37 ...... but any core sample would probably suggest 18-ish.

Hi Stewer,

Thankyou very much for your help. I was getting there with a home grown python script to write the materials for my characters into a .mtl file. Your input has put the icing on the cake and I now have a complete .mtl file writing solution.

Unfortunately Poser 5 seems to be a bit mucked up internally as I cannot get the script to replicate the ordering and numbering of the materials that Poser 5 uses when it writes the wavefront .obj and .mtl files. I do not think this is a problem with the script but rather that Poser is not outputing the .mtl materials in a consistent way. There seems to be some confusion with parented props (e.g. Hair) but it is not predictable.

My research has indicated that you can now save the actual transprency map (if there is one) because Pose-Ray 3.8.11 handles these correctly. This is really useful for those transmapped eyelashes - and the like!

Now I probably need to get a Python programming book as the online documentation at Python.org is extensive but somewhat less than helpful.

Regards from Jovial.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=715362&Start=1&Artist=Jovial&ByArtist=Yes

Some of my favourites:

Please note that most of my Gallery contains nekkid women. I like art that is bold, often rather sexy, un-ashamed and that challenges the viewer. I also like getting character interactions into the scenes.

Anyone who finds NUDITY offensive please skip past the following links.

I wanted to get a feeling of being cared-for and tenderness into this image. The basic idea was sort of sleeping beauty. (Nudity Warning) Her Guardian

I really liked the way that this one turned out - in spite of major difficulties with the flattening of Victoria's thighs. The look was very important to the title. Some of the props and scenes that modelling artists create, are just amazing. Thanks to ratracer for this excellent room. (Nudity Warning) Predator Behind Bars

I always want my pictures to involve the viewer, so the characters need to seem real and need to be "aware" of the observer. I try really hard to avoid that dummy-stare look. (Nudity Warning) Carla is Dirty

I think this is my favourite "just having a bit of fun with posing" image. (Nudity Warning) Caught them playing Twister

I enjoyed looking through all of your chosen favourite images.
Thanks for sharing them and your thoughts.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1403770

CPU: AMD 4400+ X2 (2 cores, 1MB cache per core. Costs a bit over half the price of the 4800+ X2. OK - so I really want the 4800+ but I'm not a fool. The 4400+ seems to be quite over-clockable if you get good cooling) - Although Poser only has a single process thread and there is currently no real advantage going to 64 bit (at least for Poser), the fact that you have a second CPU core to do some of the other OS processes is going to help things a bit and should make your system very smooth. Also when you are rendering you want to be doing other stuff too - like looking for Poser Freebies?!? It might be that an AMD FX57 actually goes faster but I know which I would prefer. I am not excluding Intel here. The lower spec intel dual cores are actually cheaper than AMD but most test results favour the AMD processors.

MEMORY: Make sure you have at least 2GB and watch out for the dual channel thing. The Motherboard needs to support dual channel DDR (pc3200 or better rated) and you need matched pairs of memory sticks. Low latencies (i.e. high quality branded stuff like Corsair TwinX) are also going to help a little but you will pay a premium for this. You seem to be able to get better latencies on 512 MB sticks than you do on 1 GB sticks - so probably you could get 4 x 512MB but with only 4 slots per motherboard your future memory upgrade options are limited to completely replacing pairs of memory sticks.

MOTHERBOARD: Any suitable Socket 939. I personally like ASUS but you really need to check the specs and see if a particular Mobo has all the features you want, e.g. SATAII, RAID, 4 slots of Dual DDR.

GRAPHICS: Nvidia 7800GTX. This will give lovely interactive pose rendering (in Poser 6) (and great game play if you play games!) but will not help your final rendering (or Poser 5 downwards) at all. Any modern video card that supports OpenGL is likely to be more than adequate for a Poser PC. Nvidia 6600 and above will probably be absolutely fine.

HARD DISK: The solution to speed here is to use striped RAID. Rather than going for a single huge Hard Disk, I recommend two smaller ones. Multiple hard disks pretend to be one very fast hard disk. The seek times are the same as for a single disk but the data throughput roughly doubles. SATA is better than IDE (PATA) and SATAII is better than SATA. Try to get NCQ (native command queueing) too since it is likely to add a bit more "go faster". Ideally you would have 4 Hard Disks for two RAID arrays. Put the OS on a small RAID array (say 120 GB total) and install applications and Poser stuff on a large one (say 300 GB+).

MONITOR: A big one. 19" to 22" CRTs are now quite cheap if you have the desk space.

