Nature's Wonders Sneak Peek Thread

[Rae134]

Hi Ken, I wanted to do a render with your lizard (in DS) because I felt bad about hijacking your thread with yabbies but i can't find it in my DS runtime (little scamp has run off)

 

[Szark]

Here is one for Szark with his weird tastes -

View attachment 15198

Thought I would mention this, this Kookaburra was blind in one eye and you can see that on the small pic, she had just swallowd the mouse.

oh that is awesome. cool.

A few months ago we had a Sparrow Hawk (male) in our garden not 5 feet away from the back window, down low on a wood pile eating a mouse. I could see the gib jobs danging as he pulled the mouse apart bit by bit. It was so awesome to see that so close.

 

[Jan]

Still no blue-tongue yet in the store

However I have Skinks again, the real ones Saw this fellow sunning himself today in the rare period we had sun today. Spring has sprung.

 

[tparo]

Hi Ken, I wanted to do a render with your lizard (in DS) because I felt bad about hijacking your thread with yabbies but i can't find it in my DS runtime (little scamp has run off)

Its in the Poser Runtime.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Here's a couple promo renders for the habitat from the DAZ Studio Iray side...

 

[Rae134]

I did find it in the Poser runtime Tparo, but I couldn't find the mat files.

Trouble Makers

• Rae134
• Sep 3, 2016
• big cat cub kitty kiwi burrow leopard leopard cub lizard

 

[Ken Gilliland]

I did find it in the Poser runtime Tparo, but I couldn't find the mat files.

Nice render!

The reason you see no mats is because the DS materials automatically load in on my products. You should notice a little ds script symbol in the upper left corner of the thumbnails-- that shows you that it loads ds materials after it loads the Poser stuff.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

I should also add that DS Iray materials for the lizard sets are available on my website downloads or available in an update coming next week at HW

 

[Rae134]

actually that's how I loaded the texture by using your Iray mats (I didn't realise that using the pose files it would add the mats and shapes )

 

[Ken Gilliland]

yup, I do that because I find it a pain to jump back and forth from the Studio library tree to the Poser library tree. So if I can load everything from just one side, I do it

 

[Rae134]

I'm not used to the Poser way of doing things as I've only used DS

 

[JOdel]

Ah. Whereas although I'm a Studio user, I started back when most content was shipped in Poser runtimes, and consequently that's where I tend to look for things.

Although I recently did a re-org and put all the additional library folders inside the Character folder as subfolders. (Or the Props folder, if Props was where the actual model lived.) Much easier to look in a subfolder for the materials or poses (or lights, or cameras) than have to go to a different folder in order to find the whole set of something.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

the Iray updates for Lizards, Volume I and Volume are now available at HW too

 

[RAMWolff]

Hi Ken,
Just getting to installing your critters. I'm not seeing proper set up for DAZ Studio users. I'm seeing all this in the Runtime folder rather than properly in the Library folder.

Also for the lizards I'm seeing some lizard material options with .duf files and others without .and only .pz2 options.

Also not seeing any native support in the way of data folders.

I realize it's more work, boy do I know that doing my own products to support both applications, but .....

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Hi Ken,
Just getting to installing your critters. I'm not seeing proper set up for DAZ Studio users. I'm seeing all this in the Runtime folder rather than properly in the Library folder.

Also for the lizards I'm seeing some lizard material options with .duf files and others without .and only .pz2 options.

Also not seeing any native support in the way of data folders.

I realize it's more work, boy do I know that doing my own products to support both applications, but .....

While my products work fine is Studio and are fully supported, there is no native DS library structure on the Bird or Lizard sets for DAZ Studio as your probably used to seeing.

All my DAZ Studio support files sit side by side with the Poser versions in the Runtime. The reason this is two-fold; I'm constantly enhancing and updating my products and Poser is far easier on the update process... and secondly I use both programs so it's easier to have everything in one spot. Poser allows this-- DAZ Studio doesn't-- so the Poser Runtime is the shared location. Plus, the dual version saves disk space-- less files because most are shared-- Native DS is a space hog.

Check out Page 4 of any of my manual (found in Readme/Ken Gilliland folder). Here's a clip from the manual:


Creating a Lizard

1. Choose what species you want to load. For this example, we’ll create the Eastern Fence Lizard.

2. Load Poser or DAZ Studio. For Poser, select FIGURES and the “Nature’s Wonders” :“Reptiles”. DAZ Studio users will select the "Poser Formats" : (your runtime library) : "FIGURES" : "Nature’s Wonders" : "Reptiles" folder.

