Omigosh!!! I loved the first one, was iffy about the second and then you came up with this killer third!! You are Too Darn Good!! Number one: I been doing this for years and I couldn't have done the first render and post in 4 hours-- no way! Of course, I fiddle everything to death, but that's beside the point. Your first render would have felt like a masterpiece to me. Then, that "Day for Night" change you made in the last one. Ok, I personally would like a tutorial on how you did it. I have some ideas, but am not sure. Especially the Moon which is fabulous. I can tell you easily how to get the background to look further away. Select your main figures and maybe the foreground, maybe not-- invert the selection and apply a small amount of gaussian blur. Take that down so it just fuzzes a bit, like our eyes do with things in the distance-- instant depth of field. You can do that with closeup as well to guide the eyes where the meat of the picture is-- usually the face and hands. First render with two people!!??!! I agree with rwilliams, I want to see your work a couple of months from now-- you'll blow us all away. That looks like James in the render, is that Jesse in his arms? If so, you've also made two figures not thought highly of, very very attractive and effective in a beautifully dramatic render. Put it in the Poser gallery, I'll give you an Excellent rating. And for the record, shadows give me horrors in Poser, so don't feel too bad about those. Everybody rags on me about em too-- I don't care, too much work for too little effect.;)) But you fixed them anyway!! Emily

You-- and I do mean you-- make a great render! Looks even more like the real thing. Have you thought of picking up one of Jepe's body hair textures or add-ons? There's more than one that would be a fantastic match for your chest. Course that depends on how many topless renders you're gonna do. And what "Angelina" would prefer ;))) Emily

I'm glad I bought it even though I haven't loaded it on my machine/laptop yet. Need to get about 10G off before I cram anymore on it, and life has been insane enough without trying P6 yet. Still, I'm glad I got it-- just squeezing by on the preorder price. Because I doubt I could afford it, seeing how finances are becoming tighter than. . .TOS is forbidding just about every metaphor I can come up with. . you fill it in. I can use the time to learn from everybody else's problems while I'm waiting for SR1-- the real one-- to arrive. For the record, I didn't load up P5 until SR3 and didn't really work with it till SR4. Yeah, I'm a weenie. But just looking at the renders posted, even the one's that people are complaining about, is exciting to me. I couldn't do that in P5.The first posts in the head room look good as opposed to the horrors that came out of P5 at the beginning. IBL and AO look fantastic. And, I for one, could use the help they added to the Material room. I do think this is a big step ahead for Poser and, for the most part, remembering the mess with P5 vividly, CL has been quite different this time around in their quick responses. Maybe I bought it for hope, who knows? But I'm still glad I did. I wouldn't be able to afford it at the post release price. Unless there's another fire sale at Amazon.;)) I'm an old lady and I like to take things very slowly. Except for renders, grrrr! And, thankfully, P5 is working better than ever. Meanwhile, I do what I did 3 or 4 years ago while waiting for replacement disks for Poser 4, I sit and read Renderosity and get a major education no manual could ever give me. I have folders of saved snaps of the Mat room and settings tips and heaven knows what. You guys are a Treasure. Thank you. Emily

Thank you, I like the length of the sleeves, nicely trendy, and the skirt. The shoulder UV looks better too. You're a champ to do this. Emily

There is a genuine increase in realism if you put Vicki 3-- not out of the box, but carefully morphed-- next to a carefully morphed V2, I find that most V2's just don't have the detail to get truly photo real, if that's what you want. Now, some textures like Asia and Yuma counteract this, but then everyone starts looking like Asia and Yuma. And some of the very very best V2 and M2 textures are no longer available because of copyright problems. On the whole, if your urge is to go more and more realistic, I think the unimesh figures are probably the way to go-- the major exception in my mind is the PreTeen girl, who no one has been able to surpass. V2 works very well, even better and more delicately, for stylised and fantasy characters than V3. For fantasy unimesh, I tend to stick to very few texture makers or I use Stephanie Petite. My major problems with Vicki 3 is she's too hefty. Other than that, if you like V2 and M2-- and for some uses nothing really beats the outright masculinity of M2--the only reason for moving up to unimesh is the lack of any new clothing for them. Since PhilC and a bunch of other people are working on a product that will easily convert clothing between anybody[ok, so they say, and it's not going to be a freebie, probably not by a long shot] that may be a moot point in a little while. How long, though, I don't know. It would sure make things easier. In the last analysis, if you really really like the pre unimesh figures, and I use Stephy 1 a whole lot, no one is going to shoot you if you continue to use them. You just won't get very many new duds to dress them up with, if any. But, specs2 stuff is still out there,PoserWorld does mass fits of their most popular outfits, plus there's As Shanims old freebies, and the back pages of Rdna's catalog-- which has some killer clothing in it. And one can get by on huge runtimes of V2 clothing if you've been at it awhile. I feel for those just starting out though. Mainly cause the choices are not really there. It seems to me most V2 clothing for sale has been discontinued here. Not all though. I think Tiff's textures are still here, I hope, and they are lovely. Oh, supposedly something called VickiPro is in the works. Don't ask me what she does, looks like or wears though-- ain't got a clue. I only managed to save my budget from Hiro fever at the eleventh hour. So I dread the very idea of VickiPro. [Pity the poserholic whose money is running out] Emily

