angusm said:

There are some pictures of what people think women's clothing might have looked like at this page. The baggy overdress worn by the woman in blue, plus headscarf, looks a lot like what I've seen women wearing in Central Asia, which makes me think that it could well be a kind of 'proto-dress' that showed up in a lot of cultures at different locations and times.

The red dress with brown overdress about halfway down the page is a pretty cool outfit! I'd love to see something like this made as a proper set, with all the accessories. But in the meantime....

The MFD has some "loosen sides" morphs that would help, though you want the waist to tuck in again where the belt ties it. I think http://www.daz3d.com/defiant-for-genesis would probably be the best starting point for Vikings, both male and female, as the basic garment is mostly the same other than length. Defiant includes a tied belt at the waist, as well as a tabard that could be used for the overdress, with a little transmapping, and brooches can be parented into place.

For those wanting to try dynamic options, I think these would be good for starting points:

http://www.daz3d.com/angelic-dynamic-gown-for-v4
http://www.daz3d.com/angelic-dynamic-robe-for-m4
http://www.daz3d.com/angelic-dynamic-robe-for-k4

This would be pretty plausible for guys:
http://www.daz3d.com/dynamic-male-peasant-clothing

Tabard here, might work for overdress:
http://www.daz3d.com/dynamic-tabard-with-coif

Or the dress included here might work for the overdress:
http://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-pattern-design-kit

That set also includes various scarves and such that would work for head coverings.

There is the medieval female peasant outfit, but that scooped neckline looks as if it would leave you a bit chilly round the fjords. Possibly you could morph the morphing fantasy dress to make something that looked baggy rather than sexy.

Re-textured, the headscarf from Valea's Gypsy Hair might make a decent head-covering for your Viking maidens. Less prosperous members of your community might wear something like the Old Hag Robes. A hooded cloak is probably appropriate too, and you might get some mileage from Courageous for V4.

The problem is that even the more modest female clothing available at DAZ typically either has a plunging neckline or clings in a way that I don't think would be likely before the advent of modern tailoring.

There are some pictures of what people think women's clothing might have looked like at this page. The baggy overdress worn by the woman in blue, plus headscarf, looks a lot like what I've seen women wearing in Central Asia, which makes me think that it could well be a kind of 'proto-dress' that showed up in a lot of cultures at different locations and times.

...that was because rooms needed to be closed off to hold in what heat a fireplace or "Franklin" stove provided on cold days. Central heating (usually coal fired) was found only in the largest, most expensive homes and still primarily only heated the lower floors.

Kyoto Kid said:

j.zyla said:

spiderland said:

Very cool. I just picked this up and have the previous Bungalow and Farmhouse. Looking forward to the next neighborhood releases.

Thanks for your support :)

The Cape Cod is incoming very soon and very shortly after it the much rumored Modern Home 2 should also be making an appearance!

...Frank Lloyd Wright styled?

Modern Home 2 is a two story foursquare with faux dormers on all four sides of the attic and ship lap style siding. The interior has a living room and a formal parlor with pocket doors and coffered ceilings and an interesting central staircase. It was originally designed for Sears around 1916.

Kyoto Kid said:

...well, it's not actually at Mt Mood proper. The centre gets it's name from the nearby Mt Hood Community College (which is is also partly affiliated with) that is on the far east side of the Portland metro area. The one bus that goes by there takes a long time to get there from where I live (even more so from downtown), is usually never on time and because it has a lousy frequency, is frequently crowded even in the middle of the day.

If they wanted it out of downtown they could have relocated it in the "Eastbank" area or Lloyd District across the Willamette so it would still be readily accessible to those who live in the central area.

I saw the location of the college on the map. The community college is kinda far from downtown Portland. I don't know that there is a suburb called Mount Hood. Learned something new today.

I'm going shopping on Content Paradise before one of the sale ends.

...well, it's not actually at Mt Mood proper. The centre gets it's name from the nearby Mt Hood Community College (which is is also partly affiliated with) that is on the far east side of the Portland metro area. The one bus that goes by there takes a long time to get there from where I live (even more so from downtown), is usually never on time and because it has a lousy frequency, is frequently crowded even in the middle of the day.

If they wanted it out of downtown they could have relocated it in the "Eastbank" area or Lloyd District across the Willamette so it would still be readily accessible to those who live in the central area.

Kyoto Kid said:

...busy week last week.

Why the central city WorkSoruce office (which was conveniently located right downtown by the university campus) was closed and consolidated with the Mt Hood one way out in the eastern burbs one will never know. Guess the city felt the presence of jobless people in the downtown area would detract from the latte swilling "hipster" environment they want to create there.

Makes no sense. You'd think they'd make want to it to be more convenient and attractive to use their services to help get you back to work as soon as possible.

I checked the map. Mount Hood is about 50 miles east of downtown Portland. Wow. Mount Hood looks like a nice place to go hiking though. There is a big forest there too.

...busy week last week.

Must have been tired as I didn't get up until late today.

Was gaming with some friends last night Did some RPG stuff followed by a rousing round of "Cards Against Humanity" that went until after 01:00. Got home checked the forums some conspiracy theory fun stuff on YouTube then went to bed.

38° and cloudy today with icy cold (not freezing, just cold) rain and more wind on the way. Good day to just stay home.

Was a lovely day yesterday, got up to 64°. Felt like spring....well...unless you had to go to "east county" like I did where there was still a frigid wind out of the Columbia Gorge. Nice though once I got back into town.

...related Caturday complaint:

Why the central city WorkSoruce office (which was conveniently located right downtown by the university campus) was closed and consolidated with the Mt Hood one way out in the eastern burbs one will never know. Guess the city felt the presence of jobless people in the downtown area would detract from the latte swilling "hipster" environment they want to create there.

..or maybe it was a plot to get more money for the transit agency by forcing everyone who lives in the city to pay 5$ a day (or 100$ a month for a pass) to get there. You are unemployed and looking for work and/or any way to better your chances (a lot of the workshops WorkSoruce offers are actually very helpful and free), you don't have a lot of money, yet you have to cough up for round trip bus/tram fare plus waste an hour or more out of each day just to get there.

Makes no sense. You'd think they'd make want to it to be more convenient and attractive to use their services to help get you back to work as soon as possible.

DIM is offline due to the site being down- Jaderail was nice enough to answer my question in the commons. You'll get the sit and spin, then message about checking your password/account. Just wait it out. (it's 3:40am central time and still not working. Site went down two hours ago for about an hour and DIM has gone poof ever since. They are working on it.)

Thanks again, you all.
I'm glad you like the EnvironKits concept.
It originated from what I have been doing as I create and optimize scenes for my own use, and then store them to my Browser, except that these kits are much more beyond the stuff I was doing - and now I use my kits as well!

That said I do have a quite a bit of them on the work bench, so they will keep coming - as I can complete them. It's really quite amazing how much can be done with this concept. Like the original idea, it is often my own needs that drives the ideas forth. Then I put my stuff on hold so I can build a kit that will fulfill my needs - along with a bunch of extra possibilities that I imagine along the way.

So I shot this render, since I was talking earlier about landing a star ship in the canyon. This star ship is vastly too large to actually land in the gorge, so I pulled it up into the clouds, did some rearranging, and hid all of the central terrain features and, instead, duplicated the outer surrounding terrain a few times. It's a huge ship ;)

You can model a bit more than a 'basic' shape...like for the leaves on the third one...model the outline, curve and central ribs, but no need to model the finer lines. The first one would make a very 'heavy' mesh if you tried to do much more than very basic details. The second one you could get fairly detailed without going to too high a poly count...but

BTW, be sure and test the cart because if you have purchased Stephanie 6 already, you currently are getting the additional discount in the cart without having S6 IN the cart (which it says is required.) And that's the way it should be- or else I personally would cancel my order from yesterday and just rebuy it. Hopefully marketing was on the ball with that and this isn't a mistake- but they shouldn't state that as being required (to have it in the cart) if it ISNT right.

In case they change it, you might want to get those items now that say it's required (when currently it isn't, as of 2:10AM Central time.)

evilproducer said:

magaremoto said:

another try without and with a spot light in 2 flavours (grey and yellow); see how it affects the shadows color

Nice lighting! I'm not sure which one I prefer. I'd love to get a look at your light rig and render settings though!

