I think there are many raytracing galleries here - for example the Cinema 4D, Terragen, Bryce, Vue, Poser (Vers. 5) etc... Most 3D apps nowadays use raytracing these days, so a rayracing gallery wouldn't make much sense, a POV-Ray gallery on the other hands... But that is up to the peolple who run this community.

For me. it seems that it just removes you from the "who's online"-list. On the Top of the page it says "welcome [username]" when you are loged in, and "[guest]" when not. If you have cookies activated, you will be logedin automatically when you return...

To make the problem a bit more visible, an example: We all learned at least one language at school (our native one), so we are not allowed to use the knowledge to use this language comercially (i.e. writing a book), right? Wrong, I say! Tutorials are for learning, and we should aprcieate those who write the tutorials. But if we say we couldn't use that what we learned from them, we can never use anything we have learned. The only thing we can say ist that it might be a bad move to use an object created 100% with the help of a tutorial for comercial purposes, but there is nothing illegal by it, or that schould be viewed as illegal, since this would be the fact with everything someone has learned. And that would be the end of society as we know it...

Another advantage of using Cinema would be renderspeed (Cinema has one of the fastest engines on the market) and memory management (i.e. the Mil Dragon freezes on my PC if I try to render him with textures, lately, I have done a scene with two of them in it and some special effects, along with a high polycount landscape, rendered in just 12 minutes - you can find the image by doing a search in the galleries using my nick).

One important point to those who support people that restrict use of free stuuf, that was not mentioned here: Putting legal thoughts on that matter aside for the moment, the arguments you used to support thier restrictions can easly be taken to justify another step further: Not just HOW the item is used, but also by WHOM they may be used or not used. So with your arguments, it might be okay for some prop maker to state that his or her item may not be used by white,black or green skinned users, not by male or female, right or left handed users, or whatever you wish to include to this list. And I strongly think no one here want's such sort of crap going on! I think it would be best, if a general kind of "EULA" would be made here, and by uploding links to your freestuff here, you would put them under this agreement (maybe with the exeption of making it completly free of any kind of restriction by the maker), so debates like this don't have to be made. Think about it.

Sorry, brewman, but it looks like I have to disapoint you: It looks like you won't be getting Cinema 4DXL 7! Good news: You will get R8 XL bundle instead! (It looks like Maxon started shipping of R8 just now, and as you said, you just bought it, so you will get the free update, therefore my guess is, Maxon will be shipping only R8 from now) :-)

Thank you! The biker jackets by billy-t come close to what I'm looking for - they have the same basic design, although the are only half opened. But that might be bypassed after export. I will study them further before purchase, but your hint really helped (I was browesing site for hours before).

What I regard to be the main point in LOGOs intial post, is the fact that Poser 5 has not much to offer for those who want to use it as a tool. What good is it to someone who uses it like a manekin to get poses right when you draw? What good is it to someone who just uses it for character animation who uses it only for character animation/posing for projects done in other application? Nothing more than Poser 4! Let's take me for example. I do most work in Cinema 4D, one of the high end applications. It offers (better) modelling, better rendering, lighting and everything else than Poser. Why do I use Poser? Because it is rather inexpensive, easy to handle, and if you know how to work with the models, how to tweak them in other apps, and what models to use at all, you can get good results. But Poser is not a tool, it is still a toy - just ask some professionals. Why is it just a tool? Because it is limited in features, in same ways, its perfomance is rather weak, and it is problematic to combine it with other applications. CL did a good step to turn Poser in to a tool, as they started to plan improved cooperation with pother apps, like MAX, Lightwave and Cinema, adding a little more value to thier product as well to products they made plugins for. But they screwed it up in some points (discussable, I admit). Thean they came up with plans for increasing this more with Poser 5 - dynamics, collision detection and so on. It may have turned more into a tool with this. But CL designed Poser 5 in a way, that theese features wouldn't be usable in other apps. They even went so far to make the previous plugins not able to be used with new releases of the other products, thus forcing users to upgrade to the new version, which will cost them them money (the upgrade), nerves (the actvation), and may be legal problems (the EULA) just to be able to use what they already have. Is it so hard to understand that Poser and CL have lost that little respect they have gained in the past with theese users? Okay, there are new models in the package, but there are better ones out there, that many already have. They are called Vicky, Mike, Dina and whatever. So, Poser is going back into its ghetto, be laughed at by professionals, instead of opening up more, and gaining reputation. "Owning" software, for most people mean they know they have a license, but are beeing able to use it like they want, make hardware changes like they want, reinstalling it twice a day if they want. It does not mean having to pay for it, and, on top of it, having to ask for permission to use what they have paid for. In an extreme example, imagine having to ask you bakery for permission to eat thier bread with honey instead of jam! Anyone here who would accept this?

