I have found on my disk this portrait of Victoria 4. Date of creation 6/25/2009, in Corel Bryce 5. Of course, many materials are adjusted incorrectly here. Just I am not engaged in characters now and I even have no DAZ Studio.
Just as I remember, that carefully staged lighting and rendering was long.

Thanks, barbult, Saphirewild, Gopherus. Barbult, I will have to bring Mr Poofypants back for another encore. Gopherus, The Lone Gunmen? Was that the X-Files spinoff with the 3 conspiracy nuts? If so, I used to watch that but don't remember any episodes (but I don't remember a lot of things.) 

barbult #1 - Pretty gloomy place but at least they have windows (and pets.) Beautiful render.
barbult #2 - Aahh, the beautiful leg lamp! It probably confused the poor reptile as much as anything - looks tasty but something's not right. 
barbult #3 - LOL, brilliant use of your pull!
barbult #4 Haha, great use of Esidor Hair (one of my favorites hairs.)
Gopherus #1 I love Odin yelling and the other expressions. And a holdup inside? Will Odin ever get his burgers and fries?
barbult #5 Yes, the kid knows how to get attention. (I predict a sucessful future. Huge.)

Pull #3:
Apprentice Mage in the Tower
Victoria Iven for Genesis 3 Female(s)
Hinde
Unrealty Downtown
Wicked Pyjama Party
Alligator

I predict that the DAZ Mathemagicians will come up with a new incentive scheme so complex as to make every previous sale straightforward. By Day 4, people will be wandering around muttering "But if I buy the Unflateable Pony and three items whose names begin with 'R' from a featured artist catalog, then I will accumulate enough quatloos to get me a 4.72% discount on Victoria 8 HD when she's released in 2018, but only if I renew my Platinum Club subscription before March 8th, without spending all the flibbertigibets that I earned by buying the Millennium Wombat and five items from the Build-your-own-Dinosaur Bundle. Or was it seven items from the People, Places and Things That You Might Plausibly Use To Chase a Raccoon Out of the Sauna Flash Sale?"

I predict that not less than 3.8% of active DAZ users will make at least one joke about their credit card screaming and running away to hide behind the sofa.

I predict that March Madness will begin in February and end in April.

I predict that Jack Tomalin will change his avatar to include a preposterous hat.

I predict that not less than 5.6% of active DAZ users will compliment Jack on his avatar's preposterous hat.

I predict that DAZ will throw in at least one gift card sale part-way through the month so that people can tell themselves that they're saving money, even while they spend their kid's college fund buying Naughty Space Undies HD for Victoria 7.

I predict that the Unflateable Pony will, once again, fail to show up, but if it does at least one of the artist renders will show it wearing Jack's preposterous hat. Or possibly Naughty Space Undies HD. Or both.

I predict that Jack Tomalin will change his avatar a second time, to showcase a second, even more preposterous hat.

I predict that I will spend far too much money.

I see everybody moves their refelctions in, nice ones!

Mike that is one lot of reflection with all those balls, must be some car presentation show, they do all they can to divert attention from the car ;)

Great idea with the double reflection deeleelaw57!

 

Thank you Linwelly, I also thought your Shattered render was excellent. All of the renders here are great. I like Kismet 2012 and MN-150374 spherical idea, so many shinny things and I have so few CUDA Cores.

The only reflection in my render is from Victoria 7. The Hag was added with the Double Exposure Camera.

That is important info for me. So you are saying Predatron figures can use BVH? That is my only doubt for buying Lorenzo and Loretta. They are not based on Victoria or Micheal. But if the skeleton is the same it should work. I want to use BVH a lot and Genesis does work, but it is messy and needs too much editing. That is why I went back to V4. With Genesis, extra bones are added, which are not recognized by BVH.

One thing I like about Genesis' extra bones is that the aniBlocks don't have them included, leaving free for individual tweaks. Like I can use Abdomen 2 to arch the character back a bit more in the upper torso or the Pelvis to rock the legs forward or backward. 

The LoRez figures are not based on M4 or V4, but they are made to the same scale and, aside from the feet thing being different, they use M4 and V4 aniBlocks well - but that's coming from me, whom really doesn't mind tweaking things to work when it comes to animation. 

I also like Posermocap's animated poser pose files for M4 and V4, like Spy Moves and the like. I haven't tried his for Genesis yet. SKAmotion's are also quite excellent. But the GoFigure aniBlock sets come with so many different motions that I find myself using my collection of those the most - but often not using all of the bones at the same time, as I explain in this

► AniMating in Carrara

You've likely seen that article before, but it truly is my preferred method of animating as a home director kind of workflow. I do quite often create my own custom animations too - for very specific needs. I love doing that. But more times than not, I'm using the Mocap data from those mentioned above.

