It's funny, when I was like six years old my mother took me to Central Park with pastels and paper and we drew a bridge and scenery and I was shocked to discover it recently in storage and see how I got all the light gradations and shadows at that young age, purely visual, no tech... Hell, maybe I should go back to drawing...

Just want to add, from a sales perspective, it would benefit Daz to simplify things a bit for newbies because there could be many new potential customers who just want to do pretty pinups or cute fairies and all the high tech stuff, although great, could dissuade them from starting with DS. If I didn't already have years of Poser behind me and if this wasn't now my actual career, I might have been scared away. I think Daz should do what Apple does, have all the bells and whistles but have a very easy user version so even a child could pick it up. Children, especially little girls, could be great customers of Daz if they could easily create cute dolls and fairies and boys too, could render spaceships and superheroes easily. This could be a whole new source of income for Daz. Hey, Daz, want to hire me for marketing????

I too started out drawing, then sculpting and now music, but I really got sucked into the poser thing (In my late thirties) and geek-out on all the rendering, normal maps and Ambient Occlusion (I actually made my own AO by positioning 64 spot lights in a geo pattern and enabling all soft shadow maps, took hours to render, but it came out great, this was before ambient occlusion was even a thing!)

I remember when I lost my job in Seattle and was pretty much homeless, (Which was not too bad as Seattle has excellent resources!) Anyway I would spend my days drinking coffee and drawing for hours in cafes all across the city...Lugging around all that paper/drawings was a bit of a pain though!...Oh yeah, this is when Seattle had the dot com crash that rendered most people jobless, which is why I ended up movintg eventually.

That's actually how I'm trying to learn, by looking at other people's presets. But people's Iray settings vary wildly for skin. The premade skin shader I bought is too dark and shiny for my taste so trying to figure out how to get it to my liking and save it. Still, nothing is intuitive. I figured out Photoshop without a manual. And the Nvidea instructions that are copied and pasted are meant for professionals, I wish they could be translated into easier to understand English with screenshots...  Actually I would pay for an in depth manual of EVERY aspect of DS with screenshots at every step, I prefer that to video tutorials.

There are too few video tutorials that actually get to the point as most drone on and on and take several videos to explain a few steps The best video tuts are from Sickleyield and Mec4D! 

Otherwise, I would love to read about these features but this will not happen, I am glad to see them making video tutorials but would rather have them use annotations instead of the constant droning.

Well, THAT put us in our place.  And here I thought I was being clever......

But seriously, thanks for showing us the 'correct' way to shutdown DS via script.  So the MainWindow is the central event loop control, so that when it closes, the rest of the app goes through its shutdown process?  And won't Scene.clear() prompt you if your scene isn't saved?  Or is there a different parameter/method for that?

Oh, and btw Rob.....I came across a slight bug/issue.  If you are debugging in the Script IDE, and you pop up a modal dialog in script that doesn't have a cancel option?  DS effectively locks up, and you have to kill it from the Task Manager.  I had this happen last night with a startProgress(...) call as I was stepping through the code......no way to close it and couldn't stop the debugger/script.

Is this a known problem?

But why is the dishwasher next to the clothes washer, and why is there no dryer?

This was kind of my question......Here in the USA, we don't usually have laundry appliances in the kitchen.  Just like we don't have kitchen appliances in the laundry room (which is sometimes just a long closet.)

Is this kind of layout common somewhere?

 

Very common in the UK. Housing stock in the UK tends toward being older and smaller, whereas in the US it tends toward being newer and larger. "Northern" terraced housing in particular is likely to be Victorian or Edwardian (i.e.1900ish), and the properties, being made for poor workers (to rent) in a class driven society, were often small and crammed close together. The only conveniences these houses were likely to enjoy were cold mains water supply and connection to the sewage system. No electricity, no fixed bathing, no central heating (coal fires only). Some of the modernisation and extension jobs done on these places are small miracles.

In the decades following WWII, quite a lot of housing of larger types went up. Nowadays, new housing has reverted to being small and cramped. This is partly due to lack of space (developments in the countryside are mostly prohibited) and partly due to environmental controls. Progress!

So yeah, laundry equipment in the kitchen. The horror.

OMG!!  I never knew this thread existed!!  Talk about an everything-you-need-to-know thread!!  So many thanks for this!  I own a good majority of these tools listed, but now have a central location for what to use and when.  Simply amazing! 

