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Thanks for the feedback !
Correct. Just a morphing prop of a stack of chips - that's what the 'chip-stack' bit of "DS Chip-Stack Pre-Release 0.1" was intended to convey !
I think I mentioned once or twice that I create stuff in Blender and Poser, and I use Poser for creating most of my stupid pictures.
I hardly ever touch DAZ Studio. However, it was worth the extra effort of doing a DS-specific pre-release of just the chip-stack prop because linking the morph and texture to the chip-count slider works* seemlessly, whereas in Poser there's a requirement to be using parmatic.
Correct. With the exception of those books, the most recent DS-native prop I created was 6 years ago, At that time it was common practice to put props in the <content directory>/props subfolder, materials in the <content directory>/materials or <content directory>/presets/materials subfolder (I never worked out which was the preferred one),etc. I used the same old-style folder structure for the books (and I don't think anybody suggested changing it).Since this is the next prop I simply continued in the tried (twice)and trusted (twice) manner.
That failure of the texture vertical tiling to automatically adjust would be because either:
a) You're using iray. However, you should still see the correct number of chips in the preview pane, which I assume you don't. So I don't think this is your problem.
b) You're sliding the wrong slider. I don't think it's this. The picture clearly indicated which slider to use
c) The scripts aren't being run correctly. This is the most likely. Load the prop, and then from the DS main menu select Help >Troubleshooting > View Log File. Scroll to the bottom of the file (it'll probably be huge unless you're in the habit of clearing it manually) and you should see something like this. Note the three lines in bold red - these indicate that the scripthas run correctly (yes,I've just noticed that the text still refers to the books.That'swhy this is a pre-release):
2020-02-28 09:41:10.433 DEBUG: TRACE:3DCheapskate's 'Connect_Existing_Tiling_Offset_Proxies.dsa' Script - started...
2020-02-28 09:41:10.495 DEBUG: INFO:Surface tiling offsets successfully (re)connected to their proxies. Use the 'Texture Row/Column' sliders under 'Book Adjustments' on the Parameters tab to change the book selection within the current texture map.
2020-02-28 09:41:10.495 DEBUG: TRACE:3DCheapskate's 'Connect_Existing_Tiling_Offset_Proxies.dsa' Script - completed without crashing ! Hurrah !
2020-02-28 09:41:10.495 File loaded in 0 min 1.7 sec.
2020-02-28 09:41:10.511 Loaded file: CasinoChipStack02-Step3.duf
2020-02-28 09:41:11.839 Loaded image Stack3-EdgeAligned.jpg
2020-02-28 09:41:12.272 Loaded image Casino Douteux $5 Stack3-Edge.jpg
2020-02-28 09:41:12.366 Loaded image Casino Douteux $5.jpg
2020-02-28 09:41:14.563 Ran tdlmake on image F:/3D Content/Studio/!PRE-RELEASE/Runtime/textures/3DCheapskate/TEMPORARY/Mapped/Casino Chips/Casino Douteux/Casino Douteux $5.jpg
2020-02-28 09:41:14.895 Ran tdlmake on image F:/3D Content/Studio/!PRE-RELEASE/Runtime/textures/3DCheapskate/TEMPORARY/Mapped/Casino Chips/Casino Douteux/Casino Douteux $5 Stack3-Edge.jpg
2020-02-28 09:41:14.988 Ran tdlmake on image F:/3D Content/Studio/!PRE-RELEASE/Runtime/textures/3DCheapskate/TEMPORARY/Mapped/Casino Chips/Casino Douteux/Stack3-EdgeAligned.jpg
2020-02-28 09:41:15.052 Ran tdlmake on image F:/3D Content/Studio/!PRE-RELEASE/Runtime/textures/3DCheapskate/TEMPORARY/Mapped/Casino Chips/Casino Douteux/Stack3-EdgeBump.jpg
2020-02-28 09:41:26.762 Loaded Morph Deltas in 0 min 0.0 sec.
