Just a bit of FYI for fiks, the Voodoo3 supports well over 800x600x32. Up to 2046x1536x32 @75hz to be exact. So unless your monitor is quite old, 1024x768 shouldn't be a problem at all. I wouldn't worry about upgrading to a new video card if you only need it for 2D. Voodoo3 has very good quality 2D output. You dont need new drivers for something that isnt broke. :) If you play a lot of new 3D games, which I am guessing you dont since you still have a Voodoo3, you obviously need to get rid of that outdated card ASAP. Not only because there are no drivers, but also lack of modern features.

Heh.. When I first looked at the pic I thought "Hey, thats a cool lookin dress!".. Then I read your message.

These MAC vs PC "discussions" always get so heated. lol Since some of you obviously dont know, Market Share reports are based on sales. If you have a MAC you have been using for a while and decide to go buy an Intel based machine, you just helped raise Intel's market share. If you then go buy an AMD machine, you just helped them as well.. etc etc. Your MAC was counted back when you bought it. :) So today, MACs represent about 2.6% of computer sales. "this is something i have never understood, most apps and games are written, built and desiged on mac but, the mac always get the final product last." I dont know where you get your info, but most apps and games are developed in an NT/Win2k/Unix environment. Heck, it isnt even a close race. I say buy what you want. Get what you need. But dont buy a machine the CEO of the company gets on stage and feeds you a bunch of BS about, because he knows you will buy it. Do the research. Check the numbers. Hate to sound like a PC zealot, but the latest Mac marketing campaign looks like it was built based on the knowledge that most Mac users are computer ignorant. They may as well replace the commercial with some guy saying: "Spend $1000 more on this slower system, because you are too stupid to use a computer". Do many PC users spend a lot of time under the hood? You might need to go in there from time to time, but the majority dont. Most the ones who do, do it BECAUSE THEY CAN. And by doing it, you become more informed about your system and what it does. The more informed you are, the more BS you can filter out of all the marketing BS you see on TV (from everyone, not just Mac).

How about 144 trillion.. :) http://www.finalrender.com/finalrender/images/144.jpg

The money loss figures always make me laugh. They arent "losing" any money at all because these people arent going to buy the software. The only time software companies can claim lost sales is when they bust the bootleggers. Even then it is an iffy claim. If someone sells 50,000 copies of Office 2k Pro for $10 a pop, that doesnt mean those 50,000 people would have still bought the software if it was $400. You could shut down all the pirate sites tonight and I bet no major software company will show any significant increase in sales, except maybe Microsoft. People will buy new versions of Windows if they have to. Discreet, Alias|Wavefront, Softimage, etc are dreaming if they think any of those damn pirates are going to shell out the cash for their apps. As far as bandwidth goes, major groups like DoD leach FTP space from companies with annonymous access on fat pipes. This is called a pub. The software usually gets put deep in many subdirectories with codes and directory names that the average FTP application will not see. The software moves quickly from pub to pub and gets deleted almost as fast. At that point, it is known as "0-day" warez. Those 'in-the-know' log in and download the software in it's "0-day" state while it is circulating the pubs. Eventually it filters down to Usenet, medium and smaller FTP sites, IRC, web sites, etc. Direct TV is even better for dreaming up these huge "loss" numbers caused by people with hacked access cards.

The reason those models, and applications for that matter, are so much more expensive is their target market's main use of those items: renders/animations to make money. Buying a $200 model is nothing when you are using it in a project that you are being payed 5x that amount to make. However, as many have of us have seen in the recent past, some advertising agencies have caught on to the Poser secret. There are also licensing issues to consider as well. When they buy that expensive model they are (usually) free to do what they want with it. You as a Poser user cant make a character with Vic, Mike, Posette, or Dork then sell the whole package to someone else. You can sell only the files that modify the original mesh (which they must own) to form your character.

I meant it can bring it to its knees.. Doesnt always happen and might not happen at all depending on how you use your system. It has happened to many people however. Images of just Vic2 with Daz Hi-res textures and bumps even stalled out on me a few times under Win98 with 256MB RAM.

