Mehndi, I wasnt referring to the banner ads. I was referring to the dozens of cheesy assembly-line images accompanied by posts such as "I was one of the lucky ones to beta-test Bubba-Anne by Whomever, and she's so wonderful! Shes absolutely perfect! I feel so priveleged having had the chance to work with such a top-notch product. She'll be in the marketplace on Friday, get her right away!". Whenever certain people's products hit the marketplace everyone here has to flip through pages and pages of shameless plugs for items such as these. Of course you need banner ads to generate profit, I have nothing against those. But dont try to make Renderosity out to be a poor, unfortunate non-profit organisation thats just trying to eke out an existance so it can provide its members with a free service either. As for the artists making money -- sure, I have nothing against that. But when their greed overwhelms them to the point that they try to put competitors out of business and steal other artist's free contributions then it has gone too far. As for the topic of clique-ism, I dont expect you to agree Mehndi, seeing as you are a member of that clique. Just as Dmentia and your other friends rushed to unjustly condemn neftis over the braid affair, they are trying to make excuses and cover up Dmentia's stealing of Staale's texture. Your 'evidence' that any texture placed on vicky's hand will look like Staale's texture is a crock. Of the 9 billion people in the world, less than a few hundred of which are marketplace-contributing members of Renderosity, you expect us to believe that the scanned hand of one is IDENTICAL to another, living halfway across the globe? Whatever. Youre telling me that Dmentia's scanned hand (or composite of other scans) has the exact same wrinkles, fine lines and color variations in PRECISELY the same location? I'm sure youre going to convince a lot of people with that futile argument. Dmentia has already proved her guilt with the 'no comment' post immediately followed by her quick editing of the images to remove any likeness of Staale's hand. Too bad that some unbiased people have already purchased and downloaded the offending product, otherwise the cover-up would have went very smoothly indeed. All you've done is proved my point further. Thank you for posting.

Staale this is hopeless. Even if you have proof, you wont get anywhere with it because Dmentia is one of the popular people here at Renderosity, and therefore her little friends will always stick up for her and lie through their teeth for her. This bullshit about it being her hand scanned in (and remarkable identical to yours) is rediculous. Hands are UNIQUE. There are so many perfect matches on these textures that there is NO DOUBT that they are the same hand. You could convict someone for murder with less evidence. The people arguing that its a 'coincidence' that Dmentia's scanned in hand just happens to be identical to yours are obviously blindly defending Dmentia out of friendship or are just too stupid to know that hands, while they may have similar features, are totally unique and no two are identical. Further defense of her such as "Dmentia DID use some other image to do the hands and honestly doesn't remember if it was the one in question or not" is even more bullshit. Staale bringing it up like this should have jogged her memory, and she could simply have addressed it by saying "I don't remember where I got them, I'll just change them" and thats it. End of story. Anton I dont care what Dmentia is capable of so stop posting links to her picture expecting it to be some sort of proof that she didnt use Staales texture. Wow, she can make a nice still image. So can a lot of people at Renderosity. It doesnt entitle them to harvest other people's work and be immune to both international copyright law and the terms of service of both Renderosity and its marketplace. "Anyone who can paint fabric like that is perfectly capable of scanning her own hand and lining it up a template like you did." Anton, then why the hell didn't she? It would have taken her an entire 10 minutes to scan in her own hand. Just because she should be capable of doing it doesnt mean that everyone should assume that she did and drop the subject, especially when there is irrefutable proof that the textures are identical. Would you call Staale a liar? Yes, thats it. I'm sure Staale copied Dmentia! Too bad that he carries with him the damning evidence -- his own hand. Again, the clique prevails. Staales rights as a non-clique member are cast aside. This is my last post at Renderosity. I'm moving on to a better place, a community of artists that isnt centred around a marketplace, which I feel is corrupting Renderosity. A place where both the forums and galleries arent spammed with advertisements for a certain clique's work, nor are the rights of people who are not members of this circle trodden upon. Unfortunately, I'll miss a lot of you. I really liked Renderosity back when everything everyone produced wasnt centred around money. Art should come from the heart, not from a desire to manipulate and greed for money.

Kennect -- Dmentia and friends didn't hesitate a moment to tarnish the marketplace reputation of neftis by falsely accusing her of stealing Mehndi's braid. There were well over 300 posts altogether in the C&D forum on that issue, all of them protests, calls for boycotting neftis's items, people demanding that her item be removed from the store, personal insults, etc. What angers me is the fact that one of the people that posted there that was so quick to condemn neftis, was at the time of their posting stealing Staale's texture to use on their own marketplace item. So go ahead, accuse me of fueling a lynch mob April. What goes around comes around. Unfortunately the only thing I've learned from these issues is that I'll never release the items I was working on for freestuff for fear of them being harvested in other artists work -- and an increased appreciation for those artists that do submit legitimate items and have to deal with this bullshit day after day.

LOL Dmentia. Its always interesting to see people's reactions (even if its just on a forum) to being caught red-handed. I was anticipating what sort of explanation you could possibly have for cloning Staale's hand texture, but youre obviously going for the "ignore it and it will go away" approach. Well, I sincerely hope you dont get away with trying to sweep this one under the rug, not after what you pulled on neftis with your false accusations. I wonder how many of your other textures have been harvested from other artist's work. Like you said to neftis, "Tesoro is the first stolen property you got caught for, how many products prior to that are also stolen?...and being that you didnt feel too guilty after getting caught, how many products after that are also stolen?" --Dmentia "Neftis' excuse for stealing from me was "I didnt know any better"...well now she does know its wrong to steal from others..." --Dmentia By your own words, you know better as well. Staale -- you have very sharp eyes. In the hundreds of textures in the marketplace I'm amazed at how you pick things like this out. At first glance it might pass, but upon close examination they're identical.

