Thanks for these tips, too, you two. :)

I will definitely see about that trial version.

Meanwhile, about the familiarity with the softwares talked about, besides key framing, whereas I know what it is, and that's about all, I have many of the same familiarities. I hope they serve me well.

Now to block out some time to try it out in earnest...

Thanks again, all.

Thanks, all for opinions thus far. Digital watermark is certainly excellent; on that we all agree.

Further, it seems generally agreed upon that nothing is completely safe. What I wish to do for this client is do the best that is available to make it as difficult as possible. As the saying goes, "Locks are just to keep honest people honest." There is always, as gradient said, someone who can work out a way to commit a theft, if only to prove it can be done.

Incidentally, gradient, my intent in mentioning my client is extremely gun-shy was not to justify myself; rather, it was intended to show the importance of this little excursion into learning a new software. He has been the victim of theft on a number of occasions, because his content -- musical in nature, both written and audio -- in his area of expertise is top-notch.

I'm talking about plunking down a lot of money here, because this guy is important to me. His project is not so I may come out enriched in the end monetarily, but so he may have the site he has always desired. If Flash is perhaps the safest way to go, I felt the need to seek confirmation from this and one other forum on this site.

So far, though far from infallible, perhaps Flash is, after all, the safest. I welcome any and all opinions on this matter, because I do not make this decision lightly.

I appreciate you, fotovizions, inshaala, gradient, and Radlafx, for the time you gave to me regarding this. You have been a great help.

Thanks, Rayraz. Good information. Just what I need.

Glad that was the problem. It took me literally months to figure out this one simple thing, so I'd have lips and shoelaces as the same object, or toenails and the shirt, or dozens of other such stupid combinations. It was weird what matched up by default.

Dumb question here, but here goes:

Did you texture each individual shoe and the tutu separately in Rhino. If you assign a different material, that has always worked for me. I don't worry about export parameters; I just assign materials in Rhino before exporting .obj.

I do not use Poser, so I don't know what kind of backspin that puts on things, but I have always had success assigning materials in Rhino and importing the .obj into Bryce.

I am one of the freaks who likes cold, too.

Where I grew up, in Gunnison, Colorado, we could bank on it being between -38 and -40 F (I just converted this, and that's also about -40C) every morning from about Dec. 1 to March 1. Unless it snowed, and then it was above zero that night, until the skies cleared. I used to love to walk to school and see the plumes of steam rising sometimes 50 or more feet straight up from the houses' furnaces working to keep up. I actually liked the feel of the supercold air in my nostrils, and I loved to see all the ice crystals literally sparkling in the air when the sun topped the mountains.

Interestingly, when my father grew up in the same town in the 1940s, before there was a dam built, putting a 25-mile-long reservoir about 10 miles from town, -60 (That's -51C) was not uncommon during the dead of winter. The reservoir warmed the valley up, so that, by the time I live there, the "old timers" thought it was downright pleasant.

Nowadays, it rarely gets below -25 (-30C), and that's not consistent. I would attribute it to several factors, like a bit of jet traffic in and out of the valley, more population, which brings more furnaces and which generates more pollutants that hold heat. We had very little humidity and almost no wind, so particulate matter does make a difference.

I'll stop reminiscing now, but, before I do, I will tell you about skiing in Crested Butte, Colo., where, one day it got very windy just before a storm blew in. My buddy and I noticed that, because the wind was really blowing and there was no sunlight, skiers were quickly retreating from the slopes. We thought, cool, we have the place to ourselves. So, we went up for another run, just before the tow closed. It was pretty fun, but pretty windy and cold. HOW cold we had no idea. As it turns out, the wind chill dropped the temperature to -85 (-65C). All I had on was an old lined army jacket and jeans. I'm glad I was exerting. :) That's my extreme story for the day. To be fair, though, it was only -40 in reality, so the wind did the rest. I've never lived in a place that ACTUALLY was -80. That would be wilder than wild.

OK, LOL, done for the day. I actually miss the cold. Where I live now, we never drop below about 20 F (-7C), so I hardly even get to wear a jacket, much less all my sweaters. Good day, all.
John

Cool house.

