Just had to get some welding done to fix my car, so it passes it's MOT. Wasn't too bad but still waiting to have the sensors for the engine checked to fix a slight over-reving problem.
God, I miss the days when I had my old style Mini and I could do the some of repair work myself. These days you need an expensive computer plugged into it to tell you why it doesn't want to work properly! Some designers been watching R2D2 plugged into the Millenium Falcon and thought "that would be cool!"

Did your DVD program finalise the disk?
Some disks that haven't been finalised will play in the drive/ recorder that wrote them but not in another.
You said that it worked before. Was the previous disk a re-writable one? because they can work on many machines without being finalised.

Don't know if this would help as I haven't had time to try it yet, but there was a demo of "Reference Image 1.5" on one of my 3d mag disks (you can download it from the authors website as well. Don't know if it will work with Poser or not, but it creates a window with a very thin frame that can be overlayed part of your working window. When I've attempted to do morphs from photos in the past I've had to switch the display to outline and load the image as the background which is is ok for basic shape but not details. This may help.
the site is 
scary-monsters.org

If you try it let us know how it goes.

Quote - In many ways I agree with PhilC it seems to me that Poser and D/S style art is not about learning the programs and the workings. Instead for many it's wanting a make art button. Just load figures, props and scenes, hit the button and voilá tout c'est bon! I have made the pretty picture.

I think that the whole "people  just want a make art button" argument kind of undermines the amount of work that many people do put into their work, but that's essentially what Poser and Daz Studio are supposed to do,  simple to use 3d figure posing programs. Sure if you delve deeper into the programs you can do more, and if you're really clever like BB or Ockham and can write scripts etc you can create even more wonderous things. But lets face it, if you wanted the type of program that is not "make art", then you would be using a proper 3d modelling program, building and texturing every minute element from scratch. Most people don't have the time or the patience to think or work like that. Why do you think there are so many websites and companies providing pre-built 3d content. Sure you might want to change a few things on it, but say you needed to use a model of the space shuttle, why would you build one from scratch if there was an existing one that would do the job just as well? People that tend to build these things from scratch enjoy the modelmaking process, but possibly not the final art/render side as much, Poser and Daz Studio are for people who prefer the latter.

I used to develop my own films and photographic prints, I enjoyed it, but the truth is that now I use a digital camera, it's less to worry about. I can spend more time thinking about my composition etc and then correct any mistakes without having to start again from scratch. I can be more creative. I can save time, and therefore money.

I occasionally use the poser native figures, if I need an out of the box background figure, but they have a disadvantage over the daz figures.
Poser native figures look like people.
I sometimes see posts by people like dphoadley and think "why does he still go on about using posette when the Daz figures are better?" But you know he's right! After Poser 4, when the bundled figures were given names, they became people. They already had human faces.
You would think that an advantage, but even as someone who doesn't create figures I can see that this makes it harder to create unique morphs and characters for them, where as with the Daz figures you are starting with a blank slate.

:-) if I'm redecorating the walls in my house, it's easier if they are plain and flat. I can paper them or paint them. If they are already papered or have some kind of textured finish on them, I have to strip all of that off and possibly use tons of filler before I can even think about starting on the finish.

It's good to have out of the box ready to use characters, I would imagine that most people want something that they can build upon, with plenty of partial morphs etc to help them. The face room seemed like a great idea when it was announced, but the vast majority of people cannot get a half decent head morph from it and although I own Poser 8, I don't even know if the new figures support it (and frankly couldn't care less).  I've seen head morphs done with software like Face Gen etc which are way better than ones done in the Face Room.
Several people have mention creating their own figures, that's great. I've used PhilC's quite a bit, I like them, but like the post Poser 4 figures, they are characters, they've already been "moulded". I know that other people have created figures in a similar vein to the Daz ones, but without the support they need from customers or merchants.
The bottom line is that if Poser wants to continue in the future without it's reliance on Daz figures, it is the company who owns and sells it (whoever that is this week) that needs to rethink the type of figures it produces and add better support for them. That should be their goal. After all we are buying  a character based 3d program from them, and it seems that although many people here have said they don't like the Daz figures ( I do for the most part, although I cannot get my head around Daz Studio therefore hate that!), they are the ones that are being used the most, so something has to be seriously wrong!

I hope that in Laurie's revolution, many great new figures get made,  :-)  but ultimately shouldn't that be what the people who are selling us this program should be doing!

I know what you mean, but I suppose that if they were really to go to town on something different, so called "fans" would complain that it was too different. Half of them weren't even born when Doctor Who went off air, the other half, me included ( I was born about halfway through "Genesis of The Daleks" (No that doesn't make me a Dalek!!)) have slightly rose tinted memories of it. Basically think of Star Trek, most aliens were men in rubber suits or metal ones.

