This week's Freebie ROCKS!!

barbult

How truly kind of you to respond with helpful suggestions and explanations. I appreciate it! Please take a look at my response below.

DAZ_ann0314 said:

barbult said:

Am I the only one have trouble with the Enchanted Island product in DAZ Studio? When I opened DAZ Studio 4.0 after installing it, I thought "Oh Good, metadata!". But the metadata seems to be way wrong. The things don't show up in the Smart Content in the categories shown in the Readme. (At least we got a readme file, though.) I am also having trouble with statue shadows showing up on the sky background. My render also shows dark vertical lines in the curves of the sky corners when using the supplied camera preset. Am I doing something wrong?

I also don't understand why the Content Library shows two icons for +AFullStatue.pp2. If I browse to file location, one is in My Library\Runtime\libraries\props\ART_EnchantedIsland\Instances and the other is in My Library\Runtime\libraries\props\ART_EnchantedIsland\Parented. What is the difference and how do I know which to use?

And what is that Gum prop for?? That one is a real mystery to me. I don't see it in the promo images.

Thanks for any enlightenment you can offer so I can get better usage from this neat freebie.

(Edited to add render showing the dark vertical lines in the day sky .)

On the questions:

The smart content it seems you resolved without me so no need to answer that one but in case, it looks like they moved stuff and the paths may have been wrong in the original readme.
Yes I guess DAZ moved things and then modified the readme file later, because the first one I exported to PDF had the wrong categories listed. The second readme file I exported had the corrected categories. However, the metadata was not corrected to work right with the Smart Content tab. In order to make the items show up in the Smart Content tab, I had to use the Content DB Editor and change the asset types. All of the PP2 files were typed as Preset->Materials and the PZ2 files were typed as Prop (exactly backwards as far as my understanding goes). Also, the camera presets were typed as Camera instead of Preset-Camera and the light presets were typed as Light instead of Preset->Light. As soon as I changed those things with the Content DB Editor, the Enchanted Island props, materials, cameras and lights showed up for me in the Smart Content. I'd really be curious to know if the metadata worked (as delivered) with Smart Content for anyone else.

On the difference in the two +AFullStatue files, the ones in the Instance folder just load and move around all their own though, in Poser, the ones in the parented folder will parent themselves to the ground so that if you move or rotate the ground your entire scene will all move and rotate with the ground. In DS this is done a little different though and so I don't think those files parent in DS though they may. In case not, to parent the items to the ground in DS you just load all the props into the scene and then shift click them all and then drag and drop them to the ground props name in the list of your scene editor (hopefully I got that pallet name right...I primarily use Poser so my DS lingo can be a bit rusty LOL so if I said the wrong name please someone correct me) I do have a video of the general process though on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n-3JcTZ6mc

It's done with a staff and Genesis in the video but the principle is the same.

Thanks for that explanation. Since I've never used Poser, I was not familiar with those directory conventions. Yes, if I parent the statue to the ground and translate or rotate the ground, the statue moves with it in DAZ Studio. If I morph the ground using your supplied morphs, the statues do not move with the undulating ground surface, but you didn't say that they would, so I guess that is not part of the parenting behavior..

On the gum, it was kinda a fun jokey reference to the movie A Night at the Museum. In it there is an Easter Island statue that keeps asking for Gum and so as a joke (and kinda on a dare) I through it in just for fun as a kinda homage to that movie :)

Oh, that's clever. I guess I haven't seen the movie - sounds fun. Thanks for the explanation. I can see that gum coming in handy for kid renders, too. Nice of you to throw it in.
As for the shadow on the sky plane, sadly I wasn't able to tell Poser not to cast shadows on that plane and if you can do so in DS I wasn't sure how...my solution had been to pull the statues a bit forward away from the sky or to just not use the sky plane at all and add in a backdrop for the sky instead if moving the items forward didn't work for my composition. On the lines, the light uses Uber Environment I believe it is called and so sometimes you can get lines etc like that when the quality is set lower. Not knowing how robust everyone's graphic cards may be, we left the quality setting lower I believe so people could adjust it to the setting most optimal for their system. You can change the quality setting though on the light and that should remove those lines. If not, please let me know and I will have one of my testing team that is far more familiar with DS take a peek at it to see if they can sort out what the issue might be :)

Thanks for the UE2 tips. I changed the shadow bias back to the default value. That seemed to help some, but not enough. I was able to eliminate the dark vertical lines by also changing the shading rate in UE2 and the Advanced Render Options. Looking good now.
So sorry for any confusion. If you have any other questions or still run into any trouble using the set, please let me know :)
I really appreciate you taking the time to help me understand how to get the most out of this fantastic freebie. It is so unique.

barbult

Miss B said:

I'm loving these renders with the water in them. I never thought of adding a water plane to make it really look like an island. Nice going everyone. :-)

Absoulutely fantastic. I really love the one by Penname. If there is a contest for using the weekly freebie, Penname, you'd better enter that image!

fictionalbookshelf

I am really amazed at this set as well. It's beautiful. The two items I have used was the panther when it was free with the Safari bundle set and of course the Enchanted Islands. For the vines on the upper portion of the render I just added in some extras from instances that came with the Enchanted Islands.

Dave Savage

Lol! that last one I posted on the previous page would have been better if I'd put the right date on it. Apparently, I did that render last year!. :roll:

But hey, it was just a quick test... This one I took a bit more time over and this one was done in Bryce.

atticanne

I love it, Ann and Frank. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Just a quick test render, my first with 4.5 RC 3. I just had to use the gum and decided to add matching bone hair.

nobody1954

Thank you!!!! This is fantastic!!!!!

