Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 9

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  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887

    Ah, in Fast Grab. I'm gradually putting together entire houses of "before and after" (from all different vendors) and here's the bathroom that finally went on sale. It's hard to do a story when you can't flow from one room to another with everything in that dire appearance. 

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited October 2017

    Wanted to update you on the barn owner's brother. He did squeeze the doctor's hand on command and release it on command yesterday, gave the doctor the thumb's up, had his eyes open yesterday. Still not breathing on his own. Unfortunately, today he was unresponsive. I told the barn owner it could possibly be because he was depressed, giving up- not realizing he was getting better, or he may just need the rest for a day or two, the efforts may have wore him out. The good news is the brain still hasn't developed any further complications and he is drawing deeper breaths/ more breaths. 

    Poor barn owner- in addition to that, yesterday she fired one of the two workers who had been with her six years. He hit a boarder's horse with the lead rope on the rump, and not hard, there were witnesses- and that was a thin, 34 year old horse. It's in the contract the workers sign that they NEVER hit a boarder's horse or discipline it,  they are to call the barn owner. The owner has a no-nonsense approach on that (which is why I board there. I told her I would SUE the worker if they ever hit my horse unless they were in danger. Stetson is the epitome of gentle.)  So now she is short a person to work, on top of everything else. 

    Back to Daz. I bought silly things. I picked up Betty and Neptunia. They just appealed to me!  I got the lynx yesterday. It's so nice to see a variety in the store. Everyone doesn't want practical, some people adore toons and whimsical (or just want a break from practical) so I really like today's offerings. And it's great to continue to see Genesis 3 and 8 packed into one product. Thank you vendors! 


                   

    Post edited by Novica on
  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,834

     

    Novica said:

    Wanted to update you on the barn owner's brother. He did squeeze the doctor's hand on command and release it on command yesterday, gave the doctor the thumb's up, had his eyes open yesterday. Still not breathing on his own. 

    Hope he continues to recover. Those 4-wheelers are quite dangerous when they flip.  

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Hope he takes a turn for the better soon.  Seems like when it rains it pours.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,640

    Someone told me the ownership changed here 5 years ago... I am curious if the ownership change mentioned is that one?

  • Novica said:

     

    ...you MUST BUY the qualifying item and supply that order number. You can't say "IF I would've bought this, I could have gotten it cheaper."  So, remember to log out every day and check the spotlights (I keep forgetting to log out!) to see what is there from the PA sale. I normally don't do the piddly amounts but since I looked it up anyway and there were multiples that added up, it was easy to do for today.

    For newbies (and others) the ultra fast way to check: put the items in your cart. Keep that tab open that has the cart so you'll have the current price.
    Second, open a Product Library tab. Copy and paste (just highlight the product name from the cart) into Product Library search, and from there get the order number and date.

    Third, go to your EMAIL on that date and get the price you paid. In your support ticket, just copy/paste from your email. It has the SKU and price, which speeds things up. Do the math for support. You tell them the current price, minus what you paid, and put the difference. At the end, total it up. Tell them if it's store credit or refund. It NEVER takes more than four to seven hours for my refunds, sometimes less than an hour. Help support, make it easy for them. 

    Edit- another tip- while you're in your order in the emails, jot down the DATE of the order (and if multiple orders that day, write down the amount of the order)  then go to paypal and you can easily find it. You have to give the transaction number if paid by Paypal.

    @Novica thank you for explaining how to do this! Based on your instructions, I have put in a request for refund last night and I need to do one tonight as well. I guess the telling thing for me is that I've spent way to much this past month, which is why I have so many of the featured itemsblush

    Trish

  • Novica said:

    Wanted to update you on the barn owner's brother. He did squeeze the doctor's hand on command and release it on command yesterday, gave the doctor the thumb's up, had his eyes open yesterday. Still not breathing on his own. Unfortunately, today he was unresponsive. I told the barn owner it could possibly be because he was depressed, giving up- not realizing he was getting better, or he may just need the rest for a day or two, the efforts may have wore him out. The good news is the brain still hasn't developed any further complications and he is drawing deeper breaths/ more breaths. 

    I don't know if you have shared with your friend that strangers are rooting for her, her brother and family but I have your barn owner's family in my thoughts and prayers. 

