I placed an order just now (3pm, Central Time) and signed in to Paypal, got all the way through, but when I hit the final button, it said something along the lines of unable to process, cart not initialized- and set my cart back to zero. Didn't do the typical "here's your order number" etc.

BUT THE ORDER WENT THROUGH.
So if this happens, check your My Orders and see if its there. I got the confirmation email also, from both DAZ and Paypal.

So don't redo your order, you might just be doubling it!

I love looking at Vultures. We usually do a bit of vulture watching in Southern France each year. There are colonies in the central Pyrenees near the Cols de Aspin and Tourmalet and in the Alps on the cliffs north of the town of Die (yes it is called that but pronounced Dee). You rarely get very close though just occasionally one will land nearby.

They were reintroduced because they "clean up" lambs and sheep that die out on the mountain, usually through falls. It probably keeps the wolves away as they have also been reintroduced. I'm less keen on wolves but have not seen any in the wild. Yet. Not sure if I want to meet one really.

kokorosenshi said:

HI! I'm having trouble removing an autofit morph, the image shows the crotch area being depressed after i morph genesis into aiko 3, I need to know how to remove these kinds of morphs

There are two solutions to this that I have used. Which you use is up to personal preference.

1. In the scene tab add a smoothing modifier. Then go to parameters. Change the smoothing type to Generic instead of follow base.

change the weight to about .75 and play with the smoothing modifier by gradually increasing it until it smooths out.

2. Send Genesis and the clothing to hex. Lock genesis in the properties tab so it doesn't get in your way while you are working. With soft selection on and setting it at about .2 select the central vertice and gently pull it forward. Than go to UV and paint tab. Select the soften tool. Using the right brush size(default is normally okay) slowly run the brush upwards and down and from side to side. Be careful not to touch any areas you don't want to change. When it is smooth send the clothing back to DS. It should automatically generate the dialogue for creating a morph. Choose where you want your morph to appear and name it. Hit okay. Go to the parameter tab and set the new morph to 100.

Have you looked at the town house and wondered how true to London it is? I just thought I'd give you an idea and plug the product a little in the process. I am not associated with this product or the creator, I am just a buyer who lives in London and is impressed by it, so here I am plugging it I guess. Take a look at the attached photo; it was taken today in Notting Hill with my own new camera. I have seen houses in London even closer to the Ness Period Productions product, but they aren't within walking distance of my home, so I may add a photo or two to this thread sometime to show them. The balustrades on this house aren't present (though they may once have been) it instead has metal railings. To compare properly look at the pop-ups on the linked product page and look at the photo carefully; there are a lot of common features.

For the first time I used the product today for an image which I cannot show as it's a paid commission. It did impress me how much like some real London streets my image looked, and only a little of that was down to me; most of it was because the buildings are so convincing for some residential streets in central London. The product is highly recommended.

Kamion said:

I know he's black, but there are limit, his own mother would not find him with a torch this way.
reloaded & reinstalled him but still pitch blackness.

below a 250x250 pixel central cut from the face texture.

You should not post pics of the texture like that...but it really looks fine here. I see no problems at all with it.
I think it must be your monitor settings

Rawn

I know he's black, but there are limit, his own mother would not find him with a torch this way.
reloaded & reinstalled him but still pitch blackness.

below a 250x250 pixel central cut from the face texture.

Thanks Steve K.

When I was using the London Tube every day in the 80s you'd find a busker here and there. Particularly in the more central stations.

I've tried to show how they are often ignored (hence the leg level close up shot), and what a difference it would make if someone was generous (4 coins are put in which is almost half his days takings).

Dartanbeck said:

Thanks you guys.
I'm glad you like them. They're default render setting using the default camera for my new preset scenes.
Here's the new Mountain Top Fog. It may not look like it, but the central region there is flat. Again, for ease of use - adding stuff from your asset collection.

@DartanBeck
May I ask how you did the outcrops/stairs in the middle of your trees in your landscape ?
I am trying to work with multiple terrains or even props to get this done (like in Bryce), but you always can tell that the landscape was pieced together - even with using the same shader.