2020-02-28 09:41:26.762 Loaded file: 13 Chip MT.dsf
My guess is that DS isn't finding the script. Probably because it's not in the expected location, which is hard-coded.
Load the prop, select it, and from the DS main menu Edit >Object > Element Data - you'll see the full path for the post load item is specified as:
/Scripts/3DCheapskate/TEMPORARY/Casino Chips/Connect_Existing_Vertical_Tiles_Proxy.dsa
I'd guess that DS looks for this path/file in all its mapped DS content directories. But if you've put the script with the materials and prop...
I refer you to the subsequent "Poser 54 Chip-Scatter Adjustable Prop Pre-Release 0.1" post,specifically the following statement:
"DAZ Studio users who understand Poser runtimes can simply load the prop from a mapped Poser runtime."
I can do a DS-native version of this too if you want. It shouldn't be difficult... (although past experience prompts caution)
*well,it should !
And it does on my machine.
And it uses the same scripting approach that I used for the books.
So we'll have to find out why it doesn't seem to work for you. Hopefully it's simply that you've not put the script in the required place.
Thanks, no rush !
I recall an old boss of mine telling me that I had two speeds - dead slow and stop.
I replied that, if he thought that, then I'd obviously been working too hard !
Oops! Almost forgot !
Another...
...it has Smart Content !
(And I got that working for those DS books, so I was planning to use it here too)
So when it comes to actually using* the thing it doesn't matter where its materials, etc reside within the directory structure.
*Although having all files related to a specific item in/under a single folder definitely makes sense in many ways. I'm sure Marie Kondo would agree!
I on the other hand do NOT use 'smart content' ... gave up on that a lOng time ago ;-)
... and no I didn't change any of the positions of where the script was and all that ... will get that info for you.
n.b. ignore the who is being quoted stuff, can't see that in the typing box to fix it. Quotes are in blue ink.
:-)
Most of it works :-)
Okay ... there is an error msg with regards to the texture location however that seems to be a matter of the 'temporary' folder business. I had D/S browse to the folder and find the textures which then loaded fine.
Found one dial that does nasty things, pic posted.
And this is the oopsie:
Expecting more chips to appear is actually a quite logical assumption - sometimes (often?) I get so engrossed in the detail of what I'm doing that I forget that what's obvious to me might not be obvious to others. So that was a good observation.
I'd missed that - my main development runtime has the textures in the non-temporary folder, and I forgot to unmap it temporarily for testing.
Well spotted - 'Random Z Scatter (Mid-air C)' has a bad morph target, so I'll need to redo that. I'd missed it because I only looked closely at the chips when I used small morph values.
Thanks again Catherine
Oh you're welcome, it looks to be a fun item.
btw - would there be any possibilities of being able to swap out the chips for say, little asteroids and stuff like that?
Not as things stand. Remember that the base mesh for the 54-chip scatter prop consists of 54 separate chips. Each morph target was created manually from that base mesh. The base mesh OBJ was imported into Poser, and then each morph target in turn was incorporated into the Poser prop using the 'Load Morph Target' with the appropriate OBJ.
To do the same for other objects (banknotes, playing cards,asteroids, whatever) would require creation of a completely new base mesh) plus versions of each MT derived from that new mesh. Which is why I commented back in this post, "But do I really want to go through all this morph target creation again for a pack of cards and a wad of bank notes ?"
Creating an MT to convert the meshes of each individual chip to playing cards, asteroids, whatever is possible.The X/Y/Z translation morphs would still work correctly. However,the rotation morphs wouldtotally screw things up. Also you'd want different UV-mapping. So I can'tsee that approach working.
However, an alternative that I started playing with back when I was doing the multiple-rows-of-books Poser prop was using old-school geometry swapping, as used way back (I'm talking V1/2 time) in Anton's Victoria's Changing Fantasy Suit , Sixus1's Bunch O'Props for Behemoth, etc). Basically each separate item (row of books, casino chip, playing card, asteroid, whatever...) is a mesh attached to a separate bone in the figure. Lots of big advantages doing it that way, but also lots of problems (both expected and unexpected). A few clever tricks and a bit of lateral thinking and I had the basic concept working. And then I got bored and went onto something else. Maybe time to look at it again ?
