Thank you--for this and several other pieces that I've collected over the past while.

My firewall got banged hard, too, though the port was stealthed right out, so it must have cost the seekers a bit of waiting time to hit me. But it bothered me enough that I checked some things and found a couple of holes in the firewall (now patched).

I use Poser units. I put a ball where I want the camera to focus and note it's x, y and z coordinates as xb, yb and zb. Then I take the Dolly coords from the camera and let them equal xc, yc and zc. The focal distance is: sqrt((xc-xb)^2+(yc-by)^2+(zc-zb+1)^2). This seems to work well...now if I can just figure out how to get it into a python script!

Here's what I've been using. Occasionally it bombs and I get the hairdo from hell, but it also works quite often. First make sure that the skullcap is not touching the head. Anywhere. Then select the hip and turn on collisions for the hip and press the button to turn them on for all its children. Then select the skullcap and turn collisions OFF and press that button again. In the hair room select the skull cap, select the portion of the hair you want to drape, turn collisions on with the switch beside the display and check the collisions box for the hair. Drape it. Don't pay too much attention to the way it looks WHILE it's draping. That can sometimes be misleading. You can either set them up in advance and drape using the command in the animation menu or drape the sections individually....

Phil, thanks, both for the skullcaps and the idea. I'll try this next time I'm making hair to see if I can get a proper triangular group for the bangs....

Yes, but is the elasticity of demand REALLY what these prices seem to be claiming? I'm pretty sure actually, that it is not. I mean, to look at some of these prices, you would think these people were selling water on the moon.

Reiss-studio, What marketing theory are you operating on? Last time I looked into it, the only things you should consider when setting a price are unit cost and demand elasticity. All other considerations, such as the capital cost of R&D are irrelevant. You will either make them back or you will not, but you will lose the least or make the most by pricing your product accordng to unit cost and demand elasticity. Now unit cost is the extra cost of shipping 100 copies more last month than you did divided by 100. You can factor in support costs (but need to estimate them accurately) but fixed costs like rent, power bills and regular phone bills don't count (long distance related to support might). The trick is to determine the elasticity of demand, which may take a trial sale price episode or two to fix and which probably changes a bit seasonally, too. But once you know the numbers, you can price effectively. I'm no genius, but I get the funny impression that a LOT of software is priced right out to lunch. And I often wonder why software manufacturers don't sell unsupported versions of mature products with support supplied extra (at a price).

You need at least 256Mb of RAM to do anything much with P5. But I do get useful work out of it on a K6-III+ 450 with that much RAM under Win2K Pro. My dream system would be two very fast P4 processors on about 2Gb of fast RAM. And the extra procesor WILL help because the OS can shovel out tasks to it while Poser uses one all to itself for rendering, etc. And any serious render will take long enough that you might want to be surfing or doing other work while Poser renders in the background. Hair IS awfully slow on my machine, but if I let it complete it does do it.

If you're making your hair on a skullcap, make sure it is entirely off the head at all points. Pay particular attention around the ears. Don't know if that'll help ya, but it has helped me in the past.

Are you growing the hair on a skullcap or directly on the figure? I've been messing with hair all week and have seen this same problem. It seems to be related to hair that collides real early with some body part or that starts inside the body. --such as around the ears. By VERY carefully positioning the skullcap so that it doesn't ever intersect with any head parts, I've sometimes gotten a decent render. But you have to ignore the way it looks DURING draping and wait to see what it comes down to afterwards. Turning off collisions also seems to help...but may result in some pretty weird looking hair in its own way.... Don't take my word as gospel, though. I'm still groping through this stuff myself...

I find I have to select the nodes I want applied before I hit apply to all. If you want all, just hit the select all first. Also be aware that some ray tracing stuff will not appear in the preview render. It's possible to have an object appear white in preview but to actually have a material assigned.

Koz's wave hair is transparency mapped. You will see it as sort of a ghost in the document window. Which version of Poser are you using? (By turning off the transparency you can see it to adjust the dials).

Renderosity folx: Here's an algorithm you might consider. Monday midnight: Recheck last week's missing file. Any that still cannot be reached, dump them. Then check all remaining URL's, compiling a list of those that don't answer up. Wednesday 8AM: Use Monday's list to compile a (smaller) list of those that still don't answer. Friday 4PM: Use Wednesday morning's list to compile the final list (to be deleted Monday if still offline). This would catch all the sites that are down for any long term but would probably not eliminate many (or any) truly available sites. It will avoid "catching" sites that do daily maintenance at a specific time and it will make sure that the outage is at least quasi-permanent. You should also consider PhilC's suggestion of having the 'bot email those who end up on the list rather than dumping them. It's a pretty good bet that the site is a goner if you don't get any reply and it's still down after a week of no show and another week for email turnaround.

Note when you do this, though, that it is like using a process screen in cinema. The square is actually "lit up" with the image and will not take shadows. If you want them you have to add them.

I have managed to get Judy to look fairly reasonable (she still sticks out a bit in her behind) by scaling her to Fashion Model, then reducing the body size to 100% again and fiddling with the dials on hips, abdomen, buttocks and breasts (collars). But I must admit, the result is only a tad better (and only on extreme poses) than Eve4 with dynamic hair. As you say, it's the face lab that makes Judy so attractive. I made an Eve4 with such a huge set of face morphs on her that I can create just about anyone anyway! Just use Morph Manager and move face morphs from P4 fem characters....the heads are compatible between Eve4 and P4 fem.