I've never seen them numbered like that, though I've heard that statement going back well over a decade... probably longer than the places claiming to have created it (co-opted and popularized? sure, created? no) have existed at a guess.

Why are they gonna waste their goals on making a 3d movie for kids, who probably don't even admire the hard work of 3d ?? There is nothing preventing Hollywood and its international equivalents from doing precisely this. Personally, I'd like to see more films of this type also. However! Do kids have the same appreciation or understanding of the special effects work or hundreds of man hours that go into the costumes of a kid's movie like "Hook"? Probably not, but it doesn't prevent it from being made and enjoyed. Kids may never appreciate the singing talent that goes into a Disney film, either, that might otherwise be put to use on Broadway or in some other method, but it doesn't stop those talents from being applied in the Disney movie. A great deal of effort goes into a lot of movies that might not be appreciated for the sake or quality of the work involved by much of the audience, even if it's an audience of adults, so it what kind of work it is or what the target audience is never makes much of a difference to me in the end.

If you're looking at the 'simple' setup in the material room, you'd want 'transparency'. You can click on the square to load the image you want to use for transparency. In the advanced tab, it's the line that says 'transparency'. You want to create an 'image_map' node to attach there (black background, black for what should be invisible, white for what you want seen, shades of grey for partly transparent things). Also connect this image_map to 'transparency_edge', which should be below 'transparency'. Set this to 0.0. You will also see 'transparency_falloff', and by default this is set at 0.6 -- set this also to 0.0 for best results with eyebrows.

Quote - I guess us Mac users have a jaundiced view of the whole install thing anyhow. If I were to "open a zip onto my existing runtime" all it would do is DELETE the original and replace it with the new. Manual install becomes a way of life.

Ditto. Oh, ditto. I have things arranged 'how I can best find them when I need them', which is absolutely different than anyone else ever planned to set anything up, I'm sure. Since I have to do manual installs anyway, it seemed like it wasn't hurting anything to go all the way with it in terms of the items that actually appear in the library palette. Geometries and textures I just leave alone and where they were intended to be, but everything else goes where it's easiest for me to find it. Other people would probably be driven completely bonkers by my setup, but the reverse is also true. In terms of 'the files I access in-scene', everyone is going to have a different preference and setup. I have a runtime per character I use (and one for creatures, one for scenery elements, and so on). A lot of people don't do this, and therefore their setup needs are going to be a little different than mine since "it goes with this character" is assumed in the runtime selection. A lot of other things can easily influence this, too. For example, I broke up my pose folder into things like 'hair:style:texture sets', 'clothing:item:texture sets', 'character sets:product', 'poses:product' and so on and I never have any trouble finding anything now, but it takes a lot of work and upkeep. I'm not going to assume anyone at all has done anything even remotely similar no matter how much sense this makes to me, so I'm not going to structure an item in that way for distribution. I stick to the runtime:textures:surreality:product:file.jpg thing myself for textures, but that's just... intuitive to me. It's easiest for me to find what I need. Same general setup for the pose folder, with the knowledge that people can move the contents of that folder around, subdivide them, re-folder them, rename the folder, and so on, to best fit their file structure.

V3 and V4.1's eyebrows are mapped differently, so the placement is probably not right for them to appear when using a texture from V3 on V4.1.

