Hardware Mayhem In The DigiSprawl Office

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Jim Willey

Well I say it’s an office but it’s really just my little corner of the family home. And then I’m not so much faced with hardware issues, but user error issues (ie me). Due to old failing hardware I’ve upgraded my video card, replacing a dated HD 5770, with the just released Sapphire R9 270x. Even from the best Australian suppliers the new AMD cards are about $80 more expensive here than from most US retailers, but then they are still at comparable or better prices than the previous HD 7XXX cards.
LuxMark Saphire R9 270x results1558
Al ‘s well with this part, no issues here. The little beastie flogs the retired 5770 when it comes to a LuxMark comparison. Straight out of the box with a background flooded with applications the new R9 270x scored 1558, which is just shy of the 1580 odd I saw scored in a recent benchmark comparison at Tom’s Hardware, which placed the card very competitively with other lower-mid AMD graphic cards. This single LuxMark comparison is basically the reason for my purchase – good GPU LuxRender on a budget.

So, what’s wrong? Well I also bought me a nice new Seagate hybrid SSD/HHD, and no, nothing wrong there. The new card seemed like a good excuse for a fresh start, so instead of cloning my old drive and migrating I opted for a clean install of Windows, something my system hasn’t seen since it was new. Still all good. So I spent a couple of hours pulling all the stuff I wanted off my old drive and dumping it on the new. It’s amazing how fast the process is at 100 mb/s. All done – no worries! Format the old drive to get a nice clean slave – done, and done 🙂 It’s getting late but why not install a few things on my new drive to get it feeling like home. Let’s start with email (been a while since I checked those)… Oh! Oh fracking no! I didn’t transfer my emails!

Email recover pulls up the junk and the gold alike.

So I panicked a bit. Eventually I found some software that sifts through the fresh ashes of formatted hard drives looking for fried Mozilla Thunderbirds. And this is where I am now. I’ve got over ten-thousand emails recovered all the way back from 2009, most of which have been deleted since early 2012! I’ve got these emails all ready to go, but now I’m faced with the final dilemma. To actually save these emails I now have to decide if they are worth the $99 to pay for the program. See the demo of most of these programs let you have a good look at what you can get back, but to actually get any of your files costs money.

The decision is all the more hard because once I calmed down during the epic recover process I realised that most of the information I actually need such as PayPal receipts, product serial numbers and keys are all actually safe and sound on their respective websites. I don’t need my emails, but I’d like them. New CPU fan or emails? I’ll keep looking to see if there isn’t something cheaper about that does the job, but then the concern is what damage multiple recovery attempts might do.

The moral of the story is don’t make hasty decisions at 2am in the morning. Like I didn’t already know that! Anyway, for those that ever end up in this situation I can vouch for DiskInternals’ Mail Recovery. Even though I haven’t decided to fully go through with the recovery (fork out the cash) they guarantee that if the program can find it you can have it, so quite impressive.

Artist Interview Saiyaness

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Jim Willey

Saiyaness is one of those artists that’s humble to a fault. She will constantly play down her strengths and will be the first to draw attention to any flaws in her work. She also suffers from bouts of project killing procrastination and perfectionism. In short, Saiyaness is an artist so many of us can identify with. Her roots are in traditional mediums like drawing, but for a number of years she has been working almost exclusively with digital mediums. Daz Studio, Photoshop and GIMP are her key tools.

Jim: If your deviantART gallery is anything to go by I would say your roots are solidly in traditional mediums like drawing and photography. How did you discover the love for 3D arts and how has a background with trad mediums influenced your current work?

Saiyaness: I can’t paint to save myself. I can barely use coloured pencils. If it’s not blank paper and an old HB pencil with an eraser to destroy the evidence, I’m doomed…

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DAZ 3D Halloween – 500 Items 50% Off

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Jim Willey

As is often the case, there are some fantastic sales going on over at DAZ 3D. At the moment there are 500 items in the Halloween sale. There is a bit of everything in there, and while some have a very Halloween feel to them, there are many more that have a general sci-fi, fantasy or even modern contemporary feel to them. So, there’s lots of character/texture packages, morph sets, hair, outfits, monster figures, IBL sets, shaders, environment props etc – a bit of everything.

I’ve picked out a selection of some of my favourites as well as some that have been sitting on my wishlist.