I also tried to use displacement/heightmaps I exported from Bryce, but that also doesn't turn out too well.

Or you can simply create an illusion of 'forever' terrain as shown below. The big, obvious terrain in this is really huge. I applied a zero edge filter to make the base square like that. I shuffled and filtered and shuffled and filtered until I got the center to sink down like I wanted it to.

Now look really closely at the center. See those little green blocks that form a circle? Those are each 100' x 100' and covered with I think six different trees using a replicator with like, 180% in the scale field to get massive changes in size. There's a lot of trees on each one. I set one of those tree covered terrains way out away from the center terrain, which is the second image. Once I got the tree covered terrain way out there, I set the hot point (CapSLoCk) to the center of the scene and hit "Ctrl D" to duplicate the entire block of terrain with a bazillion trees on it. With the hotpoint in the center, when I rotate the duplicate, it follows the same diameter as the first one, way out there. I made that one so close that it almost overlapped. Then I just kept hitting Ctrl D over and over until the center was completely surrounded. Then I went to each of those terrains, in turn. Select one and hit "Ctrl H" which centers the hotpoint again on the terrain. Then I rotated them and moved them into their own, unique position, leaving gaps to give way to that huge surrounding horizon terrain. The second Image is the central terrain that I spent many days on. The water is a single small square of the Ocean primitive with animation waves set to follow the wind. I then replicated (standard, not surface) that into the large square of water that you see. The original is hiding below the terrain. Slightly under the lowest waves of the replicated water is an infinite plane that shares the same shader as the Ocean primitive. I made smaller terrains too. The next smaller size has shrubs, twigs, dead trees, still standing, some leaning, and trees. Some are replicated and some are solitary, hand-placed signature trees. The smallest terrain's vegetation is placed entirely by hand.

The small, medium and those large 100 x 100 blocks are all stored as objects, in the browser, so that I use them to decorate my scene. The Base in the second picture lies in the center of the scene in the first picture, and is then saved as one scene, full of lighting options, environmental FX and such. Then I drag in the other terrains to create entirely different scenes. This is an up and coming product I'll be releasing very soon. But you can simply do this all yourself.

Furthermore, Since Carrara is thankfully a vertex modeler, I made a 3,000 foot sphere and deleted all but a slice of it, vertically. I made a nice selection of morphs that allow you to widen or shrink the slice horizontally. The same vertically. Before I explain that I made two more that are shaped like what you'd expect to see from a thunder storm, I should explain that this object was made to replicate volumetric clouds upon. Rather than slow the computer down using an entire sphere, I chose this instead. As a nice side effect, you can animate the clouds rolling toward you in a storm! All of my morphs strategically leave the single, bottom vertex at or really near point zero in the scene.
I like to create things that are really easy to operate! :)
Anyways, half the time I don't need the clouds slice because the one cloud that is replicated all over it looks really good all by itself. Since I duplicated the cloud replication slice, I have a second cloud to play with as well. The first is set so that the top of the fluff is just protruding through the entire top of the central terrain as shown in the third image. This is the ground fog option. For animations, simply open it by double clicking it in the instances tray, and type the number of seconds the animation runs where it says: "Animate". You can also move and rotate it for further effect. This leaves a duplicated version to be used as a nice cloud somewhere, which changes appearance drastically depending upon it's rotation and scale.

What else can I tell you....
Hmnpf. That's enough brain food for now, eh? The fourth and fifth images were created using the kit :)

Have fun.
EP, Scene's looking cool!

From what I'm seeing you have two different DS4 content folders. One is the Default My Library folder that DS4 creates on install and the new My DAZ 3D Library folder that the DIM creates at default. You could Combine those folders into just one using the Copy and Paste MERGE option if your on Win7. I also see a DS3 content folder listed as a Poser Format only, that should be added as a Daz Studio Format folder also for it to work fully in DS4.
Nothing is wrong with having two DS4 content folders that will work just fine. You do have a NESTED folder in one.
C:/Users/Public/Documents/My Daz 3D Library/Studio/My Library
Should not be listed. The Studio/My Library folder inside another Content folder Breaks DS from seeing anything in that folder. DS can not read Nested folders, it's just the way it works.
To help you fix this, and fix it we can, I need better info. I'm sure you have given me you info before so forgive me for asking for it again. I do so many help tips I forget which info goes to which user. So please post the following for me.
Your OS type: Win7 32 or 64 bit, XP, or other.
Your comfort level with using Copy Paste commands on Files and File Folders. As in do you understand what they do or are they something you avoid from fear of breaking things.
Your Privilege level on the PC: Are you The Admin or a User on the PC?
With this info we can fix you up in less than a day. I'm in the USA Central Time Zone and online (Daz) from 3pm to 2am most days.
Lets tackle this and get you fixed and ready to use all your content.

