Something else to consider....a lot of the Black characters in the stores are billed as "exotic" in the advertising blurbs. My partner is Black, and she gets really tired of White guys thinking she is exotic just because she's Black. Of course, most character makers would like to think their characters are exotic (I don't see "Humdrum Vicky" or "Ordinary Vicky" in the stores), but please let it be for more of a reason than just that she's Black. lynn

When V3 first came out, there were almost no clothes available for her, which made things difficult. (The same problem I've had with all the non-DAZ figures I've picked up over the years.) Now it seems like everyone's making V3 clothes, even some of my favorites, like BATLAB and Billy-T. While my first choice now is always V3, there are still some really cool clothes that are available only for V2, so I still use her from time to time. (If you get DAZ's Universal Texture Converter, you can convert the V3 skins for use with V2, the V2 character can have the same skin as V3.) lynn

lmckenzie said: "altered my opinion of vrml as being stricyly lo-rez" I have occasionally done conversions of other formats through VRML, when that was the only common format. (For example, one conversion program converts from X to VRML, but not to Y, the other converts from VRML but not X to Y.) It is acutally a very robust file format. In many ways, it is much more versatile than the Alias/Wavefront OBJ format, because it allows you to define something one place, and then use it in several different places with various transformations and rotations, without having to redefine the geometry each time. The reason if has the reputation for low-res is because of the browsers. Since you can move through the VRML scene in real time, and the browser has to re-render the scene each time you move, anything with any degree of res completely bogs down the browser. Life would be a lot easier for us, I believe, if VRML were the standard transport file format instead of OBJ. (Actually, some would argue that 3DS is the standard transport format, I suppose, but that's really hard to work with, since it's binary.)

One tip: You can get different degrees of compression on different parts by using UV Mapper Pro to chop the geometry into pieces and save out the pieces as separate OBJ files. Then you compress each piece the appropriate amount. Then you merge them back together with something like Deep Exploration, or even Poser itself, then save out the new, combined geometry. (If you use Poser to merge them, you may have to tweek the resultant OBJ file to put the group names back.) This way you can simplify the body, without losing all the details of the face. One other tip, since I mentioned Deep Exploration. Any time you modify or merge models in Deep Exploration, it's a good idea to bring them back into UV Mapper and immediately save them. Something about the format (columns, number of decimal places, something) that comes out of Deep Exploration sometimes confuses Poser.

I have used QSlim for several projects, and aside from the fact that I have to re-UV-map them afterwards, have been very happy with the results. I have obtained some very impressive compression ratios. BTW, QSlim is a command-line utility, so if you're used to GUI's, you'll have to adapt a little, but it's not so hard once you get used to it. Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

This is very pretty!

pdxjims... I'm sorry to hear about your mom's death, and your dad's and brother's illnesses. That really is too much to have to deal with all at once. (Actually, any of them would be too much.) Hang in there, bro. lynn

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=8193

Yes, that way should work fine, if it fits into your workflow. We render all our thumbnails...it makes the process of creating both RSR and PNG thumbnails a bit easier for us...so letting Poser generate them doesn't work for us, but your method would be very handy if you can use it. Like you said, the quality difference in the thumbnail is very small. Since I'm rendering the thumbnails anyway, what I do is rather than making the characters gray in the render, I pre-make a gray Vicky and a gray Michael and store them in the characters library. (That's where the utility is handy.) Then I just bring one gray and one non-gray character into the scene, and put the poses on them. So, depending on how you make your thumbnails, this utility could be handy, or it could be useless. The important thing, though, is making one of the characters in your thumbnail gray (or semi-transparent, like maclean does), however you do it. Pose thumbnails that just show what one character is doing are very confusing sometimes.

Well, maybe I'm missing something, but in Poser Pro Pack if I set document, figure, or element style to cartoon or whatever, it seems to have no effect on the render--just on the pre-rendered display.

Well, yes and no. It works on the Poser 4 part on any CR2. It does not alter the Poser 5 material specifications. (Since it was originally designed for Vue users, and Vue doesn't import Poser 5 yet, we didn't put support in for changing the Poser 5 materials yet.) Also, it does not change the transparency, at this time. (It wouldn't be hard to add that support, though.) lynn

Attached Link: http://www.castledevgroup.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index

Guitta...please bear with us. This is our first free item, and we are still shaking the bugs out of the store software that handles free items. Once we get the download software working, we intend to start having many more free items, some of which may appeal to you. Fixing the problem with the download software is difficult, because so far, none of us who maintain the store have been able to make the problem happen. (But our tech guy is putting in some debug code that will help next time it happens.) Thanks for your patience. lynn

Guitta and Sharen...Our tech guy is looking into this. He asks what system (Win or Mac) and what browser you were using when you got the error, and also whether you were logged in to the site. Thanks...Lynn

I tried to make the readme as easy as possible. Once we get the download problem straightened out, please let me know how you like the readme. Thanks.