No that's okay thank you. [not to side track you from the primary job or I'll have the whole board after little ol' me, nope] Was more of a curiousity question. I certainly wouldn't want to be making 50 some morphs for anything. [I still have a few hundred [thousands?] shaders to wade through the coding of which]
Just want to ask, what font was used in the "Pearly Gates Casino" logo? It reminds me of the font used in the "3 Strikes" game on "The Price is Right". And is there a free version I can download? I don't want the one that was used on qwizx, though.
The font used on the original thick plastic chips (e.g. green chip below) which is what I assume you're referring to is "Broadway".
However:
- It's not in my list of downloaded fonts.
- It doesn't appear to be a Windows 7 Font
- It doesn't appear to be a Windows 10 font either
So my best guess is that it came packaged with something I've installed. GIMP, LibreOffice, or OpenOffice are the most likely.
Edit: it looks as if it's "Broadway Regular", and appears to be a free download. Google it.
On the other hand,if you're talking about this one (from this post)...
...I can't remember. But I do recall that I was trying to imitate the font for the "Playboy" cover, found a font with the letters the right shape but with no difference between the thicknessof horizontal and vertical lines, and then did a lot of messing around in GIMP.
Well... as it happens I was already side-tracked by Poser candle-flames, which are something that my necromancer requires for his hand of glory. And while playing with those, suddenly, out of the blue, as if by dark nefarious, magic the answer came to me...
Yes ! I now have a Poser figure (CR2) for a deck of 54 cards (the skeleton has 54 bones) where you can swap the geometry for any bone(s) to use anyOBJ file you like. More info about that in my Instantiation Via (Poser) Geometry Swapping ? thread over at Renderosity.
(Haven't tested it in DAZ Studio yet) Tried it in DAZ Studio 4.11. It imports okay, and does work. However, you can't drag the individual bones around in the viewport, which is something I really liked when I triedit in Poser. You have to move each bone using the x/y/z rotate/translate sliders which for me makes it more-or-less unusable (i.e. too much of a PITA, not worth the effort). Also the viewport reacts really sluggishly, so the way DS handles the figure obviously isn't what I'd hoped.
This is sort of thing that, around DS4.5/4.6,caused me to give up trying to make things that work in both Poser and DS.
Those are neat flames!
For the .cr2, it is possible to have a .cr2 with lots of items that can be dragged around in the viewport - child bones can't be welded to the parent bone. I don't recall right now, but ? whether or not even parenting is passable. I know years back I made a bunch of marshmellows which could be moved around.
At any rate, progress is good ... looking forward to whatever you're releasing of this :-)
I'm afraid that I'm still at the distracted stage. That geometry swapping stuff is working really nicely (but unfortunately not in DS) and I've veered off at a tangent to the original tangent*
However, I did find the blend file with the 54 co-located casino chips and all the morphs, and I've redone the faulty 'Random Z Scatter (Mid-air C)' morph target.
But personally speaking, at present I'm finding that dual-club-wielding ladies in pink bikinis standing in the grass are more fun to play with...
*the mathematically inclined will doubtless wish to point out that a tangent to a tangent is the same as the original tangent. To which I can only say, "you obviously don't live in my world!"
Maybe I'm being stupid - in fact I probably am - but where is the link to download these groovy freebies?
Hey, I bagsied 'being stupid' first !
My original plan... well... sort of ran into a brick wall (as far as the cards and banknotes are concerned) due to the "But do I really want to go through all this morph target creation again for a pack of cards and a wad of bank notes ?" mentioned in this post.
However, Catherine3678ab's comment about little asteroids gave me an idea for a different approach, using geometry swapping, which works beautifully in Poser.
But unfortunately not in DAZ Studio - it appears* that DS4.[something, 5/6 perhaps?] broke Poser-style geometry swapping.
