It seems like there are a mixed bag of users here, so I'll ask this question...
I've been out of it for the last year, "it" being messing around with 3D; lots of weird stuff in my life, adopting the son of deceased user navysquid ,etc, etc.
Anyway, things are getting back to the point where I have some free time, so I'll ask: I usually use Poser 6 for characters, layout & motion design, then do my "world", lighting, some mainly static props and environment in Vue d'esprit 5, then use the mini-renderfarm in Vue to process things out. There are some drawbacks and limitations to this, but it actually works pretty well.
Do I need to upgrade either Poser or Vue or both? is there a new method for creating 15-60 second animations that has come out in the last year or so that is fantastically better or faster? Or just as good and faster? (I get tired of waiting 8 hours for 4 computers to finish rendering a 30 second animation).
I really doubt that a multi-system-render version of poser has come out, but if the hair room has improved drastically in regards to creating "flowing" hair that looks good in an animation...
I'd appreciate any opinion you might have.

Alright, I made a mistake.
The website is there, as are the contests; I just did a test trying to find the site from various spots around the country, and some parts of the country can't see gotthefire.net.
If you are still interested, you can get there from the original domain name, www.rugifted.com
If neither work for you, please let me know, I'll get the mods to pull this thread.

Well, that just figures.
http://www.gotthefire.net will get you there if you follow the menus. 2 clicks. Unless you just can't get to gotthefire.net in the first place? it's very new, could still be hard to get to from some places, though I checked it pretty darned thoroughly.

Thank you for all the input; It seriously helped with what I'm planning. Note: **markschum, **
I've tried several times, and, like trying to turn off the "bold" on this text, I had no luck. I'm going a different route.
**
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I was here, well kinda here, in LATE 1999 under a different name, but then I dropped out until mid 2001 I think.
My vote would be for PhilC, probably.

Thanks for the tip on DDU; I've got a bunch of stuff I did up over the years that isn't listed anywhere, or that I gave up trying to submit here; I'll check it out.

Quote -
You're mistaken.  Not only are people in prison for breaking the law I mentioned earlier, the first guy convicted under it already had his appeal get crushed:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4183/is_20090105/ai_n31173798

Next batter up is Christopher Handley:
http://www.iasd.uscourts.gov/iasd/opinions.nsf/55fa4cbb8063b06c862568620076059d/20a96a77c04347ed86257480006ae8c5/$FILE/Handley.pdf

I'm pretty sure the 1st one has as it's keyword "obscene"; if you fail the Miller test, you are screwed no matter what the subject matter.
I can't open the 2nd.

Just want to make one thing perfectly clear:
I had absolutely no thoughts, whatsoever, of making anything that could be labeled "child porn" by a reasonable adult. No Milkids, no Laura. I was not asked to do so, either.

I brought up the question in the first place because after looking at 2 of the suggested characters, I thought "she looks to me to be about 17".
None of the poser figures I was asked to use could be mistaken for a "child"; large breasts, curvy & developed figures. Obviously Virtually Mature Characters, capable of making virtual decisions, and joining the Virtual Military.
BUT. I have a 16 year old daughter. she gets mistaken for a college-age student on a frequent basis. Her mom had problems getting in to clubs until she hit about 30, because they thought she was using a fake ID, she still looks about 25.  my daughters best friend is 17, and could pass for 13., MAYBE 15 when she is wearing makeup.
With a real, live female you can check ID's; with a Virtual character, it is up to the person looking's judgement. The point being, unless the character is OBVIOUSLY at least 25 or so, you could potentially be in trouble.
My anonymous friend did have a lawyer look in to this; under current US law, NO Virtual image is illegal, unless you represent the image as being of "real" people, or it is judged to be "obscene" (which, by the way, brings up the question: how can Child Pornography NOT be obscene?). So, technically, it would be as "legal" to do this as any other Porn, but in reality it would be more risky as you can't prove the age of your Virtual Actors.
I could see a Outraged anti-porn crusader going to renderotica and pointing out a few of the "not obviously 25+" pictures and claiming they are obscene images of a Virtual 17 year old; as there is no birth certificate, the validity of the charge would be totally and completely up to the judge and/or jury, wouldn't it? THAT is where I keep hitting the cognitive dissonance, THAT is where I keep thinking to myself "this is really, really messed up".

