Heh, had a feeling this wasn't gonna be one of those "3 reply" threads when I saw it. I'll just add that I pretty much agree with what xoconostle said about the popularity syndrome: ignore it if it bothers you. That works for a lot of stuff actually. The whole popularity syndrome thing...yeah, it's something that's definitely present and I do notice it, sure. But in the end, is it something that I really concern myself with? Not really. I'll post pictures occassionally, not to hear gushing praise but because I like fiddling with Poser occassionally and figure I may as well share some of the pics. Not really under any illusions about the level of my "art" but I figure if someone else likes it or thinks it's cool, then great. You know what though, it does seem like there are a LOT more people posting to the galleries these days. With people pressed for time and so much stuff to look at, a lot of folks probably just see what their favorite artists are up to and don't spend too much time on the "other" stuff.

Re: popularity etc. it's not really a renderosity thing as much as it is something that happens anytime you have a community type environment. Some people are just more popular than others (for whatever reason). You find that here, you find it on other sites, and you find it in the real world. There's nothing inherently wrong with it and a lot of times that's just the way things work. As far as the gallery, well yeah, sometimes images get a lot of comments and viewings because it's done by someone who is "popular" around here. But then at the same time, a lot of those images really are well done (and yes, I suppose some of them aren't). Does that mean those images would get as many comments if they were done by a "stranger" here? Maybe, maybe not. Random thought: why are certain people popular here in the first place? Do they pay people off? Do they give stuff away generously? Do they just do good work and people notice? Heck, is it simply the result of having a cool username that attracts people? LOL I'm not sure I really have a point to make here. Just something to ponder. Or maybe I just like wasting bandwidth...

Anyway here's what it looked like.

Not exactly expert on this app but it looks to me like you need to: 1. Change shader (above the Opacity Mask) to value instead of None. 2. Uncheck "White is Invisible" on the Opacity Mask. Basically I think you need to make sure that whatever setting you have for opacity and transparency are identical. This is what works for me in the 3.0 beta at least.

Yeah actually there is a tutorial for this. I think it's at castironflamingo.com but I'm not 100% sure. If that url isn't right, then you should be able to find the tutorial here with the search function. I got things to work in the version 3 beta but IIRC the tutorial was written for v2 so you should be fine. As far as your export settings, I don't think it'll really matter--the tutorial was on the PC using a utility called Grouper prior to exporting the models. Meanwhile I'm on a Mac w/o the Grouper utility and it worked fine for me. Basically it involves not only the transparency map but also setting up an opacity layer. Anyway the tutorial is pretty easy to follow.

Karen: LOL, I better get crackin then--I don't think any of my images have either a sword or a temple!

What everyone doesn't seem to understand is that everything done in Poser (or 3d in general for that matter) MUST be realistic! No really, I've seen the gallery comments to prove it. Doing non-realistic images is apparently wrong both legally and morally, so this realistic Koshini pack is a great idea!

And I think they're passing a federal law this week that requires all Poser images to feature nude or scantily clad women (the proposed law defines "scantily clad" as "having no more than 15% of body surface covered by clothing or other obscurations").

(NOTE: I AM JOKING, DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING I WROTE ABOVE SERIOUSLY PLEASE)

OK so I'm working in Carrara the other night, and suddenly BAM! Bijouchat's sugestion finally makes sense to me. LOL, it does save me one extra step so yeah, thanks Bijouchat. :)

Drops dead on the floor

Yeah actually that's the site that had the tutorial I followed to get things setup in the first place. When you mentioned the "hair transparency recipe" I think I finally understood what you've been saying. Yeah, that part's no problem, I just meant tedious in reference to having to change the trans map for figures with different hair if you have more than one (me bein kinda impatient and all). It's not a big deal really and it actually doesn't take me that long to do. Just being an ungrateful user and wishing there was a built in converter/plug-in so I didn't ahve to do any work. :) Re: Grouper and Babel, I can't use either since I'm on a Mac. But that's OK, it's something I've gotten used to. No biggie though, I'm slowly starting to get the hang of it and things are (again, slowly) starting to click. LOL, eventually I might even know what I'm doing! :)

Bijouchat: I think I understand what you mean (I've played with Carrara for like, 5 days). But I'd have to do a different one for each hair prop (for example) right? (Then again I could be totally misunderstanding what you're trying to tell me) jkm: I'll try a few NPR renders and see how it comes out. What I've seen of other people's stuff seems to indicate that Carrara can do some neat stuff but I personally haven't really played around with it yet.

Really the only major problem I have now when importing a figure into Carrara is the fact that transparency map information isn't carried over. So I have to do it manually which could get quite tedious to do for every figure.

In regards to Poser/Carrara plug-in, I posted this a couple weeks back (forget which forum), which is part of an email reply I got from Jim Lumley of Eovia's Sales department:

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1. Within a short time after Curious Labs releases Poser 5 for the MAC Platform you will see an announcement of a plug-in for the two products.

--

Since he was very open in answering this particular question, I assume it isn't a real big secret. Also note that he mentions it will be for Poser 5 and carrara. He didn't know whether it would work with Poser 4, although if the Mac version of Poser 5 works fast enough under OS X then I may just end up picking it up.

Were the shadows being cast by hair or lashes? I've noticed that in some of the pictures I've tried rendering as well. Then I remember reading a post or maybe it was a tutorial that mentioned something about it. Basically it said to check the "interpolation" box in the shader where you have your transparency map set. I can't remember where I read that or I'd point you there, but it seemed to work for me.