The big problem with distant lights in Iray is that there is no shadow softness, which sunlight DOES have. But then sunlight can't be combined with an environment map, which is annoying.

 

One simple solution I've found is to parent a spotlight to a central pivot object, make the spotlight a disk or sphere, move the spotlight Z up a lot, and then adjust. You essentially have a 'sun' you can place as needed. Doesn't work with every backdrop, but works pretty well overall.

 

...yeah that is the issue with environment domes/HDRIs which don't have a "sun" (or in the case of night settings "moon") included.   Tried to use a Distant light with one of the Yosemite HDRIs but it produces a solid black shadow on the shadow catching plane.

I wonder if there are any other tricks to getting a more "diffuse" edge effect to shadows with a distant light.

Again, we really need a pack of Iray sky HDRIs that include a proper sun/moon light for use with other environment and scenery sets .

The big problem with distant lights in Iray is that there is no shadow softness, which sunlight DOES have. But then sunlight can't be combined with an environment map, which is annoying.

One simple solution I've found is to parent a spotlight to a central pivot object, make the spotlight a disk or sphere, move the spotlight Z up a lot, and then adjust. You essentially have a 'sun' you can place as needed. Doesn't work with every backdrop, but works pretty well overall.

The same shader as my last render (well I've made a few tweaks to the setup) also a hint of bloom to make the shiny bits even shinier. The pink is the original texture. I have the shader  set up so it remains the same when I apply my modified shader (I'm quite proud of that one). I think I've also gotten a handle on finishing things and not obsessively going back to tweak them more, I had two moments while rendering this where I went "you know I could set up the shader so it does this...  NO its done." The 3delight version I was constantly upgrading (breaking all my previous presets in the process) 

 

TLDR:  I like Shiny!

Slightly larger version in my gallery. I just realized I didnt have a render of my dress there, oops.

I really like this; the only concern that puts me off is the vertical position of the subject and the central placement.

these were OK but not exactly to my likeing some of the presets were a tad too close to the face as far as the mesh light thingys. i had another set that did ok for what i need. so i guess it depends on what you are looking for. still.. since iray has such powerful lighting system its always good to have things like these none the less :-).

DAZ likes the lights like this to load in the default central position. It's up to the customer to move them to their desired location in the scene as you would with your figures and props. 

Well, there's a first time for everything. 

Several of us have been having a LOT of problems with images attaching to posts- it's taking me two or three times on many of them. But after I did a post, imagine my surprise at getting this message! 

Anyone else seen this tonight? (happened at 11:25pm Central)

And of course, it took three tries to get this to attach. Seriously, can they please get that fixed? It is NOT random, many of us are experiencing it!!!!

Happy for you that Spring is about to spring for you, ps1borg!  But here, that means things are about to Fall.  However, you wouldn't know it by the temperatures we are looking forward to this week in my area.  Upper 80s and even 90s F. 

Dana

Can only dream of warm right now, our central heating kicked in just as the sun rose and hasn't stopped. Meanwhile the radio is saying it will be the hottest spring evah - but not yet :)

I hate admitting defeat... (Insert childish pouting and crying here)

Thanks everyone... again... again...

Looking into Rich's idea about importing, and the other idea about exporting or saving as Daz stuff... (I know that will work, but it is a constant REDO process, while editing in external programs.)

If it, for some reason, saves this extra info for the MTL, I may be able to write a quick program to slap "My defaults", to the MTL files before importing. That isn't much of a bother, as I can have it auto-append to every file in a folder. At-least it will only be a one-step process.

This is just ONE of the objects I am using... (Still playing with geometry and detail, but, test-rendering in Daz, to ensure things are seen correctly.)

