Was only teasing you Darthy ;p

giggles erm Darth, I don't recall Sarah's boobies being that big? But she looks really great, you have the face just right!

Absalutely lovely :)

LOL And here I thought you meant your own works, since as Shelley noted in his poem, nothing was left but the feet of the once proud being. All I could see was your feet. But seriously Paul, why would you expect us to care what you do? Go on for heavens sakes. My point was that we no longer care, the faster the nay sayers go, the better. Go on, please. Here is the door. Right there. See it?

looks for LoboUK's works.....then heads back to having some fun with Poser Oh my, well, we will sure miss you Lobo. You take care now. Have a nice life. Try to keep the blood pressure down. Bye now! (isn't he a nice sweet boy? And so kind and considerate too. With all those fine positive traits, he could only be from New York!)

Shamms is decent as far as all that stuff goes. Not a con artist. Hrm... but then, not an artist either? ;P His techinical stuff, "this is how you do this" is great. My only problem with his one book I had is his sense of aesthetics. It got hard to read it after a while with my eyes closed :) But then, I hear that dorky ugly style of composition and renderings is his trademark look ;p

His supposed forced on us membership to the new place, Graphics Resource Club, instead of an honest refund was possibly the worst insult of all. They never even sent the free book they claimed they were going to send. I did not want books. I have more books than I can shake a stick at anyway. I also did not want a 3 month trial membership to a club that I had no interest in. I believe that all here should be aware of the sort of person Bill Flemming is, and that if he is supported in any way at all, it is in fact supporting the man who defrauded a large community of trusting artists and were literally robbed of hard earned cash. I think I shall write up a large fat warning about him, dig out the old emails, etc, and do it up right into News and Announcements.

He has screwed over people over and over. It is amazing how many times he manages to get away with reselling the same slobber in new packaging too. I do have one of his books here, that I bought before I realized who I was dealing with. In it he writes a nice long diatribe on realistic texturing. Dirt. That is the key. Well hell, I know that. I did not need a 25,000 word article to tell me. Then that dirt article he has repackaged and sold over and over and over. The only person I can think of who does the exact same thing and gets away with it just as much, is in fact one of his 3d University Site/Creature Site co-horts, and it is a shame, since she is very good in her own way. Eni Oken. She too was involved in the scam, and seems to be a major contributor to his books, and if one looks at her products for sale one will find every few months she takes the same slobber and polishes it off and resells it. To a different mag, or a different book, etc. Most of the supposed book authors are in fact not that good. I CAN recommend three EXCELLENT books, aimed at Max users. Wonderful books. Not enough to be said for them. 3d Studio Max 3.0 Workshop by Duane Loose 3d Studio Max 3 Media Animation by John P. Chismar 3d Studio Max Professional Animation by Angie Jones. Now there is a third series, those put out by Bell. He also tends to repackaging a bit, but not as badly as the others, and the man has real talent and teaches things every 3d artist needs to know. He does the 3d Studio Max FX series. I also like the 3d Studio Max Effects Magic series too. When buying these books, go down to your bookstore, and sit a while. Open them up. Read a bit. Find one you can understand. Do NOT buy them based on the pretty color renderings in the center, cause chances are that is not the project you will be taught to make. Go by what they are really teaching. There are also tons of excellent tutorials on the net, it just takes hunting them down. Sometimes time costs us less than money, sometimes not. I like to read myself to sleep studying how to do better Boolean's, so a book comforts my hands in bed ;P Computers do not feel so great when held in the hand whilst prone ;P

If you will list what programs you have, I will help you find good books to learn from that do NOT have anything to do with Bill Fleming. He is truly beyond contempt. I should dig out a few of his crying whining letters to show why I say that. And he makes promise after promise, none of which he keeps. His first issue of his online tutorials magazine went live around march of last year. It was supposed to be 12 issues a year. Then inside a month he reduced it to bimonthly. By May he managed to get another issue up, but little of it was usuable, the subject he tried to cover was too broad. Then not another issue came out. He kept writing excuses, new baby on the way, having to write books to support his wife and child, etc. Then saying the site would go back to live by Nov. Then he pushed that to Feb. Never giving any refunds. No matter how many refunds were requested. Then since Feb all we get out of him are letters offering us a chance to buy this, that or the other at a "discount" that he has arranged for his VAST mailing list he now has and sells. Of couse, since there is a cute code to use to claim the discount, he is making a percentage or commission off those sales too. I never buy. EVER. I would rather pay full price than see him get even 1.00. Those artists were alot like these. Niave. Trusting. All striving to do as well as he clearly could do even with his eyes closed. And he is a charlatan who saw a way to create an internet community and make a fast buck off their needs, then leave them hanging high and dry, since he also knows starving hobbyist level artists cannot afford to sue.

