In clone you make two UV maps, and use projection UV mapping.  And that tutorial is from Jan 2013.  There's more recent texture painting tools, but I haven't seen any that change the basics of the cloning technique. 

I'm sure you could.

Actually, I'm posting because I've seen at least one person say they're having the same problem.

edited to add: And I'm most definitely not seeing improved speeds ever.  Improved IDL quality, yes, but with an apparent cost of clarity.

I found this video on cloning to be the most helpful on the subject I've come across:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4ngVoGIj1Q

I'm having glacially slow render times in PP 2014 in certain situations.   Part of the issue seems to be resolution.  There could be several other factors as well (shading rate, bounces, etc.), but with so many different variables to rendering, it's hard to say.  I can definitively say that scenes that took PP 2012 a few hours have taken so long in PP 2014 that I had to stop and get my resources back. 

Hmmmm.   The image I just posted was only my second time trying dynamic hair.  The first was back with P6 and didn't go so well.   My third try was as satisfactory to me as the one above.   But without seeing a picture of what you mean by " a ton of static in it," I can't say that my results are any closer to what you want than what you have is.  I actually used a frizzy hair style (IIRC, it was called an 80's bad perm style- it's in the RDNA freebies), and changed the parameters to make it less frizzy.  No styling, just changed some settings to make sure it didn't collide with anything on the first frame.  Then I let it sim and drape.  It doesn't look frizzy to me now, but it is still strand hair without much clumpying and probably less shine than very sleek hair would have.  I haven't got much of a handle at all on either strand hair materials or basic hair type settings yet.

I think I'd prefer fewer parts than 6, in general.  It's a PITA to duplicate the same numbers over and over and over just to get the hair to sim properly.  And simming is the whole point of dynamic hair, IMHO.  But that's just my impression from a very preliminary use.

charly_hayze - I'd definitely see what simming did before deciding that dynamic hair wasn't the answer.  I mean,  you're talking about dynamic cloth hair.  The initial shape of dynamic cloth is only part of the final look.  You have to consider cloth topology, figure scaling and morphing over the sim, and other environmental effects.  If you make a gathered skirt that's modeled as gathered and draped, it will sim like a cylinder that tends towards being smooth.  If you make a gathered skirt that's modeled as a circle straight out from the hips and has lots of tris at or near the gather point, it will drape and sim properly.

If all you want is center parted hair that moves, in my admitted limited experience, hair like what Nanette made should work.  Could you demonstrate what's not working for you?

I too wish there were more tutorials for dynamic hair.  The manual is good for basic information, but the tutorials I've come across from SM and elsewhere are always too broad, too unstructured, and not detailed enough.  It would be nice to see something on just grouping a skullcap for general use, something on just styling a center parted style like this, something on just styling a simple bob, something on just working with kinks and waves, something on just simulation settings, etc.  All I've ever found are tutorials that assume you're going to do everything in Poser and have next to no structure.   Styling, dynamics, and grouping need to be addressed systematically and thoroughly on their own.

Unless my copy is totally different, Change Gamma is not what you should use to change the gamma of your intensity maps (bump, trans, displacement, etc.).  Image Gamma is.  As described it will "change the texture gamma values on either the current material, the current figure or all props and figures."   In other words, it will make the gamma on all your images the same for a given selection (material, figure, or scene).   Image Gamma will let you have different gammas for maps with different purposes.

I understand that's what you were thinking but it's not how real light or rendering works.  Light is additive.  It isn't subtractive, unless you start messing with negative colors and intensities.  The shadow is just where the light isn't.  What color a surface is where a directional light isn't is determined, in general, by other elements adding to shading.  It's only black when there are absolutely no other elements to add to that shading.

Lights don't have a "color" of shadow, not even black.   This is exactly why painters use colored shadows: shadows aren't pure black except in outer space where there's absolutely no other source of light.  Otherwise, shadows are the color of your ambient light.  In Poser, we have tons of different ways of controlling our ambient light.  That's how you can control the color of "shadows."  Thing is, pretty much none of them are light dependent.

Let's say you have a room with a nice big window and a door to a hallway.  Let's say there's a person standing in the room near the door.  Let's say there's a light in the hallway, but for now it's off.  And let's say that it's twilight out and neither the moon nor sun is shining in the window.  What's lighting the room?  The ambient light from the sky and land.  It's probably blue. 

Let's say we want to make our 3d version of that scene, and emphasize the blue.  We make an IBL with a really saturated blue.  Yes, the light will get occluded by the room, but it will also get in through the window.  So we've got this dark but very, very blue room.  If we want to make sure nothing is actually black, we can take time and make all the ambient colors of the materials for the room the blue we want to be the very darkest color in our work.  And all the ambient values 1.  It's the color that things will be when there's no light, directional or ambient, hitting the surface. 

Now we turn on that light in the hallway.  Let's say it's a bright yellow/orange light.  What color is the shadow cast by the person standing near the doorway?  Unless that light is unnatural and has negative intensity or negative colors, the "cast shadow" is no different than it was before you turned on the light.  It isn't darker than with the light off.  It isn't blacker.  Or bluer, or redder, or any other color you could set your "shadows" to if that were possible to do for a light rather than a scene.  It's the same exact shading.  What's changed is the area where the light hits.  That's now brighter and warmer.  But the shadow is exactly the same color (same hue, same value)  it was when there was only ambient lighting and shading involved.

