I'm very new to Poser,barely a few days in fact but I'm chugging along okay with it.Finding my way around.
However today while I was checking out the material room and playing around with maps I suddenly thought "Hey! The back of Michael's head is blurred ,what have I done?"

So I tried to figure it out for a while, and then concluded that actually the back of his head is just plain blurred in the base model from the seam backwards.
Am I right or do my eyes deceive me? Is there a cure? It's really niggling at me,I keep feeling I need a trip to the optician.

No doubt somewhere here there is are references to this and I have searched but to no avail so sorry if this question has been ask thousands of times before.Your patience much appreciated.

On what is mostly default map "M4Smpl_malebody.jpg", it will probably look blurred, because that area is much smaller in comparison to rest, probably because hardly anybody use texture on back of head.

I almost always use a hair prop with a skin texture below.  Is personal preference, because other way hair looks painted on (which it is in this case!).

The back is not only blurred in the material room but also in the render?

Maybe you have texture filtering on, so it appears blurred? Then use the Python script by SVDL to turn it off (Poser 7 texture filtering off, for P7 and versions above, free here: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=99327

Are the textures the standard (or simple?) textures by DAZ for M4, because there are also high resolution ones, you find them in Poses under MAT for M4. Try them and see if the problem still exists.

The number of pixels used for back of head is less than half of those used for the ear even.

If you stretch that much relatively, you have much loss of detail.
To use a texture back there is much better a bald one.
Of course, in real world, they sell man's hair spray that paint on head something that look like hair but it doesn't fool anybody.

It's slightly better in the render,though not much. I'm assuming that if the detail isn't there in the first place rendering isn't going to put it back to any degree. I've tried altering the texturing  filters ( or at least I think I have,this is new to me after all) but this doesn't seem to have made much if any difference. So I will try running that python script you suggest.

The textures are standard/simple but then I would have thought that even so the front should match the back.  I've looked for higher res ones as and where you suggest but  but can see nothing other than the ones I've been using.

`Excuse the pun,but perhaps I'm in way over my head with this at the moment!

Actually I've just looked at Victoria 4 and she displays exactly the same characteristic. Distinct dividing line across the top of her head and blurred back from that line.

I do understand that these figures are meant to be added to with hair etc and I am after all at a very early and basic level with all this, it just struck me as a little odd that there wasn't a smooth transition across the head front to back and I found it a little off putting.Its no biggie.Just wondered if that was normal or something I was doing.

It may have been intent of designer to save polygons on area not seen (or covered).  You can use saved number of polygons on area needing detail, like ears for translucent maps or subsurface scattering.

IMO, people same way, they take shortcut on area not seen.  I don't shave armpit sometime if wearing outfit with sleeves.

Sorry Medzinatar, didn't see your second post before I posted though  I should have since they are an hour and a half apart.

Okay yes ,I see what you mean and sure,less pixels stretched out over that area,less detail. But why less pixels? As I said I am very very new to 3d so I can only wonder from a poorly informed point of view but it just seemed to me that even a basic model should be consistent all the way around and altered and built upon from that stage.After all if I bought a house I wouldn't want to walk around the back to discover half the number of bricks per square metre had been used to build it because the builder thought perhaps I'd be mostly living at the front of the house and wouldn't be too bothered by the gaps and then left it up to me to fill them in if needs be! Mind you with some builders over here I wouldn't be at all surprised if that did happen!

Anyway ,just reading through threads on this forum I know things are not going to be that straight forward, but then again as you say there's usually a solution too assuming I can get my head around it.

Bailliere - a model wouldn't have a consistent poly count because - taking the ears as an extreme example - the model would soon become too poly heavy to use in Poser otherwise.  

Most models are built to put polys where they are needed for details and morphs, leaving relatively unused areas quite plain.  It's what makes building a model as much an art as a science; knowing what to leave in and what to take out.  In all truth, do you really need 400 polys for the back of the head?  The face, on the other hand, has to do a lot of movement in order to show expressions and be able to shape into different looking people, hence the high poly count there.