I said neftis, PJF -- I think soulhuntre got confused and said Mehndi instead. Watch how little attention this thread gets. I'm willing to wager that most of the group I was referring to has read this already, but is refraining from commenting in order to avoid drawing attention to this thread. Its amazing how they protect their own, yet dont hesitate for a moment to pounce on someone like neftis. Sweep, sweep, sweep... Sweep it under the rug, baby. The hipocrisy of this amazes and angers me. Dmentia was preaching about the moral issues of copying other artist's work and condemning neftis, meanwhile she was hard at work ripping off Staale's free textures and putting together her marketplace package. And where is William The Bloody screaming BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT! now that its his little friend thats in question?

Perhaps it would, PDBlake. But perhaps you should also read the debate over the Mehndi/neftis braid in the C&D forum where Dmentia took active part in the lynching of neftis for 'allegedly' copying Mehndi's hairstyle. Apparently Dmentia's rules on copyright infringement apply only to others, and not to herself. The lines on your palms are as unique as fingerprints -- no two are the same. The image by Staale above shows that the hand has been copied. If you look closely, not only do the wrinkles match perfectly, but so do the strange discolorations (no offense Staale :) at the base of the wrist. Keep in mind, also, that the left one is an antialiased 3D render while right one is a flat 2D texture. Theres no way that the two skins are of different hands. Id like to see Dmentia talk her way out of this one. Im sure her little clique of friends will rush to her defense though, just like they rushed to attack neftis.

Wasn't Dmentia harping on neftis just a week ago for allegedly copying her texture in that huge thread in the C&D forum? She was one of the most arrogant, outspoken people in that thread, fueling the lynch-mob with her attacks on neftis. Can you say HYPOCRITE, ladies and gentlemen? Every time I start to forget that Renderosity is a nest of bloodthirsty weasels centred around a marketplace something like this comes along and refreshes my memory. I'm really sorry to hear that your textures are being used AGAIN Staale (I read about the earlier incidents). Its very unfortunate. The bright side of it is that it just shows what top-notch work you put out. Thanks for keeping them free, like Poser items should be.

You switched to XP (which isnt even out yet, but I'm sure you signed up for the beta) only to discover that your $3500 3D modelling program doesnt work. So you say, hey, what the heck, I'll go buy Truespace, truePose and 3D Explorer and let Max sit on the shelf! Does anyone else here have a hard time believing this? Hell, why dont you switch to Maya 4?

Black-Canary, if you took the time to read my post you would see that I was commenting on WildRainbow's statement that he would like to buy the light vicky2 tex from Daz. I haven't used any free Vicky textures, I've been quite happy with Catharina's vicky textures (although they all need slight tweaking, especially around the lip and ear areas). Just trying to give him a heads-up on the fact that the Daz vicky2 high-res textures arent the greatest thing out there.

Honestly, I wouldnt recommend the light high-res tex from Daz. People I've spoken to that are running Win98 or ME can't even render it -- their Poser crashes. I can render with it fine on Win2k, but I'm very disappointed in it. The whole point of high-res is DETAIL. You make a texture in a higher resolution so that small details like pores, moles, freckles and imperfections show on the skin. Well, Daz's Vicky2 High-Res texture is certainly high-res, but it sure as #%@$#ing hell isnt detailed. Christ I cant believe I paid $35 bucks for a texture that is, in essence, a 4000x4000 bunch of gradients. The level of detail on the 'high-res' textures could have been achieved with a 2000x2000 map and saved us all a lot of resources. Maybe I'll follow Daz's suit and release a SUPER-HIGH RESOLUTION texture in the marketplace -- ill get a pink blotch and increase the resolution to 6000x6000 and rake in the money. I would recommend Catharina's Sara texture -- it renders well and is quite realistic. The only problem with it is that she put very bright highlights in the centre of the lip texture, but that can either be fixed on the texture or in postwork in minutes. Sara also costs half as much as the Daz high-res tex.

Kozaburo has some nice textures for the daz hair, I'm not sure if he has one for the flip hair. His gelcut hair and kaz hair textures/transmaps are very well done.

I have the daz up-do, the ultrasalon hair, anton's changing ponytail and its expansion pack, and a lot of others. If you want my honest opinion, go with the up-do. Its the best looking hair ive seen on vicky, renders great, there are morphs for moving the bangs around to adjust for gravity/wind, and its EASY to use. No offense to Mehndi or Anton, dont get me wrong -- I really like your hair, and its great for some renders. But if I take a look at what hair I've used most, it is definitely the Daz up-do. Your non-conforming hairstyles are a major pain in the ass when a figure is already posed, or youre remaking an older scene. They assume that you apply the hair to the figure in the default position and then pose the figure, but in reality a lot artists apply the hair and props later in the process. I consider myself an experienced Poser user, and I cant see how these products can be labelled 'user-friendly' and 'easy to use', because I can easily see the average Poser user having problems with them. Hair is meant to be conforming. Faced with having to load your hair onto a default vicky, scale it and parent it to her head (or, heaven forbid, onto a pre-posed vicky and have to sit there for half an hour rotating it and translating it to fit right) or with simply clicking the little checkmark beside the Daz hairstyles, I generally pick the latter. Not because I dont know how to do the former, but because I dont have the time or I just cant be bothered. So I'm not saying these arent great products. What I AM saying is that, out of all these hair products I've used the Daz up-do the most. The second probably being the Daz gelcut and the third either the ponytail or the flip-hair (all of which load onto vickys head in ANY pose with simply the press of a button.

Nice image (I'm guessing Asia by StefyZZ), but those teeth need some work. Theyre pink!

Jim can you elaborate a little on "the price of the full 3 month membership was a bargan for me, as you can then sell modified versions of the textures" please. I dont quite understand.