It's interesting the kind of differences there are between this one and the one at the bottom of page 4. That one showcased the tree's lighting while this one has a strong central focus where arguably neither is a "wrong" idea.

andolaurina said:

Woolyloach said:

Jaderail said:

andolaurina said:

Woolyloach, I see that your "Joined Date" is 0. Does that mean you've been around since the beginning of the long count calendar? Care to tell us what happened in the last cycle? :D :D :D

I think he is from the Future and his date starts when ours ends.

Actually, it's a glitch in the system when dealing with someone who's both a mythological fish and a feathered serpent! The DAZ BBS just doesn't know how to deal with it.. it's not a serious bug, though! :smirk:

Regardless, I hope you take us up in your alien, time-traveling UFO whenever it strikes midnight on 12/21/12 in Mayan time (which is Central Standard Time). I'll be waiting, but I'm afraid if a crystal skull is required for entry, I'm out-of-luck.

Bring shrimp or mice - either is acceptable! But I'm out of plutonium to power the flux capacitor and my Mr. Fusion is on the blink.. :down:

Woolyloach said:

Jaderail said:

andolaurina said:

Woolyloach, I see that your "Joined Date" is 0. Does that mean you've been around since the beginning of the long count calendar? Care to tell us what happened in the last cycle? :D :D :D

I think he is from the Future and his date starts when ours ends.

Actually, it's a glitch in the system when dealing with someone who's both a mythological fish and a feathered serpent! The DAZ BBS just doesn't know how to deal with it.. it's not a serious bug, though! :smirk:

Regardless, I hope you take us up in your alien, time-traveling UFO whenever it strikes midnight on 12/21/12 in Mayan time (which is Central Standard Time). I'll be waiting, but I'm afraid if a crystal skull is required for entry, I'm out-of-luck.

holly wetcircuit said:

And, also agreeing with Evilproducer that where I find something that just can't really be plausible (like the need for unobtainium) I will be better able to steer clear of making it a central part of the story... lol

It needs to make more visual sense than mechanical sense. People are suppose to be impressed by it... Characters in the story, I mean.

so the planet is where the elite upper class live. then there are orbital habitats (the ring, beads, etc) for lesser classes..

the poor and downtrodden could then live in old abandoned astroid/lunar mines....

holly wetcircuit said:

And, also agreeing with Evilproducer that where I find something that just can't really be plausible (like the need for unobtainium) I will be better able to steer clear of making it a central part of the story... lol

It needs to make more visual sense than mechanical sense. People are suppose to be impressed by it... Characters in the story, I mean.

Yeah, floating mountains are cool and realized in such a way that they kind of look plausible, then you name the McGuffin that floats the whole works Unobtainium?!? Cameron, what were you thinking?!?

I could go on about the Hobbit movie after they leave Rivendell, but I don't want to spoil it for those that haven't watched the film yet. Bad Peter Jackson, bad! Go sit in the corner! >:-(

And, also agreeing with Evilproducer that where I find something that just can't really be plausible (like the need for unobtainium) I will be better able to steer clear of making it a central part of the story... lol

It needs to make more visual sense than mechanical sense. People are suppose to be impressed by it... Characters in the story, I mean.

Rezca said:

I don't drink wine myself, but...

A new Nightwish item, Imaginaerum wine, will be launched during 2012. Originating from Central Spain, this wine is brave and robust by style. The label of the bottle is based on the song “The Crow, The Owl And The Dove” from the Imaginaerum album. Further information and news about the wine can be found at http://www.nightwishwine.com/ . The wine is produced in co-operation with Tuomas Meriluoto, a Finnish Master of Wine.
Tuomas Holopainen:
“It is my personal passion for wine and this perfect marriage of music and lovely earthy delight that made us want to come up with a wine of our own. Whether it’s a romantic moment by a campfire, an occasion to celebrate Life itself or some serious Byronesque drinking, Imaginaerum Wine is what you need.”

