Well I found the perfect solution. I have both. I invested the big money into my Macs (yes that's Mac with an "s"). But with the market putting out so much more on the PC platform, and most of my clients were on PCs, I had to go out and purchase a PC. For one, it was fairly inexpensive in the greater scheme of things, and I had the money at the time. So I have the best of both worlds. Now I wouldn't even try to sell a MAC to a PCer, but I would encourage a MAC owner to get a PC. Of course if it's possible (money wise). And before I get replys stating that "Who has that kind of money!?" I have to say, I'm on low fixed income from Social Security and have very little money, but I scrimp and save to get what I need. I also have a few extra jobs that when I do, all that money goes to computer equipment and software. I know many of you can't afford to have both, but if you can it's well worth it, so you can do what you can on both platforms. James PS: I still will never be able to afford Maya, LightWave or 3D MAX.

Just fantastic!

I disagree. Setting the dpi tp 300 does indeed render differently than if set at 72 only that it just starts you out on the road to a beter render. I have tried both and get better results with it set at 300, duh--more pixels, more detail ;-). I find that it's just better to have it set at 300 and just go from there. If it's set at 72 your image will render at the current size you're working at and you have to manually up the pixel dimentions, whereas if it's set for 300 it will automatically calculate a higher pixel width and hieght and render larger. But you still have to manually up the size if you want an even higher resolution, but it starts you at a higher res to begin with.

First of all ... Apples and oranges. And by no means do I mean to offend. Poser is NOT a true Ray Tracing engine, whereas Bryce is. I.E. No true reflections or refractions in Poser. As to why your textures in Poser are coming out blury/fuzzy I don't know. I have never had that problem. Poser does not do bumps well (even at 100% Poser's bump is very low) but when it comes to textures it has always shined, giving very good results. So if the dress is relying on a bump map to achive the "mesh" that's more likely why Bryce does a better render on that. Again, it's not really fair to compare the two. I have done some spectacular renders in Poser, but I tend to do my final images in Bryce. But if I had Maya or Lightwave (to name a few) I'd use those. For a low priced program, Poser can't be beat. But IMHO it's not the program to do a final render (Yet -- maybe in Poser 5). It IS however the program to do what it does best ... Pose! And then export to another program. 35 hours?! You must be using Bryce 5 with everything at it's higest render settings and or using volumetrics. It also seems that you need to set Poser at 300 dpi/ppi and 2000 x 1500 to get more detail. The 300 setting makes a difference, if you leave it at the default (around 72 dpi) it will lose detail. Well that's my 2 cents ;-) James

Well I finally got things to work, but now Bryce crashes with any large file trying to network. Arrrgghh! It's always something. Thanks BTW for all the help. James

Just a bit of my 2 cents here. Just to stress what's already been said. Try to use a background color in Poser similar to what the end composite background will be. This just helps if some of the outlining pixels get in there (Alpha channels aren't perfect, but Poser does a very good job). NOTE: If you have other items behind/in front of your Poser figure (or object you're trying to render) these too will become part of the alpha channel. I have often done a Poser render with a "backdrop" behind the figure and when you look at the alpha channel it is completely white because it took into concideration the backdrop. So only place figures/objects in the Poser render that you want "cut-out" or masked. Yes! Save as a PSD (PhotoShop uncompressed) and Poser automatically saves an Alpha channel. And by "Condense"ing the selection in PhotoShop by 1 pixel will get rid on many of the outlining artifacts that may interfere with the composite. But you can further eliminate these pixels with a "Quick Mask" and get your hands dirty and paint out the unwanted pixels, and then resave this new selection to the Alpha/Channel. James

Yes I understand that I can't be online and do this. But what settings are you using? Can you explain exactly what you have in all your settings? Thanks by-the-way for responding. Here is an image to help. James

