Penguinisto, its funny because its true!

Poser is easy to use (relatively) its cheap  its fun. Most of what gets done with it is very ordinary (to put it politely - mine included).  I spend money on graphics software because it seems better than wasting it on games. I get more fun out of it in the long run. It doesn't bother me that people render crap if they are getting a kick out of it but why oh why do they post everything they render? I have to admit  I NEVER look at the Poser gallery because there is always so much dross - I come here for some of the lesser galleries and to check the forums. 

Cool! Thanks for the help  - I got it now. Connected and working fine but just noticed some dodgy geometry! - oh well back to the drawing board!

Thanks for the response Little_Dragon.  Sorry if this sounds stupid but is this done via conform to figure or treating it like a prop? When I tried treating it like a prop I didn't seem to have the option of creating a parent - that button was greyed out.  Limitation of  Poser5 maybe? Something wrong with my tail setup?

Can't speak for the imported hair and cloth in the latest versions of Vue and Poser but it looks good in Vue4 from Poser5 - although the hair ends up looking much coarser than it does in Poser.

All good points maclean. Perhaps the thing to do at this point or sometime in the near future is to start a new thread and ask DS users what functions they would like to see dveloped as plugins. Perhaps someone at DAZ reads this stuff - maybe they would like to survey the users.

Nuked bug I think you hit the nail on the head - I want the power of Poser with a cleaner more intuitive interface. Poser should be worried after all. I agree also about the capacity of some to achieve great results with limited resources - wish I was one of them!! BTW PickersAngel the update special from earlier versions of Poser starts at only $99. According to the specs it won't run too well on my current computer otherwiae I'd probably do it. Saving for a new machine instead of spending money on software at this stage.

For DAZStudio to keep people hooked I think it will have to eventually provide much better rendering options. If you spend money on models, clothing packs, props, environments etc (which is what most users seem to do) you are going to want impressive final images. It has some positive interface aspects that make Poser look and feel "clunky" (- floating palettes with drop shadows - its so "90's"!) I guess my point is that plugins are a great way to expand functionality. Of course you don't have to get every one made but if just a handful of major plugins end up costing more than Poser or even its update then maybe its counter productive. Don't get me wrong I want DAZStudio to succeed - just wondering what the future direction really is. It looks like plugins but they could do the Vue thing - have basic and pro versions. Or basic and pro plugins? - is that what Align Ace "Regular" means?

WB has an ugly user interface in my opinion - its primitive and hard to come to grips with like mid 90s versions of Autocad for Windows 3.1 (thats what it reminds me of!) - both Bryce and Vue are way ahead on user friendliness. Both Vue and Bryce have gorgeous procedural textures but Vue it seems to me has the edge on user control and fine tuning of these things. (Not something you pick up straight away.)

My subjective opinion is real simple - I got Vue because Bryce renders look like Bryce renders whereas Vue has the potential to look more realistic if that is what you are after. Don't get me wrong - Bryce renders do look gorgeous in their own way but they are kinda too clean and too metallic looking if you ask me - if you examine a bunch of landscape renders you can usually pick the Bryce ones - to me that didn't seem a good thing. (Sorry - told you it was a subjective opinion.)

I'm working on a pc so I can only assume the situations are the same. Essentially with the standard P5 and Vue4 updates you can only load a single frame at a time. With Mover you can load an animation from the Poser file. I can't vouch for the compatabiliy of P5 hair and cloth in just a single frame without the Mover plugin as I do have Mover but P5 dynamic animations does indeed work on the pc with the latest updates for P5, V4 and Mover.

You need to ensure that you have downloaded the latest version of Vue 4 standard. The last one I got was Vue 4.22 - that was a couple of weeks ago. BTW I found out the hard way that eon are not very good at being up front about what version the updates work from so I would download the the full rather than the partial update if I was you. I do have the latest Mover update so I can't be sure as regards people who don't have Mover but the Poser hair stuff imports just fine and renders in a hairlike mode. It doesn't look exactly like it does in Poser 5 but thats OK by me as long as it works!!

Thanks for the offer of help - sorry I didn't respond straight away. I don't own the right to freely distribute that model so I tried to create an object that behaved the same way - without luck! I have arrived at a solution of sorts so I thought I should cap this thread. When I tried tackling other aspects of the project that needed work such as introducing more plants I found that the transparent area was not solid at all but was allowing the grey cloudy sky to show through the eye and head. This was in fact the opposite problem to what I thought was going on. I then decided to look at the material of the eye. The eye is composed of 2 spheres- 1) with the pupil and 2) a transparent sphere for the lens and glossiness. The problem was mostly solved by introducing a much higher level of refraction (1.52) , showing caustics and allowing a 10% fade to white on the 2nd sphere. There is still a slight artifact around the edge of the eyelashes geometry but its not too bad - compared to what it was like originally.

Cheers.

The eyelash material has no shininess and a refractive index of 1.0. The flare settings are set at zero. The material preview in the material editor looks fine its only when I render that I seee a problem. I tried making the preview object a box (- is that what you meant, Zicculus?) but I didn't notice anything new. I have spent a lot of time fiddling with this without succes so I was hoping someone on this list might know a solution or at least give an explanation of Vues behaviour. The eye is shiny - I noticed that Poser import doesn't bring in glassy/glossy objects properly - you just cant see a highlight at this angle . I did say I use Vue 4.22 - this is an update of Vue standard which I downloaded about 2 weeks ago.

It would be good if they added some of the extra animation and plant features from pro but didn't necessarily include the camera and lighting matching component for fancy compositing with the more sophisticated pro software. (Just for the record I also think the sidegrade offer is kinda stingy.)

Spent 2 hrs downloading the thing then winzip refused to unpack it! Will have to try again. My experience of previous SRs is that they have made a great improvement - don't like the sound of this slow startup though. Poser must be the slowest starting program I use as it is.

Thanks - don't know why I couldn't find through the search page.