The thing is, as long as the overall trend is for sales to go up overall, it's not a problem for DAZ to exclude a large portion of their market.  Flash sales, by their very nature, are designed to reward those who visit a site most frequently, and use the tick-tock of the clock against an unknown expiration time as an incentive to make customers buy immediately.  It's not meant to be fair, and for all that this site clearly has a number of customers around the world, DAZ clearly perceives that the percentages break down in such a manner that they rarely deem it necessary to have actual humans physically available to troubleshoot when problems occur in the middle of the night, DAZ-time. 

Frankly, I'm amazed that they run the DAZ store on Rocky Mountain time, as it's pretty inconvenient for just under 80 percent of the population of the United States.   (Seriously.  47% of the U.S.population lives in the Eastern time zone alone, 32.9% in the Central zone, a piddling 5.4% in the Mountain zone where DAZ is, 14.1% in the Pacific zone with the remaining 0.6 percent in Hawaii and Alaska.)  So, if you feel like DAZ is snubbing you, personally, they're not.  They snub pretty much everyone.       

Here couple of my Urban parking HDRI maps for Iray I made in January, at end of April I am going to  capture most great places in Manhattan and behind scenes including Central Park NY

The group decided to attack the central tower, but the discussion was long and rather heated, but Ater’s argument that no one wants a Red Wizard running around without knowing where he is was the winning one. Better to go for the person whose loyalties are uncertain, than to force him to become a sworn enemy by attacking his hosts.
Merisiel and Ameiko went first with Ulfnaar right behind. As a gentleman, he always honored ladies first. Behind the big door lied a grand hallway, and several doors. The was light coming out from under one of the doors, and a shadow was seen moving. Merisiel slowly and carefully opened the door, but it made a soft sound, enough for the character inside to react. Merisiel was even faster, she jumped in with her rapier and said “Move and you die!”. It was Azbara Jos, and he said “I was expecting you, come in, have some hot wine”. He talks and the other moves into the room, but suddenly he picks something up from his sleeve, and the room instantly is filled with a thick fog.

z

The group started to look at the chest, while Ulfnaar was watching the end of the corridor. Suddenly he saw a short little figure coming. He hushed the others, and then the figure came a little closer he stepped out and said: “You there, sit down, don’t move, and don’t make a sound”.  The short fellow was a dwarf, and his name was Tharmod, and he worked as a cook at the castle. Ulfnaar asked him: “How many servings do you cook for each meal?”, and the cook replied about 20. Good, we have about 20 Dragon cultists here then Ulfnaar said.

He tells Ulfnaar that he saw a note that someone wanted to hire a cook and he took the job. He has been here somewhere between two and three moons. Rezmir and Dralmorren Borninggrey, the elf is here. Rezmir lives in the big tower. Dralmorren and a guest lives in the central tower with a guest. The guest is no one else than Ashbara Jos, which made Ater raise a brow. We told the cook to keep quiet and go back to his room. This is none of his business, and as he is an innocent bystander, he should keep out of the way when it starts to heat up, as it will do.

my first render with this character shows a series of folds in the central chest area. Has anyone else found this?

hey Tim

is this hdri only ?

i know how this looks without the lighting and shaders

can you tell a bit

looks nice

Glad you like it.

There's only one light other than the HDRI. That's a small, blue point light above the central platform. (Since doing this render, I've learned how to use the geometry editor to create new surfaces. The new version now uses emission surfaces to accomplish the same thing.)

The metal shader comes from Mec4D's wonderful PBS shaders. I use these all the time and highly recommend them.

Feel free to ask any further questions.

-- Tim.

Edit: The HDRI map is called AlienRoom.hdr.

Paolo with Reality will be on the thread in a minute to answer questions about Reality.He'll be with us about an hour. Come join us! If you don't use Reality or have questions, now is your chance. Reality is sold here at DAZ, and is a PBR using LuxRender.

That will be (to make it easy for folks) 8pm Eastern, 7pm Central, 6pm Mountain, 5pm Pacific, Alaska 4pm and Hawaii 3pm. Although if you're in Hawaii and are outside surfing or merely basking in the sunshine we'll understand. 

Have to agree on the float. I ended up not buying either one. I did get five things for about $6, including the Modern Brides. Would be a nice background scene (there are some wedding things in the store) and having a wedding scene in a book allows for SO much to happen/go wrong or just to showcase gorgeous plants/flowers/formal setups.