Ship: Old war frigate, updated and converted into a mini cruise-ship, for private use. Loosely based off the "USS. Constitution ship.", but bigger... The ungifted bigger brother, intended to be sold to the British navy, but pirates stole it. (There is an irony within the story, the novel.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution

Areas: Sun-Deck, Top-deck, Mid-deck, Main-deck, Lower-deck, Storage-Deck, Keel

The Sun-deck is where the life-boats are. The Top-deck contains about 20 rooms, laundry-room, medical bay and the control-tower. The mid-deck contains about 40 rooms, the pool, the hot-tub, showers, bathrooms, cafeteria. The main deck is on the mid-deck, but it is the central component with two shops, 17 tables, 50 bench-seats, 6 trash-cans, 6 look-out glasses, 4 power-blocks. The lower deck contains another 30 rooms, the cafe, the casino, the lounge, the strip-club, the movie theater (which is under the sun-deck at the nose of the boat.) the back-stage, the film-room, a private lounge. The storage deck contains the upper engine-area, crews quarters, various storage locations. The keel contains the lower engine area and more storage and ballasts.

Not including any of the rooms contents, which are now being broken-up into isolated scenes, as well as the inner floors. (Obviously not seen, but built within the ship to ensure reality of them "fitting into real space".) Everything in there, except the outline of the blue person, is all original. The blue person is the sketchup-person that comes with the default empty scene. She, however, will not be part of my visual-novel game. She is just there for scale, while I rig the cameras and lighting.

It is for a visual novel. You traverse the locations as pre-set camera angles, within the story. Sort-of free-roaming, but limited by the story-line. Not an actual 3D place to walk around though. I may upgrade it to VRML panoramic views, to save some storage space and work-flow. Plus, it's a little cooler to be able to spin the view around 360, or have the camera turn to look at aomeone arriving from off-camera.

All with default plastic, 100% gloss, 100% diffuse white, 100% specular grey, 0% reflection. xD

My settings are more like this... 94% diffuse (whatever the object color is), 15% glossy, 6% specular white, 2% reflection white.

I did find a way to group them so I can bang-out the initial slider settings for the whole thing as one solid object, but that is annoying to have to keep doing, for a test-render.

This is what I get trying to do 100 things at once, alone... I need more arms and heads and computers and time!

Attached is a tiny fraction of the things I am fighting with, at the moment. (The ship, The pool area mid-deck, assorted junk, transparent view.)

...in my old SF story the term "Prime" referred to the "whole" of being as well as balance.

It was also a numeric value equal to 64 ("100 base 8") in the Sabrinno culture as they counted in 8s having only 4 fingers and toes (in their aincent times, each toe was used as a place keeper after 8 was reached on the fingers, yeah, an odd counting system). This made for an interesting situation between different cultures which developed different counting bases.

The term also was used to denote the pinnacle of whatever it was applied to.  Prime Command was in essence the "Starfleet" of the Protectorate which was a federation of four major founding interstellar "nations" in the area of space where the story was set (the next arm of the galaxy inwards towards the centre).  Humans were the outsiders and our "nation" was not some nice happy liberal minded federation that eschewed the notions of money and wealth, but a heavily commerce driven organisation loosely patterned after the old Hanseatic League called the Consortium, that had it's foundations in commercially based exploration and subsequent exploitation of resources in space (the central administrative and financial capital was located in the Singapore Megaplex).

The first contact between humans and another major interstellar culture was with the Sabrinno League (one of the four founding members of the Protectorate) which led to the Midway Accord that established construction of a neutral trade zone (kind of like a complex of free floating "O'Neill-like" colonies) at a system located in the rift between the galactic arms at roughly the midpoint between the two interstellar powers (as the Protectorate was wary of letting just any old ship from a culture they barely knew, entering their space). All commercial ships capable of the journey between the two powers were required to make a "technical" stop here for inspection before receiving the necessary clearance passcodes to proceed on to their destinations. Most often Midway, served as a transfer point (a "hub" if you will) for travellers and trade between the Consortium and Protectorate, as permits for direct operations between the two nations were strictly limited through a bilateral agreement (similar to how international air travel here in RL was before "Open Skies").

