@bagginsbill:
For many fires, a single point light might give reasonable appearing illumination of nearby figures.
However, there are circumstances (i.e. big fires) where the flames are quite tall and you will see a distinct variation in luminance and flame colour from the heart of the fire (where the fuel is being broken down by pyrolysis) to the tips of the flames (where the vaporized fuel has just about all been burnt and the flame temperatures have dropped so that the gasses are not glowing so strongly). Even where the flames are mostly uniform in colour, the flame density tends to taper off with height - hence the luminance will change with height.
If the flames are significant in height compared to the figures (and they are quite close to the fire), then there should be a corresponding variation in the colour and degree of illumination too.
A wood or coal fire also tends to have a lot of less bright red-glowing embers in the base of the fire compared to the often oranges or brighter yellows of the flames. Furthermore the illumination from a fire is often highly non-uniform with complex partial shadows/bright spots caused by the solid fuel and/or flames and/or smoke.
e.g.: Photo showing some of the variations in colour and luminance:
http://pixdaus.com/pics/1210046743BYpAfLq.jpg
also, check out Romanceworks' "Ultimate Fire" which shows how non-uniform the fire can be (warning nudity in this link):
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewImage=15547

So, I don't think that there is a "one size fits all" solution - especially for bigger fires.

If colour transmittance could be handled in Poser, then I guess you could use a single white point light with a graded (low = red to high = yellow) and irregularly shaded (i.e. using dark er and lighter patterns) spherical filter around a white point light.
Regards,
Jovial.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

@BAR-CODE
There seem to be too many artists for me to remember all the artists names who's work I want to avoid. I generally like browsing the new work (and seeing new artists) in the galleries, but I don't want to have to maintain a paper list of artists and have to cross check every new posting before I open it.

@KarenJ
Thank you. I was aware of the filter options, however it is not nudity or violence per se, that I want to filter out.
I like artistic nudity of age appropriate characters. It is the nude anime and rather young character pin-ups that I'd rather avoid, if possible. The thumbnails often do not give me much of a clue as to the apparent age of the character depicted.
The other, unspoken, issue is that there are some artists who's work I am just not interested in, period, but simply opting to only view the work of my favourite artists means I would not get to see any new artist's work.

@Casette
I'm definitely a sinner man, but, to be honest I am nearing the decision of having to avoid all of the new gallery postings (and simply viewing posts by my favourite artists) because there seem to be more and more images that I would choose to avoid - if I could.

@MGD
I think the TOS handles the thumbnails reasonably well and I only browse at home.

Best regards,
Jovial.

FYI. If you are considering applying SP3 to Windows XP, it has been recommended that you use the full ISO CD image for the installation rather than the cut-down automatic update. Visit Microsoft and search for "SP3" and "Windows XP" as search terms to find the CD image. It is 544 MB in size.
According to IT sites and forums, it seems that the automatic windows update does not contain all the files that might be needed when some PC vendors ship strange or unnecessary driver files with their streamlined XP installation. Currently this seems to have caught out a number of HP users who have AMD processors.
I'm just about to burn and apply the update for SP3 since my PC has been a bit twitchy with frequent and temporary browser and explorer lock-ups ever since I uninstalled Symantec Internet Security. Fingers crossed that this update makes things better and not worse!
Regards,
Jovial.

Attached Link: [THE LOCKER SHOCKER] - ((WARNING NUDITY))

This is a render I made quite a while ago - in between doing loads of nekkid scenes of the other gender.

@softcris.

Sorry softcris, I am English.

With reference to the problems you have been having with ATI and XP Pro x64:

I don't have much experience with ATI as graphics cards, because this recent one is the first that I have purchased. However, we had some serious problems with ATI video cards and multiple displays at my workplace. It turned out that the (ATI) video card had too much "hardware acceleration" (see the troubleshoot panel on the advanced display settings) and that was causing things to display incorrectly on secondary monitors or for certain software.

It is also important to install the drivers for all of your monitors and do not use the default Windows drivers for anything - unless there is no alternative. The default drivers are often months or even years out of date.

