I'm not really sure what you're asking but I'll give it a go. If the clothes have separeate geometry (most do) then the geometry (ie obj file) has to be on the hard drive in the correct subfolder of the geometries folder. The rest can be be stored in a pz3 document on a CD. Keep the textures in the same folder on the Cd as the pz3. You can import the clothing into Poser by opening the pz3. I never work that way so I'm not sure how you get multiple figures into the scene.

There's an option box to include morph targets in the pose and you need to select that. It shows up in the save posedialogue box each time you save a pose to the library. However, V2 uses a lot of full body morphs. ie morphs which affect multiple body parts at a time. Those are controlled with ERC and ERC dials cannot be saved to poses, so if you use the full body morphs, you won't be able to save the settings as part of your pose. You CAN get them into the pose by hand editing it in a text editor, but let's not get into that.

ScottA is right. The MAT can't be applied to the prop unless the prop has a figure as a parent.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=93357&Start=1&Artist=Ajax&ByArtist=Yes

Yep, the Millenium figures have about twice as many polygons as the Poser 4 people. That's the main thing that makes them resource hogs. Often the textures used with them are very large, which doesn't help. Their clothes and hair tend to be high resolution as well so that adds more. Additionally, render time is slowed down by the high res bump maps they often have. I don't think the morphs slow down renders but I'm sure they eat up RAM. They are also one of the things that make your pz3s so big, so yeah, get rid of them and see how much it helps. Morphs vary in size according to how many faces they affect. They are smaller than the equivalent amount of geometry because they don't contain the full set of info, but they are still a very substantial proportion of a pz3 or a cr2. Compare the size of Victoria LE with Vicky 2 and you'll see just how much difference those morphs make. Your best bet is to "layer" different renders. Take a look at the link to see a pic in my gallery that has 3 millenium figures, 4 poser people, clothes and hair for all of them, 3 high res robots and a bunch of medium res props. This was done with only 128 Meg of RAM. The final pic was made up of five separate renders, each containing just a few figures. Each pic was imported as a background to the next. To reveal shadows from previous layers, I loaded each render into Photoshop and then cut away parts of the upper layers to reveal the earlier renders beneath. The camera angle was saved so it would be consistent in all renders and the position of a few reference props was used as a guide for placing the figures. Like doozy says, start with the ones at the back and work forward. Also, close absolutely everything except Poser while you work. If you have pretty wallpaper on your computer, get rid of it and use a single colour background. Do everything you can to give Poser all the available RAM.

I see this question come up again and again and my understanding is that you just cannot hide morphs, no matter what. It seems to be a Poser 4.03 bug that is not about to go away. On Vicky 2, DAZ used the prefix "pbm" on all of their partial body morphs because they couldn't hide them. They can't seem to find a way to do it either.

Turning off bump maps will also speed up render time and romoving references to them should reduce memory usage if you save and close, then re-open poser afterward. Transparency, bumps and shadows all increase render time. Do without them where you can. I usually composite several renders, using each one as a background for the next and doing a little cutting and pasting if necessary to get the shadows right. Go for low polygon props where you can also. That saves render time and hard disk space.

You can do it in a text editor pretty easily. I have some MAT files for Kozaburo's hair in the free stuff. If you open one of those in a text editor you should be able to see how it's done. (Those are hair, not props but the principle is the same).

I like to be able to view my gallery and see how many views there are under each thumb without having to open every picture. Other than that I'm not concerned one way or the other. I don't recal ever having noticed how many views other peoples stuff has.

I've never seen a free or sold product that used DAZ's Mike or Vicky or any of their other items, except one where the person concerned actually did have DAZ permission to distribute part of DAZ's mesh. The textures and characters found in the freestuff and the store that can be used WITH those products are not usable if you don't own the DAZ product concerned. As such they extend the usability of DAZ products and do nothing but good for DAZ sales. If somebody releases free textures that go with Nerd's prop, that is good for his sales as well as good for people that own the prop already and is to be encouraged. To cut Nerd out of the equation by releasing something that, when combined with those textures makes his original product unnecessary would be a whole different kettle of fish.

I think it's important to look at these things from a practical point of view as well as an ethical one. Nerd gives away a LOT of good free stuff. Free stuff may be free for people who download it isn't free for those of us that give it away. I'm only able to provide my free stuff because of the sales I make here as a vendor. My geocities site kept getting closed because of bandwidth usage, and I don't give away a fraction of the stuff Nerd does. Just remember that if you deprive Nerd of his sales, you may be depriving yourself and the rest of us of his free stuff. As a huge fan of free stuff myself, I'd definitely prefer continued access to Nerd's free stuff over a free backdrop. If his site goes, his tutorials also go. I would never have invented EasyPose without Nerd's tutorials. Shuting down a site that has such useful technical tutorials could deprive us of the next big Poser innovation. Also, with regard to the arguments about backdrops not being a new or copyrightable idea, I'd like ask if this one is designed to be compatible with the free textures for Nerd's prop. It would seem to me that releasing one that is designed to go with the free textures already available for Nerd's is definely treading on toes - and not lightly either.

I've seen a fog prop at a site that I think is called "Space Stories" and I think the guys name is Anthony Appleyard but that's just from memory. You should be able to find it by searching the members list and checking his free stuff and site. The wave deformer probably works like magnets - you have to go to their properties and tell them which objects you want them to affect.

There's one called Emily in the free stuff that's supposed to be good. There are quite a few others but its hard to find them sometimes. Look in the millennium section but also search for Vicky, Vic, Victoria and millennium. There aren't nearly as many good free textures and characters as there are for Posette, however. There are even fewer for Mike, especially since Joe le Gecko pulled his stuff. Anton Kisiel has a nice Vicky texture in there somewhere. I forget what username he uses here. PhoenixRising maybe?

There should be a line at the top of the PHI file which gives the location of the obj. It has to be absolutely correct, including the correct path. The group names used also have to match the group names used in the obj - exactly. If those two criteria are satisfied and the obj is in the right place then I don't know what else could be wrong. You might like to try building the PHI from scratch by pressing the OBJ button to load the obj file and then setting up the hierarchy using the group names that PHI builder automatically generates from the obj.

Where did you get your PHI file and what are you trying to do?

Oh, yeah...e-mail address: ajaxsoyyo@yahoo.com