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SKYLAB CHAT

skylab

Esteemed
I sorta straddled the middle ground, between Dad's fascination with cars and mechanics, and mom's carpentry and repair skills...my chances at "finishing school" ways were very slim...haha. I think my love of computers and fiddling with hardware and such probably came from Dad's skills. He could build anything...literally. He bought a brand new Ford truck back in 1968, but he had envisioned a "pass through" so it would be like a SUV...so he and I spent a weekend cutting a hole through the cab, he used a huge recycled firehose as weatherproofing, and we worked together to install the padded vinyl around the cut through...so when we went camping, we could talk back and forth....again, an idea that was way ahead of its time. It about tore my "repairman" mother's nerves up, that we were out in the yard, cutting a hole in a brand new truck....haha :) However, that truck was envied by everyone who saw it, and she enjoyed it too, once she found out it wasn't totally ruined.
 

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Running with the wolves.
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
Yes, Sky, it does take all kinds. Our girl has been getting quite the mix of skills over the years. Either me or my husband has had her helping with roofing, masonry, carpentry, plumbing... I think the only stuff we haven't let her help with was really the electrical. Just too risky, even when she was 15/16... now she turned 17 this past November, and we've had her doing very small things with it, but mostly with electrical she is still not allowed to touch.

She can fetch tools or use the voltage test meters (under direct supervision), or cut wire (only if it's not connected to anything, also direct supervision). But that's all new in the last year or so, and is the extent to which she's allowed to touch electrical right now! LOL He didn't want to let her do even that much, until I reminded him that she will be 18 in November, and he's got to let her grow up a little. :p

Remind me not to make you angry. ;)

Funny. You're not the first person to say that! LMAO
 

skylab

Esteemed
I tended to be like that with computers...I had a 386 drive years ago that I tampered with and fiddled with until it was more wires than drive...it had a Soundblaster wav card, which was kinda rare at the time, a true color video card, again not standard issue, a color scanner and big powered speakers. All that is not a big deal now, but at the time, people were still going "what, you mean you can see a picture on the screen?"...back in the DOS and WordPerfect 5 days. At work a Mac repairman showed me where to install an over thousand dollar video card, and with trembling hands I did it...so I went home and went crazy trying to make my 386 do what the mac would do...haha.
 

skylab

Esteemed
I've never done electrical...same here, mom was protective about that stuff. I do know how to fix switches on lamps, since they're not plugged up, there's no danger, so she taught me that. She was always cautious with electrical because of the danger, and plumbing because of the overwhelming mess it could create if things went wrong.
 

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Running with the wolves.
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
LOL Yes! My husband again... poor Bear. He actually has an IT degree, and that's what he trained for. He, of course, graduated right at the end of the whole IT boom with a college filling his head with ideas about great jobs and all of that bunk, and his degree is basically a worthless piece of paper. He's never worked one day of his life in his chosen field.

So he went into into retail, then eventually security after that for a while, and then while he was in security his buddy (our next door neighbor now), bought a new house, and hey bro, come help me put in a floor, will ya? And then that turned into a new bathroom wall, then a new bedroom, then digging out the basement... and then he bought a second property... and before we knew it, I was mixed into it grinding steel rebar for the two boys to sink into the ground in the backyard as part of the terraforming he did with his back yard...

It just sort of snowballed. About five years ago, Bear finally left security, got stuck in retail again for another few months, and then he went and applied to the carpenter's union, and he's been with the union ever since. They joked that I ought to have gone into the carpenters myself, and I pretty much put the kabash on that, because if I'm not home to deal with it, the whole house goes to pot, AND my daughter gets nuts. It's the same reason I left the workforce in the first place. As much as I loved the triage and emergency response... our girl just was going wild and not handling it very well. Within just a few weeks of my leaving the workforce she calmed WAY down, and at this point, he earns more by himself than we used to bring home combined, so it's worked out eventually.

I've never done electrical...same here, mom was protective about that stuff. I do know how to fix switches on lamps, since they're not plugged up, there's no danger, so she taught me that. She was always cautious with electrical because of the danger, and plumbing because of the overwhelming mess it could create if things went wrong.

Yep. I hate plumbing for that very reason! I can do it, but it's definitely one thing I absolutely hate!! One little oopsie and you have six inches of sewage in your basement! :rofl:
 

skylab

Esteemed
I feel the same way...I enjoyed the challenges of working in a fast-paced job, can't say I necessarily enjoyed the stress of working with others who perhaps didn't consider the seriousness of working patient care, and having to work around them to make sure things didn't go wrong, especially in STAT situations, and I did enjoy the skills that I learned in that career, especially computer skills. But I wouldn't return to it if you tied me to the bumper of the car and dragged me to it. Now that I've experienced retirement lifestyle, I'm settled in and quite happy with it.

