https://www.daz3d.com/morning-star-wings-for-genesis-9-3-and-8-female-s   ; it's the costume she's wearing in the primary promo; the three piece with the bra, waist cincher, and panty + the gloves and boots are probably part of it too. I have this feeling I've seen it before, maybe even own it, but couldn't find it after a good long search. But then I just got a new computer and I'm reinstalling everything. I'm betting it's a genesis 3 item, but couldn't find it.

I wouldn't mind some 1950-70's inspired Scifi ships/vehicles, weapons, clothing/space suits (some here would hate those cause some can be skimp wear look) , aliens/robots including aliens that look like they are wearing latex masks look. One of the reasons I like playing the Fallout 4 game as it has a 1950's scifi look can't watch the tv series but betting there'll be be some Fallot inspired products here soon and Doctor Who too which would love BUT would kill me cause like the Star Wars stuff would so would love to buy use but it'd be sad not to be able to sell art created with them maybe one day might cave in just for fan art creation at least with most of these inspired products would know what they were and not sell as art and accidently get into trouble unlike some other products

Yeah, it's true that practically everything draws on something that came before. And you can't copyright an idea. It's the specific expression that's copyrightable. (For people unfamiliar with the subject: copyright, patent, and trademark are different areas of intellectual property, They protect different interests and don't work the same way.)

The state of various arts causes many items from competitors look fundamentally similar. Anything that doesn't have those characteristics won't be functional in the same way. World War II fighter aircraft have a look, e.g. So do modern stealth fighters.

The style of the times also makes competing items look. Cars: the modern ones mostly look a lot alike. Mid-20th century science fiction book covers: they have a look, too, and I've intentionally rendered a piece to recall that style (but not a particular paperback cover). If you go back to the right era in science fiction, rockets always look like V-2s. And so on.

Star Wars has obvious genre influences from earlier in the 20th century, and was an intentional homage to the same. It also takes some visual inspiration from other cultures.

General similarity isn't a problem. Neither is marked similarity in form dictated by function, or historical homages, or creative recombination of existing ideas. If we couldn't do this, we couldn't create at all.

What's disturbing, though, is the idea of accidentally nearly replicating something non-functional and visually distinctive from a recent work, because I never saw the recent work. I at least want to know what the work is, and what the element is, so I can decide for myself if I think it's too close a likeness, too distracting even if permissible, and so on.

In the past I figured some of the historical clothing absurdities (that weren't inspired by the obvious) were inspired by movies I didn't see. But I mostly didn't buy those, or bought them only for particular individual elements. I'd never use the whole thing at once. With other sets, though the genre and most prominent inspiring works are obvious, there's nothing unique and distinctive about any individual item. So it didn't matter.

There are only so many credible ways to arrange the human face, and with billions of people on the planet, there are a fair number of people who bear startling likeness to others they're not related to. I still think I see one non-editorially licensed model in the shop that's very likely inspired by a particular real person ... that even I recognize, because he's not a movie actor.

I'm no longer sure I can keep track well enough.

Well, at a certain point, (pretty much) everything is inspired by something that came before. Even - and, I would argue, especially - franchises draw on pre-existing ideas. If I write up a story/comic/RPG game/whatever based on completely alien, unrelateable plots, subjects, characters, settings, objects (assuming I could even come up with something that was not based on pre-existing ideas, which is a big assumption), who is going to ... relate to it? Care? Be interested? Take Star Wars: it's inspired by every outer space/fighter pilot/amorphous "evil empire" movie (TV show, book, comic, etc) that came before it. It was not written in a vacuum; it's a recombination of existing elements. The party that owns the IP property of the Star Wars universe can reasonably claim the unique characters, places and things that were created for Star Wars and its various official sequels, products and so on. However, they don't get to own the basic ideas and objects that they themselves adopted from pre-existing fiction and reality. They can own the exact shape and markings of R2-D2 or unique gadgets attached to a long leather jacket. They don't get to own the idea of a long leather jacket. Or of generic round robots. Every western ever had long leather jackets; practically every early space movie had round robots. Hence, I am not worried about using generic objects which could, given the right accessories or textures, become a recognizable piece of IP. 

