....Having said that, Carrara remains a hugely powerful 3D suite that can do most things pretty well, and the addition of things like Octane and VWD have, for me at least, extended the useful life of my favourite 3d package.  Until something comes along that offers something better, and I can't think of any that meets my needs right now, then Carrara will be central to my 3D work for years to come.

wise words, but the carrara render engine isn't so bad after all

I believe that there will be a version of Carrara which will support Genesis 3 figures.  Although it is taking an awfully long time, and Daz are missing out on lots of sales of product in the meantime.

I would not anticipate any other enhancements other than Genesis 3 support, I wish there would be but I am not hopeful, and given the current rate of development, the sun may have gone nova before anything happens.

Having said that, Carrara remains a hugely powerful 3D suite that can do most things pretty well, and the addition of things like Octane and VWD have, for me at least, extended the useful life of my favourite 3d package.  Until something comes along that offers something better, and I can't think of any that meets my needs right now, then Carrara will be central to my 3D work for years to come.

Roygee, thanks for the links to so many engine references.  Many of them are for the Ferret but are good to refer to.  There are many great references for that vehicle on the internet - maybe I'll have a go some time after this.

There are only partial views of the actual engine I need in the searches I've done but I'm also lacking in the basic knowledge of how these things were made to be able to make good use of those.  As you can see it didn't stop me trying!

That being said, any mechanics taking a look at my second attempt can have a laugh.  It is meant to look like an engine but I know as a fact that has major flaws.

I need only to make an exhust pipe, sort out the fan belt and pulleys and build a central part which joins the various prop shafts.  Then I will assemble the whole thing with a lot of scaling adjustments and go round the outside adding further handles, etc.

All that will be lacking is an interior but I'm definitely not going to bother.  At a minimum this would be a driver's seat, steering wheel and linkage to the steering rack and some dials, pedals and gear-sticks.  But none of this would ever be seen (same as the engine!)  There needs to be a driver's window-hatch on the outside.

@SF-Design - many thanks for your kind comment.

Great idea you welcome to copy any of my post from before if interesting , I will post the videos I prepare also there for easy find  

Ok folks, I created a thread over in Daz Studio Discussion to discuss & collect information about using all of Cath's amazing shaders so we will have a central place to collect all of the various tips/tricks/tutorials on any of her shader packs instead of having to search through numerous different threads.

I hope everyone will join me there so we can get everything in one place to make it easier on everyone.  http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/79236/thread-to-discuss-collect-tips-tricks-tutorials-etc-for-mec4d-s-pbs-shaders-all-volumes

Ok folks, I created a thread over in Daz Studio Discussion to discuss & collect information about using all of Cath's amazing shaders so we will have a central place to collect all of the various tips/tricks/tutorials on any of her shader packs instead of having to search through numerous different threads.

I hope everyone will join me there so we can get everything in one place to make it easier on everyone.  http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/79236/thread-to-discuss-collect-tips-tricks-tutorials-etc-for-mec4d-s-pbs-shaders-all-volumes

Great idea, and subscribed. Thanks for setting up the forum!

Ok folks, I created a thread over in Daz Studio Discussion to discuss & collect information about using all of Cath's amazing shaders so we will have a central place to collect all of the various tips/tricks/tutorials on any of her shader packs instead of having to search through numerous different threads.

I hope everyone will join me there so we can get everything in one place to make it easier on everyone.  http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/79236/thread-to-discuss-collect-tips-tricks-tutorials-etc-for-mec4d-s-pbs-shaders-all-volumes

These shaders are so amazing but it can be very time consuming to dig through numerous threads to understand how to best use them plus the countless little tips & tricks so I decided to create a central thread in what I hope is the best place to collect them.  I'll try to copy/paste what I can find from various other threads as I can.

Lets go folks and share our understandings!

Collection of related threads so far:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/76602/mec4d-pbs-pure-metals-merchant-resource-commercial

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/72523/mec4d-pbs-shaders-vol-2-released-commercial

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/76602/mec4d-pbs-shaders-for-iray-vol-3-merchant-resource-commercial

Just to confirm the PM, I'm in for the usual.

Let the games begin...!

Pull #1:

3683 - Dot Check
646 - Colors for Viking Male Hair
214 - A Quiet Repose
5800 - The Youth Camp - Camper's Cabin
4338 - Ibis for Victoria 3 (??)
2397 - Beach Hair
3571 - Severed Man (This could get interesting...!)
4655 - Central Park - Twilight

Now to figure out what all this crap is...!  (Victoria 3!?  Seriously!?)

Later tonight (headed out the door to run errands) I will be posting my experiments with the Iray Smart Converter and Smart Skin Managers for Genesis 2.   Here is the ReadMe.  I thought it would be rather fun for you, the viewers, to suggest what you'd like to try on a character, given screenshots of your options with the product. Want to know what the translucency does? We'll check those. Scattering effect? Glossy layered weight? We'll click and see. 