    Trish

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited October 2017

    @stormlyght   I sure did, and her face brightened. I haven't heard from her today, (edit- just did. He opened his eyes when the mom talked to him, and his heart rate went up so he recognized her. But eyes rather glazed over.) I'm getting ready to call her. I'll edit this post if there are any changes. I honestly hope he just slept today and got some rest. Too many visitors. Church member feel like they are doing the right thing by coming by, but personally I think they should only visit the family out in the waiting area. I sure wouldn't want to be bothered if I were that bad off in ICU. I didn't even go in to see him.

    I was looking through products and rather curious. Some sets have people positioned in the scene already. To me, I don't think I'd want my scene to look like everyone else's. What's everyone's thoughts? You like positioning or not? 

    Post edited by Novica on
  • EtaminEtamin Posts: 129
    Novica said:

    I was looking through products and rather curious. Some sets have people positioned in the scene already. To me, I don't think I'd want my scene to look like everyone else's. What's everyone's thoughts? You like positioning or not? 

    I agree with your feelings on this.  However, I did pick up https://www.daz3d.com/planet-alpine-ready-to-render recently for $1.74.  As a noob and total amateur, I thought it was worth that to hopefully get a good starting point for exploration.  Obviously, there is no act of creativity in double clicking it and pressing CTRL-R, but it will give me a good starting point tutorial to explore from a known good position, as a change from starting from a blank canvas, and hopefully speed my learning process.

    Many sets also have lights and cameras positioned on load.  So with these, as also in your example, they can stlil serve as a quick set-up starting point from which I can then move everything around.  I am trying to learn the art of kit-bashing for sets/environments as well as wardrobe and props.

    I also feel the same about pose sets.  I have purchased a few, but I prefer to use them as shortcuts to get me close to my desired pose rather than, again, just double clicking, then hitting CTRL-R on the preset version.

    Enough noob rambling, but I just want to say Thank You for the incredible amount of time and effort that you and many other experienced Daz users put into your contributions here on the forums - they are extremely helpful smiley

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,640

    I don’t buy ready to render scenes but I buy and use others poses all the time. I have limited time to use studio and while I can and do make my own poses some of the storebought ones are pretty intricate and better than what I can make. Most poses require adjustment but I have no issue with readymade poses or lights

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    I don't use ready to render scenes although I do agree for people who are new its a good way to look at how things are set up. Especially for $1.74.  And, you do get all the content, lights etc. IIRC. 

    I do purchase and use premade poses all the time.  I almost always tweak them but that takes far less time than posing from scratch.  Which I can do but, like Serene Night said, I have limited rendering time and I am not that fond of posing from scratch to begin with.  Premade poses are a huge timesaver even with a lot of tweaking.

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    Novica said:

    I was looking through products and rather curious. Some sets have people positioned in the scene already. To me, I don't think I'd want my scene to look like everyone else's. What's everyone's thoughts? You like positioning or not? 

    In general, "not." Especially pose sets, when I've already positioned my character and adding a pose moves them somewhere else. (It's not so bad when the PA gives us both "go to" and in place options for each pose, and clearly marks the go to in the filename.

    I can see where it might come in handy, though, if you're in need of a busy background, like the diner for example, so there is something going on in the background. Like extras on a movie set. Being able to set something like that up quickly could be a big plus. But that's the exception, not my usual preference.

     

  • EtaminEtamin Posts: 129

    I don't use ready to render scenes although I do agree for people who are new its a good way to look at how things are set up. Especially for $1.74.  And, you do get all the content, lights etc. IIRC. 

    I do purchase and use premade poses all the time.  I almost always tweak them but that takes far less time than posing from scratch.  Which I can do but, like Serene Night said, I have limited rendering time and I am not that fond of posing from scratch to begin with.  Premade poses are a huge timesaver even with a lot of tweaking.

    Hi IceDragonArt

    In the case of the Planet Alpine RTR, you do need the scene assets to render:

    With regard to poses, I think that is what I was trying to say - preset poses are a good starting point, rather than the basic T (or whatever you call the G8 starting pose), but I wouldn't feel like I was actually doing anything cerative if I just used them 'out of the box'  I hope that makes sense

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887

    I don’t buy ready to render scenes but I buy and use others poses all the time. I have limited time to use studio and while I can and do make my own poses some of the storebought ones are pretty intricate and better than what I can make. Most poses require adjustment but I have no issue with readymade poses or lights

    I have a lot of pose sets too, and use them the same way- as a starting point. What I was curious about was the positioning ones that place them in a scene- I tend to move them so they're not like everyone else's. I'm very bad about using cameras that have been provided, I always rotate around from the default and create my own cameras. Just habit. 

