Because Ive been in tinker mode, I ended up making new banners for my site out of my blogs design. Tossing em up for anyone who wants to link to us 🙂 Our url is www.damageinc3d.net

Well, had a couple things to announce, so figured Id put it all in one post.

DS4 Compatibility Updates:

I have submitted updates to DAZ, so that my products will be compatible with DS4. While beta testing DS4, I noticed that a few of the outfits weren’t working properly, and some of the geometry was being omitted. The issue was extra lines in the obj code preceding the bodyparts, and it has since been resolved. I am not certain the updates have gone live yet or not (you will get an email announcing the update when they do, if you purchased any of these sets) The packs that have been updated are: Artik X, Vermillion Dawn, Azraella, Olympian Goddess and Queen of the Nile.

Tutorials coming to Weblog:

You will notice I have a new button on my weblog, called “Tutorials” Ive decided that my weblog serves as the perfect grounds for maintaining and keeping my tuts, so I am in the process of moving/converting all my old tuts to here instead of my mainsite. So you will start to see the smaller ones pop up here soon. For the lengthier tuts with full images, Ive decided those will be in PDF form, which will open in your browser. You can also conveniently save them to your hardrive or print them.

Ok figured Id toss up the ZBrush icons I made as well as the DS ones I did yesterday. These work the same way as the others, and theres versions for 2, 3 and 4 to present.

ZBrushIcons < Download File Here

Sooooo… I made new icons for DAZ Studio tonight. Basically, I make custom icons when I have more than one version of something on my system (so I can visually tell which one is which on my taskbar) Now that I have DS 3 and 4, I needed new icons. Figured Id toss em up for anyone who wants em.

To set an icon, you simply right click on a program shortcut (like DS) and go to properties. At the bottom, you will see “change icon” Click it, and a browse window will open – browse to the icon, click it to load it, and hit ok (or apply) Keep in mind, you need to keep the icon in a permanent location on your system, to keep the icon loading properly.

Heres a shot of how they look:

Custom Icons For DAZ Studio 3 & 4 <Download zip here

Figured since its the end of the world, I should get one more render in before then LOL

Credits:
Chicka is an unreleased character by moi
Dood is Troy from Art Collab
Cold Blooded also by me @ DAZ
BG by Sveva @ Rendo
Misc plants from Lisa B @ DAZ
Elf Age Light by 4Blueyes @ DAZ
Gladiator armor by Luthbel @ DAZ
Rest is painted or postworked

Its come up on several occasions; what religion am I? Especially recently with my son. So I thought Id write something out sort of explaining what precisely I believe in. This, by no means, covers every single aspect… but its a good start.

When asked this question, I always retort Pagan. Pagan, however, is a bit of a blanket term, and not entirely accurate to what I believe. I choose to use it, because there isnt really any religion that perfectly hits on what I believe, and its about as close as I can get. But its probably because what I believe, I dont consider to be a religion; its more like a way of life.

For one thing, Pagans are typically polytheistic, worshipping several gods, or even just two (a god and goddess, or the female/male aspects of all things) I, however, am a Pantheist – I dont believe in many gods. I dont even really believe in one. What I believe in, is a force – or a source of power that cannot be seen with the eyes. It is everything, and everything is it. It has no face, no name to call it. And it is the essence of everything that lives…. even us. I also have a reverence and love for nature, and all living things – and I seek to harness and nuture that energy for a greater good. So, I guess you can say Im a tree hugger.

I was born Catholic – Im half Italian, ’nuff said. My dad made me go to catholic church, growing up. Ive read the bible and I actually love the stories inside it. I think they’re interesting and they have good lessons. Even to this day, I watch the programs on Discovery, and Ive even been known to quote it on occasion (hey, wisdom is wisdom to me) But thats all I think they are – stories. The bible is nothing more than a device, created to further the divide between good and evil. And I often look upon that conceptualization as being… well, sad. Thing is, people should know the difference between right and wrong, without being told…. or being frightened into sobriety by some convoluted horned beast. So, what I essentially believe, is in Karmic law, and the laws of the Universe. I don’t believe in the Devil.

My mom, however, diametrically opposed to my father, was metaphysical – and I also grew up in a new age church. This was the path I willfully chose. It was always a concept that resonated with me and made more sense… and while she had somewhat different beliefs than I ended up having, she ultimately led me to what I believe in now (even if indirectly speaking)

Modern physics teaches us that electricity is eternal. And the energy that makes up us, comes down to electricity; one spark from a larger soruce of energy, both of which live forever. Modern medicine teaches us that the human brain receives impulses; or electric currents, which are routed thru “wires” or the stems of the brain, which stimulate certain characteristics, capabilities, talents, likes, and memories, etc.

