The V3 male morphs were a good idea since it's totally inefficient to have 2 (two) figures for such minor changes.

I wish there would be an V4, A4, M4 all in one. This combination would require either many polygons or skill to get it done, but after all it's better than the many base figures that are required now.
However, should DAZ be able to create a realistic figure which is V5 and includes gender change, I would more likely wait for this than getting any V4 male morphs. Up to this point there could even be a low poly version of this figure. Including more extreme morphs would prolly lead to more polys as I've doubts about the existence of the needed skills to achieve this with less than 100k polycount.
If they would offer a seperate high poly version that is designed specially to meet simulation needs, I would be even happier.

Back to present: What else features should M4 include than what all the predecessors got?
Considering the hard- and software environment and that the figure should work well for many people, there is not much left other than good posing behaviour.

Since V3 had huge flaws just like all other figures, freebies or not, and DAZ didn't care to fix or was plain and simple unable to do so, it is very unlikely that a M4 will be any better.
If one creates a figure that is not for sale which has flaws then it's nothing special if these flaws never get fixed. Maybe it was done for learning purpose or whatever.
If a figure is for sale however, it should offer some very basic functionality. That is perfect posing behaviour and the option of a low resource load variant for animations or bigger scenes.Some other basic things are morphing flexibility and perfect realism if the user wants it.
That they then take money for such a product is fine. If the special version is 500+ bucks it's fine too because as it is now one would have to spend plenty hours to integrate these features or assign the task to companies to do it.
Basically there is no need for further commercial figures if the creators don't fix the flaws that they were made awre of during the past couple years. And a fix is not something like V4 to V4.1 and with M4 the same procedure again only because someone slept while QA.
The need for free figures is given but so is the need for options and items for these figures.

Quote - I've made a few interior sets that are on sale in the marketplace and I usually create them with only three walls, much like a TV studio set, the fouth wall is not there to allow better viewing by the cameras.

... Do you like the three sided sets so you can aim your cameras and lights easier, or do you prefer having all four walls?   Also what about ceilings?  Again, similar to TV studio sets, there are no ceilings to provide easier access for lighting.

I know we can build sets that have "removable walls and ceilings" but besides that option, given the choice of the first two, which would you prefer?

With these options I prefer 4 walls. One has to adjust material settings/zones but a missing wall is more difficult to fix than to remove any unneeded walls.

**Question:**Why won't you consider the option of removable walls and ceiling/floor if you can build them anyways?

The suggestion to post a picture of what needs rigging is good.
Isn't rig also a synonym for betray, deceive, chouse?

Can see your site. It's a bit slow tho.
Using mbda-systems.

Route works til "te-1-1.gw-dists-a.bs.ka.oneandone.net" with response times over 14 ms as soon as 1&1 is concerned.

Hmmm. Guess it's about time for V5 then.
And forget about this V4 accident.

@ drkfetyshnyghtsYou said you did some photography already... Can we expect to see some your photographic artwork some day?
IMHO this place is great if you got any questions regarding Photography or Poser (or any other of the covered 3D apps)

While installing products from RMP, this sites marketplace, should work fine, it never hurts to know exactly what your machine is doing.

If you visit some of the many freebie sites you may find items that come as OBJ or items that you have to move manually to the right location in your runtime.

Looking around in the folders of your Poser installation might be boring but it is good invested time.**
**

By default they are set to outline and you can see the red and green ellipse.

Wireframe is only one color which is a bright grey (215, 215, 215) and lit wireframe for falloff zones is not transparent and no help at all.

Quote - BTW  how are the centers in Poser 7,  when the joint parameter panel is pulled up,  do they fly around like Poser 6?

Have not noticed any such behaviour while working with the joint param. panel. (Ctrl-Shift-J)
Selecting and Moving deformers or centers with the mouse and tablet works very well for me.
Changing the offset by entering numbers or using dials also works fine.
As long as I don't move anything all stays in it's place and if moved, then the result is analog proportional to what I do with the mouse/pen.

Dunno if we talk about the same thing now... g

The autobalancing however is still totally screwed and causes things to fly around already on selection. Just like in P6. Maybe this autoscrewing is some "feature" to create weird art...
I have it almost always turned off. Can't stand these many balls everywhere.

[Edit]
Forgot to mention the long awaited multiple Undo/Redo feature and Morph Brush before.
Both were working well and fast from original P7 version on.
Only drawback might be the slight delay between clicking an library item and its visible application.
Deleting a figure or restoring it after deletion can take some seconds in bigger scenes or if Poser is running for a long period. SR 1 fixed that somewhat.
[/Edit]

Disabling the firewall is a source of much and lasting fun, yep...
Better get you a different one asap. One that allows you to assign rules based on applications.

Quote - Well, I have to admit that I haven't gone much past reading their advertizing and one phonecall to their techhnical/sales people. They offered a demo and some more technical interaction once I get a demo, so that my experiments with it can give us some answers.  But, I haven't had an opening in my schedule yet to give it a serious shot.  I'd be happy to share my findings once I get to sink my teeth into it.   http://www.garagegames.com/pg/product/view.php?id=1#features

.
.
. Here's an interesting link.... http://www.devmaster.net/engines/index.php 

Thanks for all the info so far!Back in 1999 flightsims were used for strategical display of combat situations. Was not really fancy with 256 colors and block graphics...
The goal was only to get the area of operations in 3D and transfer the position and directions/speed of units to this 3D map rather than gather all info from radar, radio, airspace surveillance and puzzle it together the classical way.

