This is sort of what I'm going for (Bryce5 Render). Model and texture by me in Wings, Paint Shop Pro, and Bryce if you are interested.

I'll upload my problems in a few minutes.

=)

Message edited on: 06/03/2005 03:35

...and here's what I've got. As you can see, Poser has massacred my model. If that's the best Poser can do, I'm breaking my CD and throwing it in the trash. =( But I know it's not the best Poser can do, because I've seen you people do better. =) This is a (scaled) screenshot of my materials lab after rendering on a Production quality render. DAZ said that sharp edges on the model caused weird shadows, none noticeable to me here. In the color dialog, there is a uvmapped texture from Wings and Paint Shop Pro that is basically a starship gunmetal texture for the main ship and some green lights and red engine lights and stuff. Nothing really fancy there. Unfortunately, apparently Poser doesn't recognize .bmps as bump maps. Poser4, this was easy (it would automatically convert). Poser5, having trouble converting to .BUM I need to use an Ambience map, Transparency map, and Bump map, all of which I have in standard form where the stuff I want is white and the stuff I don't want is black. One last thing. Is there any way to stop Poser from %#$#@ smoothing my model???? Looks terrible this way! If I'd wanted it smoothed, I would have smoothed it in Wings! If you read all of that, kudos and thanks very much! Any suggestions or tuts for these problems which are probably very easy to solve would be very much appreciated. As you can probably tell, I'm horribly awfully terrible with Poser. I've had it for years, but haven't played with it much. =( Also, let me know if you need a larger pic for the material lab (I know it's hard to see).

Well maybe a bit more contrast(Balck and White) on your displacement map. Turn off polygon smoothing while rendering. And it should work.

HALELUJAH!!! Much better. I converted the displacement map to greyscale and increased the contrast. I assume that this means that Poser will just ignore a pic that isn't greyscale. Something to remember for me. But, as you can see, my render settings don't have "smooth polygons" on, and it still smooths it! I think it's smoothing the model as it imports? Oh, yes, and I'll probably have to invert the displacement map. =)

Is there any way to stop Poser from %#$#@ smoothing my model???? You mean the smooth-shading? Only in Poser 6, I'm afraid. Previous versions don't have the crease-angle feature, so you'd need to modify the mesh itself.

...on 2nd thought, looking at that displacement mapped ship, you know, it really doesn't look that bad... =) Okay, I'll bite. How do I modify the mesh itself?

If you spit the vertices in uvmapper it should fix the smoothing effect.

Thanks! I'll have to download uvmapper and try that.

Attached Link: http://user.txcyber.com/~sgalls/

You can also use PoseRay to split the vertices along the creases only. http://user.txcyber.com/~sgalls/ See the gallery for an example and check the manual tutorials for this procedure. good luck, FlyerX