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.

where do you actually live that it's so hot in winter?

i get that with garlic too if it's not cooked enough or just too much of it... but i guess if you buy the breadsticks all ready like deep frozen.. no big choice.
what is air fry? you just let them dry in the sun??

I live in Central Texas - Austin, to be exact.  Winters here are typically mild to warm, but come Summer we routinely pass 105f or hotter!  We don't get mild Summers, ever.  Even the snakes hide from the heat...

The breadsticks came with my family sized pasta order.  So, yeah, I'm stuck.

An air fryer is effectively a compact convection oven with a ventilated coof surface inside.  You can vary the heat from 225f to 400f, and a circulation fam keeps the entire interior at the same temperature.  What you do is coat your food in a small amount of oil (I use olive oil) and the hot air heats the oil up, uniformly frying the coated food.  Great crispy food, little oil used, food comes out non-greasy, a very fast and healthy way to cook. It's small so you can't cook mass quantities at once, but for a single guy like me or a couple, it's perfect!  I can make fries, tortilla chips, bbq, burgers, chicken, it came with a cookpot so I can cook soups stews and sauteed veggies.. despite tutorials I've never successfully fried an egg although I've seen it done.  I've even cooked bbq ribs! :-O

I just finished grilling hot dogs in 5 minutes, shove 'em into a warm flour tortilla with some hot sauce and woah baby good!

aah texas, i see.. not exactly next door XD. wow 105F, that's hot. we never get that here (switzerland), even less where i live, at 1000m asl. max is 90F, average 75F in summer. winter is always a lot of subzero. ok, while i don't wish my winters on anyone, i def don't envy your summers. i get sick from heat at 85F already..

this airfry thing comes on my real-life wishlist. it's awesome. especially the no-oil part (i never use much anyways, and never possessed nor wished a deep-pan oil fryer because oil, eeew) and the compact part (my "flat" is huge, but since all my stuff's piled up in the kitchen, it's so cramped i can't stuff anything else). a small one's enough, i'm the only human here. i saw they sell those mixed models with many options here too, gonna check def model when i'm liquid. i'm vegetarian and multi-intolerant, so my shopping list is very short, and my meals very boring - any options to bring a bit of change are very welcome! plus even i never buy ready meals nor do i order in, but always cook everything fresh from scratch, i'm not big on hanging out for long in the kitchen either, so small, healthy and fast, also quickly cleaned? adopted! ^^

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!! :-)

where do you actually live that it's so hot in winter?

i get that with garlic too if it's not cooked enough or just too much of it... but i guess if you buy the breadsticks all ready like deep frozen.. no big choice.
what is air fry? you just let them dry in the sun??

I live in Central Texas - Austin, to be exact.  Winters here are typically mild to warm, but come Summer we routinely pass 105f or hotter!  We don't get mild Summers, ever.  Even the snakes hide from the heat...

The breadsticks came with my family sized pasta order.  So, yeah, I'm stuck.

An air fryer is effectively a compact convection oven with a ventilated coof surface inside.  You can vary the heat from 225f to 400f, and a circulation fam keeps the entire interior at the same temperature.  What you do is coat your food in a small amount of oil (I use olive oil) and the hot air heats the oil up, uniformly frying the coated food.  Great crispy food, little oil used, food comes out non-greasy, a very fast and healthy way to cook. It's small so you can't cook mass quantities at once, but for a single guy like me or a couple, it's perfect!  I can make fries, tortilla chips, bbq, burgers, chicken, it came with a cookpot so I can cook soups stews and sauteed veggies.. despite tutorials I've never successfully fried an egg although I've seen it done.  I've even cooked bbq ribs! :-O

I just finished grilling hot dogs in 5 minutes, shove 'em into a warm flour tortilla with some hot sauce and woah baby good!

aah texas, i see.. not exactly next door XD. wow 105F, that's hot. we never get that here (switzerland), even less where i live, at 1000m asl. max is 90F, average 75F in summer. winter is always a lot of subzero. ok, while i don't wish my winters on anyone, i def don't envy your summers. i get sick from heat at 85F already..

this airfry thing comes on my real-life wishlist. it's awesome. especially the no-oil part (i never use much anyways, and never possessed nor wished a deep-pan oil fryer because oil, eeew) and the compact part (my "flat" is huge, but since all my stuff's piled up in the kitchen, it's so cramped i can't stuff anything else). a small one's enough, i'm the only human here. i saw they sell those mixed models with many options here too, gonna check def model when i'm liquid. i'm vegetarian and multi-intolerant, so my shopping list is very short, and my meals very boring - any options to bring a bit of change are very welcome! plus even i never buy ready meals nor do i order in, but always cook everything fresh from scratch, i'm not big on hanging out for long in the kitchen either, so small, healthy and fast, also quickly cleaned? adopted! ^^

Binging on watching 'Ghost Adventures' and eating chicken alfredo pasta.  Gloomy, 60% humidity, overcast and bloody 80f!  Window wide open and faun cranked up.. eating the pasta cold as it's too warm and humid for hot food.  Ugh.

