Yeah, I uploaded Sunday night and got a notice that it'd been approved -- but it's not showing up on either the main page or My Freestuff. And I don't wanna re-upload at random....

Quote - I had no trouble signing up for Poser Club.  It's Forum3D that I and others are having trouble registering for.

No idea whether you're still trying, but I got in with these three answers:

明治 
いいえ 
東京都 

So "no" apparently does need to be written in Kanji. The first question for me is "大正の前の年号は？（漢字二文字)" Which Google translate gives as "Taisho era before? (Two Kanji characters):", so I think this question changes, frustratingly. Grab the answer above while it's hot. And thanks to all the puzzled people on this forum and to Wikipedia for having lots and lots of information on Japanese eras....

Oh, thank you! I don't think I had that V3/Maddie character before. I use several of your skins for various characters in my work and they are fabulous, very high quality work.

I tend not to download stuff that is flat-out non-commercial. Don't get me wrong, I very, very much appreciate the people who load up freebies and they have the right to do what they want... but I've never been sure where my comic falls in the "commercial or non-commercial" spectrum (I do make money off the ads I guess? Though not enough to pay for even the hosting, so far :P ) and if I ever do a print edition, well -- the idea of tracking down everyone whose work I've used even in a single panel and offering them a cut of whatever tiny profit I make -- it's the right thing to do, but I'm terribly lazy. :)

I can certainly see why anyone would hate seeing their stuff grabbed and put into merchant packages, et cetera, and as I said it's your stuff and you have the right to restrict me however I want. But I am eternally grateful to those folks who put in a clause saying "commercial renders okay," and I try and make sure I give each and every one of them credit.

I'm sure you saw this go by in freestuff, but just in case -- Leatham put up a suckered tentacle that might work:

www.users.freenetname.co.uk/~leatham/downloads.html

Oh, most excellent! Thank you for letting me know. :D

Which Daz T-shirt is this? The one that came with the V3 Clothing Pack, by any chance? hopeful

V3's a good model, and those of us not willing to sink $60 bucks into "upgrading" really appreciate folks like you. ;)

Quote - Thanks for the info.  I wasn't sure where it originated from.

No problem. And -- since I forgot to say it in my original post -- thanks so much for the textures. I always need more stuff for the kids!

Yeah... I'm willing to pay for commercial items, at this point, if I could just FIND something... but I can't. Dreads yes. Braids no.

Guess I'm settling for dreads.

This hairstyle is pretty much exactly what I want. Pity it's for entirely the wrong character and a conforming hair (and thus beyond my limited refitting skills....)

http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=2183&

The outfit is the free ButterBumbles outfit from Adzan. Get it here:

http://www.sharecg.com/v/28752/Poser/Matt-&-Maddies-ButterBumbles

Aside from the loincloth included with Apollo (which might work with some tweaking) the only thing that I know of is this for-pay outfit from RDNA:

http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=716

Given that they're having their 50% sale right now, it's ten bucks.

Sorry. There remains not really enough clothing out there for Apollo. :(

In that case I [i]strongly[/i] recommend that LeGuin book. She's got chapters on everything from kicking an adjective addiction to pacing to expository lumps. It's something I still dig out when I'm struggling with a passage, and I've had the thing ten years now and must have done all the exercises a dozen times.

You may also want to check out Holly Lisle's site:

hollylisle.com

She's got a bunch of free articles up there -- many on the more practical end of things, but there's some on voice and such -- plus a store full of e-books, a link to the Vision e-zine (free), and a link to the Forward Motion writing community -- a great site full of helpful people. Holly's a good person, a good writer, and a fabulous giver of advice. :)

I know I have more resources somewhere. I'll post them if I think of them.

Strunk & White's is more or less essential as a reference. I've got it memorized by now, but I used to refer to it constantly.

Another excellent guide -- though less focused on grammar -- is Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft. LeGuin's a master, and the book is just brilliant.

Finally, for an honest-to-god grammar reference, try Diana Hacker's Bedford Handbook. We used this in my Advanced Grammar class in college, and I used to swear I'd burn the thing in effigy when I was done the class, but really it's very useful. Clean and concise.

Generally speaking -- did your editor say, or can you tell yourself, where your main problem is? Sentence level, paragraph level, chapter level? A lot of people think that grammar's something unimportant that editors fix (hint: they don't), but the good news is that they just take practice to fix. Problems on a larger level, like exposition issues, bad transitions, clumsiness in description, etc -- are more advanced, but they're also a lot harder to point at and say "yeah, do this there."

(No authority for this, incidentally, besides a few magazine articles -- but I've written two novels and spent a great deal of time critiquing people's work, besides majoring in English, so I wouldn't write me off either. :) )

A couple that helped me out were maclean's tutorial:

digilander.libero.it/maclean/DStutorial.htm

And Questor's:

questor.oldwolves.co.uk/tipsntricks/studio/studio01.htm

I find Questor's lighting models to be overkill  -- (I use a simple setup of two spotlights and one distant for most stuff) but needs differ -- I'm not doing many closeups or ultra-realistic renders.

You may also want this:

www.rubicondigital.110mb.com/Code/DSRenders.html

It's a tutorial designed to help you get faster renders which, as you start adding lights, you're gonna find REALLY helpful.

Good luck!