In answer to your first question regarding what's easier, as general rule, the deeper programs (Max/C4D, of the ones you've mentioned) will have steeper learning curves. Poser and Vue are specialty 3D apps. Unlike the others you've recently purchased, you can't model in them (to any significant degree). Obviously you can create with them but you wouldn't use them to build models for instance (other than terrains in Vue). C4D and Max are full featured. You can model, render (texture) and animate. A good question to ask yourself is what you want to do or what your objectives are in 3D. I don't see any real advantage to learning C4D and Max. That's two massive programs to learn that do most of the same things. That's not to suggest that one isn't better suited to some things over the other but that's where deciding your objectives come in. Even if you have the resources to purchase what you like it would probably still be a good idea to have an idea about what is it you want to do with 3D. Others can debate whether or not you have "wasted" any money or not but even if money is not an issue your still talking about a huge time commitment if you really plan to learn all those apps. I would be thinking more in terms of the time you're going to have to put into this since money appears not to be an object. Deep

I knew there had to be a way. I was also right in figuring that this question had been asked before and probably answered. There's no telling how much information is on this site. I love this forum. Ya'll play nice! Deep

Modo has become my main modeler within the last two months. I'm a Mac user and prior to modo I had been using ElectricImage's modeler which I loved. They've discontinued it's development so I started looking into new apps just to be on board something else if and when EIM finally started to seem obsolete as other products continued to develope. ElectricImage was offering a special deal on Silo when they launched version 5 of EI since they were no longer offering their own modeler. I downloaded the demo of Silo and played with it a bit but not a lot to be honest. I had never used a Sub-D modeler before and the interface was unlike anything I'd ever used before so I kept reverting to EIM to get my work done because of time concerns. I saw info on modo and when to the Lux site and was impressed with what I saw there even though I still had no experiance in Sub-D modeling. What I liked though was that modo works as well as a ploygonal modeler as it does a Sub-D modeler. In fact it is able to work a lot like EIM (a solids/NURBS modeler) so I was able to get results from it pretty quickly. I can't say that I ever gave Silo a fair tryout. I've seen great work done with it but then I've seen great work done with almost every modeler I've ever seen. I like modo and I'm happy that the forth coming version (which I've pre-ordered) will have the new layered renderer in it, but in truth I've always felt that the tools which do the best work are the ones that you connect with the best. At the moment my tools of choice are EI and C4D for rendering and modo and EIM for modeling.
Curt

Attached Link: http://www.suicide.couk.com/gallery/sora/fant.htm

That's 'desaturation'

The problem is that black is essentially Hue-less. There is no color to change. Same with white. Since shades of gray is what you're after anyway, one thing you could try is the desturation brush. Just desturate (remove color) by painting over the areas you want turned gray. This might be tedious but certainly no more so than creating a selection that grabs the same area. Deep

Yeah, what you are trying to do is among the more difficult types of masking/selecting. As long as you are considering using brushes to paint in the hair, consider combining methods (yet again). My concern in painting all new hair in with brushes would be that it would look like that's what you did, painted all new hair in. I would try and make as good a selection as possible and alter the colors and then go in afterwards with brushes and just hit the areas that didn't come across so well. There's an old saying used by retouchers which essentially says that the best retouch jobs are those you touch the least (otherwise they tend to look like they were painted over).

Deep

Without seeing the map itself I can only make some educated guesses as to what might work the best. The Magic Wand is a difficult tool to use when trying to create complex selections. You can use it effectively but it usually means very low sampling rates, pixel level selection and many, many added selections (a lot of Shift clicking). There are masking apps available but in my opinion, while they work, they tend to be more trouble than they're worth or at best, not much better than what you can already do with Photoshop as it is.
A better approach might be to combine methods. Maybe start with a Color Range selection or a channel selection and add or subtract from it various Magic Wand selections or editing it by hand in Quick mask. Another thing to consider is duplicating your image and changing it's mode to LAB. Since it creates a different set of channels (based on different information) it may yield a better channel to start from. Another thing to try might be to use adjustment layers to try and radically change the image enough to separate the hair from the skin for the purpose of being able to extract a better selection/mask from either channels or with Color range selection. You may still end up doing a bit of hand tweaking in Quick Mask but any oft these approaches is bound to get you closer to what you want than trying to grab what you want with the Magic Wand, which as it turns out in many cases, is not all that magical.

Deep

Deep

Well,.... probably the easiest way is to use the Glow layer effect. Of course you have to separate out the part that you actually want to glow (put it on it's own layer). Another thing to bear in mind is that sometimes if your having difficulty getting the type of glow you want, it may be easier to do it in pieces, meaning multiple layers. A layer or two for say a tight glow close up to the object itself and then maybe a couple others with wider (and more transparent glows). The glows are transparent so you can build inrensity with multiple layers as well as have a lot more control by affecting the level of transparency/opacity per layer. You can always do it by hand of course. just put the object you want to glow on it's own layer and then create a layer beneath it and airbursh in a custom glow. That can leave you with hard edges on your glowing object up close to it so you may want to address that.

Thanks, I'll check it out. Deep

YOU RULE! (Tevon), That's the one (I knew I wouldn't need to say much more than I did and people would know which one I meant). I actually had it bookmarked (Maybe still do) but I have so many bookmarks now I about can't find my way through them all. I did serach all my obvious sub catagories and still couldn't find it. Thanks loads! Deep

You're absolutely right. I didn't realize how prevalent it was. My own modeler (ElectricImage Modeler (EIM)) even outputs OBJ (duh). In my own defense though, I have heard that the EIM OBJ export doesn't support everything, like UVs (I think). There's an update of Universe (EIU) being released this coming week so maybe that's changed anyway. At any rate thanks for all the feed back. At the very least it has removed a mental block regarding creating stuff for Poser.

Thanks for all the feedback. I didn't realize that the import options were so many. I guess what I didn't realize is that so many programs support one of the import options. Thanks

Ah,.... an inspired piece!