Sorry to the diatribe that will follow.   I'm a newb, and my name is Cho.  There, got that off my chest. ;)

  I had no idea you people were out here, and this artistic niche was even around.  I just happened to stumble on a picture one day and I was floored.   I had to know who made it and how!  That lead me to the world of poser and to you people now.   Some beautiful art here, well done! 

I have been reading and practicing and trying my damnest to learn what I can.  I have spent more money then I'd care to admit!     I recall what seems like forever ago when it took me 4 days to find an answer that anyone of you could have answered in seconds.  lol.  I plugged through, and am still trying to learn.  I've never had a hobby that was met all the way through with failure after failure.  I haven't given up yet, but have been close.  I'll make a render and think, ' this is it, I've done everything, right this is gonna rock!'   Then when I see the result it's discouraging!   I look at galleries and am humbled at how much more I have to learn and good some of you are.   That makes me want to plug on. 

My failures include:

No Idea What Shaders Do, Or How To Work Them In Poser
No Clothes Will Fit Despite Buying A Recommended Program And Following the Tutorial To A Tee.  ( All My Figures Are Naked! )

Countless other tutorials i've tried and failed and then moved on.  

Bottom line is my renders look like crap.  Would you peek at this one and tell me what I'm missing to make it kick ass? 
http://www.imagebam.com/image/0c161425812713   - NUDITY!

 I thought I'd throw this out here.  Is there a learned man or woman amongst you who is avaialble to chat on YIM, or aim or whatever.  Just someone to bounce a few questions off of?   I'm "kindahotandcutecouple" on yim.  If not, no biggie, I'll keep reading, keep trying tutorials and experimenting!   

Can I ask though, are there any good textures that you know of with tan lines?  I got one of an Arcebus character, "Milk," that is fantastic!  Any other ones you can recommend?  Perhaps an easy way to make them?

Howdy. Welcome to the maddening world of Poser!

First off, I think you're being too hard yourself. Many newcomers (myself included) wish to produce artwork that the "pros" are doing. We judge ours by theirs. That's not fair nor is it conducive to our sanity.

Looking at the image above, I think you're way better than you give yourself credit for. You have a nice pose...with the feet pointed correctly (not going through the floor). Hands that are on top of the knees (instead of in them). You've even got your eyes nicely posed (which is one of the hardest things to do IMO). Usually newbies render with that "blank" look.

There's nothing there a few "touch-ups" in a 2D paint program can't fix.

I'd suggest you get Bagginsbills free VSS shader. He also has a tan lines shader...or at least he was working on one some time back.

I'll let someone else explain shaders.

Again, Welcome.

Good luck and don't give up!

Which model do you primarily use? Is it V4 as in your above image? Can you elaborate on your, "No clothes will fit" statement? Are you buying clothes FOR V4? The image above looks like the default V4 body. Most all her clothes will slide right on her when it's the default body shape. Did you mean they didn't fit after morphing her body? After posing her?  Which recommended program did you buy?

I agree with SSAfam1. You have a lot of talent. Don't stop now. One month of frustation is nothing ;) Your image isn't technical perfect. But it has more "art" than a lot of images around here.

A mistake a lot of noobs make also is that they think what they see in the Poser gallery is "all Poser", most of the time it isn't, it's been heavily postworked in Photoshop or equivalent!!
Not all but most!!
Your image is decent for a noob, certainly better than when I was a noob and I'm not much better now, but like you I keep plugging!!
The biggest thing though is to enjoy it, if not then don't do it!

Hia Cho.. and welcome!

I just wanted to elaborate a bit on SSAfam1's recommendation to get bagginsbill's free VSS (Versatile Shader System), which I completely agree with. Like... what is it, what does it do, why should anyone need it?

Firstly, about Poser's 'Shaders'. Poser tries to replicate in its virtual 3D space what happens in the real world regarding the interaction of light with surfaces. It does this using 'shaders', which are the things you can see in the advanced Material Room associated with each 'material zone' on a 3D object in your scene. The simplest Shaders just consist of a single Poser Material (the 'root node') with various colours and values dialled in... for things like Diffuse light, Specular light, Ambient light, Transparency, etc. etc. Complicated shaders, which attempt to realistically emulate the properties of things like human skin, can contain a baffling maze of dozens of boxes plugged into that root node.

