While I think it's great to link to semideau products, in this case I don't.

Good for you.

You can make z-depth renders directly in Poser without buying anything. It takes only 30 seconds to set up. Turn off all your lights. In the atmosphere material, enable depth-cue. Set the color to white.

True.

Please do not encourage people to buy something they have already.

I'm not encouraging anybody to buy anything; I'd like to think that people can make their own minds up about how they solve this particular issue in Poser, and I don't appreciate being asked not to do so.

There are other things in his products worth getting, but if all you want is to do a z-depth render, then ...

I'm simply passing on a recommendation for a $5.00 product which I have found extremely useful, and which takes even less time to initialise than 30 seconds; it includes other useful render modes too.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3619098&ebot_calc_page#message_3619098

I posted some samples here a while back, on the link above.

Here is a comparison, using Aery Soul's "Jolie Fille" hair as a test object.  I was wrong in my initial post regarding transparency, but as you can see, the quality of the 2010 render is not good, IMHO; that aliasing explains the weird fringeing effects I was getting when attempting to use such a render in Photoshop as a selection mask.  The render on the right was produced in P7, using Semideu's depth cue plugin.  Both renders produced at maximum Auto render setting, from the same scene file.

BTW - if you save your 2010 render as a PSD file (having checked the Z Depth option, as the OP suggests), you get a PSD image with the Z Depth render on a seperate layer.  If you save it as a PNG file, you get two images saved, the main render and a separate Z Depth image.  I don't do manuals either!

Here's what I meant in my first reply about the transparency not rendering properly - the wing feathers have a tranparency map to give them their shape, but this seems to have been ignored in the Z Depth render:

Correction - it sometimes doesn't render transparency effects properly...!

I thought it was just me - I get a weird fringeing effect on the edges when using it to post-work some depth of field effects.  It came as a bit of a surprise to me that the facility even existed - I've just written a magazine article about Z-Depth in Poser, featuring Semideu's $5 plugin which produces a Z-Depth render in earlier versions of Poser.  Imagine my horror at realising that 2010 can dot it natively...the article hasn't even been published yet!  Having used it a couple of times, I still prefer the output from the plug-in though, so can breathe a sigh of relief......also, I noticed that the 2010 Z-Depth render doesn't render transparency maps either.

Quote - Use the free python script from Dimension3D to delete the shadow cams:

http://d3d.sesseler.de/index.php?software=poserpython&product=delete

Magic - that did the trick; thanks very much.  And thanks too for the explanation guys, I think the light set I use a lot must be generating these as I go along....!

I think we all have an internal landscape that sometimes we see in our dreams, and sometimes, if we think of ourselves as artists, musicians, sculptors or whatever, we are lucky enough to be able to illustrate in a form that others can see.  That can take a multitude of foms, from scratchings on a cave wall, to the work (for example) of Millais, Picasso, Lou Reed, Steven Spielberg, the Ramones or any other form of visual or other self-expression you care to name.  As long as what you have created reflects that internal vision and is the best you can do with the tools you have to hand, then it's no-one else's damn business what tools you use.  Sure, an awesome ZBrush sculpt will blow your socks off and represents a serious amount of effort in it's own right, but does effort expended= great art?  My own opinion is that no, it doesn't.  I've had this argument over and over, across at CGSociety.com, where the mere mention of Poser causes rivers of blood to flow and immense flame wars to break out -  funnily enough, now that I've started making serious money with Poser, the critics over there have crawled back under their ZBrush-rendered rocks (I was one of the first people in the UK to own ZBrush and I love it, so don't go there), and are now silent.  I also have an honours degree in Fine Art (painting) and the History of Art, and I remain convinced that Poser is a perfectly valid method of creating art, as is all CG.  To attempt to differentiate between various apps and say that the output of one is art whereas the output of another isn't, is to denigrate all CG art, and is tantamount to saying that someone who makes pictures using paint made by company "x" is an artist, whereas  someone using paint "y" isn't...a ludicrous argument.  Art should be a representation of what you want to portray; the only rider I would add is that, if you want to be able to look yourself in the eye is to say that you really should strive to make your pictures the absolute best that you can, if you don't you're cheating yourself and your creations become devalued.  Just my two-penn'orth.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1957603&user_id=4147&np&np

I just bought a Hanns-G 28" LCD monitor here in the UK for £270....I was prepared for it to be a bit below par for that price (I couldn't find another 28" one for under £500), but it's absolutely awesome.  Completely blown my 2-year-old Samsung 19" LCD out of the water - brighter, sharper, BIGGER, and with a 3Ms response time.  Superb at 1920*1200 in Bryce, Poser and Photoshop.  Beyond words with Blitzkrieg!.  Seriously, a big render now looks like a wall-sized poster!

At the risk of a) repeating myself (which I do, all the time!) and b) hijacking the thread, my late brother Jim was an SFX designer on the show in the 1970s......he went on to do Blake's 7 and Red Dwarf, but never forgot the skills he learned with The Doctor.

Blimey; I appear to have opened up a right can of hornet's nests here.....thanks for the sage advice....still awaiting a reply from Sanctum Arts themselves by email though.  I'm holding off using it for the commercial projects I had in mind (some game art and a magazine article) until I get a definitive answer.

Quote - Had a look at their stuff - not to my taste at all. Does posting in a gallery constitute "commercial purposes" or was the comment person using your image gallery as an opportunity to vent?

Dunno....I bought it to make some artwork for a commerical project; I'm sure the person posting has misread the licence.  It has all the usual restrictions you would expect on not selling or distributing the actual content, but I can't find any mention of there being a restriction on your own images.  I've done the sensible thing and emailed Sanctum Arts, so I should get a definitve answer hopefully!

Quote - Oh yeah, is the shaderworks plugin on Renderosity?

Not sure; I got it myself from Runtime DNA.  I'd post the link, but I'm not sure if that's allowed here.  PM me if you need it.

Once I had cast off the shackles of believing that any post work rendered over your render, er, rendered it invalid and was a Bad Thing, I realised that Photoshop + Poser = The Answer!  Convincing DOF, which you can adjust to your heart's content is within your grasp....the only problem being that, unless you're happy doing it each time manually,  you need a z-depth render, which Poser can't do without assistance....check out "Semidue's/Shaderworks" plugins for the solution to that particular Poser deficiency.

The image above is an example of DOF (and some other FX) added in post, via a z-depth render; the DOF was fully controallable and took seconds to add.

And here's how I did it:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1963531

If you're open to the idea of post work in a 2D app, then DOF in Poser is within your reach, effective, and contollable...if you're not, then soldier on!

A bit of (related) light relief...my wife bought an artificial diamond for about £600 from the USA via the Internet a few years back, we live in the UK - two weeks later, the Royal Mail put a note through my door saying that they were holding it at their depot and that I needed to go there and pay £4.80 in import tax, levied by HM Customs and Excise...I went to the depot, cheque book in hand.  I hadn't read the note properly; they actually wanted £480, as HMC&E thought it was real.  I had to pay £480 out, and appeal with HMC&E later.  I lost their internal appeal, and would have had to go to court, with a diamond expert, arranged at my own cost, to counter their argument that it was worth £10,000 and reclaim the fee.  I gave up; it took about two years for me to pluck up the courage to ever import anything again.....reading this thread, I don't think I'm going to bother upgrading.....!