Niether Poser nor Bryce use Direct3D or OpenGL. That is, a fast 3D video card will not help their performance, they do not offload anything to the hardware accelleration. Having a large screen is useful; if you're buying a monitor as well try to get an 19 inch (or larger) if you can. Your choice of video card will probably depend more on whether you play games on the machine. A TNT2 (suggested above) is a fine card for Poser use, and can be had pretty cheaply nowadays. If you play 3D games, a GeForce card would yield higher framerates.

Unfortunately though that would be a useful product to have (both in terms of saving the download time and archiving things before they disappear from the net), I don't think it could be produced. Renderosity would have to have a (non-exlcusive) right to distribute the contribution on a commercial product. There are a huge number of entries in the Free Stuff, and not one of them has any clear indication of its copyright status in a central, easy to locate place. Many have readmes, but the amount of work for someone to download each contribution, read through it to see what rights are granted, email the creator if it is unclear, check if it contains any copyrighted Zygote meshes (yes, some of the Freestuff items contain a copy of Poser OBJ files), and so on would likely be prohibitive.

I use Cinema too. It doesn't have as large a following here as RayDream/Carrara or Rhino, but there are a few of us.

CA does offer subscriptions in the US. It arrives here about two weeks after it shows up in the UK. It is a fantastic magazine, very slick.

I thought you were here as a target for the slings and arrows around here. I'm sure I read it in the terms of service somewhere... Let me find it... I know its here somewhere...

The skeleton included with Poser (the one where the hands are not poseable) is from Viewpoint. Zygote sells their skeleton model. Personally, I think it is the most useful thing I've purchased from them, though that could be because I'm playing in a D&D campaign with lots of Undead.

Oh, oh well. I like the ice cream texture. Looks like vanilla blueberry swirl. Now I'm hungry.

You just remapped the OBJ, right? That is what Objaction Mover is for. It encodes the new OBJ file using the old OBJ file. Only people who possess the old would be able to open the new. Zygote has, I believe, agreed to the use of pcf files created in this way to distribute modified versions of their meshes. Objaction Mover is for the PC. On the Mac, I believe the excellent MacConverter can create encoded pcf files.

Now that is unusual: you don't require exclusivity from the artists? That is quite enlightened.

Fabulous!

Personally I think it is a good thing. I just wish the Online Store had an identity somewhat separate from the rest of the Forum. I.e. a seperate site, with its own identity, linked via banner ads.

Actually, I think the comments are more valuable than the actual numeric rating. To that end, I wish the Gallery would be modified to make it easier to enter comments: 1. make it a TEXTAREA instead of an INPUT a 2 line TEXTAREA would suffice, heck just being able to see more than 20 characters of what I've typed into that tiny INPUT line would be welcome 2. allow more than 255 characters of comments even the next power of 2 up (to 511 characters) would let us enter a full sentence or two, not just sentence fragments. The disk space required to store the comments would still be limited.

Honestly, I thought bbay.com was a good idea. It let artists profit from their work, while leaving the community spirit intact here. In fact I'd always assumed that bbay.com was running on EdgeNet servers (the ever-present bbay.com ad on the front page seemed telling), and so EdgeNet could begin to recoup their costs in running this site. This seemed a wise arrangement. Placing the commercial store smack dab in the middle of the community site seems unwise, there is an inherent conflict of goals. When you go to a free rock concert, the bands are not selling their CDs up on stage. The CDs are sold in booths along the side and in back, slightly outside of the spotlight on the performance. The band wants to profit from their work, but featuring the music sales so prominently would make a sham of the performance. I'm afraid this is what will happen here. The attitude of the place may shift relatively quickly from being a community based around an idea to being merely a facade to feed the commercial enterprise. I have no problem with artists selling their stuff, and I purchase quite a few things in this way. I have no problem with those sales being handled by EdgeNet, on the same machines serving up renderosity. I really don't care. I just think the commercial site should keep its identity distinct from the community site, not plop itself down in the middle as has been done today.

What rival company?

Glad to hear it. Keep up the good work.