I got Dark Fantasy Weapons (.98)

Dual Wielding Poses (Gen2, Gianni) ($1.25) GREAT starting positions to tweak for other poses

Aim And Shoot  (Victoria 6 and Olympia 6) ($1.36) as I have NO clue on posing for archery and at that price, it wouldn't be worth my time to do it anyway!

That Platinum Cocktail Dress  ($2) and  Modern Brides ($1.20)   all added up to $6.79 with the PClub discount of $6. I'm done.

And no, no Encrypted stuff for me. I'm not one of the adamantly opposed people, but  1. I am using 4.8, building extensive custom Categories, and not switching back and forth to 4.9. I don't have the time or patience to make a list of what is encrypted and what isn't, so I'm keeping it simple and avoiding encrypted unless it really has a WOW!!!!!!! factor. Even then.....2. I have more than what I can use in a year. So if I still want it (I don't NEED anything at this point) then I'll get it.

BTW, let's chat about that. This is a "no one is going to judge you whatsoever" if you get encrypted content. Feel free to showcase it (as I won't be getting most of it probably, depends on the releases) as we want all products covered. You don't have to explain why you got it, defend it, nada. If it's good and you want it, and are comfortable with encrypted, or are using 4.9 so it doesn't matter if it's encrypted, would love to see it showcased too. Just please identify at the time that it is encrypted, it's a hard habit to break to NOT look and see first, and I keep forgetting. It will help those people who are not using 4.9 (and may have nothing to do with encryption.)  

Happy rendering. I have to go read the Reality Users Manual and get questions ready for Paolo on the Reality thread here in the Art Studio. Tune in tonight at 8pm Eastern (7PM Central time and 6 PM Mountain Time and 5PM Pacific Time. I was curious- In Alaska, that will be 4PM and Hawaii 3PM) Even if you aren't there when it starts, you can read up/catch up and Paolo will take additional questions as the evening goes on.

I'm getting close to a final version. I'm particularly wondering if adding the gun is over the top.

 

It might just be me but everything looks as if it is floating above the table, there are no shadows around the items to ground them.

Good point. The shadows would be falling away from the central, overhead light, so no shadow on the gun and ashtray makes sense, but there should be a shadow on the glass. I'm also bothered by the lack of shadow under the table in back.

I thought the renderer was supposed to handle that, but I may have to add them in postwork.

...again congratulations on your 52nd trip around our central stellar primary. 

Just make sure you don't end up with a chocolate moose cake instead.

...The I Wanted Mousse But Got A Moose Instead Complaint Thread

Oh man coffee splutter all over my ipad, LOL at choc moose !

thank yoo!  

chocolate moose mousse  nomm

and plane from transformers!  

...

birthday party startin, 52nd orbit 

90's dance music.  CAAAAKE and tasty goodies, some sugar free, all weekend

Hey HBD sweetie, a three-day birthday whoa 

 

Happy birthday to Misty!

 

Thank You.   CAAAAKE!  

for those about to CAKE, 
CAKE is not a lie,
nor is pie

ordered a white cake chocolate mousse cake 

 

this the one-

...again congratulations on your 52nd trip around our central stellar primary. 

Just make sure you don't end up with a chocolate moose cake instead.

...The I Wanted Mousse But Got A Moose Instead Complaint Thread

Oh man coffee splutter all over my ipad, LOL at choc moose !

...

birthday party startin, 52nd orbit 

90's dance music.  CAAAAKE and tasty goodies, some sugar free, all weekend

Hey HBD sweetie, a three-day birthday whoa 

 

Happy birthday to Misty!

 

Thank You.   CAAAAKE!  

for those about to CAKE, 
CAKE is not a lie,
nor is pie

ordered a white cake chocolate mousse cake 

 

this the one-

...again congratulations on your 52nd trip around our central stellar primary. 

Just make sure you don't end up with a chocolate moose cake instead.

...The I Wanted Mousse But Got A Moose Instead Complaint Thread

I don't know. When I lived in the German-speaking Switzerland the translation words used for menu items and other such things often depended on the professional subcontext the reader was working in and different German speaking parts of the world ended up standardized on different translations of these standard menu word entries - sometimes very long and obscure professional terms consider the lack of space menus have. Sometimes even other native-speaking German could not understand the meaning of a menu entry. That has largely been remedied now but the central governments.DAZ's French translation is probably similarly influenced.