The other problem that you mentioned about re-formatting drives and Poser going slow reminds me of a common problem I have with Microsoft Visual Studio - which stores known path info in the project files and makes projects hard to use on different PCs. If your drive letters (or paths) were changed or re-ordered, then you can find that software (either via the registry or from its set-up files) is remembering that there was a drive or path that has now changed. When the software searches that path, the invalid disk access takes a little while to time-out. Sometimes this can be fixed by re-assigning drive letters or paths as they were before whatever changed or creating a small partition to give the OS a valid path to access.
I hope I don't run into any difficulties with my new ATI card, because I do not really want to have to get an Nvidia 8800 GT because they use quite a bit more power than the ATI 3850.

Good luck with your troubleshooting.

@Morgano and Xenophonz
Thanks for replying. I only saw the previous posting after I posted this thread. It is good to know that all the "important" software will continue to work. I guess I will try the large address aware tweak for the most memory hungry 32 bit applications (since XP pro x64 is already large address aware).

@flibbits
I built the PC from individually purchased components (see below) because I do not trust the clone PC manufacturers to always use "the best" or even "good" components. In the past, I have purchased several PCs that I found to have some really poor and/or inappropriately underspecced components inside.
So far I have spent £860 (about $1720) on all the PC bits and the 24" monitor. I already had 2 x 2GB of memory and a spare laser mouse. The Win XP Pro x64 license was £85 ($170).
So, I estimate that the total cost would be £1039 ($2078).
I am sure that I could find a cheaper PC with similar specs, but I really wanted a fairly small case and good performance without using too much power.

X-Qpack II Micro ATX Gaming Case with 500W ATX2.0 PSU
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 "LGA775 Conroe" 3.00GHz (1333FSB)
2 x Samsung SpinPoint T 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache (HD501LJ)
Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R Micro ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Samsung SH-S203NBEBN 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Black)
OcUK 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
OcUK Value (Digimate) L2442W 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Glossy Black
Cherry Black CyMotion Expert (USB/PS2) Keyboard
HIS ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro Turbo X 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-e)
Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound
Zalman CNPS8000 CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/LGA775)
OCZ gold 4GB (2x2GB) dual channel DDR2 memory kit (pc6400, cl=5)
Microsoft laser mouse

This PC seems to have some overclocking potential since the CPU is operating at about 35 degrees C. The power draw from the socket (excluding the monitor) is 145 Watts under moderate processing load (i.e. one core at 100%).

Hi KFG,

Here are a few of my scenes with dynamics, and not always just for clothing (Nudity Warning):

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1445271
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1286858
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=720619

I second your thoughts about dynamic clothing and also echo a big thankyou to svdl.

I also advise you to search out the excellent dynamic freebies by Carib98, Mapps (both here at R'osity) and the free and for-sale stuff by karanta (poserpros and content paradise).

I think my favorite dynamic thing is Oliver's Heart Poncho at RDNA.

Jovial.

Zippy.
Thanks a bunch for all the freebies - I had already downloaded my favorites and they look like damn fine models. Hope you are not feeling so negative now.
Rgds, Jovial.

Hi,

It is not necessarily true that the 5200 dual core AMD would be faster than your single core 3.4 Ghz.

The problem is that CPU and chipset design is a whole lot more complicated than just the megahertz speed. The speed is a good thing to look at first since it can (often) differentiate between two of the same type of processor, i.e. a Core 2 Duo E6600 is a bit slower than a Core 2 Duo E6700 because of the CPU frequency.

{TECHIE RAMBLE}
However, between different types of processor, you have to worry about size of CPU L1, L2 and possibly L3 cache memory, type of access to memory (i.e. dual channel operation, latency and how many memory controllers) and FSB speed, memory speed, instruction and pipeline depth on the CPU (some CPUs do much more work per cycle than others). To make matters even worse, different types of software respond in different ways to the features of different CPUs (i.e. things like rendering like really meaty floating point units to handle all that maths about how to display the faces). {/TECHIE RAMBLE}

How does this help? It doesn't but, it is a good idea to check benchmarks for any CPU/system that you intend to buy so that you don't buy another lemon or miss out on some really great performance for a small saving in money.