Support for Blender sounds good. All i knew about the engine is what was written in game mags.
On the GarageGames site that you've linked it seems like it is needed to partition a large area into smaller playfields and then you run into the problem of limited visibility due to the playfieldborders.
That problem occurs with all gameengines I know so far. Making an virtual actor at a certain distance away from the camera and linked to its transformation is where the engines crash after a short time because of the amount of ram allocated. Using low caching ends in worse slideshows on fast moves. It also causes more often crashes due to infinite iterations.

I would have to get into this in my free time primarily. Looking at the way how SGI solves problems like these with 128+ node visualisation systems let the attempt to get it done by a small box (PC or Console) appear even more fictional.
Guess that if you get it done, you can become rich very quickly as there are so many fields to use this technology.

Good luck! :)
An FPS where your clients do some team deathmatch over the buildings and areas they r interested in would be fun. :)

Now it's time to update my Blender again. Last time was in 2006...

@patorak:
Found some good docs regarding space models and tensors. IM is in work.

Poser 7 SR1 works well for me. Not more crashes than with P6 and the renderspeed with Firefly is much better now. The visible precision of numbers on param. dials is limited to 1e-3.
The feature of creating collections (favorites) out of the standard palettes is very useful too. Can't find any reasonable arguments not to upgrade.

With Poser you can have some experience of succes really fast.
Just load a Figure and start to try out things.

As long as you dont delete your runtime, there is not much that you could mess up.
Following the tutorial manual (that comes with Poser) step by step is maybe not the best thing.
IMHO it's always better to try out how things work by playing around with them. It's the fastest way to learn something new and memorize it.
Check out the light settings after loading a figure. The basic light setup is somewhat similar to what photographers use.

You can get a feeling of the way light colors are treated in preview and render.
Then testing the different light types and what they do.
After this you maybe want to check the basic material settings (but in advanced mode) to see how colors will be treated there.

And if you are somewhat familiar with the dials and their meaning you may want to look at the tutorials.
Like in photography, the lighting is very important for a Poser picture to look right.

Have fun! :)

Both models, A-10 and M1A2 are looking great!
What game mod will they be for?

You had a look at De Espona models already? Quite some useful stuff on the CD's.

Hehe, now that is funny... Everybody coming from CAD/CAM.

I also used Autocad 9 for a short time. Went then to CATIA for mil. related stuff and that's where I'm still most satisfied with if it comes to really big simulations.
For electrical engineering and circuit design I use mostly NI Multisim. Formerly "Electronic Workbench".

All the apps that started as true CAD have something technical in how the render results are looking. V3/V4 rendered within CATIA looks just not like if it's done within Maya. But both use mental ray. The same it is with almost any Max picture. There's something about it that just don't look right.

Connie, yould you elaborate "I've been investigating Torque game engine some, to see if their terrain generation is as snazzy as they claim it to be." please?

What impression you got so far and what tools you use for the modification/customization?

I used the UW engine back in ... 2004 or so. Was nice and all, but there were to many limits with the possible detail and there was no way to assign the required amount of information to the objects. It was easy to use tho. :/

Quote - Oh, I dunno......perhaps Connie will be the one to administer the beating.  And in a most unpleasant manner..........

While I would prefer a pleasant beating, it will be hard to arrange if I did not even get the phone number yet. g

Quote - OK -- looks like this thing has turned into a semi-serious discussion now -- at least partially.  But the egos still poke through -- as well as the contemptous, dissmissive look-down-the-nose attitudes.  But hey -- animals always behave according to their true natures.

Well, it was about time for an short break, right?
If we come back to topic within the next, say 2 pages, it would be great. :)

The Ego is a sneaky beast... Always waiting to jump out and take control.
At least we don't insult us for 20 pages. Now.

Quote - Dude, I was defending you from Joe's taunts, and you're busting my chops. Phshaw. What's up with you?
Oh, and... I do 3D for living and don't get into biig loong technical discussions unless I get paid for it, no time. I come to this site for hobby 3D ing and kittens.

XENOPHONZ gave me an excellent excuse: It's my omnipresent Ego. :p
And my wording is often not as polite as it could be...

Time to go sleep now.
Have a nice day/night everyone and get the new figure/add-on team started. :)

Quote -
That is EXACTLY what I am proposing:)  

So the end result is, that the Freestuff forum will be for freestuff providers to announce any freestuff items that would like whether its Freestuff from Renderosity's freestuff area or...
.
.
.
So to give some examples,

This type of post would need to go into the Freestuff forum
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2694985  (good job Anton)  or

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2694543

**And this type of post would still be okay here in the Poser forum or whatever forum it relates to
**http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2669000  or

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2669009

Let me know if further clarification is needed or if we are on the same page :)
...

That sounds great! :woot:
Have to give you a hug for that solution and for providing good examples. HUG
But don't get used to it, Admin... :tongue2: