Rule 4: During controversial multi-page posts, blow past everyone else's opinion, post a huge block of text without considering whether that point has already been made or not and sit back and expect plenty of acknowledgement. Or: Just post pictures of cats. My favorite is the one with the beer and the remote. BTW, I'm not complaining one person actually checked out MY gallery because of this thread. Thanks, SoCalRoberta for your comment.

Thanks for that link. I have successfully avoided using magnets for years but found that video inspiring. Also, you had some very amusing comments in the "no suck up" thread. cheers, don

OMG, I made through ALL four pages!! A lot of very good points and observations. Some I may underscore. To get back to tainted_hearts original post: Here's part of the problem, tainted_heart: 1. Your list of artists didn't include ME! ; ) 2. The artists in your list are good but that's still just subjective opinion, yours or mine. 3. This place is so big I amazed that after 8 years there are plenty of people whose work I have never seen. Like, this is so amazing how have I never seen this? 4. I can hardly believe I took the time to plow through everyone's post to this thread. So, while I agree with your original post and feel sometimes someone ( you, at this moment) has to say what you have said, I don't think it is worth the effort to change what is essentially the nature of the galleries/internet. Humans get attracted to praise, good feelings, drugs, sex, like-minded-ness. I also agree with those that say this thread will repeat in a month or so. I rarely leave constructive comments unless, by looking at the image, I believe that the artist is invested in their pursuit of a better image and might want to hear my "tip". There just isn't enough time to leave comments on work if the person doesn't have the desire or ability or appreciation to include a comment that isn't "this is wonderful". And to another person's comment re: having blind comments only The comments have been my avenue into other galleries that normally I wouldn't find. I see an interesting avatar with their comment and I'm intrigued to see what else they've done. Clearly, we all know this can be a blind alley as some avatars are acquired in ways other than via their own art. For the record: Yes, I see some pictures that I consider "bad", "painful" even, but somewhere out there someone might see my gallery and feel the same way.

But the dolly camera is the model used in first person walk throughs. When you turn around in cyber-space or meat-space you pivot on your own personal axis. You don't go spinning around a point in the center of the room as the "main" Poser camera does. the "alt" button does work as a camera hot key but it would be good to have hot keys that operate all axis of motion. I think the alt key only does rotation. Plus, I would also vote for adding and defining cameras.

ghelmer, judging how you listed your events, I'm gonna add one of my rules to the "save before render" rule. And that would be, "Slow Down". Rooted in experience and watered with superstition I have witnessed many crashes come when I am in a hurry. So far, P7 hasn't crashed when I cancelled a render but I'm also in the habit of waiting for it to dump its memory. It's not completely scientific and yet many hangs and crashes come when I have tried to press too many buttons too quickly. There are many kooky things going on in P7.

Khai, I love your adaptation of the Mentat Mantra. Maybe, "that thoughts acquire speed- the teeth acquire a stain- the stain is a warning" Very funny. wolfmanjim, I'm not sure I've seen you're problem but do make sure that you're not outside an object wall. In preview mode an object with only inwardly facing normals might appear transparent but when rendered will block the camera unless you turn off back facing polys in the render settings. This may not be what you're experiencing but that condition can cause results similar to what you're describing.

Attached Link: Oblique Strategies

Brian Eno created a deck of cards printed with short phrases designed to pop him out of a creative rut. I only knew one person who owned a deck but now in the 21st Century, I just googled Oblique Strategies. Voila, here is a link where someone has input all the cards and you can draw one at random. Also, here is the link to getting a deck: http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/ He designed his to deal with music/sound issues but it can be applied to any art project.

nomuse: LOL, thanks. That's why I left it for the end of the subject. What can I say, I have a "reference" compulsion. kaveman: Doh! I rarely remember to check the Mac Forum. My path is well worn between here and the Lightwave forum. Thanks, good to remember and thanks for the shruggy link. jerr3d: Likewise, thanks for the link. Update: I bought the VAP Extension through CP but went back to Sanctum Arts Home and checked out his FAQ. There was a note about using MacConverter which I don't remember doing for the original files and I had pngs for all those but WTH. I converted the new files, re-installed, suddenly I have pngs! EXCEPT! The MAT folder still has 20 shruggy guys and the folder just happens to still have 20 rsr's. Mystery solved! EXCEPT! The Armor Pose file has 11 shruggy guys and NO rsr's and it's missing 11 pngs. Wierdly inconsisitant. So, I guess I'm off to download xShruggy. It kind of makes me sorry I deleted 1,357 rsr's I found lurking around my HD last night. I thought they weren't needed. Thanks very much for all your very speedy replies. don

What a great jump to make! Forgetting whatever 'bugs" you might encounter, the improvements since Poser 4 are really worth having. If you haven't noticed them yourself already here are a couple worth noting: When you open the drop down menu of body parts there is a little tick mark showing you which body part you currently have selected. This is great when trying to quickly orient yourself among so many variables both L and R. And that drop down list can now be accessed from the parameters window so you don't have to slide your curser all the way back to the main window. The up and down arrow keys can be used to move up and down through the body parts of the first figure. Handy if you are doing pose design for one character and moving through each body part and don't want to keep going to the drop down menu. That won't work if you have many characters, the scroll through only seems to work with the first character. Well, you've probably already noticed lots of other groovy attributes yourself. You've got a lot of fun ahead of you.

