I also had that problem in the past and the only way I could solve it was to increase the anti-aliasing setting in the render engine settings (anti-aliasing options, I increased quality threshold to very close to 100% and subrays per pixel above 60). That solves the problem but, of course, adds tons of time to your render.
What I normally do, as a trade-off, is to increase until 90% and 45 subrays and then correct the rest with blur tool in PS, very carefully and only in some specific spots (see an example of this in my pic "Two suns in the sunset").

Maybe it's interesting to share some perhaps not very usual ways of using the cloth room. These are not clothes, so maybe not interesting for the topic at hand, but nevertheless, my two cents for showing that the cloth room can be used for a lot of things.

Clothifying a cube:
www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

Using choreograph group to make a cloth go up and adjust to a model:
www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

Again using choreograph group to adjust a cloth more precisely to a model:
www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

Using a cloth as a transparent, waterlike, protective shield:
www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

You can also use layers. You can place the building in a layer of its own, the ground under the balcony in another. Hide the layer with the building and paint the ground in the top view.

Hi!
Just to let you know that I will have a very limited (and expensive) internet access until sunday so I won't be posting comments until then. I know I will have like 500 ebots waiting for me...

jjroland quote: "I mean this is a mythological being, if you want to imagine zeus with boobs and 80s hair you can."

Sure! We are in a free world and the artist must have a free mind. But you must accept that who ever writes a critique is also free to write his opinion that he feels that Zeus with boobs is ridiculous. Both the artist and the viewer are free. The artist is, of course, also free to agree with the critique or not.

People in Rendo are generally very open minded. After all, we do see lots of images of people flying, fairies, angels, strange worlds, etc. But if someone makes a cube and calls it a fairy, the viewer is allowed to say, at least, that it should have wings... Or suggest that the artist should call it a cube instead of calling it a fairy. That's an opinion and we are free to express it.

Because, jjroland, as you know, it was me who wrote that comment to Ladonna about calling it something else. You probably forgot to complete the quote of what i wrote, which was:
"I like the picture, in general. But maybe it would help if you would not call her "Nike", as many of us have in our minds a very different idea of the goddess. "

A quote inside the context is always nicer... :-)

It's been a while since i last came here and, oh my!, have things changed! From enthusiasm to disillusion.

First of all, I think people are taking this too seriously. This is supose to be fun, remember?! :-)

I also think there were different expectations from different people. For example, Ladonna expected critiques regarding technique only but i, personally, always thought that much more was open for debate. In the headline of "Art Theory" forum we can read: *"[...] techniques, color, perspective, composition, balance and all aspects of art [...]".

If it was only technique, i wouldn't have joined in the first place! If it was only to learn techniques, i could simply read manuals!... It's much more efficient!...  It's the sensitivity of people i want to hear, those things that you can not find in books. Now i understand why people get upset with some critiques. The "givers" and the "takers" of critique have completely different understandings of what a critique is.

Oh well... I will continue to write whatever i want, whenever i want. After all, when a picture is posted, we all have to select an option which reads something like: "Both critical and non-critical comments are welcomed."  So, i will just follow what that line says... If someone doesnt want comments, just disable comments.

And... another thing: it is expectable that we read comments we dont like. It is even expectable that we read comments we hate! Isn't that what happens on "real life" art galleries, for example? Are the critiques on the magazines and newspapers always nice? For sure not! Someone who puts their work to public display is bound to have all sorts of comments. That's life! Who cant handle it should keep their work to themselves.

Or maybe a new option should be created on Rendo: "Only non-critical comments welcomed".

Regarding the obligation to post a comment: if i'm ever obliged to post comments, than i'm out of this group. I have too many obligations in my real life, i dont want more. If some image has nothing to do with my idea of art, i will not post any comment. Like i wrote before, art for me is not an empty room with a car and a naked girl, independently of how shiny the car is or how good the girl's texture is. I expect the same from other people regarding my images. If my images are absolutely out of their idea of art, then they shouldnt bother to write anything (I wouldnt know what to do with their comments in this case, anyway).

Now... let's stop these discussions and create some art!  Isn't that why we are here?!... :-)

This issue of what software each one uses is a recurrent topic in this group. I dont understand why that is an issue. I havent a clue about watercolor painting, Cinema4D, Lightwave and thousands of other tools or techniques. But, regardless of that, i almost always have an opinion about an image. I have an opinion if lighting is too dim or too bright, if composition is balanced or unbalanced, if characters are realistic or not, etc, etc, etc. 

How many of us knows the techniques Leonardo da Vinci used? Or Dali? Only a few, for sure. But we all can recognize the quality of their images, right? We can not say "use a bigger brush" or "press button x" but for sure we should be able to express our opinion about what we see. Well, at least I can and english is not even my native language (as I'm sure all of you already figured out :-)).