Quote - dphoadley@lmckenzie
That you for the kind words!  Now, for those of us who live outside of Cambell's Alphabet Soup Land, who is SCOTUS, and who is COPA?  And how does this affect me personally, or the Renderosity community?
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

COPA= Child Online Protection Act.
Made it illegal to have pornographic material on a website without an access code, or "proof of age" message. Some websites took the position that you could not link to a website that contained pornography without being in violation of COPA.
It got terminated by the Supreme Court of The US today, for being in violation of Free Speech.

COPA also had a clause, I seem to remember, that "Virtual Porn" was to be treated no different than Real Porn; that had already been found to be weird by the Supremes a while back, and they said that as long as you didn't try to represent Virtual Porn as real porn, you were cool. I have no ideas if that changed with this most recent ruling.
The way this might affect you: it's no longer even remotely illegal to link to an adult website. As this ruling has absolutely no bearing on Paypal or renderosity's TOS, you still wouldn't be able to post links HERE.

Quote - If model age is a question and your friend still insists on using these particular characters, then why not just morph them a little older to qualify.  Underage legality solved.

That was something I considered. I also have quite a few original characters I could use, if it came down to it.
I guess I was just trying to see if anyone else had the same sense of cognitive dissonance that I did when thinking about the issue; I was concerned that I might get in legal troubles for creating Virtual Pornography, using a virtual Character, with the main point of concern being that the virtual character might be perceived as being under 18 years of age.
To me, if I turn off my higher brain functions for a minute and just look at the characters, they do appear to have the outward appearance of being modeled on a 16-18 year old female; I know I'm not going to create something that could be misinterpreted as being a video of a real, live female; anyone who sees it is going to know it's CGI. While it is illegal in Germany, for instance, to make or see something like this, it isn't in the US as long as there is no attempt to make people think a real live underage female is involved.
Then, there is the purpose; my friend is setting up a adult website. While i have gone to adult websites to look for pose, texture or lighting research, that is not the reason 99.8% of people go to them; the thought of making money from something like this is...weird.  I don't have any moral opposition to pornography, heck, I like pornography; I've had an account on renderotica ever since they opened. But I never conceived of myself as a commercial pornographer.
Along with most of the country, I'm hurting for money right now; If i could generate some extra money to help buy groceries for my kids by doing a few renders, it would be a major plus.
But the cost is, I think, too high; if the idiots who think teen characters in The Sims 2 with censor blur turned off is child pornography, what the heck would they say about this?

Out of curiousity, does renderosity ban links of this sort for Legal, Moral, religious, or aesthetic reasons? Or is this know?
I am not trying to say in any way that it is a bad thing that they do; it is THEIR website, and can play by whatever rules they want.

Quote - Place the eyebrows on the head face texture itself and use a bumpmap for the whole face. Don't bother with the eyebro geometry. Just turn them invisable or use the hide brow morph.

They had thick heavy brows back then compared to the plucked streamlined or even penciled in brows of today.

Pretty much what I was planning on, except possibly with some displacement mapping thrown in.; I was hoping someone could suggest something I hadn't tried before? The texture mapping method doesn't seem to work quite right when I render the results in Vue D'esprit; my current project allows me to do some rendering in Poser, so any face closeups can be done with firefly.

I really think her eyebrows are, I don't know, different. those suckers are way up there.

Let's see. Mayadoll from studio maya; anime doll is based off her.
There were so many Eve's it's hard to keep track. I've got at least 4 distinctly different versions
Renda, from renderosity, which died pre-release.
Dina from DSI. there is a Vina D also which has meshes similar to vicky.
Dacort's Natalia.
There was a Millennium Woman before Victoria & before Daz3d was Daz3d. Late '98.
There are a bunch of original Japanese figures I can never quite find a place to get.

While I can do decent dynamic hair, my attempts at conforming hair have ended up looking like the hair on Poser version 2 characters.
Not Pretty.

I've been wanting to do a new freebie. I could maybe do a dynamic betty page hair?