I'm sure I have this somewhere, though it's an awkwardly large model.

Something to check on is how any bump-mapping is done. The "Gradient Bump" option only works when you use the P4 shading engine, in the later versions of Poser. If you have bump-mapping connected to the Gradient Bump, it will be worth changing that the the ordinary Bump input, and seeing what happens.

This was all a long time ago, and P4-compatible materials can do some odd things in P5 and later. From what I've seen, DAZ Studio does an imperfect job of converting materials settings, too.

 What you may need to do for your mixing of textures is to "stack" the blenders.

The basic idea is that a blender node has three inputs: A, B, and Control.

If you want to combine X, Y, and Z, you use one blender node to combine X and Y. and a second blender node to combine the output of the first with Z.

The basic trick you're using is often called a Second Skin, and some figures have "spandex" morphs that can work well with that, with morphs at wrists and ankles that align with material boundaries, and give an edge to the fabric area.

Let's say that X is the base skin texture, Y is an overall mesh pattern, and Z is the solid clothing. Control-Y and Control-Z could be transparency maps. I try to think of transparency maps as a special sort of control-map.

Blender 1 uses Control-Y to blend X and Y, making X_Y

Blender 2 used Control-Z to blend X_Y and Z to produce the final texture.

If you want to experiment with math operations on control maps, it makes more sense to think of a transparency map as an opacity map. Here's why.

The math functions treat white as 1 and black as 0. But black is 100% transparent, and white is 0% transparent. Use opacity, and the percentages and the numbers match up.

But be warned: I'm the sort of person who will do horribly complicated things with math nodes, And then skips all the complexities by using long, thin, tiles as stripes.

 That math node could have converted the texture to a greyscale.

Now, I'm not sure that you need to do that. I've seen greyscale versions of the texturemap fed into the Bump input, so you have two texturemaps to load, but using the colour version doesn't seem to change anything.

Mind you, the explanations in the Poser manuals are pretty poor.

 Are you looking for combat uniform, or more formal duties? The technicalities on precise uniforms can get a bit intimidating, and there was one fairly big change in the middle of your period.

Early: Conscription, still essentially WW2 battledress, webbing, and weapons

Late: Volunteer army, combat jacket, '58 pattern webbing, British versions of the FN FAL rifle and FN MAG machine gun.

The changes happened over several years, as the attached photo shows.

If you have a clothing conversion utility, to use the P5 Female Combat Jacket (they did the combat pants, but not the jacket, for the man--crazy!), you can at least get something of the right look for the sixties.

The Parachute Regiment wore the Denison smock all through the period.

PoserWorld is good.

Useful for some uniforms, etc.

Vanishing Point has the various weapon packs designed by Panko.

Ah, that brought back memories, though not useful ones. My batch code skills are pining for the fjords.

I have a DOS version of the awk utility somewhere, which I used to use for processing the lists of newsgroup names I got from my ISP's news server. Also a version of the gsort utility. But it's been quite a few years since I did anything complicated.

These days, people recommend Perl, and I recoil in horror. I shall have to look into Python: there are standalone versions as well as Poser's internal interpreter.

 Don't forget the Poser Materials Room.

I don't much like the colours they use for the display, but it works. Any tool can work better if the mesh is enlarged, Get the viewpoint too close in Poser, and the selection stops working.

There's a button for reversing normals, and you can select individual facets. You need to set up a temporary New Group, pick the facets you want to change, and reverse the normals. Then delete the group.

You can add a material to a New Group, and reverse the whole material, then deselect facets facing the correct way, and reverse normals again.

The general problem is that the file can contain specific normal data, which Poser ignores. Poser derives the normal from the order of the vertices in the file when the facet is defined, Two different rules, and sometimes different results.

CrossDresser is better than the old Wardrobe Wizard 1 (small-scale distortions were a WW1 weakness), but I wouldn't like to choose between XD and WW2. I bought WW2 and am very satisfied.

Add a Poserworld sub.

I think that is a pretty good combination of investments.

The !DAZ folder has similar stuff for the previous generation of DAZ figures.

SeanMartin sums up the main reason, I think.

If you're going to give up on Content Paradise, make damn sure you have copies of any serial number you may need for on-line purchases.

And if Poser goes into Ozymandias mode (along with Truespace?) it's not going to stop me making pictures. It's a pretty decent tool. with a lot of extras out there.

It's still possible to write a novel with Wordstar, after all.

 It's also on the coverdisk of a new magazine from the same publishers, 3D Artist. That's issue 3, current in the UK.

Checking www.3dworldmag.com I don't see a mention of The Girl for the current UK issue, #118

Confusing two magazines?

The new magazine is at www.3dartistonline.com

 Apparently, Microsoft changed the API for Windows networking and filesharing when they brought out Vista. Based on the queries I see on Linux boards, about recent NAS hardware, I wonder if a network share is currently a wise choice. I suspect poor compatibilty.

(My linux netbook works fine with a pre-Vista Windows box offering file shares, less well with an current-model NAS drive.)

USB isn't brilliant, you can't get anything like full bus speed out of a hard drive, but it works.

Right now, after my experience of Windows file sharing, I'd be inclined toward running two local drives, external USB if need be, with a utility to keep them synchronised over the network. Bonus, you have some protection against drive failure--it isn't a formal backup or RAID solution but it's a better chance. And an external drive might be a better backup than messing around with stacks of DVDs.

 Since you can register with your old username and password, so as to get the long-term history connection, instead of using the "retro" site (which has a limited life) it's pretty clear to me that they still know who I am.

This isn't about them not being able to transfer the old log-in data.

I wonder if they want to clear out unused accounts and other cruft. They could have done that with a confirmation email system.

As for payment security, I'm not in the USA, and the credit-card business in the UK seems to do quite a few things with much more security. We're not immune to fraud, but there's a couple of routine checks on cardholder-not-present transactions which I rarely see from US sites.

(Paypal? Another US bank operating in the EU, and I wonder if there are cultural issues, on top of any possible faults.)

Smith Micro is the second outfit that has done this sort of thing, making life difficult for customers, in the last six months. In the other case I was flat on my back in hospital over the whole transition period, and when I found out about it I decided this site didn't sell anything I needed anyway.

But since Smith Micro own Poser, I suppose, as a Poser user, I'd be stupid not to sign up.

 I've been having trouble with downloading stuff. It looks as though the old store was on the verge of total breakdown. Files were often being reported as 1 byte longer than was actually downloaded.

And it didn't make any difference which browser I used.

Since I started downloading back-ups, the stuff distributed as .exe files has been particularly awkward, but I wonder if there are firewall/anti-virus issues. But no trouble with anything from DAZ.

It's people such as PhilC, working through Content Paradise, who've kept me going there.

Sorry, but I haven't seen any photo that supports the turret shape which you use for the 8-inch and 12-inch guns. I don't see shadows of the turret overhanging the top of the barbette, the shadow effects on turret sides, and the brightness, are matching the vertical armour of the barbettes, and there are plenty of photographs which clearly show vertical turret sides.

Heck, look at your own photograph upthread: all three visible turrets have a vertical edge at the rear. I don't see any way to get that from sloped armour, and still have a vertical turret rear, without some implausible shaping of armour plate.

It's not a deal-breaker. I could make up a turret shell and smart-prop it to the model. I could use it as-is, though not as a US battleship. I'm doing stuff in an alternate-history in which minor navel powers might have bought a couple of pre-dreadnaughts and changed things.