Sorry to hear about his passing. I didn't know him personally, but I appreciated his imaginative work & the kind comments he occasionally made about my own.

No way to do exactly what you want, but assigning Families to objects works pretty well for me. If you have an idea of which objects will share identical materials, assign a common family to those objects - preferably as you create them, but you can do it any time. Then, if you want to change materials, just select that Family with one click & assign the new material to all the objects in that Family in one fell swoop...

Quest - Now you're saying "So if an artist asks for credit mention why would we repay their kindness and hard work by begrudging and disrespecting the conditions of the transfer?". We were clearly discussing the case where an artist does NOT ask to be credited - that was stated very clearly. I also said in a previous post in this thread  that I would, of course, honor a request to be credited if it were made by the content creator.

We seem to be going around in circles here, covering the same ground over & over. To summarize my position one last time:

If I use a 3d model, free or purchased, I always abide by the terms specified by the model creator. If they request credit, I will credit them.

If I use a 3d model, free or purchased & it features prominently (that's a subjective judgment, of course) in my completed artwork, I will credit the creator whether or not they requested it.

If I use 3d models, free or purchased, by a particular creator frequently in my artwork, I will periodically credit them, whether or not they requested it.

Does that make me a copyright thief, lazy, ungrateful, or morally despicable? I guess that's a judgment each person has to make...

Quest, with all due respect, it may be as simple as you can get, but that doesn't make it a fact. Using a purchased or free 3d model that explicitly states you can use it for commercial or non-commercial use, without specifically crediting it, is perfectly legal & is not copyright theft. It may offend your own personal sense of ethics, but that doesn't make it illegal.

3d models that are made available by their creators, whether for free or for profit, are designed to be used by others in works of art - that is their purpose. That's very different from say, the copyright  case brought against Shepard Fairey for his use of an AP photo as the basis for his famous Obama poster. In that case, a copyrighted photo that the photographer did not intend or explicitly state could be used by others was used as the basis for a poster. Even that case is, as far as I know, still not settled conclusively. If the photographer had sold the right to use the photograph in a commercial work & had not specifically stated that he desired to be credited (as is very standard practice with stock photography, which is probably the closest parallel to the use of 3d models), I believe he would have been laughed out of court.

I have to keep restating that I do appreciate the work of model creators & often credit them. The fact that not tediously mentioning every single model I use every single time I use them doesn't meet your particular personal set of  standards does not make me a copyright thief - it just makes you judgmental. I'm really not looking to start a personal confrontation here, but I don't appreciate being called a thief. I would hope we can agree to disagree respectfully on something that is clearly not as cut & dried as you tried to make it sound.

Quest,

I have to disagree with your statement that "most artists that create models for general free consumption often ask to be accredited". I have very rarely found that to be the case. But, in any case, I clearly stated that I was referring to free models "with no strings attached". I would consider asking to be credited a string (which I would honor if I chose to use that person's model). I would urge all modelers who want to be credited every single time their models are used to very clearly state that.

Assuming there were no crediting requirements specified by the model creator:

If I took someone's model of a spaceship & plunked it down on a starry background (which, btw,  I would never do), I would feel obligated to credit them. If I used someone's model of a window & used it on a house that was a relatively minor part of the background of my composition, I probably wouldn't feel obligated to credit them. There are a whole range of cases that fall between those two extremes & I think it's up to the individual artist to determine when to specify credits. If the models are a very prominent part of the image, if I use multiple models by the same creator or if I often use models by a particular modeler, I will credit them - both to offer my appreciation &, as you suggested, to avoid having viewers get the mistaken impression that I created everything in the image from scratch. As an example, in my case, I have often used both free models & purchased models created by MatCreator. They have become part of my tool chest & I almost consider them as primitives in the same way I think of spheres, cubes or metaballs. I periodically credit him, out of appreciation, but I don't feel the need to do it every single time.

And finally, I have never claimed that any image was "entirely" my own or tried to create that impression. There is a tradition in art of using external sources without providing explicit credit. Pop Art used images of celebrities & commercial products (Campbell's soup cans), Surrealist collages used images clipped from books, magazines & newspapers, the current crop of Pop Surrealists use images from tv, movies & popular culture & modern sculptures often are constructed with manufactured components. Picasso said "Good artists borrow. Great artists steal". That may or may not have been said tongue in cheek & I'm not comparing myself to Picasso or claiming to be a great artist - I just don't think it's necessary to credit the source of every component of a piece of art.

