Merry Christmas to you, my friend!  That's a really nice image.  I think I recognize it as one of your promo images.  I really appreciate the textures you, and also neiwil, did for my planes.  That led to a collaboration that was a lot of fun, and made me think about how I had been doing things.  I hope that those who have downloaded my planes, and USS Essex, have gotten to use your textures.

 You're very welcome, Bob.  I've been something of a hoarder myself.  I have tried to use as much of it as I can, even if it meant remapping things.  In fact that's how I got started.  Merry Christmas to you, too :)

Thanks, Tina!  Didn't get a reply notification.  Oh well ;)

John

I've had this happen.  When it does, it turns out that Poser has renamed the texture node to Color Texture instead of Image Map.  Delete it, load a new Image Map node and assign the image to that and everything works then.

I don't know why Poser does this, but it happens very seldom.  Next time this happens go to the material room and see if the name of the node has changed to Color Texture.  Maybe someone knows a fix for this.

John

Glad to help :)  I just got EcoPainter.  With Vue 9 coming out I was afraid that stuff would disappear.  It turns out to do a lot more than I knew.  I'm deleriously happy!

John

In the Vue 8 manual, page 496, Varying Materials on EcoSystem Populations.  The example uses bitmaps.

John

Your first question could only be addressed by a Python script, as far as I know.  Such a script probably exists.  Someone will know and post here.

On the second question, appling an MT5 or MC6 file in the material room will just replace the existing mat(s).  If it is something that you could only get back by reloading the figure, just save them to the library first.

John

Sixteen gigs should do just fine.  I got a machine with 8 gigs, and now I wish I had more.  I do a lot of aerial shots, and with an infinite terrain I can't add even the simplest EcoSystem.  It just never gets past populating the dynamic EcoSystem.  It maxes out my physical RAM and my HDD runs constantly writing to the page file.  It may eventually work, but I've never had that kind of time to find out.

John

This has been in the back of my mind for some time.  Very well presented, Chipp!!

John

I think 3GB of RAM is simply too little for a complicated scene.  In my experience, a render can fail without Poser telling you it is out of memory.  The crash trying to go back to Preveiw sounds like you were already out of memory and Poser couldn't get the message through.  Texture requirements can easily eat up that much RAM.

I dont know what your upgrade options are, but RAM's pretty cheap.  I'd save the file and double the RAM if you can.  It may be your best option for saving all that work you've put in.

John

I have no idea why it happened to me and not to others, but I bought Vue 8 Studio and I'm very happy with it.  I had to revert from the 8.4 update though, because it caused endless crashes.

Cornucopia3D is another story.  Every time I try to buy something that states it's okay for Studio, I am told I have to enter a serial number for Vue 8 Infinite if I want to buy it.  They're impossible.

John

I got a Win7 64-bit machine in April.  Since I had never installed the final update on my old machine, I went to eon and saw that warning.  I figured the data loss they warned about had to do with the program itself.

I had UAC turned down, and Vue 6 installed with no problems.  However, when I installed the update (went with the next-to-last I already had), it got to 95% and stopped.  As I watched, all of my desktop icons started to disappear.  When I finally got control back, everything had been wiped out!  I mean EVERYTHING.  I had to use the recovery discs to reintall Windows.

Be forewarned.

John

BeyondVR stands for Beyond Visual Range.  It's a term for a weapon, like a radar-guided misslie, which can acquire a target that is beyond the range of the pilot's sight.

I thought it wasn't a bad fit for cyber-art either, but AOL wouldn't take names that long 12 years ago, so I shortened it.  Unfortunately, people think it means Beyond Virtual Reality.  My friends know what it means, even if others think I'm bragging.

John

Hmmm, maybe this fall :)  Thanks again Deb.

John

Thanks for helping Don out, Deb :)

From first hand knowledge, I know the store staff here is simply the greatest.  It was a pleasure working with such nice people.

BTW, my daughter traveled through Tennessee this summer.  She said that each time she stopped she just had to tell people what a beautiful state it is.  Now I want to see it!

John