You need to have the plugin install, set at path to your poser-dta-file and Poser must be running, then the import of pz3-files should be working - but have patience, compared to opening c4d-files, it is really slow (for some time, nothing will happen, then the file will show up (on PC), later the object will be shown in the object manager, and it will take a while before it is shown in the editor).

The Dragon problems some people are experiencing have less to do with the memory installed in your PC or Mac, but more with the way this memory is handled by Poser and your OS. One example: On my PC (Athlon XP 1800+, 512 MB DDR-Ram, W98SE), Poser locks up if I try to render the dragon with textures, while in Cinema on the same PC, I can render two of them with a landscape consisting of several hundredthousands of polygons within only little more than a minute. As with the textures - resizing them would be the only solution. Allthough they are Jpegs, the compression only works when they are stored on any media, once loaded, they are decompressed to full size (i.e. 4000*4000 pixel will mean 16000000 * 24 bits or 45,77 MB in RAM).

I strongly support this petition. What sense does it make to hassle legal users where warez users can use it un disturbed? To CL: take a look at how (i.e) Maxon handles this: They deliver with a timely limited serial, and a piece of paper. In this you fill in you adress and OS, send it to Maxon and recieve the unlimited serial a few days later via mail.

Companies who create and market strong visual characters and objects, like from comic books, movies, TV-series and games and even novels might be able to stop hobbyists from "copying" thier designs, but that won't be a smart move from them: The main reason they produce theese things is to make money, either in direct way through thier product, or through secondary ways, like merchandising or licences for other products. To make money this way, there has to be a strong interest in them in the market. So they need good pr in the public, and a strong fanbase. Stopping people from creating thier own views like 3d models and images and fan stories and the like would only give bad pr and a lot of frustrated former fans. So some might even encourage fans to do thier own thing, as long as it isn't comercial. Such work might even give them new ideas, and happy fans are more willing to shell out more money for products. So most companies might be happy to see fan products, even if they don't admit it.

Sorry, I can't remember right now how I exactly did it (some time ago), but depending on what you want to do, the masking tools might be of help for you. Paint a mask on the figure (easier than a selection), then fill the remaining area with the filling tool with white (the figure will be protected by the mask). The white part, if I remember it right, can be turned transparent without changing the opacity of the masked area. The selection by the magic wand will work also (and easier than before masking), you can then invert the selection... I don't know HOW I mangaed this, but once I was able to change the mask into a selection (I was playing around, so I can't reproduce what I did, but maybe it will help you...).

While you allready said changes for search option are on your list - may I place a suggestion here? The galleries are application based, so I think it might be fine if you could include a genre/theme search, and enable mebers to add such info to thier images if they want. I.e. genres like science fiction, fantasy, portaits, landscapes and so on. It would give members a choice to look at picture themes they like (and avoid others they don't). The current search isn't strong on this. (move to comunity ideas if you want)

Don't know if this is the right place, but I wan't to say that I really like the new default colours. Since my eyes are a little more light senstive than normal, this is very pleasing for me.