I can see why you'd want to spend this time at home with your daughter...you'll never get those years back, and you're building relationship, in addition to stuff around the house :) She will be well prepared to take care of herself, and the reality of what it requires.
 

skylab

Esteemed
I wanted to at least test this before going off for the night...the fur presets saved okay, or at least I think they did, and they rendered quickly, but I'm not seeing the completed render in the render library...so all I have so far is what shows up in the rendering pane. Clearly there's evidence that it's working...the first being Mil Cat no fur, then second is Mil Cat short fur, then finally Mil Cat with long fur. It didn't crash at all during the process. Last pic is what you see once the preset is applied to Mil Cat in the viewport. The lighting isn't right, but it was a first step at controlling the lights.

MIL CAT NO FUR.jpg


MIL CAT SHORT FUR.jpg


MIL CAT LONG FUR.jpg


MIL CAT FUR PRESET.jpg
 

skylab

Esteemed
Is there a way to change the checkerboard design of the....I guess you'd call it pre-render?

Well, guess I'd better really go offline this time, will have to get up early in the morning, and I don't do early morning get ups very well anyway...night owl by nature. Anyway, you all have a good evening, and I'll see you when your time is permitting.

Good night all :sleep: ...she says as she circles the airport the second time :)
 

skylab

Esteemed
Circling the airport for the third time...haha....transferred my renders and files to laptop, and in the process "found" the long hair renders...I had been looking for the wrong names :rolleyes:...anyway, here are the short and long hair Mil Cats. I'm looking forward to working with the fur presets I hope tomorrow.

KITTY DS FUR.jpg


KITTY DS LONG FUR 2.jpg
 

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Running with the wolves.
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
Sky, you can set DS to render to a new window. This gives you a second window that contains the rendered product/image in it, and when it finishes, you can then control where the picture saves to. I know there's a way to set up a folder for the render to automatically be written to, but I have to admit I haven't used that method like.. ever.

This method is more like what you might be familiar with from Poser...

1.) Go up to the top of your DS window. Click on Render --> Render Settings.
A new window will open up in DS. This is what you should be looking at :

upload_2016-2-19_2-28-11.png


2.) Click on the button that says "Editor." Now, by default, the "General" category will be collapsed. Expand it by clicking on the triangle.
3.) Then click on "Destination."
4.) "Render Type" allows you to tell DS what type of render it's going; still images, image series, or movie. Since you did produce a couple of small animations, I'm going to guess that you found that property already? And if not, there it is! LOL

Below that you will see "Render Target." I believe, by default, this is set to render to a file? I honestly can't remember, it's been that long. LOL Anyway. Click in the box for the Render Target, and you can then choose "New Window," like this :

upload_2016-2-19_2-31-24.png


That will then produce your image in a second window, the next time you render a scene. And in that second window, there will be boxes at the bottom, below the rendered image, where you can type in the name to save the render as, and choose a folder to save it into. You can also close that window without saving the render, if you don't like how it came out.

This is also where you choose the size of your rendered image; you can click on "Dimensions," and either set your own custom render dimensions, use the active scene window as the render dimensions, or use one of the template sizes that DS has in the list.

Another couple things to note on the render settings for Studio...

Progressive Rendering -
This is, again, what you might be more used to with Poser, where you can see the render building up as it goes through the render process. I like this mode, because it enables me to get an idea of how a scene is coming out. And if I really don't like the way it's turning out, I can cancel the render, rather than waiting or an hour or more for it to finish.

Progressive rendering is a simple one-button press to enable it. By default, it is NOT enabled, and DS simply produces the entire image at once, after chewing on it for a while. To enable progressive rendering...

1.) Go into your Render Settings
2.) Click on "Progressive" in the left hand column.
3.) Now click the box that appears on the right, so that it says "on."

Yup, that's all there is to it for that one. Nice and easy. ;)


Buckets, Sampling, and Shading Rate are probably going to be your most used settings here, other than the dimensions.

I normally leave my options set to the default, 32 buckets. Trying to do 64 seems to cause crashes on my computer for some weird reason, so I just leave it set at 32.

Sampling is something you'll not need to mess with unless you are doing depth of field renders. If doing a DOF render, you'll need to turn the x and y samples up to about 20-25. I normally run a DOF render with my pixel samples set to at LEAST 25, sometimes as high as 30. The higher the samples value, the longer the render will take. For regular (no DOF) renders, you can leave these samples set down aroune 4 or 5. But if doing a DOF render, you need the higher samples value, otherwise the DOF effects will come out looking kind of like stained or frosted glass, instead of a proper depth of field blur.