What are they doing down in the valley or on the next hill over...what? Next hill? Waddaya talkin' about? I'm livin' in Brooklyn...we ain't got no no hills. Even da ones in Central Park ain't all big enough t' look inta da next valley..

Great story as always, Lord Ganthor. I always love to read those stories of yours. Nice and amusing render as well.

Good luck to you and all entrants.

~ Sigrid

Well ... I've made progress ... and now I'm truly befuddled....

I remodeled the door (I've lost count how many times) with the reinforcing lines and a simpler, stepped-in panel design. In other words, there are no sloping faces. All faces are either parallel or perpendicular to the main door face.

I used Fast Extrude to do the panel insets, but this time I didn't use the yellow dot at all. Instead I used the blue arrow to push the outer step in 5mm, then used the red dot to create a 4cm narrower face, then used the blue arrow to push the middle step 5mm in, then used the red dot to create a 4cm narrower face, then used the blue arrow to pull the inner step 5mm out, then used the red dot to create another 4cm narrower face, and used the blue arrow to pull that central face 5mm out. Then I adjusted the top and bottom faces of each step and the central face, so each was offset 2cm from the one outside it.

I exported to obj format without normals, imported in DAZ Studio, gave it a simple off-white texture, and rendered. As you can see in StillOneWeirdNormal, there's still one weird normal: the upper right panel on the front side. There's a matching weird normal on the back side of the door.

I went back to Hexagon and switched from the Flat Solid view to the Smoothed Solid view, to see if the weird normal showed up there. As you can see in ButNotTheSamePanel, there's a weird normal in Hexagon ... but it's on the lower right panel. Again, there's a matching weird normal on the back side.

I've attached the Hexagon file (prehungdoor2.zip) and the obj file (testdoor.zip).

Thank you all for your patience, and for your help.

What are they doing down in the valley or on the next hill over...what? Next hill? Waddaya talkin' about? I'm livin' in Brooklyn...we ain't got no no hills. Even da ones in Central Park ain't all big enough t' look inta da next valley...even if we did have a valley! Now, buildin's, we gots buildin's! Lots of 'em! Miles 'n' miles of 'em. From a rooftop in my neighborhood you gonna see what people is doin' in dere buildin' an' it may not be sumptin' polite, so youse better not bring da kids 'cause udderwise dey just might be gittin' an early education, if youse knows what I means...But, hey! If youse wants t' see over inta Manhattan, we gots da place for you! Me 'n' Big Eddie Mac, we sets up an observation deck on the top of my apartment buildin' , jus' like da one in da Empire States Buildin', weres you kin sees all da way inta da city an' who knows what you'll sees. Jus' remember, we aint responsible for any traumas or nuthin' like dat onna count of what you mights view usin' our equipments. An' afta' you gits done we gots refreshments available at our snacks bar. Hokay, so everybody line up...no shovin'...and gets youse'selves ready for da thrill of a lifetime!

1.) School Rooftop For Poser  Registration Required.
2.) Telescope  Registration Required. 3DS Model. Converted.
3.) Binoculars Registration Required.
4.) Modern Microwave  Registration Required.
5.) Hot Dog 7th Item from Top.
6.) Pop Cans Registration Required.
7.) Billboard 3D Model. Converted. (Listed as Billboard, but it's actually the sign beside the picknick table.)
8.) Styrofoam Cup With Plastic Lid.  Registration Required.
9.) Cooler. 3rd Item from Top.
10.)  Glasses. 11th Item from Top. Boston's wearing them.

Paid For Items: M4 Skin, Overshirt from M4 Stylin' set.
The 3DS items in this render were converted to the .obj format using Poseray.  Free and easy to use.

What are they doing down in the valley or on the next hill over...what? Next hill? Waddaya talkin' about? I'm livin' in Brooklyn...we ain't got no no hills. Even da ones in Central Park ain't all big enough t' look inta da next valley...even if we did have a valley! Now, buildin's, we gots buildin's! Lots of 'em! Miles 'n' miles of 'em. From a rooftop in my neighborhood you gonna see what people is doin' in dere buildin' an' it may not be sumptin' polite, so youse better not bring da kids 'cause udderwise dey just might be gittin' an early education, if youse knows what I means...But, hey! If youse wants t' see over inta Manhattan, we gots da place for you! Me 'n' Big Eddie Mac, we sets up an observation deck on the top of my apartment buildin' , jus' like da one in da Empire States Buildin', weres you kin sees all da way inta da city an' who knows what you'll sees. Jus' remember, we aint responsible for any traumas or nuthin' like dat onna count of what you mights view usin' our equipments. An' afta' you gits done we gots refreshments available at our snacks bar. Hokay, so everybody line up...no shovin'...and gets youse'selves ready for da thrill of a lifetime!

