We're trying to make money out of it too, but failing with style! Mak

Good point!

Forgot to mention that we learnt just about EVERYTHING we know from doing this and most especially... how to CHEAT! Mak

You can indeed use the particle emitter to emit... anything. Just make sure you turn off shadows unless you want to spend the whole night rendering! Mak

Attached Link: http://www.virtuallyhistorical.com

We use Cinema 4D for recreating UK historical sites and making historically based models - like furnitutre for sale here. This is a full time job that was meant to be part time! Why C4D? Simple; we played around with demos of other applications and C4D was the interface we prefered. Well, Pete, our modeler prefered it to be more precise. I could have gone with Lightwave (I deal with light and texture) but Pete is more icon orientated so C4D was the answer for what we could affored. Neither of us are trained in this art, we just drifted towards it. We'd both performed real-time CGI puppets for the Jim Henson Company and I've directed animation for them, but we'd only played around a little with Poser and Bryce before embarking on this madness. What we do struggle with in C4D is keeping the polygon count down when it's converted to .obj's. Not really knowing the maths behind it - even though I've had it explained to me - we can't seem to avoid this. Doesn't help using too many booleans! I think it comes down to what you feel comfortable with, what time you have to learn it and the cost. C4D is great for us, but maybe useless to someone else.

Well said peejay! Mak

Just mention your name and you appear! Thanks Andi. Mak

My heart goes out to you! Mak

There's something I meant to add and Moe just reminded me. It's great to keep the price down, and WE know we have to, even if it kills us. There are some who are trying to do this as a living, which means they can't keep their prices as low as they'd like. There are also a few, like us, who are UK based. If, say, we charged $5 for an item we only get $3 IF we make it Renderosity exclusive. Convert that to 's and it goes down around 2 per item. Hardly worth it really. We're relatively new to all this and I'd love to hear what the likes of Andix of 3D Modelz has to say on this subject.

I don't know if it's just the nature of the beast or not, Sharon. As advised, we started with free models to see if our historical based work was wanted. The download figures were huge so, we went ahead with some sales, not expecting anything like the numbers from the free stuff, but even a small percentage would have been great! But no! Only several purchases have happened. Maybe this is because we're not doing naked woman, or costumes, or they were just the wrong models at the wrong time or at too much money. I do know we're giving it until the end of this month to see if things pick up, if they don't, there be no more models from us, free or otherwise. Stopping free stuff may not be the answer though. Regulating it might, but I don't know how you'd do it? There are a lot of people out there who rely on free stuff because they can't afford to buy models. We want to help those people, which is why we offer free models and textures at our own site and Renderosity. It also attracts clients. But, I have to say, it would be nice to get some return. In the end it may come down to the survival of the 'strong' or the 'lucky', and as much as we're feeling the effects of that ourselves, it just may be the way it is.

Thought not. Thanks. VH

Will this allow our buyers to get reflections on their models? Thanks VH

Thanks igohigh. I saw this, but it doesn't actually help me. This would be find if I was creating an image, but I need true raytracing reflections on a prop that I will be selling and I've discovered that Poser 4 just doesn't do it! Thanks again though! VH