Thanks Cspear. And Vilters for weighing in.  :)

I think this was a lousy way to word my question.  And I can't think of a better way to ask..  hrm

Quote - the simple answer to these and similar questions is because thats what people want. Merchants dont set the trends in the MP - customersdo. Also, the vocal minority who post in these forums represent ~1% of the customer base. Even if every single person who weighed in in a thread asking for nursing flats, muumuus or Peruvian train conductor outfits in the forums actually bought the item when a merchant made it (and they DONT:  when its crunch time its usually 'oh that looks exactly like what i wanted, i added it to my wishlist' or 'ooooh pretty!! ill buy that next month'), its still not even a fraction of the customer base. 

Perhaps in time Renderosity can add some sortof pre-order/wishlist feature where customers can start a request thread for an item and people can click to pre-order. this will give merchants a much clearer idea of how much interest there is and whether its worth it or not to make that item. 

its hard enough starting out as a merchant. you have the decision of catering to the mainstream and swimming upstream against thousands of other merchants doing the same.... or you can swim in a smaller pond and carve out a niche for yourself catering to the alternative 'request' markets, but risk spending weeks making something and experiencing pitiful sales when the people who requested it dont follow through and actually buy it.

making a finished product involves a lot of work. even many people who dabble in 3D dont understand this:  theres many a step between something you model in a 3D app and a finished, packaged, tested and polished product ready for the marketplace.  unless they are independantly wealthy or retired, most merchants - unless theyre attempting to carve out a niche for themselves - cannot afford to spend that much time on a product that will only interest less than a tenth of the market.  if they really want niche products, then customers can help by actually following through and buying - not just wishlisting or complimenting - these products when theyre actually made.

That was basically exactly what I was going to say.  I worked on a just a niche character set once.  One that many forum posters said they had interest in.   Spent at least a month on the project.  time = money.  And the sales were basically non-existant.  

It was a complete waste of time and not something that I will likely do again, unless of course I become independantly wealthy at some point and get to just make stuff for giggles.  

As for me personally, I do prefer the female figure and am female.  I do have some  use for male "things".  However, the ratios are skewed, in 3d and real life.

Impressive and FREE.  Nice!  Thank you very much, I'm sure a lot of time and effort went into those.  I have it bookmarked, will be very useful to me as these are subjects I was planning on getting into shortly.  Very appreciated!

I like the all grey background, I wish I could get mine to look like that.  I crashed Poser last night just switching mats on the envsphere so I decided to stop for the night and get the update this morning.  Hopefully the update helps with my crashing issues.

After I get it all going again today I am going to try to get a result that looks like your grey.  I'd like it to be closer to white on the spectrum but still grey.  

lol ^^ agreed!!!

Thank you BB, I was coming up short on my Google hunt for that file.

I will look for that doge.hdr  Thanks for the tips!!

Well I did get the envsphere going.  Set all the render settings to what basic suggested.  Only 1 light at 10% and it is crazy bright now.  Gone from too dark to too bright lol, I guess I can at least say I've made progress.  I tried to reduce the light to 2% and still seems just as bright.  Maybe I need textures on the sphere>?  Or maybe adjust some settings for the sphere.

The good news is my comp handled the render just fine so I can even go up still in settings I believe.

Need to find the hotdog vender on that beach Stat.  j/k

Thank you for the comparison, I was just seeing this same sort of result in my renders and wondered if I was blind or something.  

Thank you for the note about AO

Nice looking!

There is a medical documentary on netflix about how they are working on mapping human thoughts and dreams.  There may have been a Through The Wormhole episode on that subject as well.

My husband gets a little annoyed that I will only watch non-fiction stuff.... But now I can at least say I talked about what I did watch today :)

Ahhh thank you.  I will update.

lol ^^

Found the EZ Skin too.  I got the new beta version and although I swore I distinctly remember it saying it ONLY works for Poser 9 and PP2012 it is telling me that it doesn't work on "my version of poser" when I try to run it.  Which is PP2012.  I will ask about that in his thread tomorrow.  Unless sleep fixes the problem first.

I have the new GND4 with SSS so I will just use that for now to set up the sphere and scene and get some testing started.

lol I know who BB is.  Yes he can shout all he wants, hell I'm happy to see his input however it comes.  Feel a little sheepish that I didn't see his posts in the thread before I went posting GoodWill Hunting references though.  At least it's a compliment :)

I think I understood the second CAPS post after 3 reads, but I will have to read the first one over about 50 times before I understand what all that linear business was about.  I'm kinda hoping that one will sort itself out once I actually get the envsphere loaded and start setting these lights up.

• side note nostaglia - BB helped me get water right for an image I did like 4 years ago, called Conjugal Visit.  It is probably the best render for fun I have done yet.  One day I will hunt down that thread and resave those water settings