It isn't reassuring. I watch too much stuff, am an avid gamer, and have not touched many things in store recently. Just like this one XI Swoop Bike | Daz 3D, I will not touch it. It's not EL, but it's too close to something else. 

I was wondering what happened to the Star Trek Fan Bundle. Again, anyone can report IP theft.

Bunyip02 said:

Return of the Cute Critters .....

close-up of a cute fluffy toon alien coloured green, alien planet landscape, science fiction

"Take me to your leader, earthling"

close-up of a cute fluffy toon alien coloured green, science fiction

close-up of a cute fluffy toon alien coloured green, binary star system with red sun, crevasse landscape, science fiction

 

 

they are cute... with their little wonky fingers  

Robert Freise said:

murgatroyd314 said:

I wonder if Daz is aware that the word "droid" is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm.

Wonder how they managed that as it was used in Sci-Fi back in 1952 before Star Wars came out 

Spent the money to register the tm and have the lawyers to defend it. Gross oversimplification. Even so, they did it and a little game once called Battledroids was forced to become a little game called Battletech. Then, Battletech lived a life of its own. Along similar lines, the design of the a-wing starfighter is patented. I suppose that would be true of all the starfighters in the movies? IDK.

murgatroyd314 said:

I wonder if Daz is aware that the word "droid" is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm.

Wonder how they managed that as it was used in Sci-Fi back in 1952 before Star Wars came out 

Gibbonskin said:

Paramount is going after 3D assets online and threatening creators. DAZ3D Star Trek assets are gone, 3DUK Star Trek assets are gone.

 The irony with the Tardigrade game thing.   Star Trek needs to go public domain, I think.

Since Conan is a book character translated into comic and movie form, what does an accurate version look like? Is it the ripped, long haired, swarthy muscle dude seen in the comics or the big tough armored fellow from the books? Or is it Ahnold from the movies? I think DM already supplied a lot of Conan-inspired materials in M4/V4 without calling him by name, though you could also say they were channeling Frazetta. 
 

it's not like Star Wars where you have these iconic characters clearly defined in form and appearance.

Paramount is going after 3D assets online and threatening creators. DAZ3D Star Trek assets are gone, 3DUK Star Trek assets are gone.

IIRC, there were Morning Star Wings update packages pushed to DIM a couple of months ago then I had them updated. So you've had them updated but they still show in Ready to Download each time you open DIM ?

Every time I run IM to install a new product there is an update for Morning Star Wings (both M and F). I'm fairly certain they aren't being updated that frequently, so there must be some wires crossed somewhere.

The time has come - enough of all of this talk!

In between working on my Daz 3D and Digital Art Live endeavors, I'm working hard to get the next Rosie skit animated, simulated, rendered, and presented. 

We'll see at least slight improvements across the board - but mostly in the realms of Rosie's look and animations quality. 

I saw that joelegecko's newer HDRI Photoshoot 2 was made for the new shaders on Genesis 9, so I didn't have it as a priority purchase. I knew then that I should have known better, and now that I have it, uhh... yeah... I should've known better! LOL

Still getting my feet wet with all of these amazing new HDRI that I consider to be perfect for Character Animation Cinematography - just like the HDRI Photoshoot predecessor. 

The animations I'm rendering right now for a really cool series of scenes is using a combination of both Photoshoot series, which is working really well. In doing so, I've also edited some of my render settings - fine tuning things here and there while still going mostly for speed in order to get things done in time, 

As they say - "With Practice comes Perfection"

Okay, I wouldn't go calling any of the things I do anything close to "Perfection", but I love it! I think they look cool on the YouTube screen - even though they actually look much better before ever making it to YouTube.

It's the Rosie 8.24 improvements that are the star of my next flourish of YouTube short videos - I think. 

The face is currently completely animated by hand instead of any form of performance capture.

I originally created the 8.24 facial dials to 'enhance' and/or correct the performance capture to better fit how I envision Rosie's face to look and perform. Well after getting used to working with them a bit, I found myself preferring to just use the dials for all of it - sometimes in combination with the facial pose dials that come in the Essentials bundle for Genesius 8 Female - or whatever generation or figure.