Haven't updated in a long while due to personal concerns that left me in a very bad place (finance, health, and an engagement that was aborted). Getting back on my feet has been harder thanks to my hard drive crashing and even the backups went missing. I'm just thankful not all my art is lost and issues 1 and 2 were saved in my email. Issue 3's pages, however, were still WIPs so all of them went kablooey.

Anyway, after some time finding the strength to go on, made some progress with rebuilding from almost scratch. One of them is making overall improvements with the character designs. Here are a few, with the updated looks of the central cast:

Misty Whisky said:

i thought the Pacific coast would be a bit milder.

Do you have any volcanoes on the west coast?

Portland is on the other tetonic plate? west side of the san adreas fault?

Geographically, Portland is at the end of a "funnel" through which winds from the eastern part of the state blow through. When this occurs in winter it ushers in very cold air that fills the northern and central Willamette Valley which is between two mountain ranges, the Cascades and the Coast range. Unlike Seattle (with Puget Sound), Portland, which is about 72 miles inland from the ocean. does not have a large body of water to "moderate" the temperature so there are times it can be snowing here while it's raining in Seattle 160 miles north.

When the jet is following it's usual course (going more east to west over central/northern British Columbia) any moisture that comes off of the Pacific Ocean is accompanied by warmer winds, hence precipitation is usually in the form of rain. It takes a specific set of conditions, like what we have right now, to produce snow. Usually these events last only a couple days before the jet resumes its normal course and allows warmer air from the Pacific to filter in. However, back in I think it was 2010, the jet stream continued to plunge south for almost a week and we received three storms back to back that buried us under 16 - 18" of snow which was around for over a week.

During the summer the opposite occurs. With the jet stream far to the north we get what are known as 'heat lows" which do not produce precipitation and circulate hot air from the central high desert through the gorge and into the valley. It is not unusual to see 100°+ temperatures here in Portland in July/August (our all time record is 107° which was almost reached twice in the summer of 2010 during a week long heatwave).

As to tectonics, The San Andreas heads offshore just south of Eureka CA and turns due westward. Portland is on the west end of North America plate. About 70 or so miles off the cost is what is known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone where the Jan de Fuca plate is sliding underneath the western edge of the North America Plate. This is seen as a possible major threat to the Pacific Northwest as it could produce a quake more powerful than the one that hit Japan a few years ago. The last quake along the zone occurred in January of 1700 and was strong enough that it produced a Tsunami which was recorded Japan.

Invited Guest Contributor

No new renders to show at this time, but I did use Morris's Aiden for M5 for the central character in this render, which is one of my favorites that I have done. It's an excellent texture. I used it for my avatar as well.

redhorse said:

I used both coupons successfully (the site is still showing them as valid at 3:58PM Central Time). But I haven't seen any special message or exclusive offer.

You should see a blue bar across the top of the store page

I used both coupons successfully (the site is still showing them as valid at 3:58PM Central Time). But I haven't seen any special message or exclusive offer.

SimonJM said:

This may sound silly but how does one go about using the files in the RealityCF component? I've skimmed the Reality User Guide and the only mention of .rsf format file is the fact that they used to be used before a central database was implemented.

Hi Simon
It's not silly, don't worry :)

I know Reality uses mostly ACSEL Share, but i'm not really fan of that system.
Having the rsf files, and loading them WHEN you want to use them only, seems to me one of the best way to control the shaders used.

If you have any more concern, please, feel free to ask, i stay around

Here is a copy of what i wrote in the readme file, hoping it can help you, as proceeding the way i explain it works perfectly :)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REALITY

The reality shaders are located in :
My DAZ 3D Library/RealityShaders/Persephone

To use them :

Load your genesis 2 female character with persephone textures on it. (it can be used with OTHER TEXTURES TOO)
In DAZ STUDIO, click Render > Reality Render
In the material tab, select ALL the genesis 2 female materials
(click on the first one, press SHIFT and click on the last one. All of them should be selected)

When all the material are selected, click on "shader operation" on the right part of the window
select "load shader"
Now navigate to "My Studio library", double click on it, select Realityshader, and inside you'll find a "Persephone" folder.
Now you don't need to select any file, you just click on "Choose" and it will load all the shaders.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This may sound silly but how does one go about using the files in the RealityCF component? I've skimmed the Reality User Guide and the only mention of .rsf format file is the fact that they used to be used before a central database was implemented.