User #124454 said:

I managed to locate this:

http://www.daz3d.com/s-f-c-s-ii
http://www.daz3d.com/s-f-c-s-ii-texture-packs

Unfortunately, I'm not finding any actual rooms to put all the decent sci-fi props in, like this or the futuristic/dystopian office packs! I'd like to see some relatively empty rooms, in the style of 'Aliens' and 'Event Horizon'. The typical office-type rooms I've found at Daz 3D have things like central heating grills or styles of windows which look too modern. Needs to be something which looks like it could just as easily fit in a colony or space station.

Someone like Stonemason would make something perfect, no doubt. :)

The idea for the SFCS II was to build the room with SFCS I.

http://www.daz3d.com/s-f-c-s-sci-fi-construction-set

There are also some ships in this thread

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/114/

That have interior layouts. I think they use SFCS II and Equipment.

I managed to locate this:

http://www.daz3d.com/s-f-c-s-ii
http://www.daz3d.com/s-f-c-s-ii-texture-packs

Unfortunately, I'm not finding any actual rooms to put all the decent sci-fi props in, like this or the futuristic/dystopian office packs! I'd like to see some relatively empty rooms, in the style of 'Aliens' and 'Event Horizon'. The typical office-type rooms I've found at Daz 3D have things like central heating grills or styles of windows which look too modern. Needs to be something which looks like it could just as easily fit in a colony or space station.

Someone like Stonemason would make something perfect, no doubt. :)

I decided to do yet another spin - do two takes on my draw, one more dramatic, one more comic (hopefully ;) This was another way to train the ol' creative muscles. Finding a way to incorporate a 2d environment into a huge 3d interior is always a challenge not once but twice .

These were the items I pulled:

Central District Subway Station
Urban Fae
Pure Hair Casual for Genesis
Hunter's Moon

Both: 3ds Max Mental Ray Rendering + Photoshop / Filter Forge post

#1
Dr. Grouchypants Evil Plan
To steal all the pants in the world
"No! Not the pants!"

(An inside joke - inspired by my nickname in the morning at school before I've had enough coffee)

+ Night Out Suit
War Dog for Genesis
Astral for GIS
Boudior Bliss
Classical Ballet Poses for Victoria 4
Ron's Particles

#2
Subway Reverie

+Lisa's Botanicals - Creepy Trees II
Ron's Fog

I need to nap, getting very sleepy, must rest.

Is the time stamp off an hour now or what. I thought it showed whatever zone you were in. For me right now it is showing DAZ time. I am in central time, so it should so 3:43 AM approx. for me at the time of this post.

Edit: Nope it showed 2:43 AM.

Hi 3DOutlaw. :)

In Carrara, you don't need to use a Sky dome or any OBject,. to have a spherical 360 degree environment. or use HDRI.

All you need to do is select "Scene" in the instance list,. select "Background", and then choose Map, or HDRI from the menu,. and browse to your file.

if you just want the environment image,. use Map, and load a jpeg or whatever format.

If you want it to light the scene, as well as provide the background,. then use an HDRI, and enable "Sky light" in the rendering options.

As Holly mentioned,, having a scale, and a texture to your Floor,. will make a difference,.

The Spherical camera, should ideally be around a foot or two above the scene floor level, but can be placed wherever you want it,. but it will become the Centre of your world, or, the central point in the rendered 360 environment image.

this is a spherical environment I made in carrara, using an infinite plane with a texture, and the Realistic Sky Editor,. then converted to HDRI in Photoshop.

The car is the "Prince" (I think),, from the Daz store, with a shadowcatcher plane under it.

Pic 2 is the same, but with an infinite plane added, with my wet tarmac shader.

...longest trip by auto: Southern Wisconsin (Milwaukee) to Central Kansas (Salina) in the end of summer 1972. 4 people, 2 door 69 Chevelle with a black leather top & black interior, 104° - 108° in Central Missouri. 702 miles one way, part of the trip on old Route 66 through Illinois.