Forgot the most basic test of them all. Poser loaded with textured vic in workspace - memory usage = 58MB. :) "Start of my tests" = system in that condition.

"When was the last time you defragged your hard drives, or rebooted your computer. That can make a difference." Defrag - yes. Defrag can work wonders on sluggish systems. Reboot - not really needed if you use XP or even 2k. Both have far superior memory management to that in Win98/Me (if you can even call it management in those). After 2 weeks of continuous operation - playing games, using photoshop, poser, etc etc, Poser still kicked out high res renders as fast as it did on the fresh bootup. XP and 2k were designed for use in places that cant or dont want to reboot when using system/memory intensive applications. 1024RAM will make a noticeable difference if you render images that cause Windows to resort to a swap file. Surprisingly enough, it doesnt take much to do it either! Get a memory manager like Cacheman and watch the memory utilization meter when you render. An image with a single Mill character using high res bumps and maps uses a fairly large amount of RAM (and swap if needed). Unfortunately I cant remember the numbers off hand. Correct Ron - Video ram/fillrate/T&L processor/etc, anything to do with the video card other than 2D output basically, does nothing for Poser at all.

EA, he has a celeron (cheap). Besides that, he need not worry about smoking its life off because overclocking doesnt do it. All CPUs are essentially "overclocked". You think a P4 2Ghz is any different than a P4 1.8Ghz? It isnt. They are manufactured on the same process. The only difference is the 2Ghz CPUs came out of the fab able to run 2Ghz 100% of the time with the same cooling and voltage requirements, AND the company was ready to take the next speed to market. Once the company finds they are maxing out the current design (thus can not "overclock" any longer), they switch to smaller/cooler ones (ie: the .13 process Intel and AMD started using now). As long as you have the proper cooling taking place, your CPU will run fine at a higher clockspeed and last as long as it would at the normal speed. Far longer than anyone would really be using it anyway. Well, except for my PII300 thats been running at 450Mhz for 5 years. Dang thing is on it's third user. :) His problem is most likely 256MB RAM. I used to have the same problem when rendering high res pics of vic2 with high res texs and bumps + shadows. Many others had the same problems and posted them here when Vic2 was released.

"This tweaking of the windows98 system you must make by hand!" Only for over 512MB (not 256) and ONLY if you are having the memory address conflicts. There are numerous applications available to do the job for you if you dont want to do it by hand. Cacheman from http://www.outertech.com/ is a popular one. Either way, Windows98 supports well over 256MB. 1GB to be exact.

Mazak, that is false. Win98 (1 and SE) and ME have a max of 1GB RAM (according to MS documentation). More than 1GB can cause a continuous reboot. fun stuff! LOL Now even though 98 and ME support 1GB, there is still a problem with using >512MB - Vcache causes memory address conflicts. Adding MaxFileCache=16384 to the Vcache section of the system.ini (limits it to 16MB which is plenty) fixes that. BTW, limiting VCache (disk cache) improves system performance greatly by freeing up RAM for programs so everyone should do it even if you dont have >512MB.

I would be surprised if Poser 5 didnt support hardware T&L like most other 3D packages do. Thats would just be in the Poser document window (workspace, viewspace, whatever you like to call it) of course. The rendering process will have to be handled by the software (CPU), just like it always is.

Resize the image, with contrain aspect ratio selected, and save. I have 3 versions of my Vic Hi-Res textures. The default high res (4kx4k), a mid res which I reduced to half (2kx2k), and a low res version around 1kx1k. Did the same with the head and the bumps too.

I agree with Mazak. No. I used my voucher to download Steph last night and I am glad I didnt have to buy her. She isnt real terrible or anything, and being able to use the muscle morphs for Mike is cool and all IF you want to make a muslce woman or manly looking woman, but the model seems to lack quality. Half the sizing morphs on her cause the mesh to distort in odd ways. The chest area looks pretty bad even with minor adjustments.. But hey, it's a free gift for purchasing a great model like Mike2. I just wont waste my money buying textures for her.