DMY    Asia (Central, SE, West), Australia (24), New Zealand (5), parts of Europe (ca. 675), most of Latin America (570), North Africa; India (1240), Indonesia (250), Nigeria (170), Bangladesh (150), Russia (140)    3295 million people

YMD    China (1360), Koreas (75), Taiwan (23), Hungary (10), Iran (80), Japan (130), Lithuania. Known in other countries due to ISO 8601.    1660 million people

MDY    Belize, Federated States of Micronesia, United States (320)    320 million people

Having grown up in an era when central heating wasn't common, one of the first things I would do on really cold mornings was check the windows to see what frost patterns had been left for me.  They are so pretty.

cold cold coooold snap

they now predicting with windchill -21F

it's even colder in celsius

 

the Florida manatees are feeling the nip

...that's brutal, and the reason Why I left North Central Wisconsin for the wet but usually milder climate of the Northwest.

Yeah our brief February Spring is over for now and it's back to water falling from the sky (thankfully not in frozen form).  City radar map is entirely green with a few yellow blobs (heavier rain). Still rather mild though, considering.

Going to be -13° (-29° "real feel") in my old hometown of Steven's Point Friday night/Caturday morning.

Ok here it goes :) I think it is a good start, I am hoping that it will be able to take shaders in the future like that Room Prop V2

That looks wonderfully surreal - is it just the caverns prop or have you used a background image too? I particularly like the look of the 'background' either side of the main central column.

If it's just the prop then I'm amazed ! What material did you use?

..all 3D asset stores working together in creating one categorisation system for all stores. DAZ3D could provide DAZ Connect as a central SERVICE to all other companies interested in sharing 3D content with their users.

You don't need Connect for this - just standardized format for metadata, but this didn't happen as for now and not likely to be in the future.

DAZ connect is the distribution system with the benefit that it shows both installed and uninstalled products.

Metadata includes just the categories. Products of other stores are currently not uploaded on the DAZ connect server so you will not see uninstalled products from other stores in DAZ Studio "all" or "available" tabs.

Example:

You open up DAZ Studio and browse to the category wardrobe/shirts in the Smart Content Tab.

Currently with DAZ Studio 4.9 you can see all installed and uninstalled products you purchased at DAZ3D.

You can also see those products with metadata from other stores that are installed.

Now imagine in the same spot all products you purchased in other stores that include shirts would show up in the same place no matter if they are installed or not.

Currently you cannot right click uninstalled products of others stores directly in the DAZ Studio Smart content tab and download and install them because the other stores have not uploaded any products to the DAZ Connect Servers.

- - -

Just because something did not happen in the past does not mean that it must stay the same.

Allready in the first metadata products of 2011 there was the option to add a store identifier to the metadata.

And some vendors in other stores  did make an effort of adding categories to their products.

Therefore it could very well be that some 3rd party stores or vendors might actually be interested to upload their products on the DAZ connect server so their customers could download them directly inside DAZ Studio as well.

But probably it is a bit too early in the development cycle now and all the issues have to be sorted out before involving even more people...

Anyway the reason why I brought this up is that I was under the impression that it does not have to be "X VS Y" but they could all find a way to work together if that makes sense for them from a business perspective.

As utoptian as the idea of a unified market sounds, the realistic concern is who would dictate terms for that market. Connect as the de facto platform for the market would be an absolute disaster. Even if Daz didn't force controls on other markets to be allowed onboard, the idea that DAZ could simply cut the others off on a whim would have a seriously negative effect on the other stores. Plus it could hardly be in Daz's interest to promote other stores. I'm not even an economist and I can see that it wouldn't work. Plus trying to manage artists is like herding cats. Trying to manage several herds of cats is just insanity.

In the past there were some kind of .duf files that were not readable with a textfile reader like notepad etc.

There may only have been very few posts that even mentioned this. The average users did not seem to have an issue with that.

Did you not notice because in fact you actually never even bothered trying to fix .duf manually by editing the code?

In all the time I only about three times edited a .duf file manually. In all the other times I wanted to edit a .duf I noticed that the .duf is encrypted, shrugged with the shoulders and moved on...

