Hi,

I had this very same problem which I raised on this forum a few months ago.  The rain cylinders (I use four of them nested) work very well. Here is an example of what they look like in a scene

Many thanks fixer!

I've used this with the bench and unwantred straps hidden

What I want is just a single buckled strap that can be morphed to gradually open and close which I can attach to another prop (and maybe saved as a character prop to maintain integrity)

Any suggestions as to how I could create this much appreciated!

Quote - I'm sure peemot used to sell some here.  Try sending him a sitemail if they aren't in his store. 

I've got many of Peemot's items but they don't work well for what I really need

I've used belt props and also Dominea's Den restraint bench (with the bench and unwanted straps invisible)  Above is a couple of renders of that bench:

Thanks guys,

TD, you've obviously not had the problem I had - that's exactly what I was trying to achieve!

I actually prepared this scene for my wife who's the Poser fanatic.  I'd just got Vue and she asked whether I could do a rainy night scene based on one of her Poser files. She's now going to do some other scenes based on this which I hope to post when she's done them.

The results have come out far better than we expected and I'm very impressed with Vue8's rendering capabilities - much more realistic than P8's - albeit rather slow.

Quote - *"You ARE using the actual "Alpha plane" object and not a simple plane, right? Did you make any changes to your units in Vue?"

*No,TD - it is an alpha plane (with image inverted in alpha) and I've made no changes from the default.

I'd be interested to see what results you got from using my rain image.

Please do!  I'd be interested to see what you find with it

Thanks Fixer

Found it and I'm trying it out now

Still haven't had any solution to my original question though about the incorrect material placement on an alpha plane.  Any thoughts or is this likely to be a bug?

Quote: *"Hmm, did you download your extras CD?? or did you buy a physical copy?"

• No, mine's a download.  didn't know anything about an 'Extras CD'  How do I get it?

Quote: *"....you should find "rain" under objects/special effects. You can add more cylinders and orient them differently to increase the effect.

The scene file doesn't seem to be in Vue 8...."

And there seems to be no Objects/Special Effects folder either!

TD, I decided to start over with a new alpha plane exactly as per your suggestions and, after setting it up, I let the scene render overnight (I stopped it this morning before it completed). The result is as per the image.

A few comments:

1. As you can see, the rain drops are still much too large and extend beyond the apparent alpha plane (Actually they are identical in size and location as the third image in my original postings so I've replicated exactly what I did before!).

2. The edge of the alpha plane (apparently a cube - see below) can be seen by the artefacts across the sidewalk and road (the corner of the cube is seen clearest at the left hand steps).

3. Obviously, from this, the alpha material setup bears no relation to the alpha plane.
   Why is this? (I tried both automatic and flat vertical on the material as well as linking the plane to the camera with no difference)

Incidentally, I'm having difficulty in seeing the alpha plane in the orthoganal views - the only way it can be seen is by switching to wireframe box view which, bizarrely then shows the plane as a very large cube!

Fixer, I've searched through the object collections and can't find the cylinder anywhere. I tried what you're suggesting as per the Simulating Rain tutorial in the manual and got thoroughly confused as the manual wording is rather imprecise. Also, the tutorial makes reference to a Rain scene containing the cylinder but I can't find that either!

I've got the download version of Vue8 Esprit with latest updates.

I'm obviously missing something so any help will be much appreciated!

Quote - @ Chris V

I suppose you are running Windows?
How did you do the update? Just installed  the SR2.1 and started Poser?
The "freeze after a delete" can be avoided with a reboot. (and wait 10s for the RAM to clear)
Where you running Outlook before? During? What version of Outlook?
Is it steadily and predictably reproducable?

Yes I'm on XP under SR2

I reinstalled the update to SR2.1 and then rebooted - no problems!  Thanks for the info.