This challenge reminds of "ani-jams" people used to do (or maybe still do?). If you haven't seen one: An animator starts with a character and ends with that character. The next animator in the jam has to start with the last frame and pass it on, always ending on that character for the next animator. What I thought was great about them was how utterly off-topic artists would go in their own segments, sometimes completely ditching the character but always returning. Sounds like a great challenge and would probably look interesting to connect all the entries into an animated sequence. Not likely that I will get to play but it looks like fun!

In calm rational letters, he types: Nasty? But so are products of decaying zombies and obesity morphs but I won't question their right to exist, at Renderostiy or Daz. Why in the year 2003 are we still so freaked out by pictures of genitals? Having done a fair amount of medical illustration involving operations around the "groinal area" (you probably don't want to know) that the product mentioned could have been used for purposes other than porn. Perhaps the ratio would be 10 medical illus. and 3000 would-be pornographers but who cares? It just a picture. What makes the dangling eye-balls and rotting teeth any less gross or objectional? Hoping we can all keep the peace, deci6el

I don't use make up and rarely use beards on my characters and if I needed to and didn't have them I would make them up myself (no pun). I don't like having beards embedded in the texture. even stubble. and that's my light-hearted opinion

I would like to suggest an old costuming trick when asking yourself, "what does this picture need?". Look at the sillohuette. How does the picture stand if it is only a sillouhette? Currently your guy's sillohuette isn't so bad but your heroine melts into the building, the sword stands out which is good. Without changing any lighting at all you could improve the composition by rotating the building around so that the Herione is framed in the space between towers Just to underscore the post by Ainle as I think it is the core advice you're looking for. Ambient settings in materials, too high. This is what makes your wall behind the herione almost the same value is she is. The bottom of her boot is the same value as the top of her boot. The inside of the temple is actually brighter than the front of the wall. These values being close together work well when you're going for a feeling of serenity or softness which is currently in stark contrast to the violence of your characters. So far I don't think that is what you're going for. The angle of the sun is too high for sunset. Your shadows still say 3-4 o'clock, to me.Setting it lower will give you longer shadows and as Ainle said you'll get more drama. Without lowering the materials ambience you'll just get more dramatic mush. The sky should be darker at the top for your sunset/twilight time. I agree with queri, if you have paint solution use it but I would recommend getting the best render possible first. Lastly, I will be posting my similar "problem-child" soon and I encourage you to have a view and "bang on it" as you will.

Aargh! Been to the link, yep, it's there with banners and english links in psuedo-asian fonts but no content. wassup with that? Explorer/Mac, no Firewall, certainly no problem seeing the banners for "cat fight central" but no tutorial, download, games, gallery, nada except for the title of that page at the top of blankness. Sounded interesting but no joy. : (

Ditto, the lighting as per Lyrra. Ditto, the left arm as per maclean. Try the "squint" test or blur the picture, something to reduce the detail down to the basic levels of value and see where your eye goes. The left fist values are so close to the arm as the arm is close in value to the wall behind that it all melts together. There's no rule that every picture should have eye popping contrast. It's all about Your choice and there's a lot of looks to choose from. I'm working on a very similar composition at this very moment, although our content is Very different. So your question has been very "in my face" for the past few days. Right or wrong, I've chosen to focus most of my lighting to the front on the attacker and to get the camera as low as possible. But that's just how I'm solving my problem. Oh, and I don't believe that the set is too small but it is competing with your central characters for focus. I'll post my endevour soon. Good luck with yours.

Ow, the tribe Has spoken! Be-e-a-utiful Tiki-torch!

This just in... With the other Mike character gone, the problem still continues.

cross-talk? ooh, I thought I heard someone use that word in this Forum but I always associate it with audio, or wiring. So, yeah, there is another Mike2 character with no morphs dialed into him. In the character list they have diferent names but are you saying Poser gets confused? BTW, I'm using PPP 4.2.1 on a Mac.

A shameless plug indeed but since you're here, a question re: Legion. First off, great design, great textures, and they make beautiful pictures when rendered... but Man, are they data heavy! ? 640 meg of RAM and my PPP chokes everytime I try to render. Finally stopped the crashing by turning off all the bump maps, which He still looks great without. While I want to buy some of your other products I'm a bit hesitant given the problems I've had with Legion crashing Poser. Can you say anything re: what is the cause other than too many polygons? 640meg seems like a reasonable amount of RAM. G4 733 mHz, btw. thanks, and great looking work deci6el

Never render outside the box, seems to be the moral to this story. Any kind of intersection with "the bowl" and the camara or going outside of the bowl/cyclorama rendered outside polys. The grouping tool did not help. Until culling backfaces is available for Poser on the Mac I will just have to be careful about staying on the inside. Thanks for the help and the interest. deci6el

Thanks for the replies from everyone, sadly the moment you invoke the Poser5 context I am SOL because, as stated, I'm on a Mac. Ronstuff, thanks for a more direct look at how I might solve my problem, other than buying a PC, upgrading to P5, learning C! : ) Yes, can't rely on preview. Yes, "the bowl" does NOT cast shadows. Yes, the camara is inside and not just zoomed in. I will have to see about the lights being inside. What seems odd about the whole thing is that rendering a single frame achieves the desired result. Rendering an animation does not. I have yet to try rendering the animation out as a series of frames, maybe "tricking it" and later compiling them into a movie. Thanks again to all for taking the time to reply. deci6el

imageio.ppc imageioEngine.ppc JpegReader.dll MtsWriter.dll PythonCore Above are the Poser files affected and the LW plug-ins are .p I have tried reloading, I have tried reassociating but Bryce continues to grab them. Thanks for the many answers. I will keep trying. deci6el

Is it a little Freud in here or am I just slipping? LOL, that was supposed to be: "I wasn't trying to sell LW7.." I really wish it were as intuitive as Bryce.

Agent Smith, Thanks so much for the compliment. I was trying to sell LW7 to anybody here (or there) only brought it up because I am currently at the bottom of that particular learning curve and yeah, it might as well be quantum physics, it's dense! I haven't given up on Bryce, I just needed something to get my character into animating in a better environment and Bryce won't let me do that. Good to see this is still a friendly forum. deci6el