The problem I have with using the Vickie hair props for Mike is trying to stay away from the transvestite look and the Braveheart hair seems to work well in this regard.

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keep the abdomen, eliminate all above it. keep the feet, eliminate the toes. set the feet and abdomen to hidden 1. clean up the weld commands and the add child commands. keep the IK chains for the left and right legs or the kneecaps will end up in Memphis. eng

It seems to be a small separation between the abdomen and the alt geom hip piece that shows up in the extreme morphs. I only get it with the barbarian settings. If you pick abdomen and dial the r flank setting to .600 or above, it will disappear. eng

alternately, you could just choose the phantom foot and turn off its "Bend." Then the flares should "fly free" if I'm understanding what you're asking.

Also, you have to learn to live with the web, it isn't a very good medium for picture fidelity and it mostly doesn't do the darker images very well.

I tried to illustrate the points with photoshop and this is a very low resolution pic, but I hope you get the idea.

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...not to forget lighting, lighting, lighting. eng

Then along came wonderful Musclebound Michael with Reserved target Geometry channels for every part.

This is a smattering of the clothes I've done. I'll start uploading just as soon as I get finished with the matching charger morphs for the metal set.

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Load your favorite character. Turn on Ground. Delete all but one of the lights. Turn it into a spotlight (white to start). Use Point At function to aim it at the head of your figure. Select the light and start at the top of the dials, seeing how each affects the lighting. If you want a more distinct display of the effects, set a vertical plane (medium or dark color) in the middle of your scene.

Except that you have to move the light more leftward and back than you would expect, the Poser light moves are pretty straight forward. (Be sure you have Cast Shadows and Anti-alias set on Render Options).

When you feel like you have the single spot nailed, and are tired of the "dark side of the moon" effect in the shadowed areas, make a new light (blue is good), change it to infinite, turn off Cast Shadows, and crank down the intensity to 50% to start. Move it opposite the original spotlight and aim it somewhere lower on the figure to fill in the shadowed portions and make them more visible.

Then....

Add in a sphere from Prop Types and resize it to 10%, setting it back (z trans) to -5 to start with. Fire up the Depth Cue and go make yourself a nice cup of tea. Then play around with moving the ball, rendering, repeat, until the many mysteries of "too much fog", "too little light" are revealed to you.

When you have these three elements under your belt, you will pretty much have a handle on Poser lighting.

There are all kinds of fancy things to add after that, of course, but you'll have some idea of how to control the effect.

And, you might consider that language is managed on the other hemisphere of the brain from artistry and mathematics and music, so it only stands to reason that for the truly artistic, words, as a whole, are a "second language."

Myself, being a less-artistic left-brainer, find the spelling in this forum to be one of its main delights.

(the picture is Muscle-Bound Mike, Edo texture, Eric Pose, one spot, two infinite lights, and depth cue on. No post.)

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...of course that won't work for a DAZ product. eng

Try going to Marketplace and clicking MY PURCHASES: [View]

try propsguild.com

How about select Head, grouping tool, Add All, Create New Prop, export New Prop as Morph target (nothing else selected in the Export box).

Propsguild has a surgeon's cap and surgical mask. eng

Oh, and those are eric's poses, available in the store. eng

First, regroup the thing in a logical fashion--in this case: ponytail, ring, bangs, and scalp. Be sure to assign a different material to each new group. Then export the hair as a prop .obj. (Or just save it to a prop file, or hair file...it's really easier just pulling it out as an obj file, though)

Pull it up in UV Mapper (thankyou, thankyou, Steve Cox...whatever would we do without it?) Select by material and play with mapping formats--cylinder for ponytail, spherical for scalp and bangs, cylinder for ring.

Save the object file and the texturemap file.

Then workup a texture and a transparency file, using the texturemap you saved as a template.

I heartily recommend the Digital Babes tutorial on doing their style of transparency...basically, just stay away from the borders and keep rendering the piece, trial and error, until it looks right to you.

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