I started up a topic in the den, beginning with the political posts here. 1. Euro up against the dollar: U.S. fault or European inflation? ::::: Opera :::::

Armor, why did you continue to post political when she asked you not to? That was wrong.

i held back too.

How do we move the thread?

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Message edited on: 11/23/2004 11:12

randym77: >>It's not the weak dollar that bothers me so much, as the reasons behind the weakness: our twin deficits, the trade deficit and the budget deficit. We consume more than we produce, and we spend more than we collect in taxes. We maintain our lifestyles by borrowing from foreigners. China could collapse our economy by selling off their dollars and refusing to buy our bonds. Of course, it's not in their interest to do that; we're their biggest market. But if the deficits keep increasing and the dollar keeps weakening, foreigners will be more and more reluctant to invest their money here.<<

The answer is to let capitalism loose. Cut corporate taxes. Cut capital gains tax. Get the Federal Reserve out of the way. Slash the budget of government by half. The deficits will vanish in five minutes, just as they did in the late 90s.

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Message edited on: 11/23/2004 09:26

Message edited on: 11/23/2004 09:28

"making our foreign trade partners angry"
translation: France hates us for destroying their client state, whom they armed all the way to breeder reactor and bio warfare. They are furious. We just went in their and killed their buddy and they were HELPLESS to prevent it. And now they won't get the oil, won't get paid and won't get to have their pet dictatorship.

"[Bush] almost dictatorial powers"
what about the 1932-1980 solid Democratic Congress, left-leaning Supreme Court and frequent Dem presidents. Was that "dictatorial"?

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Message edited on: 11/23/2004 09:22

Well, we are OT so lets make the best of it...

Armorbeast, same thing was said for the Regan tax cuts. They did not turn the economy around for a decade and Clinton took the credit.

Things would be worse if there had been no W.Bush tax cut. I agree with you that Bush/Repubs show no sign of cutting spending, however. They should cut taxes AND cut spending. Short of such an outbreak of true free-market capitalism, we need a Democratic President forced to act like a fiscal conservative, a la Clinton when Greenspan went behind closed doors in 1993 and said, basically, "Paul Volker and I just put an end to gov't-caused inflation of the 70s-80s. Regan helped with his tax cuts. The downside is, the economy is still crippled; these remedies need another decade to take hold. You won't be able to execute your socialism. Balance the budget instead." Clinton had to go along. It helped that the Dems lost control of Congress, so Clinton could not get antsy and attempt massive new socialism anyway. It worked. Clinton was in office for a long time, and at the end of his term the 20-year remedy 1979-1999 took hold.

But The Great Boom of Prosperity that took place in the late 90s was wrecked not by Clinton or either Bush...it was Greenspan -- now alarmed by the outbreak of a hyper-hot economy -- attacking the "exhuberance" of the dotcomers with his six sledghammer interest hikes over 1999-2000 which, while it did finally destroy the dot com boom, also savaged the normal economy, which had taken 20 years to heal. Greenspan should have let any dotcoms which were 'vapor' explode on their own, caveat emptor, but no, he had to assert control. We are still attempting to recover from that.

Yes we have deficits, due to the cost of the War and the continued federal out-of-control spending, and moreso by the continued controlling behavior of Greenspan, but the Euro-gap is caused mostly by unproductivity in Europe. The Euro is inflated, not "strong".

[tremendously anti-European sarcastic paragraph, a real killer, self-censored here. I can take flames, but I don't want to get TOSed.]

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I just ordered the Poser5 upgrade and B L Render's book from Curious Labs. Quite an experience ordering from them...they are armored-up against phone calls. Can't get through on any of four numbers I eeked out of the internet and phone company. To be fair, I did leave a phone message Friday when I was about to order, and a polite person DID call me back about 5 hours later, but I missed the call. Anyway, my order was placed early today, I paid for overnight shipping, and it said "in stock" as I was ordering. I tried to email them asking if it would indeed arrive tomorrow, but even their email is armored-up; I got a generic email with answers about "when will it ship" back, even though I had asked a particular question in my email. Anyway, hopefull it will arrive tomorrow. I'll pick up EJ and the two extra pacs and see what I can do with her. ::::: Opera :::::

