IMHO, a LOT of otherwise sophisticated 'rosity folk don't know about focal length. Otherwise they would never do the Marketplace thumbnails of their characters in ugly fisheye default 38mm. (I swear we see that more often that not!)

I default 55mm distance, 100mm closeup, but of course fls13 is right, you want to play around depending on what you're going for in a particular shot.

But the student discount isn't a steal like shop-lifting, it's just a sale price. (If you refuse to pay a weekend sale price, but wait until Monday to pay full-price, you're not "ethical," you're just a sap.) The stores don't WANT to be shoplifted from. They actually DO want the student discounts used by people who won't pay full price, even if those people aren't students. (Granted, they won't admit this, because they don't want people to think about multi-tier pricing and what suckers they are to ever buy in at the top tier.)

The key, again, is the student discount is not below cost; the company offers those discounts for sale, makes a profit on those sales; transacting one of those sales with them hurts them in no way. Not remotely comparable to shoplifting.

I will say this, though: if the student discount contract actually prohibits the student from reselling the product (though few do, anymore, since the courts have made it clear this prohibition is not legal), I do not consider the student a sap or sucker for refusing to resell it. Standing by what you sign your name to is an ethical decision I respect; similarly, I would never forge fake school credentials to my name to obtain a student discount. Although I know no one would be harmed or cheated in any way by this, the habit of misrespresentation or signing lies just to make life a little more convenient is too dangerous to pick up.

Still, I stick with my original point. A student discount is not like a handicap parking spot. There's no moral reason not to let a student broker one to you.

I'm generally pretty strait-laced on these piracy ethics questions, but I would point out a few things about #4:

a.) unless the Rhino student discount specifically prohibits the student from reselling it to you at his cost, it's hard to argue that it's even unethical, much less illegal. He's a student, he uses his discount. He has paid for the software and is entitled to dispose of it as he wishes.

b.) I don't see how whether you're going to use the software professionally or not affects the ethics of the sale at all. Do you hurt Rhino in some way by using the product professionally as opposed to using for a hobby? Of course not. On the contrary, your professional use is likely to provide free advertising for Rhino.

c.) You don't ask whether the student discount is an ethical policy in itself. Actually, it's just a disguised version of the sort of kickback pricing that is considered unethical and illegal in some sorts of anti-trust law. (Though not by me.) Yeah, if you look at it from one direction, it's a public-spirited way of putting the software into the hands of students who don't have much money. But if you look at it from the other direction -- just as accurately -- it's a way of getting as much as you can from poor students while charging more well-to-do people a surplus price. I personally have nothing against charging what the market will bear, but don't tell me this is a morally or ethically elevated policy; it isn't.

d.) If there's no way you would pay the full price, Rhino is getting money they wouldn't otherwise have gotten from you. You in turn must do some little favor for the student to secure his participation, so if Rhino's policy really was motivated by a desire to help students, that too has been accomplished (a little).

e.) And in fact, to generalize the argument from c.) companies who set up these discounts don't really care if the students "cheat" because in fact, that's part of their profit-maximizing scheme. If the student doesn't feel like using the discount for himself, it's better for the company if he employs it for someone else who wasn't going to pay the surplus price anyway. Of course, you have to protect the surplus price by only offering so many discount slots; the student can only buy one copy, for instance. Every big company I've ever worked for that offered an employee's discount understood that we employees would broker deals for our family and friends; they understood that by telling our friends or family we had the discount we were in effect running a sale for the company, and an effective one; they just set a numerical limit on how much we could buy so they could maintain an everyday non-sale price as well.

So, the "students only" thing is really just a fiction employed by the company, one of many marketing tools like volume discounts, group discounts, seasonal sales, etc.

