Well, I'm obviously a day late and a dollar short in this conversation... While I share the general dismay at the figure's titles (the "Big Fat Momma" looks an awful lot like me, but I like the way I look, and I'd certainly slug anyone who referred to me that way) I love the figures themselves. I gather from the message thread that they are not available any more in Free Stuff... are they available anywhere? I'd be delighted to have more realistic women to use in my images (now that I have some free time to make images again) instead of just the super-skinny, male-fantasy Posettes. -Nemo

She does retain a distinctive look for everyone, but I think the same thing about the P4 Posette (who has a blander, less realistic face IMO.) That's one of the problems with not making your own models... But I see a lot of potential in Victoria for making more realistically human characters. -Nemo

Okay, here's my biiiig secret for doing transparencies in sketch renders.. (it's similar to Krel's, but with one less step.) Render your figure using the normal renderer. This will give you an image with all of the correct transparencies. Make sure you render in the display window, not to a new document. Then, with the rendered image still showing, under "Display" select "Paste to Background." Once that's done, move the figure(s) out of camera range until there are no actual 3D objects left in the camera view, just the pasted render. Then run the sketch renderer on the pasted image. Works like a charm. ;-> (I tell you, that sketch renderer is good enough to retail as a stand-alone application.) -Nemo

Hehe.. now, that would just be silly. Actually, when you enter the contest, you download the free thirty-day trial version of the plugin to make images with. If you win, then you get the full, unlimited registered version as a prize. If not, the trial times out after the thirty days, and no more Illustrate. If anyone else wants to give it a shot, you can download the trial version of Illustrate! for Max at http://www.davidgould.com -Nemo

I won the free copy of the plug-in... :-> -Nemo

Thanks for the suggestion, nnuu... I tried some different versions of the image. This is my favorite, and I think it shows that you were definitely right about changing the color of the background. (It's not purple, but the beige looked best... ;->)

Using sequenced 3ds mesh files and then keyframing the morph targets (rather than using a separate mesh for each frame) shouldn't be too bad, surely? With some careful keyframing and weighting the morph targets, you can get some pretty nice results. I've done it that way using MorphMagic (which, by the by, is now ridiculously cheap. $29.95 from 3D Cafe! I felt like I'd won the lottery that day, I'll tell you.) -Nemo

Wow! Great mise-en-scene... very moody and sad. You did a great job making all the pallbearers into individuals (and very good portrayal of grief with the first man's body language.) Love the background,too. Very nice work! -Nemo

- Much higher polygon count in the new Head than the old. Not everyone's system will be able to handle the new Head mesh.

• Poser's existing facial morphs (all of the expressions, etc) don't work on the new head, because of the differing poly count. (But I am working on a new set of expression morph targets for this head.)
• Right now I am using the New Head as a replacement for the old (Replace Body Part with Prop function.) I need to integrate it as part of a completely new Poser figure for the best results.
• Biggest of all (and this is a very significant problem), the model I based this new head on is a Cyberware scan of someone's real head. I need to find out who the copyright owner of the mesh is, and if I can't get permission to distribute it, I won't be able to make the New Head generally available to Forum members.

So there you have it. It's nice to at least see a Poser man who can hold his own in aesthetics next to the many Poser babes. Any suggestions on the above problems and issues from heads wiser than mine will be welcome. I have now tried posting this message three times, and if it doesn't go through this time, I'm going to give up and wait until the Forum message board is more stable. Time to go back to pushing polygons. -Nemo

Amazing... the piano guy actually looks like a real person, not a Poser Mr. PotatoHead! Nice reflectivity on the piano as well, and the singer looks great (especially her hair.) The top she's wearing is cute, too... :-> I like her expression and her lively pose -- lots of personality. The textures are very good. But I see what you mean about the lighting... the only drawback to the picture is that flat unshadowed light. A vignetted sort of light would give the image more atmosphere. Have you tried using the One-Sided Square prop in Poser as a lighting reflector/baffle? This is one of my favorite tricks for adjusting Poser lighting. After moving and coloring your lights to roughly what you want, you create one or more One-Sided Squares. Leave the square colored white, move it just up out of camera range (into what would be, in theatre parlance, the "flies") and then mess with the position, angle and transparency settings to have the square either divert light where you want it to go (on the singer, off the piano), or use transparency maps on the squares to direct and shape the shadows. To keep the squares themselves from casting their own square shadows, you can turn off the "Cast Shadow" checkbox under Object Properties. (This doesn't affect their reflectivity.) I like your whole "Jazz Singer" series. -Nemo

Luckily, I'm safe from the Spousal Jealousy part! The hubby knows I'd never cheat on him with the Poser 4 Dorkboy Mr. Potato Head. (Now, the CacheForce Barbarian... mmmmmmaybe.... ;->) -Nemo

Dave says: "Animation Master uses their own brand of spline patches (analogous to Rhino NURBS surfaces, I think), which they claim are better than everyone else's." Well, I feel better now. At least I know I'm not losing my mind... :-> I remembered that Hash is emphatic that their splines aren't NURBs, though what kind of splines Hash does use and how it differs from NURBs splines I couldn't tell you. -Nemo

Nice! :-> I've been known to fake the same effect in 3D Studio Max 1.2 by taking an imported OBJ poser figure and using the free Push plugin from HabWare on it. ("inflates" the figure slightly and usually gets rid of those pointy little creases and bends. Also great for animating breathing.) -Nemo

I tried, but at that point in time (about a year and a half ago) I was very new to 3D and to computer graphics, so even the tutorials were over my head. Rhino is an excellent program, however. -Nemo

Wiz (he is smart!) asks: "I do not understand. NURBs are just one class of splines, Non Uniform Rational B-splines, with some interesting math to let them approach quadratics more accuratly. So a NURBs modeller is a spline modeller. What sort of splines does Hash use?" Oh, God... don't ask me that, please... :-> Seriously, my understanding was that AM uses some other kind of splines, but if there's only one kind of splines, then I guess it doesn't... or something. Don't know much about splines. I've only used the demo version of Animation Master and the beta version of Rhino, and with both of them I found myself bested very quickly. Very, very quickly. I like Amorphium, though. -Nemo (I think I'll have myself a little lie-down now)