The station had it's own defence forces that were manned equally by Sabrinno, Sestrii, Da'alen, Kandar, and Umanati (as humans were called) personnel. The Protectorate had this thing about "balance", even though collectively, they outnumbered the human contingent at the station 4 to 1.  Military vessels from either side (including individual member nations) were prohibited from entering the region by treaty unless it was threatened by a yet undiscovered hostile force (of course, Prime command stationed a "Tempest" contingent at a "failsafe" point nearby on a rotating basis, while the Consortium maintained a "scientific research outpost" on a seemingly insignificant planetary system a day or so jump away).

I originally developed this scenario over three decades ago and the roots of the idea (the Sabrinno culture) go back as far as 1975-76.

I like to fly.  I just hate airports these days.  Also, the seats have shrunk so much and I have expanded so much that we don't get along well.  But once I'm shoehorned into the seat I love to watch out the window and try to ignore the chaos in the plane.

Me too.  I recently went with Pre-Check and I've been buying only first class tickets.  The seats are an insult, they are too close to allow reclining, and if the airlines aren't careful, they'll get regulated for safety.  I'm only 5' 6" and my knees are almost touching the seat in front of me in regular coach.

Edit:  I think they also have become a little bit too restrictive with luggage.  At least with a 1st Class ticket, I can check 2 pieces for free.  With a coach ticket, the first bag costs $25 and the second one goes up to $110 or $130, and often from that point, a 1st Class ticket isn't much more and you get an actual meal with actual dinnerware.

I started flying when I went to college, back in 1966.  That was when you still had to run out in the rain and walk up the steps directly into the airplane.  But the seats were decent sized, you got real, hot meals and you weren't riding with 400 other people each with their own fragrances.  And even then the people in the planes were higher class and behaved themselves.

 

...yeah I miss those days. "The friendly skies" are anything but these days.

Like LG, I love the experience of flying. It's all the rubbish that surrounds it which I have to deal with that makes it a most unpleasant experience. Used to be you could get to the airport 30 min before a flight and it was fine, now you need almost two hours to deal with the check in process, security screening, and boarding, especially if you fly "Cattle Call Airlines" (Southwest) as they have no advance seat assignments and no one want's that "middle seat". "Shoehorning" is an understatement for what one has to deal with to fly what I call "torture class" (being tall, somewhat heavy set and rather brittle at the joints makes it a very painful experience).  I actually have more legroom on a Portland city bus than I do in an airliner, and when travelling between cities, Running Dog"/Bolt Bus is almost like First Class in comparison. 

Furthermore, the major airlines (save Southwest) are going more and more to those "regional jets" which are little more than "business jets on steroids" (of course without the luxurious "Bizjet" amenities) on longer and longer flights (forget first class on these as they don't have it).  Crikey, I had more room and could actually stand up to walk down the aisle on an old North Central Convair Metro, United (formerly Capital) Viscount, or Ozark "Gooney Bird" (F-27) than on today's pint sized "toy" jetliners.

Then there is the lack of choice on who to fly.  Today there are basically four major airlines: Delta, Ameriflot, United, and Southwest. (and I keep hearing rumblings of more possible mergers) along with  Alaska (primarily a regional West Coast carrier).  Every trip seems to require at least one connection in some hellish mega-hub like Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, or O'Hare as well as out of the way travel. Gone are the likes of Eastern, TWA, Northwest, Continental, National, Western, and the always colourful Braniff (I loved their big leather seats).  Before deregulation, airlines competed on the basis of comfort, quality of service, as well as on time performance and you could find more non stop and direct flights from even small and medium sized cities that didn't involve changing planes. I remember when you were still served meals on real plates with real glasses and utensils in tourist class and had a several menu choices to boot.  Flying First Class back then, made one feel etremely special and important compared to today.  If you were a "'Miler" (frequent flier which was usually only business travellers back then) you were treated as someone important and received various perks. Of course no matter which class of service you travelled in, you always "dreseed up" and made sure you were well groomed for the occasion.

