Joanna.... I simply have no words... One of the best 3D vendors and an all round amazing human being! You will be incredibly missed. :( Καλό ταξίδι...

wonderful work one and all !!! Thank you Renderosity Staff for choosing "Determination"!! I'm honoured!

short answer - yes you can.

If you have the Advanced version of DS3 or 4, you can use Uber Environment2 to make lighting more realistic  and the Human Surface Shader to adjust the surface settings.

Good lighting should include not just  full illumination lights but  also just specular (to make the highlights pop).

As for shadow depends on how sharp you need the shadows to be. Raytraced shadows are created in real time as the render progresses, which means that a render can take MUCH longer if you have many raytraced lights. They are far more accurate BUT, even at the softest setting, are still quite sharp. Mapped shadows are softer but are precalculated and created before the render starts. Sometimes a combination of 1 raytraced 1 shadowmapped can yield the desired result.

Thanks for the pick! :)

All wonderful images, showing what can be accomplished in DS!

good to know it's not just me that's still seeing the regular prices!

Good move Renderosity!

received your email and downloading items now! 

and a fabulous day to you too Kristi!

all the very best :)

excellent! Thank you Kristy!! :D

payment sent along with email to store@renderosity.com

ummm so I'll have to pay only the 74.59 since the total was $84.87? (I'm detracting the  Render reward money of $10.28)  just to make sure I got it right !!

thanks in advance

bb, I already tried the LibraryPrefs.XML. renamed the paths as well as the main Poser directory name from Poser to Poser8. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to work as it no longer finds the main Poser directory libraries. I tried making the file read-only and that worked, but, since these files are continuously re-written by the application, Poser eventually crashed hehehe. I should've just deleted the preferences file altogether!! Instead i just went ahead and reinstalled into Poser8 directory and deleted all my preferences from previous installation.

That worked a treat! :D

Thank you for your invaluable help bagginsbill!

Yes I did! Got a reply right away from a techie called John Csaky asking exactly the same question as you did and included all the relevant information and screenshots there as well.

woohoo!!  :biggrin: :woot:

I seeeeeee!! Yes i understand!!  :biggrin:
Shall i just reinstall Poser and make the directory name Poser8 then? (of course ideally that's a workaround)

so, basically, Poser 8 doesn't like gaps in runtime names and doesn't like  the word "Poser" in any directory other than its own.
you will notice that it invariably changes the texture directory to either "POSER/RUNTIMES" or "Poser/Runtime"

I have Poser 8 installed in a directory called "Poser", since i uninstalled Poser 7 and thought there'd be no need to have a Poser 8 directory. This is located in
H:/Poser
the external runtimes directory is
H:/ POSER RUNTIMES
and has several subdirectories which house individual runtimes (see attachment) I have added the "fake" poser.exe file to each of these runtimes.

Quote - lkendall**:**

This problem seems to occure for several reasons. I believe in most cases, the material nodes get loaded, but without the textures.

In the Advanced Material Room, click on the name of a texture, and in the dialogue box, click on the texture name with the down arrow on its left. A menu of pathway names to textures should open up. Scroll down to the pathway with a blue check mark beside it. Check to see if any of the directory names in the pathway are corrupted. Generally the first letter of the directory name is missing.

In my case this happens when the directory before the "...runtime..." directory contains a number (except at the end of the directory name). A directory name such as "...Poser7..." is okay to use, but not "...V4Cloths...". I have been able to manually load the textures, and Poser could then find them and render, so, your problem is a little different than mine.

lmk

ok I looked and you are indeed correct. Poser seems to get confused as to directory naming!!

my base External runtime is called POSER RUNTIMES. It includes several directories within it such as MEN, WOMEN, ENVIRONMENT etc etc.

now when i look at the dropdown menu in the materials room, the path is recorded as
**POSER/RUNTIMES/**MEN/Textures/etcetc which is obviously incorrect.
it should be POSER RUNTIMES/MEN/textures
it basically adds a stroke where it shouldn't. Possibly because the directory i installed Poser 8 in is called POSER and not Poser 8....

just to add: Poser 7 didn't have a problem with this directory name

lkendall, yes, that's what's happening. However, when i finish applying the textures manually and click render, the same error pops up, eventhough the textures are entered correctly.