The human construct is essentially infinite energy, which is encapsulated in an organic shell. But in organics, everything rots, fades with time, and eventually dies, since its susceptible to disease caused by pathogens and other agents of decay. But the energy does not die, as it is infinite. So when we die, our energy leaves our bodies to return back to nature, and start over once more. Everything we see that’s natural has energy; its just that some things are inanimate. That tree outside… even it has energy. It just lacks the capabilities to do anything but sit there (its simply not programmed or articulated to)

So given all that, do I believe in an ultimate creator? Well, I dont disbelieve in it, but I dont really cater to any belief of it, either. I dont profess to know HOW we came to be. It could be natural evolution…. or we could be engineered by another species entirely. Id be inclined to, however, believe more in the aforementioned to some degree; coz even if something created us, it creates another equal question in how that species was created. Somewhere down the line, spontaneous creation had to come into play. But in any case, I don’t honestly believe it was some supreme deity with a beard.

I also believe in reincarnation; and as far as regression goes, its not really about the memory of a past life, but rather an imprint of one that remains on our energy. I believe our energy manifests itself infinitely. And we can recall these lives thru hypnosis, because we tap into that energy imprint. Truth of the matter is, we can always tap into it. Its just as humans, we only have the capacity to use a small portion of our brains. And we have been “trained” to believe such things don’t exist. If we as a species feel, for the most part, that we don’t have a need to tap into that unused portion of our brains, what is the point of it being there? Hence why we are “generally” incapable and it lies dormant.

I also believe that all energy can be manipulated, for good and bad. Hence the term “magic” Well, its not really magic at all, if you think in more generic terms. Thats just a “word” humans use to describe something that defies explanation; an occurance that happens thru the concentration of thought to will the energy to do what we wish. Consider this: A computer…. you tell it to do a number of commands, and it does them. But a computational command is no more magic than manipulation of energy. And the same thing can be said for prayer.

So do I believe in good and evil? Well, yes… there’s a balance to all things, especially intention. You cannot have good without its counterpart and vice versa. So as already mentioned, I believe in Karma and that everything comes back to you. Because for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

In a lot of the same way, it is also how intuition exists. I dont mean reading tarot cards, or tea leaves…. those are just tools that help us decipher things. All intuition is, is the capability of reading energy…. well, and learning to decipher each nuance. And again, everyone is perfectly capable… its just that most ignore such ideas.

I also believe in ghosts. But not in the way most tend to believe. Ghosts are the energies from those whom have passed on, with imprints on them just as we have with past lives. Since energy doesn’t die, where does it go, til it has a new place to exist? Nowhere. To actually add levity to this, the night when my mother died, all the light bulbs in the area where she fell, blew out all at once (and not just one, either) I am convinced it was a direct result of the energy leaving her body; and her ultimate way of telling me she’d gone.

In a sense, I am a fatalist. But only to a certain degree. I believe that there is a pattern to everything, and that some things ARE meant to be, or are orchestrated by a greater balance of things; but I also believe that we have the power to change the way things are and that nothing is written in stone. It is, afterall, our fate to do with what we wish. But this balance also tends to keep us from things, because better things await, or because the universe has a better idea than we do in what’s good for us. So when Im confronted with disappointment, you’ll often hear me utter the words “it wasn’t meant to be” And I don’t generally tend to fight it; I find that if I go with the flow, Im often led to something better.

To make another technological analogy, to explain this concept in different terms – programming. There are several ways you can code something to get a certain end result – how you go about acheiving that end, though, tends to be different in each code pathway. Some ways are easy…. some are hard. And some paths of code in the programming will simply not acheive the result you are looking for. Now one has free will, and can take that last path, beat themselves over the head in trying to make it do what they want, simply coz they are unwilling to accept the alternatives; but in the end, its sometimes just not meant to exist and thereby, you have no choice but to take the alternatives.

If this is starting to sound like I’m coming at this from a technological angle, its not entirely off-base. In a lot of ways, how I believe is very similar to technology. Computers harness energy; and they have a brain, and can (to some degree) think. Our computers, however, to current standards, can only compute so much because thats all they are programmed to do. Our programming, however, is far more advanced… we just havent reached our full potential as a species. Also, step outside the box and consider this for a moment…. computers have been built to harness energy, and use it to better our lives. But “technology” is not something we invented; It was something that was always there, that we figured out a way to tap into. Some people use their extra sensory gifts to perceive energy, or even change it – that is all computers do as well (even if only to a lesser degree at this point)

Its really not mystifying, I suppose, to think of things in terms of this. But lets face it, ancients had a way of mystifying everything that couldn’t otherwise be explained. Like calling a solar eclipse the Sun god Re, or believing the Earth was flat. Its always only a matter of time til science reveals the true nature of things.

