One step at a time :) This was just one of those "what if I" moments that worked :) Very simple: Make the cat eyeball material and pupil material transparant (crank all trans settings to max) Make a ball. Place ball in left eye socket. Name this ball L_outer_eye and make transparant but very shiny. Copy. Create new ball, paste. Make slightly smaller, and name L_inner_eye. Make less shiny. Parant L_inner_eye to head. Parant L_outer_eye to left inner_eye. Repeat for right eye. Texturing will be left as an exercise for the student. Above pic has described eyeball arrangement for both cats - front cat has no morphs and default cat texture. Back cat has morphs from Bloodsong's? kitten, Lyne's wildcat and the 9-lives cat. Lyne's Tarvis texture. Eyeball texture from my archive - who knows where it came from at this point. What do you guys think? no post work on this render, obviously. Lyrra

No offence meant to your work, Lyrra -- the theory sounds great, and I'll have to give it a shot -- but this poor cat... I swear, when they were building this model, they didn't bother looking at any real cats...

That's a great idea for the eyes, and they do look more shiny and real in your image, but I have to agree with VirtualSite re: the basic cat model. It reminds me of the mummified ones they've found in Egyptian tombs. The mouth is shaped wrong, the ears are not right. And it's a real pain to pose. I wonder if DAZ will consider doing Millennium pets. A new cat and dog for Mike and Vicki. Any little improvement helps, but when you're going for realism, this poor creature (not your render of it, just the basic Poser cat in general) looks like a battered up toy or a child's clay sculpture. Hmm, maybe it's related in some way to the Poser baby... eeewwww, let's not go there! :) Melanie

Yes, the Poser cat leaves a lot to be desired. The lower jaw is totally wrong and I think the legs are too long, too. Especially the front ones. It's as if they had put a somewhat cat-looking head and tail on a dog's body. The other thing I don't like is the pupil. It's too tall and narrow in my opinion; it gives a vicious look to the poor creature. I'm working on a simple image with a cat in it and this is one of the things I'm trying to change. I think I'm making progress with grouping and morphing; I'll show you when I'm done. :)

I agree with you all - the poser cat is a sad creature indeed :) But. There are many morphs out there that help somewhat, and with a few more it may be possible to make it less ugly. These shiny eyes fix one of my biggest problems with it - most of the rest will involved morphing, bodypart rescaling and perhaps joint parameter tweaking. Remember - everyone said the poser horse was a loss too - but just look at what Daio and Bloodsong have done with it :) Lyrra

Possiblty another suggestion... okay, feel free to toss things at me, but with the fantastic hair we have around here utilizing a transparent layer and an underlayer.... maybe it could be made to give the poor little thing something other than the sphinx look? I agree, the poor little cat needs help and it looks like you've started on it already ;) Just a wild suggestion. I'd love to have a cat to model with that looks like my little giant. Lilfox

brycetech has conforming fur props (one black, one white) for the Poser cat. They're on his CD, but I'm not sure if they're sold separately.

Lyrra, Sorry I forgot to thank you for your suggestion about the eyes, it will really be helpful. You are right, this is another area where we need to change things and I think your method will work well. :)

Maybe we could start a write-in campaign to DAZ saying that we want a cat which not only looks like a cat, but moves like a cat! Carolly and Skrogg