"The Moff" is also one of my current heroes, and I'll definately be watching his new series "Sherlock" tonight. Another modern day  set re-invention, but supposed to be a really good one (you can't do classic Holmes and Watson better than Brett and Hardwicke).

I actually quite like the new Dalek design except for the J-Lo butt. The previous ones were built to match the eyeline of Billie Piper, With Karen and Matt being taller, those ones would not have seemed as menacing, like they could just be shoved into an enclosed space by Richard Hurndall aka  Doctor 1.2

If you mentioned you had a download section with free models and wallpapers instead of all the commercial blurb that you gave that would likely have been alright, but even the link for your downloads section on your front page doesn't work!

Quote - > Quote - The question isn't whether it'd being overdone, but whether a habit is forming where CGI takes the place of good scripting, acting, editing and scoring.

I also dislike certain design trends in contemporary special effects.  I'm thinking largely about the "monster" designs used by the Mill in Doctor Who

If you mean that giant eyeball thing in "The Eleventh Hour" then I agree it looked bad, (athough "giant eyeball appears in the sky" might have looked good in the script) but many of the other effects were alright and alot of the monsters are prosthetics anyway. In Doctor Who's defence, the majority of the series was spectacular. They had to make it with a smaller budget than before (which is way smaller than American tv programs get anyway). Plus the BBC is funded by the tv licence that British tv viewers have to pay (whether they watch the BBC or not) and I don't fancy having to eat nothing but cornflakes all day! ;-)

Quote -  And don't even get me started on the goddamn remakes...

Saw the trailer for The A-Team. Tank being used while falling from a great height.... really!?

At least with Liam Neeson playing Hannibal there are unlikely to be any sequels (apparently he doesn't like doing sequels). Unless Hannibal spends the entire next movie in one of his disguises,... or that lizard costume he wore on a regular basis in the series! :-)

I'm back off to the shed, to see if I can build an armoured car using some power tools, a '89 Mini Cooper, some plywood and a Nerf gun.

Quote - And yes- you CAN tell the difference between real-time (nowadays called "practical" effects) and CG effects, as the CG stuff usually doesn't usually conform to the laws of physics and thermodynamics that guys like me have to keep in mind with doing stuff, even with the numerous physics plug-ins available for MAYA or any of the other software packages they use.  

I did my BA Hons in creative modelmaking 10 years or so ago and found that even then more and more people wanted cgi rather than practical models. Even with architectural work, many clients prefer to see cgi rendered "beauty shots" and virtual environments than physical models.
CGI in films can be good or bad, even if the actual effects are good. (Possibly down to the director or studio).
If a film is science fiction for example the laws of phyics could be broken, bent, whatever.
In other movies, the best cgi special effects are the ones that you do not know are cgi.
Unfortunately as directors, studios, whoever want over the top explosions and effects that look good in trailers, they completely loose the sense of reality, and action films for example become more science fiction. Just because you can use a cgi stunt double to fall 50 feet then get up without a scratch on him, doesn't mean that you should.
Before it sounds like I'm dissing cgi in action movies etc altogether, I'm not. When used for certain things for example fire and water (near impossible to get scaled properly with small scale models) and digital set extensions etc they can be far superior to practical models.

Quite often special effects do take the place of a good story, but it depends what you kind of mood or film you are looking for at the time. I think that there is room for both. You just have to watch the film for what it is.
I often find old black and white films scarier than modern ones, because it is what you don't see that keeps up the suspence, same as it does in the old detective films like the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes ones.
If I'm tired or not in the mood to be mentally or emotionally challenged I sometimes watch a comedy, or low budget sci-fi / horror film, even if the story, acting or special effects are total rubbish. I can still enjoy them just as much, but for different reasons.
I know that Hollywood seems to rely on the latter at the moment, but sometimes I can be surprised at how good a film is.
We are also lucky that the size and low cost of making dvds means that lots of old classic films which were never available on vhs are now being released. So in some respects we have more choice than ever.

Thankyou

Looks great.
BTW would you mind if I ask which character/ morph you are using in your avatar?

This might help you, it uses magnets and pose controls.

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=69913&vendor=kaposer

Quote -  

Something like this? (Click it)

I didn't have to change anything to get this - just adjusting a couple parameters did it. I wasn't even aware the algorithm I came up with for the bump would produce this result. I found it by accident.

These all look fantastic as usual.
Looking at the "swine skin" above, I'm thinking that the bump could possibly be inverted and used for "goose pimples" on human skin?