'stuff' for the government.  Her name was Oohmai if I recall.. she taught me some Chinese, took me out to net-catch shrimp for soup, even had me over to dinner wth her family! I developed a permanent love for Chinese food of all sorts, along with a deep long relationship with good rice, and a permanent 'thing' for Asian women *blush*. Everyone treated us all likfe family, in retrospecy I suspect a lot of it was due to what my Dad was doing.  The places I recall, like the hot springs at Seven Star Mountain, are long gone.  Very sad.

I was only in Hawaii for 3 months while we were on our way to Taiwan.  I remember beaches, learning to snorkel, and developed a permanent love for tropical fish. I do recall folks were kind of stand-offish, I hear it's worse now in some parts of the island.

It's so weird how perception and experience can be so varying.   I was warned that people in Paris were snotty and mean, and warned that if I tried to speak French I'd get laughed at.  I had just the opposite experience, everyone was friendly, my French wasn't disparaged, and I found the city nice and the folks decent.  Of course this was 20 years ago, who knows how it is now?

I've never been treated like an 'ugly American', but then due to all the travelling my parents did when I was young I went in with a dairly broad cultural background, and never assumed that everyone spoke English. My Mom was a wizard at languages, she'd learn first then teach Dad and I enough to get along.  I crammed on French before I went to Paris, even for the short trip because it's dim to expect people in their own country to speak my language!!

Anyway, I rant, sorry!

right.. the fires. how could i forget that, i've just recently been talking to someone from there on smackjeeves... earthquakes too? charming. at least no tornados.. :( we have mudslides here too.
yeah but silicon valley? you picked a place where people make fortunes in a blink from some software or other cyber idea... no wonder it was ruinous..

those are great childhood memories :). did you keep some of the chinese you learned? also, lmao @ the part with the asian ladies ;)
i love asian food too, sadly i had to increasingly refrain to eat a lot of things due to my intolerances. still use my wok to cook what i'm still allowed to though.

i wonder if it's not a common thing in super-touristic places that the locals are sometimes aloof with strangers (i can understand it too).. happened to me in greece on a small island too, they really didn't appreciate us being there - still knowing some of their jobs depended on tourism...

was in paris 2 times i think, just in passing, and the only place i felt ok was... in the tube/underground, because it reminded me of london, a city i love. same as in other french cities, i didn't feel at ease nor welcome at all - and i speak current french, my first language. funny enough, where i live now is not too far from france, and i have a few french friends i appreciate a lot.. :shrug: - maybe you just have to know the people first, like be presented/have something in common/meet for a particular reason before the ice breaks?

i don't know but i can guess that if someone behaves decently and makes an effort towards people and culture in a country they visit, they won't make such a bad impression, at least not on sensible people. you have haters everywhere of course. many of the tourists accused of being ignorant obnoxious jerks usually behave like the cliché they illustrate perfectly..

haha, not ranting, this is called human interaction, right? ^^

Being such a large country, the US has a built-in disadvantage in the language department.  Only in the big cities and along the borders do you find many people who even experience hearing more than one language.  Much less practice one.  Things have changed a bit in the last 30 years with the introduction of Spanish in large numbers.  But there is a great deal of language momentum and unwillingness to learn or even accept the presence of anything but English.  There is a smattering of French in the northeast near Montreal and in the south in Louisiana.  Some oriental languages in small areas around the country.  But for the most part I find that many Americans are smugly and blissfully ignorant of the rest of the world cultures and languages simply because most of them can't travel far enough to have had a foreign experience.  (Canada doesn't count.)

I have traveled the world a bit and I am interested in other languages but I'm not much good at languages.  I know a smattering of Spanish, Italian, German and Russian but not enough to be comfortably conversant.  But for most Americans there is still no need or even desire to learn another language.  English is too pervasive around them their whole lives.   And if truth be told, I notice a great many Americans who casually slaughter English too.

In Fall River, MA, the city where I grew up, there were several languages spoken regularly.  Not that I knew any of them.  But I grew up in a mostly Portuguese area of the city.  It's not a huge city, but it had an Irish section, a French section, a Polish and Ukranian section, and overall a large Portuguese and Cape Verdian population.  As I was growing up, I was never aware of any prejudice.  Things may have changed a bit in later years.  Still, not so much as neighboring cities, I think.  Plenty of crime there, now, though.  Sadly, my mom and one of my sisters still live there.  I escaped in 2001.