1.) School Rooftop For Poser  Registration Required.
2.) Telescope  Registration Required. 3DS Model. Converted.
3.) Binoculars Registration Required.
4.) Modern Microwave  Registration Required.
5.) Hot Dog 7th Item from Top.
6.) Pop Cans Registration Required.
7.) Billboard 3D Model. Converted. (Listed as Billboard, but it's actually the sign beside the picknick table.)
8.) Styrofoam Cup With Plastic Lid.  Registration Required.
9.) Cooler. 3rd Item from Top.
10.)  Glasses. 11th Item from Top. Boston's wearing them.

Paid For Items: M4 Skin, Overshirt from M4 Stylin' set.
The 3DS items in this render were converted to the .obj format using Poseray.  Free and easy to use.

Yeah, I know...I'm making it by the skin of my teeth here. It's crunch time at work again is my only excuse...
 

You made it.  That is the important part.

All links verified

ENTRY ACCEPTED

Please move to Entry Thread

What are they doing down in the valley or on the next hill over...what? Next hill? Waddaya talkin' about? I'm livin' in Brooklyn...we ain't got no no hills. Even da ones in Central Park ain't all big enough t' look inta da next valley...even if we did have a valley! Now, buildin's, we gots buildin's! Lots of 'em! Miles 'n' miles of 'em. From a rooftop in my neighborhood you gonna see what people is doin' in dere buildin' an' it may not be sumptin' polite, so youse better not bring da kids 'cause udderwise dey just might be gittin' an early education, if youse knows what I means...But, hey! If youse wants t' see over inta Manhattan, we gots da place for you! Me 'n' Big Eddie Mac, we sets up an observation deck on the top of my apartment buildin' , jus' like da one in da Empire States Buildin', weres you kin sees all da way inta da city an' who knows what you'll sees. Jus' remember, we aint responsible for any traumas or nuthin' like dat onna count of what you mights view usin' our equipments. An' afta' you gits done we gots refreshments available at our snacks bar. Hokay, so everybody line up...no shovin'...and gets youse'selves ready for da thrill of a lifetime!

1.) School Rooftop For Poser  Registration Required.
2.) Telescope  Registration Required. 3DS Model. Converted.
3.) Binoculars Registration Required.
4.) Modern Microwave  Registration Required.
5.) Hot Dog 7th Item from Top.
6.) Pop Cans Registration Required.
7.) Billboard 3D Model. Converted. (Listed as Billboard, but it's actually the sign beside the picknick table.)
8.) Styrofoam Cup With Plastic Lid.  Registration Required.
9.) Cooler. 3rd Item from Top.
10.)  Glasses. 11th Item from Top. Boston's wearing them.

Paid For Items: M4 Skin, Overshirt from M4 Stylin' set.
The 3DS items in this render were converted to the .obj format using Poseray.  Free and easy to use.

Yeah, I know...I'm making it by the skin of my teeth here. It's crunch time at work again is my only excuse...
 

Oh, that's funny!  Free hot dogs...9.50 to heat it up!  Sounds like New York!    Great image, great story!

Dana

What are they doing down in the valley or on the next hill over...what? Next hill? Waddaya talkin' about? I'm livin' in Brooklyn...we ain't got no no hills. Even da ones in Central Park ain't all big enough t' look inta da next valley...even if we did have a valley! Now, buildin's, we gots buildin's! Lots of 'em! Miles 'n' miles of 'em. From a rooftop in my neighborhood you gonna see what people is doin' in dere buildin' an' it may not be sumptin' polite, so youse better not bring da kids 'cause udderwise dey just might be gittin' an early education, if youse knows what I means...But, hey! If youse wants t' see over inta Manhattan, we gots da place for you! Me 'n' Big Eddie Mac, we sets up an observation deck on the top of my apartment buildin' , jus' like da one in da Empire States Buildin', weres you kin sees all da way inta da city an' who knows what you'll sees. Jus' remember, we aint responsible for any traumas or nuthin' like dat onna count of what you mights view usin' our equipments. An' afta' you gits done we gots refreshments available at our snacks bar. Hokay, so everybody line up...no shovin'...and gets youse'selves ready for da thrill of a lifetime!

