How can I make my renders look like a real person. I have V3 and still she renders like she's made out of plastic and without hair (Where can I find hair for Vicky?). Please forgive my ignorance, I think everybody has a right to start from scratch. Don't you think?

For realism, I'd recommend the DAZ Hi-Res maps for starters. Plus ByteMeOk's Amazing Grace for a wonderful realistic texture set, and Morgana & Midori by stefyzz. As for hair, Neftis makes awesome hair, and you can also get exceptional free hair by kozabuo, but I cannot for the life of me remember the URL for koz's hair.

Attached Link: http://www.horae.dti.ne.jp/~kozaburo/dload.html

Attached Link: http://digitalcrafts.e.fiw-web.net/

One of the most important things for me in creating realistic imagery is the lighting. One can take a plastic environment and with the right lighting create shadows and points of light that reflect more realism. DAZ has some excellent sources for lighting tips. Runtime DNA has many free light sets made by Traveler that rock! Some of those sets you can virtually use without any adjustment, others depending on your setup whether a pinup variety or an actual scene might need some minor tweaking. One of my friends here at Renderosity told me not to render for at least three days until I understood how the lighting works...how you parent a light setting to a camera, etc. It made all the different in the world to the realism of my creations.

Thanks very much. Can you tell me where can I download free textures for V3? You've been truly helpful.

For free textures you should look into the free stuff section here and search for "Victoria 3" or "V3" ....

Freestuff here. Search for Victoria 3. The ones I recommended are all "paid for" items. Worth the money, though.

also, free at daz, you can get a v3 that is remapped to take victoria 2 textures.

Valentin's free "Joelle" character for V3 (in the Free Stuff -- search under Valentin) comes with a lovely texture, as does his "Looma" for V3.

If you have the Daz textures, (which you should because they are great.) remember to make sure you have bump maps turned on in the render options. There are also Mat poses for controlling bump strength and specularity (how shiny she is.) Included with the textures.

And last but not least--be patient with yourself :) Everybody here went through their Plastic Vicki Stage and just kept on learning, reading this forum and asking questions when all they wanted to do was to pull their hair out ;) Try reading the tutorials here and at RDNA, DAZ, 3DCommune, too. Try a Google search for 'Poser tutorials' and start your collection--mine go into a folder that sits right on my desktop so that I can find them easily. Some of the more technical ones I print out and keep in a loose-leaf notebook so that I can follow along with Poser open. And welcome :)

Yup Patricia's right, just relax and have fun with it for a while. Marque