Thanks for totally make it clear, d-larson! I get it now, and I think you have a great starting point. You know, with a free base tex, I might even get my hand in on making my own tex; I think it's a positively great idea. The reason I've always shied away from starting my own is just what you mentioned: I don't want to have to start from scratch, and until I see just how difficult it is, I don't want to invest in one of the tex-making packs available in the RM. I've always kind of kicked around the idea of doing a tattoo texture, since I have a kickass set of designs a friend of mine gave me. You know, I also think that it would be really interesting to see what kind of texture this could be if a group effort were made on it. The logistics of passing the base .psd around from person to person would be annoying, but it would be really cool to see you provide a base texture, and have another person add a layer to it of their modifications, and then pass that file on to another person for another layer of mods; I wonder what the result would be? Interesting in the very least, but I think you could end up with a VERY versatile texture file, with one file being the source for a ton of different textures. Just a thought. Jack

Well, I'm not sure if I understand you about the V3 head map; you mean you started from a blank template file, or an actual copyrighted existing head map? If you mean that you are starting from an existing map (and your comment about not starting from scratch every time seems to indicate this), even if you got the map from free stuff, there's bound to be a lot of restrictions on what you can and can't do with it - I'd be careful!

Hey, you know, an image came to mind reading the posts in this thread. I think it would be cool if you created a chrome silhouette of a woman singing. You could use the alpha channel from a render you posed of a woman with a mic, and fill it with chrome using a Pshop filter. You could even do a kind of etching on top of that set into the chrome, using the letters RR. Just a thought... Jack

Hey, I talked to someone a while back about getting poser stuff into C4d, and he suggested the following: 1: Set up all the stuff as you like it in poser. Get it all just right. 2: Export as an .obj. 3: Use the plugin at http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=Niki&Topsectionid=0 to set the textures. Hope this helps! Jack

Wow, Numanoid, that sounds crazy good. Can't wait to check it out!

Here's what I recommend: Most drastic: Do a fresh install of Poser 4, and then before installing anything else, install the 4.03 patch. Then, I know it's a pain, but reinstall all your other stuff. Least drastic: Get Correct Reference, and also closely examine what's left of your old original meta creations folder. My guess is there's some stuff in your old runtime that's supposed to be in your new runtime. Hope this helps, Jack

Wizardtim, I'm sure you will eventually get more input on this, but as for me, still images are the norm. I don't really have any plan to jump into animation at this point, so products aimed at soundtracking don't really register with me. However, that being said, someone with expertise in music and audio could definitely hook up with poser/bryce animators and produce some amazing results, whether here or elsewhere. The very few animations I've seen from poser rarely if ever have any audio. Just my .02 Jack

Dustin, I'm gonna take another wild stab here: XP Pro uses different logins/rights, correct? Does the login you use have admin rights? Forgive me if my ignorance is showing here... Jack

And to redistribute/sell your character, while staying within copyright law and not sending out the Vic2 char itself, you'll have to use something like the "MAT Pose Creator" http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=5174 by JHoagland. Jack

Also, do this. 1. Go to My computer, and then click Tools > Folder Options. 2. Click the File Types tab, and when it get's finished loading all your files types, scroll down to your Winzip entry (ZIP in the Extensions column, "Winzip File" in the File Types column) and highlight it by clicking once. 3. Click the Advanced button. 4. Make sure the box "Confirm open after download" is checked. 5. Click OK. That forces Winzip to ask where to save the file when you download, instead of grabbing it and closing the windows without asking where to save it. This box gets cleared most often whenever you upgrade to a new version of winzip (at least, this happenned to me the last time I upgraded). Of course, this is for Win2k. I also have a WinXP machine, but I can't get to it right now to confirm these instructions on that OS. Perhaps someone else would be willing to post that too? Hope this helps! Jack

Nomuse, you'd be surprised how difficult today's software can make scanning your foreign bank notes. For instance, Adobe's CS, from what I hear, won't accept scans of money from practically any world bank - it's got a built in sniffer that looks for money from many of the world's banks (others more knowledgeable than I feel free to correct me!). Check out the PhotoShop forum for more info. My impression is that scanning money from any country should be avoided. Stick with the funny money like you mentioned. Later, Jack

Here goes: ASUS P4S533 Celeron 1.7 GHz WinXP Home 512MB RAM 120GB 7200 RPM ATA133 HD (yes, I know paying for ATA133 is a waste) 17GB ATA100 HD (backup Poser content) Liquid smooth performance, running and rendering. I use to have Win98SE too, and it rarely rendered anything, and crashed almost always. I'm surprised I actually got the renders I did out of it. Mistdragon, if you want to avoid burning everything to CD, get a new hard drive and do a full clean install of XP. That way, once you reinstall poser on the new drive, you can pick what to either copy over to the new OS/Drive (if you have a gigantic runtime) or reinstall - instead of all that backing up. Jack

Kalypso, I had that problem before, don't use the link above to log in, go to the DAZ page from a fresh browser window, navigate to the forums and the official link, and it should work. Jack

Don't know if it's true, but apparently this one infects you even through web mail - at least that's what the talking heads on the news have been spouting off lately.

I think you bring up a good point Fido. If it says postwork is allowed, or implies postwork is allowed, then postwork of any type should be allowed. That would include rendering the pic outside of the 'creation' program. However, rendering an image outside of poser seems to sit in a shady gray area. I guess it goes to your definition of what is a poser picture - is it poser only if the initial render is done by a poser renderer, and not poser if the initial render is done with a non-poser renderer? Or, is it always a poser picture when the content of the pic was created and intended for poser? Perhaps it's time for the contest rules to be made more explicit. My .02.