1.) School Rooftop For Poser  Registration Required.
2.) Telescope  Registration Required. 3DS Model. Converted.
3.) Binoculars Registration Required.
4.) Modern Microwave  Registration Required.
5.) Hot Dog 7th Item from Top.
6.) Pop Cans Registration Required.
7.) Billboard 3D Model. Converted. (Listed as Billboard, but it's actually the sign beside the picknick table.)
8.) Styrofoam Cup With Plastic Lid.  Registration Required.
9.) Cooler. 3rd Item from Top.
10.)  Glasses. 11th Item from Top. Boston's wearing them.

Paid For Items: M4 Skin, Overshirt from M4 Stylin' set.
The 3DS items in this render were converted to the .obj format using Poseray.  Free and easy to use.

Yeah, I know...I'm making it by the skin of my teeth here. It's crunch time at work again is my only excuse...
 

Most of the buildings are only partial :(

UF 1 is a single front side building, but still looks very cool

UF2 is a few buildings connected together, about 3/4 complete but still missing the back side although it does come with rooms behind the 2 garage doors connected with a hallway

UF3 is a central point surrounded by only the front side of multiple buildings

UF4 (probably the best of the 4) is a bunch of complete building shells (no actual interiors)tHItHIA

Most of the buildings are only partial :(

UF 1 is a single front side building, but still looks very cool

UF2 is a few buildings connected together, about 3/4 complete but still missing the back side although it does come with rooms behind the 2 garage doors connected with a hallway

UF3 is a central point surrounded by only the front side of multiple buildings

UF4 (probably the best of the 4) is a bunch of complete building shells (no actual interiors)

I want to move next year so I may wait with the central water cooling and do it when I settle down but definitely not octocore I am obsessive but not possessed  I have to run first my 3 Titans X until the fans fall off and the pipes leak but as with all hardware you never sure what tomorrow bring . 

Aargh, all this hardware pron talk is making me want to build another computer.

No! House move.

But octocore and twin TitanXs with closed loop water cooling.

No!

Hi Again,

I love the gadget monitor very cool , I may get one as well , I love to control my workstation especially when I  am running heavy load and OC the system . 

I was thinking so many times about Central Water Cooling  but I will do that if my system is final and work without issues for some time, I study it and I can do it , I just need more confidence , that would fix some esthetic issues but I will need a very good one to cool everything efficient so need to research more and get more familiar , I was thinking that when in the future I get one more card then I will have to change all plates on my titans for water cooling so it is little investment again and definitely not for this year as my budged is spend completely  so no chance .

I checked the fans grill bracket for the 3 x 120 mm but need find cheaper or do myself from the old  side panel what is nice 4 x 120 grill just need to cut out and reducing cost to $19 lol  I could put them on front but the cooling was not as good as on top , outside would be perfect and I can put inside on top 240m big fan and I have tones of good fans to cool nice the rest of the system  and problem solved, not really a  problem but it don;t give me a peace .. I will think about today and decide what to do as I got one more idea but need to test the air performance before

I was thinking I may go with this case in the future .. really love it http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XCA86OM?psc=1

and you can put tones of stuff there , no worry about your pci-e sockets anymore and at last see the good side of the cards lol and even  Central water cooling for the future .. really nice and you can stack your rigs one on top of another .

I would love to have 2 CPU but for now not thinking about much , the ideas make me obsessive but good to have some dreams left for tomorrow  and enjoy today what you have already . Things change too fast today , I want quantum processor ! LOL  maybe I will be still alive to see it in  action in consumer rig .

But for today I am preparing my finger tips for the screwdriver and finish this thing finally including cable management as right now it looks like my PC  vomit with the cables since I was testing a lot of stuff last week and put a lot of extensions . We see how it goes , wish me luck 

 

Hi Cath

Yes this will not work with yours and this MSI should works there 

I went with Phanteks as well only due the color and I wanted to do same with my old HF X as this case I loved just due the caster wheels,with full gear has been very heavy and current mine is very heavy too,I'm running 2 SSD and 7 normal HDD(4 3TB and 2 2TB SSHD and 1 old 500GB which is my workhorse and mainly is scratch disk),agree that case have probably best air cooling and is very quiet what I liked most on that case

I did tried that and went with different fan,bought BeQuiet fans like for Corsair and for Hybrid,usually I'm running fans at 750RPM as most during the day,during the longer renders then I will up to 850-950RPM as most and for GPU too I'm running mostly how temps are and I usually controlling the if doesn't downclocking 