Breadsticks for breakfast was a bad idea as I proceeded to burp up garlic and coffee for 2 hours, and friends that's a bad taste combo.  The pasta has very light garlic, so maybe pasta for breakfast until I can shop for fresh potatoes to air fry.

Cool and no rain until Sunday, so I should get my shopping done tomorrow. :-)

where do you actually live that it's so hot in winter?

i get that with garlic too if it's not cooked enough or just too much of it... but i guess if you buy the breadsticks all ready like deep frozen.. no big choice.
what is air fry? you just let them dry in the sun??

I live in Central Texas - Austin, to be exact.  Winters here are typically mild to warm, but come Summer we routinely pass 105f or hotter!  We don't get mild Summers, ever.  Even the snakes hide from the heat...

The breadsticks came with my family sized pasta order.  So, yeah, I'm stuck.

An air fryer is effectively a compact convection oven with a ventilated coof surface inside.  You can vary the heat from 225f to 400f, and a circulation fam keeps the entire interior at the same temperature.  What you do is coat your food in a small amount of oil (I use olive oil) and the hot air heats the oil up, uniformly frying the coated food.  Great crispy food, little oil used, food comes out non-greasy, a very fast and healthy way to cook. It's small so you can't cook mass quantities at once, but for a single guy like me or a couple, it's perfect!  I can make fries, tortilla chips, bbq, burgers, chicken, it came with a cookpot so I can cook soups stews and sauteed veggies.. despite tutorials I've never successfully fried an egg although I've seen it done.  I've even cooked bbq ribs! :-O

I just finished grilling hot dogs in 5 minutes, shove 'em into a warm flour tortilla with some hot sauce and woah baby good!

I used a bit of kitbashing on the Last Chance Gas Station to make it look a bit more like the icehouses I grew up around in central and south Texas. 

...in Texas, I expect it to be warmer this time of year.

Crikey, even Stevens Point up in Wisconsin's "tundra country" is 10° warmer than it is where I am.  They should be the ones dealing with cold, snow, and ice this time of year, not us.

One town in Eastern Oregon had a low of -9° (F) this morning (even Fairbanks Alaska was warmer).

I know its early in the thread, but...

...The Winter, Winter Go Away Complaint Thread.

Warm is one thing.  Wanting to turn the AC on, that's a bit much for me!  At least it'll be back into the mid-60f's at the end of the week.

So full! 6 teriyaki wings, Cajun fries, and 1/2 a bowl of pasta and it's naptime for me.  Still left: 4 meals worth of pasta, 5 bread sticks, and lemon-pepper seasoned fries.  When they said familty size pasta, they meant it!  I'll be sick of pasta before it's all gone.

Tme for a little lie-down snzzzzzzzzz

...I'd like not having to turn the heat on at night. Bloats the power bill.

Fortunately, the heat here is gas.  Now, the AC will add hundreds of dollars to the power bl,, it's BAD. :-(

Here, I lucked out.  My rental arrangement is a simple $400 per month including elec. and gas!   There are two apartments in this house.  I have 1/3 of the house and a family has the other 2/3.  There is only one electric and one gas meter.  I worried at first about getting an A/C.  Primarily because I wasn't sure the I had enough circuits but after some experiments I discovered that if careful I do.  I can't run an A/C downstairs for the living room, kitchen & bathroom because a) it would probably blow a fuse if my computers, & TV equipment were on too and b) there's no adequate window available.   However, I have one window in my bedroom (the only room upstairs) that is wide enough and unobstructed to take a typical A/C unit.  So, in the worst summer days the A/C keeps my bedroom comfortable and the cool air wafts down the stairway into the living room keeping it tolerable if I lounge around half naked.  Which works out well because nobody ever comes to visit me.   

The family in the other part of the house uses electricity MUCH more than I do with their multiple A/Cs, dishwasher, clothes washer & dryer, big refrigerator, etc.  So, my little contribution is aparently hardly noticed.  As long as I play the role of a decript old man who lives only on Social Security payments, washes his dishes by hand, does his laundry at a laundromat, doesn't over use his A/C, doesn't complain, keeps his apartment clean & tidy, and always pays his rent on time, I'm hoping to retain my position here.  Knock on wood!

However, the disadvantage of this arrangement is that there is only one heating system.  And there is only one thermostat.  But it is on the family's side of the house.  So I have to live with what they consider comfortable.  Which sometimes isn't.  Especially when they go away on vacation and turn down the thermostat a bit to save gas or decide they're too cold and crank up the heat.   I'm continually opening/closing my one and only floor air register to adjust how much heat I'm getting into my apartment.

