hborre posted at 1:00 PM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466133

Thalek posted at 2:36 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466109

Y-Phil posted at 1:53 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466106

Thalek posted at 1:38 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466104

Did you checked Win10's Events journal? you may find a hint. Or maybe the support could help you if it is about more "intimate" () things proper to Poser 

Haven't checked the events journal, can't consult Rocketship's support, and haven't consulted Microsoft support.  And PzDB is a standalone.  I can drop selections on Poser, but it doesn't need Poser to be running for me to use the database.  I can confidently assert that the problem is unrelated to Poser as I haven't even turned it on the last several days while I concentrate.

It's one of the reasons you guys haven't had any of my renders inflicted on you lately.

Try setting back the Windows compatibility one or two versions and see if that corrects the issue.  That should bypass any Windows 10 update that may be interfering.

Oh, good idea!  I was so focussed on roll-backs I didn't think of that!  Thanks!  (He exclaimed.)

TheAnimaGemini posted at 12:17 PM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466130

I render a Mammouth today

Postwork was done in ON1 Some contrast,Vignette and snow storm

Beautiful work!  I like the touch of fogginess; it adds something to the realism, something I can't quite put my finger on.  Well done!

JanusJsenwark posted at 9:33 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466119

Thalek posted at 2:36 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466109

Y-Phil posted at 1:53 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466106

Thalek posted at 1:38 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466104

Did you checked Win10's Events journal? you may find a hint. Or maybe the support could help you if it is about more "intimate" () things proper to Poser 

Haven't checked the events journal, can't consult Rocketship's support, and haven't consulted Microsoft support.  And PzDB is a standalone.  I can drop selections on Poser, but it doesn't need Poser to be running for me to use the database.  I can confidently assert that the problem is unrelated to Poser as I haven't even turned it on the last several days while I concentrate.

It's one of the reasons you guys haven't had any of my renders inflicted on you lately.

Thanks for the time you put into writing this. Wise words that made me think. I have no idea about forums and how to behave in them. Despite my old age, I'm still learning. And you're right, a lot of different philosophies meet here and I took mine too seriously. I'll keep watching and posting funny pictures. Thanks!

You honor me.

Behavior in a forum is much like behavior at a party where you know only about half he people: politeness is the oil society uses to prevent us from rubbing each other raw.  The primary difference is there is no body language or tone of voice.  It's why I add descriptions.  My friends who know me best can tell when I'm being sarcastic or deadpan, but it's harder for others.  Especially when we live in an era where Poe's Law had to be formulated.  ("It is impossible to satirize an extremist in such a way that everyone knows that it IS satire.")   Despite knowing this, many of us will still take a text statement the wrong way sometimes.  It happens.  Being quick with a clarification and quick with an apology are two of the ways the two parties deal with misunderstandings. I took me a long time to learn to apologize when I'm wrong, and I still don't always do it well.

It's not that you took  yourself too seriously, it's that you temporarily forgot that there are additional approaches. to art.  I myself don't like abstract art, but I've always been literal-minded.  Someone once described a certain era of art history as "trying to invent the camera before it existed", and that is the kind of art I personally find appealing.  I find it hard to consider standing on a ladder and spattering a canvas with paint to be art.  In my narrow view, art is supposed to convey a message.  So for me, gravity-induced splatters convey no message at all, except maybe that he left a mess for the maid to clean up for him.

[shrug]  And however firmly I believe my view to be correct . . . well, it's really only correct for ME, right? Get two artists together and you'll probably get three opinions on art.  Get an artist and a non-artist together, and that probably jumps to five opinions.  [grin]  And there are some people that don't consider photography an art.  (Which is probably because, like every other branch of art, some of the photography isn't art at all.  But I'm amazed at some of the artistry that goes into even illustrative technical photography. A photograph of a complex optical experiment becomes magical with a hint of fog to make the laser beams more visible.)

I'm fortunate that I can learn so much from you, from the more technically oriented, and even from painters and photographers who have long studied light and perspective and shades and creative viewpoints.

So in urging you not to stay your opinions when they occur to you, I'm being more than a little self-serving, as well. [grin]

Y-Phil posted at 2:45 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466110

Thalek posted at 2:36 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466109

It's one of the reasons you guys haven't had any of my renders inflicted on you lately.

None of your renders has ever been inflicted on me, at least not in my eyes... 
Just in case: Win10's events journal can be opened by right-clicking on "My PC" or "This PC" or "This computer" icon (my Windows is in French) and by choosing "Manage" in the contextual menu.

You're very kind.

I tried using the events journal, and even noted the time when I created the latest crash.  Couldn't find anything. I think I've reached the limits of my technical expertise.

