That's my problem. I am probably doing something wrong and the manual is no help. When a I use a preset (thanks Davo!) only the background sketches, the figure does not sketch render at all. Go figure! Any suggestions? Is there button I am not clicking? Is it because one of the clothing figures I am using is set to be transparent?

The Sketch Render will apply to figure. In the settings window, look for a check box for Figure. Also, somewhere there is a Render sketch Style selection.

heya... yeah, try it without transparency. i dont think the sketcher does transparency, it usually just draws it on fully opaque. is there an empty spot in the background where the figure is supposed to be? or does the figure appear, but not sketched? that's weird.

Try the Soft Charcoal Preset. Set the Density to high and the opacity to high, too. Be sure your figure has some color to it. Try Sketching just one figure in a tight window. See what happens.

You are right, the sketch renderer doesn't do transparencies (it just sketches in the transpareny pattern), but I figured out the problem was the "color" setting for the figure. It was moved all the way to the right which for some reason made the figure not render in sketch mode. When moved over to the left and put on a very low setting, the figure sketched along with the background. It seems to me though, even if the slider is all the way to the right, shouldn't it just add a lot of color to the sketch? Oh well, I will continue to experiment.

I've had no problems using sketch rendering. Please look at this example http://www.anzwers.net/free/tygerlander/posergallery/poser/dance-sketch.htm (sorry, can't link images directly) What you do is render your image normally then paste to background. Afterward you either hide or move your poser figures then do the sketch rendering. This way you'll have your transparency mappings etc. This was a techinque that Fauve had discovered way back when... Tina

Ok. I think I follow you. Render your image (including any figures) normally (not sketch render) since transparencies, etc. show up in normal renders. Then make this rendered image a background in a second scene, hide or delete any poser figures, and sketch render the background. I will try this. Thanks for the tip.