Carrara 8 Pro 64-Bit

It should work in C7, but don't quote me on that :)

No scripts; translucency maps and shader-level SSS, all right in Carrara :)

I mean the real SSS :)

Who's Angelina Jolie? Never heard of her...

wolf359: My views on Vray come from my own line of work. I run a small company; a couple of employees, a couple of workstations and a 32-core render farm. Our typical job is 5000-10000 frames of character animation with a delivery time of 3-4 weeks. There's no way we'd be able to take advantage of Vray's biggest selling features (IDL, environment lighting, etc.) and still make our deadlines. I think it's one of the best engines on the market, but for my situation Vray just isn't something we'd get our money's worth from.
That's a great render by the way; I'd give more credit to your skill than what you rendered it with!

ksanderson: Trust me, I could by a dozen copies of Max and still turn a bigger profit than rendering with Lux. Mainly I just don't see the Poser community ever really embracing it. Really buggy too.

Abraham: Keep in mind that Blur is one of the biggest, most well-funded CG houses on the planet. When I said that Vray's non-architectural offerings were best suited for larger companies, that's kinda what I was getting at.
And just to clarify, I was comparing Lux and Mental Ray, not Mental Ray and Vray. I ain't touching THAT! :)

Another point I wanted to make is this:
Poser is made for character animation, right? That being said, GI/IDL are rarely used for production-level projects. Pixar, ILM, Weta-they all pretty much stick with manual lights and occlusion. It just cracks me up that there's such a high demand for these super-advanced rendering engines.
Rather than waiting 90 hours for Lux to get rid of the artifacts, I personally think people would be much better off using that time to learn some solid lighting techniques.
I'm probably on my own with that one, huh?

This is definitely the most interesting discussion I've seen in a long time!
I think what everybody in the Poser world needs to realize is that eventually you'll have to roll up your sleeves and learn how to light and render your scenes. The problem of course is that even the most basic industry-standard lighting approaches are so mind-numbingly difficult to pull off in Poser that most users start looking for better programs that still allow DAZ and Poser content to be used.
VRay is great and all, but outside of architectural work, it's best suited for larger outfits with the necessary talent and more importantly the right hardware to truly use it to it's full potential. One person with one computer and a copy of Poser isn't gonna be able to do much outside of the occasional gallery upload.
Which brings me to Lux...
I hate to say it, but the whole "LuxPose" project is a colossal waste of time. Lux still requires a solid know-how of lighting and rendering techniques and its render times are so laughably slow that I can't imagine a single scenario where Lux would be a viable solution. Even for architecture, something like Mental Ray, which ain't exactly known for its speed, would be a vastly better option-despite the price tag.
We're definitely in a strange place these days; I'm seeing more and more professionals using Poser and DAZ models, but at the same time Poser has fallen so far behind the curve that modern gaming engines are producing better results in less time.
Still, I think the vast majority of Poser users are content with their program. It's simple to use, you can buy everything you need, and it's dirt-cheap. Poser easily meets the needs of hobbyists who are looking for something to scratch their collective creative itch and that's perfectly fine.
On the other hand; Poser always seems to get a select few of its users thinking about a potential career in CG, which is a beautiful thing...but you can't do it with Poser :)

wolf359:
How is VRay for character animation; is it a practical solution?
I bought it for Cinema 4D a few years back when my company was doing a lot of architectural/engineering work. We transitioned over to character animation before I could really dive into VRay; it's been collecting dust on my hard drive ever since.
I think I still qualify for the upgrade; I just need to know if it's worth it for us.
JT

MagnusGreel-

Dammit! You just made me shoot Mountain Dew out of my nose! Now I'll have to take apart my keyboard to clean it out!

Just to add a note to what Jeff is saying;
Because you're on Windows 7, make sure to either turn of UAC at your control panel, or save the character to a Poser runtime that's not in your Program Files directory. (Otherwise Windows will hide the file from Carrara 8)

Hi Klebnor,
If this is the morph package I'm thinking of, the .CR2 should be referencing a different OBJ than the standard V4; I'll bet you dollars to donuts that's what's causing the problem.
You may have to double check the CR2 in a text editor to make sure it's pointing to the correct geometry; not the standard V4 OBJ.

Sheesh, I was thinking its budget was probably in the millions :)

In Carrara any bitmap image is considered a "texture map". If you're working with Poser hair for example, the diffuse image should be plugged into the Color channel and whatever transmap the merchant made should be plugged into the Alpha Channel.
If you're making your own stuff, just make sure that your diffuse/bump/spec/transparency maps all have unique names.
Hope this helps!

You should be alright; "Kione Hair" by AprilYSH works as a parented figure :)

Definitely a Windows issue!
I'm assuming the problem stems from your Poser runtimes being located in your Program Files directory. I ran into the same problem; I moved all of my runtimes (except for the default) to My Documents and everything was fine after. The problem I ran into was that stuff that was saved within Poser before the move was still invisible. You can still get at the content; I believe if you Google "Virtual Store" you'll find the answer.

I'm putting the word out as best I can.
You can check out my cheap, yet clever advertisement here :)

I'm still up for it and the offer to use my homestead still stands. I know there's more members in the area; I'll put a shout out in the galleries today.