It sounds to me like you're mostly in good shape.  The heat thing sounds annoying, though.  The AC/Heat here is central, it works pretty well especially now I have my insulated blackout curtains installed.  Best investment I ever made!

The window in this room is HUGE and would swallow a window unit air conditioner.  Mot to mention the wiring could be better, if I try to run my air fryer and foot heater at the same time it throws a breaker, so I just don't do that. :-/

 

Technique Sources: Sickleyield's Tutorial on Quick Godrays for Iray, Connatic's Forum Thread on Stained Glass for Iray, Tips for Sunlight in This Thread Here

I can definitely pick out the Real Lights for DAZ Studio Iray in your "Terminator Red Eye" and "Cross" renders, it's use in your "GlitterBrightBetrayalFin" is a little subtler, I'm guessing it might possibly be applied to the eight pointed star at the front of the sanctuary? All great renders btw, I've been facinated by the use of godrays in renders but haven't had the fortitude to attempt them yet. Any suggestions on where to start with godrays? Products or tutorials you found helpful?

Yeah, Night678winG, (and thank you) in that one, you're right, in part. I made the star in an old free program called Anim8or by Steven Glanville that's been around for just about ever. I positioned the star and applied a diamond shader from Mec4d, then duplicated the node, shrunk the duplicate down and positioned it in the center of the larger star then applied a real light from that set--but turned down the lumens a lot to keep from washing out the scene and godrays. I decided in the end to make light a third character in the scene, so as you can see that the central shaft of light associated with the knight is bounded by cooler blues in the godrays, which is echoed by the lady on the left, and there is another implied presence on the right which is generating the light in the scene which is flashing on the dagger blade as well as the highlights appearing on pews and columns to offset the golden light of the star doing the same. So there are in fact two lights from that set in that scene. You're spot on with the other images though, probably (Did you notice the lights of the Big Bill Truck reflected in his sunglasses approaching from the right? Those are from that set as well.).

Hopefully I already answered some of your question before seeing your post in my previous post. But there are some links in my post that I've highlighted above. Those gave me the missing links to make it happen.

It's 54f here at 12:38 pm.  So, it will likely get warmer before it starts going down again.  We have central air conditioning and heating.  No open windows required...keeps things in better shape without all that humidity creeping in.

LG, consider a portable A/C unit.  You can probably rig something to get the exhaust out of small windows.  Just a thought.

Dana

I've been looking for an Indian or central Asian model for G8M. Any suggestions?

The 200 faces product seemed to have some good options but if there was a cohesive character for body and head that would be ideal.

Much appreciated.

People are really bringing out some wonderful actors and actresses.

I certainly agree about the adult cast of the Potter movies.  Each movie in the franchise seemed to add at least three more English actors with significant gravitas.  And Sam Rockwell could make my list just for Galaxy Quest, but has done so much more.  And Allison Janney - give me more Allison.

Green Acres and Everybody Loves Raymond are perfect examples of surrounding a "sane" central figure with comedic characters.  Perhaps the most extreme form of that was the original Bob Newhart Show, in which he played a psychologist so they could have part of the comedic circle be he his patients.  The Mary Tyler Moore Show used this approach as well.

Slim Pickins!  Yes!  Enough said.  ​.  

@wwes - my apologies to Brad Bird and to Linda Hunt.  Unforgivable on my part.  Linda Hunt gets to stay on my list though, and will just have to content herself with her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

I really like the additions of Elisha Cook and Agnes Moorehead.  They just showed Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane on TCM, so both actors were on my mind.

The discussion of 60s/70s TV shows made me think of an iconic sidekick - Bill Daily.  He played the pilot neighbor on Bob Newhart and "master's" best friend on I dream of Jeannie.  Spent a lot of time in uniform!

Don't envy the leccy bill, but at least no central heating would be needed... 

well. we do have deer aorund here - warning signs on the road that goes up the hill from here.  we have a good pack of coyotes, I have seen bear tracks in the park across the river and we have the occasional cougar. Plenty of beaver and there are osprey and bald eagles that patrol the river.. Out in the mountains we ran across a grizzly once.. 

I would love to see a moose, but unfortunately there are none in these parts (Pennsylvania, US). I've seen black bear lots of times and we're polluted with deer where I live in the south central portion. I've even seen the occasional red fox and coyote, but no moose :( And right now, on February 21st, 2018, it is 76 degrees outside. I have the windows open. If I close my eyes, I could swear it was early summer. There are bugs outside. Three days ago it was snowing. Wild...lol.

;)

Laurie

I would love to see a moose, but unfortunately there are none in these parts (Pennsylvania, US). I've seen black bear lots of times and we're polluted with deer where I live in the south central portion. I've even seen the occasional red fox and coyote, but no moose :( And right now, on February 21st, 2018, it is 76 degrees outside. I have the windows open. If I close my eyes, I could swear it was early summer. There are bugs outside. Three days ago it was snowing. Wild...lol.

;)

Laurie