Oh thank you so so much :) big hug That did it for me ! Selecting is instantaneous again now !

So once more, thanks for your so effective solution. /me bows, and for answering so quickly :)

A very happy Lunedust.

Well, my problem is that at my work in Switzerland I can't even enter the Renderosity forums at all, the automatic filter installed on our PCs there considers it contains "Nudity". 

As my work has nothing to do with my Poser hobby, I can't complain about it (in my pause and lunch time I'd love to log on and browse the Renderosity forums though grr).

I wish the filter would at least accept the forums, but it blocks everything starting with www.renderosity.com. 

So you are definately too hard core for me lol :)

Lunedust

Oops sorry then if it's an old and tired out subject ! 

Btw I find your answers very mature for spotty adolescents :) Personally I like Poser because it opened up a new world to me, and as I'm pretty curious I like to test this and that as there is so much to try to understand.

The material room is an enormous challenge in itself (blending textures, adding transparencies, displacements and bumps etc, then there is the question about lighting, the clothing room and dynamic clothes, modifying and making new props .... etc etc etc. I like the fact that you can mess with dials and then see what happens ... experimenting and learning.

In the end you can even forget what you were trying to do in the first place lol, getting carried away.

When I started dabbling with 3D applications and acquired Poser the free Daz program wasn't out and I couldn't have afforded high end programs, as it has nothing to do with my job, just a hobby at home. And as there is already so much to do (and I started with Hexagon now too) I prefer not to start testing other programs if I can avoid it, so Poser it shall remain for a while definately :)

Lunedust

PS : sorry for calling you "guy" Wolf359 :) 

Even me, not so very bright lol, managed to follow the steps and do one myself (even if I don't always understand exactly the implications of each manipulation, I grasp a lot more than before). Here's the result.

So many thanks again for taking the time to explain it all step by step with illustrations !

Yours gratefully

Lunedust

I'd like to add a question about speed here too. Does using the option : " render in separate process" increase speed with dual core processors ? (I'm trying with two processes selected at the moment).

Or does it just help when multitasking, having other programs working at same time ?

Hoping you don't mind my little intrusion here

Lunedust

Indeed Geoegress, I made a few "second skins" using that method. 

The thing is I was hoping for a way to add freckles to any skin I choose to use, without having made "freckle versions" before, using random points. I think Baggins or BagginsBill or someone with a similar name made a script to do that sort of thing.

I suppose the problem for me really is that there are so many possible ways to do things, and I'm not organised enough, so I try to find the easiest road without having to plan ahead too much. The moment I think, hmm I'd like to add some freckles to the skin of this character I rendered, all the rest is done and it would take a while to load up PS, find the skin file and open it, add the freckles to skin texture I was using, save with new name, return to Poser, select in material room the new skin, re-render again, notice the freckles don't come out the way I wanted, so go back to PS again etc etc. (and using most RAM memory, slowing everything down ...)

But the method you propose is sound, no doubt there, especially if you plan well in advance. I just wish for magic buttons I suppose :)

Lunedust

I made a simple scene with two props, one far behind the other. I checked Depth of field and Smooth polygons in the render settings (Quality : Auto Settings : Final). I calculated with a Python script the distance to the barrel and inserted that distance (in feet) into the focus_distance dial of the main camera.

After pressing the render button I received a message about my Firewall and ffrender.exe, choosing to let it pass through.

The render worked this time, apparently when using just one process earlier, the Firewall message was behind something else and was invisible, blocking the whole process. Weird that a normal firefly render didn't have the same effect ! Anyway here is the result and I must admit I don't like the blur that much, any way to make it render better ?

Thanks again for your help

Lunedust

Thanks for your input,

Looking in general preferences I noticed that I didn't select Render in Different Process, should I ? My PC is Dual Core so perhaps I should use multiple processes ? If so, how many threads is good to select ? I did select Adaptive bucket size.

I'm using Poser 7.0.2.132.

Hope this helps you to help me :)

Lunedust

Shame on you Geoegress, this is the POSER forum :) And I'm lazy, trying to do all in Poser, no post-work heh. Actually I'm also relunctunt to load up a memory hog like PS, even if I close it afterwards, I'm never sure all the RAM is given back unless I reboot. 

Another reason is I save my renders as jpgs usually, and that means compression (75%) and loss of data. If I use the image in Photoshop and save it again as jpg, that's a second compression and loss. I'm a bit relunctant to do that also, I would need to planify more and save the pictures uncompressed I suppose. Bit of a hassle.

I read somewhere that there was a mathematical way to do random freckles in Poser but can't seem to find that info anymore.

Anyway thanks to everyone for the links, you're really all vey helpful, nice community here :)

Lunedust

I had the same problem, but I read it was a problem with the NVidia graphics drivers for Vista. The latest graphic drivers (June 07) corrected  the problem. No more freezes since then :)

So it's not really Vista's fault in my case.

Yours friendly

Lunedust

I'm using Vista Ultimate 32 bits and Poser 7 (tried without updates and with SR-1 and SR-2). 

I had the same freezes (render reaches end then blocks half the time, I had to terminate Poser and restart again) until a few days ago when I udpated my NVidia graphic drivers.

Since then not one freeze ! All my renders work perfectly now. /me crosses fingers

I haven't tried animations yet though.

Yours friendly

Lunedust

Dang I had a feeling that would be the answer lol, oh well thanks for confirming that then. 

I'll stick with Vista and hope for the best. I can't really complain, I chose to try out Vista and some features are really nice, at the moment all things I use are working and well for better or worse it's here now and will become the standard anyway, I might as well get used to it :)

Lunedust

thx that looks great !

Lunedust