Quote - I have both V4 and V4.1 installed in an external runtime and they work fine - NO DAZ/V4 files in my main Poser 7 one at all, so I'm confused...

Poser 7 has a shallow search option that Poser 6 does not. for this reason V4.1 loads a lot faster in Poser 7.

I have to agree with joe public, the morph brush in Poser 7 will likely provide better results than you would get using ZBrush for this purpose. the biggest drawback with the morph brush though is if you want to do a morph that crosses between bodyparts as it doesnt handle the seams particularly well.

actually considering that the sidegrade won't even be to the Pro version but to the "Base" version which I assume would retail a fair amount lower than the Pro version if they were even offering it for sale seperately, which Im not sure about, I think the upgrade price should be lower. they have not specifically said that there would even be an upgrade offered to the Pro version.

Quote - Why not leaving the material file where it is? If you like to have something that helps flooding your pose folder, just do a "wrapper" (small pz2) containing a readscript statement.

I HATE this millions of MAT-pose files in my pose folders. I would love to see all materials in my material-room. At least if a product says: "Poser 5/6/7".

Poser 5 doesn't recognize mc6 files so you have to limit them to Poser 6 and 7

Attached Link: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=1910&spmeta=rl

and this is a set we did for both mike 3 and Vicky 3

Attached Link: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=5135

I did a winter outfit for Vicky 4

I believe he meant Open GL Preview.

ghonma and pjz99 are right, there is some confusion between Normal maps and Vector displacement maps. modern Normal maps are simply a diffrent type of bump map, the big difference is that while bump maps give the illusion of pushing the surface out in only one direction, normal maps give the illusion of pushing the surface out in different directions, by controlling normal directions, giving a better illusion that the shape is changed than bump maps. but its still not adding any actual surface detail like Displacement or Vector Displacement maps do, so it looses the illusion along the edges of the object. Thats not saying that if done right it isn't a step up from standard bump maps. I tend to doubt though that poser is adding Vector displacement maps, if they were they would make a lot bigger deal about it, becouse even a lot of the high end suites dont have vector displacement yet.

Quote - This may seem obvious but couldn't you just tile the texture in photoshop instead ?

That way you can make it as big as you want, paint out the seams and add your white lines and other markings. Then you just scale the prop to whatever size you need and you will get perfect grass with no artifacts.

ghonma, if this is the grass prop Im thinking of it actually has grass stems sticking up in different directions. if you scaled it up you would have a sparsely populated field of huge grass stems.

if you do as you want with this prop, and as geep suggested you will end up with a prop with tiling textures, the same tile will apply to each square of grass. you won't be able to draw lines on it unless you Remap your larger prop. becouse as soon as you drew a line on one of them, they would all get the same line in the same place. for what you want to do the suggestion of using a plain with noise displacement would actually be a lot easier becouse the plain would already be mapped to allow you to paint your stripes easily.

Plutom, raytraced reflection has nothing to do with which shadow setting you use, you can have raytraced reflections and still use shadow maps.

No reason for Remapping V4 other than selling new textures? I have heard that one before from naysayers, but the evidence doesn't really indicate that was the motivation. take a look at this comparison. V4's arm on the top, V3's arm on the bottom, which map is going to offer less distortion? and better ability to provide detail on smaller maps? Im not saying that the V3 maps aren't easier to use, they are. pelt mapping provides the least possible seams, which makes hiding seams much easier, but with that benifit comes drawbacks, the primarily drawback is major distortion in some areas that is impossible to minimize. the secondary drawback is that there is a lot of wasted area on the maps, requiring much larger maps to get the same amount of detail. so we are dealing with ease of use VS quality, if I want ease of use I will go with V3. for quality mapping I will go for V4 mapping, its definately more work but the benifits are definately there. try putting a tattoo on Both figure's arms and tell me V4's mapping isn't better.

and of course those "Pose" dials negate you from being able to do it manually? :rolleyes: and you can pose the whole figure using them? sorry this seems like a huge rationalization for not liking a figure. just like your assumtion that just becouse their are unified expression morphs people can't use the components of those expressions individually. take a look, not only does this not limit expressions, there are actually more choices for fine tuning expressions than in V3. Yes DAZ offers ease of use dials, but they aren't forcing you to use them, nor are they huge space hogs becouse all they are are erc code which adds very little to the size of the cr2. and No offense but you calling DAZ Studio users fanboys is like the Pot calling the Kettle black.

yeah the material has overkill in the specular in my opinion which you can even see in the promo, so it must have been intended. it has both specular and alternate specular set which really makes the specularity strong. I personally would remove the anisotropic node in the alternate specualar and just go with the standard specular, adjusting that strenth as needed, I think I would also up the bump on the lips to .006 or thereabouts.

I think your primary problem is bad lighting, harsh lighting and not enough fill, will blow out the detail in the textures and make the highlights too strong. the promo render you are showing has at least 3 lights, if not more which are much more ballanced.