However (again), using a figure with 54 (effectively) disconnected bones, but without the geometry swapping is a possibility for DS, although there's some tedious and error-prone stuff that I'd have to do up front (assigning each individual card/banknote/chip mesh to a separate bone) which I can't really face ! Luckily I've already done that for the deck of cards (which is actually why I know I can't face doing it again in the forseeable future for the banknotes or chips)
So.
The only stuff that I've actually released for this so far is the pre-release stuff - links in the first couple of lines of the OP so you don't have to plough through the thread to find them somewhere on page 2.
But (too many 'however's already) as I mentioned in the previous post I've found the blend file for the 54 casino chips, and (despite my penchant for dual-club-wielding ladies in pink bikinis standing in the grass) I've actually started work on creating the release version of the 54 chip scatter prop. So fingers crossed on that.
And since there's now no way that I'm going to do the cards in that same morphing prop way, I've decided to do them as a 54-loose-boned figure. Fingers crossed there too.
*mentioned here, 4th paragraph, 1st sentence
Shows how long it is since I've used DS - I forgot that you have the select the translate tool to drag the bones around !
And if I strip out the geometry swapping from the CR2 (or more accurately,if I use the CR2 I had prior to adding the geometry swapping) then the preview pane updates at the normal speed. So I think I'll be doing the deck of cards like that.
Meandering through ... love your response to expected questions re tangents :-)
These freebies certainly look interesting, I'll keep an eyes on this, thanks.
I mentioned back here about the problem I ran into when using the same image for the front/back of a chip. The problem occurs if the colours around the circumference of the chip are not left-right symmetrical.The fix for the example I gave was to simply rotate the outer colours until they were left-right symmetrical.
However, I've just realized that chips with two-colour inserts around the edge can't be done like that.
The* solution I can see is to create a separatemap for the back of the chip with the colours (but not the label) flipped left-right:
Obviously the chips would then need two material zones, 'front'and 'back' (edge colours are taken from the front map).
*An alternative is to modify the mesh so that the label and outer colours are separate material zones. But then I'd have to redo all those morph targets...and that's just not going to happen !
I've been working on completing the textures sets for the Casino Dubbioso and unnamed casino chips (based on google images of Monte Carlo Poker Club and Macau casino chips respectively).
The chips are now 39cm diameter when they load, so they'll need to be scaled down to 10% to be the correct size releative to Poser/DAZ figures,but they'll beeasy tospot when you load them,unlike the Goblin Enamel.
I'm only including the four mid-air scatter morphs in the 54 chip scatter prop. I'm going to do the piles of chips as separate props.
Anyway, Poser render to show progress... and further annoyances !
Also, after realizing (in the previous post) that chips with two-colour inlays will require separate maps for back and front (and this remapping of the prop) I somehow ended up here and here... now there's an idea and some almost ready-to-use textures to take me off at a hyper-N-dimensional-tangent.
Jim lad.
...and tangentially speaking - just slapping the doubloon face on the casino chips with a pseudo-metallic Poser Friefly shader...
I'm rather surprised that the edges actually appear knurled/reeded - that's definitely a lucky bonus !
So coins may actually be easier than I thought.
However, I can't use a morph to change the thickness or diameter of the coin, because such morphs would screw up when combined with the mid-air rotation morphs.
I can't see any solution to changing the diameter:thickness ratio in the scatter prop.
However (again), different diameter coins could be achieved by simply using scaling and a bit of simple mathemagics. E.g. a US quarter is about 1" diameter, and a cent about 0.75". So if I scaled a chip scatter prop to 6.51% the chips would be 2.54cm (1") across. If I scaled another chip scatter prop to 4.88% the chips would be 1.9cm (0.75") across. If I then set 'Mid-Air Scatter A' of the first prop to 0.2, and set 'Mid-Air Scatter AB' of the second prop to 0.267, and applied appropriate quarter/cent textures... then (if I've got my maths correct) you should have $13.04 up in the air !