    @etamin   Our pleasure. There's a lot of information in the previous eight threads and it's rather fun surfing through.

    For people wanting 3DL lighting advice and setups, it's back in the earlier threads. I tested different light sets and gave coordinates and settings. I don't discuss 3DL anymore because I just don't have time to keep up with Iray and rendering what I've bought. It's not a deliberate snub.  smiley

    One tip on clothes bashing- look at your layered sets, sometimes the garment underneath makes a great outfit all by itself. I can't remember the name of it, but I think it was a dress under an armor outfit!  And those under-garments paired with pants from other sets gives you a lot of options.

  • jakibluejakiblue Posts: 7,281

    I think that Paladin armour set from the PC you were rendering the tunic/dress underneath on its own.  

    Novica said:

    .......One tip on clothes bashing- look at your layered sets, sometimes the garment underneath makes a great outfit all by itself. I can't remember the name of it, but I think it was a dress under an armor outfit!  And those under-garments paired with pants from other sets gives you a lot of options.

     

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited October 2017

    Yep, thanks @jakiblue- and look what I found with a Google search. The dress with textures. Ah, memories of older posts.

    Post edited by Novica on
  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,640
    edited October 2017

    I always leave my characters at zero or close to it in the case of couples poses since only one character can be at zero. I don’t move my characters to suit a scene I move the scene to fit the characters. I find it tiresome to move the scenes but lately sets have been loading above and below the ground floor and out of the 'cool looking zone' so  I have to move it anyway or the character jumps below the floor when I zero or move the figures feet. I get tired of fixing the soles so I move the floor to the correct location so I don’t have to do that again.

    I like to leave the camera at default position and zoom in and out and roll it but I try to pose characters for the default camera because lights are designed to work with those  settings frequently.  some poses are rotated away from the camera so what I do is parent the figures to the vignette handle and rotate them around. Once I get the characters where I want them I rotate them towards the camera.

     

     

    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • BlueIreneBlueIrene Posts: 1,318

    I do try to make everything I buy look at bit different, which is one of the many reasons why I love my shader sets so much. The one thing that really does my head in is when a product changes my typical render dimensions or somehow manages to change the colour of my viewport background on load, for no reason whatsoever.

    With regard to your friend's brother, my husband's mum had an undetected aneurism burst in her brain about two years ago (they discovered a bigger one next to it that would have killed her instantly had that one been the one to go). As it was, she was not expected to last the night and the family were called to the hospital near her home 150 miles away to say their goodbyes (you can probably imagine that journey!). She made it through that night and the next, slowly coming back to us each day as everyone took turns to sit beside her in intensive care, encouraging her on. Three weeks in, we were even getting a couple of mostly nonsense words out of her. Then my sister-in-law rang - they were rushing my mother-in-law in for an emergency brain scan as she had been completely unresponsive all day. The scan was fine, and the next morning my mother-in-law was responding again. Asked why she'd not moved or spoken the previous day, she simply said 'Didn't feel like it'. It was another six weeks before she recognised any of us for the first time since the aneurism burst, after which she made rapid progress. Apart from a minor problem in her left foot, these days she is much the same as she always was.

    I agree with what you say about the well-meaning church members. The family needs their support, but the patient just needs peace and quiet and the family - a small core of people who are sufficiently in the thick of things the whole time to be able to recognise subtle signs and changes which might get lost to a constantly changing stream of visitors. Tell your friend I'm thinking of her and her brother and the family too.

  • jakibluejakiblue Posts: 7,281

    Oh that drives me nuts.  The old .daz files do that - change the colour of the viewport background. Then i've got to try adn remember WHERE the tool is to change it back. There've been a couple of products that change my render dimensions too which shocked the heck out of me the first time it happened. A good one for that is Dreamlight's "Iray Presets for DS Enchanted forest". Good lighting, good render settings...but OMG it changes your dimensions to 500x281px!!!!! I put in a ticket for this back in July 2017 and there's never been an update or a fix since then. I can't be the only person who bought this product that it happens too, but yeah, nothing has been done in 4 months about it. 

    .. The one thing that really does my head in is when a product changes my typical render dimensions or somehow manages to change the colour of my viewport background on load, for no reason whatsoever.