Fortunately, you don't have to do the bechmarking yourself because most of the geeks and techies in the world benchmark and review new CPUs as they are released. Although no-one (yet) benchmarks with Poser, sometimes POV-Ray, Lightwave, Cinema4D and/or Studio Max are used for benchmarking. These are a good first approximation for how "good" the machine will be for Poser since they are doing the same sort of computations. So if POV-Ray runs faster on Machine A than on Machine B then it is quite likely that Poser will too.

I usually go to the Tech Report to check out types of Processor.

Here's a link to a review of Intel E6700 vs AMD X2 6000. For rendering, at least, it looks like AMD has the edge.

http://www.techreport.com/reviews//2007q1/athlon64-x2-6000/index.x?pg=9

and here's and earlier review that has the AMD 5000 in it.

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/e6300-vs-sff/index.x?pg=12
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/e6300-vs-sff/index.x?pg=13

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Jovial.

I think the problem is caused by raytraced shadows. I also have seen/experienced the dreaded ink-blot of doomed firefly rendering. I seem to remember that someone advised me to increase the shadow bias. Personally, I found that tinkering with the lights was such a PITA that I mostly only use Poser for the posing and POV-Ray for the final rendering (of static scenes). I will also be watching the responses to see if there if a definitive solution.

@pjz99 : I think (seem to remember reading) that your "inner elbow" picture jaggedness is actually caused by the fact that the mesh is smoothed for rendering BUT not for ray-traced or  depth-mapped shadows (i.e. you will see jagged shadows of the un-smoothed mesh). You might be able to make things a bit better using a much finer shadow map (for depth map shadows).

For the first image, it would be interesting to see the mesh faces on the drape to see what the light and dark pattern actually relates to - i.e. is it bulging of many smaller triangular faces or distortion/twisting of larger square faces? I'd be interested to know if you could export the drape into PoseRay and then smooth/subdivide and then re-import as an obj, if the problem would go away.

When I rendered a scene with V4, G2 Sydney and Tuyuko in POV-Ray, I found that (particularly for shoulders and breasts) the mesh is really quite coarse. I had to apply 2 levels of subdivision to get a really smooth mesh on Sydney and Tuyuko - so I can see why the smoothing algorithms might struggle. V4 had the smoothest mesh to begin with - sort of indicating that DAZ took some efforts to make a high quality smooth mesh - but even V4 was not perfect.

You guys that cannot easily read the text on your nice high res monitors.

Been there, done that.

There are a number of settings that can help. One of the main ones is the
Display properties (right click on empty desktop) => settings => Advanced => General
and change the DPI setting to 120 (you will need to restart!). This changes everything to be larger.

Using clear type fonts also helps make the most of the available resolution.

If you don't want all application sizes to change then you can use large fonts from the Display properties => Appearance => Font size setting. This will make text easier to read. Obviously you can also do changes on a per application basis, e.g. for Firefox or Word, by changing the default font settings.

HTH,
Jovial.

Thank you Anton.

Hi,

I would like to join the gang of critics (and criticized) - although I don't have as much time for posing (or viewing) or commenting as I would like.

My preferences are for honest criticism about all aspects of my images (e.g. composition, feeling, viewer reaction, technique, errors, suggested improvements, etc) .... and perhaps just one or two "ohhhhs" and "ahhhhs" or maybe a "wow!" now and again - which would be nice!

How easy is it going to be to leave the list? If everyone on the list has individually favorited an artist then they will all, individually have to un-favorite them again - otherwise the criticism will keep on coming.....yikes! This might just be an opt-in with no opt-out option.

Must give a warning to others on the list that I do often make images with nudity.

Jovial.

Do DAZ and ef share the same marketing people?

There are remarkable similarities between the way Poser 7 and Victoria 4 are arriving. Eventually both products will get to market, but I am now worn out by the waiting and begining to wonder if I really care about either product, even though I am a true poser-ite and will have to get the new stuff soon [I could give up Poser-ing any time I want, honest].

I guess that software developers are now very shy about giving actual release dates since you can see how badly M$ got it wrong with Windows Vista (2 years late) and Longhorn (never arrived). I also have some sympathy with software developers because it is inevitable that the more features you have in a product, so the testing and weird dependency problems tend to grow exponentially.

(Sits back in chair to wait some more).

Rgds Jovial.