The other thing to note... and it is very apparent in most newbie Poser pictures (mine included)... is that Poser versions before Poser Pro do not automatically adjust rendered images for how they are displayed on computer screens, which is not linear. In simple terms, the perceived brightness is not proportional to the actual light intensity. In slightly more technical terms, Poser (before Poser Pro came along) does not Gamma Correct for you. That is why, in your picture, the shadowed areas of the image, especially her skin, are too dark in comparison with the rest. This is a typical Poser non-Gamma Corrected render, and can be fixed with a little knowledge and a few good tools.

bagginsbill's VSS product, whilst designed for general material texturing applications, actually comes with extremely good skin shader templates for Victoria4 already built into it. These skin shader templates are designed to replace the skin shader setup that come with your V4 character, but still use your character's own texture files (image maps). The VSS V4 shader templates also include gamma correction, for use in Poser 6 and 7 (I'm not sure about 5). With the 'as-supplied' VSS prop loaded into your scene, a single button click (Synchronise) will adjust all your character's shaders, with (usually) startlingly good results. There are many comparison images out there, but I'll give you a link to my own as an example.

Izi's VSS V4 Skin Shader Comparison (no nudity but slightly cheeky)

I'll have to leave your other questions to others for the moment, 'cos I'm at work!

Oh, apart from one thing... the 3D human models we use are not as bendy and squishy as we are. That's why you get things like those hard lines along the pelvis/thigh and thigh/calf joints with large joint movements. Often the only way to eliminate such shortcomings of the 3D model from your final work is to do some postwork on the render using an image editing program. There are some purists who do anything to avoid postwork, but that's just their preferred workflow... don't let anyone persuade you there is anything wrong with it!

Hope this helps a little.
Izi

Chonan,
I will be home today if you want to reach me by Skype...
darkedge007

Regards

Oops I wrote VSS Shader. Which is saying, "Shader" twice. It's just VSS.

Only one month and the frustration mounts.  Welcome to the club.  There is definitely much to learn, but the problem is where to start.  You have great potential and now is the time not to stop.  Although you look at many posted images here, as TheFixer stated, many are postworked and enhanced in 2D programs.  However, that shouldn't deter you from pursuing something excite and frustrating at the same time.  You will find in time that a combination of elements will bring about that awe-striking image; may it be the lighting, the pose, the scene composition, etc.  And you will find your way here, to the forum, with many question to be answered. 

I have to ecko what thefixer said. Lots of post work. And add that the best things happen by accident. Every picture is unique, play with your pictures in your choice(s) of graphics prograns, photoshop ect.....

No one program does it all.
And each graphics program has there own unique filters and capabilities.

Quote - Which model do you primarily use? Is it V4 as in your above image? Can you elaborate on your, "No clothes will fit" statement? Are you buying clothes FOR V4? The image above looks like the default V4 body. Most all her clothes will slide right on her when it's the default body shape. Did you mean they didn't fit after morphing her body? After posing her?  Which recommended program did you buy?

I just use V4 and morph here.  Generally I make her larger.  Bigger hips, butt, and boobs.  Here's a typical character for me.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/c27ce125886748  - NUDITY

The program I read about to make the clothes fit is called " Morphing Clothes"   The closest I ever got with it is depicted below.  It's def. morphing the clothes, but still way off.  Here's a shot of the options that produced these results after checking all the morphs that would affect the top.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/df2bcf25886750

Now here she is wearing said top.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/ba8f0925886753   - NUDITY

http://www.imagebam.com/image/17a2b525886755   - NUDITY

LOL.  Glad I can laugh about it!   I really feel like if I just can get clothes to fit I'll be making head way!  

After I master clothes, I'll move on to better things like shaders and lighting!  Baby steps, right?  

Really appreciate the help and insight, guys!  

