Runtime Reconstruction... .excruciating .EXEs

Ugh. For those of you that don't know, the home of my runtimes (an external drive) let this world earlier this month. Luckily, with some exceptions, I had backed up most of them a few weeks before. We had a hitch with the replacement drive and had to get another one. I'm finally back on the road to reconstruction.

One of the major exceptions to the fairly recent backup was my V4 and related stuff. I had given up on using V4 due to some problems with using her on our household's old computer. We got a new system during the last quarter of last year. Thanks to Ann from ART-Collab, I decided to give V4 another shot on the new system. She and Fisty patiently and graciously helped me though some of the changed technical stuff. However, I never did reinstall quite a bit of the older stuff that I had for her because it seemed like a lot of work to go to if I wasn't going to end up using V4 for the long-haul. I decided to start on small scale. Since I had to do some reconstruction, I thought I might as well install all that stuff and some of the bundles for V4 & M4 late last year. I figured better to do the least pleasing job first. I spent most of the day running the installers and it brought one thing very sorely home. I H-A-T-E Daz's bloody .EXE installers. Almost always have, but now I definitely do with a passion. Running more than three to four makes me nuts. I wanted to hang myself very quickly. Never again! Fortunately, I think I have the bulk of the stupid things installed now.

I have some more minor installing with blessed, sweet .ZIP files to do. And that's it. I should be back in business. I think I might take a breather for a couple of days and have mental health vacation after all those .EXE. After the .EXE files, a few weeks' worth of .ZIP installs sounds like a breeze. I should be in the home-stretch soon. If all goes well, I'll be back composing and rendering scenes in Poser sooner than Daz s**n.

New Freebie: Loading Dock Cameras

Hurray and congratulations to ART-Collab. Their new products, The Loading Dock and The Cargo Hold have made it to the Daz Store as part of March Madness. I made a humble set of starter cameras for The Loading Dock and packed them up as a freebie. Click here to download them from the ART-Collab thread at Daz. I will try to get them put up on a web page as soon as life becomes less hectic again. Enjoy.

Returning Freebie: Claire for A4/V4 & Morphs++

Due to life being kind of complicated, I haven't had a chance to repost my 2011 holiday freebies like I had hoped. I've gone ahead and reuploaded one of them, Claire for A4/V4 and V4 Morphs ++, over at Renderosity Free Stuff. Claire was one of my contributions to the FaerieWylde 2011 Winter Solstice celebration. This is the first time I've ever uploaded anything over there, so I guess we'll see how it goes.





I think you'll need to log-in at Renderosity to download. Click here. Instructions are included on the Rendo entry and in the readme.

Good Causes: ART-Collaborations' Firesale Continues

For those of you watching the ART-Collaborations Firesale, MissB has donated a beautiful collection of seamless tiles. Check them out here or here. They're free to all, but please remember donations to help Ann's parents would be very sincerely appreciated. Thank you! :)

Good Causes: ART-Collaborations' Firesale

I won't be doing much of this type of thing within my blog pages... However, there are exceptions to every rule.

Sad news from ART-Collaborations--one of my favorite vendor teams. Ann's parents lost their pets and most of their possessions to a house fire. Ann is wonderful lady and is always doing generous, sweet things through out Poserverse. You can read more about her parents' situation here. All proceeds from the ART-Collaborations site store's sales will be going to her parents. You can also make donations here. Some artists around Poserverse are rallying around Ann and her family and contributing items or proceeds towards relief, as well. There is a thread at Daz3d's forum with details here.

If you're a digital artist that uses Daz|Studio or Poser, you have several other options to help.


Diamonds & Pearls, donated by JasmineSkunk, is an add-on for Star Struck Twinkle (with a few bonuses that match BeMine). The pack is free-for-all members of the ART-Collaborations' store, but donations are very much appreciated. Thank you, JasmineSkunk, for paying forward some cosmic kindness helping Ann's family! :)

Lassie24 from Cute N Toonz has stepped up with two other fantastic options. Proceeds from the sale of Spring Time for Cookie's Goth Gown and Cook Tunic for Cookie's Tunic Dress will be donated to the donation fund for Ann's parents. Thank you, lassie24, for paying forward cosmic kindness and helping out, as well. :)

For the 2D graphic enthusiasts out there, Kriss is donating the proceeds from the sale Sharing Love 1 and Sharing Love 2 to the donation fund. Thank you, Krissy, for paying it forward and helping out! :)

As for myself, I've donated a couple of things. Since, however, I've never ventured into the commercial marketplace and don't have a store, I'm leaving their distribution up to Ann. I'm not quire sure how that's going to be handled yet. There are two 3D-related packs that I've donated. The other is a 2D pack of .PNG images. Stay tuned find out more. You might also want to watch the Daz3D forum thread here.

Thanks for reading. :)

New Freebie - Cookie Too Cute PNGs

Thanks to the chaotic nature of my life lately, the arrival of my newest freebie is delayed. Just some cute "Valentine-esque" images.



Click here to see the .PNG images at approx. 50% of their actual size.

Click here to download the zip file. Enjoy!

New Freebie: Enchanted for Littlest Witch

I have a new freebie to share today. I'll get a permanent web page set up for it in a few days. I wanted to get it packed and available so nothing happens to in the meantime. This is a Poser shader material set that I used in several of my personal 2011 Halloween renders. To use this set, you'll need ART-Collab's Littlest Witch for Candy and Candy (The Gumdrop Base Figure). You will also need Poser 5 or later. These materials will NOT work in Daz|Studio.

In the archive, you'll get material settings for: The Littlest Witch dress, gloves, socks, shoes, and hat. I've saved the materials as MAT-Poses for easier use. Please note: there are no .jpg files for bump maps, displacement maps, or textures. These are strictly Poser procedural shaders. Click on the preview for full-size.



When rendering, please remember that Poser shaders are sensitive to lighting. The results you'll get depend on your light settings in each scene. The images for the promo were rendered in Poser 7 with the LW_Light1 set that comes with ART-Collab's Littlest Witch. There is more information in the "readme" file enclosed in the shader archive.

If you would like to download "Enchanted" for Littlest Witch, click here.

Enjoy!