For version 2, it has a STEEP learning curve. That being said to be steep by comparison of what you may be used to in Poser, or Bryce. However if you are used to 3d Studio Max, it is easier. The modeling is done largely with splines, and most of the libraries take a bit of coding knowledge to create ones own unique plant models, but it comes with whole greenhouses and forests and oceans of plants. It also comes with a vast collection of ready to use splines for land bases, and ready to modify and use scenes. That was version 2 :) The good news is this about version 3. It has an EASIER to use interface, no coding is necessary and now one can visually drag and drop a tree branch onto a tree truck, etc. The interface is more truly like 3d studio max, at it's depth, that is in how it functions, not just in choice of icons, then the disappointment to learn those icons did something different. I am told the learning curve will be MUCH easier on version 3. Now if I understood Alexander and his team correctly in some of their posts, if one buys in on version 2 at this late date, the upgrade to version 3 is free. But be sure to confirm that first, ok? One more thing bout those boys, they are the friendliest nicest guys I have ever met. If you need help, they move sooooo fast to help, no matter how silly what you are asking on their forums may sound, or by email if you email. Once I dropped my plant library cd in the floor, and rolled over it with my chair and broke it :( I almost wept. I could just imagine how much it would cost me to pay to get another, beings as how the whole kit and kaboodle cost me around 800.00 (pro version). And shipping costs from Russia, too... mother of god. Ok so I send Alexander an email asking to be told how to get a replacement, and sending my registration information, and the man writes back asking for a snail mail addy, I send that, then inside less than 4 days I got the cd, packed up out of Russia and sent to me :) No charge, not even for shipping. Bless them. The user base is small on their forums. Unlike here, no one speaks harshly, most ask a question, most get in, get out, no one just converses for hours on end and hangs out. But I suppose production deadlines prohibit. However when one posts one always gets a response, usually several, answering ones query. This program has more in common with 3d Studio Max, and Lightwave btw, than it has in common with say Bryce. It is NOT pretty to look at, no artistry in the interface, Kai Krause was not on the GUI team ;P But nothing beats it, in my opinion :)

In the end Scarab, we are all just artists, even those of us who come in from other fields such as pharmacy, business management, or coding. It seems, there is no soul so filled with passion, anxiety, darkness and light, as that of the soul of artists and scientists. And despite the fact the world insists on viewing both professions as being non-political beasts, if we sense that something is about to change to endanger the existence of that which we all love, we will all fight to our dying breath... but after a very short while, most of the artists and scientists begin to realize the sky did not fall, the world did not come to a screeching halt, poser still boots up most times on first try, Posette still looks like Barbie, and renders fine if you pull her legs just so ;P Tempests in a teapot. Nothing to seriously worry over.

Not to disaparage the man's talent, which is considerable, but how many of you got taken by his selling memberships to his pay only 3d Creatures Workshop, and his 3d University sites? All told, the two different memberships came to close to 100.00, to cover a years membership. He ditched both sites after only 2 months, leaving the members hanging high and dry. Now he has packaged the tutorials he was supposed to put up on those sites where members paid to gain access, and sells them in his books. No amount of asking for refunds has worked, he sends out some of the longest winded crying letters I have ever had the displeasure to read, making excuse after excuse on how he did more for the 3d community than anyone ever has, supported us when no one would etc. Short of getting an attorney and suing for the lost 100.00, there is little that any of the thousands who did make the mistake of paying him can do. The attorneys fees would eat that up, so it is just lost money in another internet scam. Now though, I make sure to never buy ANYTHING he has contributed to at all. He defraued a large community of trusting 3d artists, who were talented than saavy.

Naw, I was a passionate supporter of ecommerce and a chance for artists to sell things, even for just a dollar or three, since ANYTHING sold is a chance to call oneself a pro, and put it on a resume, thereby bettering their chances to get real work in this field. I did not know the Dark Souls from the devil himself, just I do ecommerce visualization and front end design work.

The cutie with the candy cane is in the store section here. She is well worth it, and I purchased her :)

Thank you all for your compliments :) It was so much joy for me, creating that little world I put up in the render. I am working now on laboriously porting it out to use in Poser, though of course, the lovely rendering of water and sky will be largely lost in Poser. Landbridge to Annwyfn was created and rendered in Animatek World Builder :) It does the BEST skys and waters out there, as far as ability to render depth such as you see. Version 3 is almost out now, and I am told will make the version 2 I did that work in look like child's play. If one gets the standalone version is a tiny bit more expensive than Bryce, but as you can see, well worth the difference. I went and purchased the Pro version, which has a plugin for Maya, Lightwave, 3d Studio Max, etc, but to be honest, I have not ever liked or used the plugin much. So had I it all to do over again, I would go with the cheaper and equally well equipped plain stand alone version. To learn more about World Builder, and see artwork of my fellow users that will just make you have to sit down and think a while, go to: www.animatek.com No one does it like the Russians, I swear to God. They put the rest of us to shame, when they sit down to code an art program ;P And it uses alot less resources than your average program too ;P