Dana

Yes, other languages are present around the US but not to the point where you need to learn them.  In this area when I was a kid you knew that parents of other kids spoke Italian or Swedish but you never heard it in school.  And the Amish around here speak something akin to German.  But you don't go into shops and have to deal with another language.  You don't see signs in other languages, and unless you tune into limited range radio or TV stations specifically you don't hear other languages, and why would you if you didn't have to?

I really admire people who can speak more than one language.  It's like having two eyes instead of just one, you see another dimension of the world.  Even just the little bit I know of Russian, gives me the ability to see a sign in a movie, and be able to pronounce the word and in many cases figure out what it is telling me.  Whereas before, the sign was just wierd Cyrillic chicken scratchings. 

yeah, the cool thing (landscape-wise, maybe not so much travel-time wise or when you're stuck...) about the US * is that it's so big. so vaste. here it's so populated that unless you're in the middle of the high mountains, you can't help stumbling on human structures everywhere. also you guys have the sea, canyons, volcanos..
do i guess right when i say that california has probably an excellent climate, warm all year round but not as scorching as texas?
how was taiwan as a foreigner? and hawaii?

true, when industrialization doesn't go on par with ecologic efforts, the results are catastrophic for the environment. and megapoles are not human friendly - overpopulation drives people nuts, everywhere.

always been my dream to move to sweden - sadly, no way we can all beam up there ~

* (and probably also china, russia, australia - huge countries/continents)

California, at least Central and Northern California, have a lovely climate compared to most of Texas.  The downsides are: earthquakes, fires, mudslides, insanely high cost of living.  My small studio apartment in Silicon Valley cost me US$1350 a month, not including utilities!!! No place for a low to middle income person.

I was in Taiwan when I was 7 to 9 years old.  I remember a LOT of it, the country and people made a permanent impression on me.  At the time it wasn't polluted or crowded, we lived in a house in a town outside Taipei called Pey-to, Dad hired a maid/assistant for Mom since he was off doing erm 'stuff' for the government.  Her name was Oohmai if I recall.. she taught me some Chinese, took me out to net-catch shrimp for soup, even had me over to dinner wth her family! I developed a permanent love for Chinese food of all sorts, along with a deep long relationship with good rice, and a permanent 'thing' for Asian women *blush*. Everyone treated us all likfe family, in retrospecy I suspect a lot of it was due to what my Dad was doing.  The places I recall, like the hot springs at Seven Star Mountain, are long gone.  Very sad.

I was only in Hawaii for 3 months while we were on our way to Taiwan.  I remember beaches, learning to snorkel, and developed a permanent love for tropical fish. I do recall folks were kind of stand-offish, I hear it's worse now in some parts of the island.

It's so weird how perception and experience can be so varying.   I was warned that people in Paris were snotty and mean, and warned that if I tried to speak French I'd get laughed at.  I had just the opposite experience, everyone was friendly, my French wasn't disparaged, and I found the city nice and the folks decent.  Of course this was 20 years ago, who knows how it is now?

I've never been treated like an 'ugly American', but then due to all the travelling my parents did when I was young I went in with a dairly broad cultural background, and never assumed that everyone spoke English. My Mom was a wizard at languages, she'd learn first then teach Dad and I enough to get along.  I crammed on French before I went to Paris, even for the short trip because it's dim to expect people in their own country to speak my language!!

Anyway, I rant, sorry!

right.. the fires. how could i forget that, i've just recently been talking to someone from there on smackjeeves... earthquakes too? charming. at least no tornados.. :( we have mudslides here too.
yeah but silicon valley? you picked a place where people make fortunes in a blink from some software or other cyber idea... no wonder it was ruinous..

those are great childhood memories :). did you keep some of the chinese you learned? also, lmao @ the part with the asian ladies ;)
i love asian food too, sadly i had to increasingly refrain to eat a lot of things due to my intolerances. still use my wok to cook what i'm still allowed to though.

i wonder if it's not a common thing in super-touristic places that the locals are sometimes aloof with strangers (i can understand it too).. happened to me in greece on a small island too, they really didn't appreciate us being there - still knowing some of their jobs depended on tourism...