There were the planes themselves, all classics today.  The DC-8 and stretch DC-8 (the largest airliner in the west until the 747*), the "iconic" 707 "stratojet", and it's slightly smaller but faster sister, the 720 (affectiontely referred to as "Boeing's Thunderbird" after the sports car of the same name), The sleek and fast looking high tailed 727, the dependable DC-9 that brought jet service to small communities, the odd looking Convair 990 with it's "speed pods" on the back of the wing, and the "cheeky" French Caravalle that United operated in the east which was all First Class. Then beforehand were the great prop liners like the triple tailed Connies, Stratocruisers (the first "jumbo" airliner which like the 747, had a spiral staircase leading to the lounge below the main cabin), DC-6s & 7s, Electras, Viscounts, and Convair Liners.  It was indeed an exciting time to travel by air.

[*The Soviets had one bigger, the turboprop powered Tupolev 114-D which was built off the TU 95 Bear airframe. It was a massive beast with four huge sets of counter rotating props swept wings and tail surfaces and stood so high (to provide clearance for the props) that you could drive a truck underneath it's belly.  It's cruise speed was close to the 707 and it had a range of almost 10,000KM with a capacity of up to 200 passengers. Besides Aeroflot, Japan Airlines also operated a couple aircraft for about two years under agreement with Aeroflot on their Tokyo - Moscow route.]

Today, I prefer to travel by train domestically, No airport hassles, no long security lines, not being poked and prodded where only my doctor is permitted to, no luggage fees, no carry on restrictions (you are even encouraged to bring snacks, and food along, just no booze), not having someone sit in my lap for several hours, not worrying about having my luggage pilfered by TSA agents (a growing issue these days), and no changing at some out of the way hub even for a relatively short trip. For long trips I book sleeper car accommodations.  Yes a bit more expensive and takes more time, but compared to full fare "torture class" (unrestricted, no penalty for changes or advance purchase required) it really isn't much more, and I'm wined and dined all the way.

The two giants of the "classic" jet age.

Fig 1. TU 114-D

Fig 2, DC-8 "Stretch"

Fig 3. The first double deck "jumbo", the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser.

...The I Miss The Days Of Classy Air Travel Complaint Thread.

...The I Really Hate ThIs Spell Checker Complaint Thread

So, are Jack Tomalin's, Stonemason's, and Maclean's structures up to OSHA standards?  (the ones that aren't falling apart, I mean, LOL)

No, I want a little more attention to plausible details...some of which are critical.

This is the level seen in freebie content (actually many of the missing items details ARE present in quite a bit of free content)...not something that costs $30!

Agreed 100%  Though wires are very rarely found in 3D models of any quality due to the difficulty in rigging (and in the case of wires running along a wall, like what would be realistic for a model like this treehouse, for aesthetic reasons as well) 

Then again, how many lamp or phone models do you see with a plug-in cord?  How many full modern building scenes do you see with electrical outlets?  Not very many, but that's mainly because few people are interested in that level of detail.

But yeah, the architectural integrity and appliances that require central plumbing are the absurdities, and not the lack of electrical wiring which, let's be honest, few people care about, esp. outside of scene close-ups.  Mind you, I'm not suggesting nor demanding that artists install plumbing pipes running up and down treehouses like this, simply that the plumbing facilities shouldn't be there in the first place.

Speaking of, let's not miss the fact that SOMEONE had to drag a toilet and a refridgerator up there!   Unless they hoisted that stuff up using a crane, that is.  Would that even work?  Doesn't that sort of heavy machinery require a sturdy and level surface?  I mean, engineers always lay the foundation first before building. 

There have been a number of items in the store in the past year or so that fail the functrionality test. The 'fantasy fort' mentioned by wiz, above. Any number of four-wheel carts and wagons that have NO clearance for the front wheels, so it is impossible for them tro turn. The recent 'mad max' style motorcycle tricycle with the entire engine hanging un-supported off the front.
Which other vehicles?  I'm guessing the Carriage House is one (but let's be honest, it's an absurd model anyhow, so who cares as long as you don't have it Milhorse 1 or two-drawn.  Yeah, with how low the handles are, you'd better plan to have it drawn by a whole bunch of giant Noggin's rats...)

Happy Birthday, Tjohn!!!