LBT, as a newbie, I must heavily underscore Miss Nancy's "save out to tiff" comment. That will save you plenty o' frustration in the future. Many things can go wrong with the program or computer or you might just get bored from waiting. Saving to an image will at least leave you with something to look at and consider whether its worth another take, as is. On the subject of "takes". Rendering to an image you can also set it to render out every 5th frame. This is great for getting an idea how the rendered sequence will look before waiting the three days for the whole thing to render on 1's. Looking at the preview animated can be good enough for evaluating body positions or camera animation but until you see rendered frames you might not realize that your character has been covered in shadow for the last two seconds of the animation. Or some other bad thing that wouldn't catch your attention when testing the first frame. Oh, and my personal favorite: Rendering to image makes it easy to go into Photoshop (or your favorite paint program) and correct minor flaws or add effects etc. good luck

Attached Link: V4 under the hood

I have only glanced at this tutorial but it looks like it will clear up a few questions I have. My time implementing V4 has been rare, only long enough to see if a costume fits and then I'm onto the next project. There are a lot of new dials that I'm sure I'm not using perfectly. The magnetize method for clothing is confusing to me. There is still a lot of dealing with poke-through. I'm hoping to get the time to actually read the tutorial. Or someone can post back to this thread and say whether it is worth it or not.

Attached Link: Poser 7 Render Errors

I went straight from Pro Pack to Poser 6, skipping P5. So, from PPP to P6 was a fantastic improvement. P7 comes with two really great features: Multiple Undo's and "duplicate". "Duplicate" I find great for adding similar lights quickly. And of course, you can use it to add people or cars, etc. My own complaints are well documented in the attached link. In this and other threads, others report they are having no problems with SR1. I personally have not used the "layers animation" in Poser7 but it seems to be very much the same as the Motion Mixer in Lightwave. And yes, its a great way to animate using defined motions, editing them in a non-linear way. The concept is a good one, I have yet to see how it works. Yes, I think the preview looks pretty good, depending on what you need it to look like. V4? http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=1942 this is a tutorial that covers a lot of what is different in V4. The changes are good as it further develops the Vicki line. And it is sometimes frustrating because V4 is not always what I'm used to. And therein lies the double edged sword of change. ; ) As always, you gotta ask: What are your needs? Animation vs Illustration, Deadlines vs Time to Experiment.

The official reply from E-Frontier: ------------------------------------------------------------ The blue-channel issue actually closely resembles a bug that we found (and fixed) in SR1- I'll pass it along to our QA staff so we can see what might still be going on, but I haven't been able to reproduce this problem on my Core Solo Mac mini (admittedly it's an Intel Mac running 10.4.8); I'll check it on my Panther G4 at home (I've been saving my renders as PNGs, or I'd be able to tell you right away if it were happening) and of course we'll set up a G5 to check it out. QuickTime renders also work fine on the Mini (again, I'll check on the G4 and pass it along to QA); although Poser 4 renders currently can't include a background image, rendering over black does now produce a proper alpha channel if you save out a PNG, even if you're using the P4 engine. Here are my suggestions for workarounds to the problems you report- 1. Instead of Photoshop files, save out rendered images as TIFFs- the data that gets saved is the same; if you need alpha channels, save out PNGs; 2. For movie files, image sequences work very well, preserving image quality as well as alpha channel data if you choose PNG for the image file format; 3. Unless you really need to use the Poser 4 engine, we recommend Firefly- especially with the current support for multiple processors and the general speed boost that we gave to the new Firefly, there's no major benefit to the P4 engine. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyone who is having this problem and stumbled on this thread via Search may find this info helpful. Their work-arounds were my work-arounds but I would rather a feature that dates all the way back to Poser3 (?) still work in the improved model. It's not like I'm expecting RT Ray Tracing! ; )

For what its worth, I appreciate hearing the full spectrum of reviews. If SR1 is working for you then there is the possibility that points me toward looking into my own directory for something that might have gotten erases or corrupted. E Frontier Tech Support has replied that my "blue channel corruption" problem was part of a problem they thought they had solved with SR1. Well... Bopperthijs: Regional settings, you say? Interesting. As I am in Australia. I'm not totally clear how that makes a difference but if it is causing my problems can it be fixed. E-F currently is only suggesting work-arounds that I already explained I was using. I would rather not work-around but have it work. Writing to a psd shouldn't be so difficult in the 21st Century. IMO

Attached Link: Poser7 Render Errors

I had a similar thought today as well. I thought I had a well oiled assembly line for staging and posting scenes and while Poser 7 comes with some long awaited improvements it has really slowed my throughput to a stand still. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out why simple things aren't working. Attached is my earlier thread about simply rendering out has become difficult. I've had to give up and go back to Poser 6 just to get things finished. Which is rough 'cause I hate giving up the multiple undo's. And "Duplicate", I love duplicate! And then I'm not so happy about giving up the attached alpha channel in a render but that can be dealt with. Maybe I could go into Real Estate in my second life.