Longest "uncool" bus trip: New Orleans LA to Milwaukee WI - 'nuff said.

Most scenic long bus trip, Portland Oregon to Humbolt County California. Once out of the city went through Oregon's "Wine Country", then old Hwy 101 along the Oregon and north California Coast, and to top it all off, through Redwood country to Arcata/Eureka.

Coolest long bus trip: Stevens Point WI to Colorado (Steamboat one year, Breckenridge the next). Bunch of college skiers on a chartered bus totally fired up for a week of "real" skiing on "real" mountains. Firkin and tap in the back...party time.

Most enjoyable long distance trip on the ground: The Coast Starlight between Seattle, Portland San Fransisco, and LA (several occasions). Sleeper car, special parlour car, lavish meals, incredible scenery, especially along the coast between SF and LA.

Longest ever (and most "eventful") trip on the ground: The Empire Builder between Lacrosse WI and Seattle WA. May 16th - 18th 1980. Incredible scenery 100°+ weather in the Dakotas, snow at the great divide, breathtaking views of the Snake River Canyon, late night card games in the club car, and nearly a ringside Seat for the Mt St Helens eruption.

Coolest flight ever: return trip from Hawai'i back in the 80s. Airline's computer network went down and in the process lost everyone's seat assignments, By the time thy got to me all that was left were seats in Business class, on a 747 (which back then were in the "penthouse"). Wined and dined all the way and had to go into a holding pattern for over an hour because Seattle was fogged in. "ahh, another single malt Scot's whiskey please, no ice".

Most terrifying trip ever: Flying from Milwaukee WI to New Orleans LA in the late 70s, Two enroute stops, the worst turbulence I ever experienced (landing in Pittsburgh), and nearly hit by jet landing behind us in Cleveland as we taxied what seemed to be an eternity on an active runway (only a month after those two 747s collided on the runway in the Canary Islands), "ahh attendant, better make that next one a triple please...no ice."

FirstBastion said:

Nice video. It's always fun to see my stuff getting put to good use. My wife got a kick out of it too. Kudos to you, that's a pretty intense schedule, that you rendered and edited it in 48 hours probably meant very little sleep. The actual story works well and we follow the protagonist's adventure easily. The transitions into and out of the daydream could have used some kind of dissolves, like when the mom shows up for example but all in all, nicely done.

Many thanks (and Jaderall and Ivy, too). "The Neighbor's Yard" is one of those 3D scenes that inspires stories, in my case based on the adventures I had around the neighborhood as a kid. BTW, I heard the comment "cool boat" about the ChrisCraft, and weirdly enough, I saw one just like it in a seafood restaurant during the screenings of the contest videos. For those unfamiliar, it looks like this:

http://tinyurl.com/bdeumjz

I now also have "The Neighbor's Pools", which in turn brings to mind an adventure I had with a serious thunderstorm in Okla. City. (in "Tornado Alley" :bug:)

I do recall the following words:

"Please note: These are exterior-only house props and the central area of the fenced in yards is the focus of the environment. Future sets may expand on this environment towards the road."

I vote yes. As I've mentioned, I am having no luck finding 3d bungalows, the closest I've come is "The Neighbor's Yard", but it would be nice to have the front views (the bungalow billboards are nice, I should mention). To me, they look like this:

http://0.tqn.com/d/architecture/1/0/T/z/yellow-bungalow.jpg

I.e. small, 4-5 rooms, covered porch with pillars on pilings, etc. There must be millions of these throughout the country, although they are being torn down and replaced with "MacMansions" in desirable locations. >:(

The dissolves for the daydream are an example of what the schedule does to the mind. I have used exactly that in previous videos, but in this case, I got the basic sequence of scenes done Saturday night to check the time (4-7 minutes required), then went to bed planning to add the transitions, sound, and music the next morning. I added the sound and music and just forgot about the transitions. I did remember them, Sunday night on the way home from the dropoff. :-S

Came up around 1:30am Central Time.
Subsurface Scattering Shader, Better Looking Skins, Increased Realism, New Render Engine.
http://www.daz3d.com/sales-promotions/

Enjoyed the glitches when I shopped just now. 50% was nice on things that normally won't go that. Glitches started at 1:15am central time, Sunday.