I'm not going to even pretend to understand what you're talking about, love the image though!
Making progress.
Basic Poser Prop PP2 for the mid-air scatter prop redone with 54 chips of 39cm diameter. No 'pile' morphs, just the four mid-air scatters
Three sets of 1024x1024 texture maps done(allredone from scratch).
All three have left-right symmetrical circumference colours, so the original UV mapping (front and back to the same image) is fine, and I haven't bothered changing to separate front/back images*. I'llbe including the GIMP XCFs/PSDs I used to create them in case anybody wants to change the values, colours, or casino names.
Still need to create the Poser Materials (MC6 and MT5 files).The prop has
And of course,once the Poser version's done I guess I should DAZify it ?
After that I can do the piles of chips (simple non-morphing props), and the chip-stack prop.
And then the geometry-swapping scatter figure. But that'll be Poser only, for the reasons already mentioned.
Although I should be able use the basic scatter figure, without the geometry swapping, to create a deck-of-cards scatter,a banknotes scatter, etc.
Mustn't forget the single-chip prop.
Edit: Just realized that with something like a coin it doesn't really matter that the back and front are different, since you'll never see both back and front of any single coin at the same time*. So since the 54 casino chip scatter prop has four material zones, with around a quarter of the chips being assigned to each zone, then the four mat zones can be assigned as coin A front, coin A back, coin B front, and coin B back.And nobody'll be able to tell. Genius,eh ?
*unless you have strategically placed mirrors of course
3dcheapskate...are you still working on this?
Thank you looks interesting.
To be honest I'd forgotten about it. I had an HDD crash in August and inevitably lost some stuff, despite having backups of most things. I don't recall finding these in my backups, but I'll check again and let you know.
Edit: It looks as if I've lost everything I did on this from March last year onwards. Those three nice texture sets are among the casualties - I knew I should have uploaded the XCFs. Personally I blame the dual-club-wielding ladies in pink bikinis standing in the grass... I have backups of them.
But on the bright side I can pretend that I've just had a completely new idea to create a random scatter figure that works by having 54 scatter elements each attached to a separate (and effectively disconnected) bone - something I vaguely recall reading about somewhere...
LOL you're a riot and if you want to start again, I would love it, though will understand if you don't, I remember your frustration at times when things didn't go quite as planned.
Things never go quite as planned, which is why my favourite plan is not to have one.
Luckily I uploaded an early 1024x1024 version of the Monte Dubbioso $10,000 chip back there, and also uploaded screenshots of Windows 10 Explorer folders showing reasonably sized thumbnails of all the textures for the three sets I'd done. So I think I'll ease back into this gently by redoing the XCF templates for the three sets (Monte Dubbioso, Casino Douteux, and the unnamed set) from scratch, again.
Edit 21 Feb: Going well with the Monte Dubbioso set (I've also attached a zipped PSD exported from my latest GIMP version - you know, shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted)...
...but I wish I'd made a note of the fonts I used - I know that those aren't right..
I think the pale gray italic 'MD' on the Monte Dubbioso label was Vladimir Script, and I think the outer curved text on the Casino Douteux was Broadway Regular. But of course I also lost those scripts in the HDD crash.
Edit 21 Feb: Found Vladimir Script and Broadway Regular on my wife's computer. Vlamidimir Script's correct, Broadway isn't.
I used a stencil font for the 50¢ obviously so that one shouldn't be too hard to find. And I think that I only have three different fonts to identify...
Edit2 21 Feb: The other computer seems to still have the fonts I used, so they probably came with MS Office.
The non-stencil digits are almost definitely Bernard MT Condensed (BERNHC.TTF), and the text for the Monte Dubbioso and unnamed sets also seems to match this font.
The stencil digits are almost definitely Stencil (STENCIL.TTF), and the outer curved text for Casino Douteux could be too.
Only the inner curved text for Casino Douteux to go...
...pretty sure I've now found the three fonts - Teen Light was the other one: