I have also found that parenting spotlights to various cameras is a great way to get them placed more easily. Poser should work this way already, but it doesn't. I could go on for days about how much I hate Poser's way of doing lights, so I'll stop here :)

Twas a jest, speculating that Poser 7 would try to install itself to your !: drive, therefor putting itself on top of all other programs running under Windows Vista, and also allocating 100% of the CPU for good measure. The box is even oddly shaped, ensuring that you stack it on top of other things.

If Poser Firefly isn't doing what you want, I would suggest either Carrara 4 or Cinema 4D 9. These two offer the most bang for the buck. The main difference is that C4D is more expensive/more powerful, and can be a complete solution depending on what modules you get. If you're looking to save money and still get a much more powerful rendering engine for your Poser scenes, Carrara 4 is the way to go, especially with the Poser import options available.

WTF?

The point lights can have soft shadows, but since they are raytraced, it will take longer to render. The point lights do not have the option to use shadowmaps.

DOF Pro works in alot of other programs besides Photoshop. Go here for a list of the many free programs that can use Photoshop plugins.

No, because they are coming from an infinite distance outside of the scene. What you want is Poser 7, which should have point lights with shadow maps. Short of that, you can get Poser 6, which has pointlights, but they only cast raytraced (sharp) shadows; or you can get Cinema 4D, Carrara, or one of the other more complete 3d packages. Most of these have point lights that can cast shadowmap shadows, or some form of soft shadows. I share your frustration with Poser's lighting system. Throw a couple of figures and a few props into a scene, and you can get excellent results provided you know how Poser's lighting/rendering works. Try and put anything inside of a building or other enclosure, and you're in for a hell of a lot of pain, unless you render in passes/layers.

DOF Pro works very well with Poser. To repeat/clarify the advantages mentioned above, it is much, much faster than using Poser's own dof, plus it's not ultra grainy. Also note that version 3 will be able to do motion blur :D Oh, and the price ain't bad, either.

There are 2 types of people in this world: (1) Those who merely like Alan Rickman, and (2) Trekkiegrrl :o)

Which version of Poser are you using? If it's Poser 3/4/5, use Mat Pose Edit.

If you are using Poser 6, you should save material collections directly from the Material Room.

Innovation is a good thing :) Thanks for the update Steve.

Ooh nice stuff! Happy birthday Lisbeth. You have a bad url for the curlers, BTW. It should be "curlerhair.zip", not "curler.zip".

Setup room sucks? WRONG! Er, um, at least IMHO :) What do you dislike about the setup room? Aside from a few issues that aren't the setup room's fault (camera navigation issues), I find the setup room to be the fastest and most enjoyable way to create a new character rig. I still do a lot of tweaking back in the Pose Room with the Joint Editor, but for getting the basic rig in place, the Setup Room is the place to be. Some tips for using the Setup Room: * Make sure that you ALREADY HAVE YOUR OBJECT GROUPED THE WAY YOU WANT IT. Name the bones accordingly, and keep in mind that this is CASE SENSITIVE. If you try to go back to the Pose Room, and it tells you that you have some polygons not belonging to a bone, then you do. This is the one thing that could be improved in the Setup Room, since 9 times out of 10, the "NO_BONE" group shows no polygons. * Don't bother trying to finish rigging both sides of the figure in the Setup Room. Get one side the way you want it, and then just quickly approximate the other side, making sure that the hierarchy and naming are correct. Use symmetry to finish up the other side. * Use the Front Camera when placing bones initially. Use the Zoom tool when needed, restoring the Front Camera afterward. Use the Left or Right Cameras to move the eyes/feet/toes into position. Use the Top Camera when moving the fingers into position.

Stewer, that's why I'd rather they simply expose what's already there, make it available to the material room, and then lock it by default for the average user. The option to unlock it and set it up for use would be available for more advanced users, who could then hand edit the necessary files to work with their renderer of choice. This would take most of the work out of their hands, freeing them to fix other things. The Air comment was meant as a "if you really want to give us a superb renderer, aim higher" type of comment. Or, if nothing else, subcontract out that aspect of things to 2 or 3 people who could devote themselves to such a thing. Volfin: you may have to recompile the shader if Stewer's version was compiled with an older version. Stewer: I'm IMing you with a few questions :)

"but im curious as to what new "rigging enhancemants" are in poser6 though???" LOL, there aren't any. I don't know why the idea was even brought up in the first place, except as a poor attempt to distract us from the fact that the P6 people are rigged up P4-style. A very poor attempt, might I add, since there AREN'T ANY NEW RIGGING ENHANCEMENTS IN POSER 6, no matter how often the question is avoided. The only verifiable reference that was ever used to support this was that the P6 people have nifty dials on their hands/fingers to make hand posing easier, which QUITE OBVIOUSLY has nothing to do with the ARCHAIC rigging on the rest of the figure.