Amaranth posted at 7:40PM Fri, 05 February 2016 - #4253425

sounds like soylent green ... pls try to escape they are people !!

I was trying to come up with a "Logan's Run" joke, but I've got nothing.

Thanks - I was just curious if there was some universal problem I was not aware of. I appreciate the reply. :)

dr_bernie posted at 7:56AM Sat, 30 January 2016 - #4251877

@tsarist:

Thanks for your concerns tsarist, but there will be no update catastrophes for me! The last good known version of Carrara is 8.1.1.12, and that is that!

The only way I might upgrade to a newer version is if Donald or Hillary are willing to bet their presidencies on it!

Can I ask what that is based on? I am using the most recent version (8.5.19 something something) and haven't run into any issues in it that were not present in earlier versions, plus I can now actually use smart content (I rarely do except for Genesis stuff, but I can) and it also seems to start a bit quicker. I agree with most people that it wasn't any sort of earth-shaking improvement over earlier versions, but I keep running into people who stopped at 8.1 and I don't understand why. Even if it was just for the few little bug fixes, why would you not use the most recent one?

I'm going to vote for Wonga for "Fill it up." :)

Moonglow posted at 5:44AM Fri, 22 January 2016 - #4250585

The latest four products released by DAZ3D will NOT WORK WITH CARRARA, nor will most future releases by DAZ3D. Read their latest FAQs and their forums about the new DRM products and Carrara incompatibility. Also, if you run "Daz Connect" feature in the new DAZStudio 4.9, it will, depending on file locations, update current DAZ product files in your runtimes and render them unusable in Carrara. Read ALL the FAQs...and also "between" the Daz3D lines.

That's partly true. The four new items will not work in Carrara, but not all future items will be DAZ Connect-only (yet - eventually they will be, you're right about that, but they are not switching over entirely right away). Running DAZ Connect and allowing it to download content updates WILL download versions Carrara cannot use, but it WILL NOT over-write any content you have already downloaded/installed except for earlier versions of D/S itself. The new encrypted files it downloads go to a different location and are in a different file format. I installed it just to take a look and it only needs to connect using DAZ Connect one time and then never again (currently).

Even if you install D/S 4.9 you only have to let Connect connect once and then you never have to use it again (currently) and they have said repeatedly that all the old products that came out pre-4.9 will always still be available in your library as .zip files.

Out of curiosity - would it be possible to somehow allow comments on the entered images after the winner is announced? I get why the whole process is anonymous and no comments are allowed _during _the contest, but when it is over it's a little de-motivating to have spent a lot of effort on an entry for one of the site contests and then not know if anyone even _looked _at my entry. Some people post their entries to the galleries later, but it might not be right away and they are easy to miss that way.

Publishing some general statistics on the contest after it is over would be nice too: just something like x people voted, x total image views - for the whole contest, I mean, not per image.

Just a suggestion for consideration for future contests.

This one might be pushing the theme a bit, but I thought I'd share it anyway. :) I just had this weird idea last night while watching a tutorial on making a TIE fighter and couldn't stop laughing (might have been lack of sleep too) so I got up this morning and made this. I should probably have spent more time on the UV map because you can see where the texture kind of randomly changes directions, but it was such a quick one-off model that I just didn't feel like spending the extra time to carefully unwrap it. I am kind of happy with how the crowd came out though; that's just a spots texture multiplied by a color gradient and applied to a cube - I think with the blur it actually looks surprisingly like a large group of people back there.

"Tie Fighter"

We all know that the classic MSE-6 "Mouse" Repair Droids are the real heroes of the Star Wars universe, so I thought I'd show them off here in a fake magazine type ad. Everything modeled and rendered in Carrara, post-work in Photoshop.

This could probably be un-stickied now - looks like voting closed this morning. :)

A lot of the Genesis 2 character material presets use a DAZ Studio-only SSS shader base and since Carrara has no idea what to do with that it replaces it with just black. Like Sueposer and manleystanley say, the only work around is to manually load the textures and then save the master shader so you can re-use it later.

This is not the challenge I was looking for. :)

But strangely I had an idea just last night that fits the theme, so I'll see if I can make it work.

LuxXeon posted at 6:00PM Mon, 28 December 2015 - #4245980

In Cycles Properties panel, make sure you have RGBA selected, not RGB, in the Output panel rollout, and be sure the Transparency option is enabled under the Film rollout. Save to PNG. This should allow your alpha layer to save, with the World background transparent.

Thank you so much! Checking the Transparency box solved it. I already had it set to RGBA and PNG but that tricksy Transparency box was the missing piece.

DramaKing posted at 6:08PM Sun, 27 December 2015 - #4245920

Turn off the Sky pass under Layer in the Render Layers panel.

I don't see a Sky pass under the render layers. I am rendering with Cycles in Blender 2.75 if that helps.

Under the World options I am using "Background" with a solid color for the surface though - could that be messing it up? Does Blender see the solid color as an object?

LuxXeon posted at 5:59PM Sun, 27 December 2015 - #4245919

Which editor or compositor are you using? For example, in Photoshop, when you open an image in a layer, you can import the black and white alpha in the Channels panel, as an alpha source. In the Blender compositor, you would need to set up an Alpha node structure, as illustrated in the documentation here:

https://www.blender.org/manual/composite_nodes/types/converter/set_alpha.html

I am using Blender's compositor with an image I just rendered in Blender - I don't save it out, I just go straight to the compositor. The separate render layers I set up all show up as options there in a Render Layer node - for example I have a render layer with just some rocks floating in space on it and nothing behind them in the scene; I can select just that render layer and connect it to a Viewer Node and see only those rocks, but if I connect the Alpha output to the Viewer all I get is a solid white image.

In the video I watched they just rendered the image and when they went to the Compositor and connected the Render Layers node's Alpha output to a Viewer node it showed a black and white image - I am not getting that though, so I must have missed a step they did somewhere.

I'd add some screenshots but I actually have another render going right now. If it's still not clear what I am trying to do I will post back later with some images of what I am getting and what I am expecting - I'm still pretty new to Blender and this is my first real foray into the Compositor so I may be using some incorrect terminology in trying to describe this.

I'm not real familiar with Poser, but in most programs increasing the light quality will help with this. Looking at the settings visible in your screenshot, if bumping up the Indirect Light Quality does not help, try increasing the Pixel Samples. Increase the samples slowly though - that setting will probably increase render times significantly.

Also, just as an aside (again, I'm not real familiar with Poser so this could be totally wrong), you might want to un-check the SSS box - any subsurface scattering on that one character won't be visible at that size/distance and it is probably slowing your render down to calculate it.

You might get better answers asking this in the Poser specific forum - you posted this (maybe accidentally) to the Community Center forum. :)