LeatherGryphon said:

Golden Orb Web Spiders: I've seen 'em by the dozens (possibly a hundred) in groves of Cabbage Palms around cow pastures in central Florida. Webs span the distance between trees. Thankfully most of the webs are above head height. Probably because they seem to prefer to attach to the palm fronds at the top. Or possibly because the cows walk through any lower ones.

But at least I could see them, they were not moving, and mostly out of my way. I think I'd freak if they were raining on me!!!!!

I saw one in a house and it charged toward me AFTER I'd hit it with the business end of a broom!

Hey, this "Golden Orb Spiders Web"
I see a lot of it here in my region ... And really, she loves to dwell in orchards ... But here in Brazil this spider is a greenish color.
is harmless, and if it drops the web, she can barely walk on the floor.
I've lost count of number of times in which I have given to my face, covered by their webs, all because I always wanted to get the most orange orchard before my cousins or siblings

Golden Orb Web Spiders: I've seen 'em by the dozens (possibly a hundred) in groves of Cabbage Palms around cow pastures in central Florida. Webs span the distance between trees. Thankfully most of the webs are above head height. Probably because they seem to prefer to attach to the palm fronds at the top. Or possibly because the cows walk through any lower ones.

But at least I could see them, they were not moving, and mostly out of my way. I think I'd freak if they were raining on me!!!!!

I saw one in a house and it charged toward me AFTER I'd hit it with the business end of a broom!

DADA_universe said:

JoeMamma2000 said:

Dustrider, I love the poses and expressions on the two females in your image, especially the one on the right. Excellent.

My only comment on the image overall is that it is a bit too "flat", and your eye wanders all over trying to figure out what's going on. As with may CG renders, I find that it's difficult to figure out what's going on because people tend to want to showcase all the cool objects they built or downloaded... :)

The right half of the image is great, the two females, great poses and expressions, you know exactly what they're doing and thinking.

The left hand side, however, is very confusing. Partly because there is so much "stuff" all jumbled around, and the lighting doesn't lead your eye to a central focus, but rather allows you to see all the stuff and, IMO, it's just too jumbled and confusing to figure out. I *think* there's a dinosaur inside a tree with a bunch of stuff around him, but I can't figure out what he's doing, why he's inside a tree, and what all the stuff is... :)

I'd suggest you re-think your lighting to provide a central focus to lead the viewers' eye to the important stuff, and don't try to make the viewer see all the cool stuff you inserted in the scene. Often, less is more... :) :)

Anyway, I think you should get some sort of award for those very natural poses and expressions. Very nice. BTW, the tree texturing is also very nice... :)

What you said about visual clutter, if only I could remember it half the time. I love Dustrider's renders but I remember struggling with the October version of this one without exactly taking the time to figure out why.

JoeMamma2000 said:

Dustrider, I love the poses and expressions on the two females in your image, especially the one on the right. Excellent.
Thanks Joe!

My only comment on the image overall is that it is a bit too "flat", and your eye wanders all over trying to figure out what's going on. As with may CG renders, I find that it's difficult to figure out what's going on because people tend to want to showcase all the cool objects they built or downloaded... :)

The right half of the image is great, the two females, great poses and expressions, you know exactly what they're doing and thinking.

The left hand side, however, is very confusing. Partly because there is so much "stuff" all jumbled around, and the lighting doesn't lead your eye to a central focus, but rather allows you to see all the stuff and, IMO, it's just too jumbled and confusing to figure out. I *think* there's a dinosaur inside a tree with a bunch of stuff around him, but I can't figure out what he's doing, why he's inside a tree, and what all the stuff is... :)

I'd suggest you re-think your lighting to provide a central focus to lead the viewers' eye to the important stuff, and don't try to make the viewer see all the cool stuff you inserted in the scene. Often, less is more... :) :)

Thanks for the critiques - some good food for thought and future renders. Agreed, it is a bit busy, but as this image was primarily "fan art" (using the term art very loosely), the time machine was a requirement. The image seems to be much less busy and confusing for fans of "The Time Machine", a movie that came out in 2002 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine_(2002_film)). Even though the white glass on the time machine should have been transparent glass (which would increase the visual noise compared to the white "glass"), most fans of the movie immediately recognize the time machine, which reduces the confusion on the left side of the image immensely (comparing responses from fans of the movie versus those who never saw it). All the "shinny" stuff on the lower left is the time machine, so it kind of had to be in the image as it's an iconic prop in the movie.

