Morkonan and patorak  I hear you!

Yep, been there.  Commercial poses too!

I came to recommend what Morkonan said, so my work here is done.  No need to thank me. lol

Hey, I'm really glad to see that TrekkieGrrrl is a girl! lol.  No, seriously, for a while there I was afraid it might just be a guy looking for a girl into Star Trek! lol.

I love the variety of people's Avatar's.  I like funny one's too, like JenX mentioned. 

Who is it that has that broken jpg that a kitten comes and wipes off?  I love that one!  I'm also always amused by Miss Nancy's great animated Avatars.

That's a good point Miss Nancy.  I actually recently read an article where a scientist was talking about how the moivie Titanic was ruined for him because despite the fact that they spent all this time to recreate so many fine details of the ship, they had a random star pattern for the sky above the ship, no recognizeable constellations or anything.

(I also understand that this has been corrected for the DVD release of the film according to the article.)

It is interesting to note that there are people out there that pay attention to this kind of stuff.  I always have that article at the back of my mind. lol.

I ended up picking up the Starbright plugin, because it is exaclty what i was looking for for this specific instance, but I really like your suggestion too bwtr and I can see lots of uses for it.  What I l really like it how you can control individual sizes and flares and such.  Lots of good potential for some great effects with that.

I did something similiar many years back, only instead of space it was underwater and instead of stars it was bubbles (lots of bubble from many things).  That was in Poser, but it did the trick.

Thanks GKDantas that's exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks bwtr for the idea, I might play with that a bit, but I was thinking something pretty dense for deep space scenes with starships or detailed night skies, all in animation, so a photoshop backdrop wouldn't work.

sparrownightmare, I like your idea, it's like old cell animation and would work great for high speed travelling through space like at warp or such.

Great response all, thank you.

Cheers!

Man, I would like to see SM sell Poser to a real 3D company.  I wonder what Daz would do with it.  They certainly have proven themselves with the latest release of Carrara and even their own Daz Studio is nothing to sneeze at.

I just get a bad feeling everytime I get an email from SM about their latest little gimmick software.  Man, they peddle some crap, IMHO.

Alas, we can dream.

I've had no problems with Carrara 7 on my machine (i7 with Vista 64), just upgraded to 7.1, I'll have to see how that works.

Mind you, I have all the fancy crap turned off (no Aero, or sidebar).  My system looks like it's running Vista! lol.

USAMIKE, is answer to your question, I have Poser Pro on my new machine.  I still have Poser 7, but I have left it on my older machine.  The big difference between the two is that Poser Pro has a 64bit render engine, thus allowing you to access greater then 2GB of memory - Poser 7 will not give you that same power.

Still, when you slice it down, Poser does not have the most efficient render engine around.  In doing speed tests, I have not been super impressed at the differences between my i7 and the AMD Dual Core laptop.  This is not the processor's faults, obviously, it is really the fault of the render engine!

Carrara, on the other hand?  Wow, big difference.

I could be mistaking, but if the graphs in the task bar are filling up, even if not at a high percentage, does that not mean they are being utilized?

I will admit, with Poser Pro (just double checked) my CPU usage is sitting at about 50% (where as a render with Carrara goes to 100% on all processors), but for the most part, it appears to still be spreading the workload out to all 8.

Ow! Ow! Ow... You people all make my head hurt!

Victoria Lee has the answer!

When you import a background you have the option of setting your viewport setting to fit the background.

Unfortunately, this does not effect (affect?) your render dimensions.

You need to go to Render -> Render Dimensions

Then in Render Dimensions you can either manually key in your aspect ratio if you know it (I do all my renders at 1600x1200, for example) or if you don't choose -> Render to Exact Resolution, then check "constrain aspect ratio", then click "match document window".

Now, if you want you can increase or decrease the size of your render.  Changing one number will change the other one to the proper corrosponding number.

Make sure everything is set at "pixels".  The other measurements (inches, cms) are for print and will only confuse things if you just want to post ina gallery of work on your computer.

That said, choose a decent size, at least what your monitor display is set at, for example.

(HD Television is 1920 by 1080, but that would only print out at 6.4 inches by 3.6 inches at 300 dpi... a low quality magazine setting.)

(Don't bother changing from 72dpi unless you are going to print... even then I would just change that in Photoshop later... 72 dpi is dots per inch of all TVs and computer displays... when going to print it gets kind of complicated and that's a whole different discussion.  Others will chime in and try to tell you otherwise... ignore them.)

I hope this helps!

I just hope this all leads to Carrara supporting Poser 7 and Poser Pro for import with with Transposer.

Forget V4 and M4 in the Face room, Daz would loose waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much cash if we didn't need their face morphs to make our characters unique.

People still try to make their characters unique... right?

Hello?

Hello!?

Is this thing on?

I have all versions of Poser (from 4 through Pro) and I am a great fan of it.

BUT

I have also had Carrara since version 5 (I am presently installing the 7.1 update.)

Honestly, though, Carrara has been a long haul for me.  It requires a lot of relearning and I have not had the time to sit down and learn it like I did with Poser.

That said, I have been doing a lot of render tests lately and here is what I have concluded.

The latest version of Carrara is hands down faster then Poser (Pro of 7).

It is not 64bit and will not access more then 2GB of memory (where as Poser Pro will during render).

This does not matter, though as it (Carrara) is a much more efficient render engine. (I have not pressed limits, though, I might sing a different tune with something like 5 V4s loaded or something liek that).

To master Poser you have to do a lot of "faking".  To truely get great results in an image with Poser you have to learn a lot of little tricks with lighting and the material room.

With Carrara you just have to learn how to use the materials.

(For example, there is still no consensus on the perfect skin texture in Poser... Subsurface scattering is a fake process with varied results.)

Carrara has true subsurface scattering, true caustics (much improved in 7.1) and it does true GI.

Can it produce a better picture?  Well, that can only in the end be determined by the artist.  There are many fine artists who use only Poser (or Daz Studio, for that matter).

What makes Carrara really worth learning is the little extras that it has over Poser.  The ability to turn any object into a light source (new with 7.1 from my understanding), the ability to generate particle effects (though there are some nice products for Poser that allow similiar ability), the ability to generate landscapes (rivalling or even better then Bryce).

What Carrara lacks (from my understanding) is dynamic cloth (though with Transposer and Poser 6 - not Poser 7, sorry - you can import a Poser scene with Dynamic Cloth).

Poser is still much easier to learn and use in the Poser Room, but the true poser of Poser comes in it's Material Room, which requires a lot or reading, experimentation and practice.  For a totally new user, Carrara's Material set ups might be easier... though I'm just starting to wrap my head aroudn them, so I don't know.

Does this help anyone, or am I just babbling?  It's been a long day...

I have the i7 and when I use Poser Pro I know that it takes advantage of all the threads.  Poser Pro has the same option for threads as Poser 7 (choosing up to 4).

Anyway, yeah, I did some test renders and checked out my processor workload and all threads were working.

What's great about Poser Pro (that you won't get with Poser 7) is that it is 64bit and thus will also access greater then 2GB of memory.  I have 6GB on my new machine and Poser Pro takes advantage of all of it!

(You then also need Vista 64 or XP 64).

Anyway, I hope this helps!

*"...only it isn't a friendly screwing you get, more of a nasty bukkake kind of screwing."

*pjz99 you owe me a new keyboard!  I should not have been drinking coffee while reading this.  The guy in the office next to me said he thought I was drowning.

lol.

Thanks for pointing this stuff out CrazyDawg, please drop me a note if you see anything of mine there.  Cheers.