I grew up in a Victorian home in Ouray, Colo., complete with Mansard roof, dormers, bay windows and all.

Ah, this brings it all back. Nice work. Definitely great work.

Different cameras, different favorite lenses for me.

When I shot Olympus OM system lenses, I had a great 50mm f1.4 that I thought was just the best lens around, until I got my 90 mm f2.4, which was crystal clear and just perfect for almost every application. It wasn't as fast ast the 50mm, but it was just better for almost every application.

When I shot my Nikon FE (until I got hit by a bull and the front of my camera got yanked off like a sardine can -- I'll save that story for another time), I had a 50 mm f1.2 lens that would just knock your socks off.

Now I have a digital Olympus, with the 14-54mm zoom and, whereas it's not particularly fast, I (a) don't much care, because the digital is just easier in low-light situations anyway and (b) it is such high quality and low disortion, even on extremely wide angle, that it is the absolute, hands-down LEAST trouble of any lens I've ever used. It is my favorite, without a doubt, of all the lenses I've owned.

As far as crystal clear, though, a lens that I was in awe of was my friend's Leica lens, which was 38 mm on his 3c. I, to this day, have never seen its equal in terms of razor sharpness. I didn't own that lens, though, and it's not likely I'll be getting a Leica any time soon.

Fun walk down memory lane. :)

Well, it's late, and I'm not the expert, but I will tell you a couple of things:

I have long been a satisfied Olympus user, since the OM2. I later had an OM4T, several lenses, and I now own an e500, and the hospital for which I serve as marketing director just purchased one. I love them.

Meanwhile, if you want more megapixels, the e400 is going to be priced soon, and, whereas it may be a bit more than the e500, most camera blogs and reviews are placing its price as very competitive. It has 10 megapixels and will use the same quality lenses as the e500.

There's nothing wrong with Canon. There's nothing wrong with Olympus, for that matter. If you like Olympus, my humble opinion is that you should just get an Olympus. I've been extraordinarily pleased with mine. I bit the bullet and got the 14-54, $500 lens the second go-round, and I think it is noticeably superior to the "kit"lens, though the kit lens is certainly adequate, parcticularly for those on a budget.

Just my .02.

I got it finally. One day it just started downloading, and, at my office I have a fast connection. About 20 minutes later, I had all the first one. It took a bit more than 30 minutes for the second file. It was full speed, about 60 kilobytes per second, and it went without a hitch.

Now I know it works. ddaydreams, you might give it another go.

So far, the only one I've seen who has successfully downloaded a complete file is adrianharrison. tom271, I, like you, have been having trouble with this. I've been trying this for days, and I have DSL. It either downloads a tiny file or gets somewhere over 100 megabytes and stops. I've never gotten more than 50 percent. This is with MS's download protocols.

I've tried Getright download manager, too, with which I usually have success, but it only downloads a php, and I can't seem to access the .exe file itself.

I'm going to give this a try at the office, because I have a faster connection there, but this seems to be an exercise in futility. I understand that their server is tied up. Lots of us wouldn't mind having Poser 5 for free. However, hiding the file behind a string of alphabet soup and then only getting partial downloads by using built-in download dialogs can frustrate a person after five days.

Mirrors would be good, too.

J

This week, though, I'm going to my favorite portrait genius, who doesn't shoot anymore, but agreed to get a "professional" shot of me with my accordion. I'm instructed by his sidekick, his wife, that I am to wear all black. She wasn't impressed with my red T-shirt.

I'm with you guys: I don't like being the model; it's supposed to be one of the advantages to being the photog. Right?

Anyway, this one was taken as a quick snapshot to go with a bio of me on an accordion list. I grabbed one of the ladies in our billing offices to take the photo with my Olympus. I guess it could be a lot worse.

Well, guess what: I proposed the 9800 today. I was met with genuine interest.

I had read some of the same types of reviews you had about the 130 not being built to really slam out constant printing, but, so far, all I've seen about the 9800 says it appears to be bomb-proof.