Dana

Thank you, Dana. And thanks to all for the well-wishes. I'm feeling a little better today. planning to go out for a little breakfast this morning.

..waoh, how did Dana know that? 

Well happy, (how many is it?) 62 trips around our central main sequence G class stellar primary. Not far behind you.

I take notes.    I put it in my Outlook calendar last year.  The reminder popped up two nights ago.

Dana

Happy Birthday, Tjohn!!!

Dana

Thank you, Dana. And thanks to all for the well-wishes. I'm feeling a little better today. planning to go out for a little breakfast this morning.

..waoh, how did Dana know that? 

Well happy, (how many is it?) 62 trips around our central main sequence G class stellar primary. Not far behind you.

And you have to be careful- it might look okay but whenever you go to another page, it can change. It can also change once it starts being processed, when the swirling is occurring.Trying to avoid buying around 1am to 1:15am Central Time (and now, sometimes it's 1:25am or so) as the prices can easily change on you.

I found several items that have the same problem. I am a PC+ member, so the prices I see might be different than yours.

e.g., The Portello (13953) shows -81% $20.95 $4.03 in my wishlist and on its product page (50% DAZ Original sale, 30% PC+ discount on DAZ originals, plus some other (46%?) unnanounced reduction on FWDesign/Forbidden Whispers?), yet when I add it to my cart, it comes up as $10.48, clearly only with the 50% discount for DAZ originals, currently going in effect. Where's the extra 30% for PC+  and the other reduction?

Central District Subway (13713), Tangien Courtyard (12983) have the same problem (but not the Tangien Corner (12970) nor Tangien Portico(12971)). Only in my wishlist (both show -81%), but the product pages and shopping cart show 50%.

Yes I refeshed the browser, restarted the browser, logged out and back in. This was not happening earlier in the day, but I fear these prices will be gone by the time anyone can do anything about it. More lost sales...

Thanks.  I'll see if I can find that...

My attempt was a bust.... I asked on the Z Central forums so got my fingers crossed for some help from the pros there! 

Hi,

I was just wondering if there is any sort of planned movement towards more permissive lincenses for realtime 3D applications / video games.  Ultimately this is central to whether or not I continue to invest in Daz content.  Personally I would rather see one figure to license all content (rather than 2k per artist where available) so I can better understand the value, budget for my licenseing accordingly and be left to the business of 'creating experiences'.  Failing that including 3D licenses for a cost percentage of the model may also work - at least you know that once you've paid you're licensed.  Some combination of the above would be great as well but where you can only obtain licenses for a fraction of the content and you need to license your hair from one artist and your boots from another at 2k a pop its just too convoluted and expensive...

Is anyone in a position to indicate whether Daz intends to continue to focus on 2d or if they will be moving with the times and competeing with the likes of adobe/mixamo?

Thanks for any insight.

there's always Zbrush central too for models, and Sculptris forum, many make them for just for printing not 3D art

iClone pipeline another posibility can put your friends faces on them too.

I have an XYZ printer, it is crap

Pic-a-nik?!? Sheeesh! Brudda, have I gotta pic-a-nik story fer you! So, de udda day T'oie...you remember my bestest giol T'oie, right? Anyway, she comes t' me and says "I gotta new summa' dress an' I wanna go out onna pic-a-nik." "Pic-a-nik?" I says t' her, "where are we gonna go onna pic-a-nik 'round here?" "We ain't," she says t' me, "we're goin' t' Central Park!" "Central Park!?!" by dis time I wuz gettin' pretty hot... "Central Park! Ya means we gotta load up alla da stuff in a basket, carry it all on da bus, ride all da way downtown wit' alla dem hot, smelly people, git off, haulin' alla our junk wit' us, try t' find us a place t' sets up, fightin' off alla da people, da bums, da drunks, da soccer players, da hippies, da yuppies, da hipsters, da muggers...an' da ants! Notta chance!

