Quote - Does anyone know how to put a character flat on the ground or floor to where it doesn't make them look like they are floating in the mid air?  Every time I set up a character with it's feet on the ground as close as I can get it, it still looks like the character is floating after rendering.  Thanks for the help.
Adrian

I find that even when I do use Drop to Floor, sometimes the character is still floating above the ground.
What I do  is switch to front camera.  Then I select the character's Body from the parameter
window.  The I use the Y translate dial to line up the bottom of the character(s feet)
with the white horizontal line.  I also check the left, right, and back cameras.
Perfect feet every time.
If you don't see the white line, you may have to check Ground on in the Guides menu.
Also sometimes it disappears, but shows up as you move your character, and
then disappears again after you stop moving your character.

Quote - Here are my FireFly SUPERFAST Manual Settings:

• All checkboxes turned off.
• Min shading rate: 5.0
• Pixel samples: 1
• Max texture size: 1024
• Max bucket size: 64
• Min displacement bounds: 0
• Post filter size: 1

At these settings, I can see what my lights are doing just fine. The above render was made in 3 seconds.

 

Actually if your machine can handle it, I find increasing the bucket size to 256 or even 512
gives a faster render.  At 1024 my machine chokes, but somebody with a faster machine
and more memory might even want to give that a try. 

Quote - Every light has a choice of depthmapped shadows ("rendering shadowmap...") or RayTrace shadows. It's on parameter box tab of every light. Depth maps are prettier shadows with blurry edges and great fot interior lighting (simplistic example) RayTrace are sharper and hard edged and better suited for exterior shots. In the right hands they can compete with each other on quality.

Actually you can "fuzz" up a raytrace shadow with your bias and distance settings in
the light parameters.  You can also make it a lighter shadow by setting Shadow
in the light parameters to something less than 1.000.  Ray-traced shadows are
more versitile than depth mapped shadows plus you don't have to wait for Poser
to calculate a shadow map, though it does take a little longer to render.  But
overall I think you can save some render time by using ray-traced shadows
and get more realistic shadows too.
Also in Poser 6, the Point Lights have no other option than raytraced shadows.

And each time you create a light, it should create a corresponding shadow camera for it.
So what you might have to do is delete the lights that don't have shadow cameras
and create new lights to take their  place.
Really, with Poser 6 you only need two or three lights anyway.  One set to
Ambient Occlusion and one to  generate shadows, and maybe another
for highlighting something.  Over the years people have gotten light
happy in an effort to simulate global illuminations, and so people ended
up with far more lights than they really need, which take up resources
and really bogs down rendering times.
You didn't say how many lights you were using, but you should ask
yourself, do I really need this light?  Do I really need that light?
Maybe a good thing to do would be to get rid of all the lights first,
then set up one for Ambient Occlusion and see how your scene
looks.  Then add another for shadows and see how you like that.
Then add another one if you really need it.

Did you start your character at a zero pose in the first frame and then set it at the
final pose in the last frame?  In other words, was the leg inside the dress when
you started the animation?  This looks like what happens if you have poke through
at the start of the animation, and the Cloth Room then can't calculate the collisions
accurately enough to move the cloth outside of the character.

You could try parenting the sandal to the toes instead of the foot if it is a prop.
Or if it is a conforming item, instead of conforming it to the character,
treat it as a prop and again parent it to the toes.  I find this works in a lot
of cases.  And if it doesn't work for these sandal, then you could go
the morph route.

Quote - With the spot light I know you have to do a 'point at' command which I did point the light to the character, but it did not seem to help.

I used to do it that way, but I find I get more accurate results using the shadow camera
to aim the light.  Then I just change the light's xyz positions and rotations to get the
light on the part I want to illuminate.
If you already have point set up, you can unselect it by going back to point
at and select Universe as to what it should point at.  The Point then magically
disappears in your light parameters box.

Another thing you could do if you have Poser 6  is go to the material room,
select that item, and at the bottom of the material surface main node
put a check in Normals Forward.  I assume you already deleted your
floor and replaced it, so it's too late to try that.  But this is good if you have
a prop that gives those odd patterns too.

Quote - This only goes to show that when NOT threatened by terrorist, mayhem, and other life endangering situations, American tend to go collectively insane!  Thank G-d I live in Israel, where all we have to worry about is Hamas, Hizboulla, and suicide bombers.
David P. Hoadley

Yeah, those bastards keep you all pretty busy, don't they.  Were you safe?
Did you have to move south?  I heard they did quite a bit of damage to
northern Israel.

Is it possible that something is blocking the light to the figure?
Or the light isn't pointing at your figure
Try looking at your scene through the shadow camera for
that light and see if something is in the way, and if your
figure is not centered in the view of the shadow camera.
If so you will need to move and rotate your light until
you get around what is blocking the light and your
figure is centered in the shadow camera.