I'm confused. The picture labeled 09.pz3 clearly looks as if the entire texture has been applied, lips, eyes, eyelashes body. Did you say you did not do this? Sure looks like they are there. Just as the other figure "how to create a character for Vicki.pz3 looks like just the head, with painted eyebrows. They both have painted eyebrows, I can see that on the texture map. Emily

Only fault I see-- that that's a small one-- is around his eyes. Suddenly he looks way too young or had a face lift. Men's eyes tend to be rougher and crinklier than women's-- gives them character and humor. Eyes are a turn-on for me so I always check textures there first. Your character already looks like he has a smile lurking just below the surface so this would perk him up soooo much. Icing on the cake, so to speak. I'd darken top and bottom lid just a tiny bit, in the cooler shades, and give a few fine lines there and then--stick a fork in him cause he looks done other than that.:)) Oops, Columbo moment, one more thing, a lip bump wouldn't hurt either. Or failing that, more fine lines. Extremely good work. Would have said all this sooner, but is the first I've seen of your guy, he's cool. Emily

bm.

I guess it depends. I try to keep as much spare "scratch" disk as I can-- I'd have a separate hard drive for Poser, if I could, but on a laptop that isn't too practical, so I put the runtimes on a Firewire. How much actual RAM, actual memory you have, also is figured into this. I have 1G on one laptop, 2 G on the other. And I have about 20G free on my main drive. Lower than that and I have problems rendering. Always have. It might be all in my mind for all I know, but I try to keep that much free. Then defragmenting the drive also helps so the free space is actually free. I haven't loaded up Poser 6 yet, cause I need to free up space to do it, and I've been too screwed up lately physically and mentally to get the job done properly. [Be nice to have one full day of sanity. I'm in the middle of changing meds] I'm not getting rid of programs just transferring them. I hesitate to tell anyone to get rid of stuff-- unless you aren't using them. But if you're wondering if anyone else has better luck with Poser running-- not necessarily faster but more stable-- with less going in the background and a leaner hard drive. Then yes, I have better luck that way. I also try to keep my main runtime very lean-- but this only applies to Poser 5 and higher. The less you have in the Poser 5 and I would guess Poser 6 runtime, the faster it loads and works. Hope this has helped some. Windows XP Pro and home, 1 to 2 G RAM, at least 20G free. Poser 5 with SR4.whatever. Emily

I've had the memory bug in Pro Pack and Poser 5--not so much lately, and though the memory grows dim, I'm pretty sure I had it in Poser 4. I used to call it, Poser's getting tired. Happened after about an hour or so of work-- sometimes hour and a half. You could tell when the lbraries and other stuff started to get a bit wonky. Shoes came out of conformation, tools were activated without being touched, sometimes just comeing near em. I'd usually save, under another name, just in case it was already corrupted, try a fast render in the preview window-- I did this just a few days ago for the Namihei pic,not an overly complicated setup. But I had tried a slew of lighting changes. And then I got out while the getting was good. So. . . Poser's still getting tired, huh? Not terribly surprised. I'll be very pleasantly surprised if and when they fix it. We complained enough about P5, no improvement really there-- ok, we got a little longer before fatigue set in, but no real change. There seems to be a tendency towards real change in Poser 6. But whadda I know? I just opened the box. Emily

Yup, Poor Man, Doomed to Have Fun. Glad it's a big Doom Room.;))) I like to spread out. Emily

Wow, the box just arrived and so have I. Teach me, Dr Geep. Emily

Looks fabulous-- thank you!!! Emily

Casette, I agree with operaguy-- this happens more and more-- truly a beautiful evocative portrait. And Jesse is a model with considerable potential. Thinking of what other Poser users have had to do to make the "stock" figures of Poser 3, 4, even 5 marginally workable without major morphing and remapping, Poser 6 users can do beautiful renders in a few days--- hours, sometimes. It's unbelievable. There's a Smoke preset that looks this good!! Wow! I'm hoping my box comes soon. Emily

bm.