Renderosity holds its SM Poser 11 licensees hostage. I already own a license to use it, i.e. PP11, without any more requirements. Now, Bondware forces me to "upgrade" the software, ostensibly to maintain the 'license structure', but without any legal consideration to do so. However, it is not technically necessary, in the slightest degree, that any licensee do so to maintain full use of their licensed copy; Bondware/Renderosity could very easily have responded to any legitimate licensee server request though their own license server. It's hard-coded into the SM software and all Renderosity/Bondware had to do is redirect those license requests to their own license server.

The Renderosity/Bondware 'patch' has immediately rendered PP11 useless; now, it will function no more, even though it functioned quite well when last I loaded it. I can't go back to my last functioning copy to restore good order.

Renderosity may not hold my license hostage until I do what they demand. I demand a full refund, paid to me in cash, of the fee I paid to SM for full use of the software.

Many thanks!

I have 84 linked runtimes on an external USB drive with no loading problems, save for the speed of the HD.

maybe the morph tool?

I see the usual knee geometry breaking in extreme bends, and her shoulders are really problematical, but, like 3Dream says, just be mindful of how you do it and the results are quite nice.

Here is another render of the poor, ugly girl.  I really don't know why I let her clutter up my runtime...

Thank you, Vilters, for the tip; I wondered what those little 'sparkles' in the pre-render view were for...I'll try the diffusion reduction, too.  And, btw, I also tried your suggestion to foreshorten 'waist' as well, and the results seem worthwhile...I sorta combined the two 'y-axis ' reductions to get the appearance I was looking for.  I also lengthened her legs at the thigh and shin in small increments.  Now she's all beautiful and leggy, too!

Bagginsbill, I am glad to hear what you've offered by way of the various lighting clarifications.  I can see that Poser did these work-arounds to get an effect, even if it was not entirely correct.

Given your thoughts on this, should I set light shadow to zero?  and if I use IDL, should I eliminate any AO/IBL in the scene, including textures that have 'AO' built-in?  Many modellers offer AO and non-AO versions of their textures.

I think the render times should shrink dramatically if poor Poser only has to do one set of light calculations.  Hopefully, I'm heading in the right direction here.

I confess that you have the right of it; she stands alone in a vast electronic wasteland with nothing to reflect upon.  I kinda wondered about that.

I took your suggestion and put her in a small enclosure and made a very simple, infinite white light of zero-zero-zero orientation upon her with IDL.  The shadows will fall where they may.

I did notice that, even with IDL triggered in the render settings, I can still adjust light shadow % in the light dialogue, so I set it to .500.

I really don't know how light shadow % and IDL interact; it seems like the same function to me, making raytraced shadows less intense.

In my earlier render, I had left the point light at 1.000, which also contributed to the harsh shadows.

In any case, I set the edge to 3 and let my creaky old gear get to cranking on the render...it may take days.  After an hour or so, it was still 'precalculating', which doesn't bode well.  I am well-and-truly CPU bound.

Many thanks for the suggestions, and the free tools you offer; I shall work on the environment sphere and the IBL probes that you have conjured.

I had always, for my IBL purposes,  just rendered a high-resolution, reflective ball set large in the middle of my render scene (sans actors, of course), and used that as my IBL image...seemed to work., but who knows?

I am a bit curious about the body shadows myself, since the render is one point light with IL; I've a weak system, and this took a long time to render.  With IL, I'd thought to get softer shadow blends.

In any case, I probably have messed up my render settings somewhere, and I'll have to sort that out.

The pubic hair is actually a free V4 prop, acting as an independent figure, whose compressed folder has no ownership details, so I can't tell you where, in the wilds of the vast Internet, I found it.

It comes in six variations, and I have found many uses for it over the intervening years.  I think it was on Renderotica, but it has been quite a while since I first saw it.

Her hair is the Portia model by AprilYSH.

I made some dial adjustments on the body shape, just to suit my particular likes.

I scaled the whole figure up first to 109%, then the ABDOMEN down to 75%...here's a render of her, with 3Dream's nice face morph.

Many thanks to all of you who have such positive energy about making this model useful and attractive.

Thanks, 3Dream, for the suggestion about the 'body smoothing' morph.  I tried it and was very pleased with the results.

I see that we have discovered many eccentricities about Alyson, particularly concerning the length of her arms, but I discovered last night, tinkering with her, that the 'shortness' issue is apparently an optical illusion.

When you compare her 'zeroed' figure to other, more acceptable 3D models, her armspan is about right.  What is not apparent is that her abdomen is too long, vertically.

I did the following:

1)  increased her whole body scale to 109%; and
2)  decreased her abdomen 'y-scale' to 75%.

Now her arms appear to be relatively correct in length, and her overall stature is about right compared, say, to standard P6 Jessi.  I try to align Alyson's crotch and breasts to the model I like by adjusting Alyson's abdomen length.

The stock poses seem to apply correctly, and I see no apparent distortions using these settings.

I'm working on an IL render of her, and I will try to post the results this evening.

In my opinion, she looks really cute now.

I am shocked...she has such strange proportions to begin with!  If 'smooth body' works such wonders, I shall be very pleased.

I tried her with the 'fashion model' height instead of 'ideal adult' and got some very strange, twisting distortions of her upper arms.

In any case, that taller figure height gives better proportions for her generally, save for the distortion.

I loaded her in a scene with P6 Jessi, without tweaking anything on either model, and the proportion differences are fairly great.

In any case, I shall give that 'smooth body' dial a twirl and see what results...many thanks for the continued interest in the model.  I too, use the head morph and the higher quality materials for the model texture.

I am certain that my fascination with the P6 versions is not as anamolous as first I feared, and  I still tweak and play with some of the G2 versions, but mostly the males...they are actually quite good.

Many thanks, 3Dream, for your efforts to support Alyson.

I really do like the figure you have shown above; too bad you do not offer a body morph as well as the lovely face...

In any case, I applaud your efforts, and this from a hobbyist who still uses a lot of P6 James/Jessi characters in renders!

If ever you change your mind about the body model you have shown, please let me know, ok?  I've not had nearly such good results in my efforts with Alyson.

Wow...I would definitely like to see an Alyson in my runtime that looks like that...

Care to share?

Thanks for your quick reply!

I found that file and program loading as well as rendering have become very much faster. The pause that exists when switching from render view to preview is still there, but much less. It appears that the P6 memory management is better. I'm still very impressed with P6; it is a much bigger advance than I expected. With time, I'm hopeful that Curious Labs will sort the remainder out.