It ALSO depends on what your final output will be. For example, if you are rendering for a video, the final output is 720 x 486 or thereabouts. A texture that is really large is really wasted for the most part. On the other hand, if you're going to zoom in on an eye, the eye texture might have to be around 1000 pixels high (or double the height of the final output) for best results. On the other hand, if you are going to render a closeup for print output, you will need the highest resolution textures you can find. A 2400 x 3000 pixel image will end up being 8 x 10 inches when printed at 300 DPI, so you will have to use textures that will look flawless when rendered to pixel dimensions that large.

Zarabanda, is that also true of FaceGen Customizer? It looks as though you need it and FaceGen Modeler to work with your own (ie: non-FaceGen) meshes. However, it also looks as though you can't distribute the results. Am I correct in assuming that?

I might be wrong, but I think with two pieces of their software you can create your own faces with any model ... you would need Modeler AND Customizer.

BUT, and here is the big BUT, I don't think you would be able to distribute them. So you'd be buying $1000 worth of software to use them only in your own art and animations.

One person who might know all of the answers to this is Zarabanda ... he has some FaceGen work in his galleries, I believe (WonderWoman2004 and Seven of Nine). He might be able to tell us the scoop.

Message edited on: 11/02/2004 16:40

This over-catagorizing, this terrible urge to pidgeon-hole everything and to get to the customer as efficiently as possible Like those automated operator recordings you get when you call customer service ... For English, press 1 ... para Espanol, dos (beep) ... 15 minutes later they FINALLY tell you to press 0 to talk to a real person. 8-)

and allow multi selections of the Catagories That is a brilliant suggestion! One post, multiple categories.

Well, in "the old days" it used to be that there was just a Poser gallery, and a Bryce gallery, and so on. But as membership got larger and the number of postings got to be so many per day, they added the categories so that folks could choose to browse ONLY the categories they were interested in. But there are really too many gray areas in this approach ... first, if you use Poser to develop and pose figures, and then add it to a scene created in in Bryce or Vue, and then do postwork with Photoshop and add effects from Kai's Power Tools, which gallery do you put it in? I don't think the galleries should be broken down by application at all. 2D, 3D, and photography. Why? Because there are a lot of us that could stand to learn things by looking at images done in OTHER applications that we would normally not even think about looking into. Or ... if you do a picture of an alien riding his spaceship with a load of Christmas presents, do you put it in Science Fiction or Holiday? Since you can't double-post, how do you know that you are putting it in the gallery that those interested would find it in? The problem with doing ratings is that EVERYONE will be posting in the R and NC-17 area (LOL), and you are also setting up the site for being even worse in the "titillation" department (word chosen purposely) than it already is. I say the best solution is to drop the application galleries and simplify the categories.

My personal thought is that there is too much here ... too many forums, too many gallery categories, too many brokers, too many unused accounts, just too much. In Renderosity's attempt to be all things to all people, it has turned into a nightmarish site. That could be the biggest reason why it has also become nearly impossible for the coordinators and mods to do their jobs properly.

Even though it's not something I would probably use, I have to admit it really is a wonderful work of art!!! I hope they do really well with it.

Renderosity won't be changing in the galleries or the forums to a more sex filled one. It's pushing that boundary already. A large percentage of the Poser gallery is of nude or scantily-clad women. While I have no problem with that, some of them are in very suggestive poses, with facial expressions that are very um ... "orgasmic." There is no question what they would be involved in if a second person was in the image. This is an art site that claims to be family friendly. Here are some examples of what I think is "family friendly" art. http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=800525 http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=800516 http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=800501 http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=800485 I like tasteful erotic art. I create some of it myself every now and then. But to illustrate the point raised in this thread, here is an image that, while I have no problem with it personally, I would feel very uncomfortable if it was viewed by a young child. Currently, it is viewable with the "Allow Nudity" profile preference set to "No." It is a recent post, so the lack of the flag may not have been "caught" yet: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=800463 My point is this ... if Renderosity wants to be a "family friendly" site, it should not have to depend on nudity flags to make it so. It should not depend on "Thumbnail Warnings" to make it so. It should simply NOT ALLOW what is not family friendly. Otherwise, it comes across as hypocracy.

You know 3 will never happen anyway, don't you? They make too much money. 8-)

just because you can buy a condom in the drugstore doesn't mean that you can use it there But if a child saw the condoms, you can bet that he or she would wonder what they were used for. Fetish items are about as inappropriate for a "family friendly" site as you can think of. They are in there because they make money. Money talks. Plain and simple.

Hiding them is probably the best solution, because removing them will make it impossible to pose the character or clothing correctly.

There are other issues about P5 materials that won't apply in P4. Poser 4 only has diffuse color, ambient color, highlight color, and reflection color/map (in addition to the bump map, that is). Poser 5 has secondary ambients and reflections, etc etc etc., and tons more options for them.

What I usually do is provide the bump map in JPG format, because BUM files are ridiculously too large to zip and distribute. As for applying the bump map, I would rather NOT apply the jpg but give instructions in the readme for how to do so. The reason for this is so that P4 won't get lost in limbo by looking for a BUM file that isn't there.

Message edited on: 10/30/2004 09:14

It's kind of hard to make recommendations unless we know what type of look you want. 8-)

There are a great many already available ... what exactly do you need, and for what Poser model?