The forward bending problems are the result of the matspheres not having enough space to do their job. In other words, the forward bending is helped by the outwardness of the legs. No need for JCM with this method, either. You're correct, the falloff shouldn't go past the center line, which is why giving it more room helps.

Er, if'n youse would continue wif dat test, all nice n quiet-like, youse'd find this herr page: http://www.goneglobal35.com/whyyourartiq.html

Obviously you have no idea what you're talking about, as I will illustrate with my brilliant marketing plan: Phase 1: Naked Women with close-ups of knees and elbows Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Profit! Viva la underpants!!!

Stewer: The problem is, Poser now has PERFECT Renderman export when using Firefly only, or craptastic Renderman export via file:export. I appreciate your efforts with the Python script, but as you state on the Poserman page: "No shadow maps. No Material Nodes. No environment maps. Limited bump mapping." Which is why eF needs to make the Renderman bytestream that it sends to Firfly available to the user for sending to other Renderman engines. As I've stated above, I'm trying to avoid these clunky export workflow options. Having to recreate my shadernode setups is more trouble than it's worth, since I have Cinema4D 9.5, and can recreate shader setups more easily there. Unfortunately, this is still a clunky workflow, since I lose the ability to pose. Ideal workflow (obviously, eF wants to provide this, or they wouldn't have added Firefly): Pose -> setup shaders -> render -> tweak pose/shaders -> render, etc. Once again, since Poser is ALREADY spitting out excellent RIB to Firefly, there shouldn't be a lot of work involved to get it ready to use other engines (unencrypt the shader library, setup a dialog for the user to choose which renderer to use, etc).

"The GIRL is modeled with her legs out and bent forward" The bent forward bit is what causes most of the problems here. I initially thought that out + forward was a good idea, then I did this silly thing called internal alpha-testing (I created a mesh with just enough form/detail to get an idea of general appearance, then moved the legs into position, and dropped it into Poser and rigged it). The forward-ness isn't necessary at all, and causes problems in fact, as you've seen. The reason is, as anyone can plainly see, is that there isn't another body part anywhere close to either the front or back of the legs to interfere with bending. Additionally, you can rig an existing Poser figure's leg correctly, with the drawback that the other leg will get distorted. Therefor, some clearance is needed on either side of the legs in order for distortion to be kept to a minimum. The outside is no problem, obviously, so we have plenty of space to swing outward, although we still want to keep this to a minimum. 30 degrees or more, and you get new problems that you don't want. When I set up my current figure, I rotated the buttocks 5 degrees out, and the thighs 10 degrees. A bit of re-rigging was needed, since this is based on V2RR, but now the bending is almost perfect. I also took the mesh into MarbleCLAY to smooth out the buttocks, and then recreated the buttocks as a morph, which helps immensely. I used MarbleCLAY because it has a smoothing method which keeps seams between body parts from getting separated. I have since re-rigged a few clothing items, which conform quite well. I may begin to create things more seriously (as in: for release to the public) once I see that eF has decided to fix the things in Poser that really need fixing: LIGHTS + UNDO + ability to use ANY Renderman implementation, not just Firefly. I want real GI rendering from Poser, and I want it in Poser 7. I do not want them to try and add it to Firefly, however. Hell, I wouldn't even mind if they released a higher-priced Poser 7 Professional Edition, with Air bundled instead of (or in addition to) Firefly.

Once again, I must defend an aspect of Poser that is being unnecessarily disparaged. Poser's rigging is not as powerful or as flexible as weight-mapping, that is true. However, until I see any evidence that the "professional" third-party figure creators have even an inkling of how to rig in Poser to its full potential, then there's really no point in wishing for yet more advanced features that nobody will be able to use properly. Hopefully eF will seriously overhaul Poser where it really needs help: the light system.

