EnglishBob - strangely enough, background colour does seem to matter even when the background is going to be masked out. Poser appears to take this colour into account when it anti-aliases the edges of the figure. It's a very subtle effect, and you may never notice it (especially if you use Poser's default greyish background), but I was rendering-out some animation frames using a high contrast magenta background, and when the resulting figure was composited onto a dull, monotone background image he looked like he had a faint pink glow all round him.

Of course, it might just be the way PSP7 handles alpha channels ;) but thinking about it, anti-aliasing works by averaging-out high contrast areas of colour, so Poser has to work off something in order to apply AA to the edge of the rendered figure. Even if that 'something' is a background colour that isn't going to be part of the final render.

Message edited on: 11/20/2004 01:39

You're welcome :)

Attached Link: http://dave.firebin.net/gallery/Ammo-dor/DSCF0137

Mapps, I'm working on a new weapon freebie, a Browning M2HB, so I've been rooting round the web for references for several weeks. Just last night I came across this photo gallery with 34 hi-res images of a .50 cal ammo can being converted into a cigar humidor. It'll be a while before mine gets done, so I thought I'd pass the reference on.

Cheers

• Graham

Weird coincidence - I have a Radeon 9200 and installed the Catalist drivers about five hours ago (to improve the performance of a 3D game) so I just downloaded the UVMapperPro demo and spent the last few minutes trying to make it crash, so far without success :) Does this image shows what you were trying to achieve - vertices selected with the marque tool? BTW, I got my copy of Catalist from a magazine CD (PC Format). If you've got any newish cover CDs lying around you might want to check them - the game-oriented magazines in particular often put the latest ATI and Nvidia drivers out with each issue. Oh, and last but definitely not least, if you do decide to install Catalist, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST! 'cause I didn't and that's why I spent most of last night trying to get my computer to work properly again:( My specific goof was trying to install the catalist drivers without first un-installing my existing ATI drivers. I ended up with a mishmash of files that left me with a totally garbled screen. Having learned from experience, I can offer more detailed installation info if you need it LOL Cheers - Graham

Thanks for all the tips and advice guys, a repair/reinstall did the job.

Freestuff production can now re-commence ;)

cheers

• Graham

Message edited on: 11/07/2004 22:52

lmckenzie, looks like a reinstall might end up being my only option, so many thanks for that link - there's some very useful information there.

cheers

• Graham

lmckenzie, I went looking online because the original error message reported that SHLWAPI.DLL was missing. BTW, I tried extracting the file from WIN98_41.CAB but it was an older version than the one I'd found online. I gave it a whirl anyway, but no dice. I'd already tried copying over the .dll from the old computer. On the plus side I'm now building a handsome collection of shlwapi.dll files ;)

Message edited on: 11/07/2004 00:05

...which is almost exactly the same thing that this guy did. I found his post via google:

"The last thing I remember doing was loading a cumulative patch for IE 6, SP 1. When the download/install was nearly complete, I checked IE 6 and saw that I already had this patch. I figured I'd let it complete and just overwrite what I had."

That, apparently, is the specific action that makes any system, 98 ME or XP, go pear-shaped - letting windows install the same IE6 patch twice.

Les - I'll remember that registry tip for future reference, but unfortunately it didn't work this time (no back-up available).

The trick still seems to be getting the most up to date copy of SHLWAPI.DLL

The first version I tried was about 25K, rummaging on google I found a 284K version which let windows load much further before coughing up a common-or-garden error message and shutting Explorer down.

Thanks for all the input guys - I've got the CD for a reinstall, but I think I'll pursue the .DLL route for a while longer (reinstalls make me nervous LOL)

cheers

• Graham

Attached Link: http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcrtd

Excellent little prog, but initially I got the following error message;

'A required .DLL file MSVCRTD.DLL was not found.'

If anyone else is having the same problem, a quick trip to www.dll-file.com will sort it out :)

• Graham

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=gps&Topsectionid=0

I've got a 'natural' texture for V2 that you can use if you want. - Graham

Minty1974, I'm actually a pretty slow modeller, I've just been doing it for a long time, so I've built up a library of parts I can reuse. Think of it as cyber-recycling ;) - Graham

Er, glad you like the idea Byrdie, but no sacrifices are necessary ;)

Okay, here's my first attempt at 'sticking-the-bits-together'. Made entirely of Galactica surface detail bits, variously scaled, mirrored and tweaked.

Rendered in Poser 4 with a global lighting set. I lowered the gamma a bit in Paintshop to compensate for the lack of textures, which was making it look a bit ghostly LOL

As for scale, well it's definitely not a capitol ship! More like a destroyer or frigate perhaps?

Should look better (and bigger) once I get a texture on it ;)

• Graham

Message edited on: 09/08/2004 22:04

If you have a look at my gallery you'll see that I'm working (very slowly) on a model of the Battlestar Galactica (remember the TV series from the 70's?)- attempting to duplicated the detail level seen on the original studio miniature.

In order to do that, I literally have to model the plastic kit parts that were stuck on to create the detail in the first place. By now I have quite a lot of these virtual 'kit bits' and it occurs to me that I could use them to cobble together some generic vessels - assuming that you're after that 'knobbly' ILM/Star Wars style.

Obviously the detail level would be well down on that of the Galactica, maybe around 5-10,000 polys, so that multiple ships could be used together. I'm thinking maybe the space fleet equivalent of Moebius87's dystopia city blocks - ideal for background detail, while still able to hold up under medium-close observation.

Freebies, obviously, with no commercial restrictions. Sound like a plan?

Cheers

• Graham

Attached Link: http://www.staigerland.com/amapi/poser/index.html

Step-by-step info on how to set Amapi 6 import/export options for morph-making. As x2000 said, it's pretty easy actually.

BTW I've been using Amapi for years - all my freestuff's made with it. Combine it with UVMapperPro (A6 can import/export .obj files, but looses the UV mapping) and you've got Poser content creation nailed :)

• Graham

Cool idea with the spotlight, That would never have occurred to me, but then Poser lights aren't something I mess with. I've always worked on the principle that they're relatively harmless unless provoked ;) As a result, I understood approximately a third of your last message LOL I recommend starting a new thread specifically about parenting spotlights - hopefully you'll snag a lighting guru! - Graham