Can you tell that this is going to be one f**ked up year? How many planes, helicopters, shuttles are going to crash each month? Plants and factories going up in flames every other day. Preparing for a nasty war. Economy sucks. My condolences go out to the 7 astronauts, their families, and NASA.

TFTs usually have better calibration for color/contrast/etc, but that still depends on the make/model/OS. :) The good things about quality TFTs:

• Viewable area (17" TFTs are 17" viewable)
• Crispness
• Weight and size
• Digital display requires no A-D/D-A conversion from DVI or ADC ports

The bad things are: - Viewing angle can be somewhat limited, but how often do you view your monitor from the side while working on it.

• Low refresh rate (usually 60-65Hz)
• Native resolution, which means the maximum display size (usually 1280x1024). Lower resolutions require "scaling" of the display which, when not an exact division of the native resolution, can result in loss of clarity.
• Lighting has a more prolific effect on viewing. I use torchier lamps to the side of my monitors (CRT and TFT) to reduce glare etc.

All I have to say, TCSP, is why reinvent the wheel when every ground-based vehicle has them?

Deal! ;)

Don't insult my intelligence and knowledge. 15 years of 'traditional' art, 5 years of electromechanical design, Poser 4, Pro Pack, Poser 5, C4D XL 7, C4D XL R8 w/BodyPaint3D, LightWave3D 7.5, ImageModeler 3, UVMapper Pro, AutoCAD v9 thru 2000, and have used 3D Studio Max on occasion. Plus, I was probably programming 3D graphics when you were in kindergarten (just for the insult... ;). I've tried the "morphs" for Donnie and Marie and they pale in comparison to V3's morphs in every way, shape, and form (literally). And, again, I can never get them to look completely unlike D&J. We're not talking 3rd party morphs or custom morphs or magnets. Right out of the box, there is not much more than Dork and Dorkette. Look, I've seen some great stuff done with Dork and Dorkette, but it takes major work to do it, work that is still going to leave you with a lower quality mesh, coarser skeleton, and toes that don't wiggle. Mind you, these are a vast improvement over Dork and Dorkette, but why they chose such determinate faces instead of something more vanilla as a starting point is beyond me. I make characters that resemble the people who are being used as reference. D&D wouldn't come close with out a complete remodelling. D&J failed to comply. V2 and M2 do pretty well, but not quite. V3, on the other hand, works beyond my wildest imagination. I don't have the time to custom sculpt a Poser figure with magnets and other tools. If I wanted to do that, I'd take one of the real modeling programs (mentioned above) and create the character from scratch. Instead, it's quite nice to have highly flexible figures, unlike D&J. That's the problem with D&J, even V2 and M2 to some extent: they did not have what I 'needed', nor could I find anything to make them be what I 'needed'. Some of us aren't into just making up certain types of people to which happen to be easy for the figure to conform. As an artist who practically specialized in the human form and face, I know when I can attain what is needed and when not. After spending hours trying to get Don to look like someone else, and utterly failing, the five or ten minutes spent making V3 successfully look like that is worth the money.

Which is really a shame since I use Don and Judy, well, NEVER. I hate to harp on CL, but it's been known for a little while that you can take the facial features of what are considered "beautiful" people and come up with an ideal male and female head. What am I ranting on about? Well, it appears that Don and Judy are as far from this as you can get. Don looks like some French business entrepeneur and Judy is just scary. Worst of all is that the morphs do not disguise this very well. I'll stick with V3 and M3 (when he arrives).

Takin' me to task, are ya? ;) Although you'll pay more, LightWave has the better modeling resources. And, in the event that you eventually want to do more work in LightWave, such as rendering, boning, animation, there will be nothing more needed to do so. It comes default with caustics, radiosity, volumetrics, paricle fx, boning and IK, hypervoxels, metaballs, distributed rendering, UV map editing, (I think) HDRI support, and the ubiquitous "much, much more." :)

I have C4D XL R7, C4D R8 XL Bundle, and LightWave 7.5. The Basic C4D would be very good for just modelling, simple rendering, and can be expanded with modules as you need. On the other hand, LightWave comes with a ton of features, some not available with C4D even with all of the modules (hair/fur/grass modelling, for instance). C4D's interface is easier to configure and more configurable. C4D has a shallower learning curve. Both accept plugins. But, for the price, LightWave does alot that the more expensive 3D apps do (3DSMax, Maya, SoftImage) and has a very large user base with more books and tutorials available. Also remember that LightWave will run on either Mac OS or Windows without requiring a new purchase to transfer (just a re-registration). This is why I ended up with both C4D XL and LightWave; couldn't really decide which I liked better! :) The default suggestion in this case is to get the demos of both and see which you prefer better.

No, no, nu-be!! He MUST spend all of his money and get 3D Studio Max 5 or Maya Unlimited or he's not a real modeler! ;)

Oye, Pharsyde! You haven't seen the LightWave3D or C4D manuals, have you? ;) Let's see, between LW3D, C4D XL R7, C4D XL R8, and BodyPaint3D module (for R8), that's 9" thick of manuals (!!!). I've neither read all of LW's or BP3D yet. Why are my eyes crossed? :) As always, all things come with time.

pigfish, God, man! Seek counselling! 85 GB of Poser stuff!!!! :) Yeah, the library with hierarchy is the best thing they could've ever done. No more infinite scrolling or lost items due to overflow (255 is the limit, IIRC).

Yes, I know about what the manual covers, but that's not dual-monitor setup. That's Modeler on one screen and LW on the other. I can do that. Try putting all of your commands on another window on the second monitor separated from the "tabs" displays. No? I didn't think so... ;) C4D beats it hands-down in interface configurability. That might be just about all it beats it in, but that's a nice feature.

1. They have NOT released Poser 5 Pro Pack and have NOT given a date of release - expect it in about 4 to 6 months, at least. 2. Poser 5 does not have all of the features of Pro Pack - there are no importing plugins for other 3D apps yet. This is what will mostly comprise the Poser 5 Pro Pack, one would imagine. 3. Don't know if this will be free or not. Probably do an upgrade thingy for those who already own Poser 4 Pro Pack.

MachineClaw, can you grab any of the command sections, tab views, or toolbars and drag them to a new location or make them a window? I can't. Show me a dual monitor layout.

Breathe-taking! And this is P4 only? Wow! Definitely put that one in your gallery and be proud of it.