Thank you both for your help. Two further questions arise, Allerleirauh how do I alter the cr2 file to get it to point to the new figure? And Anthony, if I manage to line up the vertexes exactly (ruining my eyes in the process) will what I am doing work, is it even possible? Would it be possible to use the grouping tool to spawn a head prop, withouth moving it, save it as a prop so it repositions exactly, export the prop, remap it, then replace the prop file in the library with the remapped one. Would this remapped prop then - when applied - line up exactly with the P4 Fem head allowing a "replace body part with prop" command to work withouth gaps in the mesh? Would this work? Where are the positioning co-ordinates stored in Poser for library props etc? Thanks

The news here in Europe is that it also has a Trojan Payload that appears to send passwords to a central internet site. It also appears to rename files on your system. Apparantly it was released first in Manilla by a well know virus maker called Barak (?spelling?). It will now be spreading over the USA. In Europe businesses have been badly hit. Apparantly comes as a email "I Love You" with an attachment. DO NOT open the attachment. Delete both.

I think the key to all of this may be posting information on the thiefs ISP carriers as casamerica suggested. If an individual will not change his stance maybe pressure on his carrier will. Getting a bad name is bad for most kinds of business and that is of concern to carriers. Has anyone thought of discussing this with or contacting the BSA (Business Software Alliance, www.bsa.org/). While they are primarily concerned with anti-piracy action on behalf of commercial software makers, they may be able to help or offer advice in this area. After all theft of copyright materials and licence violations are the same whether the material is commercial or not.

From what I can see every single one of the models is a download from here, Poserforum or various artist's homepages. Can't remember all the artists but all the models look very very familiar. All of you should also contact various Max forums and notify them of the situation as these are the places this thief will be targetting for sales. Who knows you might end up with a couple of aggrieved customers seeking redress. Good Luck!

To get back to Jim Burtons reference to texture maps I did something I was never able to do before the latest Poser Patch. Using the grouping tool and Steve Cox's UV mapper I re-mapped the P4 Fem head to a map of 2048 by 2048. Now think back a few days to Allereirauh's fantastic Old Woman head tex for Vicky, it is 966x966. I am just starting to play with textures but the possibilities seem enormous and add bump maps to that...... The point of all this, and something I did not know, is the P4 fem (remapped head) continues to accept the standard P4 tex including the head sections. This is great for posing and render tests. Only at the latter stages do I use the test large map for the head. Now what strikes me is that given the huge number of morphs, courtesy of Traveler and others, maybe the ease of remapping under the patch may be one way to go. I am now wondering just how many hi-res texture maps I can use on one P4 figure. The hands and nipples (for nudes) strike me as areas that would benefit and possibly the armpits and cleavage area mentioned by Jim Burton. Don't ask me to post any tex's or views yet, as this is all experimental and in its infancy for me and I am learning as I go. but it has given me a great deal of food for thought. Thank you Larry for the wonderful patch. STORM

These are the two working links for this: http://www.edtech.clara.co.uk/ http://www.start.demon.co.uk/

I don't think the comments deserve the title "Evil person", nor do I think they are particularly venomous or vicious. I mean "nc" (no comment?) and the other two on "posing" and the "eye" do not really amount to an "evil" attack and his ratings, two fives and a two - well compared to some of the things that have happened in the galleries - this is in my opinion mild. However, it may well be that Dnick is annoyed at you for some reason and targeting you through his comments on your work and this can be annoying. You should take this up with the Admin or post it in the complaint forum. Posting here may well inflame the situation. Just my opinion. BTW Very fine work. STORM

I totally agree, it is like emerging from Limbo or having a blindfold removed, the world seems a brighter place and its colours more vibrant and the add is affirmation of that. I would suggest that most of the 10,000+ members of this forum share similar thoughts. May I take the opportunity to make just one suggestion, please listen to our requests and hopes as regards the future development of Poser. That way you will ensure a loyalty and a customer base almost unheard of in the fast changing world of 3D graphics, copperfasting the commercial viability of his fantastic program. Good Luck Larry and Curious Labs STORM

Yes you do speak words of wisdom bonestructure, and if you look at my post in Renderotica (news) you will see my small familiarity with this area is very recent, limited and triggered by a bad experienece that I would not wish on anyone. However, despite its major shortcomings, I believe that my limited knowledge is probably greater than the vast majority of ordinary surfers on the net and that is scary because it shows up the vulnerability of people to the preditors be they Aureate, or Hackers or (and thank you for explaining it) Crackers. Your security precautions are something that many people could learn from. But just like many car drivers have no idea what goes on under the bonnet, many computer users will never learn about the dangers of the waters they surf in. And in those circumstances programs like ZoneAlarm might protect them and their often valuable and irreplacable data in some cases. If the computer, that we all increasingly rely on, were a house, it would have guard dogs, alarms, security glass and more if the neighbourhood posed equivilent threats to the ones that exist in cyberspace. And yes I agree with you the big boys like Microsoft and Intel may yet be proven to be the Al Capones of this whole saga. These days before I go to bed (which will be soon as it is 3.30 AM here) I unplug my 'puter from the mains and disconect the cable from the net. This despite boot passwords etc.etc. Mad is it not. 'night bonestructure, 3DSprite.... STORM

