I bought V3 and love her/it. Lots of morphs and Hi-res. I should have signed up for the $99 platinum level though at DAZ becasue I've spent more than that on the downloads. I'm past the point of no return now. You may want to consider that.

Oh, and you're right the manual kinda sucks--not much in the step-by-step "how to" dept.

After you get the ins and outs of P5 (which I like a lot, even though it has some bugs) you can purchase new characters for it at http://www.daz3d.com/. (I don't work for Daz, just a heads up) There's also a lot of free-bee models here at R'osity to help you out in your scenes.

Thanks Emily: yes I had "remove back facing polys" checked & I unchecked raytracing. All though I haven't gone further in my experimentation; I do think it is the lights more than the figures. Unfortuneatly, shadows in this scene are important to me, I am trying to simualte what a stage setting would look like. I'll keep on plugging away when I get a little more time. Thanks again.

Under the "figures" drop down menu there is a command "conform to" that is supposed to make the clothing object fit and conform to your figure. However, in my experience it doesn't always work and Poser points out work arounds in the manual. The one that is suggested most is to turn off the "visible" option in the properties dialogue for the particular body part that shows through the clothing object. A problem with that though is sometimes the objects are not exactly uniform. For instance: a small shirt on a muscular figure; if you make the abdomen invisable then the edges of the shirt may not line up with the hips. The bottom line is I think, you still have to fiddle with the transform controls to try and get the clothing to fit as closely as possible in those cases. Even after using the "conform to" command.

I think you are right about the lights. I took "stewers" suggestion and started eliminating some of the actors from my scene and Fire Fly moved beyond the point where it was hanging up: which was the "render shadow map>adding objects" for the first light in my scene. I think by simplifying the scene, therefore the shadows, for light 1 that allowed it to move forward. I'm going to explore this a little further and see if I can narrow it down more. I'm also going to upgrade my video card now that faster ones are available.

Yes, P5 is fully up to date with SR2 and I have rendered other pictures with the same settings. You can check out my small gallery here, each one of those used the Fire Fly settings I indicated. I will try your suggestions and see if it makes a dif. and thanks for the reply.

looks great except for the arm joint. Doesn't look natural there. Love the image though.

Well, I have two HD's (ones a slave) so I have more than enough room. I think I'll try TIFF's to see if I notice a quality dif. Thanks for the info.

Okay, I think I get it now. Thanks! I'll try a few experiments. By the way, I'm a fisherman and I'm used to pulling bones (a lot of bones) out of things. LOL

This thread seems to be a good place to bring up this question: I save my renders as BMP because of the relatively low quality of JPG.s. I've never used TIFF's what's the dif and what's the best format?

There are 3rd party's that create texture and bump maps that you can apply, quite simply, to the Poser figures. I seem to remember seeing a few that can be found for free here or at other sites. Most are for sale. Daz has new figures and texture maps for sale at their website http://www.daz3d.com/. These can be morphed into a wide range of figures and achieve the quality you see others achieve in their work. I know these will work for Poser 5 but I can't say for P4 or P3 because I don't have those versions.

Thanks, I think I'm getting it now. Then let me ask you this: as in "EsnRedshirt's" reply, would you use/do the same scenario for a mens P4 shirt applied to a P5 character--say "Don or Judy"? and (theoretically) should that shirt conform--then--to the afore-mentioned figures without skin showing through? I had just such a problem recently when I tried to use hi heeled shoes with V3 and they did not conform to the feet well. I spent a laborious amount of time using the "transform" dials to try and make them fit better, but still the skin showed through some, so I had to retouch in Adobe PS. If I am understanding you all correctly, the cloth room should eliminate that?

Makes sense to keep them in a seperate folder somewhere.

Okay, I think I get it. I tried coloring a piece of clothing as per suggestion and used it in the materials lab and viola! it worked. Man...for someone to do a whole body and make it look realistic must take a phenomenal amount of tedious work! I'm sure there are some shortcuts I have yet to discover for that. Especially if you want to do things like realistic eyebrows or lips! Well, that'll be for another day--I have enough basics to learn right now.