I've been trying to control fans via motherboard,but I went with different route as Phobya fan controller which works for me and controlling fans on Corsair and EVGA through this as Corsair SW doesn't want to control those fans alhough they're PWM,its the issue of the new V2 SW i think and I now I'm uisng SIV64 which is much better and works flawlessly for me 

Agree about the Gigabyte,I've owned two of them and both failed,Asus X99 Deluxe this board I bought,but sadly returned that baord as didn't work for me there,but agree is great board,my next board will be probably Asus Z10PE as I want to have 2 CPU and stay with 2011-3 or I wil stick with this,on this I will decide later on

This case has been designed for watercooling,there is lots of space for radiators and if I would remove drive cages etc then I would have space for radiators too,on bottom I can have 240/280mm or 480mm if I remove drive cages,on top I think 480mm is biggest and at front 240mm,if I want to go with WC loop which I will be doing if I will be putting extra GPU in coming months,that's plan 

Regarding the putting larger radiator,if temps are really low there,then I wouldn't bother at all with this,if its for look that's different story,but if temps are low,I wouldn't go with larger radiator,in my case I went with H100 as I've used earlier version on X58,but this one V2 I think have noisier pump,many people wouldn't notice,but if you are running fans on low RPM you will hear the noise of the pump,spoke with supplier and he happy to send me updated version of the pump what they use and I will take them for this or I will retunr that and put there my old Noctua D15 which I've still from my previous builds and Noctua already sent me mounting bracket for 2011-3 and I will put money towards WC loop which I will be doing 

Push/pull configurations of the fans,I tried that and temp difference has been only 2-3C on CPU and on the GPU temps has been I think just 2C lower,due this I abandoned this and running like is it

Not sure did you investigated to do full custom WC loop this should be much better option although expenisve,but will looks much better and without the downside there or you can have look on EK 360 Predator which have drybreak system and you can add there GPU waterblock etc very quickly,this is what I've used on friend build and he is very happy with that system,he running 3 GPU plus CPU with two 360mm radiators 

Yes those magnetic filters are best,those above DEMCIflex are magnetic there too

Regarding the putting GPU radiator outside this depends Cath,from my pint of view I would try to put them to the case if case allows,if doesn't then you need to improvise there,but looking like you are already improvising which I like,this cabinet cooler I think I've used once something simialr in past and has been from  Zalman(Zalman Reserator V2 ) and few other solutions are there too,you need just have look on this

Please have look on this gadget,I've same and works awesomely,its great monitoring gadget and display,its graet from one point of view,you don't need to have openned all those apps to monitor and if you need help with this I'm very happy to help you,I'm using this for few months and works great

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LCDsysinfo-for-GOverlay-USB-2-8-TFT-LCD-Module-gamer-gadget-FPS-CPU-GPU-Smartie-/121106592717?

and some displays or how this looks

http://www.goverlay.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17&start=10

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

Okay, this time I Extracted the panel and did the Fast Extrudes to mold it as an independent object. That produced some N-gons, so I went back to the previous save and Extracted the panel again. This time I used Tessellate by Slice to split the panel into four quadrants, because that's where the N-gons were before. Then I did the Fast Extrudes to mold it ... and again I got some N-gons. Rather than start all over yet again, I used Triangulate Non-Planar Facets to fix them.

I tried this with both Extrude and Fast Extrude and got the same results. I can only conclude that both Extrude and Fast Extrude will create N-gons if you offset in all three dimensions at once: pulling in the sides to create a smaller face, and moving the smaller face in or out. I have no idea why, as that seems to be precisely what those tools are designed to do.

I suppose I could start with a flat panel, Tessellate by Slice to create all the faces within the panel, check the seams as de3an suggested above, then shift-select and Z-offset the faces that should be moved in or out. That way I would Fast Extrude on only the last step, to pull the central face back level with the door face.

The UShirt has a fair degree of bridging across the cleavage, so when you apply a morph like haley that shrinks the breasts it is probably having less effect on the central portion, fursthest away from any skin, and soleaving that section behind while it pulls the mesh over and closer to the breasts in. A Smoothing Modifier may help.

Thank you, Richard, but I tried almost all G3F clothes I own on Haley, always with the same or nearly the same results. As Melissa said, it must have something to do with the shape. Or this figure only works in 4.9+

The UShirt has a fair degree of bridging across the cleavage, so when you apply a morph like haley that shrinks the breasts it is probably having less effect on the central portion, fursthest away from any skin, and soleaving that section behind while it pulls the mesh over and closer to the breasts in. A Smoothing Modifier may help.

