"To all the gurus here that post everywhere and assume that everyone else knows nothing- great you are poser masters, but you assume that everyone else is stupid and you are all knowing, this is your downfall, and makes for a hostile environment here.  Why do you do this?"

When I first started using Poser 4 and registered here at Renderosity I was amazed at the help you could get from the forums and I posted quite often. This thread  reflects perfectly why I stopped following the forums. People bitching and complaining without doing any of the work themselves. But to critisize the people who offer probably the most experience and insight to how Poser works....?! That's HOSTILE (yes, indeed that was a shout.) Sounds to me like you've got a case of the envies...;)

But in an effort to pull this thread towards something more constructive I'd like to touch on something MikeJ said earlier:

"This is why so many people have so much trouble with shaders and now, with GI too. There is no one size fits all, there is no easy way. There are no light sets, backdrops, cameras, shaders, textures, or anything else that will guarantee a perfect scene. Not just Poser, but the same goes for all 3D apps.
And a lot of times, presets won't even get you close to what you want."

This is the most important lesson a Poser user needs to learn. They should print it on the cover of the Poser manual and put it on big street signs all over the Poser universe. It took me a long time to learn and until just recently I was hunting for that "perfect" light set that would fit every scene. It doesn't exist.

I can name you real world example as to why that is. A few years ago I got the job of photographing commercial products (pens & such) at work and I had no experience in photography nor did my boss. His idea was to find the perfect light setup that would make the background completely white so I could just mask out the subject with the magic wand in Photoshop. Sounds great, right? Well after I had adjusted the lights and the camera settings I was succesful!! I had photographed a black pen on a clear white background and masked it out with a few clicks of the magic wand!  Fantastic!!  Next I took a royal blue mint box, placed it on the white background, zoomed out a little bit and SNAP! Everything was grey. I didn't change the camera settings or move the lights an inch. But because the subject had a different material, color and size and because I zoomed out a little bit the light environment for the lens had changed so I pretty much had to start all over again.

I´m no expert on Poser materials and lights and I know less about photography but that's just how things are. If you're not going to take the time to at least try to understand how things work and be willing to put some time and effort into what you're doing you're not going to get the results you want.

As for the original post in this thread; If you're looking to do hi rez professional work maybe you should consider a more professional software. It would cost more but if you're doing things on a professional level it might be a good investment.

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