I had to listen to some Nightwish 'cos I thought there was a swan as well, and there is playing right now:

A swan of white, she came to me
The lake mirrored her beauty sweet
I kissed her neck, adored her grace
But needed nothing... (I think that's what it says)

eta why would a spellchecker change nightwish to nightwing?

mdbruffy said:

GRFK DSGN Unlimited said:

mdbruffy said:

I have a zip file entitled "STWK Bridge", I have tried 4 times to open it and every time Winzip tells me " Error: too many entries in cxentral directory to end of central directory info."

Anyone have any ideas how to get this stupid file to open?

Have you tried a different program like WinRAR or something like that?

David

I don't have winrar. Usually winzip does right the first time. I 've never had it do this before.

Explain this one: I moved the zip to another computer that had winzip on it and that copy of the program opened the zip without any problem.

Think I managed to get that one opened once with 7zip but since the upgrade nothing would open it so I pitched it.
Maybe one day somebody would repackage it and rezip it.

GRFK DSGN Unlimited said:

mdbruffy said:

I have a zip file entitled "STWK Bridge", I have tried 4 times to open it and every time Winzip tells me " Error: too many entries in cxentral directory to end of central directory info."

Anyone have any ideas how to get this stupid file to open?

Have you tried a different program like WinRAR or something like that?

David

I don't have winrar. Usually winzip does right the first time. I 've never had it do this before.

Explain this one: I moved the zip to another computer that had winzip on it and that copy of the program opened the zip without any problem.

mdbruffy said:

I have a zip file entitled "STWK Bridge", I have tried 4 times to open it and every time Winzip tells me " Error: too many entries in cxentral directory to end of central directory info."

Anyone have any ideas how to get this stupid file to open?

Have you tried a different program like WinRAR or something like that?

David

I have a zip file entitled "STWK Bridge", I have tried 4 times to open it and every time Winzip tells me " Error: too many entries in cxentral directory to end of central directory info."

Anyone have any ideas how to get this stupid file to open?

Rezca said:

I don't drink wine myself, but...

A new Nightwish item, Imaginaerum wine, will be launched during 2012. Originating from Central Spain, this wine is brave and robust by style. The label of the bottle is based on the song “The Crow, The Owl And The Dove” from the Imaginaerum album. Further information and news about the wine can be found at http://www.nightwishwine.com/ . The wine is produced in co-operation with Tuomas Meriluoto, a Finnish Master of Wine.
Tuomas Holopainen:
“It is my personal passion for wine and this perfect marriage of music and lovely earthy delight that made us want to come up with a wine of our own. Whether it’s a romantic moment by a campfire, an occasion to celebrate Life itself or some serious Byronesque drinking, Imaginaerum Wine is what you need.”

looks sweet :)

eta temporary end of spam :red:

I don't drink wine myself, but...

A new Nightwish item, Imaginaerum wine, will be launched during 2012. Originating from Central Spain, this wine is brave and robust by style. The label of the bottle is based on the song “The Crow, The Owl And The Dove” from the Imaginaerum album. Further information and news about the wine can be found at http://www.nightwishwine.com/ . The wine is produced in co-operation with Tuomas Meriluoto, a Finnish Master of Wine.
Tuomas Holopainen:
“It is my personal passion for wine and this perfect marriage of music and lovely earthy delight that made us want to come up with a wine of our own. Whether it’s a romantic moment by a campfire, an occasion to celebrate Life itself or some serious Byronesque drinking, Imaginaerum Wine is what you need.”

wancow said:

Just a note: I don't have the minimum requirements for video, so I cannot use the Girabaldi Express pluggin to create hair. I decided to try it anyway. I found out that I can use it to render hair... I hope you'll have a low end plugin for those of us not equipped with high end video cards...

An example is in beta version 10 many OpenGL related things were tweaked, for many users they probably won't see any difference but some will see massive improvements in the Garibaldi preview viewport's responsiveness.