Y-Phil posted at 1:53 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466106

Thalek posted at 1:38 AM Mon, 22 May 2023 - #4466104

Did you checked Win10's Events journal? you may find a hint. Or maybe the support could help you if it is about more "intimate" () things proper to Poser 

Haven't checked the events journal, can't consult Rocketship's support, and haven't consulted Microsoft support.  And PzDB is a standalone.  I can drop selections on Poser, but it doesn't need Poser to be running for me to use the database.  I can confidently assert that the problem is unrelated to Poser as I haven't even turned it on the last several days while I concentrate.

It's one of the reasons you guys haven't had any of my renders inflicted on you lately.

JanusJsenwark posted at 1:58 PM Fri, 19 May 2023 - #4465794

I didn't mean it badly. But that's all way too technical for me, here's a little blue, 0.02 of that a little... where's the fun, the beautiful and interesting? Maybe I'm not in the right place. I'll keep my mouth shut in the future. Sometimes I piss myself off.

I don't think anyone took it badly.  And that image with the spheres is amazing!  I hope you had a script to help you place the spheres, instead of doing it by hand.  [grin]

I think part of the situation (I won't go so far as to call it a "problem", because I don't think it is one), is that the posts here have two different philosophies behind them.

Many of the posts are from the technician artists, a category I would fall into if I was an artist.  They find art in getting the shaders just right, doing the math for the most realistic effect, or the most spectacular or most beautiful effect. They're concerned with the minutia of the right depth of field settings, the subtle differences of lighting techniques, bump/displacement/normal maps, subdivision of meshes, reflections, transparency settings, all of the "mechanical" settings that can affect the calculation and appearance of the rendering of the image. So, some of their images have given less thought to poses and expressions and look more like technical how-to drawings.  They're a bit like song writers who don't necessarily sing well, but their art also lies in the area of creation.  There's nothing wrong with that, per se.  They are the ones who give us incredible shaders, amazing figures and props, powerful scripts, and tutorials on how to do some of the harder stuff, or some of the more obscure stuff, or the stuff newbies need to know, but don't seem to get from the manual.

Then there are the Art For Art's Sake people.  They may or may not know anything about the shaders or how to tweak them, could not care less about f-stops or if the light is at 104% or 107%.  They may never use anything but pure stock shaders, but rarely pure stock expressions or poses. Or they may, but that's not how they create. They create from intuition. They are the ones who put laugh lines around the eyes, know how to make those marbles look like eyes with a rogueish sparkle in them, the tilt of the head, the spontaneity of the candid shot (very hard to reproduce in computer generated art where there's damned near zero spontaneity in the process), they've studied body language, and how hair blows in the wind or looks on a humid day.  They don't know the difference between what looks natural and what looks like a mannequin; they FEEL the difference.  One kind of artist knows how to make a character look like they're actually touching the ground, the other knows how grass feels on bare feet and how it sticks out between the toes.  How a walk on sand looks different than a walk on grass.  Some of its conscious, an awareness of perspective and negative space, and making of point of not making the centering of a pose TOO perfect.  And some of it is intuition. But this is the sensuous artist, the one who pays attention to the senses of both the intended audience and the characters they create. They make it possible to not just see the roses, but smell them, too.

Then there are the mechanics, the ones who fit in neither camp and frankly, aren't as brilliant as either camp, but they want to have fun, and so they do so.  It may not be art, but it's what they like.  Or . . . close to it, at least. This is probably the category I belong in.  When I repair an electronic instrument, I read the manual.  When I cook something, I cook from the cookbook. I don't create things so much as I direct them.  (And directors are artists, too, their medium just happens to be people.)

But amazing things happen when the intuitive artists and the technician (maybe engineering, as engineers DO create things; technicians tend to use things instead of creating them) talk to each other and share their skills, offer creative criticism and in short, help fill the gaps in each other's strengths. Not everyone can take constructive criticism, just as not every actor can take direction.  The ones who can are usually the better off for it.

Almost everyone has SOMETHING they can offer.  Don't fall silent just because the techies are dominating the thread; they want to learn, too.  :-)

Y-Phil posted at 11:59 AM Sun, 21 May 2023 - #4466000

shvrdavid posted at 11:24 AM Sun, 21 May 2023 - #4465999

Thalek posted at 9:30 PM Fri, 19 May 2023 - #4465848

I recommend VoidTools "Everything" search engine, indexer and database. Both free versions and a modest fee version are available.

I use Everything, very handy indeed. It is far faster than Windows search, even if you have to wait on it to reindex the entire system because you don't load it with Windows.

Everything loaded 100% of the time 

I'll check that out; thanks!