was in paris 2 times i think, just in passing, and the only place i felt ok was... in the tube/underground, because it reminded me of london, a city i love. same as in other french cities, i didn't feel at ease nor welcome at all - and i speak current french, my first language. funny enough, where i live now is not too far from france, and i have a few french friends i appreciate a lot.. :shrug: - maybe you just have to know the people first, like be presented/have something in common/meet for a particular reason before the ice breaks?

i don't know but i can guess that if someone behaves decently and makes an effort towards people and culture in a country they visit, they won't make such a bad impression, at least not on sensible people. you have haters everywhere of course. many of the tourists accused of being ignorant obnoxious jerks usually behave like the cliché they illustrate perfectly..

haha, not ranting, this is called human interaction, right? ^^

Being such a large country, the US has a built-in disadvantage in the language department.  Only in the big cities and along the borders do you find many people who even experience hearing more than one language.  Much less practice one.  Things have changed a bit in the last 30 years with the introduction of Spanish in large numbers.  But there is a great deal of language momentum and unwillingness to learn or even accept the presence of anything but English.  There is a smattering of French in the northeast near Montreal and in the south in Louisiana.  Some oriental languages in small areas around the country.  But for the most part I find that many Americans are smugly and blissfully ignorant of the rest of the world cultures and languages simply because most of them can't travel far enough to have had a foreign experience.  (Canada doesn't count.)

I have traveled the world a bit and I am interested in other languages but I'm not much good at languages.  I know a smattering of Spanish, Italian, German and Russian but not enough to be comfortably conversant.  But for most Americans there is still no need or even desire to learn another language.  English is too pervasive around them their whole lives.   And if truth be told, I notice a great many Americans who casually slaughter English too.

In Fall River, MA, the city where I grew up, there were several languages spoken regularly.  Not that I knew any of them.  But I grew up in a mostly Portuguese area of the city.  It's not a huge city, but it had an Irish section, a French section, a Polish and Ukranian section, and overall a large Portuguese and Cape Verdian population.  As I was growing up, I was never aware of any prejudice.  Things may have changed a bit in later years.  Still, not so much as neighboring cities, I think.  Plenty of crime there, now, though.  Sadly, my mom and one of my sisters still live there.  I escaped in 2001.

Dana

 OK, here is an incomplete list of all the hardware needed to render in Iray.

Please correct or add the answers to some of the items listed below. This should help a lot of newbies, like me, in the future (if the search engines can find this, that is 

When more of these questions are answered I will impove the list and post it here again.

______________________________________________________________

Let's try and make a list of the minimum to better requirements to be able to make a single photorealistic render in Daz Studio 4.8 to 4.10.

There are lots of veriables but these specs are needed to make a medium size (to be established), render, with some props, costumes, lighting and 3 people in the scene.

Computer makes (to be established).

PC Desktop (see note below line for some MAC specs).

Windows 7 to 10

RAM:  8 to 16 GB - (DDR3  or  DDR4 ?)

Graphics Card:  
Nividia GTX 1060 to 1080 Ti
evga gtx 1060 sc 6Gb
Intel HD Graphics - 4400

CPU  Processor: (central processing unit)  How much is needed?
AMD fx-8350 BlackEdition 

GPU (graphics processing unit = much more powerful than CPUs)
What does GPU do, and how much do we need?

SSD: (Solid-state drive -  storage device)  how much do we need?

Motherboard:
gigabyte 990fxa - ud5 r5
Motherboard Bus Speed
It plays an integral role in how fast your computer is, though. The motherboard is the central hub of your system, through which all the other components (processor, RAM, hard drive etc.) communicate.
It also determines which components you can use, and on an ageing system the motherboard can become the performance bottleneck itself by preventing you from upgrading to newer parts.

Core:
Quad-Core is best
Intel Xeon/Core 2 Duo or Quad /Core i7
AMD Opteron/Phenom processor(s)

GHZ:  4.0

MHZ:
1600Mhz

Monitor: What are good monitor specs to be able to appreciate all of the high tech hardware and Iray renderings?
___________________________________________________

MAC:

One source suggested: (Please add to this if you like)

Intel Macintosh®
2.00 GHz Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz or faster recommended)
Mac™ OS X 10.7 or above.
2 GB RAM min (3GB+ recommended)
1GB free hard drive space for installation.
OpenGL 1.6 compatible graphics card with at least 128 MB RAM (Hardware accelerated OpenGL 2.2, or higher, compatible recommended with 256MB+ RAM)

________________________________________________________________

This may be getting to complicated, but I would like to know the answers to be better informed when building or buying a computer for Iray rendering.