I didn't mention it because it's the past. Those were .daz files, they were binary and also had encryption option but I usually hacked .cr2 and .pz3 that time :)

And I doubt You want to be merely "average user". :)

I wonder if those files aren't so much encrypted as compressed. And thus can be uncompressed. I do note that I'm not able to use products with .daz files that have been installed through connect. Which given that they're useful products from some notable PAs kinda bothers me, but I put a ticket in on that. Also I should be able to save the assets out in nice unencrypted .dufs I believe. If I can make them open. I think when I poked at them for the sake of being able to add some of my troubleshooting to the ticket, I was able to get them to open by setting the product folder as a base runtime for DAZ Studio content in the content pane. But as this affects several products, that's not an ideal solution. I suppose if I just copied them to my normal library it'd likely find them. It just seems whatever Connect is using to let products find their resources is not working for these particular products with that filetype. 

But the point is compression is not the same thing. While a compressed file can be encrypted, and isn't readable plaintext, an non-encrypted compressed file can be uncompressed and read as normal. Just having a proprietary format isn't the same as having an encryption locked one. For a good example, I'll point to gaming. Most games use files that are specific to that game. But they're not encrypted to a specific user. So tools made to modify game files can be worked on by multiple people, who can puzzle out how to edit the files, and make mods that will work for others. And some games do encrypt their files or use compression methods not commonly available in order to prevent modification. The difference is, games are presented as something we're meant to use in the form the creators intended. Do you really want your 3d artistic content to be like that? People do wonderful creative things with content all the time through a variety of methods, including direct editing of the files. Locking the files to encrypted formats is pretty much demanding that we only color within the lines with the products.

To the original post quoted: Just because you don't edit .duf files often doesn't mean there aren't users who do. And I'm sure if they encountered the compressed/binary ones, they saved them in a non-binary uncompressed form and went to editing. 

And you shouldn't try to claim that all export options are the same when Daz has outright stated that Cararra's normal ability to read .dufs and the DSON plugin for Poser users do not work with encrypted content at this time. That's two options down, and the others are stated as being 'less than' what the product was originally. Which is how they had been, but now with less chance some bright person could write a plugin or converter to handle carrying over more functionality into other software.

No way around it, DRM encryption cripples the products it's used on in order to lock them down. Maybe you don't need the lost functionality. Maybe most users don't. But there are people who relied on it to do their work with this software, and there's always the possibility of others running into a situation where such access could be useful only to have it denied.

My understanding is that .daz files are mostly used for dynamic clothing products. I believe they are not encrypted, but they do use a completely undocument binary format, and the reason the spec is kept secret is so that people do not make their own dynamic clothing. This should only be done with an app from Optitex, a product, I believe, that costs 10s of thousands of dollars, and just a single DAZ PA has access to. Hence the rather small amount of dynamic clothing available in the store.

Wouldn't know about the dynamic clothing. I'm talking about stuff like Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 2. (A lovely set to be sure, but concrete and stone are rarely dynamic. Though it'd be funny to watch a dynamics simultation where it was turned to cloth and buildings all fell into a pile...)

..all 3D asset stores working together in creating one categorisation system for all stores. DAZ3D could provide DAZ Connect as a central SERVICE to all other companies interested in sharing 3D content with their users.

You don't need Connect for this - just standardized format for metadata, but this didn't happen as for now and not likely to be in the future.

DAZ connect is the distribution system with the benefit that it shows both installed and uninstalled products.

Metadata includes just the categories. Products of other stores are currently not uploaded on the DAZ connect server so you will not see uninstalled products from other stores in DAZ Studio "all" or "available" tabs.

Example:

You open up DAZ Studio and browse to the category wardrobe/shirts in the Smart Content Tab.

Currently with DAZ Studio 4.9 you can see all installed and uninstalled products you purchased at DAZ3D.

You can also see those products with metadata from other stores that are installed.

Now imagine in the same spot all products you purchased in other stores that include shirts would show up in the same place no matter if they are installed or not.

Currently you cannot right click uninstalled products of others stores directly in the DAZ Studio Smart content tab and download and install them because the other stores have not uploaded any products to the DAZ Connect Servers.

- - -

Just because something did not happen in the past does not mean that it must stay the same.

Allready in the first metadata products of 2011 there was the option to add a store identifier to the metadata.

And some vendors in other stores  did make an effort of adding categories to their products.

Therefore it could very well be that some 3rd party stores or vendors might actually be interested to upload their products on the DAZ connect server so their customers could download them directly inside DAZ Studio as well.

But probably it is a bit too early in the development cycle now and all the issues have to be sorted out before involving even more people...

Anyway the reason why I brought this up is that I was under the impression that it does not have to be "X VS Y" but they could all find a way to work together if that makes sense for them from a business perspective.