No worries, any changes you need I can provide :)  Just happy to be of assistance.

Stepdad

Quote - Thats pretty cool!

Thanks... it's getting there at any rate.  The space suit is going to be a bit more complicated and of course I still need to finish some textures for the rest of the helmet but I'm fairly happy with it so far.

Ok.. all finished, I submitted it to the Renderosity freebie area but it will take a bit of time before it's available from there (has to be approved), in the meantime if you like you can get it directly from the upload site:

http://www.sharecg.com/v/20476/3d-model/Romance-Era-Fountain-Pen

If you have any problems, questions or suggestions for improvements please feel free to contact me.

Stepdad

Quote - stepdad, can you please send me that one please? looks just like what I envisioned!  thanks a gazillion..
babbystahr.2nd thoughts, sorry...

No problem at all, glad to be of assistance and the modeling didn't take more than a few minutes at best.  I have some texture work to finish on it, should get that done tonight and have it ready for upload tommorow, I'll provide a link for you as soon as it's finished and uploaded.

Stepdad

Quote - Lol.
In the professional world it's all about originality.
YOU DON'T USE SOMEONE ELSE'S STUFF, PERIOD.
Especialy not if it comes with a license plastered all over.

Well, that very well may be true.. but then again I wouldn't know.   I'm not a professional artist, nor is it likely that I ever will be.  My application is far different than that, as are a lot of other peoples application.  Not everyone that uses a 3d rendering program does so with the intention of selling their finished render as a standalone work.

Quote -
Seems too few people here are able to understand what I'm talking about, so let's try it this way:
The HotRod movement started in the 30's and came to a high in the 50's because of what ?
The Ford Flathead V8 and the Chevy smallblock V8 engine.
Two simple. powerfull engines everyone and his brother could modify and tinker with with a few simple hand tools.
It was completely DIY, it was a grassroots movement, it was for the common man and many talented people turned cars into rolling pieces of art.
A few people became professionals and sold speed equipment and opened shops, but they still were part of the community.

Actually I understand what your getting at, but I hope you'll forgive me when I point out that perhaps you might have missed a point or two yourself in this discussion.  Take your example of the hot rodders of old, who began working on their own engines and souping up their cars.  That's all well and good for them, but what happens if you want a fast car but you're one of the people who doesn't know how to work on engines?  You were either stuck driving your mom's station wagon or paying a boatload of money to have someone who could work on engines do the work for you, there was no in between.  

Quote -
Nowadays ? Look under a modern car's hood and you can't even spot the engine because it's buried under a ton of gadget and gizmos and stuff that breaks for you and shifts for you and thinks for you and all the crap people are told they can't live without anymore.
Cars became fat and sluggish, and then they needed MORE power just to move as fast as the older cars could.

The automated systems on modern cars do a lot of things the old hobbiests could even dream of, and it wasn't that people were told they "couldn't live without it" or that it's a bad thing that it exists.  Take my daughters neon for example, it's a lightweight car with a small 2.0 litre engine in it but it's still a blast to drive.  It's got plenty of pickup and handles like a dream.  Back in the hotrodding glory days you couldn't get that kind of power and performance unless you had a fairly good sized engine that was properly built and tuned.

And having done a fair amount of hotrodding myself, believe me once you take that hotrod down the track a few times guess what?  Your going to be tuning the engine some more.  Not so with the little 4 cylinder power plant in my daughters neon.  Computers sense the amount of oxygen in the exhaust gases and automatically adjust the fuel flow to the engine real time to decrease wasted fuel.  Computers also monitor various other aspects of the engine and constantly adjust things like airflow and fuel intake so that the car is runnning efficiently at all tempratures and speeds.

The old 72 ford pinto I used to run 1/4 sprint track in was an awesome machine and a sight to behold, but it didn't have any of those kind of features.  Tuning the engine required a mechanic, and the engine had to be constantly monitored and maintained because it was built for performance, not drivability.  It's entire design concept was different, it was designed for maximum horespower and speed in a short sprint.  We even had to take the engine entirely out of the car to change the oil filter, which is what happens when you shoehorn a V8 into a car that was originally designed for a V4.  But our design concept was simple.. light weight and massive horsepower equals speed.

It wasn't designed to be easy to use for the novice driver.  But hey, if nobody had ever built a car that was designed to be easily maintained and built for long trips the only people who would be driving today would be mechanics and their families.  The rest of us would all be taking the bus.

So really what your comparing here is apples and oranges.  Granted, you won't see many professional artists using Daz Studio - but then again not everyone is a professional artist.  You won't see too many people driving dodge neons at the Indy either, but then again not everyone is a professional race car driver.

So while my daughters Dodge neon certainly won't be winning at Indy next year, it's still nice for her to have to get back and forth to work in.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Well, not sure if there is one available or not, but if not let me know and I'll see what I can come up with.