@Chonan,

Would it be OK with you if I posted a post-worked version of your image to this thread?

I'd love that!!

Quote - @Chonan,

Would it be OK with you if I posted a post-worked version of your image to this thread?

LOL I was thinking to ask the same thing. Postworking...especially where the hip/inner thighs are concerned...

Quote - > Quote - Which model do you primarily use? Is it V4 as in your above image? Can you elaborate on your, "No clothes will fit" statement? Are you buying clothes FOR V4? The image above looks like the default V4 body. Most all her clothes will slide right on her when it's the default body shape. Did you mean they didn't fit after morphing her body? After posing her?  Which recommended program did you buy?

I just use V4 and morph here.  Generally I make her larger.  Bigger hips, butt, and boobs.  Here's a typical character for me.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/c27ce125886748  - NUDITY

The program I read about to make the clothes fit is called " Morphing Clothes"   The closest I ever got with it is depicted below.  It's def. morphing the clothes, but still way off.  Here's a shot of the options that produced these results after checking all the morphs that would affect the top.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/df2bcf25886750

Now here she is wearing said top.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/ba8f0925886753   - NUDITY

http://www.imagebam.com/image/17a2b525886755   - NUDITY

LOL.  Glad I can laugh about it!   I really feel like if I just can get clothes to fit I'll be making head way!  

After I master clothes, I'll move on to better things like shaders and lighting!  Baby steps, right?  

Really appreciate the help and insight, guys!  

Hmm I've recently heard of this program, but have never tried it. Maybe Dimension3D will see this thread and answer this.

Even so, this is only one shirt. V4 has many items with built in morphs for adjusting the clothing to a more voluptuous figure. I'm still puzzled as to how none of her clothing fit.

Yea, lol, bad to use such a generalization.  However, I bet I've bought 12 different outfits and I'm 0 for 12.  So I just computed the average out there.   ;)

Be aware a lot of new clothing items are what's called "super conforming" which means they'll adjust to the morphs of the character automatically [within reason], see merchant Jasmina for examples.
IMO one of the best things to arrive in Poser world for a long time!

Which version of Poser are you using?

Whilst I know a bit about the technical aspects of Poser, I would be the last person to claim any artistic prowess. Never the less perhaps I can give a few suggestions. Whilst some people produce great work straight out of Poser, many images in the gallery have been post-worked in a paint program like PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro. In cases with a lot of bending at the hip/thigh, knee, shoulder, or elbow, current Poser figures do not handle this well, and post-work is almost always needed in these cases.

I opened your image in Paint Shop Pro 5 (PSP45). Copied the image and pasted it as a new layer. Working in the new layer I increased the contrast qite a bit, and increased the brightness a little. I copied the new layer (Layer 1) and pasted it as yet another layer. I selected the Soften brush and set its size to 7 and its Opacity to 50 and its size to 7. I then went over the seams where the thigh meets the hip, and where the shin meets the thigh to soften the edge of the shadows, I also used the Smudge tool to round off some sharp angles of the shadow. Then from the menu bar I selected Colors>Adjust>Red/Green/Blue, and increased the red component of the image. Then I selected the eyes with the Freehand Selection tool, lightened the eyes and increased their saturation slightly.

I think the result is a better image (you may not agree). I am sure someone with more skill and/or time than I have could have made bigger improvements.

As to things you could do in Poser to improve the image. You would be amazed what a difference a good texture makes. Also the Lighting could be improved, to my mind the sides of the figure are too dark, and could do with a little bit of fill light, don't over do this it only needs a tiny bit.

[I should stop looking at this, the palms of my hands are starting to get hairy]

A lot of great information here.  Sincerely thank you those who have offered help.  I can see the importance of post work now.   I thought I'd make it through this process without ever having to resort to it.   I can't use MS Paint, let alone PS.  ;)

Also, big thanks to for the lead to the VSS, I spent over an hour reading the thread, then a couple hours messing with it.  Reading the thread is like a college course though.  Wow, does it make one feel stupid! 

Again thank you all, and to the gentleman who post worked the image!