@coldrake: Just so you don't think I'd ignore you:

"JoePublic, since you didn't reply to my last post, I can only assume that you agree with all my points or that you simply couldn't think of any answers. Well, now that that's out of the way, let's move on."
I think you assume a wee bit too much here. ;-)

"It also gave you your car, TV, computer, plentiful food and that nice lifestyle you live. Or perhaps, comrad, you prefer old Soviet Russia! Da!"
I actually prefer a so called "social market economy" where companies are regulated for the common good.

"No one will get an informed decision from you,  because you seem to have forgotten that you have to be informed first. Yeah, hate is always a good public service......."
After trying for seven years to turn Posette, Judy, V2 and V3 as well as others into passable human beings, I think I know a thing or two, actually.

"As MikeJ said, he meant the density of the UV coordinates in the map. I recommend that you pay more attention so that you don't look so foolish."
Last time I opened a Vicky object in UV-mapper the number of UV coordinates was identical to the number of vertices in the mesh. But I guess V4.1 is so sophisticated that she even has invisible UV-coordinates. But as I said, I hate mapping, so if V4.1 truly has MORE UV-coordinates despite of being lower resolution, I stand corrected.

"What does hobbyists making Poser big have to do with mapping?
You don't need an expensive 3d painting program, any image editing program will do. If you were truly informed, you'd know that."
Please re-read carefully what I wrote about differently scaled bodyparts. Maybe also wdupre's answer.

"You don't need a high end modeller to create morphs for V4, you can even use free modeling programs. If you were truly informed, you'd know that too."
No, not to make a few minor headmorphs. But if you morph the body too much, you have to re-adjust her 91 JSM-mags.
See that's exactly what I'm talking about. V4.1 is so complicated, not even a reasonable intelligent person like you is able to understand exactly how she works.

"One that wants to make a large print? Here's a newsflash for you, not all Poser/DAZ Studio users are hobbiests, and I'll bet there are a lot of hobbiests who like to make large prints. Me for one. Besides, you can't really upsize an image without losing a lot of quality, but you can always downsize."
You are absolutely right, That's why I keep a backup with the original textures in case I need them.
But sorry, the MOST COMMON use for Vicky is to post an 2000X2000 render of to a web gallery.

"Then you don't know a lot of Poser users."
Maybe I just know the "wrong" ones ?

"You consider large texture sizes to be high tech? Rotfl!!! What neck of the woods are you from?"
A place where usability trumps bleeding edge, perhaps ?
Remember the Allies won WW2 with ancient tech Sherman tanks while the Germans had all the latest high tech panzers.

"Yup. Poser, DAZ Studio and V4 all work for MANY people."
The problem is not THAT they work, but HOW they work.

"There's lots of proof in the stores and freestuff that plenty of other people can use it. You've got to realise that just because you can't do something or you can't figure something out doesn't mean that others can't."
Again, the problem is not wether or not "I" can do something or not, but that A LOT LESS people will be able to make V4.1 textures compared to how many people could make V3 textures.

"If you were really listening to yourself, you'd laughing yourself silly."
Please at least try to be more witty, next time.

"So V4 is destroying what exactly?"
V4 destroys the DIY attitude or whatever what's left of it because it nurtures the attitude that buying is better than creating.

"(Pssst, your adolescence is showing.)"
I have no problem with that. Porn is art !

"V4 isn't perfect, but she can bend better than any other female figure on the market."
And it takes me ten minutes with the morphbrush to make ANY female figure bend better than V4.1.
Pretty sad, isn't it ?

"Why would V4 bog down your machine more than V3? You said yourself and I quote, "Actually, V4.1 has LESS polygons than V3".  Please explain to everyone here, (we're all dying to know,) how V4 would bog down your machine more than V3 if she has has fewer polygons?"
Sorry to again being forced to correct you, but while V4.1 has a few polygons less than V3 she stores all her morphs permanently in her cr2, and her body uses 91 (ninetyone!) Joint Smoothing Magnets. And each of those 91 JSM's consists of three separate parts, so that is 273 additional actors that Poser has to calculate everytime you pose her or move a camera.

"So which "freakin' Barbie doll" with kneecaps do you use? Just curious."
I mostly use modified V3RR and M3RR, as well as modified Luke and Laura because they have the best joints out of the box, can use all Unimesh stuff, and are easily turned into adults because they have more average (adult !) proportions.

"Please give us a list of all the faults of V4 and the ones that you've fixed, it should make some very interesting reading."
I could and maybe I even will, but it would be a lot of work as I intend to back up all my claims with a comparison render.
But in the meantime just search through my older posts here on Rendo.

"It takes a combination of mesh, lighting, textures, render settings etc to make a fairly realistic image. V4 can make as realistic image as any other mesh.  V4 is perfectly accessible to me an most other people, why are you having problems? Oh, and please give a list of all of V4's design defects."
Please see above.
And Please keep in mind that my goals is 100% PHOTOrealism, not "quasi-realistic" as in "It's neither a Toon nor anime so it must be realistic"
If you take a virtual Barbiedoll and throw photorealistic lights at her you get a best a render that looks like a photo of an actual Barbiedoll.
But never something that looks like a photo of a real human being.

"Vicky still is. Again, just because you can't do it doesn't mean most others can't."
I'm sure folks with the talent and knowledge like Anton Kisiel or maybe Blackhearted could make V4.1 their bitch, but the average Poserite will be stuck with just spinning some face dials.

"You don't need any more special skills to use V4 than you do V3, anymore than you need more special skills to use Poser 7 than Poser 6.  You may need to learn new things to use Poser 7 and V4, but you don't need any new skills. You don't need any professional tools to use her either."
You need a a profound knowledge of cr2's to make truly new bodymorphs because of the embedded JSM's, and a full fledged 3D-painter to create seamless textures.
And a high end computer to use her without too much lag.

"But wait, you just said a couple paragraphs up that, "I'm lucky enough to have the talent to fix most of the problems the existing meshes have." Do you have the skills or don't you? Thousands of other people aren't having problems using her, why are you?"
You constantly mix up "using" her with really being able to "making her your own"
Just spinning a few dials or applying a custom character someone else made is not equal to being able to being truly creative with a mesh.

"Actually there are V4 morphs available at other stores.  And yet once again, if you were truly informed, you'd know that."
See above. I don't want to use someone else's morphs. I want to be able to do my own. It's easy with V3, but next to impossible with V4.1.

"It's nice to know that you set your standards so much higher than most other people. Most other people don't seem to be having all the problems you're having with her. Maybe you got a corrupted file. Try downloading again."
That actually WAS funny. Bravo !
But the point is that a lot of those people who claim to have no "problems" with V4.1 aren't even able to recognize problems as such because they have been trained by DAZ to accept them as inevitable.

And even if we assume that some people truly have no problems with V4.1 because they never want to do more than "buy, load, render" , why should they have a problem with a lighter, better optimized mesh that bends better and looks more realistic right out of the box ?

"Coldrake"

JoePublic