With very few moments to watch entertainment, I've been spending that time with things like the live-action Cowboy Bebop (Netflix), Halo - The Series (Paramount +), The Witcher (Netflix) and things like that.

In doing so, I'm looking carefully at how scenes are established and blocked out... how the beats go... the timing... that sort of thing - along with the actions shot on camera and how that all plays out.

That said, I've been watching and re-watching the live-action Cowboy Bebop a lot because I really like how they put the show together, the cast, the story, the imagination of it all... and that has been helping me to decide how I want to direct my next series of animations and renders. It's funny, it's fun. it's colorful and noir, it's scary, it's romantic, and the freaking music just drives me Wild!!!

So I looked up Cowboy Bebop because I knew I heard the name before.

As it turns out, the original Japanese Anime is on Hulu and it's very nicely dubbed to English without being the slightest bit obvious in that regard. I was impressed! It was then when I realized that the live-action uses the same music - and I think they're even using the same musicians as well as much of the production team. Wow! 

It's easy enough to dig up a trailer, so here I'd rather show the opening credits that plays before each episode. It gives a great feel for what you're in for and the Amazing Cast!

Loving Every Minute Of It!!!

I really enjoy working with Rosie 8 and coming up with creative ways to improve her animations. Her predecessor, Rosie 7 (right), really tipped the scales for me and having to rebuild from scratch after losing over ten years of data, knowing now what I've learned with her while pushing forward and learning more and more... Rosie 8.24 (cover image above) just keeps getting more and more fun with each step of the way!

Having the opportunity to create my Dynamic Character Animation in Daz Studio course at just the perfect moment was an absolute blessing! You see, among the data that was lost was every single file used to create the course and all of the Rosie 7 videos - not to mention all of the Rosie 5 and earlier Rosie 8 animations I had saved and rendered - sometimes many times over for different situations. 

All of my custom texture maps, FX maps and renders, custom characters... everything that I didn't keep on my C drive, which was just the basic My Documents, Photos, and Video sort of stuff - all GONE!!!

Creating the course took a lot of time and effort with many variations on how to approach making it. This really helped to drive my brand new philosophies and discoveries into my subconscious workflow - which is also what a majority of that course is all about - getting these concepts used in daily practice so that animating in Daz Studio becomes second-nature and the biggest difficulties disappear because we're working in Daz Studio language - and Daz Studio Loves That!!!

Creating Rosie 7 was an exercise in its own right... having all generations from the whole V4 family through Genesis 2 and, of course, she was Genesis 3 Female, so she had a bunch of that into her as well. Using the methods I teach in Part 2 of Dynamic Character Animation, I was able to use GenX2 and Genesis 3 shapes as well as the pose control dials in combination with one another within a single dial. This gave Rosie 7 an amazing ease when trying to design new dials made specifically for Rosie.

The data loss thing left no Daz Content files behind. So I had to start over. The only other option really isn't an option, so... I launched DIM and started downloading my entire Daz 3D product library all over again! Yikes! But also - what a wonderful way to 'see' all of the excellent products I've collected over the years!!!

Genesis 8 worked really well for me. I was going to try and build a Rosie 9 and, in fact I did. But for some reason my computer doesn't want me to animate Genesis 9. I thought about rebuilding Rosie 7 until I remembered how much GenX2 was used in her creation. I knew I could do it, so I had the recipe of GenX2 morph transfers in my mind as a fallback when I opened a Genesis 8 Female to give her a try.

Rosie 9 Attempt:

As it turned out, Rosie 8's entire being is very much a Keep-It-Simple sort of strategy that evolved really nicely right before my eyes. I started animating her right away* and kept my video flow going strong for a while there - doing more and more Digital Art Live work, answering questions, creating helpful guides with links and such on my website... it really picked right back up very quickly!

One day I'm all kicked back as I awaited another animation render or hair simulation, and decided to watch my 2024 videos of Rosie 8. I couldn't believe my eyes! I hate the new "Improvements" I had made to her hair - thinking it was this Massive Upgrade!

The picture on the right shows her New Improved Hair, which looks pretty cool in still frame images - especially after I corrected the tint and hue to match the underlying Classic Long Curly, but I had a hard time understanding how I could have rendered out so many animations without noticing how much I hated the effect in animations! Argh!!!

