Sorry 'bout the lack of pic in the previous posting, here's one now:

See that pile of gifts in the second car? (Yeah, I'm still adjusting the car's placement, I know it's up under the engine.) That's the pile I was referring to.

I do like the idea of rendering the gifts separately for the final image and posting them into the final shot. If I can't figure out another way around this, I might just do that. Thanks!

Two other quick wishes for Bryce 6:

1. I would LOVE to be able to boolean model something, then when I know that object is complete, to 'compress' it (or something) so it turns into a mesh of the visible parts. Does that make sense?

Simple example: create a thin positive disk and use a negative elongated cube to carve a square all the way through the middle. Then 'compress' that group, so it turns into a single neutral mesh of a disk with a square hole in the middle, no negative boolean object would remain.

1. Collision detection.

Actually, that texture looks like black leather to me. Very cool. :-)

I think this is lovely, and it looks soooo cold! :-)

The only recommendation I can think of is that the solid snowflakes close to the camera have a matte material, and I tend to think of snowflakes as icy-transparent. You could re-texture them and just plop-render those areas, to avoid a long re-render of the whole scene.

Two other questions:

1. What are those stick things on the ice in the foreground?
2. The terrain in the middle on the right, it sort of looks like we're seeing under it. Is that my imagination?

Has anyone else seen a jester texture for Mike 2? I really like the one in Serpentis' Jokers Wild pack, but that's for Vicki 3. Thanks...

Thanks, Laurie. Unfortunately, that link is broken. Are you able to access it right now? I'll try again in awhile, in case they're just having some sort of server issues.

3 = cybia 2 = RNKarenER 1 = Patricia

So, if I understand the rules, to enter the contest we have to buy the 'PhenixAmerican' font?

I've already tried there, with no luck. :-( Hiram, there's no rush, and if you'd just like to give some general instructions, I could probably do it myself. I'm used to modelling in Bryce with heightmaps and booleans, and I can do a little in Cinema. I'm thinking if I create spline outlines for the... seed thingie part, and make a loft nurb, then it would just have to be duplicated enough times. Am I on the right track?

Well, when I'm exporting for use in Bryce, I choose OBJ as my format. The textures that I've used in Poser are referenced in a .mtl file that gets saved in the same place as the OBJ. When I then import the file into Bryce, it knows which textures go where, and if the texture files themselves are in the same folder as the OBJ, they load in with the object. So I guess what I'm saying is that the textures you have now, or could download from Freestuff or wherever, should be able to be used in Max. Hope that helps. - taerin

Patty - are you talking about textures you would use only in Max, not in Poser itself?

Ooh, a script! I haven't even played around with them yet, thanks for mentioning it! :-)

Bless you, O Master. That worked perfectly. :-D I just hope it wasn't in a FAQ somewhere that I missed... And while I have the eyes of anyone reading, it seems that you can only add lights from the Lights library. I thought that applying a lighting preset changed the number, color, location, etc of lights in your document. Apparently, that's not the case. I saved the default 3-light setup, but when I reapplied it after using a set of nearly 50 lights, the existing ones didn't go away. Is there an easier way to remove lights, other than selecting them one by one and clicking the tiny trashcan? Thanks again, - taerin

And I'll tell ya, the green lady's face reminds me of the newest potential Slayer on Buffy - the tall, very thin one that goes to school with Dawn. (dorkmode off now) :-)

How sad... I was hoping not to have to do that... Oh well. Thanks for the info, Ray! :-)