I left them editable.
The big thing with this kit in particular, is that I wanted to focus on the actual features of Carrara and introduce a good method towards their use.
So there's two main scene folders, one uses the Realistic Sky as the scene atmosphere, which use a Sun light for the main illumination. The other uses background images that were rendered from scenes using the kit to create 360 degree, panoramic surrounding detail. So you have two different basic ways to begin scene creation. Many presets provide scenes that have already been started for you, which could be used as they are (those are the scenes I've been showing renders of) or you may add to them, which I will be demonstrating later this week.
Terrains use the power of the terrain editor within Carrara. The base terrain used for the central region uses a height map and a filter to get the ground smooth enough for walk cycles, large flat buildings or other prop sets, etc., I like having a relatively flat 'Ground Zero' area as a base to design scenes around. The terrain comes with a default, procedural shader. Each preset contains two more optional mapped versions of the shader. They work together, if you want to mix and match. These three terrain shaders (I think) are a great way to demonstrate, to those who want to experiment more with it, how flexible and easy it can be within Carrara to work with these excellent features to get truly excellent results. And yet it provides a great set for those who just want a preset.

All of the plants are made using the Plant editor, even the deadwood and lifeless shrubs. Having leafless upright shrubs helps to complete the look of an environment, just as much as the fallen twigs, branches and trunks. Again, all of these items use the features of Carrara within their shaders, too. Once again, I'm looking to give good examples of using the power of Carrara's features to create your own, new assets. All of the shaders I've made for this use a less saturated approach, which gives a very natural feel. During further experimentation, I've found that many more plants and trees can be created, without even making new shaders - as there is a good variety here, and every shader in the kit is also available as a shader within the browser - so you can just drag and drop.

The lake and stream use the Ocean primitive and is set for animation. It also includes both a transparent, high quality water shader, as well as a faster, opaque, but reflective version for times when the water is not a focal point - or simply doesn't require transparency, refraction, etc.,

Ummm... carrying on so much...
Stop it Dartan...
:blank:

This has been a most enjoyable thread!
Here's my latest image.

I've lived on or near the Cahaba River (which runs through central Alabama) for the past 35 years and it's really an amazingly beautiful and diverse area. Especially in the spring, which I have tried to depict here.

Software used:
Bryce 7.1
Arbaro (trees)
Modo (remodeling of the butterfly body)
Photoshop (web prep)

Content used:
Plants - Lisa's Botanicals
Butterfly - Noggins
Fish - Toucan

Rendered with True Ambience @32RPP; about 9 hours.

Thanks for looking!

Thanks you guys.
I'm glad you like them. They're default render setting using the default camera for my new preset scenes.
Here's the new Mountain Top Fog. It may not look like it, but the central region there is flat. Again, for ease of use - adding stuff from your asset collection.

When a contest ends on a date, what time period are they using? Mountain time, Central Time, etc?

Blaine91555 said:

I kind of assumed that entrants could not vote and had not planned on voting? I just want to browse through all the images in a thread without the clutter.

I'm really interested in which Stonemason picks. His job will not be easy. Some really nice renders were posted.

I got turned off to member voting when I saw a mess involving one many years ago on another forum. People had gangs of people set up to vote for them and it got really strange. There was no prize and yet people rounded up their families and friends to join and vote. Drama always makes me move on.

I can see people really like Stonemasons products and I agree. What few I have are used often. I'd be thrilled to end up with one.

