To be honest the image is drastically different from what CGTalk and Conceptart expect. They want quick dramatic 2D paintings OR production-grade 3D stuff. Unless it's a WIP. If you want 3D you have to do it good, like those things ZBrush/Mudbox do. And you notice the large analog influence over there? One tip: Shaders and postwork. Try making your own materials with variable bump/specular/reflection and great skin. Also try painting over the 3D image (rendered large) for a grittier, bolder look- especially for the terrain, which would look magnificent and much better with Painter X and a tablet in a few strokes. You might think of these processes as long-drawn and tiring (perhaps even longer than the time it took to assemble/pose), but the devil is in the details. IMHO Poser should be more of an indirect stepping stone to awesome 2D art (and if you sculpt using Digital Clay, 3D). It's own output would be just passable. The same applies to a lot of 3D actually. Most of them go through a professional compositing app to make it more dramatic/composited on matte paintings. If Poser renders are not stylized to a stage where they look like work done in 3ds or Maya or Houdini, they will be subjected to scrunity to anyone outside the Poser Gallery- uncanny valley and perception of unfinished pieces at its work. It's definately not insecure people trying to be dicks- the people there would be damn proud of their stuff, like any artist would. Arrogance? Maybe a little, but it happens in the music world (technically proficient artists hurling insults, etc.) and to an extent it's justified. Unless Poser renders are never to be compared to "professional" 3D art, which looks to be quite okay among lots of R'osity artists. :)

Actually, EVERY preset turns out the same. Wowzers. Again, anyone to confirm?

Well, I use the shift key when deleting- so that's a no-no for me.
If anyone can help by PM for a folder that has the basic scripts/resources (encrypted and all, for private use) for restoration, I'd really appreciate that. :D

Jim, using Messiah does mean he has to rig over. ;)
Looking at how-badly unified the Wavefront format is, you might even need to re-UV coordinates. Much better off making a seperate character in LW and port to Messiah with minimal problems.

p/s: Vicky 4 has great joint area handling, but it screws up morph data support. So it's Poser's fault still. :D

Hmm, I didn't consider about full body details, since I'm much more of a potrait guy (no big boobs swaying around here).
Still, I despise how overwhelmingly obvious the "realism traits" are in quite some textures:  big freckles, big (scale and magnitude) displacement till the age of 45, and the lips. Maybe it's me again, but some improvements seem to bring the uncanny valley to the next level. Textures won't look convincing until the shader and lighting react like it does in real life (or those contrasted catwalks, who knows.)

Vektor's "Princess" images are more akin to what I'm mentioning (without the smaller spots and subtle freckles though). It might appear to be full of makeup and a "perfect" skin, but as far as dodging that "Poser/D|S" look, it suceeds, no doubt.

/Semi-OT. :D

With exception to Realism nodes and skin tones, I do NOT see how any 3rd party texture here does reinvent the character. Morphs yes, textures? Not much.

Good study of lighting, lots of experiments with mat nodes, at least one diffuse IBL and that essential Realism kit would do the default much more un-toony good than another texture. :) If you can't afford to make a specular map, careful processing in PS, preferbly a matte image, would yield roughly the same results, maybe even better.

iTunes also had user privs problems.

I think the way that I avoided all this was that my installation was NOT clean- it was an upgrade (despite all the objection from the holy saints, it runs remarkably fast). I have 2 accounts- originally one Power user/Admin (as they call it in XP) account, and one limited account.

I suggest this:
Booting into safe mode
Logging into admin
Make new account with AS MUCH privileges as possible
Restart, boot normally, log into new account
Install P7. Try XP compatibility too.

With you (almost) on top of the "privilege" chain, installing P7 would be smooth.

mike302de, http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1559 is the current best driver for nVidia cards. You might need to copy the modified inf file and install manually through Device Manager, but everything after that is a breeze.

Yours seem to look like it was integrated into a nForce motherboard. Still, my advice for the 100.54 drivers are ALWAYS RUN IN AERO. They're finally good enough to support your system that way, and reverting back to old GUI had some devastating corruption on the screen that needed a restart.

Still, it works, and kicks the ass outta my imagination (I thought my FX5200 couldn't stand a chance with OPGL + Glass. It's like double suicide)

As far as I know, there is an ample market for GOOD-INTERFACED animation apps that cost considerably less than the new Autodesk-ed Motionbuilder Professional versions.

Of course, the people that complain about proportions in a figure but only render flat-looking images won't be the ones using it. CGSociety members- that's more like it.

But CGsociety members do use Messiah. :D

Naturalmotion endorphin. Bucktooth

Didn't Messiah: Animate already do that WITHOUT existing stuff? It's much cheaper than youknowwhat...

Asking for cheap non-platform locked rigged content is unreasonable. It'll never be cheap- static figures are rather expensive these days and Turbosquid MAX models cost a ton. They might not work as well as expected, because animation is a different beast overall. V4 would have too many polys for efficient, practical animation usage. Masha, TS' offering, costs 175. Not much compatibility with clothing, props, and her face isn't unbiased like 3rd party figures are.

I'm hoping for DAZ|Studio but DAZ does seem to care about selling more copies of Victoria using Studio as a catalyst. Just my opinion though.

i) Graphics card and OpenGL.

Try running Poser after Start->Run-> net stop usxms
It disables Aero so OpenGL might work better.
We need details on your graphics card BTW.

ii) Did you INSTALL P7 in admin mode? To get registry settings correct, installing with an admin account is always recomended.

Surely it's Hiro with manboobs.
I can't imagine of anything else.
=/

She doesn't look like a real one- way too little makeup and... whoa, NO freckles? :D

Err... Vista uses Server 03 code. They tried XP- oops I mean spaghetti, it wasn't good.

That's the reason Vista doesn't look to be much but is a blessing when used for long terms- OS itself never crashed ever since my November install.

I have Vista RC2 (not even final!) and it runs great, so does V6Infinite.

Just your graphics drivers. If you're using nvidia ones, get the new Forceware X betas. If you're using AMD/ATi, why even complain? Catalyst is stable and awesome.

And talking of DRM- if you don't touch it, it won't touch you. So much for FUD (oh wait, this is R'osity. :D)

I have Windows Vista.

Maxwell (that 4GB RAM using freak) runs, Poser does even better.
It's not stellar though- I'm using SreeD + 2005 nVidia XP drivers, and I minimize Poser while waiting for the program to snap back into consciousness...

Must be Vicki4. She rocks- basically everything, even my PC. Syd and James G2 work well and are responsive. (Athlon XP 2500+, 768MB RAM, Vista RC2 with User Account Control disabled)