Moriador,Ambientshade,  icprncss2

Sorry all, didn't mean to confuse you. There is no black magic involved here. I neglected to mention (for selfish reasons) one other program I used, Ivy Generator by Thomas Luft. An absolutely incredible bit of software, available free, but no longer supported. Easy to use, but maddeningly frustrating to get the results you want. I guess the reason I didn't mention it is because those with more experience can probably crank out a figure in a day, (by importing the results from Ivy Generator into another program to refine the shape) where as it took me the better part of two weeks of watching Ivy grow to get the results I wanted.

It all started with a contest I entered several years ago:

http://www.cornucopia3d.com/contests.php?contest_id=28

My image took second place, but it was a static figure, and I wondered if it was possible to make the figure come 'alive', and after diving into the Poser manuals, figured out a way to make it work. Imagine my surprise when it DID work, and the Dryad came to life!

Several years back when I first started working on a Poser version, I kind of described how I was doing it here in the forums. (I can't find it now- the search feature kind of sucks) But I did write a tutorial for the winning image at cornucopia3d: http://www.cornucopia3d.com/classroom/article.php?id=140&from=makingofs

As for the length of time to get the Dryad complete from start to finish. I have to work for a living and a family to support, (wife was in an accident and is now disabled) and as a state employee I don't make a lot of money to do all of that, definitely not enough time or money to get or learn new software. I don't get much time to 'play' around, and this is probably the most amount of time I've spent online in years (being the holidays helps). yada yada yada, you all didn't came for a sob story. Basically I had to really learn how to use Poser (Before I was posing figures, exporting them out for Vue) The material room still confuses the hell out of me. Still don't like the lights in Poser, much harder than they need to be, but that's a different topic for another day.  Anyway, long story short: I took me two years to get to this point.

**
**

...Insert some witty or thought provoking comment here...