As it turns out the 1964 Thunderbird was from a company called Viewpoint Datalabs and was distributed for free as a demo of their work. After years of floating around the net and many incarnations its original license agreement has been left out of many releases and subsequently forgotten. The original body of the 1957 Chevy was also from Viewpoint Datalabs but through the diligent efforts of our very own moderator ScottA (yeah Scott!) I have recieved permission from Viewpoint to remain distributing it for free. To avoid any possible future issues I will no longer be modifying or converting any free, or presumed free, models for use in Poser. I am however still working on the 1966 Mustang GT based on the one in my garage. As there currently is no known existing highpoly model of a 1965-66 Mustang I do not forsee any problems with its eventual release.

Rock on. I had a '65 hardtop once. ::sigh::

Duddly you might drop a line in the Rhino, Lightwave, Modeling, 3DS Max or one of the other modeling forums and see if any of the artist there have some models that could be converted over to poser. They typically model really high poly stuff for challenge but they might have some mid-range poly stuff just gathering dust on their harddrives. smerc

...and then depression set in.

After that 57 Chev, we can't let you give up Duddly ! If you asked me to model these cars in wood and metal I can, but I'm just not cut out for modelling in 3D software. A couple of possible suggestions come to mind here. (1) I have a few very old (50's)scratch build scale model books with measured drawings of a few classic 50's and earlier cars that I can dig out and scan for you if you can work from technical line drawings. (2) my other suggestion is to take some photos of plastic models and work in something like Photomodeller lite (free) to create the basic body shape. Both suggestions entail you creating an original digital image from scratch and I can't forsee a copyright problem with that. I have photomodeller but can't find time to get my feet wet. If my suggestions make any sense post a reply or contact me. Regards, Tommy.

Actually the plans would be very useful for any future projects. Accurate technical line drawings are the best. I didn't give up entirely, I am still working on the 66' Mustang from scratch, using plans from a model kit, actually for decal placement, photos and looking at the three I own.

How am I going to get to work? s oh well, too bad, sooooooo sad!

Duddly, as you have a model of the 66. A good choice would be to cut it in segments, scan them in and load the scans as baselines in your modelling application. Then you can place curves around each segment and do a "loft-command" or "sweep along rail-command". This way you will have in a relativ short time some accurate curves to work with. SHARKEY

Hate to be an I told you so Duddley but this is the kind of stuff I ran across as well. One thing that may work is if you use Mover to encode the model with the original mesh. One of the 3d model sites had some free meshes (a tank, boat and car I think). They refused to let me cut up the free models for use as Poser models even after I offered to let them have the work for free. But when I proposed using Mover and explained the user would need the original model from their site to decode the Poser one, they agreed. A lot of those "free" models on 3d Cafe are just Viewpoint models pilfered by others or copied without knowledge of their source.

Yeah Mason, ya did. I am just glad ScottA was able to get permission for the 57' Chevy to remain available. It has become obvious that use agreements on a site mean little or nothing so from here on its from scratch only. I have had one really good modeler in the mean time offer some of his classic cars he has created for conversion but at the moment I would rather go it alone. I don't want to spend weeks getting a model up to snuff and have the original model creator have a change of mind. I may still work with him after the 66' Mustang is completed, well see. He has a real nice 69' Boss 302, 67' Shelby, 65' GTO, 70 Dodge Challenger, etc. that with some work would make nice additions to the Poser garage.