Part of the blurring may be due to the quality of the texture.  If you're using the basic texture provided with the M4 base, it's quite low res, so don't expect miracles.  Also, those painted on hair textures are generally useless for anything other than background figures anyhow.  I wouldn't get too busted up about it; just get a good texture and some hair props. 

Making model is different than cost-engineering a building.  If framing a house, you put studs on 24 inch centers because easier to execute with available labor (also to conform with building codes) also to hang pictures on wall, you don't want to have to guess where stud is after covered.  There are reasonable shortcuts that a builder may take, like less insulation on garage than main house because nobody living in space.

There is finite amount of cpu consumed per polygon and some memory for each pixel of texture.  The model should be optimized to use less resources.  On hand, all fingers have three joints, but on foot is articulated as single toe (there are optional adjustment morphs available, but they have no bones).  Form follows function, you see people gesturing and grasping things with hands, rarely with toes.

The Blurring effect is due to the UV's. The UV's for the back of the head use much less UV map space than the UV's for the face and ears. This does not really correlate to the polygon count. You can have a very low poly model and still have a very high resolution UV map. But since the back of the head is usually covered by a hair prop the developer used a lower resolution for the UV's on the back of the head, as compared to the face which is often seen.

Medzinatar's pic above with the checkerboard squares illustrate what is going on. The ears have much smaller squares because the UV map for the ears cover a much larger area of the UV map than the back of the head and so have more squares and better definition. If you were to make a UV template where the entire figure received as much resolution as the face you would have to have 12-15, 4000x4000 maps and it would have many more seams.

Oops! Honestly SamTherapy I'm really not that bothered about it. I was just curious that's all and j thought I'd ask the question in case it was something  I was doing wrong rather than just the way it is. Poser is a whole new world to me and I'm just trying to get my bearings and understand the whys and wherefores of how things works. To be honest I hardly  know my texture maps from my elbow in poser at the moment, but though  I have  M4 and a bunch of morphs muscle maps and so on  I can't see anything other than the basic texture anywhere so I guess that's all I have.
I actually only came to notice the  blur because I was trying to get rid of the hair altogether on a character I was playing around with!

So yes,not stressing, I'm really enjoying this program, I've been buried in photoshop for the past umpteen years so It's good to get out to pastures new.
Thanks all for your explanations,much appreciated.

I am in hopes that some day a UV mapping layout like Zbrush has will become standard. Zbrush can map each polygon individually and lays them out with almost no wasted space at all. With 4 4000x4000 maps you could have a very high resolution texture over the entire figure. But it is not something you could work on by hand, you would have to use a 3D paint app like 3DCoat. But imagine how much more detail you could get into half the space for maps.

You mean AUV and GUV tiles Mike ?
Only problem with them is the texture isn't very editable in photoshop (or anything other than ZBrush actually)

Yes Frank AUV and GUV.  I agree they cannot be worked on by hand. But you can easily paint the texture on in 3DCoat as long as you have the materials set up. 3DCoat (and I imagine other 3D paint apps) Work very well with those UV mapping layouts to apply photo textures. Also since each poly is mapped there is almost no distortion at all. It takes specialized apps to use these UV layouts true, but those apps are becoming more and more common. The hard part of course is matching the photos and getting rid of shadows etc. But since 3DCoat is able to use photoshop tools natively you can do those things right on the applied texture.

Sheesh, sounds like I'm plugging 3DCoat! :) not my intent. I just really like the layout. I dont think its anything new really 3DSMax has had something similar for many years now. I know what you mean though, a person cant really make heads or tails of the texture template from just llooking at it.

Bailliere, hop on over to ShareCG and pick up some free textures for Michael 4. There are quite a few good ones there. In particular, there is one called Nicholas (3  files to download). Well worth the effort.

 the biggest newbie error I made when I started poser was thinking free stuff meant free and one can do what one likes with one's renders - even sell them.  but it isn't the case always. so always check the readme on the free stuff or keep it separate from your good bought poser stuff.
Love esther