BTW, EBob, let me put it this way: I'd rather import my figures as static meshes and re-rig them in Cinema4D than ever again try using Shade to render them. One of the worst examples of cross-program file interaction I've ever seen. To clarify for those who are curious about Shade's UI: the best way I can describe it is this: if the creators of Blender had actually designed its UI to be obtuse on purpose (rather than obtuse until you get used to it, and intuitive after), they still couldn't have come up with something like Shade. Shade is now in my all-time top 3 worst UI programs, which are as follows: Form*Z Quark XPress Shade Funny thing is, these three programs' UIs look very similar in many ways. Conspiracy, maybe? The plot thickens...

"it's like an old copy of quarkXpress with a spline modelor crammed in." ROTFLMAO As a fellow Quark- and Shade-hater, let me thank you for putting my feelings into words perfectly :)

If only eFrontier would allow us to use other Renderman implementations besides Firefly, we could do this basically inside of Poser. Of course, they'd also have to allow user-created shader nodes to be used in the material room, which would need to be turned off by default for the newbies. Air, Pixie, and the big boy of Renderman, Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman all have some form of global illumination. There are a couple of others (including the discontinued Blue Moon Rendering Tools) that support GI partially. C'mon, eF, what do you say? Can Poser 7 give us an option of where it sends the Renderman bytestream output? Firefly is nice, but for those things it can't do, it sure would be wonderful to be able to render directly from Poser to another Renderman instead of having to go with the various clunky export workflow options. Despite my bickering, I really DO enjoy using Poser a lot. The less I have to fiddle to get my figures rendered with GI, the more I'll enjoy it.

"...there was a person working on this model..." "Spanki is working on a female figure as well. I don't know how completed it is." Spanki is Keith Young, whose signature you see in the lower right of the image :) I do wonder how he's doing with her, it certainly looks like she's quite well done as it is. "I would love to see better rigging and matrices for better posing and more REAL looking figures that are anatomically correct from the start. Hate having ken and barbie to work with! Can't imagine why someone hasn't picked up the ball and ran since there are many artists that want something better." You are right in wanting this. There really is no excuse for the lack of innovation from the various third party figure creators (with the possible exception of Anton's Apollo Max, which I don't have). Poser's rigging system is totally adequate as long as a character is modeled correctly and in the correct pose to be rigged. A couple of hints for the curious: (1) Anything that is composed of fat should NOT be modeled as a part of the base figure. Use morph targets to add these in order to allow the rig to do its job. An exception to this would be if your character is obese. (2) Modeling the legs straight down from the hip, with NO SPACE between them is one of the STUPIDEST mistakes made by MANY professional figure modelers. There should be a 15-30 degree angle between the legs.

If you have any doubts about Eileen Galvin's poly count, remember that she was designed to be onscreen with several other characters with similar poly counts, in detailed environments, on the Playstation 2 game console. She looks very impressive in motion, and you really don't think about or notice that she's low poly.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Poser's rigging system. Once you know how it works, it can be made to do things quite well. Joint Editor bugginess aside, Poser is a wonderful application in which to rig figures. You just have to set up the figure model properly (actually not a huge departure from how things are currently done). Also, certain 'fixtures' of the human body should NOT be modeled, but morphed (however, there should obviously be enough polygons present to support these morphs). Finally, it is unnecessary to create a figure with 100,000 polygons JUST to achieve better bending. All the results I speak of, have been achieved with a figure based on V2RR.

"There are some PT characters (Tae and Sizuka) who required blMilGirlPh.obj..." Actually, they require 'Highteen Vicki', who is available on the same page as Tae. I haven't downloaded her myself, so I'm not sure what each of the two downloads is for, but it looks like the one on the right is the main file to get.

You shouldn't set an IBL light to have raytraced shadows, since this is essentially a gel (the light is being cast through the IBL image, causing the weird shadows you see). Make sure that whatever lights you want to cast shadows are not IBL lights.

Attached Link: http://www.google.com/search?q=skin+texture+painting+photoshop