Quote - I think the "combatants" frightened away the original post starter IMHO anyone who immediately mentions editing joint parameters in one of these discussions is in the slight minority of poser users i consider "advanced". let alone "hacking a CR2" I still firmly believe more than 51 % of poser users are : BUY-LOAD-RENDER using the canned hair,clothes,poses and most time canned lights perhaps with some slight variation of the canned poses. so to be frank D/S is the Ideal free solution for the majority especially someone who has only now exjted the crumbling cave of P4!! (Disclosure) I use Maxon Cinema4D +interposer pro linked to 2 poser runtimes and Vue will like NEVER buy another version of poser beyond P6 and D/S is just a free toy for me to fiddle with occasionally.

I think that all Poser users start out that way, I certainly did.  But eventually you run into a situation where the canned buy load render doesn't quite fit the bill, and for some of us that means starting to branch out a bit and learning a bit more about meshes, textures, etc.. to get the desired effect.

Pretty soon you’re looking at modeling a few things on your own, and before you know it your starting to read up on CR2 files and how they work.  I must admit I've never tried Maxon's Cinema 4D - sadly my budget just can't keep up with all these great 3d rendering programs so I stick with poser for now.

I'll probably look at going to something a bit higher end eventually, but for now Poser does what I need it to do with a minimum of fuss and aggravation. As to the combative nature of some of the responses, whenever you ask a question on an internet forum about which software package is better you must expect at least 50% of the responses to be along these lines, it’s just the nature of the beast.

People have a tendency to get rather entrenched in the software they use. I remember not to long ago some folks got there knickers in a twist when I wrote a review of some image editing software called “The Gimp”. I had some nice things to say about the program and it didn’t sit well with some of the folks that read my article and were long time photoshop users.

Now I’m a long time photoshop user (in fact I’ve been using it for so long my first commercial copy was purchased under it’s original name of photostyler) and I’m certainly not going to be switching over to the Gimp anytime in the near future. Not that the Gimp isn’t a good program, but I’ve got a lot of time invested in photoshop, I know where the menu options are that I need and what the shortcut keys are that I use on a daily basis. But for someone that doesn’t currently own photoshop it’s a viable option, it’s a powerful program with a lot of desirable features at an unbeatable price – free. 

But while I can see the value of a program like the Gimp for others, a lot of people grow rather attached to their particular software and feel the need to defend their choice wholeheartedly. For me a software choice has never been that much of an emotional investment, but for others it often can be strangely enough.

I hope both programs continue to develop and progress for years to come, and both enjoy a sizeable userbase that will keep the companies that own them making a tidy profit.

Why?  Simple - competition is a good thing, a very good thing, for both programs.  Daz Studio does not yet have some of the features that poser does, but then again daz studio is a pretty young program in comparision.

Poser has more features overall, but in some instances the user interface can be clunky and some of the features (most notably the "face room") are so poorly implemented that they are nearly useless.   

As Daz Studio improves Poser must also improve to stay current and competitive, and vice versa.  Each time a new feature or a better interface is developed the opposing side must take notice, and do what they can to improve their own program to prevent it from becoming obsolete.

As to which is "better" at this point in time, it depends entirely on your application and experience.  For me, I've been working with Poser for a while now so I'm pretty familiar with it and as such it's fairly easy for me to do about 90% of what I want in poser relatively quickly.

If DS improves to the point where they have all the features that I want I might consider giving them a look - but for now it really isn't in the cards for me.  However your application and experience are probably much different than my own, so DS might be a better option for you personally.

Case in point, I have access to a full version of 3ds max, however I don't really use it all that often. Why?  Because I don't do much modelling and usually when I am working with a mesh it's normally only to make minor corrections.  As such I generally use a freebie program called wings 3d far more often than I do 3ds max.

Now 3ds max has features that Wings 3d couldn't even begin to duplicate, and it's a far more powerful program.  Comparing the two is like comparing a cap pistol to a nuclear weapon, they are just on two totally different scales as far as power and flexibility are concerned.

However for the most part all I need for most of what I do with meshes is a "cap pistol".  A simple edit here or there is generally all that I require, and as such Wings 3d does the job quite well.  I can accomplish things quickly because less features also mean a lot less menu options to be sifting through to find the one I need.

If I were modeling something complex, like a car or an airplane, I'd probably haul out 3ds max and use it instead - it has features that make such modelling far easier.  However for a quick edit here or there Wings 3d is more practical for my purposes.  

You might find such is the case as well with yourself and Daz Studio.  If what your doing is mostly rendering and you don't really need most of the features Poser has that DS does not, then DS might be a good option for you.  But really this is entirely in the eye of the beholder.  It will depend on your needs, your experience and your workflow.  

Just my 2 cents worth.

Quote - Editing the pp2 is required. But insert

smartprop $CURRENT

insteed of the props name.

Interesting.. I'll have to give that a try - but I think it should probably be 

smartparent $CURRENT

if I remember my syntax correctly.  Certainly worth a shot though, I'll see if that does the trick.

