I use Canvas, by Deneba Here's why: Takes photoshop plugins Great painting environment, probably 90%+ of PS. But also: full-blown vector graphic "side". A beautiful facility for making animated gifs. Imports and saves out to many many formats including PS and Flash, .pdf also and .avi/.mov (quicktime) for animations. Terific for page layout. Imagemapping for HTML? You will be in heaven with Canvas. (Attach URLs to objects, Canvas generates full webpage with style sheets, and also calculates coordinates for imagemaping!) For painting, naturally it has sized and custom brushes, airbrushes, sharpen, blur, desaturate, and many other PS-like features too numerous to list. And yes, it has that tool Dr. Geep was looking for (see next post) review: http://www.keystonemac.com/canvas9review.html Mac and Win Price? Canvas 9 $349 at mfg www.deneba.com Canvas 8 street price as low as $199 You can find Canvas 7 even lower. Trial and academic versions avail. ::::: Opera :::::

markdc pusblishes a good PDF on going from MotionBuilder to Poser to MotionBuilder. The process is no picnic, but doable. http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.ez?Who=markdc Scroll down on his page, you will see the link to the PDF I just purchased Motion Builder and am eagerly awaiting shippment, hope to spend Christmas deeply emersed in it. ::::: Opera :::::

SUCCESS! No more red or white squigglies! Gratitude, lesbentley. Man, this is a valuable forum. Just a note to anyone reading this thread in the future: ALWAYS make a copy of core files, such as Poser.ini before altering. Also: you can allways switch the red/white selection cue back on any time you want, just by reversing the process given here. ::::: Opera :::::

Uh-oh, a solution that involves altering the genes of the beast. Just my kinda thing, risky but straight to the problem. Will try and report back, thanks lesbentley. I don't do much selecting by clicking on the document window. Poser thinks too much and has you selecting some body part on the other side of the figure, or next door, etc. I have settled into resignation of picking body parts from the popup list. Also, I work with the graph a lot, and get there by double-clicking on the name of the morph above a dial. So, I have not been relying on the red/white business to tell me if I have been successful in selecting. ::::: Opera :::::

Yes, the default Vickie in Cartoon mode looks like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. Here are the morphs [found on 'head'] I played with to get control on the second image above: lasheslong -0.240 lashupfull -2.150 lashlowfull -8.987 eyelidsasian .653 Also usefull in controlling lashes: eyesbig eyedepth And of course, for the infamous eyebrow problem: browsgone .039 Good luck, ::::: Opera :::::

Unchecking 'figure circle' helps a little (thank you geep) but does not solve the problem. Yes, with it unchecked you don't get the red if the curor is on the 'document window' (but you do still get the white business.) Note: My gripe is that the red kicks in when I grab the animation slide/scrubber and move it. [The red appears no matter if "figure circle" is toggled on or off.] This is truly annoying, since the purpose of moving the scrubber is to see the transition of body parts, and the red scourge blots it out. Then only solution I see is: select the paint bucket. For some reason, the red AND white disappear when the paintbucket is chosen. But having to choose the bucket each time is a real drag. Also, I invariably click on something with the TOS bucket and change the color of the background or Vickie's TOS or something. [Note, you can also click on some other part of the scene to 'deselect' the body part you are focusing on and make the red go somewhere else, but invariably you have to reslect a second later, a drag.] Anyone know how to turn off this thing? ::::: Opera :::::

Gray cat, yes, that's what I'm looking for, as long as the rest of Vickie has not also scaled down. Also, I want to slenderize her fingers, but that can be done by taper, etc., if the scale is correct. However, I am a real rewbie, so your "I'ts MOR pose" needs translation for me. Are you saying it's a morph dial somewhere on Vickie that I haven't been able to find, it's a pose that came with her, or that I can obtain this MOR pose somewhere? Please explain. Thanks, ::::: Opera :::: P.S. I am looking into Phil's ideas as soon as I can get back to it.

Thanks ernyoka, working with that concept now! ::::: Opera :::::

I guess I don't get it. IK has a positive use when turned on for the legs, right? So, if I want it on, but V. not 'pinned down', is there a way to break the chain or something? ::::: Opera ::::: P.S. Yes, drop to floor does work; she does not go thru. And, I certainly can KEYFRAME with her on the floor. But in a spline animation, will have to find out if she then will dip down into the floor in between keyframes. Must experiment...

thanks, that worked. but now she falls through the floor when I yTrans her down. Will she respect the floor when I animate her with IK turned off? ::::: Opera :::::

stewer, thanks for responding. That is incredibly important advice. Same time to render, but total freedom to use the frames independantly. Besides the points you made, I can take a set of frames and make an animated gif or flash mini from separate images (I use Canvas for this) ::::: Opera :::::

little dragon: "...increasingly complicated scenes at DVD resolution" what would the settings be for DVD? What pixelCount/aspectRatio? Codex? Quality? Little Dragon, thank you for your detailed and thorough response to my post. It's a perfect example of contributing to the community, and it helped me significantly. Thank you for giving your time. ::::: Opera :::::

DarkPhoenix, I am slowly groking your post on motherboards, and will dig deep into a little later, as decision time approaches. Your tips welcome, thank you. Meanwhile, I am buried in Poser, making Vickie dance! ::::: Opera :::::

So, when is OS X going to run on the Athlon dual rig I am going to purchase? Heard a rumor this might be in the cards... ::::: Opera :::::

Not that I can afford it presently, but there seems to be a ceiling on RAM at 3Gig. it seems these motherboards only have 2-4 slots, and state they support 2-3 Gig of RAM total. It's all based around the 512MB memory modules. Also, I have not seen any 1Gig modules anywhere. There must be either a hardware or systemic limit. ::::: Opera :::::