Man that's eerie. My job places me right at the end of the runway of Port Columbus International Airport. Jumbos fly over every few minutes, all the time. Except that one day a couple years back when the skies were strangly silent. I definitely got infinite plane syndrome!

Holy Crap! I really like what you've done with your animations! I like the camera movements in all the works! You indeed are a skilled imagineer that has done a lot with very little. I am inspired! You show the strengths of these low budget programs and dispense with "what can't be done" and just do it anyway. Your musical scores are very good at lending a sense of drama to your animations. Bravo!

Will this method let me use magnets to add small hills? Did you use the wave deformer to make the water ripples?

I think that this is a case of putting the people together that belong together and keep it palatable for everyone. If you want trollish crits, go to the trolls. If you want constructive crits on specific parts of your work, ask for that. For example, if your intention is technical, say so. If your intent is more subjective, then make that known. For example, a question: "I want this effect, have I acheived it?, and if not, what can I do to get there?, will automatically attract the people who know the most about the effect you are trying to acheive.
Incorporate this into the gallery that is already the correct gallery of the work, and that way you've already gotten someone's attention, they know the program, they know the genre, etc.
Renderosity could merely supply a generic guide box for submitting work/feedback that lets the viewer know what is expected. We could post an image and fill out what we want, then a generic reply box would allow people who want to crit to fill out boxes that address the basics and then fill out the boxes that go to the intention of the artist. This way, mostly helpful information will go to those who ask for specific feedback and would be crit people would have a guide that prevents obvious bashing or undue vague comments.

garicstar, I'm sitting here going duh! why did I do that? Of course the elevator thing is dumb. Doh! I think perhaps you have inspired me to do more on the ship now. I was thinking originally of railed stairs roughly in the middle of each side, but I nixed them due to time/work contraints. I don't think it would be all that hard to add those (not poseable). On the weapons tip, I originally designed the scout ship as a peaceful vessel. It wouldn't be impossible to add guns, I had also envisioned a turret with a Millenium Falcon type gun with a chair and all that (in the elevator). This would take away entrance/exit animation, but some people would only really need the gun version. I could add guns to the four nav sensors, and that would make them able to rotate and go up and down, but not track in complete 3d. Let me know what you might like to see. Also, perhaps you could input on if stock motion files (based on one male and one female) would be helpful, such as standing on ground, climbing ladder, going down in elevator, getting into seats, etc. Remember, it may take a while before I could really deliver anything, since I would be starting with only the product you see as a starting point.

I have been thinking like Hisminky for the about a week now. There are two things that can happen. Furious Labs could add modeling functionality to Poser. Since you can only use the premade figures without spending way to much time/money on another modelling program, this has created a trend of Vicky, Vicky, Vicky (not a bad thing entirely). Or, as Hisminky points out, a bunch of us need to start modeling the vast variety of things that need to be modeled in order to begin to round out the Poser application. Now, I have seen the price of models drop dramatically over the last two years, and it looks like nobody would be able to make enough money on a model to justify how hard/long it would take to make, especially if it has a very limited use. So, although the quality of the models has increased, the price of any model has plummeted. The situation, based on supply/demand makes it very unlikely that a variety of "more useful" products will emerge. We should formalize "wish list" format to allow modelers to respond when they know roughly how many people will be interested in "toilet paper rolls, towel racks, etc." In other words, we could find a way to fairly distrubute modelling assignments so that we don't each make the "best roll of TP ever" and then have fifty five dollar rolls of TP! Without some type of organization, I think it will be literally years before Poser renders begin to diverge from each other in appearance.

Thanks everyone! It looks like I'll be staying out of trouble for a while now! My weekend testing is all hashed out and it will now take much less time to get the results I'm looking for! regards caravaggio

Hmmmm, Interesting. You can take a mesh into z-brush that exists in poser, and use the tools for morph targets, and all is well. Making a model may push the limits of the computer. There is a horrible registration issue. Hmmm. Well I suppose you can't have everything. I went by those galleries of Zrincx and RnRWoman, and it looks like those artists use them for morph targets, rather than all out content creation. Is that right? Thanks caravaggio

Hey great then! I'll sure go look into all this stuff! Thanks caravaggio

I actually tried some magnet manip last night and started to get some promising results. A perfect job will take hours however. I read up again on Vicki 3 and I am definitely going to get her today. The ad reads that they have pretty much done all that they can for fixing joints with ERC. The comments from the people who bought her already seem to be very positive towards this problem. I guess the main reason I am thinking about this problem is that with Poser 5's capabilitites now the last main obstacle to being a great program are the joint setup issues. I am thinking of a set of prefixed poses now that would cover most extreme pose possibilities, saving time for those of us who want to use these poses. As opposed to "standard" poses most of us could whip out in an hour, these would be heavily worked and a real boon to renders. Of course, Vicky 3 is just going to have to be it for animation. Yeah, those elbow and knee fixes on Vicki 1 and 2 don't do much for me either.

Oh. I guess what we're left with is that by the time I could fake the effect by sculpting morphs individually, I could buy Maya and start there and still the overall cost in labor with Poser would be higher. I can swipe in post also, but I was thinking about animation as well. Hmmmmm.

Hi Bloodsong, Got it figured out! I was trying to do a 4096 pixel wide texture map on that part. I dropped it to half and the problem vanished! Guess I should have read the manual! Thanks!

Salutations and Greetings Bushi!

Thanks, Your suggestions have opened some doors and I have been able to fix the problem. (Of course there was nothing pleasant about fixing it!)

I HAVE GONE ABOUT CORRECTING THE "TOO DARK" PROBLEM IN TWO WAYS. ONE, FILTER THE TEXTURE MAP AND MAKE IT LIGHTER. TWO, I HAVE ALSO ADJUSTED THE AMBIENT COLOR TO A DULL BURGUNDY TONE AND THIS HELPS. YOU MUST ALSO ALTER ALL AREAS OF THE FACE/BODY WITH THE SAME COLOR IN ORDER FOR THEM TO MATCH. YOU CAN CREATE A CUSTOM COLOR IN THE MATERIALS PALLETTE IN ORDER TO MAKE SURE THAT THE COLORS ALL MATCH WITHOUT WRITING DOWN ALL THE COLOR VALUES. MAKE SURE YOU ARE HAPPY WITH THE RENDER B4 YOU CHANGE THEM ALL. I KNOW THIS IS A LOT OF FUSS FOR THE PURPOSE, SO MAYBE YOU WILL WANT TO ALTER THE VALUE OF THE MAP SO THAT YOU CAN APPLY IT TO OTHER FIGURES EASILY.