I think it might be cool to be able to set an ambient scene color.  It would be nice to have an ambient control that wasn't surface specific.   But I don't see how you can effectively set a "shadow" color for individual lights when shadows are everywhere in the scene the light isn't, not just where some parts of the scene are illuminated.  That would essentially cover the whole scene.  Not to mention that this is already controlled by IBL and/or ambiently shaded meshes.

Yes, you could go to the trouble of making a directional light that doesn't cast shadows.  That will make your materials glow, essentially.  But it seems to me to be one of the more complicated ways to change the shading where a directional light isn't.

I think that depends on your perspective.  I've had people ask me what V4 WM is when I credit it.

Gator762 -  Oh, no offense was taken!  And I often find that new tools make using older items easier.  I've been using the morph tool since it was introduced to Poser because it helps so much with anatomy issues and smoothing simmed cloth.

Haruchai - Yeah, that seam is annoying.  And I had to use it or try to come up with a much more complicated script to incorporate complex skin shaders.  As it is, my 2nd skins work with EZSkin (for instance) without reproducing it.

That said, I don't find it an issue in my own work.

Do you mostly make animations?  I ask because fixing that V in post takes about a second.  One stroke of the pen or mouse, and it's done.  Even shorter than the morph tool work you're talking about.  The only way the morph tool work would be less effort is animating.

Quote - IIRC, there is a way to make Poser generate coloured shadows, with shader trickery. Unfortunately, I can't remember what it is. :(

Again, you can do it with any form of ambient lighting or shading.  I mean, define what a shadow is, and think about how rendering works.  A shadow is the absence of a light, not something positive.  It's not an addition to shading.  Shadows don't make an area darker or color it.  Shadows are simply areas where a directional light isn't illuminating.  What it can't reach. 

Rendering works by adding up different effects.  Ambient color, diffuse shading, sss shading, specular, reflection, refraction, etc.  Again, shadows aren't "black" by default.  It's just that you start with nothing, and then add effects from there.  If you want a color where directional light isn't, then you color whatever is adding to shading where directional light isn't.  Ambient color.  IBL. Whatever you want.   IBL is just easier than ambient color because it works on the whole scene, so you don't have to start changing the ambient color of every material involved. 

The one thing I know of that's actually light dependent is when you start playing with negative intensities and color values.

Quote - Let's say "artistic". ;) Fine art painters often use purple or blue shadows regardless of the light color (or let's say, especially with a warm, yellowish light).

Oh, I didn't mean anything negative by unnatural.  I was thinking more about the difference between "natural" light and special effects. 

The reason I made the distinction between "natural" and "artistic" is exactly what you're talking about.  The natural phenomena that, for instance, impressionists observed and painted was that shadows are colored in the inverse hue of the light.  Or, more accurately, the light's color is removed from shading when occluded.  Given warm sunlight or even candlelight and a realistic, naturally bluish or purplish sky, you get blue or purple shadows.  Which is totally different from, say, fauvists who used whatever color they wanted as long as it was saturated and high value. 

Essentially, yellow lights do cast blue shadows.  If you want the shadows to be emphatically but naturally blue, then the whole environment's ambient lighting should be blue.  And the solution is to make your IBL or environment sphere very blue. 

In fact, thinking about it, I don't think it can be done any other way.  Lights don't have "black" shadows, exactly.  They are a color, and other things get in their way.  So "shadows" are whatever color a surface is without the light on it.  Shadows aren't positive.  They're an absence of light.  What happens in the absence of light is ambient shading.  Which, again, is controlled globally by IBL and IDL.

If you mean for unnatural effects, that would be really cool.  But if you mean for realism, then Santel is right.  Your ambient light (IBL, environment sphere, etc.) determines your shadow color.

First of all, dynamic or conforming?  I've never had a problem with morphs, fixes or otherwise, using dynamic clothes.  That was the reason I mostly gave up on conforming some years ago now.

Second of all, if dynamic, have you used scaling?  The best way to get good tight fits on dynamics is to scale down the figure in the first frame and make sure it's full scale in the last frame.  I included some brief instructions and examples about fitting in my instructions and my lightbox images, if you're interested.  In my experience, scaling mostly in the z direction is most useful.  Sort of like making the clothes flat. 

Third, just to check, are you saying that looking at my set's promos or my gallery and don't like how they look?  I understand both if you are and if you haven't spared the time.  I take no offense either way.  If you haven't, and you do check and like it, just to let you know, I don't add postwork to my products in my promos.  I'll add words and things, but other than that it's pure Poser. 

Fourth, just to be clear, it's not just stockings.  It's 2nd skin materials that work with any texture, a toe prop to work with the 2nd skin maps, stockings, a dress, a necklace, earrings, panties, and a pretty large number of textures and materials.  For the earrings, dress, and necklace I made two material sets each that could take any colors, and all of the stocking and 2nd skin textures can be any color.  It's a pretty versatile set.

Just to be most clear of all, I'm not saying that the morph tool isn't incredibly useful with dynamic clothes, too.  Smooth out a bit here, get rid of tiny bits of pokethrough there.  Just perfect results, IMHO.  And it's wonderful for making the figure more correct.  I use V4 WM, which deals with most of the major joint issues, but the morph tool is immensely helpful with tweaking anatomy to fit a pose.  I almost always work the shoulders a bit, regardless of what figure I use. 

With Poser 10/PP 2014, you can finally add subdiv to your figure and your clothes.  It's the norm to subdivide after a cloth sim.  I've been having a ball recently with older figures using subdiv and my custom materials. PP 2014 is a huge leap forward.  I've only just begun to explore the new features.