To explain the thinking about the minimum specification on the website and where we hope to go here is some detail:

* Daz 3D Studio Version: 4.5.x 64bit
The 4.5 release was already available when garibaldi was started being developed and the small user gain from supporting earlier versions does not seem worth while.
64bit is only officially supported mainly due to an issue with 3Delight on 32bit windows that causes crashes. This issue when rendering affects more than just hair curve primitives such as the ones Garibaldi uses, but unfortunately the crash is more frequent with large amounts of overlapping surfaces such as hair. I've been in contact with Daz 3D and they have confirmed the issue. I don't feel I can officially support or recommend using 32bit windows until this issue is fixed in 3Delight. Hopefully this issue will be fixed in a future version of Daz/3Delight until then Garibaldi is only officially for 64bit systems (although a 32bit version will be also provided for the brave).

* Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, Windows XP, Vista, 7 8.
Basically the same as to run Daz Studio. Mac OS 10.6 is required on the mac as Garibaldi Express uses the modern 'Grand Central Dispatch' framework for optimal threading performance (the modern Microsoft Concurrency Runtime is used on Windows for optimal threading performance).

* Processor: Dual core 1.6Ghz
There no technical reason Garibaldi would not run on earlier cpu but a dual core implies a reasonable speed to provide a expectable user experience.

* Memory: 3GB
The target minimum is 2GB which should be attainable with some forthcoming tweaking. Using lots of hair strands with advanced rendering techniques is going to need more memory, but the provided hair assets and examples are planned to support machines with 2GB of memory.

* Graphics: Nvidia: Geforce 8400 or greater, AMD/ATI: Radeon HD 2400 or greater, Intel: 'Sandy Bridge' HD graphics or greater
Different graphics cards can be a minefield. The minimum specified above is what is required for a useable experience with anti-aliasing and shader effects in Garibaldi Express.
Turning anti-aliasing and shader effects off (in the Garibaldi Editor Global tab) allows a useable experience with anything higher than a Radeon x600 or Geforce 6500 which were the low/mid end cards 8 years ago, Beta 10 will show big responsiveness improvements on some of these older cards.
Intel graphics chipsets before the 'HD' series were unfortunately not well suited to 3D graphics acceleration.
A chart comparing graphics cards/chipsets can be found here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

Here is a photo of just some of the graphics cards we use internally for testing:

holly wetcircuit said:

JoeMamma2000 said:

RoguePilot said:

Just one thing, try to get rid of the shadow on the planet, it gives the scale away.

I've been trying to figure out what you mean by that...and I can't.

Would not such a thing cast a shadow on the planet just like that? Okay, allowing for atmosphere and all that other stuff that might disperse it, but wouldn't you get a shadow?

I thought about this too... LOL. Moons and even airplanes cast shadows... I guess the question here is would the size of the sun prevent such a "clean" shadow? Does the ISS cast a visible shadow?

Okay, trying to get more opinions on this with a google search...

Shadows from the sun (being an "area" light rather than a bulb light) break down into UMBRA and PENUMBRA (and something called ANTUMBRA)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbra
The Umbra is what we would call just a normal shadow ir the darkest part within a soft shadow.... The Penumbra is what we would call the shadow falloff, or the edges of a soft shadow.... The part where the shadow edges overlap and cancel out the full Umbra is called the Antumbra (see diagram at the link)....

So the factors involved are:
1) size and distance of the sun (in sci-fi this can change, so it is important to this discussion)
2) size and distance of the object (plane in the sky: yes.... satellite in space, probably not)
3) (atmospheric dispersion does not play a strong roll, unless of course you have a cloudy day... The shadow still falls on the top of the clouds though...)

According to one reply on a StraightDope.com discussion:
"To have the same angular diameter as the sun, a satellite orbiting at the same altitude as the ISS (350 km) would have to be about two miles across (3.2 km)."

So applying this specifically to my Orbital Ring, the way I was trying to build it with a ring of about 1.25km would NOT cast a shadow... however a ring with a cross-section of 10km would cast a hard shadow.... Any "beads" like in my later experiments would probably cast soft individual shadows....