Two blocks down and 'round da corner is a spot jus' as good as Central Park and it ain't gonna cost us a dime an' we don't hafta puts up wit alla dem people, 'cause nobody uses dat lot since ol' man McGinty's store burnt down 10 years ago an' dey never bothered t' clean it up. Hokay, dere are some rats 'round an' a few winos, but dey both chases off pretty easy. So dat's what we did! I gotta good feast, a few brews an' T'oie got t' show off her new dress to da winos before dey split. Who could ask fer a better summa' pic-a-nik?

 

As always, figure set-up in DAZ Studio 4.7 and final render in Bryce 7.1. No postwork save for addition of signature and copyright date.

That is awesome! LOL!  Yeah... we guys can be a little obtuse... very practical... but obtuse!

As the camera has a "focal point" indicator, I would love to have the ground-plane indicate the LOD-zones, with the ability to adjust them.

Settings for the editor LOD being unique to the scene-render LOD, by isolation of the controls bound to "A camera", for the render, and bound to "General settings" for the viewports. Optionally, having the ability to "Isolate scenery to current LOD". So everything beyond the LOD at our working location is just hidden, not the scenery LOD which we are obviously editing.

Okay, don't call it LOD for the viewport, call it draw-distance, since that isn't actually used here. (Well it is, the grid disappears, but not the objects beyond the grid. This should turn the grid into adjustable levels, without disturbing the grid-scale. White for the current LOD zone, medium grey for the middle LOD zone, and near-black for the far LOD zone, if we had three viewport LOD's setup. Objects beyond those points would not draw while editing, if we isolate to the central work area, which is the area close to what we are looking at, not just under our camera-view. (Half the intersect of the camera-angle to the floor, up to a limit-distance? Or just the center of the "focal point" of the camera, for an actual camera.)

When selecting an actual "camera", in the viewport (not the camera-view viewport only), we should be able to see the LOD models as they would appear in the render, as we get closer, they remain LOD detailed to the selected camera, not the viewport LOD adjustment. That would just determine which models we see on the screen, not the LOD level of the model seen on the screen.

I hope some of that makes sense... (I believe 3DSmax does the LOD thing in the view-port, and this might too... But not the camera-view thing, which would let us see if we need to adjust the LOD levels for that camera, for more or less detail, for faster renders or memory savings with renders. As opposed to viewport LOD drawing which is intended for editing-speed. Here, with the ability to HIDE, without having to keep selecting each individual item and "hide them", would be a big time-saver, especially for the live-IRay view.)

Oh, and one more thing... With the LOD stuff... Some Scene-Calculator or estimation of "Memory size required", would be nice to know, in advance... (Obviously not the same for every camera, and still just a quick evaluation estimate of the sceen, with the LOD accounted-for, and hidden objects from rendering, not counted in the estimate.)

Pic-a-nik?!? Sheeesh! Brudda, have I gotta pic-a-nik story fer you! So, de udda day T'oie...you remember my bestest giol T'oie, right? Anyway, she comes t' me and says "I gotta new summa' dress an' I wanna go out onna pic-a-nik." "Pic-a-nik?" I says t' her, "where are we gonna go onna pic-a-nik 'round here?" "We ain't," she says t' me, "we're goin' t' Central Park!" "Central Park!?!" by dis time I wuz gettin' pretty hot... "Central Park! Ya means we gotta load up alla da stuff in a basket, carry it all on da bus, ride all da way downtown wit' alla dem hot, smelly people, git off, haulin' alla our junk wit' us, try t' find us a place t' sets up, fightin' off alla da people, da bums, da drunks, da soccer players, da hippies, da yuppies, da hipsters, da muggers...an' da ants! Notta chance!

Two blocks down and 'round da corner is a spot jus' as good as Central Park and it ain't gonna cost us a dime an' we don't hafta puts up wit alla dem people, 'cause nobody uses dat lot since ol' man McGinty's store burnt down 10 years ago an' dey never bothered t' clean it up. Hokay, dere are some rats 'round an' a few winos, but dey both chases off pretty easy. So dat's what we did! I gotta good feast, a few brews an' T'oie got t' show off her new dress to da winos before dey split. Who could ask fer a better summa' pic-a-nik?

Where do I find the condiments and the large food items?