It appears, at this point, that I may end up spending about $500 to repair the HP designjet 130, which is approaching half the cost of the printer.

Meanwhile, I may end up getting the Epson 9800 Pro put on my capital budget for next year. I was stunned that I met with such success. This tells me several things: first, the hospital is getting used to me putting out various projects that are better than our competition, including posters, limited-run in-house brochures, and "fine art" that we have framed at various places around the facility; second, they must think my work is better than average and are expecting more of it; and, third, they apparently are not planning for me to be able to slack off on volume.

These are all good things.

I appreciate your input on this thread, and I'll try to remember to keep you guys posted. Our next budget year starts in July of '07. I'll be adding the $5,000-plus to my capital expenditures in April budget deliberations. We have to be over $5,000 anyway to get it put on capital. Otherwise, it comes out of my departmental budget.

Pretty exciting. I hope they don't change their minds. :-)

The 9800 sounds really nice. I think you have good reason to be so enthusiastic.

I don't think, though, that the hospital will spring for that kind of $$ anytime soon. :)

And my experience with the Epson 2400 so far is very good, so that gives me reason to see some of your enthusiasm. My CFO and CEO, neither one, batted an eye at $800 for the 2400. I think they'd pass out, though, at $5,000, unless it were a laser printer that gave you a massage and prepared the perfect latte; then I might convince them that the ER doctors could benefit, too.

Anyway, back to reality:

One of the things I like about Epson -- and after hearing my rant about getting better results with their software than Photoshop or InDesign, you might find this strange -- is that the printer dialog that comes up with this Epson (as with one other Epson that I was using prior to this at my church office (I'm a bi-vocational minister of music)), because you know EXACTLY what's going on. You get a read on your ink tanks and you know how many copies have been done so far and how many are left to go, etc.

With the HPs I've used, you're just kind of running blind. The 130 printer itself has a screen that shows how full your tanks are and will blink when you need a new printhead on a given color, but I have never seen a way yet to find out how many copies have run and how many are left to go. There are times when that would be really useful, rather than taking a stack off and having to count by hand.

Thanks for the additional info., LCBoliou. Have a great day.
John

I have a DesignJet 130, which does pretty well. Archival ink, you say, LCBoliou. Tell me more. I have a tough time with the ink I'm using now, because within a couple of years, I'm noticing degradation. Now I know this could be that, because we're a hospital, there are some chemicals wafting through the air that you might not find just everywhere, but it still makes little sense to me.

That's why I got, for photos, the Epson 2400, which uses the oil-based dyes. Those photos are really wonderful, but you can't do anything else but photos. I also don't like the fact that you have to finesse Photoshop and/or InDesign to get even decent output, but, by using Epson's photo printing software, you suddenly get these beautiful images.

I like printing from other programs besides the "idiot-proof" Epson software.

My HP DesignJet 130 currently is broken. I've used it hard for about two years, and it makes some really nice posters, reasonably good photographs, and pretty nice in-house brochures.

Though I'm miffed with it right now, I will say that, among all printers I've ever used, it is KING when it comes to cheap per-copy cost. I didn't believe 1.9 cents per page, but it has pretty much borne that out. The printer I used prior to that is an HP 1200, if I recall, and it cost about 4.7 cents per page and choked on any special paper whatsoever, no matter how you fed it.

The DesignJet (and I forgot to mention that I paid about $1,300, just like was stated by LCBoliou; you can't get it much cheaper still, I don't think) can get finicky now and then, but, with a little patience will eventually take every kind of paper I've thrown at it so far.

We have an HP color laser printer networked. I like its output pretty well, and, of course, you can't beat the speed, but I have noticed that there are strange artifacts and outright bizarre printing on occasion. However, this may be due to my initial document setups in InDesign and Photoshop. I'm only now beginning to send some documents to this printer because my 130 is dead in the water.

Anyway, now I'm salivating for the Epson 9800 LCBoliou mentioned. Is that for photos only? Or will it do good plain paper stuff, too?

I'd love to hear more.
John