Thank you all very much! 

yeah, the cool thing (landscape-wise, maybe not so much travel-time wise or when you're stuck...) about the US * is that it's so big. so vaste. here it's so populated that unless you're in the middle of the high mountains, you can't help stumbling on human structures everywhere. also you guys have the sea, canyons, volcanos..
do i guess right when i say that california has probably an excellent climate, warm all year round but not as scorching as texas?
how was taiwan as a foreigner? and hawaii?

true, when industrialization doesn't go on par with ecologic efforts, the results are catastrophic for the environment. and megapoles are not human friendly - overpopulation drives people nuts, everywhere.

always been my dream to move to sweden - sadly, no way we can all beam up there ~

* (and probably also china, russia, australia - huge countries/continents)

California, at least Central and Northern California, have a lovely climate compared to most of Texas.  The downsides are: earthquakes, fires, mudslides, insanely high cost of living.  My small studio apartment in Silicon Valley cost me US$1350 a month, not including utilities!!! No place for a low to middle income person.

I was in Taiwan when I was 7 to 9 years old.  I remember a LOT of it, the country and people made a permanent impression on me.  At the time it wasn't polluted or crowded, we lived in a house in a town outside Taipei called Pey-to, Dad hired a maid/assistant for Mom since he was off doing erm 'stuff' for the government.  Her name was Oohmai if I recall.. she taught me some Chinese, took me out to net-catch shrimp for soup, even had me over to dinner wth her family! I developed a permanent love for Chinese food of all sorts, along with a deep long relationship with good rice, and a permanent 'thing' for Asian women *blush*. Everyone treated us all likfe family, in retrospecy I suspect a lot of it was due to what my Dad was doing.  The places I recall, like the hot springs at Seven Star Mountain, are long gone.  Very sad.

I was only in Hawaii for 3 months while we were on our way to Taiwan.  I remember beaches, learning to snorkel, and developed a permanent love for tropical fish. I do recall folks were kind of stand-offish, I hear it's worse now in some parts of the island.

It's so weird how perception and experience can be so varying.   I was warned that people in Paris were snotty and mean, and warned that if I tried to speak French I'd get laughed at.  I had just the opposite experience, everyone was friendly, my French wasn't disparaged, and I found the city nice and the folks decent.  Of course this was 20 years ago, who knows how it is now?

I've never been treated like an 'ugly American', but then due to all the travelling my parents did when I was young I went in with a dairly broad cultural background, and never assumed that everyone spoke English. My Mom was a wizard at languages, she'd learn first then teach Dad and I enough to get along.  I crammed on French before I went to Paris, even for the short trip because it's dim to expect people in their own country to speak my language!!

Anyway, I rant, sorry!

right.. the fires. how could i forget that, i've just recently been talking to someone from there on smackjeeves... earthquakes too? charming. at least no tornados.. :( we have mudslides here too.
yeah but silicon valley? you picked a place where people make fortunes in a blink from some software or other cyber idea... no wonder it was ruinous..

those are great childhood memories :). did you keep some of the chinese you learned? also, lmao @ the part with the asian ladies ;)
i love asian food too, sadly i had to increasingly refrain to eat a lot of things due to my intolerances. still use my wok to cook what i'm still allowed to though.

i wonder if it's not a common thing in super-touristic places that the locals are sometimes aloof with strangers (i can understand it too).. happened to me in greece on a small island too, they really didn't appreciate us being there - still knowing some of their jobs depended on tourism...

was in paris 2 times i think, just in passing, and the only place i felt ok was... in the tube/underground, because it reminded me of london, a city i love. same as in other french cities, i didn't feel at ease nor welcome at all - and i speak current french, my first language. funny enough, where i live now is not too far from france, and i have a few french friends i appreciate a lot.. :shrug: - maybe you just have to know the people first, like be presented/have something in common/meet for a particular reason before the ice breaks?

i don't know but i can guess that if someone behaves decently and makes an effort towards people and culture in a country they visit, they won't make such a bad impression, at least not on sensible people. you have haters everywhere of course. many of the tourists accused of being ignorant obnoxious jerks usually behave like the cliché they illustrate perfectly..

