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.

..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.

Dear DAZ, :)
are we going to have another blink sale tonight? It's not "every 2 hours", as planned, the first one was up for 3 and a half hours, the next one for 3 hours, and we just changed to the third sale. It's midnight, and I wouldn't want to stay up for another 3-4 hours if this is the last one. :)
Thanks. :)

midnight where ?

Central Europe. But luckily the 3rd blink sales only lasted an hour and a half, so didn't have to stay up TOO long... :)

some more thoughts that came to mind while reading trough this all...

 

As I mentioned earlier though, the more someone spends here, the more this DRM could impact them. And anyone considering a gamedev license should be reconsidering that (and anyone else purchasing 3D content for business purposes). And I would hope the majority of of customers in these categories are paying attention. I really do not get this DRM approach, unless DAZ wants to remain a hobby-only business.

Point 1:

How exactly is encryption in its current form affecting users with a game developers license?

All export options are exactly the same as before.

Am I missing something?

Side Note:

I do own a Commercial Game Developer License for DAZ Originals because I find this is a fair deal for users who want to create holographic or VR scenes and share them with others in the future. Progress in this area was slower than expected.

The whole point in the first phase will be to make some fun VR scenes and share them with friends. That is why I will not be able to use Game Developer licenses with limited use restrictions (1-5 projects) because sharing VR scenes over social networks is going to be the same as posting images in a hopefully not so far away future.

And of course shared VR scene files will also have some kind of encryption.

So far I can not think of any issues how encryption in its current form could affect a workflow to create scenes in the OctaneRender plugin for DAZ Studio and then exporting them to OR standalone to convert them to VR scenes.

Note 2: The current form of VR scenes are mostly 360 degree images you do not need a game license for that.

Nevertheless holographic light fields may distribute the scene in a 3d holographic form. That technology is still under construction. Maybe more news at GTC 2016...

Point 2:

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...

- - -

Point 3:

All 3d software have some proprietary file formats.

If you want to move 3D objects from one software to the other you allways have to use default export options like .obj, .abc etc.

IF DAZ wanted to make the encrypted files loadable in other software they could do that.

It does not matter if a DAZ Studio plugin for Cinema4D, 3DS Max or Houdini reads .duf files or encrypted .dsf

Side Note:

It does not matter what proprietary file format DAZ Studio is using as long as the export options are not messed with.

That is why I suggested to put the export options in the EULA so it is legally binding that those options are not going to be touched ever.

I do not buy 3D products at DAZ3D to just use them in DAZ Studio. But I do not think it necessary to just protest against encryption in general because there is a risk that the encryption is going to be used in order to completly isolate DAZ3D content for use in DAZ Studio only.

With all the doubts I still think they are reasonable enough to understand that the future is to make 3D content more compatible with other software and working together with other companies bringing the content to a lot of different plattforms.

- - -

Point 4:

Yes there are currently issues with activation on other machines, backups of encrypted products. But I trust that DAZ3D will sort trough them one after the other.

Point 5:

A lot of  users are worried how DAZ Connect will affect other stores.

Some users say that the file structure of other stores will keep being traditional in content directory style.

This will make searches and categorisation inefficient because two or three different file sorting solutions are present in DAZ Studio in different runtimes.

My personal solution is indeed to only buy content at DAZ3D exactly because that way I can just use the official category system and do not have to invest any time at all adding tags to 3rd party content. I know how to create products for other stores manually. I did that for 100s of products. But I simply am not anymore in the mood to keep doing that. In the future I will pay for products with metadata set up. Either the other stores can provide that or they cannot...

Nevertheless it does not have to be that way:

Why not invite other stores to distribute their products over DAZ connect with  categories set up and in encrypted form?

DAZ3D could provide this service for free or for a small percentage of the earnings.

The benefit would be that all stores who offer content for DAZ Studio can use the same category and search options.

- If DAZ3D keeps DAZ Connect as exclusive service they could attract new users who prefer a finished category system instead of having to manually moving around files and manually adding tags

- Nevertheless if DAZ3D grants access to the DAZ Connect distribution channel to other companies this could be a start in having 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.

