Very impressive for one person to put this together.  I rather liked it, perhaps because I've wished I could call the Beat Police myself a few times ;)

For some reason Youtube swore there was an URL or email address in my comment and would not let me post it.

I never took this warning seriously.  For me it was always that I'd moved or deleted something.  True, poser will ask for textures, but I've found that once it asks for about 4 or 5 different textures from different locations that warning usually pops up.  I just ignore it and after the scene has finished loading I then go into the mat room and reload textures manaully, or select either "reload textures" or "render", both of which will sometimes begin the process of looking for textures again from where it stopped.  Once I get a render without the warning, it's time to resave.

Dang it, now I have to clarify my own post.  Snapping a mesh to the canvas was one of the most confusing things to new users.  Your mesh is a "tool", and is stored in the "tool palette" as a fully 3D object.  When you select it you can then use it like a traditional brush.  You can stamp it down anywhere on the canvas, as many times as you like, and because it's a 3D object, you can change its orientation and scale.  However, you cannot retrieve the original mesh from the canvas.  Early users were often confused by this process as it was possible to begin painting the mesh without realising it had been snapped to the canvas and all unseen detail had been lost.  You can go from 3d to 2.5d, but not the other way.  You can paint on a mesh that is active in the tool palette for export to another program, you just can't recover it from the canvas in the event that it is accidentally or deliberately painted there.

Quote - Modo 301 will have sculpting, and I have always seen and looked at ZBrush as an add on to a polygon modeller (ZBrush is a 2.5D app, not  3D vertex pushing app)...and don't forget that you can only use morphs created outside Poser within Poser that have the same amount as vertices as the group it is replacing.

I hope you don't mind if I clarify this a bit.  zBrush started out as a layer based paint program.  The chief difference between its layers and something like photoshop's is that these layers store depth information.  This would allow you to add a true 3d mesh to a 2D canvas, and while you'd lose the ability to look at the model from any angle, the preservation of depth in the canvas would allow you to relight the scene as you would in a normal 3D program, though in near real-time.  Also it would be possible to clone a very detailed object many times across the canvas without the overhead a true 3D space would require.  Pixologic coined the term "pixols" to refer to the "enhanced" pixels their canvas used, and "2.5" is their term for this technique that combines elements of 2D and 3D without being true 3D.  Most of their paint tools at that time were designed to just work on these canvas layers.  Next  came the ability to import meshes and snap them (remove back faces etc., a non-reversable process only affecting the mesh that is snapped) to the canvas.  With this came the ability to store a mesh as a tool, and to use the paint modes to texture the mesh for export.  Version 2 added zSperes, a powerful way to model organic models and various methods for adding higher levels of detail as well as to transfer (via normal maps) higher levels of detail to lower level meshes.  zBrush's strength is not in architecture or mechanical forms though it is now a true 3D program.  Most users find that if they are not creating an organic mesh from scratch using zSpheres they often get better results working with meshes imported in from programs such as Wings or Hex (or Max or Maya).  This is mostly due to weaknesses in zBrush's handling of things like edge loops and creases, which become especially apparent with models that aren't the characters and cartoon objects zBrush is strongest with.  There are several threads discussing ways to use zBrush's sculpt tools to create non-organic models using box-modeling techniques, but most agree that it is not zBrush's true strength and there are many other programs which can do this job quicker and more effectively.  Also, zBrush doesn't have a standard UV unwrapper, and instead uses a technique called Adaptive UV tiling.  Meshes imported from other programs can still be textured with their previous UV coords preserved, though zBrush seems to prefer that those UVs do not overlap.

Once you parent the wings, try selecting 'lock actor".  You may then be able to apply the poses without the wings going crazy, if the poses aren't dependent on the root part.

Here's the listing, with pics, of the announced Carrara 6 improvememnts, including hair.[

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=63703](http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=63703)

I couldn't find the video showing the hair, but it looked quite nice.  The hair seemed too "alive" to me, but I'm sure that can be toned down somehow.

Blender is indeed quite full featured.  The fluid sim is especially impressive.  I didn't really take to the interface that much though.

I don't know about everyone else, but Carrara6 impressed the heck out of me.  It does things Truespace doesn't even attempt for less than the price of Truespace's plug-in renderer.  I'm sure that XSI is probably better in every way than Carrara, but I am (at least until the month's end) comparing a $200 program to a $2000 one here.  The new hair looks great, but I'm really stoked about those atmospheres, displacement modeling, and oh yeah, COLLADA export.

But it still doesn't have Truespace's awesome realtime "photoreal" workspace.  I hope they're planning that for version 7.

I ran out of Dark City twice during the same showing.  The first time because I was convinced they were lulling me to sleep with whale sounds on the sound track and were going to put some subliminal idea in my head.  I calmed myself down and went back in 20 minutes later to catch the end just as the thing comes up out of the ground and the guy says "let the tuning begin!"  I got the hell out of there.  I'd just been reading about MKUltra a few days before.

Hmmm...  I've never parented and conformed the same object.  I'd select the wings, conform to your character, then select the root part of your wings and use the X,Y,and Z dials to position it correctly.  I've actually been able to get clothes for one figure to work with another figure using that trick.

Yeah, that's a fake tan... :rolleyes:

Here's a character made from Jesse.  The only one I could find with minimal nostril glow. :sad:

You should specify what style you like.  Fantasy, sci-fi and military are currently the most popular it seems.

I've always wondered if cloth would work for this.  You could pose the figure on the ground, map the splatter to a plane above the figure and then calculate the drape.  Just make sure your plane has alot of polys, you could use the group tool to make a square prop from the side of a cube if you need to.

Take a look at Awakening2, only $68 US.

Robust lighting Good lighting is crucial in building realistic virtual worlds. Awakening's lighting utility is powerful.
Lightmap support inside Awakening supports Ray Tracing, Radiosity, Smoothing, Mirror, Caustics, Alpha Test, etc. Other software rarely has built-in pre-compute lighting , so you must export to other programs, which takes more time and money. Full animation support You can animate almost anything in your scenes, including 3D objects, lights, materials, cameras etc. Skinning Mesh Animation is useful for characters. Other software usually doesn't support animation, or provide simple animation at best. Awakening's Animation System is easy & powerful. User-friendly physics system You get automatic collision-detection and easily achievable realistic walk-thru's in 3D worlds.
Other software rarely has physics systems. Efficient Visibility Testing By setting up portals & section, you can build big 3D worlds with flowing real time rendering!
Other software rarely support this technology. Flexible Shader Text support DXEffect Shader support lets you deeply control rendering, make photorealisticl realtime 3d images!  Particular Blur Rendering Particular Blur Rendering increase image quality, let your realtime 3D scene looks more like a movie. Compact web3d player Compact web3d plugins for embedding into Firefox & IE. It lets you show 3d scenes in web pages. It's only 374K (569K for IE); compared to other softwares always being more than 2M. It save waiting time for downloading.

 Sorry, just a little cut'n'paste to save time...

I saw this myself in a scene recently.  And it was always in the upper left corner...