The model doesn't technically matter; I've added parts to it that definitely make it not quite a real car and I'm not in any way trying to indicate what it was, however the base shape is perfectly clear and obviously the original vehicle and it takes a central role in the purpose of the render rather than being backround scenery.

Onr factor that plays an important part when this sort of thing comes to litigation is how central the identity of the item is - if your car is just sitting on a street, or being driven by a character, and the precise model and marque doesn't matter then you are less likely to have problems than if the car is the star of the image and model and marque are central.

Arien said:

I do happen to agree with Richard, though, in that EA is deriving monetary gain from their use of real world weapons, both for the "cool" factor, and of course by the often ignored fact that then they won't need to have anybody from their team designing cool and workable guns or vehicles to use. If this was a game where these things are peripheric it would be one thing, but apparently they are quite central, so it's very difficult, at least in my head, to argue for EA to be right on this.

One would think the same legal principle would apply in this case, whatever principle it might be.

Can I get an amen ;)

The thing is, we want to be aware as much as possible how it 'should' work, because if something gets 'fixed' later in the base product it gives us a heads up on what we would probably want to do to adjust our settings to the new fixed ones to get them to work. It also gives us a heads up on how to fudge things in related but different circumstances, and what might or might not carry over to a different environment. And last but not least, it gives us a good central point to start from. But, if it gets too confusing and it works, don't worry about it till then is my take. Usually things sort themselves out eventually.

That is what is so nice about what Szark (and others) are doing when they work through these settings. They have all of these things in mind when they are working on what the best settings are from their experiments as a core to work from, thank you Szark and everyone else who spends time doing this :)

Hmm, either there's glitches going on right now or either an email hasn't been sent out telling members they get additional discounts (which normally is stated the PC members will get 40% instead of 30%, yada yada.)

72% discount on banner promo items that say 60%. DM's store. Go shop! NEVER trust what a banner says, be sure you are logged in and click on all promos. On top of the 72%, I got the additional $5 off for Cinco De Mayo (over $25.) Time: 1:50am Central time, Saturday
morning.

Hopefully DreamLight will pop in here and give us a clearer understanding of what the courses should be teaching us. My personal feeling so far is that these tutorials cover lots of situations and do so in a very smart way allowing room for improvisation as needed. The tutorials seem highly impressive in so far as they get one thinking about lights in clever ways.

My suspicion is that this tutorial teaches the user more than just how to light portraits, but how to light entire scenes. Is this not the case?

wancow said:

Rashad Carter said:

Makes sense. But what if you had 10 characters? I doubt anyone would composite 10 renders. There has to be a better more efficient and logical solution than that. There has to be a global solution of some sort out there to deal with such situations.

Ten characters is not the same as ten subjects. Most images, and I can't think of a single one that does not, has far fewer subjects. Usuall it's one, sometimes two, and three is a stretch. Everything else, including extra characters, are background.

You forgot to mention that there are some renders that have no specified focus at all. Not every image needs a clearly defined focus of some kind, which I think DS users dont often realize. A "still life" is a good example. To my mind there is no such thing as mere background. DS tends to inadvertently instruct artists to focus all rendering resources on the Daz figure at the center and to just place some sort of backdrop skrimm to fill in for the "environment." While this is fine for portrait style rendering, it misses the point of CG overall.

The point of CG is the create a "world" that is compelling, at least to my simple mind.

Here for example is a link to an architectural image I rendered recently testing fake GI to look as much as possible like full GI. Now I ask you, what do you think is the central focus of this image model-wise? Where is the background of this image? If I was going to throw my best lighting at something in this room, what would I point it toward? For me the actual "focus" of this scene is the behavior of the light itself. How would the 7 point light set-up help me in this current render? I am convinced the 7 point light rig can handle this room interior, but I could be wrong so let me know.

