The Daz Phoenix has the right face and beak to make a good Toonie Mynah Bird, other than the fact that it looks right now like a plucked chicken. I had hoped that DAZ was going to release some neat add-on paks for the Phoenix- such as FEATHERS. It could also make a nice Toonie chicken, parrot and other cartoon-like birds with a FEATHER PAK. But- put black feathers on the DAZ Phoenix and it would be pretty close to an Indian Mynah Bird. They make great pets by the way, and learn to MIMIC nearly every sound they hear.

Attached Link: Hawaiian Tikis

Attached Link: A Vibraphone

Hey, thanks! Also found Cooler's Xylophone in Freestuff. Would love to see a Vibraphone, which is a somewhat bigger instrument with metal bars, played by musicians like Arthur Lyman and Martin Denny during the huge boom in Exotica Jazz in the 50's-early 60's. Also looking for more Tropical Tiki's, as well.

I will ad this to my collection! I have been playing around with wave models and getting closer to the type of renders using Poser, Vue and Photoshop. I have also purchased Foresters wave sets as well. I don't know if he has realized it (I emailed Traveler about this- but no reply. Lost In Spam maybe?) - but if you use his Micro-Cosm model with water pre-sets (and I have added my own surf wave textures) - his model comes pretty darn close to being a dynamic wave form model- meaning that you could animate it, etc, as well as play around with its shape and form in near real time. What Trav needs to do is add a curl morph to his wave model, and perhaps expand the Micro-Cosm model into being a Full-Blown Surf's Up model. I think he would sell tons of them (of course tonnage may vary somewhat but it would be popular in California and Hawaii, I'm sure)

That's the cost of Xfrog Lite. And the price for a very accurate bundle of tropical or exotic plants is $95.00. If you buy a bundle it comes down to around $80.00 per CD. If you do professional 3D work, spending $200 on 3D models and tools/utilities is not at all unusual. I believe that there are a number of Vue users out there who use it for more than just a hobby. I guess this forum appeals to mostly students and hobby types, but there are a lot more silent professional 3D users lurking out there, I'm sure! Renderosity, RNDA and the others are making $$$ selling models and utilities every day. Think about it.

This would be great if Vue were still making new plants, but they seem to have stopped a year of two ago. I own all they plants that Vue has made, and downloaded others that you (Gebe) have made, and they are really nice. But, Xfrog makes lots of highly accurate plants that Vue and nobody else in the Vue Community has made- Tropical, Desert, etc. Besides, I think most people who are not techie types do not know really how to make their own plants. This is why I have suggested the "Poser Solution" I know that Vue does not support "plug-ins", but they do host Poser files, which in essence IS a type of plug-in. Vue doesn't host plug-ins the way MAX or Lightwave does, but it doesn't have to. If you read my post above, I suggested that Xfrog give Vue their plug-in code to read the XFR files- in the same way Vue reads a "native" Poser file, with all attached maps. Vue doesn't have to re-write their program to do this since they have, in fact, already proved how successfully they can host a non-native model format. Vue also has recently added the Japanese Shade model format too as another example. But the Poser 2 Vue concept would be much closer to what hosting an XFR model in Vue would be like. Vue CAN do this! Xfrog would most likely GIVE them the necessary code. Xfrog isn't going to suffer any loss of technical secrets. Has Poser lost any "technical secrets" by having Vue host Poser scenes? I don't think so. I cannot see any big technical or monetary problem for doing this. Not everyone wants to have to go through a bunch of steps and read tutorials just to bring in a nice plant model. Before the Poser 2 Vue "plug-in", bringing in Poser files could be a REAL HASSLE! If you are a real technie and love techie stuff this is great, maybe. But many people I think would just like to get on with the creative process. In the end I think it would help sell more copies of Vue and more Xfrog plant bundles. I cannot see why this would be such a major deal.

Orio's tutorial is very helpful, but I had previously discoved a lot of this by my own trial and error. I didn't know about using the material summary to update ALL the materials at once. That's a neat and very useful trick! Obviously these are great looking plants and I am very impressed with how accurate they are. Howewever, I would really wish that Xfrog could become the POSER of the plant world, and that it could be as relatively easy to use as Poser is. I think the guys at Greenworks are tecnical wizards but they need to upgrade the interface and file exports. Then it would be a fantastic program and they would sell LOTS of plant bundles and software to people who aren't techie-types. I think lots of people would buy and use an Xfrog-Poser program and the market for new plant models would expand tremendously! BTW, the plant bundle I was looking at was the ASIAN plant bundle. If you buy it (and I checked around among the Xfrog dealers) that bundle, WITH Xfrog Lite, is a little of $500! You must have Xfrog Lite as a minimum to use the plant models, as they don't work "out of the box ((the CD)). If Greenworks is going to sell these model sets they SHOULD improve the XFROG software. I hope they will, as I think they would see a major new market grow for them if they took a look at an Xfrog-Poser concept.