Got carrera and amapi but use Carrera for props and when dealing with Character/Conforming/Morphing fall back on RDS as have a method to my madness that hasnt quite worked in Carrera... If you can go ebay or somewhere on the cheap - Raydream really is very advanced, good and works with the obj into PPP and P5 just fine. Otherwise, would catch carrera as not as difficult a learning curve as amapi (least for me).

with all the great stuff they have -- the only way to lose customers is to start NOT giving us great band for the buck!! ;-D

Drats, I thought that I was an anomaly for having the problem with logging in. Hope you are wrong and is not an ominous sign and that they will soon respond.... Maybe I will be a bad girl and go use the shout that they ask us not to use.... Thanks for the heads up - I was really thinking it was just me not doing well at communicating and was sitting on hands awaiting reply [for last week].

Render to images using png (has alpha channel so background becomes transparent) then bring into program for making movie. AVIs do not support transparent background per sec so you are best to do images. You can use JASC Paintshop Pro Animation shop to import/manipulate and make the movie. if using P5 - you are allowed to have 1 laptop and 1 desktop installation so shouldn't be a problem to render but it is - if you are on a lan - p5 notices that you are running it on 2 different machines and makes you close one of them. Usually doesnt notice until after it finishes the render though. Is kind of a pain as I use my laptop to make animation and due to the wireless slowness ?word? and lack of harddisk/memory on laptop; I use desktop to render firefly.

good deal - dont forget that extra cup of java!

I use the defaults as the blue based lighting (255 blue 0 everything else) seems to work well. What r your settings for Make Movie? when the dialog opens you would have avi selected and under that you should have Current Render Settings - sounds like you have Current Display Settings.

To get more realistic character in P5 - I use more realistic texture and bump maps (since we all got pores) and blue based lighting (goes better with skin tones) then set my render options to production - firefly - raytracing on - cast shadows on - pixel samples 2 - bucket size 16 - raytrace 6 - 8 (dependent on what else is in scene) - post filter size 1 - filter type gaussian. Have not fiddled with 3d motion blur or depth of field yet but hope to soon. Make sure that the codecs you are using is uptodate and keep compression to a minimum. Main thing is the lighting and the texture/bump to me. The pdf help (page 343) is really good on explaining what all these things do. Will be interesting to find out what others do.... as I played with this for over a month before getting happy results.

wow that gingerbread is so nice as i use carrera and took me 2 weeks to figure out just the basics of grouping! Thanks for link cowboy.

Well, the first thing to ask is whether this "sock monkey" has groups? I could not find the object. If it has the groups and is not just one mesh object - you should be able to find instructions looking for PHI. This is a text file that sets up the movement dependencies (to best of my knowledge). Like if body moves forward then hand moves with it (z trans) or if hand moves up (y trans) forearm, etc moves up too. If it doesnt have groups - believe that you have to create them with the grouping tool but not sure as only have done the "bone" creations in PPP and P5. Good luck! PS this is a "to my knowledge post" ;-)

good for you! Glad you are happy. I was feeling bad that I couldnt come up with good tricks for your needs.

Well, if you increase the flash option to highest color (think around 253) set to display render and have your display at flat or cartoon setting. No alias, no bump, no texture, no motion blur, no shadow. Then you get a psuedo decent vector. (by this I mean it looks more like your display not the great renders that are possible) But can guarantee you [2 best of my knowledge and pocket book] that not Propack or P5 or FlixPro or any painting software-plugin that you can find advertised will give you "enhanced" vector. Vector is line drawing whereas poser is pixal based. Macromedia site says to outline figure then take insides and make them into a paint bucket to successfully vectorize your image. Anyways, that is all I know - so hopefully someone will come around and let us both know more ;-)

I had a similar problem with kids animated on seesaw - try adjusting the chest forward. Worked for me with no seams busting but I had to actually sit on a seesaw 'fore I figured out that my chest leaned forward ;-) [now that was funny - to see 45 year old woman on neighborhood kids teeney seesaw]

The swf exporter tries to convert to Vector (like FlixPro) which of course gives you that awful look.

I actually export the character to images (png so background doesnt repeat/show and create large pic sizes) then I bring all png into Animation Shop from Jasc. Then crop the figure frames as tightly as possible. Then select all frames - export frames to pngs. This usually drops the size of the pngs drastically.

Then I import character movement pngs as a movie in flash and throw in the background, etc. Keeps swf files fairly small by not continually repeating non moving/changing items.

For example - if you are having a character walk across the screen - you would only need the left and right walk segments in png then bring them into Flash and have it continually loop while you move the character from one end of screen to other.

So far this has worked best for me and I have tried many different ways (specially since some animations per character are over 750 frames when talking!).

Maybe someone else has a better way of keepiing quality while importing to flash - if so would love to learn as my way does choke up a lot of disk space.

BRAVO - your character features a very rubenesque character who looks healthy and at home with herself. I think the pic is wonderful. We need more real looking characters like this. I 2 am sick of sticks... as a 45 year old woman - can guarantee you that I am not 5'7" 110lbs anymore but am much healthier 140lbs and more SELF SATISFIED with the heftier size which finally gave me boobs and hips and nobody calls me toothpick legs anymore (thank god sister cant call me thunder thighs though;-D)!! Keep up the GOOD work - the fools who can't see beauty in all shapes and forms are not worth your time or effort and probably have no idea what a woman looks like outside of an advertisement or porno site/mag. Good Luck!

oops should add in that hubbys paycheck pays the bills (is only fair - I did it for years!) so money I make is enough to pay for last childs college and my software/hardware playtoys. Would not be able to make house note if not for hubby $$$. ;-) Just didnt want to mislead (probably earn around $15k year for last 4yrs but write off earnings with software and hardware upgrades...).