Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 11
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@Kharma - OMG, -23F is cuh-razy cold, I can't even imagine living in that kind of winter! I grew up in Ohio, amd lived a year in Chicago, both of which had real winters but nothing like that! Meanwhile, I live now in northeast Florida where today it is... 85F and sunny. Azaleas are fiercely abloom and have never really stopped blooming through the winter which never actually had a freeze (yet) this year where I live...
I bought Hongyu's Maiden Lingerie when it was in fast Grab and wanted to see how it looked with some of the textures from Paisley and Patterned Iray Shaders
Also used the textures on the Bedclothes. Pleased with the results.
Yeah its definitely cold, they say it's the coldest February we've had in 80 years! Ya gotta be tough to live here in the winter for sure.
Nice job on the use of shaders, @sueya.
The Princess Ensemble for Genesis 8 Female(s) is in the Platinummy sale today, so I bought it. So far, it is a big fail for me. It might be OK if you apply it to the basic Genesis 8 Female, but as soon as you start morphing the body beyond the 6 supported morphs listed, it stops fitting. The product page says "Other Shapes supported in Daz Studio by Auto-follow", but the skirt part doesn't autofollow at all. As an example, I dialed the Weight morph to 100%. The skirt does not expand to fit the larger body, and the length of the skirt suddenly goes way through the floor. This is just an example, I tried other body shapes, too, including some Genesis 8 base characters. The skirt never fits. I will submit a help request, but I think the chance of a fix is slim.
For 2 of the, I think, past 4 years, maybe 5 years, southeast Kentucky has had winter lows of -18 F (-28 C) and -5F (-15C) for a couple days at a time in winter. Enough to kill the Zone 6b plants many have in their gardens but that sort of weather is not typical cold here. It is probably related to ice cap melts way up north precipitating out. Before those too, last time was 1994 and 1989 so maybe 5 years periods are normal.
I learned about this new program called Flowscape. From the game page: "In FlowScape you can create your own tiny nature scene simply by painting. Choose from more than 20 landscapes and 60 models to create your own private paradise by changing the sky, rotating the sun, adding sound effects and adjust your camera settings for that perfect photo". It generates a landscape something like Infinito does and you use a brush motion to paint flowers, grasses, shrubs, trees, sticks, stones, animals, etc. in 3D. No import or export, so limited to the objects withing the program but it's very easy to use, creates beautiful small landscapes and has zen-like music for relaxation. For the price, it's well worth it. Wish Daz Studio was as easy to use. I attached a couple of screenshots (which is the only built-in form of output the program offers). These landscape take just minutes to go from are rock/water to what you see. The designer has mentioned maybe adding import which would make it even more useful.
I can confirm Flowscape is a lot of fun!
I picked up Flowscape after reading about it on this thread this morning and I can't leave it alone. What a bargain for $10! The attached scene is not quite as peaceful as it might look at first glance - most of the fish that lurk beneath the surface are terrifying creatures which are the size of Moby Dick, but I couldn't catch them to scale them :) It's a shame that the animations can't be exported (or at least the camera angle saved), but from what I have read, the software has only been around for a month or so and the creator is full of ideas for adding functionality and working hard at making them a reality.
I might even get a single useful thing done myself soon if I can just stop mucking about with the program :)
I'm going to third the recommendation for FlowScape. Worth every penny. Just make sure you have at leas a couple of hours to spend...
I think it's quite beautiful! Laughed at the Moby Dick!
I also picked it up and agree worth every penny and fun possiably addicting
Wow, that is gorgeous!
Haven’t been here a while because of too much RL stuff but thought I should mention that if you have any older characters like https://www.daz3d.com/grandmother-hd-for-genesis-8-female-and-edie-8 (which doesn’t require Edie 8 and is currently on sale,) you can have fun creating your own elderly Asian characters if you don’t want to get Mrs. Chow. She’s not something I’d normally use but just for fun, I tried adding various Asian morphs to the Grandmother character and kind of like this little lady I produced lol.
At 9:30 pm a few minutes ago, we found Finnigan, my cockatiel, dead in the bottom right corner of his cage. His food was scattered on the floor which indicates he had a night fright. He turned one year old three days ago, on St Patrick's Day, which is why I named him Finnigan. He only lived one year, three days. No bird deserves a short life like that.