- - -

Yes, I know that. Wasn't my point. I know the merchant might be liable. I'm thinking about possible end users. Presuming you have a show fan who wants to do free fan-art (not ironclad in court, but most fandoms appear to assume it's OK after the Star Trek franchise owners explicitly said they allowed it), then they'd want the fan-art to be as acurate as possible, and the tattoos here aren't, which is important given their central importance to the whole series and character premiss - far more important in detail than the detail of a tattoo a character happens to have in another series (say whatever Steve McGarrett'ds tattoo is in the rebooted Hawaii Five-0 - which I couldn't even tell you what it is despite us being in season 6, because it's not important). I'd have thought a Blindspot fan wanting to do fan art would want at least some of the more obvious details right, especially the more prominent details that are very obvious: Weller's name, large and readable from quite a distance (the one writing tattoo on her that IS readable at a distance); the tree tattoo on the right forearm that is clearly of sigificance although as yet unexplained (at least here in the UK, where we are some weeks behind the US and have just gone into the mid-season break); the birds on the sides of the neck, which are very noticeable even when 'Jane' is fully clothed. The Rendo product is so very specifically not just that actress but that very unique character I can't see anyone wanting it other than to portray that character for fan-art - but the lack of specific details rather invalidates it for fan-art by real series fans. Hence I am puzzled by the merchant putting in all the effort to create it - too specific for anyone but a show fan, but not sepcific enough for  a show fan.

I don't watch the show, but I'm a big fan of hers, and I would have *never* thought that character was meant to be her until you pointed it out... and even now I just don't see it. 

Yes, I know that. Wasn't my point. I know the merchant might be liable. I'm thinking about possible end users. Presuming you have a show fan who wants to do free fan-art (not ironclad in court, but most fandoms appear to assume it's OK after the Star Trek franchise owners explicitly said they allowed it), then they'd want the fan-art to be as acurate as possible, and the tattoos here aren't, which is important given their central importance to the whole series and character premiss - far more important in detail than the detail of a tattoo a character happens to have in another series (say whatever Steve McGarrett'ds tattoo is in the rebooted Hawaii Five-0 - which I couldn't even tell you what it is despite us being in season 6, because it's not important). I'd have thought a Blindspot fan wanting to do fan art would want at least some of the more obvious details right, especially the more prominent details that are very obvious: Weller's name, large and readable from quite a distance (the one writing tattoo on her that IS readable at a distance); the tree tattoo on the right forearm that is clearly of sigificance although as yet unexplained (at least here in the UK, where we are some weeks behind the US and have just gone into the mid-season break); the birds on the sides of the neck, which are very noticeable even when 'Jane' is fully clothed. The Rendo product is so very specifically not just that actress but that very unique character I can't see anyone wanting it other than to portray that character for fan-art - but the lack of specific details rather invalidates it for fan-art by real series fans. Hence I am puzzled by the merchant putting in all the effort to create it - too specific for anyone but a show fan, but not sepcific enough for  a show fan.

 thinking cap on.  Maybe find some way to combine (1) a central vertex sphere, and (2) a second sphere that is soft body attached to the first sphere at a tangent {but have the soft body settings very rigid so it keeps it shape}, and (3) spin the central sphere, and (4) make the spinning central sphere invisible (uncheck visibility or use an alpha shader).  OK, I think so far, the second sphere will appear to be rotating in a circular orbit.  How to make the orbit shape expand and contract in time for an ellipse?  Maybe (5) for the first sphere go to the modifiers tab and choose formula.  Make the axis upon which the softbody attach has been placed augmented by the parameter P1.  Then (6) make P1 a function of time synchronized to the time it takes the central sphere to complete a rotation. 

 Sort of depends upon how the softbody interacts with distortions caused by a modifier on another object.  But it might work.

is there a way to morph a normal round orbit into elliptical orbit 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_orbit
was thinking like an electon orbiting nucleus animation

ironically, i failed geometry twice in high school