Here in NYC when the new Time Warner towers went up on the southwestern corner of Central Park, it raised a big stink about buildings blocking the sun over outdoor public areas (not to go too deep into it, the towers were tall enough to cast a shadow over an ice skating rink as the sun set, cutting primetime sunlight hours in Winter when the rink would be open). The compromise was to make two towers that were cut along an angle to create a thinner shadow. See pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Time_Warner_Center_II.jpg)

I suggest that in the future if there are mega constructions in space (even a temporary "visiting" structure like a mothership) they would likely NOT be allowed to park in low orbit (definitely not above a city or farm) because planet dwellers would complain about losing their sun... A space battleship (assuming it looks somewhat like a boat, like the Yamato cartoons) would likely have two orientations: a "thin" profile that does not block the sky, and a "wide" profile that would allow attack with more turret guns (called "crossing the T", the ship that shows it's long side has a gun advantage, basically you don't want to go against another ship unless you are in this advantageous position: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_T ).... Even if it's a large station or a city-in-space there would be design advantages to having a "thin" profile that could be oriented to solar wind, meteor showers, attack from other ships.... or even just to avoid uneven surface heating. So we are more likely to see a megastructure that is shaped like a cigar, fish or saucer oriented to cast a thin shadow, than a big cube or a ball....

Just came in at 5:30am Central time- The email states you get 50% off Go Figure products when you add the new graphMate at the same time. I just got KeyMate and haven't even used that yet. Just thought I'd mention it in case you didn't get the email. It's titled "Animating in Daz Studio Just Got Better."

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/graphmate

http://www.dreamslayerartworks.com/vB3/forumdisplay.php?368-Competition-Central

Darker Shades of Christmas is our annual Christmas contest serving as an homage to Tim Burtons Nightmare Before Christmas. This years contest is a focus on Tim Burtons Christmas movies and his movies in general as well as our own Darker Shades Santa who is a barbarian war god and in our story, the loss of his wife Clara causes depression where his daughter Candace takes over the holiday.

We normally hold this contest for the entire month but this year, we decided to end it before Christmas.

DAZ normally sponsors with us but unfortunately, recent problems with the voucher system prevented them from doing so. Hopefully, they will get this fixed but we have several DAZ merchant sponsors in the contest.

We hope you will leap in before December 20th is over and being non commercial, we don't think this announcement violates DAZ rules... after all, we want you to enter the contests here at DAZ and check out the offerings by merchant sponsors from DAZ involved in our contest.

Check our Advent Calendar for our Christmas freebies as it never hurts to have extra's and see what you might win in the contest.

I hope everyone here at DAZ is having a great Christmas holiday season so far as we're all trying to make your holiday a bit merrier.

Forget the central, wall and fire lights for a moment in this picture below.

I used a spot light in each top and bottom corner angled at 45 degrees, all set to max spread and all 100% soft ray traced shadows....or you could used UberEnvironment 2 set to Ambient light only, giving it what ever light colour you want. Don't use a HDRI map just choose a colour that you want and adjust light intensity as needed. 10% is a good starting point. The you need to figure out what time of day it will be. :) and add the lights. Key lights first and any internal light sources you may need or want.

Not sure what you mean by "more central" the red spot is your focus point in this case, so depending on which point you want the viewer to focus on depending how you move the figures or camera.

Actually, looking at that grid it could do with being a little more central. I'm a terrible fusspot when it comes to getting poses right, so I'm still very much tweaking and positioning. The chair was improvised. The young girl on the left is actually the original Sadie character while the one on the right is the Genesis remake. I don't have the same character morphs or the Santa outfit for new Sadie as I do for old Sadie and GenX was giving undesirable results.

At the time, I didn't realise that the original Sadie is actually considerably smaller than the Genesis version so I decided to keep her the same size and leave her as a younger girl. Not sure whether it adds or detracts from the scene yet, but I guess I'll find out once all the elements are in place.