I have a somewhat different perspective on this. I use my own models, purchased models & free models in my compositions. I sometimes credit model sources & sometimes don't. It depends on how prominent the model is in the overall composition or how many I've used. I tend to use models as a form of primitive object. I distort them, apply booleans to them, texture them in unusual ways, etc. & use them in ways that often make them unrecognizable. In that context, if I have obtained the models in a legal way (either through purchasing them or because they were given away by their creators without strings attached) & I am not violating copyrights, I don't feel I'm morally obligated to credit every model I use every time. It would also be a tedious task to keep track of the models I use in each composition - I view creating art as play & that would make it more like work.

That said, I do periodically credit modelers whose work has become an important input to my own, just out of gratitude. And for those who use models in a more straightforward way & that feature them prominently in their completed work, it does make sense to credit them.

Works very nicely & I think this will be very useful for me. Only two things I've noticed so far that are minor issues. For some reason, it can't view 3dsmax files unless you actually have 3ds max installed (not a big issue for me, as I have very few 3ds max models) & you can't rotate objects without opening a new window - it would be a lot more convenient to be able to rotate them in the main view.

Also, it's not free - there's a 30-day trial, then you have to pay $20 - which is very reasonable & which I'll be happy to pay.

Thank, Countach - I have checked out the description of the product on their website & it sounds like it may work for me - am downloading now...

pakled - I checked the Irfanview site & it doesn't support 3d files. I know there are several 3d file viewers out there that are helpful, but not exactly what I'm looking for. I suspect there must be some high end programs that can do this, but I've done a bunch of searches & haven't found anything that meets my needs. P3dO seems like the closest fit, but as I mentioned, it somehow messed up my content libraries & I'm not prepared to risk that again. Seems to me this could be a niche that somebody could fill. 10 or 20 years ago, I might have attempted to build my own program, but I'm just not into programming anymore - I' prefer to spend my time creating art rather than software...

tom271 - Thanks, I checked out the online manual for Deep View. Though the price is right, this seems to be geared to viewing of models & facilitating their use in documents & presentations, rather than cataloging, which is what I'm after. It also sounds like it inserts itself into contextual menus within MS Office, which would be ok if I needed that functionality, but which I'm reluctant to allow it to do when I have no need for that.

I have tried one product in the past called P3dO Explorer, which seemed to be designed to catalog & organize 3d files, but it misbehaved & actually messed up my Poser content libraries. I ended up uninstalling it & spending several hours getting things back to where I could access the libraries.

bobbystahr - Thanks for the quick reply, but I checked it out & you & I must have a different definition of "reasonably priced". The cheapest version of Deep Exploration is $498/year with a 5 year subscription or $1495 for a perpetual license. It's a also a full-scale, enterprise level CAD program, which I have no need for. I'm just looking for a simple cataloging or database application, hopefully for under $100...

Metaballs can only be booleaned with other metaballs, they don't interact with other Bryce objects. And checking the "+" or "-" in a metaball attribute box has no effect. You create a negative metaball by holding down the shift key when you create a metaball. Probably not the answer you were hoping for, but I hope that helps...

Ok, never mind, I figured out how to fix this. When I installed Poser Pro, I set up a separate Download content library (as recommended). So I uninstalled the Victoria 4.2 I had installed in the Poser Pro application folder & re-installed it in my Download content folder (after first putting a fake Poser.exe file in it to satisfy the DAZ installer). Poser Pro was then able to find it & all seems to be working fine now.

I had a similar problem installing Victoria 4.2 into Poser Pro, created a fake Poser.exe file & it seemed to installed successfully. But there is no sign of Victoria when I look for her from within Poser Pro. I can see the files in the RuntimeLibraries folder (in a folder called "!DAZ"), but I've searched every single Figure folder from within Poser Pro & it's not there. Anyone have any ideas about what may be happening & how to fix it?

Congratulations on the award - excellent sci-fi artwork...