Now to be fair, Bryce 7 has some seriously sweet lighting tools such as the 3d Fill Light which can produce fake GI looking better than people would expect, so I cant take too much credit. I only upload this example to explain how if I'd been thinking in terms of primary focus and background being less important I would have been totally lost on how to approach the lighting for this scene. One cannot even call the building outside the window as backdrop since most of the light inside the room is actually coming from the outside.

Instead I did exactly what I suggested to the OP. I first chose a space to work within, in this case by Jack Tomalin. I considered where the light was coming from and I manually placed lights to "bounce" around the room including from the floor (a floor bounce is essential since the sunlight strikes the floor very strongly). Most of the lighting in this scene is indirect lighting created with hundreds of dimly lit radials, so it wasn't easy to pull off. Anyplace the viewer places her eye I want her to see believable lighting even if her eye falls into the corner of the room or the underside of a shelf. For the illusion to work all of the items in the scene need to look more or less correct. I have lit the room and merely placed items within that room. I chose and lit the environment long before I decided what content to place within the environment. If I would add a character I might add an additional light or two around her face, but 90% of the work would already be done because the environment itself is already plausibly lit without her.

Architectural renders are a good example of why more global approaches such as the light domes are needed for scenes that are more complex and cover a larger scale and don't have singular focus if any focus at all. DreamLight has Domes and other more global tools available in the store so its probably not a bad idea to be familiar with those too.

http://www.bryce5.com/details.php?image_id=5259

Check your emails NOW. If you got a survey and do it, you'll probably still be in the first 1000 people to do it (only takes three minutes) and you'll get a $5.00 off code later. I just did it at 8:15 central time (Fri Night, USA) and I was still one of the first ones. It will tell you that you will receive a code later.

fixmypcmike said:

LordHardDriven said:

Although with the way so many are used to running very customized runtime setups I have a feeling many will opt to download files manually from the Product Library.

You can just use DIM to download.

The point wasn't about how to download though it was about trusting the DIM to install for you. So yeah you could use DIM to just download but I'm inclined to believe that if it's an issue of having control as I suspect it is for many, then they'll be more inclined to use the Product Library. Now if the day comes that the Product Library option is taken away from customers then those people may start using DIM to download but I suspect the type of people I'm talking about will resent being forced to do something differently then they used to be able to do and preferred.

fixmypcmike said:

LordHardDriven said:

The down side is that so far the DIM doesn't appear to be using any quick way for users to determine if they in fact have the latest version and this will be very frustrating for those same folks who like to do things their way.

Do you mean if stuff they installed with the old installers is up to date? Yes, a perpetual problem. What I've done is install using the installer and the DIM zip to dummy locations and compare them -- found quite a few updates I didn't know about. After that, you can either (a) install to a dummy location with DIM -- you can then delete the dummy location and DIM will still know if you have the latest, or (b) keep the downloads in DIM's download folder. Either way, DIM will then let you know if there are updates.

Not necessarily stuff that is installed. To illustrate an example I'll talk about how I used to do things and how this impacts me. Every so often things happen that I have to rebuild my runtime. I like to have just one central runtime under poser although another runtime is created for Studio. I rarely use that though since most of the time when I use Studio I can just access things from the Poser Runtime with Studio (after I've let Studio look on my drives for content). Given the size of my collection and how big my runtime gets with everything installed I've not been able to find an affordable effective way to back up my runtime. So whenever I rebuild a runtime or used to before these changes, I'd compare each items installer with the file sizes that used to be listed on the product pages. If they matched I'd install what I had and if they didn't I'd reset the download on that item because it had been updated. Now it's a hassle to have to do it this way but Daz stopped notifying customers with emails about updates, then they stopped automatically resetting downloads for updated files, then they stopped having a sub forum specifically for notifying customers of updates (all three methods of which were preferable to how I had to do things and/or the method you're suggesting above). Now yes one could do as you suggest but it's a lot more work and greatly slows things down. The way I used to do things (going to the product page and comparing file sizes before installing) slowed things down a lot too causing it to take me months to rebuild a runtime complete. The way you suggest is much slower because of the process of installing to dummy folders before comparing and would likely increase the time to rebuild my runtime from months to more then a year and likely by the time I finished a number of the items would likely have been updated again. Really the best solution though would be for Daz to come up with a new way of doing things such that every time they update Studio or improve Genesis they don't create a need for so many products to have to be updated to keep working. Before Studio 4 and Genesis this almost never happened and updates were mostly to fix errors in products that should have been caught before release but weren't. I never had to update Victoria 1,2,3 or 4, Michael 1,2,3 or 4, Freak, David Stephanie, Aiko, etc just because a new version of Poser came out.