It's been a long time since I've imported a BVH file. Here's a thread I've stored on that topic:

* importing bvh files into Carrara 8

I have the complete Carnegie collection of M4/V4 converted BVH files, and I remember them to be excellent. I may get back into trying them some day.

Beautiful work, mori_mann and deeleelaw57! Well done!

Thank you all very much for the kind comments!

@Kismet2012 : It was made in LuxRender with the opportunity of network rendering, it was possible to cut the rendertime down to a small eternity.

@Linwelly : That was one of my thoughts too. So I disarmed Victoria with everyday streetware, instead of a bikini.

Victoria 8, with 7 PA characters that look exactly like her with slight variations in the tan and makeup OR look nothing like her making you wonder why Victoria8 is required when you could have just applied it to Genesis4F... 

That is important info for me. So you are saying Predatron figures can use BVH? That is my only doubt for buying Lorenzo and Loretta. They are not based on Victoria or Micheal. But if the skeleton is the same it should work. I want to use BVH a lot and Genesis does work, but it is messy and needs too much editing. That is why I went back to V4. With Genesis, extra bones are added, which are not recognized by BVH.

After I apply Victoria 4 shape to G3F, the feet behave as if wearing high heeled shoes (stands on tip toes as I dial in the Vic 4 shape). Also, G3F poses don't work well when G3F has Vic 4 shape. Is this to be expected?

Just curious if I did something wrong. To get Vic 4 shape, I just moved a single morph for Vic 4 to G3F and the shape appeared for me to use.  Perhaps I should have moved all the morphs...or maybe poses for G3F simply don't work perfectly on an older shape like Vic 4...

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/samira-bob-hair-for-victoria-4-and-genesis-3-females/116521/

it's possible to create a foot pose, which would alter the angle of the feet,. it wouldn't be a morph, as morphs only effect the geometry position, and it's the bone angle which is needs to be adjusted,.

I always thought this too, but you are wrong. Victoria with all injected morphs, has a mixture of mesh adjustments and bone movements. But they are all called morphs and this is not right. The parameters are both mesh and bones mixed. Bodybuilder is a morph, but head turn is bone movement. Bone "morphs" are very small in size and rotate bones. Maybe 50 Kb. Real morphs is mesh only. Bone morphs is for bones. But you cannot see this at the parameters. Use common sence. Bend over cannot be done by mesh. Otherwise the bones would stick out. You can open the morphs (it is a script) and this lead to another script. Bone "morphs" control bones. Mesh morphs seems to have obj values included.

One day, or probably year, I am trying to figure out how to create bone "morphs" myself. It is doable, because these script are very small. But for now a little bit too complicated for me.

One trick I have discovered. Maybe someone can use it. If I inject all morphs to Victoria (the file becomes 4 times as big) > I set the parameters I need (Bodybuilder for instance) > after finishing I remove all morphs (file size becomes small again) > do my scene and at the end before the final rendering I inject all morphs again. The bone movements do not go back to default (raise arms) and the values of the bodymorphs (bodybuilder) are still there.

If you know which morphs you are using, you need only inject them and not the use the All option - that would save you some memory.

I have a list of each Morph INJ I need for both of my main characters. But I also have my V4 Powerload and M4 Powerload versions that I've saved as new CR2 files in my runtimes, after Powerloading ALL morphs for each - and their file sizes never bother me. But again, I go through great lengths to try and keep my scenes optimized to my needs. I do use lower resolution figures for background people, and still try to keep them optimized. I have a few M2 LR and V2 LR background folks saved, but I usually use Predatron's. It depends. Vicky and Mike are great with the amount of clothing available. But my BG folks often can be pretty much anything, so Lorenzo and Loretta fit my needs in most cases. 

Still... it's nice to load in background folks into a background scene - get it all animated and render it out. Then either use that in the backdrop of the render for the main content or composite the main content over the previous render using Fusion, Howler, HitFilm, AfterEffects or whatever compositor we have. It looks like Corel's VideoStudio Pro is starting to work towards getting better compositing tools too. The whole world is seeming to make vfx easier and easier as time goes on.

I was always impressed by how easily I can composite directly in Carrara though. Because I can just keep working the scene through. Start from the furthest thing we need to see - animate - render. Delete, but keep cameras and lights. Add next 'layer' of depth - animate - render. Delete but keep cameras and lights. Add next 'layer' of depth - animate - render. Delete but keep cameras and lights. Add next 'layer' of depth - animate - render. Delete but keep cameras and lights. Add next 'layer' of depth - animate - render. Delete but keep cameras and lights. Add next 'layer' of depth - animate - render. Delete but keep cameras and lights. Add next 'layer' of depth - animate - render. Delete but keep cameras and lights. Add next 'layer' of depth - animate - render. Delete but keep cameras and lights. Add next 'layer' of depth - animate - render. Delete but keep cameras and lights.

