If the book will be printed, you might want to double-check the license for any freebie you find for it, as many freebies are not licensed for commercial use.

Just a reminder ;)

I think the use of painted highlights and fake reflections is much the same of people wanting to stick with Poser 4 renderer when Firefly came out:

It's a new thing, and they don't know how to use it right.

Ok, so real reflections and complex shaders are just that: complex. Not everybody understands how to mix those nodes properly to simulate an effect (hey I don't, bagginsbill saves my life everyday without even knowing it). Not everybody knows that real reflections only look nice if there are things in the scene to be reflected.

In the end, I'd guess many vendors know better but choose the method that would look ok when rendered by a complete Poser newbie than a method that would look great rendered by the vendor and a huge disaster when rendered by a complete Poser newbie. I myself included the option for real or fake reflections in my last outfit set which had rubber materials (also because the fake ones render faster LOL).

My main fear with V5, as I think SM will find a way to make her work with Poser, is that if she really is weight-mapped and her base completely androgynous as they say it will be a complete NIGHTMARE to create clothes for her....

If anybody else ends up here with the same problem, I was able to fix it by deleting the problematic bone and recreating it.

Uhm. Thank you! :D

Bellydancing is great, it gives me a lot of flexibility and femininity (is that a word in english? eh, dunno). Yes it burns a lot of calories... No, that's not the reason why I'm thin, I'm just the daughter of my (skinny) father LOL

I think Alice is beautiful, but she's obviously not quite human. I don't think she was made to be. She's supposed to look like fantasy, not to be realistic. I think there's a point in that: if I wanted a render that looks exactly like a photo, I would go and take a photo. I like realistic renders because of the technique, and I like realism in renders in general, but for that case I like to inject at least a bit of fantasy (usually a lot).

As for them changing names, I thought it odd first, then I learned it's not the first time they do it, and I can't help but wonder why. As a graduated graphic designer, I have learned the importance of the strength of a brand, I can't even begin to understand why they would want to reset it when they're so famous and supposedly start anew. Plus I feel a bit bad that, when they left this time, they made a huge suspense in their forums and left us users worrying that they might be quitting poser because of problems or such. Oh well, if it works for them, then good for them, I guess.

Quote - Marvelous Designer has annonced that a version where you can choose quad or tris output will be released in April.

"collars, lapels, cuffs, pockets with flaps..etc"

Marvelous Designer doesn't do eveything. You still need to use you prefered 3D modeler. It does a lot more that you ever imagine though.

It can, however, make all the items in that quoted list.

See this example:

This one was entirely modelled in Marvellows Designer (I believe by Amakyn) and rendered in Daz Studio. (Yes, that's V4 you're looking at)

Quote - A semi-clothed woman is often more sexy-looking than a completely naked one ...

And a fully naked woman is generally viewed as more artistic.

Which brings us back to the OP question. But different people will have different feelings from the same image.

-One person may think a semi-clothed woman is sexy.

-One person may think sexy is the full naked one.

-Another might like the half-naked guy and think that's sexy

-The other will think the half-naked guy looks gay.

As for me, my pictures naturally have a tendency to look sexy. But to me, it's an ode to the beauty and power of women. I would do the same with male figures, but as I said before... my style makes them look too delicate. And I like men who don't try to look like women LOL

My pleasure!

The problem with making a movie and turning it into flash is that, unless you know how to make an ActionScript inside a flash application, your viewer can't manually rotate and stop at a certain angle s/he wants to analize, like 3DNP allows you to do.

Quote - I have to say yes because for example, notice most women images made are always sexy characters, or attemps at it. you rarely see someone who makes a render of an ugly female character.

Judging from that thought, one could say Hollywood is a porn industry.

Ok, I'm exaggerating, but still. Very few people appreciate ugly art. Apart from gore art, terror, art that critiques society... you WILL see a vast majority of depictions of beauty, in all forms of art.

I am female, and heterosexual. And it's not hard to see my art has a tendency to be sensual, even my hand-drawn artwork. I'd depict more men, if I were able to draw/render them properly handsome (my style is too feminine though. So I refrain from making all those sissy flowery guys LOL)

It's just natural for the human being. We like beauty. It's not just the male users.

Attached Link: 3DNP download page

It's free, needs no plugins, highly customizeable and has a loading bar. Rotates by itself and lets the viewer click and drag to rotate at will (and resumes rotating by itself after a few seconds unclicked). It lets you rotate up and down too, but I find that would end up in a HUGE file size for renders big enough to show Poser content. Basically, it loads a succession of renders one after the other.

Here's how I use it:

-Decide the amount of degrees you should spin between each frame. For me, 5 is enough for a smooth animation with renders around 1000px high and with decently optimized jpgs (Photoshop's Save For Web command does that wonderfully). A full rotation = 360º. Divided by 5 = 72 frames.

-I set my scene up with 1 frame at first, load everything, throw in a nice pose, set the lights, everything. Remember people will see a turnaround, so you need to make sure there are no pokethroughs anywhere and that it looks good from behind as much as it does in the front.

-Set up the animation: 72 frames, select my figure's body, go to last frame, add a keyframe only there, change body's yRot to 355 (because rotation 360 is exactly the same as rotation 0, so I skip it).

-Have Poser Make Movie, but instead of a video I make it render to images. Select the folder and name. Poser uses the name and 3-digit numbers after it when saving such a thing, usually.

-In Photoshop, I make an Action to add the background and any text I wish to display in the turnaround, and to save as a jpg with quality of around 8, then use the Batch command to run the Action in everything from that folder and save to another folder.

-Set it up in 3DNP. It has a readme file telling you how to.

-Upload everything (images and scripts) to a free web server.

-Turn it into an iframe (you need basic web programming knowledge for that) inside my Renderosity product's page.

Quote - RUN AWAY before the others try to force feed you doughnuts!!! :lol:

Wait... if there will be doughnuts, why should I run away? Gimme!

No way in hell I'm gonna take a photo of my legs with anything shorter than pants before I do some serious shaving here LOL

Joke aside, with bent knees I'm quite flexible. Make them straight and I can't even sit properly xD

My point is... V4 is a 3d model. Meaning she can be anything an artist wants, be that a dancer, a contortionist, a fantasy creature, an alien, list goes on~~ my guess is, if SOMEONE in the world can do it, 3d model is allowed to. It all depends on a person's view of "realism": does it mean it could be real or you think realism means easy to happen with anyone?

As for me, I'm with my boyfriend as far as digital art goes: it I want something exactly like real-life, no nice brush strokes in paintings, no fantasy-like features in 3d... I'd just shoot a photo. Heh.

I saw all the discussion about that pose and since I was just coming home from my bellydance class I couldn't help but try myself LOL

Yeah... I know, not nearly as pretty. Oh well. Please excuse the lack of tip-toedness, I'm not well-balanced enough. But as far as the leg go, I think close enough, would be better if I were a bit more flexible... I'd say anyone who can open their legs sideways in a 180º angle (like ballerinas practice to do) could do that pose exactly like that.

My version was just for kicks though LOL (and it would seem I need a longer sword too!)

I tried checking that... Also the first thing I did with that bone was mirror the left side one's joint setup (usually I make the left side, then do a Left to Right symmetry and have Poser mirror the joint setup). I actually discovered the bone was buggy because I tried, after symmetry, bending them both to see if my falloff zones were nicely positioned and wouldn't leave a big V in the middle.

Also checked the hierarchy to see if I accidentaly made that bone another bone's child (thus making it ignore the hip geometry).... nope, it's where it should be, child to the hip bone.

Still crashes for me, but my tester says everything is working fine for her now!

I don't know what makes my version crash, perhaps the lack of Service Releases that I haven't installed.

In any case, I'm calling this a success. Thank you very much everyone!