I have bad news for you bonestructure hacking is dead easy if you have one or more trojans lurking in your system. Try using a firewall like Blackice Defender which not only gives you the IP from where attacks are being launched but the type of attacks. The most common of these tend to be SubSeven and Back Orifice pings and a range of other probes to see if your computers ports are open and amenable to allowing the hacker in. My record is 47 such probes on my system in a five-hour web session. Experienced hackers can trawl millions of computers on the net in one session. (have a look at http://www.networkice.com/ for lots of info and links on the topic) If you have a trojan in your system and no firewall and the hacker comes after you the chances are you won't even know it happened. And you can pick up a trojan from any download on the net. I understand it is now even technically possible to hide small programs, virus's and trojans in graphics data, i.e. a picture. Anti-Virus programs are generally poor at spotting trojans and very few ordinary surfers use specialised anti-trojan or trojan hunting programs. On the question of Aureate gathering info on surfers, maybe you are right and should not worry, but in some cases this data might be used against surfers in the future. But, there are many countries in the world that have far less liberal laws than e.g. the USA. Certain extremist regiemes imprison, torture and even execute people for looking at things that are considered legal and "normal" in the USA and much of Europe such as adult graphic sites like Renderotica. Ask Amnesty International about this if you want the evidence. There is no guarentee that Aureate's illegally gathered surfer's IP addresses and surfing information habits would not fall into the hands of the security and police authorities of such regiemes and have serious consequences for many ordinary people (after all the manufacturers of over 300 software products already get this stuff from Aureate - some security headache!). The info could also be used for Blackmail purposes by individuals or intelligence services. I object to such illegal information gathering and so do many others. On a final note you may not have to worry about your "Aureate profile" but if you do not have a good firewall I would advise you not to keep any sensitive personal information such as financial/bank details, credit card information or anything of that nature in an open folder on your computer. Use a good encryption program for it or store it in a removable disk. Then again maybe I am just a little bit paranoid having lost my system to a hacker last Christmas. STORM

Since not everyone is probably going to plough through the long page links I listed above here is a small sample of what just one of the dozen or so dll.s aureate installs on your computer does. Bear in mind that investigators are still trying to establish fully what this one and the others do. "advert.dll" This DLL creates a hidden window every time you open your browser. It creates and sends 4 pages of information to the Aureate servers using port 1749 on your system, these pages include: 1. Your name as listed in the system registry (not the name you installed one of the programs with) 2. Your IP address 3. The reverse DNS match of your address. ( tells them what ISP and area of country you are in) 4. A listing of ALL software that is shown in your registry as being installed. (Not just the companies they work with) 5. This DLL sends the following information to their server on all URL's you visit: A.) ad banners you may click on B.) all downloads you do showing the filename/file size/date/time/type of file(image, zip,executable, etc) C.) full time and date stamps of all your actions while using your browser D.) the remote dialup number you are dialing in on (taken out of your dialer configuration) E.) dialup password if saved, does not "appear" at first glance to send this through to them. 6. Contains programmers note: "Show me the money! I want to be Mike!" There are also serious worries that these dll.s may allow aureate or hackers to remotly controll your computer. Makes you wonder if this is an isolated case or just the tip of the iceberg?

Sorry I should have given the site page for anyone interested www.rayflect.com They have a page up with the information.

Here is another little titbit and possible casualty of the whole Metacreation's fiasco. This may be old news to some but I only just became aware of it while looking at the various home pages of Photoshop plugin developers. It seems that the French company Rayflect (makers of the PhotoTracer, Fourseasons, Four Elements etc plugins) were sold to MetaCreations on October 18th. On the MetaCreations homesite at the bottom of the Products page there is a Rayflect tab and when you click on it you get details about support but also the information that MetaCreations are incorporating Rayflect products into their product line! If it were not so sad it would almost be funny. I wonder if we should add the Rayflect employees to the list of people laid off by Meta Creations before Christmas? I wonder what the future of the Rayflect products is?

I can't answer your question for sure Cage but you could always convert the DXF with Explorer 3D or by importing to Poser or Bryce and re-exporting in obj format and remapping your model using UV mapper. What grabbed my attention (apart from the FREE bit) was the posibility that it can work with curved surfaces. Good for model creation from photos. BTW you can also download the manual and other help pages from the site (I just did). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WOW!!!!!!! Do it. Pleaaase post it. STORM