haha, not ranting, this is called human interaction, right? ^^

Being such a large country, the US has a built-in disadvantage in the language department.  Only in the big cities and along the borders do you find many people who even experience hearing more than one language.  Much less practice one.  Things have changed a bit in the last 30 years with the introduction of Spanish in large numbers.  But there is a great deal of language momentum and unwillingness to learn or even accept the presence of anything but English.  There is a smattering of French in the northeast near Montreal and in the south in Louisiana.  Some oriental languages in small areas around the country.  But for the most part I find that many Americans are smugly and blissfully ignorant of the rest of the world cultures and languages simply because most of them can't travel far enough to have had a foreign experience.  (Canada doesn't count.)

I have traveled the world a bit and I am interested in other languages but I'm not much good at languages.  I know a smattering of Spanish, Italian, German and Russian but not enough to be comfortably conversant.  But for most Americans there is still no need or even desire to learn another language.  English is too pervasive around them their whole lives.   And if truth be told, I notice a great many Americans who casually slaughter English too.

yeah, the cool thing (landscape-wise, maybe not so much travel-time wise or when you're stuck...) about the US * is that it's so big. so vaste. here it's so populated that unless you're in the middle of the high mountains, you can't help stumbling on human structures everywhere. also you guys have the sea, canyons, volcanos..
do i guess right when i say that california has probably an excellent climate, warm all year round but not as scorching as texas?
how was taiwan as a foreigner? and hawaii?

true, when industrialization doesn't go on par with ecologic efforts, the results are catastrophic for the environment. and megapoles are not human friendly - overpopulation drives people nuts, everywhere.

always been my dream to move to sweden - sadly, no way we can all beam up there ~

* (and probably also china, russia, australia - huge countries/continents)

California, at least Central and Northern California, have a lovely climate compared to most of Texas.  The downsides are: earthquakes, fires, mudslides, insanely high cost of living.  My small studio apartment in Silicon Valley cost me US$1350 a month, not including utilities!!! No place for a low to middle income person.

I was in Taiwan when I was 7 to 9 years old.  I remember a LOT of it, the country and people made a permanent impression on me.  At the time it wasn't polluted or crowded, we lived in a house in a town outside Taipei called Pey-to, Dad hired a maid/assistant for Mom since he was off doing erm 'stuff' for the government.  Her name was Oohmai if I recall.. she taught me some Chinese, took me out to net-catch shrimp for soup, even had me over to dinner wth her family! I developed a permanent love for Chinese food of all sorts, along with a deep long relationship with good rice, and a permanent 'thing' for Asian women *blush*. Everyone treated us all likfe family, in retrospecy I suspect a lot of it was due to what my Dad was doing.  The places I recall, like the hot springs at Seven Star Mountain, are long gone.  Very sad.

I was only in Hawaii for 3 months while we were on our way to Taiwan.  I remember beaches, learning to snorkel, and developed a permanent love for tropical fish. I do recall folks were kind of stand-offish, I hear it's worse now in some parts of the island.

It's so weird how perception and experience can be so varying.   I was warned that people in Paris were snotty and mean, and warned that if I tried to speak French I'd get laughed at.  I had just the opposite experience, everyone was friendly, my French wasn't disparaged, and I found the city nice and the folks decent.  Of course this was 20 years ago, who knows how it is now?

I've never been treated like an 'ugly American', but then due to all the travelling my parents did when I was young I went in with a dairly broad cultural background, and never assumed that everyone spoke English. My Mom was a wizard at languages, she'd learn first then teach Dad and I enough to get along.  I crammed on French before I went to Paris, even for the short trip because it's dim to expect people in their own country to speak my language!!