This product is excellent for quickly twiddling the skin, instead of going to Surfaces constantly and scrolling down through the sliders. Make it a custom category and have it at your fingertips! (I have Slosh's hair product, the Uber Base, and the optimized Genesis 2 skin all right there handy.)

I'm just exploring this product, so join the fun. If you have suggestions for a character you'd like to test it on (doing Genesis 2) just let me know. I'll be starting around 7pm Central. Anyone else who has this product, feel free to  help showcase it. (You can also do for Genesis, Genesis 3. I have all three of these, I like it that much.) 

Very curious, I bought this at releas but did not find the time to really test it.

Later tonight (headed out the door to run errands) I will be posting my experiments with the Iray Smart Converter and Smart Skin Managers for Genesis 2.   Here is the ReadMe.  I thought it would be rather fun for you, the viewers, to suggest what you'd like to try on a character, given screenshots of your options with the product. Want to know what the translucency does? We'll check those. Scattering effect? Glossy layered weight? We'll click and see. 

This product is excellent for quickly twiddling the skin, instead of going to Surfaces constantly and scrolling down through the sliders. Make it a custom category and have it at your fingertips! (I have Slosh's hair product, the Uber Base, and the optimized Genesis 2 skin all right there handy.)

I'm just exploring this product, so join the fun. If you have suggestions for a character you'd like to test it on (doing Genesis 2) just let me know. I'll be starting around 7pm Central. Anyone else who has this product, feel free to  help showcase it. (You can also do for Genesis, Genesis 3. I have all three of these, I like it that much.) 

For anyone who wants a look at it, I tried to convert the first of the cyber interface to 3delight. first I converted everything to DS standert material. All the glowing parts are there as a map and so I put them up in the ambient (change colour to white) , the specular and the trans map into the opacity slider. for the metal parts I use the metal shaders from the ultimate shader pack (share cg http://www.sharecg.com/v/27568/material-and-shader/Ultimate-Shader-Pack-for-DAZ-Studio) with the Ingore option. Normal maps come with it but need to be put back into use( that's for the metal parts as well). I still would like the orange on the central rings to be more glowing but its a good start.

You will ALWAYS have the textures copied into the temp folder (that's probably the folder you are seeing in 'roaming').   That is perfectly normal, they are being optimized for rendering and kept in a central loaction accessed by the renderer, along with any other temporary render files. 

If you put the textures in your content library Runtime/Texture/name/product folder and loaded them from there, that is where they will ALWAYS be loaded from (or any other folder, really...but that is the expected default location, it makes things easier to start there).  For consistency and compatiblity  purposes, they are NOT saved in the same folder as the duf preset file (of course, if you put them there to begin with and load them onto the surfaces from there, then that is where they will stay).

To be 'portable' you need the files in the /data, <whatever preset> and /Runtime/Texture (or where you loaded them from) folders.  Ideally, the /data files will be in Daz/figure/your name/morphs.  The preset should be in either People/Figure/Character/your name or /Preset/your name.  Textures were listed above.  <Your Name> will be what you listed in the Author info when you installed Studio (it also appears on the General tab of the Preferences...along with an Edit button).

yoo'd be safe from daleks in the foothills, daleks prefer flat terrain

 

...good I moved out of Central Wisconsin then, flat as a board there.

Glad you got it working, I know fixmypcmike was assisting you. Interesting that you aren't using any V4s- not even for the materials? There's some really good materials in those, and with the Iray skin optimization (and even without) some look really good IMO. I like the variety of eyebrows from generation 4, as everyone knows. Anyway, expecting to see some great showcase renders as you explore your newfound toys!  I'm working on one now.

And really ticked off. We had a 30% chance of rain according to Weather Channel. "Gonna stay off the coast, drift to central peninsula, then SUNDAY drift back and up to the Panhandle." (me) Well at 5:30am there was a loud BOOM! of thunder, and I thought what the heck was that? And you should look at the FLorida radar- been POURING down rain since then (and it's after 10am now.)  I am so annoyed because I could have gone and let my horse out of his stall and walked him around before all this started- now we're in a flash flood warning with 2-4 inches. Really? First 30% then 2-4" and 80%. (AHem, it was covering the entire Panhandle, but they still couldn't bring themselves to say 100%...)  

Sonja, I hear ya. I don't know why they put Stonemason's at the end of the month. They knew it was going to be a blockbuster, the details are amazing, so doing it at the beginning made more sense. 

First to explain the question. I got 2 PCs at each of 2 locations because I work away from home during the week. If I buy a Daz product I install it on one PC and update my content directory. Then when I go away I copy 'My Library' directory and the Postgre SQL 'CMS' directory onto a back-up drive. At the other end I copy these 2 directories onto my 2 different PCs. This has worked fine for years and with Valentina it worked OK too. Is a similar arrangement possible A) With DS 4.9 without connect system or B) With DS 4.9 with connect system. I'm only interested for now in A) but other people would be interested in B).

As a central point of Connect was DRM it may be that Connect is not copyable but I'm hoping something is still possible with DS 4.9. I don't want to install everything 4 times over.