If a special discount actually priced the software below cost, that would be something else again. But of course, with software, that possibility doesn't come up -- is indeed laughable.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who goes on and on about how all high prices are theft, blah blah blah; the software business is no bed of roses, some of the best providers don't break even, and I'm always happy to pay the non-pirate price for good programs. (If they're really overpriced, like Photoshop, some competitor will provide nearly all the same functionality at a more reasonable cost; or I will eventually find an Adobe discount that applies to me.) But scooping the student discount price, or your sister's employee discount price, is no more unethical than taking the upgrade discount price. The company has alotted all these price slots in its marketing plan, makes its profit, and no one is harmed.

While there's a lot of good information above, am I the only person who thinks that the shadows in this image actually look pretty good? The figure's right breast shouldn't be showing a bit more shadow than it is, and the left breast's dark penumbra is exactly where it should be. Yes, south of that line the breast is showing some reflected or ambient light instead of the dark shadow you see on the arm, but it's not nearly in the same plane as that arm, and this kicked-back light (slightly green, as if reflected from the grass) looks like something you might well see out-of-doors.

I'm persuaded it might be a little darker if not for the shortcomings of shadow-mapping. But IMHO it looks great just the way it is.

Another Bill

Or if you can't find a free place, sell them here for $5.00. I'd cheerfully take the first set.

Momcat has some good suggestions there. The shirt pattern and separate collar is a great way of making Mike's shirt look a.) better than its usual plastic self and b.) in period. Good choice! If you want to be obsessively, iconically noir, having both characters looking in our direction -- the classic noir cheap camera setup -- is good, (though momcat is right about more interaction), but where is your classic venetian blind shadow? (I think SnowSultan has posted a freebie gel for this.) It would also be nice if the hat looked more fedora, less western. (Though I seem to remember Ricardo Cortez's Sam Spade wearing a hat like your hero's in the first movie version of the Maltese Falcon.) Anyway, most important thing, don't let these nitpicks discourage you. You've made a very good start. Bill

So is that crash problem only with props? Figures okay?

Or a shoe/boot toe, as Victoria 2 has?

THANKS A MILLION, DODGER!

I'm getting ready to launch my first project and this is just exactly one of the things I'd bogged down in and was about to leave plaintive little messages about. Now I don't have to.

I really needed to know this. Thanks again.

Bill

Got it, just didn't read the tutorial closely enough. It's an .obj I squish, so I get an .obj file the customer can load as a morph, and all I need to do is enclose a readme so the cust knows it's there and can find it.

Thanks, guys! I think I'm up to speed at last.

Bill

Thanks, Little Dragon! The tutorial gives me almost everything I need.

Except:

Okay, I've squished the morph, and now have this shortish .csr file that can't be opened as a figure. How do I package this? What folder should I put it in, and what do I tell the customer about how to apply it?

I mean, if the customer tries to load it as a morph target, won't Poser be looking for an .obj file? How does the customer load it?

Cluelessly,

Bill

Yeah, you've got to use Objaction Mover to convert the .pcf seedfile.

Did you find the "how to install Azura" file at Morphworld? It's coming to back to me that maybe you get a no-file-found when you try to download those instructions. If so, go back and get the "how to install Eve" file instead -- it will tell you what you need to know about decoding the .pcf.
(Objaction Mover can be downloaded free here at 'rosity. Don't worry, everything should work, you just skipped a step.)

Bill

Nothing wrong with your memory, that's just something Poser often says when it's upset. Is there an "Azura V4.obj" in your runtime/geometries/p4 nude woman/ directory? That gap in the file name worries me.

As it happens, I just recently downloaded Azura and Eve myself and have not installed them. I'll do so and get back to you if it teaches me anything.

Bill

That's a terrific idea, ToolmakerSteve.

Since I can't make that happen, I guess I'll have to work on my copy and manuals to make it clearer to prospective customers just how easy the decoding process is.

Thanks for hashing it out with me.

Bill

I accept the verdict. Thank you all -- particularly you, lourdes -- for going to the trouble of thinking it through for me. I appreciate it. Bill