So now I come to the part where I have Gnostic leanings. Well, we are pure “light”, and there is a “hidden” world, waiting to be discovered in a different plane of existence. And once we learn how to become that pure energy, the energy from our beings will no longer require a body to exist. We will no longer require a mouth to communicate. We will no longer need air to breathe, or water to live. And from then on, there will be no boundaries.

Well, I figured Id put this up some place, coz its a handy thing to know (and remember, if you’re senile like me lol) This basically turns something that conforms into a parented “figure” instead.

So why on Earth would u ever want to do this? Well, in the cases of Helms that are conforming, or hats and such, you might want to. You see, when you conform a helm or a hat to V4, it deforms with her head movements. And no amount of joint editing or falloff adjustment makes it work like it should (that being, not deforming with her head movements and staying with her head instead) If you have extra posing parts coming off it? You’re even more screwed, as they will not pose correctly at all, and you’ll end up with that part being “stuck” while the rest deforms into mush. In order to make it so its stationary, but also keeps its functions (like posable parts, etc) you need to trick poser into believing its a posable prop – a weird hybrid between prop and figure.

Sooo, in order to do this trick, you need to change a few things in your CR2. For the sake of this tut, Im using a my War Helm from Vermillion Dawn since it was done this way, and the head is my target. Im also using this as an example, coz well… a skull would definitely not deform like it does when it is conformed, since its solid. So its a perfect example of why you want to do it this way instead.

After all your rigging is done, first, youre going to open your CR2 in something like Edit Pad, so you can see the code. Locate actor BODY. At the top, you will see the following code:

name    BODY
on
bend 1
dynamicsLock  0
hidden  0
addToMenu 1
castsShadow  1
includeInDepthCue  1
useZBuffer  1
parent UNIVERSE
creaseAngle 80

See where it says parent UNIVERSE? You need to change that to: smartparent head:1

Now, that its changed, don’t go loading it quite yet. Theres a few more tricks to this.

First off, if you loaded it in Poser right now, Poser would most likely crash. Why? Simply because its trying to parent itself to itself. This occurs when the parent is to head:1 and the instance numbers in your CR2 are also :1. You need to force it to see V4 as :1 and itself as :2. So youre going to change them all in your CR2 to :2, by doing a quick search and replace in edit pad. In the search field type :1 and in the replace field type :2. Then hit replace all. Note, this is also going to change the parent u just added to :2 – you will need to change that back to :1.

Also, so this trick will work in DS, you need to do another thing. Type “conforming 1” in your search field, and hit enter. It will take you to a line that says just that. Change the 1 to a 0. This will make it so it doesn’t auto conform in DS (and thereby, overrides the conforming function completely, so it parents instead)

Finally, the last part to making this work right. Poser will automatically omit the BODY on this, coz it sees it now like a prop and props do not have BODY actors. So any FBM’s for morphs you have will disappear altogether on you. That is, if you make the BODY the node for your FBM’s. DS’ Morph Loader Pro and ERC freeze will allow you to choose what node you want for your FBM’s. So instead of choosing the default root of the figure in DS (named after the figure name) (aka BODY in Poser), you’re going to change it to head.

Sadly, you cannot choose where to put the FBM in Poser, when making FBM’s…. so in there, youre kind of stuck just doing them like normal, and then manually changing them in edit pad or some equivalent. Thankfully, fixing them is simple. Open the CR2 in edit pad, and locate the ERC code on each morph (search for “valueOpDeltaAdd” to find the first of five lines of ERC code) You only need to change the BODY:1 in the ERC code to head:1 instead (also pretty simple using search and replace all – just copy the ERC lines and paste in the search field and in the replace field… then change the replace field to head:1 – hit replace all. Note, do not just search and replace BODY:1 – its important to include part of the ERC code in your search/replace parameters, or you will only end up replacing ALL with head:1 and it will break the CR2)

Also note, if you have Easy Pose rigged into the figure, you also need to make that node the head as well. Since Easy Pose is basically ERC controls, they function just like FBM’s – and if you make the Body the node, it will disappear like the FBM’s for the morphs.

Now, when I go to load my War Helm, it poses with her head as it should (being fully stationary) YET, the jaw still hinges and the posable parts still move as they should. All the FBM’s/Easy Pose dials are located on the head, so people can still use full body morphs and EP to control the entire figure (even though Poser has now omitted the BODY actor completely) Be sure to note the head is the node in your readme or something, so people know to use it instead for the FBM’s.

Keep in mind, should you need to save the figure again, Poser will default the code back to the way it should be, and you will have to do this all over again. Its pretty simple, though, so no big deal if it happens. But if you don’t wanna have to keep redoing it, its best to leave this step for last.

Lastly, this has been tested and works in P4, P5, P6, P7, and PP2010. It also works in DS2, DS3 and DS3 Advanced. It works on multiple instances of V4, with multiple instances of the parented figure.

And that’s all there is to it…..