I get, if I'm lucky, a few hours a week to mess around with my hobby and I'd never think I could compete with folks who spend a lot of time at this. I'm pretty advanced in Vue Infinite however and plan on spending the next year on about two hundred hours of ZBrush instruction I've bought. I'm also fairly proficient with Silo and somewhat with Lightwave. I think I'm going to skip Poser from now on and use Studio, so I thought I'd better get acquainted with the community here.

This place reminds me of ZBrush Central. Lot's of helpful folks, helping each other.

Yeah, I see this with polls on my publisher's message boards; a cadre of trolls that call themselves fans but do nothing but try to tear the company down constantly skew things in their favor to feed their delusion that they are the majority. They have wife-beater syndrome, and generally just serve to run off the real fans.

That said, I can easily cast a vote for someone else's image and would expect anyone else to do the same. If they don't and vote for themselves, well I'll never know where they cast their vote so it doesn't affect me to walk on the sunny side of the street.

I kind of assumed that entrants could not vote and had not planned on voting? I just want to browse through all the images in a thread without the clutter.

I'm really interested in which Stonemason picks. His job will not be easy. Some really nice renders were posted.

I got turned off to member voting when I saw a mess involving one many years ago on another forum. People had gangs of people set up to vote for them and it got really strange. There was no prize and yet people rounded up their families and friends to join and vote. Drama always makes me move on.

I can see people really like Stonemasons products and I agree. What few I have are used often. I'd be thrilled to end up with one.

I get, if I'm lucky, a few hours a week to mess around with my hobby and I'd never think I could compete with folks who spend a lot of time at this. I'm pretty advanced in Vue Infinite however and plan on spending the next year on about two hundred hours of ZBrush instruction I've bought. I'm also fairly proficient with Silo and somewhat with Lightwave. I think I'm going to skip Poser from now on and use Studio, so I thought I'd better get acquainted with the community here.

This place reminds me of ZBrush Central. Lot's of helpful folks, helping each other.

Is there a way to have the tetrahedron's central axis point actually be in its center. When I create the object, then rotate it, it rotates asymmetrically. Regardless of setting it to 'Center' or 'Basis' or making other changes.

1. I would like a night time setup for whatever city comes next. I would also love to see that as an upgrade for US2
2. A light-dome to encompass the set that had a virtual extended scene on it so you could never "shoot off the set" would be nice
3. I agree with some others that a central park setting would be incredible and a welcome addition.
4. Overall, something darker than US2 more like Gotham.
5. Taller buildings
6. pose presets to bring genesis to spots in front of the included cameras
7. a section of sewer accessible by manhole cover
8. an interior office area inside the tallest skyscraper so you could look out.
9. Classic scenes (maybe great add-ons) You could include empty interior space placeholders and add-on with actual interior sets for diners, pubs
10. Low res populace and vehicles so the city looks populated
11. different weather. Snow, Rain etc...
12. add on rubble and destruction sets

just a start :D

BlackFeather1973 said:

I'm definitely no expert, but i've been told the GTX6xx series' OpenCL performance is subpar and that a similar priced AMD card will perform much better with regards to OpenCL and thus LuxRender. If your going to churn out the dollars for such a card, you might want to look into that.

That being said, i didn't take my own advice :lol: I went for the GTX580, i just assumed the 5xx series wouldn't have that issue and didn't do any further research (the internet is full of opinions and they're all different). No regrets so far, that thing is blazing fast when rendering in LuxRender. It also doubles as a heater in my workroom, i actually turned the central heating down a notch :)

Thanks. In the end I went for a different system. It has 32GB of RAM and a 2GB AMD Radeon grahic card

I'm definitely no expert, but i've been told the GTX6xx series' OpenCL performance is subpar and that a similar priced AMD card will perform much better with regards to OpenCL and thus LuxRender. If your going to churn out the dollars for such a card, you might want to look into that.

That being said, i didn't take my own advice :lol: I went for the GTX580, i just assumed the 5xx series wouldn't have that issue and didn't do any further research (the internet is full of opinions and they're all different). No regrets so far, that thing is blazing fast when rendering in LuxRender. It also doubles as a heater in my workroom, i actually turned the central heating down a notch :)