Shading Rate works just like Poser. The lower the number, the longer the render will take, but the more accurate the shadowing. I normally render with a shading rate value of about 0.20; in some cases I might drop it as far down as 0.10.

Max Raytrace Sampling -
I normally render with this set to 4. By default, it's only set to 2. This is also found under the "Sampling" part of your Render settings window.

Just some tidbits regarding the render window. :)

As far as the grey blocks go - DS spits out PNG format renders; the grey blocks will not be present in your final render. You only see it inside of DS, in the window, if you've rendered a single object without putting anything else in the scene, but if you were to save that picture, it would be a transparent PNG - no blocks.

Hope that helps. ;)
 

skylab

Esteemed
Thanks for the render setting info, I switched to progressive according to your description. I'll PDF these tonight after I return home and grab a nap. So far even my 4 gig ram laptop is able to render the fur scenes. It's slower than my workstation of course, but it's working. Here are a couple more...I'm still learning, so try to ignore the lighting. I'll post these and run. See you all later on :)

TIGER FUR.jpg


LION FUR2.jpg
 

skylab

Esteemed
Actually this PDF was easy, only two images to insert, so here's a zip of the Render Settings .doc and PDF. Thanks again...got to run now :)
 

Attachments

  • DS4 - RENDER SETTINGS.zip
    159.5 KB · Views: 263

skylab

Esteemed
Hi Terre...I just got out of the shower and getting dressed to go for my regular doctor appointment to check labs and stuff, in order to continue my prescriptions. I hate going to the doctor...always dread it...and have trouble sleeping the night before consequently. At least I put it to good use...I learned to do fuzzy renders in DS.

How are things going for you on your side of the country? Haven't seen you around here as much so figured you were busy.

I'd better get at it or I'll make myself late...have a good day :)
 

Terre

Renowned
Going all right. Part of why I haven't been saying as much is I didn't want to interrupt the lessons you were being given. Seeing people be this helpful is very nice. :)
 

skylab

Esteemed
Hey Terre :) It sure has been nice, just what I've always felt the chat thread could be, if we gave it a chance...and yet we can still play and carry on too. I've always thought that there were folks who pretty much stay in lurk mode, who don't feel free to ask questions, but appreciate when people take the time to share their experience. And I've been on the fence for the past two years about learning DS....I'd work with it some, but so many of the features are buried behind tabs. I finally feel as though I'm getting a little momentum with it now. There's nothing wrong with "switch hitting" with DS and Poser...DS is definitely easier on system resources, no question about it.

By the way, don't be afraid to jump right in to the discussion, if you want. We probably lost you when we were talking sledge hammers and carpentry...you didn't even know that I was brought up that way. Seliah's description of how they tackled projects together as a family just reminded me of how I was raised. You can imagine what a challenge it was, my little short self, trying to keep up with parents who were so active. Good memories, some of them amusing.

Well, I got my doctor appointment over with. Every time I walk into the blood lab, my veins instinctively retreat...so it's like drilling for oil to get enough for the test. Sometimes I'm so bruised up afterward, I look like I've been in a fight...haha...so I'm always glad when it's over. Some techs and nurses just have a special touch with it...one time a little nurse in the ER was sticking, and sticking, and sticking some more....and she went and got one of the guys who was supposed to be good at it. Sure enough, he tapped my arm once, and then stuck so I never felt a thing...it was perfectly done. Others who are inexperienced will gouge with the needle and then keep twisting the joker all over the place...haha....by the time they're done, my eyes are crossed. They need to give you something to bite on if they're going to do all that o_O
 

Terre

Renowned
The amusing thing is that when DS4 first came out the specs were so high that people were finding Poser 7 was what they needed to upgrade to instead of DS4. Looks like things have changed a bit with the newer version of poser.
 

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Running with the wolves.
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
Going all right. Part of why I haven't been saying as much is I didn't want to interrupt the lessons you were being given. Seeing people be this helpful is very nice. :)

Terre, please.. you don't need to feel excluded. I'm so sorry if I gave that impression! I was just trying to help Sky out with a few rough patches. I did not mean to make anyone feel like they couldn't post! I'm so sorry! :/
 

skylab

Esteemed
Oh no Seliah, nothing for you to be sorry about, you didn't do anything, so don't think that's a problem, okay. Terre is just a little shy when it comes to jumping into an active discussion. So that's not on you okay :)

I finally rolled out from my nap and am trying to determine now if my eyes will cooperate if I sit at the workstation awhile. My goldfish is looking at me like "where you been?"
 
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