Thanks. The rendering is not my biggest problem. Too many characters slows down my Assembly room movements too much. A ten second walk becomes a one minute walk. It is not realistic anymore.

I agree, it was not easy to find LOD (for Victoria). The manuals fail. I had to do a Google search to find the right thread in the DS forum. Because of that I found the folder name and with that I searched my computer.

Ahaaa! Gotcha. Just so happens Carrara has the perfect solution to your (our) woes! ;)

"Show in 3D View"

Deselect that on one before bringing in another. We can always turn them all on at once to see where everything is, but then shut off any of them that we don't need on right now - they still show up in the render though. So use Visible instead if you aslo don't want to test it in the render.

To help with this, Every character I even make ends up in its own Group. This enables me to quickly and easily move, rotate, hide, whatever, all at once. It also just makes it easier for me to always keep track of things.

I also use simple target helper object to help mark out in the scene where some of these hidden things are to make it easier for positioning.

Good idea, it does help, but the saving problems stays. Larger scenes takes minutes for saving for me. Even the hidden stuff is going to be saved. And I am not sure if hiding does make the scene faster. I think the keyframes from the hidden stuff is stil read. You could do this: for the parts you do not need, drag your character or the whole group if possible (?) to the Carrara browser (maybe new directory) > delete the group > remove unused objects > and move on. If I am correct (test first please) everything is saved in your browser, including keyframes. So when you need it, drag it back from the browser.

LOL!!! Well of course! Sometimes we need to be patient and let the files get written. There are ways to speed that up.

As 3DAGE and I often suggest, try working with less actual geometry in any one file and combine them only when needed - and combine them using compositing if possible.

Faster hard drives on faster computers can speed up saves and loads

But sometimes we just have to realize what we're asking of our software and either wait, or use the compositing advice. There are often sacrifices to be endured to get what we want.

One trick I have discovered. Maybe someone can use it. If I inject all morphs to Victoria (the file becomes 4 times as big) > I set the parameters I need (Bodybuilder for instance) > after finishing I remove all morphs (file size becomes small again) > do my scene and at the end before the final rendering I inject all morphs again. The bone movements do not go back to default (raise arms) and the values of the bodymorphs (bodybuilder) are still there.

If you know which morphs you are using, you need only inject them and not the use the All option - that would save you some memory.

Hey Guys, first of all sorry for my bad english but i would be very happy if someone could help me with my problem. I installed Daz Install Manager and Daz Studio 4.9 Pro Free a few days ago and i tried diffentent things and it was a lot of fun. I also downloaded a few free products from the official Daz Shop to try more things. I had no idea about the all these things, the different figures like genesis 3 victoria 7 etc. so i downloaded a lot of products i couldnt even use. Now my problem. I want to move on with Daz 3d and buy different things in the shop but first of all i want to reset everything i have done like my product library in the shop and i want to delete all the "ready to download things" in the Daz install Manager. I have already tried that by creating a new account but that didn't help. Also theres another  worse problem: I can only chose from genesis 2 figures and i cant chose anything from genesis 3 in Daz Studio although its downloaded and installed in DAZ Install Manager and i have no idea why. I hope someone can help me. I would be very happy about it.

Thanks :)

One trick I have discovered. Maybe someone can use it. If I inject all morphs to Victoria (the file becomes 4 times as big) > I set the parameters I need (Bodybuilder for instance) > after finishing I remove all morphs (file size becomes small again) > do my scene and at the end before the final rendering I inject all morphs again. The bone movements do not go back to default (raise arms) and the values of the bodymorphs (bodybuilder) are still there.

Thanks. The rendering is not my biggest problem. Too many characters slows down my Assembly room movements too much. A ten second walk becomes a one minute walk. It is not realistic anymore.

I agree, it was not easy to find LOD (for Victoria). The manuals fail. I had to do a Google search to find the right thread in the DS forum. Because of that I found the folder name and with that I searched my computer.

Ahaaa! Gotcha. Just so happens Carrara has the perfect solution to your (our) woes! ;)

"Show in 3D View"

Deselect that on one before bringing in another. We can always turn them all on at once to see where everything is, but then shut off any of them that we don't need on right now - they still show up in the render though. So use Visible instead if you aslo don't want to test it in the render.

To help with this, Every character I even make ends up in its own Group. This enables me to quickly and easily move, rotate, hide, whatever, all at once. It also just makes it easier for me to always keep track of things.