Another thing to check is the light intensity.  Maybe you
have it set too low.  Are you using the inifinite light
or are you using a spot light or a point light.
If the later your shutter angle may be too narrow
or your falloff too sharp.

Maybe you could post a screenshot of your light and
render settings.

Well just think of all the poor children who were traumatized over seeing Janet Jackson's nipple.
Some of them will be in therapy for years and may well bear the scars of that incident for life.
We can't have things like that happening can we?
(Oddly enough there have been no reports of European children who were watching that
Super Bowl  having any long term physcological problems .)

Quote - > Quote - Do they require ownership of V3's Male Morphs to use?

The following is from the "Details" area next to the download button:

Quote - Notes:
Only the INJ & REM poses. No texture included. Texture used in thumbs is Sam from DM's TP 2.
Requires V3 Base, Head, and Body Morph packs. Male Morph pack IS NOT REQUIRED.

Mac Users will need to convert files.

Requirements:
Operating System: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows XP, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X
Software/Package: This is not standalone; see above notes.
License: This is licensed for commercial or non-commercial use.

Doesn't the V3 body morph pack already include male morphs?  If so, and you
need them anyway to use this package, what it the advantage of this package?
I know I have made several male characters out of V3 just using the body morphs
from DAZ.  Some old, some fat, some skinny, and some muscle bound, all
just by turning the dials.

Quote - > Quote -

Getting Poser 5 for free may well be legit, but if you follow through all the pages you
end up at a page where you have to buy some service to get Poser 5 for free.

I think he was referring to the Bryce 5.0 and not Poser 5.

I seriously doubt that e-frontier if giving away Poser 5. I  could maybe see them giving away Poser 4 or earlier, but not Poser 5 as many still are using that version and it's not that old considering they are only at version 6.

Yes, but the subject was Poser 5 for free, a phishing scam.
No, it's not E-Frontier giving it away, it's EveryFreeGift.com
that will supposedly give it to you when you sign up for
one of the services they are brokering
As far as the serial number, when you first start up Bryce 5.0
it should give you a link to DAZ with your serial number.
Copy and paste that onto your Bryce 5.0

Quote - uh..sorry, this is legit. You have to go to Daz to get the serial number, and it really, really works. Honest, I downloaded it (now I have 2 copies..;), installed it, and  it works.

The 'spam' part is that Daz will be offering a Bryce 6 upgrade by 12/31 (hopefully sooner), and those who have this version will be able to get the upgrade price, instead of the full price. And it's not a fully functional (nothing drastic, it's just missing materials, and you can download the materials pack from Daz as part of the registration process. Skies and more materials you can get on dozens of places on the net.) Once you get all the pieces in place, it works just like Corel's offering.

Sometimes it is too good to be true, and sometimes it's all good..;)

Getting Poser 5 for free may well be legit, but if you follow through all the pages you
end up at a page where you have to buy some service to get Poser 5 for free.
None of which I was interested in.  And if you don't sign up to buy one of these
services that's all the further you get.  So I just exited out.  That's the free part,
they give you a version of Poser no longer in production that probably doesn't
cost that much anymore, but the money comes from the services they are
trying to sell.  It's like the car dealers giving away a free DVD player.
If you buy one of their cars.

Oh well, I did get Bryce 5.0 for free, but it appears to be the same thing as the
one I bought several years ago as Corel Bryce 5.0.

Quote - Hi all,

Sorry if people think this is not a direct Poser question. I'm thinking of buying either Vue 5 or Carrara 5, I want to create scenes to put my Poser characters into. I have Bryce 5.5 but there are limitations with this package when it comes to Poser figures. Regarding Vue & Carrara, could you Poser people out there who use these programs give me an honest opinion on which is the best package when it comes to importing Poser figures & creating a scene with them, this would also include light work & maybe posing as well, to which renders the best.

At the moment my interest is with Carrara 5 because of transposer but I've also heard that Vue creates better scenery, or am I wrong?  I can't seem to get the Carrara 5 demo to work on my system at the moment (unsure to the problem as my system should be capable of running it) so I can't judge for myself.

I was going to ask on the appropriate forums for Vue & Carrara but I thought I would first ask the Poser community as I would imagine you deal with Poser figures more.

Many thanks.

I don't know anything about Carrara.  But I did buy Vue Infinite on an educational discount
and I really like it.  I can create beautiful scenes with it and my Poser characters import
directly into view with all the textures and poses.  Plus what's neat about Vue is that
it works dierectly with Poser.  So I have Vue and Poser running at the same time.
That way if I don't like the way a character is posed, I can change the pose in Poser,
save the pz3 file, and Vue senses that I have changed the Poser file and asks me
if I want to import the changed file. Then it brings the character right in with the new
pose in the same position as it was before in view.  Really helps in tweaking the
scene just right.  Unless Carrara can do that too, I'd say Vue wins hands down.