I think the issue is not about the tool used. The issue is more about the style. I have to confess that sometimes I see images that have a style so different from my "mental universe" that I dont even know how to start the comment. And I dont want to say just "excellent" if i dont mean it. So, in these cases, I prefer not to comment at all. For example, the other day I saw a picture, I dont know by whom, of a naked girl in a normal pose, near a car. Just that, a naked girl in a normal pose and a car. It may have nice reflections, nice textures, but I just couldnt find any words to comment. Because for me that image had no idea behind, it had no "soul", it was void. And, for me to comment on something, I must feel that the image brings something new, that I'm a bit richer inside after seeing it. And I felt nothing of the sort. I see lots of naked girls and lots of cars, so what's new in a couple more? 
I perfectly accept if the people who liked to see that image dont like my own images. Those people might look at my images and think: "this guy is crazy, making these impossible things, without any sense! what a piece of rubbish!". 

So, some people may not be able to comment on other people's creations simply because there are very little common points between them about the way of seeing art and the world, about what they expect from an image. I mainly expect innovation, wrapped up in fine technique. Other people might mainly expect naked girls with fine textures. Other people expect something completely different. That's ok. We are all different and that's how it should be. But for people belonging to radically different "mental universes" it might be hard to make a comment.

I hope I didnt offend anyone, it wasnt my intention at all. It's just my simple opinion (maybe simplistic, I admit) on these complex issues.

Yes, I've had that need, from time to time. I normally do it in two ways: either I do a boolean subtraction of a cube from the terrain (I previously scale the cube to match whatever I want to put on top), which sometimes causes crashes in render time if I dont bake the result, or, if I want to put the object higher than the terrain, I put a "dummy" rock textured cube, like if it was built there (not very nice and a bit artificial, I have to admit...).

So, I salute your script with great joy! :-) I will give it a try! Thanks for sharing it with the community!

I'm sorry but real life issues have been keeping me very busy and I'm overdue on crits on many pictures (I think I have about 25 unread ebots in my mail folder!).

Sorry! :-(

I never tried it myself but, from my experience, I can imagine two different workflows:

a) Using Ecosystem Paint feature (only available in V6). You do not click on "populate". You just paint your ecosystem in the visible top part of your object. Then you rotate the object and paint the ecosystem on the new top part. And so on, until everything is painted. That's really easy, I think. And you have precise control over what's painted.

b) If you dont have V6, you can click "populate". Then duplicate the object and rotate it, as many times as you need to cover everything. Finally, you make the base texture of the duplicated objects 100% transparent. This has the disadvantage of you getting equal patterns of the ecosystem, which, depending on your population, might become too noticeable. If this is the case, when you duplicate the object, you can click "clear" and "populate" again on the duplicated object. You might have to adjust the rotation in this case.

I haven't tried any of these methods but do drop me a PM if this works! I'd be interested to know! :-)

I was also surprised, I could swear I read a post from you, lemur01, saying you wanted in. So I went back and in page 15 I found that post. Lemur01, you got me confused now! :-)

cobaltdream, you're right, i'm probably making things more complicated than necessary. Sorry for that.

So, when can we start using the forum for new threads asking for critiques? Right now?

I think that it's important to leave the WIP versions of a picture somewhere, as a testimony to evolution. And also I think it's not very friendly for the kind people who spent their time to write something for us and then we just go and delete it, when we don't need it anymore. I think it's not nice, but that's only my opinion.

But I also don't like to clutter the personal galleries with WIP's. The ideal would be for the personal galleries to have two subgroups: WIP's and finished images. The viewers could opt to browse one or the other. I know it's complicated and a lot to ask...

So, my "ideal" process would go like this:
a) The artist posts a WIP in the WIP gallery. This is added to the subgroup "WIP" in his personal gallery. Anyone can post comments, from inside or outside of the Critique group.
b) The artist creates a new thread in the Forum, asking for critique to the group, with a link to his WIP.
c) Maybe a 2nd WIP or a 3rd WIP come, all handled in the same manner, with updates of the thread in the forum.
d) Some time later, the artis posts the finished version in the normal gallery (Vue, Poser, whatever) and this goes into his personal gallery, subgroup of finished works
e) The artists updates his thread on the forum, telling the group of the finished version.

That's it! The hard part is the creation of subgroups in the personal gallery, as we would have to "convince" the site managers to have this rather big change in the concept. If this isn't possible, each artist could do as he/she pleases: he/she could keep or delete the WIP from his/her personal gallery.
Another option is to keep WIPs offsite and put links in the forum thread only, as Acadia suggested. This has the big disadvantage that only the Critique Group members will see it, but that's up to the artist, of course.

I dont think I would like to do that. When I delete, I also delete all the comments that people left there. 

This just reminded me of something else: would this new process mean that the Critique Group members would stop posting comments in the pics themselves and only do it in the Forum?

There's still a lot of things to be defined before the new process begins, I suppose...

But if you put a pic in the WIP gallery, doesnt it show in your own personal gallery like a normal pic? I would like to avoid in my gallery what i already have now: pairs of pictures, almost identical (the WIP and the final).