Okay, so following Desdemona's (I believe that was the name) advice, I fiddled around some more with my gothic claws to try the long nail effect and this is what I managed to do. The character's nails are made of a crystal-type substance and extend into claws when she fights. A WIP. Comments, suggestions?

Credits:
Anime Hair by Maya (retex by me)
Free Michelle Tex from Creed on head
Free Angelace body tex from Angelmoon
Gothic Claws from Villains set

Looks great! How did you fix the problem you were encountering? :) Jay

Cool! Hmmm...Poser doesn't render glass, water or crystal effects too well unless your using version 5. If your on P4, try this site's tutorial material settings...

Awesome. I saw the original post and this looks great.

Wow! That tutorial was great, Desdemomonna! Here's the new render, her nails look much more like I wanted them to now. Thanks!

In answer to jay's question: I didn't. I couldn't fix the nails themselves. So I took my gothic claws and turned 'off' everything but the left hand claw section (including the bands that sit around the tips of the fingers). Then I scaled each of the claws and bent/twisted/side-to-sided them until they were coming out roughly where the nails would be on her hand. I stripped all material off them and played around with transparancy (and now followed the tutorial Desdemmonna gave me) until they looked like I wanted.

Thanks again everyone!