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SKYLAB CHAT

skylab

skylab

Esteemed
I used to work different shifts at the hospital before I retired, so some of my irregular sleep patterns are left over from shift work...my body is still trained to stay at it when I'm busy, and then collapse when I'm not...and I worked enough double shifts so that staying with something for 16 or 18 hours is not so unusual for me still. But I do think that keeping those excessively long hours didn't do my health any favors, especially as I approached retirement. So I try to discipline myself to find a stopping point at a reasonable place, even if I have to jot down a few notes for the next day. It took almost a year before I fully realized that I could truly set my own schedule, and stop wearing my watch (so that I could break the habit of checking the time). Now I love it :)



:cool:
 
Dani Foster Herring

Dani Foster Herring

Adventurous
Dusk makes a cute bunny. LOL

Summer is here! It's really hot here, too, this morning. Very thankful that I don't have to go out. I grew up without air conditioning...boggles the mind. Stay cool.
 
skylab

skylab

Esteemed
Yes, it does many things, like Poser, but has advanced animation tools, as well as animated special effects...something I've wanted to try for a long time. They dangled a really good price in front of me yesterday and I chomped on the bait...haha. Let's see if they dangle Popcorn FX at me :sneaky:

I have high hopes that Rendo make take an interest in further developing the animation tools in Poser...but like it is now, one has to buy special content that is preset to do things like flame, smoke, halos and aura, and falling weather...and that's what Popcorn FX does, it just does it all in one package, instead of having to buy each one separately (flame, smoke, halo, falling weather, etc.). If my friend Sarah could be here to see this....she would be beside herself...talk about never getting sleep...haha.

Reallusion software is built upon presets...like the talking lamb animation that I did years ago...all you do with Crazy Talk is mark where the eyes are location, where the mouth is located, and position markers around key points of the face...then add an audio file, and the character starts talking. That part was amazing, since I didn't understand how it calculated from an audio file what mouth movements to do...but it was fairly accurate....and in the case of the talking lamb, it did it perfectly.

So Popcorn FX works on the same principle....I watched a demonstration yesterday where they were adding a mystical, rising, animated glow to a figure in the scene....so they clicked on the preset for that, and dragged a box at the feet of the character...and in the final rendered animation, it was a spooky animated, rising aura all around the character. The same could be done with flames and torches, rain storms, things like that...just by clicking and dragging the preset into the scene. Pretty advanced in comparison to Poser...and I think that's why folks get on a soapbox about it in the forums.


:bee:
 
skylab

skylab

Esteemed
Thanks Dani, for the tip about the Noah character. I have Chunk, but had no idea that Meshbox had done Noah. I'll have to look into that. I lost track of their new releases after Content Paradise closed....that's where I used to get their stuff.

And yes, you're following my train of thought...hoping that I can do water and weather animations with iClone's advanced tools. Some things can be done in DAZ Studio, but the controls are not intuitive, and they have a bad habit of writing the plug-in capability into the software (with a buggy version), leaving the plug-in creator high and dry, and older scene files become obsolete, and unusable. I like a little more stability than that, since it takes me sometimes years to advance in my ability to work with it.


:bee:
 
skylab

skylab

Esteemed
Finished my lunch, so heading back to the bedside workstation to download the bunnies, and check on some things. Be back shortly :)
 
skylab

skylab

Esteemed
Well, I checked on the sale price of Popcorn FX, and they did indeed dangle an even lower price at me, so I jumped out of the water and chomped it, hook, line and all...downloading it now...and can't get the grin off my face :)




:D
 
Maja

Maja

Eager
IClone indeed is a pretty cool tool box for creating stunning animations. Now I'm curious what it will get out of you, Sky.
 
skylab

skylab

Esteemed
My internet went belly up for awhile....haha....I wonder why. Something about all the 1 gig program files I've been trying to get downloaded :)

That was interestingly put Maja...haha :) I've been riding Poser animation pretty hard for years...but I think I've met my match this time.