A couple of things come to mind:

The first (that'll probably make PAs hate me) is I'm really tired of the "PAs have to put food on the table" excuse being thrown out (not in this thread, but elsewhere) and I'm really glad to see it not being used here. I've yet to see a case where that excuse was actually relevant in separating PA needs from customer needs. We want to support PAs to make cool things. We want to buy them. It's just that many of us can't afford to buy whatever at a day's notice and need to pick and choose more carefully.

The second thing, and this was a big complaint of mine about the more expensive things like Pro Bundles: there is a reason games, movies, music, and basically every other form of hobby with a release date announces it way in advance. I understand that some PAs put teasers and things on personal pages to build anticipation, but there is no real central source for this, nor any way to make use of the secondary purpose: saving for something you're looking forward to and really want. Maybe it doesn't work in Daz world, but it seems the majority of the posts in this thread are in the "we can't just spend a ton at the drop of a hat" type thing. I have however seen a few mentions of users saving for items they know are coming that they've seen posted elsewhere.

Yes.  In the back of my mind, there lurks the thought, "Lilith 7 is probably coming."  And that sort of theme is my cup of tea, precisely.  So I'm saving.  If Lil 7 arrives and isn't what I'm expecting, then there'll be a little extra, which is ok, too.  There's always something good, around the corner. 

BUT -- if I knew what Lilith 7 looked like in advance, and knew she wasn't for me -- I'd budget differently.

Then again, it seems that DAZ relies on the element of pleasant surprise.  Holding your breath, wondering what IS right around the corner.  That's pretty cool, too.  Keeps me constantly checking the shop updates. :-)

The older I get, the more adaptable I seem to get.  So whatever the policy is...I'll do my best to work with it.  Unless "it" is totally outrageus, and I draw the line at totally outrageous.

A couple of things come to mind:

The first (that'll probably make PAs hate me) is I'm really tired of the "PAs have to put food on the table" excuse being thrown out (not in this thread, but elsewhere) and I'm really glad to see it not being used here. I've yet to see a case where that excuse was actually relevant in separating PA needs from customer needs. We want to support PAs to make cool things. We want to buy them. It's just that many of us can't afford to buy whatever at a day's notice and need to pick and choose more carefully.

The second thing, and this was a big complaint of mine about the more expensive things like Pro Bundles: there is a reason games, movies, music, and basically every other form of hobby with a release date announces it way in advance. I understand that some PAs put teasers and things on personal pages to build anticipation, but there is no real central source for this, nor any way to make use of the secondary purpose: saving for something you're looking forward to and really want. Maybe it doesn't work in Daz world, but it seems the majority of the posts in this thread are in the "we can't just spend a ton at the drop of a hat" type thing. I have however seen a few mentions of users saving for items they know are coming that they've seen posted elsewhere.

 

I do like the idea of doing a central "hero" house with a partial or full interior, with the surrounding houses being less complete, or even just facades.

Overall, is it important for you guys to have all the stuff in the background (for instance, the row of houses behind the one you're shooting) or do you prefer to composite stuff like that in post?

It's usually better to have the mid-ground be actual geometry (if simplified) and only have far-ground stuff be HDRI imagery or composited in during post.

In regards to an earlier comment regarding lighting sets... for Iray specifically, is this really as important as it might have been for 3Delight?  I find in Iray I can get along pretty well with the sun/sky or an HDRI, with a few omnis dropped into the position of whatever artificial light sources might be in the scene, adjusting the exposure as necessary.

For INTERIOR sets, having lighting presets is pretty important.  HDRI-style or Exterior style lighting tends to work against interior renders.  Having actual lights (with IES profiles) can really bring the scene to life.  Especially if there are multiple presets....for the 'lights out' look, the 'daylight coming in through the windows' look, or the 'lights on at night', etc.....

Last question from this set:  would "so-so" foliage from me, that is included in the set, be preferable to, say, just adding your own foliage?  For instance, Predatron and XFrog, among others, have wonderful foliage sets and do them much better than I ever could.  In fact, I use them a lot in my own promos.

Having basic foliage (that is either prop-based, or bilboarded) that can be removed/hidden would be best in my opinion.  That way, if it looks too fake in the render, the artist can just replace those particular plants with more complex versions.  Even basic grass could just be shader-based....if it's not clearly in view and close-up, you can get away with a lot just adding a partially transparent 'edging' the has little blade tips on a shell that goes around the edges of the house/sidewalk/etc.