I also use simple target helper object to help mark out in the scene where some of these hidden things are to make it easier for positioning.

Good idea, it does help, but the saving problems stays. Larger scenes takes minutes for saving for me. Even the hidden stuff is going to be saved. And I am not sure if hiding does make the scene faster. I think the keyframes from the hidden stuff is stil read. You could do this: for the parts you do not need, drag your character or the whole group if possible (?) to the Carrara browser (maybe new directory) > delete the group > remove unused objects > and move on. If I am correct (test first please) everything is saved in your browser, including keyframes. So when you need it, drag it back from the browser.

I love BD's Esther. She was one of my top picks for last year, and the model I'm using as my title character in The Black Kat Series. Here she is on the cover of my book, with just some minor tweaks to her facial features: 

BD Salome is also very beautiful and has an interesting look. I had considered using her for Kat and dialing down her morphs a bit before Esther came out.

I thought this was simple, but it is not. I have imported an aniblock to Victoria in Carrara. There was a small amount of unwanted foot movement. It does not show in DS. So Carrara does something wrong. I have corrected that in two ways.

1) Corrected it manually by correcting the hip translation. Result is very good. So tried to put in in NLA. But when I add the NLA to the same Victoria in a new scene, all edits from me are gone. The foot moves again. And it gets weirder. The values of the hip from the editted version (which is fine) and the one from the NLA (which is wrong) are the same.

2) Corrected it with IK helpers. Result is also very good. But how do I get IK helpers info into an NLA clip.

I hope this clear, because it could be sounding confused.

 

Sounds clear to me. Hmmm... So the IK helper isn't actually changing the keyframes of the individual joints which are affected by it... that seems strange to me.

Are you adding the IK Helper to a Vicky who is using an NLA clip, or imported aniBlock keyframes? 

If you're using the Helper against a Clip, try going to Vicky's NLA tab and use "Load Data from Clip" to convert the clip to keyframes (without the clip being in the timeline - just in the Clips tray)

If that's not working, I'd submit a Bug ticket. I'm sure we could still find a work-around for you, but IK should affect keyframes. 

Another possibility is that aniBlock keyframes do not line up perfectly on my 30fps timeline. So IK keyframes wouldn't change those many keyframes that are not on an actual frame, but would make a new one instead. I tried to correct this once by turning on 'snap to grid' in the sequencer, selecting all keyframes and nudging them along time - it didn't work. The only way ws to do each key individually or all keys in the same time slot individually - something I was not willing to do.

I've never tried fixing aniBlock data with IK - I always prefer the Graph Editor, which is fast and effective. We may either edit a few keyframes of a joint or all of them. 

I select the joint in question with the rotation tool active, so I can clearly see which axis I want to manipulate. Change the Sequencer into a Graph editor, find the joint along the Hierarchy and open the tiny triangle next to it. Go to Motion Method > Translate > Rotation, and then I select the axis that I've confirmed, use the editor's zoom tool and zoom out to see all keys, (switch back to selection tool) select them all for that axis, zoom back in, and carefully move them up or down to correct the rotation.

I usually do this for arms that tend to poke into the body for certain motions - like Martial Arts with Rosie. The thing  I like about this sort of editing is that I can do so anywhere along the timeline - like right where the problem occurs.

Sometimes we might not want to edit all of the keyframes - but just in a certain amount of time.

To do this, I select all of the keys in that span of time, and then (using the Shift key) deselect one key every 5 or so frames, then delete the rest. By deselecting those few in between, I'm still keeping the gist of the animation information. But now I have far fewer keys to work with, making life much easier. here is where I'll snap those remaining keys to the timeline before I start editing. For this method, I never even switch to the graph editor - just stay right in the Sequencer.

Thanks. The rendering is not my biggest problem. Too many characters slows down my Assembly room movements too much. A ten second walk becomes a one minute walk. It is not realistic anymore.

I agree, it was not easy to find LOD (for Victoria). The manuals fail. I had to do a Google search to find the right thread in the DS forum. Because of that I found the folder name and with that I searched my computer.

Ahaaa! Gotcha. Just so happens Carrara has the perfect solution to your (our) woes! ;)

"Show in 3D View"

Deselect that on one before bringing in another. We can always turn them all on at once to see where everything is, but then shut off any of them that we don't need on right now - they still show up in the render though. So use Visible instead if you aslo don't want to test it in the render.

To help with this, Every character I even make ends up in its own Group. This enables me to quickly and easily move, rotate, hide, whatever, all at once. It also just makes it easier for me to always keep track of things.

I also use simple target helper object to help mark out in the scene where some of these hidden things are to make it easier for positioning.