Keep-It-Simple? Yeah... go back to that!!!

I started animating her right away* 

I always animate and my characters as I develop them to look for any problems that may occur during certain situations. So I try many types of motions, simulate the hair, render the result. Most of the videos on my YouTube channel are made using nothing more than these test results

Back to the ol' drawing board? - Not exactly.

Fixing Rosie's hair improvement was as simple as removing the secondary conforming hair from her. If I wanted to use any of the animations, I'd have to simulate the hair again or it just won't look right.

So I took this opportunity to look a bit closer to see if there are any other important changes I'd like to make since, if I'm going to do it - now is the best time!

I decided to make Rosie's head a bit less stylized... less Huge. In doing so, I did a few other minor tweaks here and there. I also reworked the hair settings in all areas - different initial shaping morph settings, different simulation settings in the surfaces pane, and different default settings used in the Simulation pane. This took a lot of tests - and these tests have to use many different animations - which took a lot of time. Weeks!

I also decided that the performance capture examples were doing things to her face that I didn't like. So I started making my own custom dials that I could use to correct what was going on. In the process, I was discovering that these new dials were a cool way to make special "Rosie-Only" facial dials that allow me to alter her facial musculature in Rosie-specific ways that help make all of her facial actions unique to her! Wow!!!

Still in their infancy, the few dials I've made are already a lot of fun to work with!

For Star Wars Day (May 4th) I decided to reuse one of my early tests of the system - this time with Rosie cosplaying as a Fallen Jedi, with wet hair and a different costume (and a light saber!)

The original animation that I reused was Medieval Rosie weilding not a light saber, but Aeon Soul's mighty Legend sword!

During all of this madness with getting the new Rosie 8.24 going, I'm also getting more and more ideas for Digital Art Live performances - which eventually also led me into making a new product for Daz 3D, which still isn't completely ready to ship - but close: Starry Sky Iray for Daz Studio - which is really working excellent!

The whole Digital Art Live thing... I really Love it!!! (see My Digital Art Live page)

My first course is a stand-alone course that I slaved over for Months! Paul Bussey at Digital Art Live was really happy with how I put it all together and invited me to come up with a plan for a live webinar - so along comes The Power of aniMate 2 - a course that answers all of the questions I've been getting about aniMate as well as a whole bunch of information that isn't readily known by many aniMate users. 

That course was a Blast! I was nervous to perform my first webinar - and Solo, nonetheless!!! And most of the things I do (especially with Rosie) are very time-consuming. So I went to work recording my screen as I work through the topics of my course so I could judge myself and try to get the program within a reasonable amount of time.

Well, that last bit was a bust before I got very far. I chewed through waaaay too much time without getting very far at all - so I just kept working and kept recording - at least getting my workflow logged on screen so I could figure out where to go with all of this next.

By the time I was done, I had a LOT of hours of screen capture. Hmmmm...

Okay, in Dynamic Character Animation for Daz Studio, I did the same thing, and then sped up the lengthy processes in DaVinci Resolve afterwards rather than cutting it out. I wanted people to be able to "see" the entire process - even if it was going by really fast. Many video players allow us to speed up or slow down playback - and I felt that it would be best to just leave everything in there - and let the viewer decide. I love how it all turned out.

So I went through the same process with these screen captures and... voila!!! I immediately asked Paul if it would be okay to use the resulting video during the webinar, and narrate live as I play it back - being able to pause as I go, if needed. He approved the idea, but I'm sure he wasn't entirely certain how well it would go over.

It was Awesome! Paul Loved it! The attendees (according to chat and replies I've received afterwards) Loved it too!!! So Cool!

In the process of it all, I created a thread in the Daz Studio Discussion forum and then also made a support page for anyone, whether they attended or not, which also works perfectly for anyone who later bought the course here at Daz 3D! The Power of aniMate 2!!! And if anyone has any questions for me, the support page also has links to the forum page. Replying to the forum page notifies me so I can answer the question, which is a feature I've thought long and hard about doing way back when I started my site as a Help Center for Carrara Users, which it still is - it just has a whole lot more to it now that I'm deep into Daz Studio! ;)

I found myself answering more and more questions regarding my rendering/post work practices - as well as seeing (and answering) a bunch of render-speed-related queries. So I contacted Paul and asked if I could perform a Movie Magic webinar. Now, the last one took two sessions - so it was two weeks of webinar for him to host, so I wanted to give him fair warning that this one would do the same. He liked the idea, so... Bam!