I probably should have dropped the little flying droid thingy for this version, as I made/included it in the original contest entry as one of my "Made in Carrara" items, and it was not in the movie. But I liked the way it sort of pulled the two "halves" of the image together that are sort of divided by the tree. But, in retrospect, omitting it may have reduced the visual clutter quite a bit.

The lighting could have easily been better, but one of my goals with this render was to light it with a single mesh light, and to keep the guy with all the teeth more or less in the dark behind the tree. This really restricted my lighting options, but made for an interesting and useful learning experience.

Anyway, I think you should get some sort of award for those very natural poses and expressions. Very nice. BTW, the tree texturing is also very nice... :)

This was really one of those projects I just wanted to do after the first time I saw the movie, and I decided to make it a bit of a learning experience as well. The learning elements included using a StoneMason scene with at least two clothed figures (without using Octane procedural s, and both having resource intensive hair models), lighting a complex scene with a single light (don't know that I would try that again, but it was a fun exercise), and of course fitting it all this in 3Gb of video RAM for rendering..

JoeMamma2000 said:

Dustrider, I love the poses and expressions on the two females in your image, especially the one on the right. Excellent.

My only comment on the image overall is that it is a bit too "flat", and your eye wanders all over trying to figure out what's going on. As with may CG renders, I find that it's difficult to figure out what's going on because people tend to want to showcase all the cool objects they built or downloaded... :)

The right half of the image is great, the two females, great poses and expressions, you know exactly what they're doing and thinking.

The left hand side, however, is very confusing. Partly because there is so much "stuff" all jumbled around, and the lighting doesn't lead your eye to a central focus, but rather allows you to see all the stuff and, IMO, it's just too jumbled and confusing to figure out. I *think* there's a dinosaur inside a tree with a bunch of stuff around him, but I can't figure out what he's doing, why he's inside a tree, and what all the stuff is... :)

I'd suggest you re-think your lighting to provide a central focus to lead the viewers' eye to the important stuff, and don't try to make the viewer see all the cool stuff you inserted in the scene. Often, less is more... :) :)

Anyway, I think you should get some sort of award for those very natural poses and expressions. Very nice. BTW, the tree texturing is also very nice... :)

What you said about visual clutter, if only I could remember it half the time. I love Dustrider's renders but I remember struggling with the October version of this one without exactly taking the time to figure out why.

Dustrider, I love the poses and expressions on the two females in your image, especially the one on the right. Excellent.

My only comment on the image overall is that it is a bit too "flat", and your eye wanders all over trying to figure out what's going on. As with may CG renders, I find that it's difficult to figure out what's going on because people tend to want to showcase all the cool objects they built or downloaded... :)

The right half of the image is great, the two females, great poses and expressions, you know exactly what they're doing and thinking.

The left hand side, however, is very confusing. Partly because there is so much "stuff" all jumbled around, and the lighting doesn't lead your eye to a central focus, but rather allows you to see all the stuff and, IMO, it's just too jumbled and confusing to figure out. I *think* there's a dinosaur inside a tree with a bunch of stuff around him, but I can't figure out what he's doing, why he's inside a tree, and what all the stuff is... :)

I'd suggest you re-think your lighting to provide a central focus to lead the viewers' eye to the important stuff, and don't try to make the viewer see all the cool stuff you inserted in the scene. Often, less is more... :) :)

Anyway, I think you should get some sort of award for those very natural poses and expressions. Very nice. BTW, the tree texturing is also very nice... :)

TroutFace said:

It's 8:30AM.. been up an hour installing new musical instruments, backing up my new tools, and pouring coffee down my throat. :blank:

Soon, it's out for breakfast, then off to shop all morning.. ran out of a bunch of stuff all at once! :bug: Then, finally home to record some music! :cheese: :coolsmile:

Supposed to hit 60F tday, then 64F tomorrow.. omg.. and it was 18F last week! :ahhh:

Hopefully, due to the warmth, they'll put a big screen out on the patio at the bar and we can sit outside and watch football!! :)

Everyone have a great weekend!

I remember once when it was in the low 70s just before noon and snowing three hours later. The reason I left Milwaukee for the central region of the state was the effect of Lake Michigan. it could be 80°, then the wind would swing around off the lake and the temperature would drop into the 50s (often accompanied by a thick fog) in the span of ten minutes or so. On the old Allen Bradley building there is tower with a digital temperature display visible from downtown and a good part of the near south side on which you could actually watch the numbers tick down like a NASA countdown before a launch once the wind changed. Never knew how to dress as it was so unpredictable. Not good for the ol' arthritis and sinuses.

...just saw this.

A belated happy, how ever many trips you made around our central stellar primary.

Is The NTransform Brick Really Needed For Environment Mapped Reflections?

Back to Kadix query about whether the NTransform brick is required for environment mapped reflections.

For the first image in this post I set up raytraced reflections on each plane/sphere pair using the standard NON-ShaderMixer material. That's our 'control', and I'm taking this as being 'correct' reflections.

For the second image I used 'File > Import From Scene' in ShaderMixer. With the central sphere/plane pair I added just a 'Reflect' to this (as Kadix suggest). With the right sphere/plane pair I added a 'Reflect' and 'NTransform' as millighost initially stated.

The third image shows screenshots of the added bricks.

To me both central and right sphere look okay in the second image (although a test with a more strongly coloured map is probably required to confirm orientations are correct), but (surprisingly) both central and right planes still look wrong (i.e. they don't match the first image). The central one obviously so, but the right one more subtly - note the colours of the '+' signs, which indicates that they're not showing the same part of the environment map as a reflection.

Once again I'd appreciate if somebody else can confirm/refute this - I may have made a mistake in setting up even these very simple networks, and I didn't save the scene!

Eyos said:

Thanks for all the advice guys, it is really helpful and teaching. The animation I'm working on is of a dinosaur, and I find handling the walk of a 4 legs creature is quit laborious.

As with the same principals I talk about in Carranimation Part 1 – Rotation of the Hip, at the Carrara Cafe, I begin each next movement frame with the moving and rotation of the hip of the beast, watching carefully how far I want it to travel between leg changes - how far do I want the 'drive' legs to move before they lift and relax forward, letting the other two legs drive for the next movement forward.

I am more of an Asymmetrical animator, rotating each joint separately according to how my eyes and mind tell me that the motion should take place, rather than to perform symmetrical copying from one half of the body to the next for sake of speed. We all walk differently on our left sides than on our right, due to some kind of pain, weight load, thought going on in the head, person walking by... whatever. So instead of settling for a cheat like copying one side of the body to the other, I'd rather copy the first frame to the last, so that I know the cycle becomes fluid, and then animate the rest by hand.

Don't get me wrong... I do cheat, and it saves me a lot of time! I buy motion-capture aniBlocks. But those are recorded from real people's motions, so they, too, are asymmetrical in their own right - and tend to look more natural than one side cloned from the other.

Anyways, I start by moving the hip, and rotating it according to how the hind drive leg is going to have to be bent at the end of it's pushing motion. So the next thing I work on is the rotation of all of the hind drive leg's various joints - shaping the end of it's push. I'll often have to go back and forth between the hip and those leg joints - placing the tip of the foot (or hoof) exactly where it will look right compared to where it was in the first keyframe. Once I get the hip and the hind drive leg sorted out, I finish the hind quarters by addressing the other hind leg as it travels forward - imagining where it will be... has it touched down already? Has it touched down before this point and has started it's drive? I sort that out right here and now, and work it out between this frame and the first, ignoring what happens in between for now.

Now I have to focus on the fore drive leg (the one pushing or pulling the beast forward) and where it needs to be. To do this, I start countering the rotation of the hip with the other joints leading to the shoulders - often over adjusting with the next joint, like the abdomen, so that the next (chest) can counter that one, and the weight of the beast on that driving foreleg. So now I'm rotating the joints of that leg as well as the joints between it and the hip, to help the motion show the viewer the weight of the creature. This is where I'll keep in mind what's going on with these central spinal joints between this frame and the first, and begin anticipating what happens next, and so forth.
The final leg has to travel forward and get ready to take over, and the neck and head need to counter everything that has just happened with the spine behind it. This will give a natural feeling towards how to finalize the initial stages of this frame with the tail joints.

Did I just say "Initial Stages"? Yeah... before you'll really enjoy your cycle to it's fullest, you'll likely have to come back to each major frame and tweak some joints about.

The big thing to keep and eye out for with something like a massive Dinosaur is that the drive legs will have to give the impression that they are firmly planted into the ground during their drive movement. Massive weight begets a certain firmness... no sliding.

Another thing to keep in mind:
To help that lumbering motion, just make a walk cycle at first. You'll see in the end that the drive legs stop driving and begin returning a bit too quickly. This is where you can try playing with the ease in and ease out of the tweeners to try and really get the weight of this massive creature to become apparent through the walk cycle. Try playing with the tweeners before trying to add more keys. This is where you might try opting for linear tweeners instead of Bezier, and experiment with a very high ease in and out... see how it looks.

Turn your render settings and output resolution way down to simple renders. Don't worry about how the dino looks right now... just look at how it moves. Make some changes and Ctrl R to get that render done, so you can compare it to the last animation.

Oh... and save various stages as you go! :ahhh:

Temperature is 64 degrees in central coastal California. I love it. We are getting sme warm weather after a cold spell.

You all will have to forgive me, but I think north-central Wisconsin has you east-coasters beat (at the moment ;-) )

I'm looking for some more ethnic varieties for genesis 2.

I've found good models for American/most European, East Asian, Indian Indian, and African/African American in the DAZ store.

I'm looking for a good way to make the following ethnics in genesis 2

American Indian
Hispanic - Spanish, Mexican, Central American, South American
Germanic and Russian
Central Asian - High Himalayan, Tibetan, Mongolian

Any ideas on how to make people of these ethnic styles using genesis 2?

Skins and morphs.

Someone at DAZ Central seems to have forgotten something today. Since the store redesign, we've never had a proper permanent link to things like the special-events sale page, the Fastgrab, etc. that aren't considered "proper" store pages, all we get are slots in the rotating whirligig banner.

Guess what, DAZ... today, all of the custom banner slots are pointing to their own special event pages. None of them point to the Happy HolliDAZ page. It's way past time to consider a solution to this — it was mentioned, I think, a grand total of twice in the forum threads discussing and bugfixing the new store, but nothing was ever settled. Time for that now.

thanks KaribousBoutique and MelanieL for your comments

@KaribousBoutique ¡what dedication! Doing them all in one fell swoop. And you must be psychic. My first render of the hare patrol had them using a straight razor to shave the men on the run, but i switched to netting them first for the safety factor.

@icecrmn #6 That girl looks cold sitting on that cold marble. I m thinking of a central park although maybe not NYC. Like the reflections! Good one!

Pull:
Country Cottage Expansion 3 - roofs (runtime DNA) deja vu
Barbarian Lord for Freak
Old Beach Pavilion
M3 Reduced Resolution Textures

Gopherus #6
All My Exes Came From Texas...

"Do you mean to say that all your exes came from Texas just to give you away?"
"Well, No. Actually the only ones who came were those who couldn t wrangle Super Bowl tickets in Glendale.
And what they said was that they wanted to meet the fool who seemed to want to join their group.
And to test him for his worthiness."

(edited to fix the hole in the roof. oops!)

smurph9 said:

Here's a second draft - I tried to show a bit more of the emotion as suggested, and framed more around the people than the background...still not happy with the lighting and haven't figured out how to 'grime' the characters up more. Dollygirl is right: they look like they just stepped out of the shower to put their rags on. Any advice/comments/kind-hearted-humorous-remarks welcomed.

Yes much better on the interactions and moving the focus to your central characters. What do you not like about your lighting? What is it that you want to do? Right now you have a bright sunny day type lighting which is good.

As for how to grunge up your characters. There are three ways you can go:

Buy your grunge http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=grunge

Use the Layered Image Editor http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/software/lie/reference/lie_using To access the editor you will need to go to the surface tab, select the surface you want to add grunge to, go to the Diffuse parameter, click on the down arrow in the image box, at the top about the fourth item down there will be Layered Image Editor... Click on this and it will open up a window. The link above explains how to use it.

Pull your textures into a graphics program and layer some grunge brush strokes. Save this out as a new texture and apply in the Diffuse Color. Here are some free brushes for Photoshop and I think gimp can read them as well: http://dotcave.com/freebies/grunge-brushes-for-photoshop/

As for some more suggestions if I were working on this picture I would have the angel guide with his hands. I would also see what kind of vehicle I could come up with to represent the donkey in the scene. A beat up motor bike would be pretty cool. I would also add some more larger trash elements such as rusty barrels, rusted out cars and such. I would also make Joe's hand touch Mary's back.
These are just suggestions. Looking forward to seeing what you do.

.....hexagon had a command to rotate (scale etc.) simultaneously more faces respect to an axis (axis of each single face) and not only with reference to a central axis of the group.
Sorry for my bad English.....

:-)

...I've had requests for my Leela character but I have similar feelings about releasing her or even the settings I use, considering I have been developing and refining her over several years from Gen 4 (when there were no teen characters) to the current G2 version.

She is also the central character for a story I am working on.

Gopherus #3 : Very creative usage of a weird pull!
icecrmn #3 : Very nice render, cool story, love it!
luci45 #4 : Beautiful luck, just beautiful!
Zawarkal #1 : Very strange and great, I think the term is artistic!
Fobok1 #1 : Very nice usage of the items pulled.
icecrmn #4 : Looking really great!
Gopherus #4 : Wow, that was a really great one!
Ken OBanion #2 : You really have highschool themes now, and your stories are always so twisted, love it!
luci45 #5 : Nice retreat to the cartoon solution for weird prop pulls, and a great one!
MelanieL #2 : Another really great one from you, so busy!

Tag: Totte#5

Totte said:

#744 Central Pump Station (#14968)
#2887 M43 Field Cap (Rendo)
#5711 Zaid (#12573)
#2882 M4 Tuxedo (#7992)
LB1 #808 CitizenX (#15745)
LB2 #3216 Morphing Booty Bag (Rendo)

Also Used:
Mr Radish: M4 + Debonair for M4 Tuxedo + (M43 Field Cap, M4 Tuxedo & Zaid)
Foreman: Genesis + Kumar + Wicked Wear Future + DLD metallic Shaders
Mutant: (CitizenX) + Spartacus MAT + Four Arms + Esidor Hair + Short order cook + B Movie Cook
Liquid Pack
ART Toxic
Urban Decay Shaders
Techno Town
FT-30
Toys from different sets
Gummy SSS Shader on train

The toy factory accident
Mr. Radish: What happened here? Why have you stopped the production?
Foreman: One of the workers came in contact with the plastic we use, and look, he mutated, I think this is unhealthy
Mr. Radish: You screwed up, you cover this up. The western world holidays is your most important business, now start it up again.

From EP
Hi Bunyip, I hope I don't come across as dismissive to your suggestions, it is not the intent.

The first thing I will point out, is that generally my goal is not hyper-realism, but rather a stylized realism.

Living in North-Central Wisconsin, I have life experience with most types of snow and ice in all different lighting conditions. I also have quite the library of photos of different snow events. I appreciate the time it took to get the references. ............

Hello EP

Was wondering if my suggestions was like trying to sell ice to the Eskimo's.
(Something that might now happen with the Arctic polar ice-cap decreasing)

My comments when made are usually asking a question - more along the lines of have you thought about doing this ????
An old engineer many years ago said to me - "Don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions"
Initially I was a bit miffed, but after some very interesting life experiences I greatly value those words now.
As such just checking that you know what you want and what you want to do.

I am more of a realism freak for my landscapes, but everything else it depends on what fits with the scene intended.

Hello JoeMamma2000 & MDO2010

I love quality photographs and use them as inspiration for starters and am now using them as texture bases for shaders.

In addition to photographs another idea I use is to have a sketch-pad and pencil nearby, then doodle/sketch thoughts
or ideas when I am thinking about them. Something everyone into graphic art (2D & 3D) should consider.
Don't worry if your sketches are just stick-men with notes, it's all about capturing the concept for later work.

Still have some old sketches I did when I was a kid that have somehow survived being "filed" in the rubbish bin.
Wish some more of my Sci-Fi stuff had survived.

Had a few days off from Carrara, back into the fun stuff tomorrow !!!!!!!
(Was going to get back into it today but was recruited as a "taxi-driver" - then could not get back into my creative mind-set)

Everyone keep up the great work. Hope there's a few more late-chargers as well.

Regards, Bunyip