Gloomy007

fictionalromance said:

I am really amazed at this set as well. It's beautiful. The two items I have used was the panther when it was free with the Safari bundle set and of course the Enchanted Islands. For the vines on the upper portion of the render I just added in some extras from instances that came with the Enchanted Islands.

Beautiful render!

Stezza

Everyone is enjoying the rocks.. :)

great freebie

fictionalbookshelf

Krissy said:

fictionalromance said:

I am really amazed at this set as well. It's beautiful. The two items I have used was the panther when it was free with the Safari bundle set and of course the Enchanted Islands. For the vines on the upper portion of the render I just added in some extras from instances that came with the Enchanted Islands.

Beautiful render!

Thank you and thank you to ARTCollaborations for the set. It's amazing and fun to play with.

DAZ_ann0314

barbult said:

Yes I guess DAZ moved things and then modified the readme file later, because the first one I exported to PDF had the wrong categories listed. The second readme file I exported had the corrected categories. However, the metadata was not corrected to work right with the Smart Content tab. In order to make the items show up in the Smart Content tab, I had to use the Content DB Editor and change the asset types. All of the PP2 files were typed as Preset->Materials and the PZ2 files were typed as Prop (exactly backwards as far as my understanding goes). Also, the camera presets were typed as Camera instead of Preset-Camera and the light presets were typed as Light instead of Preset->Light. As soon as I changed those things with the Content DB Editor, the Enchanted Island props, materials, cameras and lights showed up for me in the Smart Content. I'd really be curious to know if the metadata worked (as delivered) with Smart Content for anyone else

Not sure what happened there with the smart content tab but I did contact my tester who tested the pack at DAZ to have them take a peek at it and see if they can get that all fixed (if need be) and put out an update. With the way DS shows all the files, it gets easy when the files all have similar or the same names to get confused as to which is props and which is mats etc. So as I name the files that go together (prop, mat files for same prop (Poser mc6), and pose files for the prop (Poser pz2) in ds it just shows three files all with the same name :( So I blame my naming for the confusion the tester probably suffered from LOL I am sorry about that but I am sure it will be fixed soon :)

On parenting (in poser and ds) it only means that the prop will move with any scaling or translation dial changes (so if you scale the ground it will scale parented prop (usually though oddly not always ROFL) if you move the ground left or right etc, the prop will move with it . If you dial in a morph though (like hilly etc), that has no effect on a parented prop. :) In that case, you have to select the prop itself and then move that around to suite the morph in the ground. Hopefully that makes sense...it's 2:30 a.m. here so this may make no sense ROFL If not, let me know and Ill try to better explain at a time when my brain is more awake :)

On the movie, if you've never seen it and can, I recommend it. It is very cute. Basically all the exhibits in this museum come to life at night and in the case of this Easter Island statue all through the movie it keeps saying "Hey dum dum gimme gum gum" so when I made the pack I thought I would be nice to my statues and be sure they had some LOL Actually a lot of my packs of odd little hidden things like that that I kinda leave as things to "find" Another example would be we did a makeup set a while back and it has labels on the makeup that have all sorts of funny/silly DAZ related ingredients etc which I dont mention on the page anywhere but that someone can kinda discover on their own. I also tend to put additional textures in my texture folders etc as little added surprises too LOL (Im silly like that)

I am so glad everything is working well for you and I was able to help and I thank you very much for letting me know about the issue with the Meta Data so I can get that all fixed :) If you have any other questions about this or any of our other packs, I am always more then glad to help so please feel free to contact or PM me any time :)

DAZ_ann0314

And WOW on all the images! we love them! Always so great to see how everyone uses things and how creative everyone is well above anything we could ever come up with :) Thanks so so much to all of you for sharing them with us!!! :) Can't wait to see what else you all come up with! :)

fictionalbookshelf

DAZ_ann0314 said:

On the movie, if you've never seen it and can I recommend it. It is very cute. Basically all the exhibits in this museum come to life at night and in the case of this Easter Island statue all through the movie it keeps saying "Hey dum dum gimme gum gum" so when I made the pack I thought I would be nice to my statues and be sure they had some LOL Actually a lot of my packs of odd little hidden things like that that I kinda leave as things to "find" Another example would be we did a makeup set a while back and it has labels on the makeup that have all sorts of funny/silly DAZ related ingredients etc which I dont mention on the page anywhere but that someone can kinda discover on their own. I also tend to put additional textures in my texture folders etc as little added surprises too LOL (Im silly like that)

:)

I haven't seen the second movie in the series yet but the first one is hilarious. I loved it. The movie kept my little girl occupied for hours because she watched over and over just for the dinosaur. It's didn't 'dawn' on me why you added gum until after you mentioned it in this post and then I almost spit my coffee out on the computer. I love the little surprises like that.

Greywulf

Finally had time to experiment with this absolutely brilliant set. The attention to detail is breathtaking, especially for a free item. The ground prop, lights and skyback alone would be worthy of praise, but that's just a small part of this set. The morphs on the Head is just icing on the cake. Fantastic.

Thank you!

My fairy has a place to rest. Don't think the head is too pleased about it though.

frank0314

Were very happy you are enjoying the pack.

Aurelius.

A Great Freebie with a lot of possibilities !! Thank you very much !!