3. To create an Eastern Fence Lizard, load the "Nature’s Wonders Lizard" base model.

4. Go to the POSES folder and “Nature’s Wonders “ : “Reptiles folder” : ”Lizards”. For DAZ Studio users, this will be found in the "Poser Formats" file section.

5. Select the Eastern Fence Lizard (or a lizard of your choice) and load/apply it to the Lizard base model by clicking the mouse. This species pose contains both the morph and texture settings to turn the generic model into the selected lizard. It will automatically apply the correct DAZ Studio material settings if you are using DAZ Studio.
​

So what happens, is the Studio reads all the Poser code and then through a DS script loads in all the DS Materials. Hopefully, that explains it.

My sagebrush habitat set will have a native studio version because it's prop based and Studio plays less nicely with Poser's .pp2 (prop) format. With my huge Songbird ReMix series-wide update coming next year.

 

[RAMWolff]

Thanks for the info Ken. I'm pretty comfy in using just My Library so took it upon myself to make a full on version of your fabulous lizard. Converted to Weight Mapping, TriAx and then saved it out under your Name and then named the main folder in the data folder to Natures Wonders and then named the file Lizard. Resaved out all the poses as well as .dufs and I have a very happy lizard. I did notice some of the Poser skin options as having green lizards so I'll do that next... Here is the Male Black Necked Agama in DAZ Studio using the fully converted Lizard. All morphs came over fine and work as expected.

Cheers...

 

[Kerya]

All my DAZ Studio support files sit side by side with the Poser versions in the Runtime. The reason this is two-fold; I'm constantly enhancing and updating my products and Poser is far easier on the update process... and secondly I use both programs so it's easier to have everything in one spot. Poser allows this-- DAZ Studio doesn't-- so the Poser Runtime is the shared location. Plus, the dual version saves disk space-- less files because most are shared-- Native DS is a space hog.

And I, as a Poser and DS user thank your for it!
I love it when DS files are alongside Poser files in the runtime.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Thanks for the info Ken. I'm pretty comfy in using just My Library so took it upon myself to make a full on version of your fabulous lizard. Converted to Weight Mapping, TriAx and then saved it out under your Name and then named the main folder in the data folder to Natures Wonders and then named the file Lizard. Resaved out all the poses as well as .dufs and I have a very happy lizard. I did notice some of the Poser skin options as having green lizards so I'll do that next... Here is the Male Black Necked Agama in DAZ Studio using the fully converted Lizard. All morphs came over fine and work as expected.

I'm glad that worked for you... you didn't even need to resave the .dufs-- simply copying the exisiting .dufs and .pngs to the DS side would have worked. Those .duf is a "Properties" file, meaning it has all the scaling and morph settings for each species, plus the materials. If anyone else prefers things this way, simply doing the above plus doing a Tri-Ax save of the main model works.

I've supported DAZ Studio from the moment the first beta was released-- and actually I was the first PA (outside of the DAZ staff) to offer a DS version of my product. It's been a bumpy road with a lot of growing pains as Studio matured. I've to rewrite my entire SBRM series for Studio three times over the years to complete it compatible. That's part of the reason for the dual version. It's easier for me to simply replace the main poser files (.obj/.cr2) than to deal with the data folders which can become messy over a period of time if there's lots of updates-- they retrain obsolete versions as well as current ones.

And I, as a Poser and DS user thank your for it!
I love it when DS files are alongside Poser files in the runtime.

I'm glad someone else likes my arrangement, as a dual user (Poser/DS) it makes the most sense to me.

---

Testing is close to done on my Sagebrush Habitat, as well as the never-ending material tweaks, so I'll probably be handing it over to Hivewire this week. I've already started modeling my Saguaro Habitat with a simple column Saguaro-- I'll add "arms" to a second one. It's amazing how polygons add up with so many needle clusters. Besides the Sagebrush inspiring the Saguaro set, I will be embarking on a new bird model (hopefully for a Thanksgiving release-- although that maybe wishful thinking )... the Sage Grouse.

 

[RAMWolff]

Actually the poses are in pz2 format that does not show natively under the Content library so I had to resave those one at a time as .duf files but it was no big deal.

On a side note, not so funny or funny on how you look at it Ken, I just bet your looking forward to DAZ Studio 5!

 

[Miss B]

I used Poser 5 for a while before switching to DS 2, so most of the products I bought, and used in DS 2, 3A and 4.0P, were all Poser products, so I was always accustomed to accessing my content from the Runtime folder. Only the few DS only products I bought were installed in the main Content folder. I like having the DS and Poser files in the same folder, and am used to seeing the little scroll icon on the thumbnails in my Content tab.