If so then Daz will start hearing a lot of complaints soon if they're not hearing them already. I don't see why it should be an issue and daz couldn't just use the same naming convention before which did indicate version number, I mean all you're doing is changing the file extension from .exe to .zip

I've asked for this, although given how rife with errors the file naming approach has been, I'm happy to have DIM's checksum-based system.

I'd be happy with a checksum-based system too if I could also visually tell version numbers by looking at the file name. I'm sorry but Daz has had too much trouble with things that were supposed to work a certain way but didn't for me to completely trust the accuracy of DIM.

As to the issue you had yeah the DIM only handles content which is best since people also like to have control over where programs are installed for performance reasons. Also as I understand it the DIM is currently only installing Daz Studio and Poser content and that for now it won't install content for Carrara or Bryce.

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/install_manager/change_log

Near as I can tell it sounds like DIM still is having issues with Carrara and Bryce. I certainly don't get the impression from that change log that it's ready for prime time with those programs. Besides many of the old installers didn't properly install things in Bryce and Carrara to where they would work without the user having to do things first (import materials and objects into presets in the case of some Bryce files and some shaders and objects also had to be imported in the case of Carrara) so if the files have been simply changed from exe to zip then even if DIM is now able to install Bryce items it wouldn't do it correctly without requiring further user intervention. Which might not be a problem if one just had a handful of files but when one has hundreds of files it is a problem, a big problem.

Also worth mentioning, "fair use" is very often branded about, and most of the time, it's grossly misused.

For what I remember, fair use in the US covers, roughly, whether it's educational use (and this "educational" means being used in an official school or university or whatever, research, etc, not "for tutorials to put on the net"), use for reviews/news/critical evaluation (not a chance in a game), or use for parody (again, not a chance).

There are also considerations, where the first one is whether it's used for commercial purpuses (resounding YES) instead of nonprofit educational purposes (and notice this is "nonprofit educational", not "nonprofit, and educational", it has to be both). The third is whether there is a portion or a full work used (full work). So under those considerations, EA should not have the right. Although of course if their lawyers are arguing, of course they are going to suggest somehow they're bypassing all of this. However, there are considerations about transformative use, which COULD be the case... and I suspect this is where EA might be trying to drive their point in.

I do happen to agree with Richard, though, in that EA is deriving monetary gain from their use of real world weapons, both for the "cool" factor, and of course by the often ignored fact that then they won't need to have anybody from their team designing cool and workable guns or vehicles to use. If this was a game where these things are peripheric it would be one thing, but apparently they are quite central, so it's very difficult, at least in my head, to argue for EA to be right on this.

@Horo: Thank you very much. If the third image were made into a stain glass window the room where it was placed would be flooded with color.

@David: Where the results of the Stanford dragon has a good glass appearance, the Bryce rendered object in that image doesn't make me feel I'm looking at glass. In this instance, it's the Octane rendered image where I feel I'm looking at glass. Though both remind me of a Sun Dew plant feasting of its latest meal.

Something I might say, which I should have said, about the fourth image in my previous post. The material in that image is the black structures within that image. The yellowish color is a diffuse color given to the reflective cube surrounding the central cubes. The camera is actually positioned so its looking at the wall behind its normal position of looking down the boolean cube. This view was the more interesting of the two rendered.

Well that sounds like it is in fact a mythical representation of the Torus. That central structure and process behind it all.