Next thing you know, he invites me to attend a Content Wizard webinar because he likes a lot of the methods I use to organize and find all of my Daz Content using DIM and the Content Library in Daz Studio. So he wanted me to talk a bit about that stuff. Of course I agreed. I Love doing these webinars with Paul, and I Love answering people's questions! That went really well too - and Paul says that he really likes my unique style of dealing with Webinars - that whole screen capture thing along with spending hours and hours each week practicing the topics - getting prepared.

Paul also liked that, in addition to being active in the Digital Art Live STUDIO and Daz 3D forums, I create support pages within my website. After exploring my website for a while, he contacted me about doing free webinars utilizing my love for Daz 3D and their products. In my site I like to get visual and I'm always enthusiastic - because Daz 3D just always does that to me - so I like to share that experience as much as I can find time to do so. 

Thus, the first Creative Cart was born!

We discussed the series at length, but the reality of it is that I don't think either one of us really knew how it would play out. So for that first episode I just started building it as if I was writing an article for my website, yet also trying to fit it into a TV show type of format or style. So I told Paul that I'll be doing an Animation Corner for each episode. I'm not sure how well he liked that idea, but at least for this episode, the light was Green!

Although I really like the ad I made for it, I'm not sure that anyone really knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew what I was going to do, however, and I had a feeling that anyone who enjoys the pages of my never-ending information site will love the show - I just had that hunch - and sometimes, like this time, my hunch paid off!!! 

But armed with the Incredible Star Ship Marcoor and all of its support interior products by Ravnheart, DzFire's Amazing Cyborg Generation 8, and the entire Sci-Fi Moves Genesis aniBlock series by Reisormocap, how could it really have gone wrong, right? I mean... this stuff is right up my alley!!!

The Creative Cart Epsiode 001 - Sci-Fi Marcoor went Very Freaking Well!!! 

So without hesitation from the exhaustion of preparing for and performing Episode 001, I began working on Episode 002 in earnest. Before long I sent a message to Paul to let him know that Episode 002 will be called Pestryakov and the Dragon, featuring Andrey Pestryakov's landscapes for Daz Studio along with the Millennium SubDragon for Animation Corner. And since we're using it for Animation Corner, I'll first demonstrate how to work the surfaces into Iray shaders and, as an added bonus - demonstrate how to make a material preset that doesn't overwrite the Base Color maps. 

I think he was surprised. I mean... not a lot of time had passed, and he knew quite a bit about the fact that I poured my heart and soul (and Gobs and Gobs of Time!!!) into the first one - that we Just did!

Before I even handed him a promo for Episode 002, I informed Paul that TangoAlpha replied to me and that he will be not only our featured artist for Episode 003, but he will also be a guest on the show! Oh... and by the way, Predatron will be the feature for Episode 004, with Kara Pitat on for Epsiode 005.

Episode 003 - TangoAlpha Super Sets - with Special Guest: TangoAlpha!

It was Awesome having TangoAlpha on the show! He contributed a lot of fun tid bits about his creative flow and inspirations, comments on the products as I presented them, and even gave us a wonderful sneak peek at his upcoming product, which is Absolutely Fantastic!!! At the end he commented that it was interesting and rewarding to see someone else (me) present his products in such a way. Building them and shooting all of the promo images... and then to see them through my eyes as a happy, enthusiastic customer was a real treat.

I was really happy with that comment - because I really do love these works of art that I get to work with in my own projects - my animations... and I really wanted to convey that into the show.

I'm also really happy that Paul loves these and that he enjoys performing them with me - because I am Really Loving This!!! 

I am planning more course videos as well - and trying to keep animating Rosie 8.24 along with finishing Starry Sky Iray - and just got back from taking Rosie (the Real Rosie!!!) on a road trip sponsored by my awesome Dad! 