I notice a very interesting quote on one of the images there. "I made her smile just for fun, but it turned out to be a very difficult process." Are these static or rigged-for-posing meshes you're showing us? Because I'm pretty sure you can get something far more detailed if it's static than if it has to move and look good from all angles in as many combinations as possible. I don't know which they are, which is why I'm asking. There's no question that they're gorgeous, obviously. I'm not seeing extreme poses in those images like those shown for both Miki and Vicki in this thread; there is no means to compare that capability. There's obviously a lot more modeled detail, but no indication of how well that would translate to the level of flexibility that is expected out of a Poser figure. Would it be nice to have a figure that has that level of (adjustable to different body types and ethnicities and so on) detail and poses brilliantly? Well, that's a big 'duh' right there. To treat anything else like rat poison and insist that the only worthy pursuit is "as close to real as possible" is, IMHO, forgetting a lot about art in general as not all art is even approaching realistic. I can be impressed with technical prowess. I can be impressed by imagination and expression. The two don't necessarily both hit at once. I've seen a number of things that make me think, "Wow, that's some really impressive skill with the software!" that aren't great compositions or aren't otherwise interesting to me in any way, for example. "Look at the level of my technical skill" is not a substitute for "here is a compelling expression of my idea". The current tools may be imperfect and improveable, but seriously... they are tools and they can be worked with. What one does with them is substantially more relevant.

Quote - V4 is a 3D mesh.  Not an evil icon which needs to be knocked down by self-appointed purists who are out to lecture the rest of us on the errors of our ways -- with much scowling and waggling of fingers.  It's an experience similar to being lectured on the true meaning of life by a jumped-up freshman.

As an artist with a basic knowledge of anatomy (learn the rules before you break them, after all) I cheer seeing the rest of this post. It's just that this part? This part is where I start swaying and holding up the lighter like part of a concert crowd. I mean, seriously. Nothin' for nothin' and way off-topic, but... it's generally accepted by students of mythology and folklore that there never was a grail, and it was the journey that was important because it tended to lead one to challenge oneself and through interesting places and experiences. And yet, the grand fact is that since every one of those people is going to find different elements of those experience more impactful or important than others and take different paths. So, sure, go on grail questing if it rocks your socks, but the people who wander along a different road aren't inherently [i]wrong[/i] when they think something else is a more interesting area to explore. I have a tool for photorealism, after all. It's called a Canon 20D, and it is a lovely thing. Poser serves a much different purpose for me, and I somehow doubt I'm alone in that.

laugh Email and forum tag. Gotta love it.

Wish I knew what to tell you! Seriously, I'm baffled. It's something I've seen on a texture (though oddly, not that one) once, and it had my fan running wildly all the while it was in that mode, but I can't recall off the top of my head what it was precisely.

I am deeply in love with that tutorial. I looked at it often enough that I now have it memorized -- or at least the approach. It is massively helpful. If I need different lighting for a scene, postwork works if the glow is the only problem and the adjustments required to kill the glow would also ruin other aspects of the image, of course, but I've found that paying attention to the shadow map sizes and the min bias makes a huge difference even then.

She is a sweetheart, and that light set is utterly brilliant (please pardon the pun). I used it for part of a promo recently, too. There are matters of positioning the figure to take best advantage of the lights, but I can assure you the render settings are a big issue and probably the primary one at work here. I honestly can't imagine using anything less than the 'final' settings for promos because it allows for the most detail, and I'm a detail junkie. Things like the way light shimmers on skin, or the details of a face, get muddied at lower settings -- you end up losing almost all of the benefit that many of the light sets listed provide. Give it a shot at a higher setting, seriously. grin I think you'll really like the results.

Credit and permission are not the same thing.

1. It's not an 'even if it were' -- it is copyrighted. There's not a quibbly area in there, at least so far as I know. 2. I've never even heard of them, so I have no earthly idea.

Er... I'm really not so sure you'd be allowed to distribute something imported/exported in such a fashion (especially for sale or without some very explicit permissions by the game's creator), as it's not an obj file you created, but I could be wrong.

My lashes are from Sarsa's resource in that image, so she definitely deserves every bit of credit there. Lashes, I am convinced, are downright evil. I've been picking on and off at an abstract character set and the lashes have been the worst of all to deal with. Iuvenis_Scriptor, what render settings are you using for these? I think that's what's making some of the difference with the lashes. Lashes tend to look speckly in Poser 6 without texture filtering on at times, or at lower (draft) render settings, and that may be part of the issue. It takes longer to check each time you test render, but it's definitely worth the time.