Hey Dani...yes, at some point Poser and Studio figures can be imported. I still have a couple of Genesis plug-ins to install, and I'm not sure where they go....that part is a little fuzzy on the directions so far. Instead of hunting around and guessing, I'm hoping to find something on YouTube, or the Reallusion site, to guide me through that process. Would you believe the online manual is over a gig, and the one for Popcorn FX is also a gig. I was in the process of trying to get that when the internet fainted on me...haha. Who knows, I may get a little knee-weakness myself when I try to read it. Anyway, if I disappear suddenly, it's because my internet connection has its hands on the hips again :) I got the version of iClone 7 that doesn't have the Character Creator 3 for Studio and Hivewire, since I wouldn't be exporting content for gaming. Instead, I got the 3DXChange Pro (instead of Pipeline) which allows for all kinds of importing into iClone 7, and some exporting, but not on the Pipeline level....the Pipeline version of everything is where it gets very pricey. That's why I took a lot of time studying it before I made a move....considering what I really wanted to do with it...the animation tools...I opted to bump it back to Pro instead of Pipeline. Interestingly, I set out the do the same thing with Popcorn FX...but they dropped the price for me during the purchase, and I ended up with the whole shooting match with that...how sweet it is....haha. I already know that I may have global illumination issues because my video card barely squeaked by the requirements, but I've exceeded the ram and drive size, so maybe that will help some.

I still have the Super Tools part of Popcorn FX to get downloaded, but I was able to do this much with only part of it installed. I created my first fire. Even though this is a still picture, what I was seeing was a flickering flame on the screen, when I hit the play button in the timeline. Again, I got this far by just picking around and trying things...no directions yet :) It was under Create -> Particle -> Torch Fire I've uploaded a super-sized screen capture for you all below, so that you can see what it looks like...and if by chance anyone else gets iClone, they can learn along with me. Anyway, here's my first flickering flame...only it's not flickering in this .jpg screen capture :)


Popcorn first fire.jpg




More tutorials on YouTube. I'm picking around, trying to find the ones where they are not mumbling when they are presenting the demonstration :)





 
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skylab

skylab

Esteemed
Here's a screen capture of the video card requirements, in case anyone needs to know. Mine falls under the AMD Radeon 7000 series, which is right at the bottom, but appears to only crash in testing on huge (900 meg+) projects...so if I don't get carried away, I should be fine for smaller projects. At some point it uses system memory, and I'm keeping 1T free on my drive for that purpose, and have 16 gig of ram. Hope this helps to solve the "will my computer stand all this" question, if any of you consider at some time getting iClone.

Am resuming the rest of the Popcorn FX downloads...so I have Super Tools now, and half of the manual. I'll tread lightly this evening until the downloads are completed :)


graphics-card1.jpg



graphics-card2.jpg
 
skylab

skylab

Esteemed
I never got around to showing this work in progress...we've had so many things going at one time....but that's good, since there will always be something going on that interests someone, and not every project will be folks' cup of tea. Anyway, I imported the Doc Jesus scene into Mark Fowler's Last Supper room (be prepared for lots of scaling of the .obj if you try this at home), and used enough Poser 11 side area lights shining through the windows so that I could see to work. The Last Supper scene also has a DAZ Studio version included in the download.

DOC - LAST SUPPER 1.jpg
 
skylab

skylab

Esteemed
Oh, while I'm thinking about it...Dani, you asked about Poser models in iClone. I think, if I'm understanding what I'm seeing in the downloads so far, that the 3DXChange reads directly from Studio files, rather than Poser. I'm thinking that maybe I'll try using Nursoda's Flisch in Studio (because his clothing is part of the model), and creating a .duf scene file, and then see what happens during the 3DXChange import. I'm also thinking this is probably how you get Dawn and Dusk into iClone 7...by way of DAZ Studio as a utility. I'm guessing this here, since I've not yet seen thorough documentation on it. It is possible to create a scene in Poser, and then import that scene into Studio, and then save the scene as .duf so that 3DXChange can read the file. FBX, 3ds and .obj can be read directly into 3DXChange, which is what I did with Forester's Galilee boat. I've already tried one of Birdman's 3ds truck models and it imported fine. Also, iClone 7 is supposed to accept both Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 by way of 3DXChange import, but I've not yet gotten that specific part installed yet.

Here's a screen capture of what the 3DXChange utility looks like:


3DXChange-example.jpg




:coding:
 
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