     

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887

    Hey, @Mattymanx has a great tip- 

    TIP:  When you are working with a figure and tweaking it, use the Perspective view. Why? Because it doesn't show up in the Undo list. When you want to undo an action, you don't have to wade through and undo all those turns and zooms,. It's SO nice not to have those interfering in your list. 

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited October 2017
    Novica said:

    Hey, @Mattymanx has a great tip- 

    TIP:  When you are working with a figure and tweaking it, use the Perspective view. Why? Because it doesn't show up in the Undo list. When you want to undo an action, you don't have to wade through and undo all those turns and zooms,. It's SO nice not to have those interfering in your list. 

    Well... here's another tip: If you have your camera where you want it, go into the parameters and lock the transforms; Translate and Rotate are sufficient. (I really wish DS had a "Lock Camera" toggle function, like the Draw Dome toggle in the Render Settings->Environment!) Because even when you use the Perspective View most of the time, there are times when you want to see what your changes are going to look like through the camera you'll be rendering through, and it can be a royal pain in the neck if you've done a lot of changes before you realize you're looking through the wrong camera. (Yes, that's experience talking.) If the camera is locked, nothing happens when you try to rotate or zoom in, cluing you in to the fact you are looking through the wrong camera.

    Post edited by L'Adair on
  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887

    I'm surfing back in Thread 6 (just feeling nostalgic and wanting to see what characters I had rendered) and as I was saying about undergarments, here's another example of a nice turtleneck under Galactic Corps Defender.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887

    Oh yeah, remember this product?   Kaleidoscope   I found a forum thread from the product page saying you can render a group of people (say 6 people) then use this to multiply them. I have yet to use this, although I recall some of you did. Can this use Iray?

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887

    Getting some laughs from Thread 6. I posted a picture of an outfit that looks like a Nintendo Wario sticking out his tongue-  in the chestpiece. Yeah, when I'm looking through thumbnails, I do ink-blot tests all the time. 

    @Etamin   This post lists four outfits that were kitbashed together. I did this years ago but I remembered what you said a few posts up about kitbashing outfits and sets. My favorite thing to do is put a Skinz product or bodysuit under skimpwear and make it family friendly. I mix leggings, boots, and arm bracers/gloves to change the outfits. This is the original outfit then the changed one.

  • firewardenfirewarden Posts: 1,482

    @Novica, PM'd you. Also, how is the barn owner's son doing. Thinking of them.

  • EtaminEtamin Posts: 129

    Hi Novica, thanks for the link

     

    Novica said:

    @Etamin   This post lists four outfits that were kitbashed together. I did this years ago but I remembered what you said a few posts up about kitbashing outfits and sets. My favorite thing to do is put a Skinz product or bodysuit under skimpwear and make it family friendly. I mix leggings, boots, and arm bracers/gloves to change the outfits. This is the original outfit then the changed one.

    Yes, I have been spending quite a lot of time reading theough many of the threads, and many have so many comments towade through to get to the useful info - like the 'Show us your iray render' threads.

    The product page forum reference links from the Daz Deals Options plugin http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/106296/announcing-daz-deals-browser-add-on/p1 are very helpful, and many land up in one of your posts like the one you linked.

    So much info, so little time!

  • Novica said:

    One I want to point out (that goes to 51%, I haven't checked to see if that's the right discount, just got online) is Tara 2 HD for Victoria 7 and Victoria 8  by @Kayleyss. Don't let the main promo fool you, there's other brows, including "soft" versions. I have a new release in the cart. And although she won't look quite the same on G3F/ G8F you don't have to have the Victorias. 

     

    Only the body morphs use the Victorias. The Head morphs don't need them smiley 

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Yes, you can use the Kaleidoscope product in Iray.  There was a thread awhile back.

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    kayleyss said:

    Only the body morphs use the Victorias. The Head morphs don't need them smiley 

    @kayleyss   Ah! Good to know!  And you should- I can't remember if you surfed in to the favorite character/hair thread, but you got mentioned repeatedly.  yes

    Another TIP I learned today- to reset a pose back to a T pose (I haven't tested on Genesis 8, is that called the A pose?) , it's CTRL+SHIFT+F   

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited October 2017

    LOL here's another funny video- a virtual shark. Wow, does it look REAL. This would make those flying fish keep on flying if this dude were in the area.

    Post edited by Novica on
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