Thanks for the suggestions. I may play around with that some.

But I'm also interested in learning more about things as they exist on the drawing board, so I'm still interested in resource suggestions, if any.

You see, the setting for the novel is essentially now, not so much the future.

It is still sf, but not due to, or in regard to, the weaponry being used. It's a bit of a twist on the first contact concept, and one of the significant premises requires that certain weapons that probably don't exist yet, actually do, i.e., hardly anyone knows it because their actual existence is so highly classified.

Think it's called a "Pi Pa."

See 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipa'

I don't understand the thinking here. One of the main advantages of Poser Pro is faster rendering? How many "professionals" even use Poser for rendering?

And if they want to appeal to professionals, then the last thing they should do is leave the interface alone. Most professionals are trying to be productive and the Poser interface, while it may be "pretty" and even intuitive from a hobbiest's point of view, was definitely not built with productivity in mind.

svdl, my biggest gripe about McAfee: though I contacted their tech support many times with questions and problems over the course of a couple of years, I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever received even a single reply (or solution).

I never even got a reply on their forums, and from what I could see, neither did anyone else. Don't know what it's like over there now, but a couple of years ago, the users' frustration level was intense.

I used to swear by McAfee, then started having lots of trouble, switched to Norton and haven't had any trouble since.

I guess it all depends.

Yes! Philywebrider, if you find a good one, please let us (i.e., me) know.

Vista 64 Ultimate running Poser 7, ZBrush, Vue6, etc.

Biggest trouble I see is with Poser 7. Everything else seems pretty okay, but Poser 7 runs very slow for me. As it speeds up somewhat when I turn off the hardware OpenGL preview, this may be my graphic card though ... gotta do more research.

How would emulation via Python constitute reverse engineering? If someone figures out how to do it with Python by definition that would be a new methodology ... wouldn't it?

By the way, nabob21, after reviewing the information on the model, I don't plan to purchase, not any time soon anyway. So no morph will be forthcoming from me. Sorry. But good luck with it anyway.

Quote -
You can do whatever you want if it's for a personnal use. But you are not allowed to distribute or share any commercial product, even modified, except if clearly stated in the copyright.

I didn't realize there was any restriction so long as you do not redistribute, i.e., I always assumed you could do whatever you want for commercial use as well, so long as you are doing it for illustrative purposes (and not redistributing the model itself).

Can't you?

Clearly, I'll have to recheck the Daz license agreement (and others), but I've always been under that impression.

nabob21, no promises, but if I decide to buy it, I should be able to do a morph for you (in ZBrush).

Who cares? God keep me away from bio-engineered plagues, weaponized insects, etc., but what's so scary about an evil gnome anyway?

What I have found interesting is that the right now say the left are the totalitarians and the left say the right are, and both sides have some fairly persuasive evidence.

I had a discussion about this recently with a friend of mine. One of us is left politically and the other right, though neither of us consider ourselves or the other extremist, and we came to the conclusion that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are really very respectful of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights these days, not if said respect gets in the way of their respective agendas.

Everything seems to be about ideological purity and party loyalty these days, with the law and the Constitution often all but forgotten.

If I'm not mistaken, both Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (and perhaps others) warned against allowing professional political parties, and of just this kind of danger.

I have never voted 3rd party in my life, though I've been tempted. -- but maybe the time is long overdue to give in to the temptation.

My bad. Yeah, you can fake a lot of things ... but faking it and then animating it? Sounds unpleasant.

Quote - Microsoft has stated after the vista fiasco they will release windows 7 in 3 years time come hell or high water.

Hmm. What if it's hell and high water?

Anyway, I'm using Vista64. There are a few annoyances and a few incompatibilities, but it really ain't half bad.

I've never been one to bash Microsoft, and I've never been one to praise them either. Seems to me they could do better, but they could also do worse.

I think I'll just bow out of the discussion now (famous last words) and wait and see ...