Exactly what networking software do people deploy for a small render farm, five or fewer nodes including the master? 1) if all Windows, can you just use the simple peer to peer built into XPHome? And what would the hardware need to be? Ethernet from peer to peer plus an inexpensive hub? Or do you even need a hub? 2) at what point do you need something serious like Win2K Server? ::::: shudder ::::: 3) what about for a mixed network of Macs and PCs? ::::: Opera ::::: (networking novice)

Max to Operaguy: >> What do you use for post? Something like AfterEffects or Combustion can really be useful tools for "faking" a lot of things you might normally try to do in the render, and the results are just as good, if not better. << I have not gotten that far yet. (I use a little known and fantastic app for single-frame editing called Canvas by Deneba.) You make a good point about faking things. For one thing...painted backdrops and layered backdrops and you can import quicktime footage into Poser backgrounds (i bet you can do the same in Vue) and when things get really serious I will have to attack professional animation post. I've already discovered the trick of taking a freeze frame of background and not-speaking-or-moving-now character and using that as a backdrop for a one-character animation in front of it. This has its limits, but useful. Thanks for waking me up on that, Max. ::::: Opera :::::

exactly wolf. write to me if you want my full rant. john@jrdonohue.com ::::: Opera :::::

i will refrain from political posts in this thread (OT) but my comments stand as written, and are mild next to my full thoughts on this matter. ::::: Opera :::::

Once again, very rewarding to post here at the Rendo Poser forum. Intelligent, pointed comments. Thank you everyone, and keep the opinions coming, others, if desired.

While I'm interested in cartoon look for certain projects, right now I'm trying to get a feel for how far I can get at the high end of the Poser/Vue world as a one-person filmmaker of serious stories. It's not so much the money aspect as the learning curve aspect for someone who wants total creative control as an aspiring indie filmmaker. I am not afraid of challenges; I have been on steep learning curves like Visual FoxPro (database programming) and Logic Pro (music sequencing). But for animation, at this point I have an Aki Ross taste on a Vickie 3 [time/resource] budget.

It's quite possible I will have to take the plunge into Maya and/or consider that the scope of my ambitions is beyond the capablities of one person and requires a team. But I am not by any means finished with Poser. I am going to read B L Render's book as recommended by EnglishBob and also invest a weekend in Judy/EJ to see what can be done.

I like this model developed by
digital artist Steven Stahlberg
(animations at his site here.):
Spectacular large format
jpg of this image here.

And of course there is Philippe Bouyer, here.

I also think I need a good strong reality check about expectations. Animation is not live movie-making; it is 'once-removed' and 'symbolically abstract' which means the animation suggests the action at it's keyframes, and the viewers imagination supplies the majority of reality/perception. I've got to get that message deep down. I think Polar Express is failing because the filmmakers did not respect this, while Pixar does. One of my ways of groking this is to watch Snow White, often.

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lol Info, I subscribe to that Mag (it helped me get Motion Builder for a total of $300) as well and cringe at 'paying uphill' for it. I'm also saving for a trip to England and Normandy in spring and have to sock away a lot every month just to keep up with the ongoing inflation! But I don't mind. I LOVE the "weak" U.S. Dollar. And we ARE having a Boston Tea Party right now. Bush administration paying back France and Germany for their truculance on Iraq. Europeans should learn to be more productive. Get it: it's not the dollar that is weak, it is the Euro that is inflated. Bush not going along by inflating our currency is exposing the underlying unproductivity of Europe. ::::: Opera :::::

Tunesy, When you import into A:M, how much do you get. No bones or morphs, nor conversion of polygons to splines, right? But do you get a 3D or 2D figure? Could you describe the rotoscope sequence once you are in A:M? ::::: Opera :::::

i've been trying to get into Daz all day. No pages are resolving.

Renderfarm for "Final Fantasy, Spirit Within" was 1000 CPUs using Pixar's Renderman. I concur that rendering out to single frames is the way to go. Total control. Many are beginiing to conceptualize VuePro/Mover as the de facto solution for rendering Poser animations, even if you don't have to do any 'landscape' or other generation of content in Vue itself. Vue4Pro is on sale now pending next generation in a few months. ::::: Opera :::::