I won’t talk much about the products, they speak for themselves, but I do have a bit to say about a couple of these. Right at the top of the list is Age of Armour’s Atmosphere Effects Camera (DAZ Studio only). This handy tool is great for rendering volumetric lighting effects, depth masks (great for adding depth related post work effects like DOF and haze), haz and fog.One reason I always hung back on buying this one was because DS comes with Ubervolume, which does volumetric effects, but I have found the Uber plugin somewhat buggy nad lacking in features.

Next we have Skeleton Dungeon. This bundle is pure value right now at 70% off. In this bundle you get the M4 skeleton, the M/V4 skeleton textures, and Dreamlight’s environment prop, The Dark Corner of the Dungeon. This package is shipping for less than the standalone M4 skeleton, which is itself on special for 40% off.

Here’s one of my own early Reality 2/Lux experiments done with M4 Skeleton.

The Super-Physicality Bundle is another great value package. If you are just starting out with DAZ Studio or Poser or just looking for some good character content, but aren’t interested in Genesis 1/2 then this is for you. It’s even great for those that have a few of the included products in their inventory as the saving are still significant. This bundle includes the base Michael and Victoria 4 figures as well as their morphs++, muscle morphs, elite body morphs, and creature morphs packages. Also included is She Freak 4 and Freak 4 base figures.

And the others

Click image to visit item store page at DAZ 3D.

Other Happenings in DAZ 3D’s Store

Stonemason’s Sci-Fi Corridor 2013

There have been many notable releases of the last few weeks. Stonemason’s Sci-Fi Corridor 2013 is, as usual for a Stonemason product, highly detailed with great attention taken in the construction of materials and texturing. Included are movable walls, stairs, doors, med beds, and all manner of fixed details we have come to expect from one of DAZ 3D’s most trusted and well known content creators.

Age of Armour’s Advanced Ambient Light

The last item I will mention is Age Of Armour’s Advanced Ambient Light. This particular product has been causing a lot of excitement among the DAZ Studio crowd. Here’s part of the product blurb:

“This custom coded light casts pleasing, super-soft ambient light and occlusion based shadows. Use the light by itself to produce a fashion shoot style lighting or even overcast skies. The Advanced Ambient light also works great as a soft-box fill light used in conjunction with spotlights, and it also provides a beautiful bounce light look when used with distant lights.”

The light set is highly customisable with features like radius and falloff control, and light only certain objects. The product also comes with an in-depth user guide, something that is very much appreciated and something that Age of Armour’s products are known for. This is one item I have been intending to do a full review of since I picked it up, so hopefully that will be up very… ermmm… soon (hopefully soon, soon).

Oh, and Carrara 8.5 Sales Chugging Along

So I lied, I have another item I want to talk about – just quickly draw you’re attention to Carrara 8.5 (Pro and standard). There is no doubt about it Carrara has been selling well. Ever since I started paying attention to the top 30 sellers at DAZ 3D, Carrara has held in there at position 25 – 30. Right now, standard is sitting at position 18, and Pro at 19. The current positions are no doubt related to the recent 8.5 release promotions, but Carrara is and has been doing rather well.

I’ve been saying it for some time now, but I’ll say it again, hopefully Carrara’s sales performance will spur DAZ 3D on to giving the budget 3D suit some TLC. Maybe they have been? With Carrara 9 due in the first quarter of 2014 let’s hope DAZ give us all a nice big surprise. With no feature list out in public we’ll just have to wait and watch and hope that Carrara 9 will be a big fat, juicy update.

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Artists Feature Jeremy Mowen (Exyle Studios)

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Jim Willey

Jeremy Mowen was one of the first friends I made in the Poserverse. He was one of those cool guys with an awesome gallery that doesn’t mind slumming with the initiates and sharing his thoughts and knowledge. Getting any sort of feedback in a crowded environ like deviantART is a rare business, especially for those among the endless ranks of lowly newbs, so I always enjoyed talking shop with someone that had a good head start on me. Eventually we moved to exchanging correspondence and WIPs via email and began collaborating on joint projects, all of which have languished long in a mutually agreed murk and may never see the light of day in their fully intended forms.

One of the primary factors in this agreed stasis was Jeremy’s shifting efforts to push out his literary/graphical chimeras before they wither on the vine. The foremost front runner in his undertakings is the Autumn Risen (set amidst a cataclysmic war-torn US), with Revenant emerging out of the frozen wastes of distant UV Prime.

Jeremy primarily works with Poser and Photoshop, but he also makes heavy use of DAZ Studio, Vue, and Reality 3D among others. Whatever the programs used you will notice bold contrasting colours, grungy vivid postworking techniques, strange beings and flawed heroes, big weapons, and lots and lots of wings.

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