Quote - stepdad, 
Here's something you might try, it's worked for me, but it involves hacking the pp2 file. First you have to give your parent an individual name, like OakTree or what ever. Then pose your smart prop and save it as usual. 

Now open the .pp2 file and locate the "smart parent" command line you'll probably see something like "smartparent prop:1" (I'm not positive of the convention for a prop parented to a prop so I'm guessing here). Replace this witl "smartparent OakTree" or simialr and resave the pp2.
In the case of a smart prop parented to a figuer you'll see somthing for example like "smartparent rHand:1" change the ":1" to the figure name with no number, an examplewould be "smartparent rHand:Victoria4".

when loading the files in Poser load the Parent object first then the smart prop, then the second parent object and the smart prop for it, etc.

I pickup the idea of using figure names from this site, where it's explained better than I can:

http://www.rbtwhiz.com/rbtwhiz_ERC.html#CT

Seems if you leave the number off of the name Poser will add it in the order it;s loaded, at least internally. 

mike

Great suggestion, unfortunately the figure (in my example trees) can't be given a unique name in that fashion - I can't really go to in depth on the explanation as to why this is without discussing to many details of the project, something I've promised not to do.. but  just suffice to say that while this workaround would certainly work sadly it won't work for the application I have in mind.

I do appreciate you taking time to make the suggestion however, any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Have you used posers group editor feature to assign material groups to the various sections of your prop?

That would be my first guess... if your needing more detailed instructions on how this is done let me know and I'll see if I can't put together a real short tutorial on the subject.

Well, I haven't had the difficulty of being mistaken for a child in a very, very long time myself.  I'm 6' 2" and I'm the runt of the litter, most of the men in my family are 6'4" or better.

As to the job of the moderaters deciding what is and isn't a child for the purposes of a 3d rendering, that's one job I don't envy in the slightest.  Renderosity could get in a whole ton of trouble real quick if some overzealous legal type decided to make a huge issue out of a rendering being considered "child" pornography.

Granted, I've never heard of such a legal case but I'm quite sure that Renderosity would not like to be the first to try and defend themselves in court over something like that.  The punishments for such things are usually severe and the determination of what is and isn't legal in this regard is in a pretty big grey area overall, so quite frankly I can see why the moderators would tend to err on the side of extreme caution.

As to the issue of "short adults" in renderings, I've had my best luck with V3 and using the scale dial, scaling her down to about 70-80% and then doing some morphing.  If this doesn't make her "short" enough I just increase the scale on the other items in my render to compensate.   I dislike the proportions that using the "figure height" parameter gives me.

I've dabbled a bit with A3 I can't say as it's ever really been a favorite figure of mine.  Don't get me wrong, I've seen some really fabulous characters that were made for A3 by some of the various vendors here, but personally I've just never had the knack for it.  Every character I've ever tried to create using A3 has just never really turned out quite the way I wanted, I can never get a "realistic" look to an A3 character.  Something is always just a bit.. off.  Not sure if I can really explain it any better than that.

Well, I don't have V4 yet but I thought I would weigh in on this one from a programmer/creators perspective.

As a longtime programmer I'm always pleased to hear what people like about my work.  However it isn't anywhere near as useful to me as hearing what they dislike.

I come from a school of thought where I can't fix it if I don't know what is broken.   So while the tone of some of the criticism about V4 might be a little harsh, if I were part of the Daz development team I'd have somebody in every poser forum I could find taking notes about the things people dislike about V4, so that improvements could be made.

Having worked on some fairly large projects in the past I can tell you from experience that things of this nature are always a compromise, and that first releases always have some shortcomings due to "creative tunnel vision" for lack of a better term.  

I'm sure Daz put a great deal of thought and effort behind getting the figure to bend and move in a realistic fashion, after all, this was always one of the main criticisms behind V3.  However from the reading I've done in doing so I'd imagine that it forced them to make some compromises on V4, which I would imagine probably includes dividing the mesh in different ways to acheive some of the more realistic joint effects (which curiously enough is one of the main criticisms I've heard so far about V4).

So, I would encourage those who dislike V4 to continue to post what they dislike about it, as this sort of discussion is quite helpful to designers and creators who can then address those problem areas.   However I would encourage them to make their criticism more constructive and less vitriolic if possible.

I would encourage those who like V4 to also try to respond to those criticisms in a more constructive fashion, sharing tips on how they have overcome some of those problems or ideas on how to make improvements in those areas.

Just a thought folks, even though I like V3 and use her quite a bit personally I have no emotional investment in the mesh whatsoever.  If someone else prefers A3 or some other mesh to V3 I'm not going to get seriously upset about it.  Same with V4, when I eventually get around to purchasing her, it's just a mesh to me.   Each mesh has it's strong points and it's weak points.

But just imagine how much better V4 can eventually be if you can combine it's strengths with those of other meshes.   That I think should be the goal for both camps - that way everybody wins.

Just my 2 cents worth.