Anyway, I rant, sorry!

right.. the fires. how could i forget that, i've just recently been talking to someone from there on smackjeeves... earthquakes too? charming. at least no tornados.. :( we have mudslides here too.
yeah but silicon valley? you picked a place where people make fortunes in a blink from some software or other cyber idea... no wonder it was ruinous..

those are great childhood memories :). did you keep some of the chinese you learned? also, lmao @ the part with the asian ladies ;)
i love asian food too, sadly i had to increasingly refrain to eat a lot of things due to my intolerances. still use my wok to cook what i'm still allowed to though.

i wonder if it's not a common thing in super-touristic places that the locals are sometimes aloof with strangers (i can understand it too).. happened to me in greece on a small island too, they really didn't appreciate us being there - still knowing some of their jobs depended on tourism...

was in paris 2 times i think, just in passing, and the only place i felt ok was... in the tube/underground, because it reminded me of london, a city i love. same as in other french cities, i didn't feel at ease nor welcome at all - and i speak current french, my first language. funny enough, where i live now is not too far from france, and i have a few french friends i appreciate a lot.. :shrug: - maybe you just have to know the people first, like be presented/have something in common/meet for a particular reason before the ice breaks?

i don't know but i can guess that if someone behaves decently and makes an effort towards people and culture in a country they visit, they won't make such a bad impression, at least not on sensible people. you have haters everywhere of course. many of the tourists accused of being ignorant obnoxious jerks usually behave like the cliché they illustrate perfectly..

haha, not ranting, this is called human interaction, right? ^^

Cleaning is super-simple since the interior of most models are nonstick.  Worst I had to do was soak overnight to get rid of cooked-on barbeque sauce, otherwise it's soapy rag and done.

It's good for healthy cooking, for sure.  It should help you roast fresh veg quickly.

Switzerland!  One of the most beautiful countries.. never been but I live on travel documentaries and I do love mountains and lakes.  Lucky you!! :-)

it is, if i say so myself. has quite a few different landscapes for such a small fleck of land, too. personally not a fan of high mountains, just rock... but hills & forests, any time. i really couldn't live anywhere where it's not so green, and the south is not my thing. ireland is totally awesome too tho, and i really regret not being able to visit scandinavia (my tribe costs all i have...). never been in the US either - too far, travel too expensive. and then it's so big you can't see all of it at once, lol. but some landscapes i've seen onscreen where also breathtaking ^^
the only thing i'm not too enthusiastic about my fleck of land are some people - unless you live in one of the very few larger cities, they're pretty dull and unimaginative, kind of... backwater. but generally the peeps are also really peaceful compared to other places... which is nice too i guess.

I've lived all over th US, some time in Taiwan and Hawaii, and one short trip to Paris on business.   America is a land of contrasts.. about 75% is amazing with forests, lakes, mountains, vast plains, majestic rock formations and deserts for miles.  The other 25% is pure ugliness.. trash piles, deforestation, urban blight, decaying infrastructure and institutionalized hopelessness.  Pretty much the same as any over-industrialized nation, but not as bad as some places I've seen on documentaries.  I used to want to visit India until I started watching 'The Amazing Race' and saw the soul-destroying poverty and terrible living conditions.  Shudder... :-|

Anyway, my vote for most beautiful part of America: Northwest Coast.  Ocean, beach, mountains, forest, small towns and big cities.  And the odd volcano.  I could easily spend my last years on this dirtball on the Northern California coast or around Seattle or Vancouver..

Still, given the chance I'd move to Norway, or Denmark, or Sweden, or Switzerland.  I'd just have to dress really warm! :-P

yeah, the cool thing (landscape-wise, maybe not so much travel-time wise or when you're stuck...) about the US * is that it's so big. so vaste. here it's so populated that unless you're in the middle of the high mountains, you can't help stumbling on human structures everywhere. also you guys have the sea, canyons, volcanos..
do i guess right when i say that california has probably an excellent climate, warm all year round but not as scorching as texas?
how was taiwan as a foreigner? and hawaii?

true, when industrialization doesn't go on par with ecologic efforts, the results are catastrophic for the environment. and megapoles are not human friendly - overpopulation drives people nuts, everywhere.

always been my dream to move to sweden - sadly, no way we can all beam up there ~

* (and probably also china, russia, australia - huge countries/continents)

California, at least Central and Northern California, have a lovely climate compared to most of Texas.  The downsides are: earthquakes, fires, mudslides, insanely high cost of living.  My small studio apartment in Silicon Valley cost me US$1350 a month, not including utilities!!! No place for a low to middle income person.

