In addition to reversed polygons, you might have degenerate polygons (ones that form a line) or polygons where the first three points in the polygon form a line. This is important because some renderers (and this would seem to include Poser's) use the first three points in the polygon to calculate the direction of the normal. If your first three points are colinear, you get weird normals, and the polygons show up as dark spots that refuse to take a color or texture. UVMapper Pro will detect and correct degenerate, reversed, and colinear polygons if you ask it to. I don't remember whether or not UVMapper Classic does the same thing. Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

This is very cool. I remember reading an article years ago in "Communications of the ACM" that theorized how one might generate holograms by computer. I didn't realize that people were actually doing it. I'm very glad to hear that. (Very nice work, by the way.) Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

Brycetech has a praying mantis...is that close enough?

This is great! I liked it so much I just bought four copies of it, for me and three of my friends! (And if you look in LadyJaiven's gallery, you'll see a good example of how beautiful they can look.)

I was just at the bookstore, and the May 2002 issue of PCPlus magazine, another British magazine, has Poser 3 on the cover CD. (Their website is PCPLUS.CO.UK). Where I live (Chicago), they have it at Barnes and Noble stores. Once you have that version of Poser 3, Curious Labs will give you a discount of something like a hundred dollars off the price of Poser 4. Hope this helps.... Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

Here's what I posted in another forum last time someone asked that. I'll just repost it here, with a few modifications, rather than rewriting it from scratch. -------------------------------- KISS (the KIsekae Set System) is kind of like the Colorforms toys that were around when I was a kid, where there were people printed on a cardboard background, and clothes made of a flat, clingly plastic that could be stuck on the people to dress them. A typical KISS set consists of a 2D image of a girl, with several layers (cels) on top of it, with a piece of clothing on each layer. By sliding the layers back and forth, you can dress the girl. The layers on top hide the layers below, so underwear would be on a layer below outerwear. By splitting a piece of clothing into two layers, it is possible to see the front and the front part of the back when it is off the model, then when it is slid on the model the back part is hidden. It is possible to have clothes snap into place when they are moved towards the model. FKISS (French KISS) adds a bunch of special effects...sound effects can be triggered when spots on the board are clicked, timers can trigger blinking and such, parts can move by themselves. There is a built-in scripting language that controls what goes on in the scene. The cels can be made in Photoshop. There is a plug-in available that saves images in the .CEL format used by KISS. I ran into a guy on the 'net the other day who was using Poser to make renders of characters, that he then turned into KISS cels in Photoshop. Here's a few links to get you started: http://geneticnoise.clanpages.com/kiss/t1.html http://www.msen.com/~crandall/playkiss.html http://www.xs4all.nl/~calezane/kisspage.htm http://otakuworld.com/index.html?/kiss/dolls/lindex.htm?http://otakuworld.com/kiss/dolls/fkiss.htm --------------------------------------------------- Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

You might still want to look for Poser 3. I have heard rumours that its still showing up on some magazine cover CDs. I've also seen the magazines on eBay. If you have the magazine version of Poser 3, Curious Labs gives you a pretty good discount on Poser 4.

Jack... I think it is wonderful that you have decided not to just be another Poser site. I cringe every time I get notification that another new Poser site has started up. I have 15 icons on my DragStrip task bar for various splinter Poser sites, and no time to visit them all. Meanwhile, if you look in the "Gaming Graphics" forum here, there is almost no traffic. This is not a failure of R'osity--gaming isn't their core competency, and the gaming folks don't hang out here. Of course, there are some really good gaming sites, like Gamasutra and FlipCode, but those are targeted toward those writing game engines and renderers, rather than those producing game graphics. A site that emphasizes gaming graphics is sorely needed. (And being that site is a much more well-defined goal than just "not being another Poser site." :-) ) I wish you the best of luck, and I will see you there. Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

Sure enough....Edit/Properties or Ctrl-I brings up the parenting window....I never thought to look there. Didn't know it was s'posed to have a texture :-)

I use 3DWin4 a lot, it's great for converting, as well as scaling, translating, and rotating. My only gripe with it is that it insists on adding "vn" statements for the normals to your OBJ file, which makes it about twice as large, and aren't used when importing to Poser anyway. Be sure to un-check "Export normals" when you save it out of UV Mapper, and you'll be fine.

Ultimate Unwrap 3D (http://www.unwrap3d.com) will import DXF files, map them, and export them as OBJ. I'm a long-time UVMapper user, so I haven't gotten used to the Unwrap 3D GUI yet, but it looks like it has potential.

I just tried it in Poser 3...seems to work like a champ. Of course you get the "Version is newer than expected" message, but it doesn't cause any problems. I tried moving the eyes and ears and jaw...they all work fine. The norn even seems to work with the standard poses. (You haven't lived, till you've see a norn doing an arabesque!) All the hair works, and stays on when the norn moves around. The thatch doesn't move with the norn, but I suspect that's the nature of Poser 3. There doesn't seem to be any option to parent objects to figures in Poser 3. BTW...it you make any texture maps for the norn, remember that Poser 3 seems to like only TIF files for maps. Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

You might find our tutorial, "Using MTL files to set Poser colors and textures," useful. You can find it by going to http://www.CastleDevelopmentGroup.com, selecting "Welcome," then selecting "Tutorials" from the menu bar on the right. Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

I am really happy with UVMapper Pro. It has several new features, including the one Lyrra mentioned, that make your life easier. I'm glad to see you are doing frequent saves under different names. That is probably the most important thing you can do, especially when you're doing complicated maps. I can't count the number of times I've completely screwed up a complicated map and had to go back a version or two to recover. Good luck... Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

I really like this. I haven't heard of the DAZ3D Tunic Pack before, but if you start selling this texture, I think I'll go out and buy it. I'm interested in Native American clothing and characters, since my partner comes from a Black Native American background. There doesn't seem to be a lot of Native American stuff for sale, and what there is is frequently of questionable accuracy. (Similar to the problem with African-American Vicky characters. Several of them seem to just be painted White Vickys masquerading as women of color.) Lynn Grant Castle Development Group