It's like you haven't even tested it before unleashing it on users. I'm not getting any notifications about anything (yet I have notifications turned on), can't find stuff like my Fav Artists list, everything feels very clunky and the ads are too "in your face". Very poor - I have been a user for years and have over 1000 images in my gallery, but this has made me seriously consider moving my stuff elsewhere.

Yes, they appear very intrusive, I can only guess that they are a major reason for the change, but it is simply going to lose regular people from the site. It also seems to add a lot to load times, making the whole site less responsive (not to mention that I can't now find a lot of things such as Fav Artists, not getting ANY notifications any more...). I am hating it so far - surely not the response they were aiming for.

I haven't been getting any notifications that images are uploaded from my favourite artists since the new site was introduced. As far as I can tell, I have it turned on, and made no changes (and I would have thought that settings would be carried forward). To be honest, I was away for the week, came back and just thought "WTF!"

Congrats, Dr Bernie!!

Thanks, Stanley. I was hoping that someone from DAZ would be able to give the reason, but the answer didn't fully convince me. Still, I can see some benefit in it, even if it is not actually required.  Thanks to Haed Wax for letting me know about this thread!

http://www.carraralounge.com/

 Enjoy!

I have already uploaded to Carrara Lounge too!

Hi Eliane,  Given that the system requires some memory to work, 2GB is really prety low these days.  I'd consider adding some more RAM if you can. Depending on your computer this can often be done quite cheaply and you will notice the difference!

technically very accomplished and so very cute too - excellent!!

If the charts can be "adjusted" in some way to exclude the serial commenters then that would be a good thing - they are a good way to see what is popular and find some great art and artists that you may have missed - but it is frustrating to see mediocre work rewarded when much better artists are overlooked.

I didn't know about the DazTmp folder - I just freed 18GB on my hard drive!! Thanks for the tip!

I sometimes apply a little gamma on the render, but nowhere near 2.2 - perhaps 1.2 or 1.4, sometimes it can add to the realism, but too much can just wash out a scene. And it is usually just as easy to apply any gamma and contrast adjustments in Photoshop (or equivalent).

Hi Flibbits,

There are a few general tips to using FaceShop (which you may have seen before, so apologies if I am repeating):

• use the best photo you can - high res, neutral light, not an extreme expression. I've generally found full face (or nearly) to be best, but you can use 3/4 face shots;
• be as accurate as you can in placing the initial points. When you complete the points phase, you get a representative head which should match the orientation of the head in your picture - if there are major differences, go back and re-do it.
• save both an original and a mirrored version, it gives you twice as much material to work with.

Faceshop is clever but it can't make textures from no information, so as the face turns away from the camera, the texture will get less accurate until it is useless for areas that were turned away from the camera when the photo was taken.  This is where a little work in Photoshop (or similar) goes a long way.

The basic technique I use (and I'm sure I've seen a fuller tutorial on this somewhere - perhaps Laslo can point you to it) is as follows:

• Open the original texture, the mirrored texture and a "default" texture - eg. V4 standard maps if your figure is a V4;
• ensure that they are the same size, re-size if needed;
• decide which FSP texture is the best - I prefer to use the original if possible as it will include assymmetric elements which contribute to the character of a face. Select All and Copy to the default standard texture - by selecting all the features will automatically align;
• use a layer mask to hide the poorer areas of the texture, while leaving the areas that are good and contribute to the character.  You can always refine certain areas at this stage using the original photo - eg. copy eyebrows, scaling as required to match the texture.
• At this point you will have basically two layers - the standard texture and the best bits of the FSP texture, but they probably won't match that well. Use the colour adjustment tools (levels, curves, contrast, saturation etc as required) to match as well as you can the FSP texture to the base texture. Doing this will avoid any significant changes between the FSP texture and the rest of the body - the problem that you specifically flagged.
• Save this new texture (under a different name), then go into Poser, load the standard texture MAT and then change the face texture to the new one that you just made.
• Load the morph targets (both orginal and mirrored) and apply some of these but probably less than 100% each, mix them to get the best look that you can without ripping the mesh.
• You can then fine-tune this with the built-in morphs as required.

That's it in a nutshell. As I've said before, the more work you are prepared to put in, the better result you are likely to achieve but FSP is a really useful shortcut to achieve a reasonable likeness.  Good luck!  and I hope this is useful.

So it's not who I thought it might be - but struggling to make a positive ID! I must get more up to date on gossip!

Great work, Ariah!  Is the girl based on someone famous?