DanaTA said:

There was an EF2 tornado with winds of 120mph just north of Boston today, in the town of Revere. It was down for four minutes, was about as wide as 6.5 football fields and traveled for two miles. Nobody was killed or hurt, which is surprising, since it did some damage. It went right down Broadway, which is a main road as I understand, maybe the downtown area. There was an EF0 tornado yesterday, also north of here. We supposedly average two tornadoes per year in Massachusetts. They're more common in the western part of the state, though. These were both in the eastern part, and Revere is just north of Boston. I just looked at the Google Earth map of that area, it's Rte. 107, and it is quite densely populated. It's amazing there were no injuries!

Dana

...in late July which is normally the hottest time of the year in that region.

...here it's going to be around 90° if not in the 90s for the rest of the week (and they still haven't fixed the AC at the local cafe).

Thanks Serene, I've been on a new creative kick lately and scifi has always been one of my favorite genres.

Another image: The central elevator moves up and down to allow access to the sublevel, to deliver supplies and whatnot.

Greetings,

JohnDelaquiox said:

I hate to be this guy. I am honestly not impressed with the Genesis 2 male figures. The chest in particular to me still looks like flat breast, too rounded off on the bottom and there is no variation with the abdominal region.

I can only imagine that all these images are with HD most-definitely on, as I can't imagine getting that detail without it.

This is a good look, the arms and chest and lots of the body are dead on to pictures I can find. I don't know how much I need this character, in reality, but I'm deeply impressed with what they've put together.

-- Morgan

This is my first entry in this challenge...
Title: California Oranges

As we leave the Central California San Joaquin Valley on our way home

in the Sierra Nevada mountains, we pass by a beautiful orange farm at

the base of the gentle foothills. Many international tourists on their way

to Sequoia Kings Canyon Parks, pull over to the side of the highway to

photograph this picturesque farm.

This challenge took me into the Instancing Lab where I had never been

before... It was not without the help of the tutorial by Rashad Carter and

another by Kine_magiK... that I came out alive... Many crashes when I

tried to instance so many actual trees... So I rendered an image of one

orange tree and created a 2d picture obj for instancing the trees...

which worked a lot better. The orange tree was actually 2 of the same

Bryce tree (I can't remember what type of tree it was) with one rotated

on the Y axis to make what I thought an orange tree shape should be.

The oranges were just spheres multireplicated and fit within the tree

branches.
Steve

Kyoto Kid said:

...ran into something new. Using the EZ Volume Camera with a spotlight flagged for the volumetric effect. Also using a beam effect from HeroFX in the centre of the spotlight cone. Upon rendering, there is an unusual dark bar artefact/pattern appearing at different points in the volumetric cone of the spotlight. I made sure to set the beam effect to transparent and turned "Cast Shadows" off. the transparency plane and effect are also aligned parallel with the spotlight beam at dead centre.

Also using one Advanced Ambient and one Advanced Distant light as well as two Linear Point Lights (the latter which do not interfere with the Spotlight or beam effect),

Figuring it may have been something about the transparency map used for the HeroFX effects, I then substituted a thin cylinder primitive set to 50% opacity and 100% Ambient for the central beam and turned "Cast Shadows" for the cylinder off. However I still get the banding effect in the spotlight cone..

Without the HeroFX plane or the cylinder primitive, the spotlight cone renders fine with no unwanted artefacts

The odd thing is in another scene I created which used A couple Jepe's SpecialZ lightning effects (which also make use of transparency planes) within a volumetric cone, this didn't occur.

Would you mind posting the render? I'd like to see if it is similar to what Spyro was getting.

...ran into something new. Using the EZ Volume Camera with a spotlight flagged for the volumetric effect. Also using a beam effect from HeroFX in the centre of the spotlight cone. Upon rendering, there is an unusual dark bar artefact/pattern appearing at different points in the volumetric cone of the spotlight. I made sure to set the beam effect to transparent and turned "Cast Shadows" off. the transparency plane and effect are also aligned parallel with the spotlight beam at dead centre.

Also using one Advanced Ambient and one Advanced Distant light as well as two Linear Point Lights (the latter which do not interfere with the Spotlight or beam effect),

Figuring it may have been something about the transparency map used for the HeroFX effects, I then substituted a thin cylinder primitive set to 50% opacity and 100% Ambient for the central beam and turned "Cast Shadows" for the cylinder off. However I still get the banding effect in the spotlight cone..

Without the HeroFX plane or the cylinder primitive, the spotlight cone renders fine with no unwanted artefacts

The odd thing is in another scene I created which used A couple Jepe's SpecialZ lightning effects (which also make use of transparency planes) within a volumetric cone, this didn't occur.

...what, no bacon? ;-)

Actually looks very tasty (mmmm...getting a sugar rush now just looking at it).

Happy Half Century of circling around our central stellar primary.

The Daz3D programs and models are excellent. But the documentation is lousy. Most of it -- what little there is -- is in the form of tutorials. Most of them are for earlier versions of the program. Many of the links are broken. For example the following is supposed to be a deformers tutorial:

http://www.daz3d.com/i/tutorial/tutorial?id=2112&_m=d

It 404s.

In fact most of the "documentation" consists of links to off-site tutorials. Many of those point to http://artzone.daz3d.com, which apparently no longer exists. As far as I can tell almost all the "documentation" that exists has been contributed by the community of users who post solutions once they've been able to figure them out. I applaud the users for doing that. I appreciate it. I'd get nowhere without their help.

Look. I know that Daz Studio is free. And that's wonderful. But I have bought hundreds of dollars worth of models, plugins and other programs from Daz. Studio is the central program that puts it altogether. It should be well documented.

Studio and the others are complex programs. They should have comprehensive reference manuals. Those should use names and labels that match those of the current program. Every listed feature, menu item, check box, etc, should have an explanation -- a real explanation not one that just repeats or rephrases the labels or mouse-over pop-ups. Not only do Daz's users waste an enormous amount of time trying to figure out what a particular check-box does (or dropdown menu item or context menu or ...) but also it is the other users and tech-support people who have to answer the innumerable questions that could have been answered by one sentence in a reference manual. That is a waste of everyone's time and the company's resources.

Just why is there no manual for this program. What the hell were they thinking?

DreamSlayerArtworks
INVASION ~ Countdown To OBLIVION: http://www.dreamslayerartworks.com/vB3/showthread.php?10324-INVASION-Countdown-To-OBLIVION
Deadline will be "Midnight" Central Standard Time at the end of [this] month.

PC Inspiration Contest — July 2, 2014: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/43309/
(platinum club members only)
Closing date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014

You could try to contact Tomas over at polyloop and see if it's possible to get a new installer. He's the one that had Eovia back then. He's also known as Totyo over at zbrush central.

That is the next step argus1000

My plan is to try some of the techniques I have been playing with on Genesis 1 figures and applying them to Genesis 2 figures. Once I get something that works, then I can pass along what I did to get the results.

I would like to invite anyone who is experimenting with this type of work to contribute to this thread, so we can all learn from each other. Plus this would give us a central place to use a reference.

Ok, Thanks for all the tips here, great!

I have figured out how to change the rotation point of an object (to it’s edge like a door hinge), how to limit it’s rotation (so it doesn’t spin all the way around), and how to lock it so that it only rotates (doesn’t move on X,Y, or Z).

But for my project several parts need to have these qualities and be locked into something that can move like an R2-D2 model. It's all mechanical so no bending is needed.

Next will be combining several primitives together that can be moved individually but still are locked into a central primitive.
Am I only researching the joint editor or is there another tool to look into, other search terms in the forum?

Cybersox13 said:

Is the competition on price that strong? I have actually no clue what the total market is, nor DAZ's slice of that however I have got to imagine its already the Gorilla in the mix. Also a gas station competing on opposing corners can only differentiate on price, but the content stores have a lot more dimensions. I think DAZ is the market leader, and competing on price alone for the leader becomes self destructive. How many of us compare discount offering from store to store, before spending, va how many compare individual products (even at different stores)?
-------------------------------
A lot of this depends on how you define competition. In the limited area of selling 3D figures and content for Poser and DAZ studio, DAZ is clearly a leader. On the other hand, in the category of selling software to use Poser and DAZ 3D content they're behind Smith Micro and Poser, but in the intermediate area of general 3D content and animation software aimed at the hobbyist and pre-viz markets, both companies are losing market share to products like iClone. And in the larger area of 3D software they're a relatively small player.

This is not to say that this is a BAD thing. In many ways being a dominant player in a limited market can work out better than being a medium sized player in a huge market. The classic corporate example is Coke Vs. Pepsi. In terms of actual money earned, Pepsi flattens Coca Cola, yet Coke stock consistently trades at a higher value then Pepsico... because a huge portion of Pepsi's money comes from it's Frito Lay snack food business, and that business requires a lot more in terms of maintaining ongoing production than Coke's operation, is now almost all tied to it's central soft drink business. Thus, there are more variables that could potentially affect Pepsi's ongoing business. Of course, the flip side is that Pepsi would likely survive a sudden drop in demand for soft drinks, whereas Coke could be totally wiped out... hence the general perception that the better diversified Smith Micro is a more stable operation than DAZ, even though DAZ probably conducts more individual transactions.

Its kind of hard researching the industry - but I'm sure its my search terms like 3d brokerage, content store,3d content, stock 3d, and such do not come back with much except the actual (known) stores usual garbage links. Not much anything describing the 3d content brokerage industry in general - not even a Wikipedia. So I appreciate the info.

Dream Cutter said:

[Is the competition on price that strong? I have actually no clue what the total market is, nor DAZ's slice of that however I have got to imagine its already the Gorilla in the mix. Also a gas station competing on opposing corners can only differentiate on price, but the content stores have a lot more dimensions. I think DAZ is the market leader, and competing on price alone for the leader becomes self destructive. How many of us compare discount offering from store to store, before spending, va how many compare individual products (even at different stores)?

A lot of this depends on how you define competition. In the limited area of selling 3D figures and content for Poser and DAZ studio, DAZ is clearly a leader. On the other hand, in the category of selling software to use Poser and DAZ 3D content they're behind Smith Micro and Poser, but in the intermediate area of general 3D content and animation software aimed at the hobbyist and pre-viz markets, both companies are losing market share to products like iClone. And in the larger area of 3D software they're a relatively small player.

This is not to say that this is a BAD thing. In many ways being a dominant player in a limited market can work out better than being a medium sized player in a huge market. The classic corporate example is Coke Vs. Pepsi. In terms of actual money earned, Pepsi flattens Coca Cola, yet Coke stock consistently trades at a higher value then Pepsico... because a huge portion of Pepsi's money comes from it's Frito Lay snack food business, and that business requires a lot more in terms of maintaining ongoing production than Coke's operation, is now almost all tied to it's central soft drink business. Thus, there are more variables that could potentially affect Pepsi's ongoing business. Of course, the flip side is that Pepsi would likely survive a sudden drop in demand for soft drinks, whereas Coke could be totally wiped out... hence the general perception that the better diversified Smith Micro is a more stable operation than DAZ, even though DAZ probably conducts more individual transactions.

dave.evert said:

The buttons in the picture weren´t really detailed just simple round, this time I got the surface of the button quite right but i´m having trouble cutting holes in it, its made of basic cylinder mesh and I can´t subdivide the central big face of it, I was looking online for tutorials on holes making in meshes and there was something about boolean modifier which I tried using but didn´t work out, I also asked on Blender forum so maybe they can help me out with this but if u have some quick tips how to cut holes let me know!

And I have no idea how to use the knife tools in Blender : D I was hoping that I could finish the outfit today and move to shoes but I spent 6+ hours just correcting the upper part so it looks decent : D

I wouldn't use knife or boolean on clothing. They create terrible polygon setups. Using a cylinder with two ngons is also not a good idea unless creating a gemstone (an ngon is a polygon with more than four sides).

When you want to make something with holes in it, the way to do it is to plan ahead. To make a two-hole button the best way is actually to create a circle, duplicate it in edit mode, and move it over next to the first circle. This will form your holes. Then duplicate one of the circles again, and move/scale it up so it's around the other two to form the edge of the button. You end up with two circles inside a third circle, is the idea.

Now you're going to have to do some manual filling to fill in the space between the two small circles and the big one, by selecting four polys at a time and pressing F. You may end up with some triangles too, but in this case that's okay.

When you've filled them all in, select the whole thing, press E, and extrude it to create the full shape of the button. You can extrude or double-extrude the two rows of vertices at the rim to create a border if you want one of those, too.

This may seem overly time consuming for something so small, but it's worth it because you can then export this "base" button as an obj to reuse in other items once you've got a good one.

---

Side note:

When making a hole in clothing, say to add eyelet holes in a corset, the best way is to delete a single polygon, select the edges of the hole, subdivide, and extrude to form a rim.

The buttons in the picture weren´t really detailed just simple round, this time I got the surface of the button quite right but i´m having trouble cutting holes in it, its made of basic cylinder mesh and I can´t subdivide the central big face of it, I was looking online for tutorials on holes making in meshes and there was something about boolean modifier which I tried using but didn´t work out, I also asked on Blender forum so maybe they can help me out with this but if u have some quick tips how to cut holes let me know!

And I have no idea how to use the knife tools in Blender : D I was hoping that I could finish the outfit today and move to shoes but I spent 6+ hours just correcting the upper part so it looks decent : D

Novica said:

Aiko 6 is here. (It's 1:38am Central Time) Should be fun looking through all the products.

Aiko 6 is here. (It's 1:38am Central Time) Should be fun looking through all the products.

Jaderail said:

1gecko said:

deep South? Where are you?

Central Alabama here (just North of Montgomery)...

Central Alabama here (Just North of Birmingham) Hi Neighbor!

Hi neighbor!

awesome! we should catch up some time! You hitting DragonCon?

ahh.. today is really an over-achiever of a Monday! Nothing really *bad* (that I know of), but definitely pegging the 'not fun and somewhat worrisome' meter!

1gecko said:

Jaderail said:

tjohn said:

starionwolf said:

Jaderail said:

LOL Humid, in my part of the land Misty would have melted long ago. Temps in the 90's often with humids that make it feel like 103F average. But we here are raised in it so its nada to us mostly.

eww.. lol Me and Misty will melt if we go to the south during the summer. I guess you are used to the heat and humidity Jaderail.

As someone a tad further North (East Tennessee) with the exact same current weather conditions, I can honestly say you can tolerate it, but you never get used to it.

Here in the deep south Mr. AirCon becomes your best friend. It pulls so much water out of the house (widow units) I have wet loving Elephant Ear plants under them. They do very well every year.

deep South? Where are you?

Central Alabama here (just North of Montgomery)...