If you wish to do this for a living, bite the bullet, pay the bloodmoney, and get Photoshop, since it will land you jobs once you have a decent portfolio of what you can accomplish. Better save and save for this route, unless you are just naturally wealthy. This one will run you around 800.00 unless you can redeam an earlier version for an upgrade. BTW you may wonder, "What sort of jobs?" Most Photoshop experts with 3 to 5 years of experience make around 40.00 to 65.00 an hour and up per billable hour. If all you wish to do is art for arts sake, and do not plan to run out next week and storm the graphics market with your skills like I did a few years back, go for PSP. I am increasingly impressed at how they manage to get that program to do more and more each day. It will only set you back about 59.00 to 99.00 depending on where you shop. The third solution is a two choicer. It is middle road. Painter on the one hand... which I find to have a frustrating interface. Photopaint on the other hand... which I find to have a frustrating interface. These are both relatively affordable to hobbyists.

How about we get a drop of perspective on how the other half live? That way we are wiser consumers. Most professionals in this business of animation and 3d purchase their products from companies such as Id8 Media. To go to Id8 and get an idea how much we tend to pay for something, head out to: http://www.id8media.com/ Now not all products made outside Poser are ripoffs price wise. Some are, sure. There are indeed the companies that charge 1000.00 a model, they tend to have as their customer base large production render farms and effects companies in Hollywood. Then there are the independent artists who provide an awful lot of what you see in shows such as Babylon 5, Star Trek, Ally McBeal, Zena the Warrior Princess, etc. They contract out almost all graphics to small time one man or 3 man shows... where do these independent artists buy to save money? Alot in fact go to Acuris. To check out the prices for Acuris works, go to: http://www.acuris.com/product.htm These may put you into some perspective here. An eye... 249.00 :) However... out of the same company, Acuris, comes the excellent CD collection 18 Perfect People. Acuris no longer seems to sell it directly, for that go back to ID8 again. 299.00 :) We are getting close to that now, arent we, for Vicki? She has alot in common with 18 Perfect, as indeed most of Zygotes models seem to do. When I first opened up Poser 4, took a look at the models and clothes, I could have SWORN on a stack of bibles I was seeing 18 Perfect, and the other excellent product out of Acuris, Mix and Match clothing and People. Zygote's prices are industry standard thus far, for the industry of independent artists. I do not find them exhorbitant. You would not believe the cost of the hardware, software, etc of the stuff they are using out there to model in. Overhead on a shop like that is massive. They bleed money. Hell my little shop bleeds money, and I do not go in for the big names in hardware and software Zygote does, instead confining myself to the low end of high end. Competition is good. The store we are making will give Zygote a run for their money. I believe Ayesha was as good a model as any Zygote have put out. I distributed her with props, clothes, textures, morphs, poses, faces, you name it. I am now working on another update pack for Ayesha. If I had chosen to sell Ayesha to you all, I would have asked literally and truly, for 1.00. That would then of course double up to 2.00 for the store charge ;) If each here who chose to take my free Ayesha had given me 1.00 I could pay my rent this month, and get that upgrade I desperately need for Lightwave 3d too ;P Maybe I lack ambition or something here... but for me, selling someone like Ayesha once a month to supplement my income a bit and offset the costs of keeping up the low end of high end is all I am after, not getting rich off you all, or even buying myself and SGI.

I am not by any means saying that professionals in this business are not using Poser :) In fact I use it. What I am saying is that compared to a program such as Character Studio, or even the high end easy to use animation interfaces of Maya, 3d Studio Max, Lightwave 3d, he might find that Poser just won't hold a candle no matter how he tweeks.

Anything I ever aim to sell will ALWAYS have morph targets in it, same for what I give away too. That is the thing I am doing, making it morphable... not just making another static statue. Travellers morph targets tutorial has been a boon to this community in that it has enabled many of us who never quite got the process before to step up to this challenge, and I expect to see that most of the advanced artists who have items to contribute for sale or for free will be including morph targets as a matter of course more and more.

I have found this was a problem of Poser 3, and was patched, but still at times occurs in Poser 4. It seems to occur when Poser cannot locate things it wants, such as a texture map (and sometimes telling it to cancel and not look then causes this exception c error), and also it seems memory related. Oftimes even if it recovers it's next message is it is out of memory.

Heya Pete, I live in the Washington DC metro area. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do to help you on this one, since the plain and simple facts are that Poser IS Unprofessional, inconsistent, clumsy, and is therefore not a reliable tool for anything save still renders. Getting any sort of animation out of it is almost impossible to the level you are probably seeking. It is not so much that you are necessarily doing anything wrong... though some of the more advanced Poser users may indeed have workarounds they can share. If it helps you feel any better, go read this: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19990730/poser_01.htm you are not alone in your experiences. Now... let me see. Do you happen to have any other 3d programs of a professional level? If so there is hope for using Poser's stuff anyway... a bit. Like for 3d Studio Max, exporting Poser's people once you have them morphed to your liking into 3ds format, boning, setting up IK limits, etc, then going on about your business? I mean if you check out collections of higher quality 3d models such as 18 Perfect People, etc, that are created for use in such programs, you will find they are not as nice as those coming with Poser, and need IK and boning done too. So use Poser for nice still visualization maybe, and then learn the workarounds necessary to get a clean export into a program that does respect keyframe settings? I am sorry if this sounds incredibly negative, but there are just no easy answers for getting Poser to work as a professional industry standard tool, so much as there are ways to get Poser to spit out your stuff so something else can have a go at it.

Oh... and one more idea ;) How about "hair add ons" like you know, packs of ready to use transparency mapped curls, things to dangle at the ears, bangs to add on, sort of a mix and match make your own do set? That would do me more good than anything :) And yeah, I'd pay you ;P

Speaking of Priss from Bladerunner, remember that devastatingly heartbreaking replicant that was not aware she was, and was the pet of the replicant maker? Can't recall her name... her hairstyle was the utter height of 1940's chic. And I would just kill for one of those skull fitting finger curls. And also a nice close short bob cut of very curly hair.

grin I do like the shaggy dog look too, but was hoping for an alternate version for a very short, very slick 1920's bob style. You know me, still here trying to recreate the silent ladies of the 20's ;)

I think one might do both approaches with some success Anton :) Go maybe for an individual price, and a per pack price? That way if one really only needs just the one, or can only afford just the one, it is available? These are splendid btw. I hope you will consider doing some of the hairstyles from the 1920's and 1940's also :)

All I would suggest is getting rid of the "shaggy dog" look of the ends. A smoother cutline so it appears cut, instead of just all different lengths? Otherwise this is looking very good. :)

http://store.zygote.com/cgi-bin/miva?Merchant2/merchant.mv+Screen=PROD&Store_Code=ZP1&Product_Code=ps_ac043&Category_Code=new Or go to the new products area, on the secure server, as if you are about to purchase Vicki all over again. It is there.

Also, please read my new posting above, Store Improvements in Process. Thanks, Bast

I wanted to just reassure you all that all items going into the store will be quality tested by the Renderosity staff. We are working to achieve the most efficient means of doing usability testing even as you all fret ;P Just so you know.

Oh, we little birdies have our sources Byte ;P Liz Birdsong hbg@kreative.net