Be aware that you can resize your canvas to good effect-- while it doesn't create new detail, increasing the file size gives you more "space" to add detail. In fact, a lot of people rough out their images at low-resolutions, and then resize to to work on the fine detail, like the eyes in your case. As a simple rule of thumb, when you resize, double each dimension; this will produce a file four times as large, and isn't always the right answer, but its a start. Resizing doesn't create new detail, but it doesn't destroy it either. If you're interested in digital painting, you might also explore using Painter, which has the ability to replay scripts of your session in more detailed file-- this does add detail.

Couple of things-- the Alpha channel is not generally used for a bump map; bump maps reflect roughness of a surface. . .alpha corresponds to transparency. I assume that what you're trying to do is to take the alpha and create a new image, jpg or whatever, for use in the alpha channel of a 3d app like Max, right? Open the tiff in Photoshop, go to the layers, copy the alpha layer, then create a new greyscale file and paste the alpha there. . .now you have a file which is the alpha from your original Tiff. But again, this is generally not what you want for a bump map.

"Will there be aclothing room and its functionality near perfection, cloth that really attaches perfectly to the body of the figure , no matter what Pose it has.. I want for example, if i have a figure sitting, i want perfect flow of the cloth." Its nice to want-- but no program delivers this. Cloth simulations, whether Syflex, Maya, Reactor, Lightwave, XSI or whatever, nearly always require attention and tweaking. You won't find "perfection" in Poser 6, or anywhere else, I'll wager. . .

A couple of points: scanners scan in RGB-- CMYK is a generated format that's bigger and typically is targetted at the color profile of a specific output device. So you should be saving RGB for future use, and convert to CMYK when and if you need to print from it again. The scanner itself doesn "see" CMYK, so this info is "invented" by the conversion software-- you gain nothing saving it this way. If your scanner is truly scanning at 16 bits, as opposed to software interpolating 8 bits to 16, then you should save this way, because its more information. A number of digital asset managment systems will automatically produce reduced size versions of your source files and place them in designated places. . .Cumulus, Extensis Portfolio, PhototoWeb --- there are many solutions for the problem of storing and repurposing files at multiple resolutions, formats, whatever. . .search on "digital asset management" and you'll find many systems. . .

Absolutely not. But I'm not an anti-Poser snob either. Its a great tool, that has some really strong points, but for me it works better in conjunction with other applications. some points where other apps work well with Poser-- --render engine. The first moment that you see what Max or LW ( or Vue 'Esprit for that matter) does with imported Poser content, you'll be blown away. mental ray is simply a much better renderer than the Firefly engine, and fPrime makes radiosity and GI fx an interactive cinch on LW. Despite the clever work of some on creating good shaders for Firefly, I still find the Poser render to be slow and less good. --non-photorealistic rendering. Its a not often noticed feature, but Poser will export a Painter script which can then be rendered in any of Painter's zillion brushes, very cool and quick way to get a sophisticated painterly effect. --eyes. Eyes are funny things, and getting them right always means some postwork in Photoshop-- I just haven't seen models with the conjunctiva/eye interface that works convincingly, just as I haven't see a convincing teeth and smile out of a Poser render. --model economy. Poser has a very old method with zillions of polygons. . .if you're working with a modern 3d app, you've got some kind of subdivision surface to work with, and can make clothes and so on with many fewer polys. My #1 request for Poser 6 is subD surfaces. . .

Wow, toshibasan, Well thanks for the link-- I'd not seen this guy's work before and it is excellent. The funny thing is that I think he's doing exactly what Larry Weinberg thought people would do with Poser, when he created it. . .remember the artist maquette guys in Poser 1, 2 (and its still in there, somewhere). Early Poser, or early Poser running on a 100 Mhz computer with a 512k of memory only could do so much-- the huge texture and bump maps of the present weren't even a gleam in anyone's eye. So, as I recall, the early idea was very much of an artists posing and shading tool. . .one of the hardest things for a traditional artist doing paintings of people is to get sizes right, particularly when the perspective is extreme, as it it is in this image. All a very long way of saying that, to my way of thinking, "Archangel Gabriel"'s images are very true to the spirit of what Poser was intended for, in addition to being very striking, Another Rosity regular who works similarly is "Voodoo". . .

Take a look over in the Mac forum, there's a lot of discussion about this topic there. Short answer: It works, but not terribly well. Basic issues: doesn't take advantage of dual processors, Python doesn't work, is pretty slow. I keep a PC to run Poser and some other stuff that just doesn't run great on Mac.

both xara and buzz pro work on PC -- its only Studio Artist that's Mac-only; both have free demos

lot of ways to do this. If you're on mac, Studio Artist is great. buzz pro is also good. xara has a nice vectorizer. To start with, though, you can get a lot of these fx inside Photoshop, just by learning how to posterize.

Much easier to use a displacement map, IMO. P5 Firefly has excellent displacment built into the renderer. You'll need to get a "footprint" of the character from above-- if you save out a TIFF, you'll get an alpha channel of the character's outline. Blur this a bit in Photoshop, and use in the displacment channel of your bed texture. Another advantage is that you can paint wrinkles and folds in the bedclothers right into the map. Map can be animated by keyframing the displacement strength, or save out transformed mesh and use as a morph target.

Or you can buy Softimage XSI for $495 -- and the advanced version for $295, if you're a student. "I am looking for a software program that can make; obj, 3DS files, and/or other, so I can group them, boning, so then when I import into poser, I wouldn't have to do all that." XSI is considered to be a very good modeller. Lightwave is very much so-- I think I've heard that the DAZ people use LW to make their models-- but both are subdivision surface modellers. Poser's greatest limitation is that its strictly a mesh application-- which means that if you need local detail, or smoothness, you have to increase the polygon count enormously, compared with how you'd do it in Lightwave, 3DS or XSI I don't think that any other boning system exports to Poser. There are some custom Poser utilities, but if you do your character rigging or grouping in Lightwave, 3DS, or XSI, I don't think you'll have an easy time exporting the rig.

the reason this shadow doesn't show up right in Poser is that the chief source of the effect is what's called "ambient occlusion" -- that is, the blocking of the general ambient light as your hand approaches, say, the thigh. In order to have ambient occlusion, though, you need to have a Global Illumination solution, or fake it, either with many lights, or with the --very clever!-- settings above

get a copy of Amorphium. Its dirt cheap, and its still the easiest SubD modeler around. . .its strange how good it is; much better than Wings IMO; better than LW, better than Max-- not as powerful, mind you. But its the very best place to start, IMO. All the techniques apply to other subD modellers--its just that they're much easier to learn in Amorphium than in more cluttered apps (in Amorphium, SubD is called "Tin")

Bald headed characters are very tough, because so much of how we recognize people is their hair . . . PS' eyebrow is rather "feminine" -- light and arched, much moreso than your model. An easy adjudstment. Two tips: 1) model with texture off-- makes it easier to concentrate on features 2) UV map a pic of Stewart to your model-- it will look excellent. In truth models only have to be approximate-- texture is far more important. . .in the case of your model and the reference pic, the biggest difference between model to pic is that the lips in your model are quite pink; Stewart's are not. . .solved by using his pic as a texture. . . There was a full headscan done of Stewart for some computer game some years ago. . .I remember seeing it on the web, but now can't find it