first, i generally render animations in the full preview mode because it is quicker and with the antialias feature it works just fine for my needs-however i have noticed in this mode wings and capes become invisible when viewed straight one from the front- is there a way to fix this so they can be seen fromthe front in this mode?

second- i recently aquired nerd3d's dust and trail tool- but cant seem to get the mats to work- preview or rendered(there is nothing at all that can be seen). i checked in material room and they seem to be there but i dont seem the mats. is there something special that needs to be done(this is the first time i have had this issue with any of their products)

system specs:
win7, poserpro

thanks in advance

Question:  Did you read the tutorial?

i just read the tutorial nothing too unique there(this is regarding the dust and trail tool)- guess i have to fiddle with it a bit more, plus check that everything installed correctly, however i did notice it seems to share some of the same textures and the smoke and fire tool- when first installing the dust and trail

btw any hints on the cape wing issue, in preview mode?

 the cape/wing issue is a preview issue and can't be solved other than by rendering the thing.

I think this might be the answer...

Select the Dust and Trail figure. Select Control from the list of body parts. Set the Make Trail control to 100.

The reason you get invisible parts is because they are essentially one sided objects so the part you cannot see is the back side of the model. You can find some two sided capes and whatnot if you look hard enough. You can also fake it with the creative use of primitives (i.e putting a small plane or cube in the empty space.)

ahh that makes sense- and ty for your suggestions, which would work for stills and i guess animations(with a tedious amount of work)- but seeing as there is no simple solution for this i will just omit these from animations, which isnt a huge issue, just use them for stills
thank you all for your input- very helpful