Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=787015&Start=1&Artist=brainmuffin&ByArtist=Yes

Here's my guess: When you run the preview,and it looks good, you're running it with the "Skip Frames" option turned off, and it runs about the speed you want. Then when you render it, it goes all wacky, like it's running too fast... If this is the case, you should try re-timing the animation. Linear interpolation should really only be used for robots and machines.

I've thought about it, but I haven't tried it... any transmapped hair prop that isn't supposed to intersect the head in any way should work, as long as it's fairly hi-res...

You also have to do that (ctrl+alt+click) when you do a boolean subtraction in the VM.... I'll have to remember that rotation tip, though....

Hey, shonner, I was wondering about that program. How well does the 3ds export work? Does it export all the doors and windows? How about the textures?

I don't know, I think it might just be your computer. Not that your computer is really all that slow, but I just upgraded from a 1.4 ghz to a 2.8ghz pentium, and it is really a huge difference. For example, in poser 5, my old computer would lock up like yours is when trying to render a single frame of dynamic hair, and the new one will render that same frame in about 5 minutes. For something you could relate to, I made a physics animation recently of a few gemstones (about a dozen)dropping and bouncing. I rendered 5 seconds of it at 15 fps, at a resolution of 320x240, and it took about two hours. If I were going to do that same animation at 640x480, 30Fps, I'd leave it to render when I went to bed, and expect it to be done by morning. Add GI to that, and I'd have to leave it rendering friday night, and hope it'd be done monday morning! If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that the area where yours is locking up is right around when the letters start to collide with each other, and it suddenly has more interactions to calculate. Try leaving it rendering while you sleep, or go to work, or school, whichever, and see if it's still going when you get back. If you know that it takes, say, 2 hours to get to frame 90 where it slows to a crawl, and you leave it going for 8 hours while you work/sleep/school, and it's only on frame 101 when you get back, there's a problem.... Of course, I could be wrong....

I'd suggest rendering it without the GI and see if it still freezes. It's probably just getting too comlicated for your cpu with both turned on....

Problem is, I think, no one wants to seem so conceited as to consider themselves the "best of the best"....

Use the curve settings at the bottom of the advanced options window.....

The new sky looks great! I'm thinking I'm going to get a lot less use out of Vue once I get C4 pro....

what is the "Edit Mode" selection up at the top for?

Yeah, that would at least let you use poser figures for still images....

"Its really too bad Metacreations disappeared and didnt have the chance to really combine what it had... " Yes it is. I've only just now got, with carrara, poser and vue, what we should've had years ago with poser, ray dream, and bryce.... It doesn't particularly bother me that I have to go back and forth between programs, I keep them open together, so it's like switching back and forth between the "rooms". I was in the same boat though, before I bought poser. I thought to myself, why can't they just give me plug-ins so that I could use bones and morph targets.... Then poser 3 came out, and it had the ability to import poser figures into ray dream, sort of like what transposer does, and I bought it, hoping for better somewhere down the upgrade highway. If they would've gone that way, then you'd have what you want. The plug-in for Ray Dream let you go into a new "room" where you could manipulate the poser figure, just like in poser, but you still had to buy poser to get it... Of course, even poser5 is not the end all be all of character animation software. Back in poser 3, you had to create a skeletal rig in a text editor, like notepad. With poser 5, you can do it in a few clicks, but there are new tricks, like JCM (Joint-Controlled Morphs,e.g. you bend the elbow, the bicep flexes automatically) or "easy pose" which I think lets you assign a pose to a morph channel, both of which still have to be done in notepad. Although there might now be utility apps or python scripts that aren't to expensive, that will automate these functions....

"it may be somethign to think about to just bring the figures into C and do all your animating from there...may take a little more effort..but then im not so sure it would..." It's going to take a lot more effort. In Poser, the DAZ figures have morph targets already set up for facial expressions, lip synch phonemes, and general appearance. None of which will work in carrara if you just open the obj file, since they are built in to the .cr2 file. That's what this idea of yours lacks, Todd. The .cr2 file contains all of the morph targets, as well as the skeletal rig information. You'll aslo have to be careful when shopping here or at DAZ, as most of the characters for sale are only modifications of Mike or Vicki's .cr2, and DO NOT include a new .obj file. And again I'll say, you won't be able to use conforming clothing without incorporating it directly into your figure, which means that every time you try to change outfits, you'll have to re-rig the character. And forget about using MIMIC for automated lipsynching..... The few new features in C4 are definitely an advantage over C3, but make no mistake, they are not a substitute for Poser....

Take a close look at the timeline. SOMETHING, I don't know what, probably has keyframes on 260 and/or 263.... maybe a light moves, or the sun? if not, does the camera pass through something?