I was in Taiwan when I was 7 to 9 years old.  I remember a LOT of it, the country and people made a permanent impression on me.  At the time it wasn't polluted or crowded, we lived in a house in a town outside Taipei called Pey-to, Dad hired a maid/assistant for Mom since he was off doing erm 'stuff' for the government.  Her name was Oohmai if I recall.. she taught me some Chinese, took me out to net-catch shrimp for soup, even had me over to dinner wth her family! I developed a permanent love for Chinese food of all sorts, along with a deep long relationship with good rice, and a permanent 'thing' for Asian women *blush*. Everyone treated us all likfe family, in retrospecy I suspect a lot of it was due to what my Dad was doing.  The places I recall, like the hot springs at Seven Star Mountain, are long gone.  Very sad.

I was only in Hawaii for 3 months while we were on our way to Taiwan.  I remember beaches, learning to snorkel, and developed a permanent love for tropical fish. I do recall folks were kind of stand-offish, I hear it's worse now in some parts of the island.

It's so weird how perception and experience can be so varying.   I was warned that people in Paris were snotty and mean, and warned that if I tried to speak French I'd get laughed at.  I had just the opposite experience, everyone was friendly, my French wasn't disparaged, and I found the city nice and the folks decent.  Of course this was 20 years ago, who knows how it is now?

I've never been treated like an 'ugly American', but then due to all the travelling my parents did when I was young I went in with a dairly broad cultural background, and never assumed that everyone spoke English. My Mom was a wizard at languages, she'd learn first then teach Dad and I enough to get along.  I crammed on French before I went to Paris, even for the short trip because it's dim to expect people in their own country to speak my language!!

Anyway, I rant, sorry!

...yeah a 30° drop would feel a bit chilly.  Used to live along Lake Michigan and it wasn't uncommon in early summer for the temperature to drop by as much as 20° (as well as thick fog roll in) in a matter of minutes when the wind shifted from offshore to onshore.  Never knew how to dress as sometimes mornings would be warm so you didn't take a coat or jacket and by the time you got out of work or school it would be cold and damp (or the other way around).

When it really got crazy was early spring.  A couple weeks after I moved to New Orleans back in the 70s, the music director at the chapel where I played organ at in Madison told me it was in the 70s one morning so she wore light clothing and no jacket.  When she left at around 15:00 that afternoon, it was snowing and by that night something like 5 - 6" of snow had fallen. 

I've seen times up in North Central WI where ripples in puddles and pools created by the wind literally froze in place after a rapid temperature drop.   One time I remember it dropped from the mid/upper 40s to around 10° in less than 30 min when an "Alberta clipper" (fast moving cold front) came through.

Oh Chicago the Mackinac Trophy freshwater boat race is famous hey :)

...yeah a 30° drop would feel a bit chilly.  Used to live along Lake Michigan and it wasn't uncommon in early summer for the temperature to drop by as much as 20° (as well as thick fog roll in) in a matter of minutes when the wind shifted from offshore to onshore.  Never knew how to dress as sometimes mornings would be warm so you didn't take a coat or jacket and by the time you got out of work or school it would be cold and damp (or the other way around).

When it really got crazy was early spring.  A couple weeks after I moved to New Orleans back in the 70s, the music director at the chapel where I played organ at in Madison told me it was in the 70s one morning so she wore light clothing and no jacket.  When she left at around 15:00 that afternoon, it was snowing and by that night something like 5 - 6" of snow had fallen. 

I've seen times up in North Central WI where ripples in puddles and pools created by the wind literally froze in place after a rapid temperature drop.   One time I remember it dropped from the mid/upper 40s to around 10° in less than 30 min when an "Alberta clipper" (fast moving cold front) came through.

Weather. :-| :-O

...yeah a 30° drop would feel a bit chilly.  Used to live along Lake Michigan and it wasn't uncommon in early summer for the temperature to drop by as much as 20° (as well as thick fog roll in) in a matter of minutes when the wind shifted from offshore to onshore.  Never knew how to dress as sometimes mornings would be warm so you didn't take a coat or jacket and by the time you got out of work or school it would be cold and damp (or the other way around).

When it really got crazy was early spring.  A couple weeks after I moved to New Orleans back in the 70s, the music director at the chapel where I played organ at in Madison told me it was in the 70s one morning so she wore light clothing and no jacket.  When she left at around 15:00 that afternoon, it was snowing and by that night something like 5 - 6" of snow had fallen. 

I've seen times up in North Central WI where ripples in puddles and pools created by the wind literally froze in place after a rapid temperature drop.   One time I remember it dropped from the mid/upper 40s to around 10° in less than 30 min when an "Alberta clipper" (fast moving cold front) came through.