Well I'll try to answer the second part of your message. As Shadowcat replyed; When Victoria first was produced, it was a "Zygote" product. But then a few of the people at Zygote decided to customize a department that was a Poser Only company. And DAZ 3D was born. All of the Poser ready objects and textures were ported over to DAZ 3D from Zygote. So when you see something for Poser that has a Zygote label it just means it is something that started in Zygote. Anything NEW to DAZ will not reference Zygote. But it all is the same great quality. Now here's something I know you won't want to hear. Victoria will not appear in any FREE section ever. It is a copyrighted product and can only be purchased through DAZ3D. But if you look around and price any other figure of this quality and Poser ready at any other company, you'll find that you will have to spend hundreds of dollars for what In my opinion DAZ sells at a very affordable price. And she has been on sale before and I'm sure will again. Hope this helps. James

Here let me help with that itch .... ;-) If you need more explanation, feel free to ask. James

Ok, my 2 cents here. One other work around ... Place a cube (standard prop) in your Poser scene. Scale it up large enough in the x and y axis so it can become a "backdrop" instead of a background. Shrink it in the z axis so it's thin like a wall. Since it is a square (Do not size it oddly otherwise your map will stretch) you can place any size (Larger the better) SQUARE image map on it. It is set up to map cubic so the map appears on all sides. (see image) Place it far behind all your figures and props so it does not recieve any shadows on it. You may have to give it it's own spotlight if it's not lit well enough. I find that this works well too and it avoids any pixelation. Hope this helps too. James The image here has the upper left: Imported 200 x 250 pixel background. If you look closely it is pixelated. The second image -Upper Right: Imported 500 x 550 pixel background. Much smoother. The third lower image: Is done with a backdrop. Image is 500 x 550 pixels and the backdrop cube was scaled up around 600% on the x & y axis and 10% on the z axis. All were rendered at 500 x 500 pixels 300 dpi in Poser. (cropped and scaled in PhotoShop)

You need Curious Labs Poser Pro Pack for that. It adds in the Flash export module. I don't know of any other third party plugins to do this. James

Thanks people! As for doing any glass or anything that needs refraction and reflection... sorry to say... Poser is not the program to do this in. I use many Programs (well as many as a poor man can afford) for my final renders. I have done some fabulous renders with Poser alone, but I end up rendering most of my stills in other Programs such as Bryce 5 and Carrara 1.x (Though Carrara is still very buggy and screws up transparencies a lot). So I guess what I'm saying... if you must have beautiful glassware, use another program for now and wait and hope that Poser 5 will do a better job at handeling these things. Also Poser can not do a "Deep cut" bump render very well. It seems to be a half strength bump even with a true black and white map. Anyway here is a sample render in Poser with NO post work and just a few variations of transparency settings. It took me all of 10 minutes to do so it is NOT the best I could have done, but shows an idea of how it can look in Poser. James P.S. sal, the "tree" is from the NEW Tree Designer in Bryce 5. Many programs can do trees now. I believe Vue can do them as well, and Carrara has a Tree plugin from ZenStar.

To explain that a little further... Unfortunatly, when Bryce imports the object it only reads the normal texture. It does not read the transparency map at all. Someone out there has a program that does this all by-the-way I just can't remember the name So after you've imported the object you have to go in manually and apply the transparency and bump maps. (I believe Bryce 5 at least now reads the bump) To do this, select the eyelashes separately and click on the "M" in the drop-down options attached with the object. Click on the first* "Transparency" bubble and apply the trans map. Remember to check the "Blend Transparency" option in the materials requester! NOTE: *You can apply the bump, transparency and other materials in different channels for a little more options. I hope this helps a little. James

Well Thanks for the lead, but a small word of caution. You can not get the page to load with Netscape Communicator for the MAC. The CG Resources page loads fine in IE though. Thanks again, I'm a exclusive user of Quark and will look into this. James

Eric, I unfortunatly don't own or have Lightwave. I just know that it has a plugin that will do the job. I have Carrara though, but as I mentioned, it is sparatic and may not handle the large poly reduction. I'm also on a 56k modem and would choke at a 30 meg e-mail. Though I have have had larger files sent and zipped the file should be very small indeed. James