 

I'm thinking that for contemporary municipal buildings (including police stations, high schools, boards of ed, post offices, etc) an enterprising vendor might be better off designing a generic gov't building with a set of different signs and props for customization, kind of like how the old Central Subway set had a different texture set to change the country the subway and the nearby stores belonged to. The main exception would be firehouses, which have to have distinctive exterior qualities almost by default.

Yeah.  Someplace relatively large with a large parking lot - possibly two (one for visitors, one for municiple vehicles).  Our board of education building is an old school (also fairly close to me.  The only thing I'm missing in easy walking distance is the post office and city hall - and City hall is still within what I call walking distance - just the "I'm going to complain about having to walk this far" kind).  And of course, in Chicago, you wouldn't know that the court house or City Hall are any different from any of the other various corporate offices.  (The court house/county jail at California and 26 is fairly distinct, though.)
Hospital exteriors would be, at least on the Emergency side, a little different (and a lot bigger.)  And as you said, Firehouses.  Especially as around here there's the "main" fire house and then a handfull of auxillary houses some of which are just about literally that.  A 2 or 2-1/2 story house with a garage big enough for a fire truck and an ambulance (or 2 fire trucks, depending.  The one by me has an ambulance, probably to help out the hospital) attached.

Well, there's this one

http://www.daz3d.com/gothic-city

Which doesn't come up under searches for "Police" (part of the problem with the stations being part of a city block)
And is a bit too techno-noir for my purposes anyway.  Not what I'd call a "contemporary" station.

Yes, Gothic City is done as an homage to the Tim Burton-era Batman sets.

I'm thinking that for contemporary municipal buildings (including police stations, high schools, boards of ed, post offices, etc) an enterprising vendor might be better off designing a generic gov't building with a set of different signs and props for customization, kind of like how the old Central Subway set had a different texture set to change the country the subway and the nearby stores belonged to. The main exception would be firehouses, which have to have distinctive exterior qualities almost by default.

I almost missed out on this contest, working on "stuff" for the hubby. Phew! Made it just in time. I hope my entry won't be disqualified as it is a revamp of an earlier render. When Dragon Queen for G3F came out, I "quickly" slapped together a tongue-in-cheek render with M7 wearing the outfit. I had to use Wyvern 2.0 because I didn't have Dragon 3.0. I think this is a much better image, and pretty much only the pose of M7 and DQ outfit is the same.

Go Ahead. Ham It Up, Draco.
 

I finally figured out how to use the geometry tool and tool settings, and created a "bodysuit" for Michael 7 The bodysuit, the ties in his hair, and the wing membranes all use Leather Worn Green. On the Dragon Queen outfit, the bracers and vambraces of the arms and the thighs and greaves of the boots use Tarpauline Dark Green, as does all of the skin on the dragon. (It looks a lot like scales!) I think that's Latex Green on his fingernails. And finally, the stairs, (from one of the pieces of Fantasy Castle 2011 Castle Keep,) and the cube primative landing platform use Mossy Stone. (The photo in the background is one of mine, taken in 2007 somewhere in Central Oregon, near the small town of Shaniko.)

Normally I wouldn't comment on something that is quite obvious, but let's for a moment suppose  you own a business in Germany are you going to run your business and sales by local time or by say Pacific coast time zone.in the US. A business runs by the local time and not by people who are in completely different times zones  Part of the year I live in Kiev Ukraine  and other half in Central time zone of the US do a time conversion like I do how difficult is it to google time.conversion. Just isnn't feasiblte to accomodate every time zone..

Anyone seen the dead horse?

I dang near tripped over it

Converting a time zone from one to another is NOT the issue. The issue is about keeping track of DST changes for folks who are not accustomed to DST. For example, in my country we are very lucky to follow a single timezone without any DST settings throughout the year. So when we see a different timezone we mentally note the difference in hours from our timezone. Subsequently, we do not have to rely on Google or timeanddate.com or any phone app to do the conversion everytime. We just add/subtract the hours .... mentally.

The DST changes breaks this pattern.

Moreover, Daz 3D is no longer doing business only locally. The bakery near my street corner has the luxury to follow only local timezone but a merchant who sells internationally always runs the risk of confusing and alienating its global customers if they follow the same practices back at home.  I am not expecting a company like Daz to deal with multiple languages or multiple currencies (which would have been great BTW) but at least address the DST change issue which is not standardized across the world. Neither, I am expecting Daz to run business as per my local timezone. I am only expecting Daz to follow some of established industry practices while dealing with international customers.

Normally I wouldn't comment on something that is quite obvious, but let's for a moment suppose  you own a business in Germany are you going to run your business and sales by local time or by say Pacific coast time zone.in the US. A business runs by the local time and not by people who are in completely different times zones  Part of the year I live in Kiev Ukraine  and other half in Central time zone of the US do a time conversion like I do how difficult is it to google time.conversion. Just isnn't feasiblte to accomodate every time zone..

Anyone seen the dead horse?

I dang near tripped over it