Finnigan made me laugh last month, when he told himself to "Step up" then said, "There you go." He put his head down and let me ruffle behind his crest and then turned his head for me to stroke the sides of his face at the same time, then one at a time. SUCH a sweetheart. I'll bury him tomorrow in the back yard, back in the corner under the lush bamboo. He'd like that.
So sorry to hear that
Oh, so sorry to see this, Novica.
So sorry, Novica. Words just aren’t adequate to express how sad this is.
Poor Finnigan. Sorry for your loss, Novica.
Thanks all, appreciate it. It's 3am and I have to get some sleep, my sister is in town from Jacksonville and we have a 10am meeting over at Mom's specialized care facility to discuss her Care Plan. She's doing well, getting a bit weak when she gets in her walker from her recliner, but she IS 91 years old.
I just didn't feel like going to bed, I have Finnigan ready for burial but will do it tomorrow afternoon. Not going to rush and try to do it before I leave for the appointment. Gotta leave by 9:15am so getting about 5 1/2 hours of sleep as it is.
TTYL and again, appreciate the kind thoughts. My husband was the one who found Finnigan crumpled in his cage. Mike was headed to bed at the time, and hated having to go ahead and get some sleep, when he knew I'd be up for many more hours (as usual) . But I'm the type I don't want someone around, I'd rather deal with it on my own. With the huge moon tonight, I just went outside and looked up and talked to it, thinking Finn was shining brightly in Rainbow Bridge or wherever his little soul is. We artists are sensitive and creative and many people think whacky- but we usually know what makes us feel better even if others would never "get it." It was SO peaceful with the bright moon illuminating the back yard. I'll always have that beautiful memory of Finn now, when a bright moon comes around again.
I am so sorry for your loss Novica. Makes me sad.
So sad when these family friends pass.. espeically when it's before their time... Take care.
Some interesting AI based drawing techniques for the future from Nvidia
So sorry to read this. Poor birdie.
Really sorry to hear about Finnigan.
Very sorry to read that, Novica. It's always distressing, even more so out of the blue like that.
Sorry for your loss! It's hard when our pets preceed us, but thinking of them greeting us at the Rainbow Bridge is a comfort. Glad you'll have the moonlight as a kind memory!
Sorry, in a place like Florida it may of been a disease from a wild parrot family bird outdoors. Also, many pet parrot type birds, because they tend to share food socially naturally in the wild when they are socialized to humans will sneak some human feed or drink and that will kill them prematurely. My 1st cockatiel as a boy was likely done in by my allowing it to have human food. It would open its cage, turn on the kitchen faucet and drink tap water, it would steal macaroni and cheese and other foods if not shooed away and that likely did her in. I was heart broken at that age when I saw her fall off her perch and she died. I know better now but I cringe when I read about pet parrot owners feeding their birds meats like chicken, eggs, and other foods like that.
My cockatiel, Rio, I tried 4 different budgies and one other male cockatiel so he'd have a cage mate. Rio didn't like them and Rio, while he liked me (whenever I'd leave the house he's be waiting at the living room picture window for me to return), did not want to play or be active. He is 15 years old so I respect that; however as I now had 4 budgies that I got to try and cheer him up and that made a lot of noise that I could see stressed Rio, I gave Rio to a man that was looking to buy a cockatiel so Rio could get some piece and quiet like he was used to with the people that gave Rio to me. I made sure to let the man that tok Rio know all about Rio's personality so he wouldn't make the same mistakes I made.
I will admit I made a mistake in getting the budgies to try to make Rio not be alone but I had read others opinions and projecting of their own feelings onto their own pet birds and felt ashamed that Rio was alone. What I should of done was kept him alone or bought him a female cockatiel that I have the option to return if things didn't work out instead of buying budgies. Mixing species in the same cage is too often not good to risk it even though one may read of people doing that all the time and claiming they are successful, if you pay attention you often will read about the same people dismissing bird fights and missing bird toes as normal. It is not.
So now I have 4 budgies in 2 bonded pairs (the two Autrailan mutants and 2 traditional English mutants - one cobalt and one SF violet cobalt) that I have no worries about socially and a female lutino Indan Ringneck who is so skittish and scared that her prospects didn't look good if I hadn't adopted her (and pay a pet store price for the priveledge of that). Next month I will also be adopting a male green Indian Ringneck that is similarly wild. They are both about 3 years old. Budgiesand Indian Ringnecks, of the smaller and inexpensive parrots, are also the best at learning how to talk. The average price of a newly fledged Indian Ringneck is $600+ though so that really isn't cheap although it's cheaper than must purebred registered dogs and cats. They are definately much cheaper to feed and vet care for then dogs & cats.
