Might as well jump on the bandwagon ... 37 here. Mentally I think I'm still stuck in the 80's.

Looks good so far.

I'm not a frequent poster, but I do read the forum daily, and just thought I'd put my two cents in. Looks cool so far. I like the way the eggshell is flying away on the one in the middle. I'm looking forward to watching this develop. I've thought about doing a hatching dragon for awhile now, but it looks like I won't get around to it any time soon. For what it's worth, I was going to do a humorous image with a baby dragon that had just hatched with a warrior looking down at it going "Awww ... where's your Mommy little fella?" And right behind him, looking all evil and mean was "Mommy", blurred a little with DOF. You can take that as you will.

MoonGoat: My roof texture IS world space mapped :D Possibly it's the texture I chose that's causing it to look like that. And I duplicated my base city many times. Many, many times. In retrospect I learned (after going back through and having to reselect 64 individual roof sections) that it would have been a good idea to group them by family before I started.

It doesn't really matter what type of ranking system is used. It's the people using it. I visit another site that currently uses a 1-10 ranking and they were discussing changing to R'osity's method. People mostly give images a "10" over there. I think it's the same anywhere you go. I'm not a frequent poster, either in a forum or on images I view, but when I do decide to post on someone's pic, I try to politely point out what looks wrong to me. I try to avoid subjective issues, like "that ship would be better with more guns" since I know the artist may very well have WANTED it that way. But it seems to me that any ranking system is only as flawed as the people using it. This is not to say that everyone abuses it, but certainly quite a few do, or topics like this wouldn't keep appearing here and other places.

I don't really think your comment was rude, but I do think it might have been better with a little more clarification. I also think comments should be directed towards the image more than the text the artist includes. It DOES say "Your helpful comments for improving this image" in the feedback section. Naturally, I wouldn't expect everyone to offer constructive criticism on my images, but I WOULD expect them to concentrate their comments on the image. If they had anything to say about any text I might have included, I guess I would prefer that they mention it as an aside from their comments on my work. All of this is, of course, my opinion.

A thumbnail should probably be a reduced version of the full image. However, it seems that a good thumbnail is becoming an artform in itself. It's true that if you can see the whole image in a thumb, there's not much point to clicking on it to see the full version. Sometimes though, the thumb image is too tiny to make out details and it's worth it to see the big picture.

By creating a "teaser" thumb, people attempt to attract viewers by tantalizing them with a well placed snapshot. For those of us that like (and are able) to view all images, this has had an annoying tendency to focus on the chest of any females present in the image. I can understand what the artist is doing: Breast shots generate more hits. The other extreme seems to be taking a teeny tiny portion of the image (such as an eye) hoping curiosity will get the better of the viewer.

Do I like cropped thumbs? Sometimes, if they're artfully done. A good thumb will get me to click on it if it looks original, or well placed.

Are people likely to stop using these tactics? Doubtful. :D

The RR figures (from what I read) were supposed to be good for crowd shots, and scenes where having the full version would put a serious drain on the resources of most people's computers. I have DAZ Studio, but I've hardly done anything with it and have no plans at this time to get the Starter Bundle. I MIGHT get the Poser bundle, but the more I read, the less likely that is to happen. And since most of the improvements to Bryce 5 seem to involve D|S I'm just going to sit back and wait for Bryce 6.

Fractal, or Weird, maybe. Looks cool.

"What you're seeing isn't a cause/effect of how good/bad the renderer is, because the P5 Firefly renderer is based on PRMan, which is one of the best renderers money can buy in the 3D world (albeit not the fastest at certain things)." I can't speak for Firefly, I have Poser Pro Pack. I have seen some Firefly renders, and they ARE superb. Also, as I stated in my previous post, this is just a hobby. I don't have the time or patience to milk the program for everything it can do. I just didn't like getting grouped together in a category. I'm also sorry to say that I must agree with several other opinions about Poser images that have been expressed here: A lot of them DO look alike. While I enjoy seeing top heavy women in scanty clothing no real woman would be caught dead in, it would be refreshing to see something different.

Personally, I think if it was rendered in Bryce, it should be in the Bryce gallery. Likewise for Poser.

Bryce renders a LOT better than Poser. I only do this as a hobby and even I can tell a big difference.

And why, if I happen to enjoy creating images of a naked [insert your favorite character here] in a [insert your favorite location here] with a [insert your favorite weapon here] does that make me less of an artist? Not that I'm trying to put my skills on par with all the REAL artists I see posting on here. Everyone has their own idea of what makes a good image. Granted, there are better places to post such things, but as long as they're here, I'll view what looks good and pass on what looks bad, or, in some cases, done to death.

Art, by its very nature, is subjective. You won't like everything you see. But please don't lump all Poser users together and assume we all exclusively post naked women in seductive poses with implements of destruction. Yes, I DO create images like that, but I also do other things as well.

I'm not trying to start a war here, just offering my two cents.

For what it's worth, I recommend Firefox. It's a relatively small download (approximately 7 megs) and is much quicker about displaying web pages than IE. I'm currently on a broadband connection, and I can tell a big difference in the speed between Firefox and IE. Best of all, it's free!