Don't forget that the area covered by the EnvSphere is huge. If the 'background' created by the EnvSphere won't be visible, or if an out of focus look would make sense, then low res would be OK. But even at 8000px it will look a little fuzzy with focal lengths over 50mm.

Quote - I found this a short time ago.

I knew I'd seen these on ShareCG but couldn't find them... thanks for the link!

Oh, this is one of my pet peeves. Precious few of the textures I've bought over the years are useable out-of-the-box.

Sometimes it's simply that the colour is wrong: too blue, too red, too yellow, strange purplish tones... it's not as if there's a shortage of images on the 'net that could be used for reference, if you know what I mean.

It's the burned-in shadows and highlights that really grind my gears. Most of the time these are fixable using various Photoshop techniques, but occasionally it's so bad that the textures are unusable. I'm trying to rescue a particular texture at the moment where the knees and elbows are the sort of dark purple you'd normally associate with the skins of aubergines (egg plants to you folks over the pond).

And what's with all the dirty bottoms? I know the sun doesn't shine there so reference photos will have a shadow, but including that in the texture maps is a bad - no, make that a terrible - idea.

Now that Poser has IDL and SSS, skin textures should show natural variations in tone, spots, freckles, blemishes and so on. But burned-in shadows and highlights are a no-no. Assuming I have the attention of any vendors, why are so few of you adept at making bump and specular maps? Making grayscale versions of the colour maps just won't do: it will make me think that you're both lazy and incompetent, and I probably won't buy your stuff again.

Maybe it should be mandatory to show thumbnails of texture, bump and other maps in the market place so we can make informed purchasing decisions.

Flink has a water effects package. From the promos it looks like the shaders may need some work to look a bit less like paint!

xpdev, modo is a 3D modelling application and is a bit pricey.

Morphing Clothes transfers NGM morphs to clothing with no issues, in my experience. Just make sure you spin the NGM dials in the Body rather than the chest for best results.

Lasers are beams of highly collimated, or 'coherent' light.

In real life they're only visible because (a) laser shows generally happen in dark surroundings and (b) the atmosphere scatters some of the light off its path towards the viewer. They normally turn on the smoke machines so the lasers have plenty of tiny particles to get scattered by.

In normal conditions - room light or daylight - in the scenario you describe, you'd see a faint spot on the mirror (scattering by the glass) and another spot on whatever surface the laser is reflected onto; the  beam itself would be somehwere between hard to see and invisible.

All that presumes that it's a visible light laser. A high-energy laser weapon would probably work in the far infra-red, and therefore be invisible to you and me. Whether such a beam would destroy a mirror or not would depend on how reflective the mirror was (or how little of the energy in the beam it absorbed).

The laser weapons you see depicted in Star Wars etc. would almost certainly not look like that if something similar could be developed for real. To get that effect in Poser, you'd need to make a prop (an elongated cylinder) and a shader setup to get that glowing effect.

The only way, AFAIK, would be to edit the CM2 file after you saved it to the library.

Put it in runtime : libraries : materials : [your folder name]

Then apply it to something like BB's envsphere.

Here's an mt5 file (take the .txt extension off the filename).

But note that there's nothing in the v_texture_coordinate node to modify, you need to control it using math nodes.

Here's a shader setup for a clear blue sky (I use it applied to BB's EnvSphere).

I did a Google image search for 'Marine Radio' which shows a bewildering range of types and styles, from bulky 'steam powered' things from the '50s to small ultra-modern gadgets which also have MP3 and video playing functions.

In all cases, if you get a decent resolution head-on image it should be simple to create one - using 1 or more primitives - that would pass muster.

From the BBC website (my emphasis):

"Cecilia Gimenez, who is in her 80s, was reportedly upset at the way the fresco had deteriorated and took it on herself to "restore" the image.

She claimed to have had the permission of the priest to carry out the job.

"(The) priest knew it! He did! How could you do something like that without permission? He knew it!"

BBC Europe correspondent Christian Fraser says the delicate brush strokes of Elias Garcia Martinez have been buried under a haphazard splattering of paint.

The once-dignified portrait now resembles a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic, he says."

Quote - I'd wager that 100% of anyone who keeps track of the comings and goings in Poserdom will get these figures. More details on the why on that down the road.

Let's see now: the new Poser figures next month; Genesis (maybe) in October; Reality 3 in November.

Sounds like my family are getting little more than a pair of socks each this Christmas!

DAZ has a history of over-hyping things that are happening 'soon'.

Half of me is prepared to be underwhelmed by something involving a long list of things I need to do (via plug-ins, scripts and who knows what else) to get Genesis to sort-of work in Poser.

The other half hopes they've learned their lesson (about over-hyping, if nothing else) and deliver something that 'just works' with no hoops for me to jump through.