I have made amazing progress taming Missy, the female lutino Indian Ringneck. When I 1st got her in January she was so afraid of people and any change in her cage at all that she'd thrash about the cage so violently she'd loose feathers and bloody her wings and beak on the cage bars. I was scared for her safety.
Now after much work on my part she regularly will come to a platform on her cage door and request her favorite foods from me. She is smart. She knows if she has no more peas and corn (thawed frozen unseasoned, uncooked, and unsalted is food they often steal from farmers in India) she will go to the cup I always put it in and look at me. If her seeds run out she will go to the seed cup & wait. If she waits pellets she will go to the pellet feed cup. If I say 'I want millet' or 'I want pineapple' she often comes scampering over to me like she was shot out of a cannon. I am hoping and trying to teach her to say, 'I want pineapple' and 'I want millet' by actually only feeding her those things when I say those words.
She can wolf whistle but I believe she learned to do that when very young at her breeder's place and that she learned it from another bird not from a person via training. She has never wolf whistled or done her natural IRN calls (eg says what sounds like 'papagayo', the Spanish word for parrot but that is actually a natural sound of IRNs and that sound is how parrots got their spanish name as IRNs where the 1st commonly kept as pet parrots recorded in history) while I've not been in the room so I believe it's actually a call for me to come to the room she is in when I am not there.
She is still far from tame. She is absolutely scared if she is in a position where she thinks she must step up onto my finger or hand so I don't force it but she will if she has too but I try and avoid her getting herself into situatins where she must. I don't know if she'll ever be relaxed and tame enough to step onto my finger. She is still so wild and I can tell you I spent as much time and patience getting her this far as a full to part time job every day and every week since January so you can see why she wouldn't have fared so well with another pet buyer expecting an easy time of it. I also got one very hard bite where I thought she may of stress fractured one on the tips of my pinky about 1/2 way through January. She was very smartly biting me to try and force me to drop all her favorite treats out of my hand so she could have possesion all to herself and I wouldn't have anything. Don't be fooled, birds are smart and don't assume they are happy and cheerful just because of their painted on smiles.
LOL, and I'm about to go through it all over again with a male green Indian Ringneck. This male green IRN was bought from the same petstore I bought the female lutino IRN from and now 3 months later the lady that bought him gave up. They can't manage to tame him so when she asked to return he wouldn't but I had already told him when I bought the lutino IRN if whoever buys the green IRN changes their mind to let me know as I suspected they mind be surprised at the difficulties they would encounter. It's nothing like a clingy puppy or an silly kitten trying to tame a bird that age. I have to keep them in single cages as the female can kill a male if she doesn't like him. The choice to be friends is completely up to the birds. I can't force it. However, for me personally the prospects of taming the male to sit on my finger and talk are much better than with a female once they both have passed 6 months of age. I would have been elementary at less than 6 months of age to tame them easily.
That's it for me though. The two IRNs have pushed the limits of the time I can spend just in taming them. Plus I don't want to hoard no matter how many sad appeals I get from Pet Rescue Centers. I figure part of being a Pet Rescue Center is being prepared to keep the pets you rescue for the entire duration of that pet's life and support those pets with your own money. Since I don't want to hoard, I might give the budgies once fully tame to a retired person or a person whose child wants tame harmless pets but only as the bonded pairs they already are. I'm also fine with using them as pretty funny alarm clocks as they are bonded and happy and easy to take care of.
So there you have it. Adopting adult parrot-type birds is not for the faint of heart or impatient. Bonded budgies though if you do want pet birds are practically effectless to keep care of. You clean their cage every morinhg and change their water & feed every morning and they are beautiful little buddies that enjoy their days. They are also easy to tame, even bonded, although they will only sit on your finger for short periods once tame if they are bonded because every natural instinct drives them to stick to the side of their bonded mate. Indian Ringnecks in contrast typically don't bonded and don't cling to the side of their mate except during breeding season. LOL, they do eat a shocking amount of seed for such little creatures though