On other stuff, non-photographic, I've found that working in Hue/Saturation/Luminance does interesting things. On an image like that, most of the effect would be on the blue, though it would affect the general tint too.

Dammit. I dug out the "War of the Worlds" game. I've already wasted most of a day. You bastards! :)

The cut-off shorts can probably be done with a transparency map. A bit of fiddling, but not complicated.

Yes, I know you did it for the Tobi figure (and it's a great improvement over the original). I vaguely recall you mentioning some detail on how you did, on some old thread. It can be easier to re-arrange the texture, as I've done for a couple of free textures.

As I've said before, if older stuff doesn't sell, is it because it's old, or is it because the price looks less good. There are reasons to want to use older items -- less of a load on system resources is one, and the whole accumulated value invested in Mike 2, or whatever. Plus the relaunch of Poser 4 as Poser Artist. Whatever the reason for the disappearance of an item, somebody lost the chance to earn a bit of money. That's a bit careless.

For some image maps a JPEG isn't a good format. For Poser 5, PNG is also a good format.

Transparency maps, which usually have a very limited range of grey scales, are better as PNG, I think. Better compession, and no blurring of edges.

Message edited on: 06/12/2004 02:45

Poser will import .lwo but the files are sometimes a bit awkward, and there can be a lot of texturing work needed. Also the props might need re-scaling to match Poser figures. If all it costs is download time, it's worth a try.

No, Gone With The Wind isn't one of those type of movie. But a B-movie might use some shots from the Burning of Atlanta sequence for a burning city anywhere in the world. Partly because of the studio system, there were a lot of shots taken from big expensive epics and used as background events for less expensive movies. Quite a few from the 1939 version of The Four Feathers show up in British movies of the Fifties, partly because they were in colour. Star Wars has a streak of the B-movie to it. So does Alien. But it's the movies which hitched a ride on the bandwagon which are better examples. You do know that Ronald Reagan might have starred in Casablanca</1>?

There is also a PC computer game of "War of the Worlds", one the real-time strategy sort, which gives the British a bit better tech, and the Martians are not brought down by human disease. Quite absorbing, but the strategy isn't all that deep.

I think a good analogy for Poser is a model railroad. As for the Kiss files, the digital equivalent of the paper cutout dress-up doll, there's stuff around which will offend some parents. It's an easier program for the kids, but check anything you download.

It's worth remembering that the B-Movie, and hence the posters, have their roots in the Hollywood of the classic era, when films were shorter, and the custom was to have a programme of 2 movies, and a "short", and newsreels; something which was more like a night watching TV than the way a modern cinema runs. Often the second movie was a B-movie. They were shorter, lower-budget, films. Cliched, perhaps, and the posters often were, but hardly bad. Also, you might get them re-using sets and costumes from the big movies, but the setting was often the here-and-now, or some commonplace genre like a Western. And a commonplace of the movie posters, for the more action-filled movies, was the torn female clothing that looked as though it might fall off. And a poster image is one meant to sell the film, not get the film or the advert banned. A silhoutte in a window, rather than a full picture, for instance.

JPEG compression can be varied. You don't need high quality for a thumbnail. There's no simple rule on whether to crop or resize. Often, it's best to do a bit of both. The aim is a small picture to represent the full-size image. And if you're uploading enough stuff to need a batch conversion, maybe you need to be a little more selective.

I have a stack of Microsoft Flight Simulator stuff, but I'm well behind the curve. I stopped with FS98, which is still pretty good. But that, and Train Simulator, can still soak up the cash. Hmm, I wonder if there's a way to stick Poser people into FS98 scenery...

As I understand it, it's Poser 4 which needs an RSR file for the image. Poser 5 will read the RSR and generate its own PNG image. It's also possible to convert ordinary graphics to PNG, which can sometimes be a better way to make a PNG than using an in-Poser method.

Looks good, but why can't Posette and Judy be Mad Scientists too? Yes, it is fun being a scantily clad nurse, but that's not the issue. (Seen Kill Bill yet? Even Posette has better feet than Uma Thurman.)