Thanks, randym77. Stew did a beautiful job on the rat's fur, and I will try out his render recommendations, excerpted here for completeness:

"I found strand-based hair looks best with mapped shadows, a high number of pixel samples (7 or more) and a gaussian or sinc post filter of size 2."

In the meantime, I have found that setting the dynamic hair to be invisible to raytracing greatly speeds up rendering, although the figure's ground shadow then looks disconcertingly bald. To compensate, I increased the light's Shadow Blur Radius to 5, which makes the ground shadow blurry enough that the "baldness" isn't apparent.

Thank you, templargfx, particularly for explaining the Gravity parameter. It makes sense now. Armed with this information, I can start to make reasonable tests and experiments to refine my animations.

Also, operaguy in a thread in the Animation Forum reinforces your point about Position Force: "My suggestion is to start with "Position Force" at a high value, say .03 which should make it not move at all in a simple animation. Then, lower it gradually until you get just a little motion. Once you gauge the temperment of "Position Force" you could try altering the damping settings."

It's a long, four-page thread over there, getting into the Poser vs. other apps debate at points, but it basically ends up re-affirming the delicacy of strand-based hair settings. Here's a link:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2570850&page=3

With your help, perhaps we can end up documenting a workable min-avg-max range for the most sensitive parameters, so that all of us Poser dynamic hair enthusiasts can build on our strengths. Thanks to you and Kirwyn, we have a start. For example, it sounds like we are suggesting Bend Resistance: Min = ?, Avg = 0.84, Max =  0.92

Still, since most of my work is animation without much close-up work, I think it will be worth the effort.

I'm using Kirwyn's marvelous Genesis Hair, and have played around with the default Dynamic settings, but they appear to be very sensitive and tempermental.

With that in mind, I'd very much like to get your thoughts and feedback on the default Dynamics for this hair, shown above (Sorry about the size - I don't know how to show it bigger, but if I click on it in Preview, it opens a window where the image is larger and the text is legible). These settings work quite well during movement, but the "settled" position hides much of her face when the character is standing still.

Speaking of tempermental settings, the Gravity parameter is a very, very small number, and is negative. That seems counter-intuitive to me, but when I changed it to a positive value, the hair floated up. Strange.

Thanks, nruddock. Looks like 3Dream did a nice job with the USC set.

I don't suppose you know who "Stew" is? I'm still curious to see how he adjusted his render settings for dynamic hair...

randym77, can you tell us where to find 3Dream's textured skull caps? I haven't been able to find them in either the Free Stuff or the Marketplace.

Also, I would like to try the render settings you mentioned, but my search of the forum on user "Stew" found nothing. Does Stew have another name in the forum and/or galleries?

Thanks,
Rick

Thank you very much. 'Last Refuge' looks like a great setting for a momentous event, or a quiet interlude. In other words, a setting limited only by the artist's imagination. Thanks!

Thanks to everybody for responding. It reminds me that I've learned most of what I know about Poser right here in these Renderosity threads.

I don't want to impose on Ockham's Python expertise, and I'm not comfortable enough with magnets to try Les's insightful suggestion, but I've played around just enough with grouping in the Cloth Room that dadt's and svdl's proposed process seems the most suited to my mid-level skill set.

Thanks svdl for listing the proposed method in a step-by-step format. I will give it a try and report back with my results.

Thanks, and Happy Jiggling,
Richard

I wondered about that too, and tried both raytraced and shadowmapped shadows, and various kinds of renders to trick P5 into creating the shadowmap cameras, but nothing I did seemed to do the trick. I ended up saving my figures and animations and re-creating the scene in the default, empty scene. It wasn't that much work, and now I'm a happy guy. Still curious though: some day I hope to find out how to create them on command, in case I run into this scenario again. Thanks for the suggestions and help. I hope I can return the favor some day. Ricky

Thanks for your responses. I started testing again, from square one, and found that ground shadows work fine in a default scene. I investigated, and noticed that the scene includes three special cameras to match the three lights. They're called: Shadow Lite 1 Cam Shadow Lite 2 Cam Shadow Lite 3 Cam These are the shadow mapping cameras built by Poser, and I've used them before to zoom in and improve shadow edges. But I've just taken them for granted otherwise. However, in scenes I've built in P5, these three cameras aren't listed, and/or don't exist. These scenes are also the ones where ground shadows don't display. This brings up two questions: 1. Why doesn't the scene I'm working on include these three additional cameras? 2. How do I create them, or copy them into the scene? Thanks, Rick

It's me again. I meant to add that I've tried both Firefly and P4 rendering, draft and production, and I'm running SR2.1. Rick

Jim, Thank you! I really appreciate your quick and generous response to our requests. These enhancements to the Las Vegas hair make an already great product even better, and I plan to try out the LT version and the new morphs on a current animation project. I hope this doesn't seem ungrateful, but I'd like to suggest a Windblown or Billowing Morph for LV hair's sides. This might only be useful to us animators, but I would love to see my models' hair fluttering softly in the breeze as they walk. Thanks, Richard

I've been enjoying the wonderful Las Vegas hair since I bought it, and fortunately I haven't had any of Nukeboy's problems. Even though I have a GB of RAM, I like the idea of the "lite" LT version Jim offered to make. I would use the LT hair on Reduced Resolution Vickie(s) to populate my backgrounds. To save you the trouble, Jim, can I use Morph Manager to remove the bigger morphs? If so, which morphs would you recommend removing? Thanks, Richard

Glorious! Thank you, Rena. The rich brocades and bejewelled ornamentation shown in your image do justice to the legacy of two of Byzantium's greatest nobles, and capture the feeling of a time when the ancient legacy of Hellenic Rome was evolving into Orthodox Christianity. As you said, Justinian and Theodora were a tremendous creative force in history, commissioning the Code of Justinian and the Hagia Sophia, and sending armies to win back large portions of the Mediterranean world from the barbarians. But I'm glad you mentioned the lesser known achievements too: Theodora clearly inspired a great deal of what they did. I'm looking forward to playing with the elements you've so kindly shared with us lovers of the under-appreciated, thousand-year-long Byzantine Empire. Thanks, Ricky Java

Thank you for sending me the manual. I'm very glad to see that you've included four motions for Vicky, since animating her is my interest. It looks like I will need to buy the Poser Pro Pack in order to use the Michael motions with Vicky. I've been thinking about buying PPP anyway, so that's okay. Though I was determined to slow down spending at Renderosity, I'm sure I'll be buying your item soon. Thanks again for all of your work, and then for offering it to the rest of us at a reasonable price. Judging from bounce.mpeg, it is a labor of love for you too! - Richard

wolf359, Thanks for offering your custom BVH files. I've done a few animations, but never with the help of BVH. I'd like to learn more, and take advantage of the kind offer in your first announcement, and take a look at the seven-page PDF manual. If you can, please send it to Richard_Coffey@hotmail.com. Thanks in advance. Also, you mentioned in your earlier post that this set includes 'a sultry walk for victoria with no "Knee problems".' Can you tell us if this would work for a Vicki 2-based character wearing high heels? As I'm sure you know, the Walk Designer doesn't do high heels. Finally, I really enjoyed the "Vicky 2 Struts in Cinema" movie you posted some time ago. Beautiful work, and the soundtrack made it a total package. May I ask if the walking animation seen there used the same BVH file you're now offering in the Marketplace? Thanks, Ricky