This whole Creative Cart thing, however... I think that this will be a good one to focus hard on and keep this thing going as long as I can keep up with it and Paul is willing to host and our Daz 3D fans continue to attend - because the more of these that come out, the better the entire collection becomes. I'm envisioning years of these things and as each episode is completed, it adds a whole new level of cool to the whole series and, years down the road we'll have a nice video encyclopedia of Having Fun with Daz 3D... I Love That!!! 

Being involved in one of Jay Versluis's Daz + Pro Artist Series webinars (must be logged into Daz + for link to work) was a Huge honor - and I'm hoping to do more with that. Jay and I have always had a special kinship that, I think works well - especially when performed live, on screen. We both animate and Love to do so, and yet we both have almost entirely different workflows that compliment each other really well - so we can intermix both of our philosophies together and really have some fun! 

Also, I think that we both get even more passionate and even more energetic when you put us both in the same room together. A certain Magic comes from it that nobody - not even ourselves could have planned. So, Jay... if you're reading this... yeah... I'm looking forward to working with you Anytime!!!

Along with all of this stuff, I've also been forcing to give myself a little "Me" time on my website and just do something fun. Some of it is just taking care of housework - organizing things from the Home page to the categories where they might belong, making new support pages for the things that I do... but also just hopping into the Rosie 8 page and writing about my exploits with her and writing other fun stuff, either on its own or with something else that I already had started... I'm really loving being overly busy because this truly is a Labor of Love!

Speaking of Love, I've also worked very hard to create a whole workflow for all of this stuff, so that I am Always taking time, every day, to doing something wonderful with my Incredible, Wonderful, Beautiful Treasure - My Reason for Living - My Real Rosie - My Amazing Wife!!! Thanks, Treasure! I couldn't do any of this if I didn't have your support and unending encouragement! Rosietreats... You Totally Freaking ROCK!!!

Return of the Cute Critters .....

close-up of a cute fluffy toon alien coloured green, alien planet landscape, science fiction

"Take me to your leader, earthling"

close-up of a cute fluffy toon alien coloured green, science fiction

close-up of a cute fluffy toon alien coloured green, binary star system with red sun, crevasse landscape, science fiction

close-up of a cute fluffy toon alien coloured green, binary star system with red sun, blue landscape, blue exotic flowers, science fiction

close-up of a cute fluffy toon dog coloured green, binary star system with red sun, blue landscape, blue exotic flowers, science fiction

close-up of a cute fluffy toon alien coloured green, binary star system with red sun, crevasse landscape, science fiction

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I daydream a lot and my fantasies borrow from are plagiarised from many genres 

which is why I never would be able to create a book based on them.

That said it does make mixing and kitbashing stuff inspired by many movies, games, books etc easier 

I could never settle on one fandom 

everytime I read a book, watch a film I just toss another ingredient into my world

I guess others are just more disciplined, linear thinking than me

It is pretty hard to be completely original these days. My son is working on a group assignment for one of his college classes, and I was listening (eavesdropping) when they were talking about the other day. Their Story is a post apopoliptic scenario where the S has HTF and the world has regressed into a stage of medeival feudalism.

I made the mistake of interacting (which they are not comfortable with), and asking if they had heard of the SM Sterling "The Change" series where this same scenario played out across something like 15 or so books. Eight blank stares looking back at me.

It was original to them...

I'm a big fan of Star Wars fan fic these days, since it shows infinitely more imagination and creativity than the drivel being excreted from the official channels.

Seeing as there's a Bridge theme - here is my USS Horizon Bridget (a recoloured BridgeXT2 from VP) and the Crew (missing a Chief Engineer at the moment) from Star Trek Red Directive

Added First shot of the USS Horizon (Interceptor Class)

Some cucufulins started to explore their universe.

The planet they ended up exploring was inspired by an image and prompt by amysparkles.

panoramic view of a dual star system with a giant red sun and a small white star,

blue landscape, blue exotic flowers, science fiction,

${cucufulin=enter a description of a cute animal here}

close-up of a ${cucufulin}, binary star system with red sun, blue landscape, blue exotic flowers, science fiction, bokeh,