Now if I could just figure out how PzDB broke.  It appears that it fails when I try to create or update a record (such as updating a catalog), and after giving an error message about not being able to find the database file it just let me look into, it then crashes.  I'm suspicious of the timing of a Windows 10 update, but not having much luck. And it was just long enough ago that I can't roll back the update, either, which is what some of the Access sites are recommending under similar circumstances.  [mutter, grumble]

shvrdavid posted at 7:01 PM Thu, 18 May 2023 - #4465736

vopehov507 posted at 5:56 PM Thu, 18 May 2023 - #4465733

This will be my Last post after the Act of Renderosity banning my Original "vopehov506" account !!!!

That looks like The World's Tiniest Violin.  Does she know how to play The World's Saddest Song upon it?

ghostship2 posted at 1:54 AM Thu, 18 May 2023 - #4465645

@Thalek I’m sure there are things you know or can do that I don’t or can’t.  I didn’t have much time today to respond here with more articulate answers so I can see not following this convo.

Well, I did, once upon a time, know more about repairing a spectrum analyzer than you might.  But I don't think there's anything about Poser that I know better than you.  [grin]

shvrdavid posted at 1:34 PM Thu, 18 May 2023 - #4465705

Quarker hair I found in my Runtimes so far... I may have more, but not sure where they would be hiding in terabytes of stuff...

Sapphire Fox, Babydoll, and Radiant Jaguar. And the Grace Lion one I posted earlier. Babydoll has some scalp issues in P13, but nothing that cant be fixed by simple hiding the scalp.

I probably have hundreds if not thousands of hair models.... Some of which I may have only briefly tested than never used again....

I have the same problem with finding stuff.  Even using the PzDB database, I still sometimes stumble over stuff I didn't realize I had. I'm heavily dependent, so the fact that something went wrong five days ago has me dismayed.  I was going to double-check to see if I ever posted the final version of  my tattoo material layer (which I used to update Shana's Inked Poser compatible volumes).  Instead, I've been wrestling with trying to repair my PzDB installation. (For those who have it too, it turns out the only truly essential file is PzDB1ItemIndex.dat.  Everything else can be regenerated or re-installed, but that one is the actual catalog.)

Edited to add: if you know the name of some of the files or want to search by date or some other enhanced capabilities, I recommend VoidTools "Everything" search engine, indexer and database. Both free versions and a modest fee version are available.

This is what I get for trying to follow a conversation between several people who are considerably smarter than I am.

Y-Phil posted at 11:40 AM Wed, 17 May 2023 - #4465593

Thalek posted at 5:23 PM Tue, 16 May 2023 - #4465538

NikKelly posted at 7:11 AM Tue, 16 May 2023 - #4465478

Y-Phil, thank you for that clarification.

Whatever the reason for the 1.000 / -1.000 delay, knowing there may be a delay yet it will 'come good' makes it 'usable'...

Hmmm.  I'm not in front of Poser right now, but if the Mirror U/V is separate from Scale U/V, maybe part of the problem is that Poser is doing a mathematical scaling operation in addition to mirroring it? A mirror operation should be a mathematically simpler operation, simply changing a pixel's coordinates on one axis from one side to the other.    Might be an experiment worth trying.

Also, if it's an issue of refreshing the image, try turning off all of your lights and then reversing the textures.  It shouldn't take Poser long to refresh a completely black image.  Hypothetically.

In fact, at the time of Poser12, I had written a small script to turn off all previews of all material nodes of all objects, just to speed up the material room. A few months later, Poser12 got an update that let the room react faster.

[shaking head]  That appears to be a case of reverse serendipity.

NikKelly posted at 7:11 AM Tue, 16 May 2023 - #4465478

Y-Phil, thank you for that clarification.

Whatever the reason for the 1.000 / -1.000 delay, knowing there may be a delay yet it will 'come good' makes it 'usable'...

Hmmm.  I'm not in front of Poser right now, but if the Mirror U/V is separate from Scale U/V, maybe part of the problem is that Poser is doing a mathematical scaling operation in addition to mirroring it? A mirror operation should be a mathematically simpler operation, simply changing a pixel's coordinates on one axis from one side to the other.    Might be an experiment worth trying.

Also, if it's an issue of refreshing the image, try turning off all of your lights and then reversing the textures.  It shouldn't take Poser long to refresh a completely black image.  Hypothetically.

hornet3d posted at 2:51 PM Mon, 15 May 2023 - #4465403

Location Content purchased by me in 2017.

The interior environment looks familiar, but I can't place it.  The exterior environment doesn't look familiar at all.

RedPhantom posted at 5:12 PM Mon, 15 May 2023 - #4465427

With shvrdavid's help (he did all the heavy lifting) I've been able to modernize one of my characters.

"Sisters, sisters; there were never such devoted sisters . . ."