It expired on my Mac this morning ... I'm going to contact them ...

Well, I made a mistake: the prop material definitions should be outside the figure block:

{
version
{
number 4.01
}
figure
{
material body
    {
    KdColor 0.980392 0.980392 0.980392 1
    KaColor 0 0 0 0
    KsColor 0.843137 0.843137 0.843137 0.1
    ..............
    }
}

prop right_eye
  {
material right_eye
    {
    KdColor 1 0 0 1
    KaColor 1 0 0 0
    KsColor 0.984314 0.084314 0.084314 0
   .................
     }
  }

}

Thanks for your help ! About the .pz2 file, I have troubles making it work: when I apply the pose, it correctly assign the material to the figure but not to the props. Here is my template:

{
version
{
number 4.01
}
figure
{
material body
    {
    KdColor 0.980392 0.980392 0.980392 1
    KaColor 0 0 0 0
    KsColor 0.843137 0.843137 0.843137 0.1
    ..............
    }

   
prop right_eye
    {
material right_eye
    {
    KdColor 1 0 0 1
    KaColor 1 0 0 0
    KsColor 0.984314 0.084314 0.084314 0
   .................
     }

}
}

I really can't see what might be wrong ...

Well, thank you very much ockham, I was just searching how to create those .pz2 files and you were so kind to provide the best info ! Very much appreciated...

Hi ockham, thanks for your answer. I'm not sure I understand: I'm trying to create a .MC6 material collection including the figure material, and all the parented props materials.
When I select the figure, and I try to create the material collection, in the popup window I can only choose the materials belonging to the figure: no parented props materials are shown.
I'm on a Poser Pro Mac.

Oh my, that easy ? Stupid me I've never seen that option, thank you very much !

Well, thank you very much for these precious advices guys !

Quote - If you're coming straight out of Zbrush you're going to end up with huge amounts of polys that probably don't need to be there.  A common technique is to first sculpt the model in Zbrush and then re-topologize it when a conventional modeler using poygon snapping:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=49536
http://www.silo3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3929
(you may already be aware of this, not trying to talk down to you)

Ehi no problem, instead I have to thank you for those link, they will surely be helpful. About my ZBrush workflow, as other users do I use the highest subdivision level to create the displacement (bump) map: and of course I use a lower level (say around 100K) as the standard mesh in Vue or similar softwares.

I'm modeling mostly dinosaurs and prehistoric sea reptiles using ZBrush: the one I'm doing now, a liopleurodon, has eight subdivision levels, ranging from 4K to 21 millions: I have two levels that might be suitable with poser, one at 70K and one at about 300K. Probably 70K will be ok since the animal has a quite smooth shape. Probably it's a matter of trying and seeing what quality I can achieve with both levels and then decide which to use ...

Well, I discovered that this happens only when I use OpenGL rendering: if I switch to Sreed, the whole movie is displayed (1:1)

If you are on Windows, try Easy Recovery Professional: it will recover all your lost data ...

Thanks. I edited the .cr2 file, and under the right foot actor, I modified code like this:

actor Rfoot:8
    {
   ....
channels
        {
        groups
            {
          ......
            }
rotateZ zRotate
            {
            name TwistRFooty
            initValue 0
            hidden 0
            forceLimits 1
            min -5
            max 5

...

So the right foot should now respect -5 +5 rotation on Z axis. Instead, even with forceLimits on, it still rotates with no constrain.

I have Poser 7.1 Mac.

Thank you very much for all your kind and interesting answers ! I'll most likely stick around this forum and bother you again :-)

Thanks for your answer, but this solution would not work if you render an animation ...

BTW, if I understood it correctly Vue7 should have the feature to render shadows only, am I correct ?

Thank you very much !