Here are a couple of links you'll want (free hdri files): http://hdri.3dweave.com/library/ http://www.hdrimaps.com/ http://www.avalonarts.co.uk/hdri/hdri.html http://home.comcast.net/~e_craft/hdr.html http://www.lightworks-user.com/hdri_starter_collection.htm

These are the sites I go to for Japanese stuff: http://homepage.mac.com/hisaom1/ImageLabs/TOP.htm http://yokohama.cool.ne.jp/tomiya910/NeoJ/ http://edogoyomi.page.ne.jp/download/3dmodels/nihongami/index.html http://www.3dchaya.com/index.html http://www.expandingwave.com/ http://poserclub.jp/ Most of the stuff in the these sites is free, Poserworld, Poserpros and Daz3D have Kimonos etc. as well, but not for free. I haven't seen anything quite like what you've got in the photo, but theres loads of useful stuff anyway (cool ronin pic btw).

That looks like HDRI lighting - try turning interpolation off, that generally gets rid of a lot of artifacting problems. I like hdri rendering for most things, but I've also noticed it doesn't handle poser hair and, especially, eyelashes so well.

How come? (if anyone knows) I've switched shadows off most of Carrara's other light types and gotten skylight rendering to work as I wanted. It would be interesting to know, having just tried it for myself. I've never switched shadows off an hdri render before because they generally aren't too obvious compared to the other lights in Carrara.

Have you tried switching off shadows in the render room as well? That should do what you want - not render any shadows at all.

That's a new one, the only thing I can think of is if you've gotten through to Eovia's US store, rather than their European branch. Email Eovia - they're usually pretty good with sorting stuff out quickly.

Athlon 64x2 4800+, 2Gb ram, C5Pro - 20 minutes 7 seconds

Carrara 5 Pro CPU: Athlon64 X2 4800+ MEM: 2GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM Graphics: Asus Extreme N7800GT (256MB) Time 8 seconds

Poser 6 support in Carrara 5 Pro? Been playing with it since yesterday & didn't notice. Does that mean Carrara can now read .obz files and import those binary extrnal morph things that I've done my best to get rid of? Admittedly I've been trying to work out the new Translucency feature - Brownie points to Eovia for throwing something new at us, thanks.

I can help you with some of these, I've also chucked a screengrab in so you can see it in action: 1) depends how used to Poser you are - Carrara's way isn't too awkward, a combination of dials, a skeleton and a complete parts list should cover what you need. 2) Yes, just import them. 3) Yes, the option is there - both to import cloth and to conform it. I'm having a bit of a tough time getting it to work, but I'm probably doing something wrong. Like LCBoliou says you'll need the Transposer plug-in to use dynamic cloth & hair. 4) Haven't got a clue, sorry. 5) I tweak everything anyway. Hair & eyelash transparencies tend to get in okay, but Poser specific shader functions won't. I have noticed that Carrara asks for the main body texture, but not the rest - eyes, head etc. Hopefully someone else can clarify this point. 6) Yes.

No, but Julien already has Carrara5 versions on his website & the serial numbers you'll get from C4 work with those.

Do a search for Transposer on this forum - I'm sure someone has had this problem as well. I just can't remember who or when. Otherwise email Eovia, they should be able to help you out.

Which version of Poser are you using? Transposer and Poser 6 don't work together. If you have Poser 6 I think your only option is to export the scene out of Poser as .obj or .3ds files and put the scene back together in Carrara.

(The above texture maps have been scaled down from 1024x1024 just as preview). I think the problem you might have had before is that Carrara only exports whats in the colour channel of a texture (if I'm wrong please let me know). If that is the case than you need to export a separate version with the bump map in the colour channel (greyscale/black & white) and apply that image to Poser's bump and/or displacement map channels: - Drag the Bump map channel into the colour channel. - Check that the preview shows the bump map pattern in black & white. - Export this one as something different so you don't overwrite the colour map. I'm starting to get into normal maps now - they're like bump maps on steroids. Obviously you can't use normal maps in Poser, but I hope this stuff is useful to you anyway. One more thing: I'm not 100% certain on this, but Baker doesn't seem to recognize a Terrain shaders bump mapping - the 2nd image was actually generated using Baker's light map function. Doesn't really matter to me, I think Baker is a useful plug in anyway.

I picked Island from C4Pro's scene wizard. As you can see the 3rd image that uses a normal map gives a much better result than the bump map version (2nd image). I'll post the maps that Baker generates below.