It's funny. Today I had to go out on a rather long drive for business and I was thinking about Poser and this thread. I tried explaining it to my wife. I remembered how Bryce handles elevations, and I remember reading this is how Poser handles texture (which are micro elevations in a way). As I explained it to her I started thinking that a freckle would be rendered as a low spot, yet in reality a freckle isn't usually a pit, neither is a mole. I started thinking, also, thats why perhaps the old BUM files were negative images. Except Ernyoka says a negative image isn't an ideal map. What would be closer to an ideal?

I like the idea of a math subtract node as a bump. It seems this may result in a more realistic skin texture than even the old negative image BUM files, eh? It might help if someone could explain how Poser and the Firefly renderer handles this issue differently than the earlier Posers.

Hopefully Curious Labs has continued work on this technology and we can expect even more magical results with the Poser 6 version? (Are you folks at Curious listening? :-))

This is proving to be a great thread. Thanks for your contributions.

S