I finally whipped the waterlillies in shape in Amapi with help of UV mapper Pro (yeah.. I am on Thip's and geeps side in the matter of that program!). I have played with the lake, the lillies, - and eve and RDNA's cove. So here is what I did: I mapped the cove, and used one of my photo's that I also made a bump map for. I brought first the lake into Poser, and made it really big... like Hmm... 1600, and rotated it so it had the background and the shallowness of the water that I was looking for. Then added the cove and eve. I used one of Schlabbers poses and brought in the two water lilly props. Then I started to play with lightening. wow.. that is a whole science in itself. In this picture I haven't adjusted anything, except, bringing some transparency to the waterlillies, - they were sticking out as a sore thumb. hang on, please... questions follow next... :)

Here I have changed the lights, - and also the water color - AND turned the transparency of the water a bit down. I changed the reflection color of the water lilly and made the base colour darker... - still maintained some transparency of the lillies. My thoughts about props in general is that they should be SMALL in file size.. so these two (a single flower and the plant with lilly pads and flower) are both pretty small (the plant is a bit too large for my taste, - I might try to get the verticle count down). BUT I haven't made any texture maps or anything for them.. (smaller the better) I have grouped, and assigned colors to them in Poser, - so they turn up as they are now (I DID learn something geep, - even if I miss your tutorial! :) Now, - for the questions... **Light wizards:** How do you THINK when you think lights and colors... what would you have done differently in these pics. **Posers...** Props... what counts.. Does size matter? Would you like me to make texture maps, - or would you prefer them as is, - and play with the colors/reflection/transparency on the different parts of the prop, as I have done with the water lilly? **all:** Would this be an item in the free section?? Britt (PS... a render like this would need post work in Photoshop etc, - there is none of that now)

Throwing in the ending bold tag... and grinning < /b >

Britt, The first one looks "cold." I can almost see that poor li'l thing shivvvvvering! ;=] Looks like a sheet of ice is forming on the water's surface. IMVHO! The second one is excellent! Your textures are pretty close to photographic! (or are they? photographs, that is?) ;=] But, .......... what the heck is she lookin' at? cheers, dr geep <------------------(tryin' to stop shiverin') ;=]

lol don't ask me... I didn't do any "fine work". Just posed her. I was mostly interested in the light/water/reflection/colors and transparency.... In no prefered order. and yup... the texture is one of my photos, - mapped to the cove, - with a bump map :) Britt handing geep a warm blanket There... ;)

Thanks, I needed that! ;=]

... for turnin' that BOLD "thingy" off. I was startin' to get eye strain. ;=]

ok, first, light: it's obvious that the light in the background photo is coming from up right (as you can see on that rock and it's shadow on the right side), so you have to mach it somehow. right now, you seem to have your main light coming from front, one weeker from the right and probably another week one from the left. see how dark the those shadows on the rocks are? you'll have to adjust your lights to have the same impression. secondly, background: the photo is just not good enough. it isn't sharp and it's scanned with way too low resolution and than badly sharpened. find a new one - you'll never get that blurry look on your figures nor it's desirable... thirdly, props: if you are going for the realism, than you'll have to consider that water isn't just a blue filter, but an object with reflections and refractions, uneven surface and caustics. it's almost impossible to achive this in poser, and if you don't do it, you'll always have big problems in adjusting your photo realistic backgrounds to the plastic look of the figure and props. finally, i can suggest that you start looking on the photographs that depicts similar scenes and analyze them piece by piece. lighting, perspective and materials. you're right, it IS a science in itself ;)