OS: WinXP Pro. If you are going to go for Win XP 64 bit version you need to be very careful about all of the components because they MUST have 64 bit drivers and not all manufacturers are rushing to write 64 bit drivers. MS has compatibility lists but it is worth checking your chosen product support sites to make sure that 64 bit drivers can be downloaded NOW.

I got all excited just listing the stuff, so I will have to start saving up now.

My poor old system (P4 3.2GHz, GeForce FX5600, non-RAID, 2GB RAM) just seems so slow now.

Regards Jovial.

When you do finally get your dream PC can you please run Jim Burtons Benchmark (see linked thread) performance test render and report the results. Thanx.

Just thought, the release timing might actually be very important.

Think:

Don has his Judy,
M3 has his V3 (and/or SP3),
James has his Jessie,

And now there is lonely Mr. (rather bendy and gorgeous-lookin) ApolloMaximus with no-one to get close to.

It is so obvious, Renda must be the intended partner of Mr. AMAX.

They do say opposites attract.

Thanks to all for the very honest and frank info about Renda and her failings. I will definitely save my money for when ByAnton makes his female counterpart of ApolloMaximus.

Also much nearer to the top of my shopping list is Jim Burtons excellent (although slightly anorexic) revamp of Jessie as Glamorous Jess.

Hi Dr Geep,
Glad you are back. The forums would have been somewhat less interesting and less colourful, without your input. It is like having an adult around to watch and supervise all the children at play. Perhaps you can use your annoyance at Rosity speed (which is often way too slow even if you have a good ISP and broadband) to fight for some site improvements from the management. Just don't hold your breath though, as my suggestions and requests to the community forum have indeed disappeared into the ether.
Kind regards.

Hi Nine5de, Just checking for the obvious. When you say you "installed a new motherboard" did you then re-install MS Windows completely afterwards? If you left your previous windows on the hard disk then it is probable that you have all sorts of wrong low-level drivers from your previous installation that would make windows unreliable or even fail to boot. If you did re-install windows then I tend to agree with the earlier posts that you should check the following points (in order): a) get latest graphics card driver b) check the bios settings and timings for your CPU and your memory c) perform a bios upgrade if there is a newer one available especially if your CPU has a very recent core revision d) is the power supply suitable for the CPU / motherboard / video card combination Hope you get it sorted, as these problems can be a real pain.

Hi Artistheat,

I remember that Render_boy did a few free MillDoggy poses of a more (perhaps too!) natural style. PoserPros still has his posting on their Freebie Forums although I have not tried the download:

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22638&highlight=

You probably need to be registered there to get in. Hope this helps.

Hi,

If you have access to Paint Shop Pro then the following is what I do and is relatively painless:

1. Do your final full-size render to TIFF (which can be useful for alpha channel transparency and because it is not lossy, PNG is OK too, and have this as your archive copy of the render).
2. Open your full size final TIFF image in Paint Shop Pro.
3. Use the selection tool to select any size of (preferably) square region that will be your thumbnail. Most viewers like to have a sub-region thumbnail rather than the full image and you will probably get more views if you choose a tantalizing sub-region. It is best if this selected region is greater than or equal to the 200 x 200 pixel size.
4. Edit => Copy from the menu to copy the selection.
5. Now Paste the selection as new image.
6. Resize this new image to 200 x 200 pixels (if it was larger).
7. Now Save As... some_name_thumb.jpg remembering to use the advanced settings to make the JPG compression factor to 10% or higher. This helps make the file size below the 15KB limit.
8. Check the size of the image and re-save to lower (or higher) quality if the image size exceeds (or falls too short of) the 15KB limit.
9. Also save the original full-size image as a JPG but at a higher quality setting (suggest 3% compression to start).
10. Check the file size is just below the 512KB limit.

Hope this helps.

What do we say? (grabs pitchfork and burning torch, joins mob headed for castle CL) NO... to single (often broken) undo! YES... to a working multiple undo. When do we want it? NOW!........please. Hi Dr Geep. Will this thread be the first in a series to get all of our issues with Poser sorted out. Good luck (to us all), from Jovial.

Thank you Dr Geep. I had hoped that there was a simpler answer. Regards (and respect!) from Jovial.

Sorry. Just saw martian_manhunters reply after my reply post. Now content. Will try Poser 6 ASAP. Thanx.

Hi Melen, Thanks for the info. Does Poser 5 still run after the install of Poser 6? Also did you have to manually link the Poser 5 runtimes into Poser 6 or was Poser 6 install aware of the Poser 5 content? Thanks again.

Unfortunately the Windows 64 bit beta testing period has now closed but MS have apparently indicated that they will be exchanging Win XP Pro for Win XP 32/64. We only need to wait until the 29th April.