Honestly, I think Sydney would be a much better starting point than V4 to make Bjk, but of course that would involve skill in making characters, which I don't have either... shrug

I've never used Final Cut so I can't really make a proper judgment on that. But for me, unless you're making fully fledged anims I wouldn't think it'd be worth it (again, that's just my pretty uninformed opinion). Your G5 will run Logic no problem. With mine (dual 2GHz with 1.5GB RAM) I don't run into problems until I get about 8 audio tracks all using different effects (and I think that's mostly that the hard disk can't keep up). If you're mostly using MIDI you really shouldn't have any problems. The effects and instruments are definitely better in Logic (well, they'd wanna be huh ;) ) than in Garage Band, but personally, if I'm just mucking about I'd rather use GB. Just a quick question... is Garage Band really not cutting it for you? Not trying to put you off, but I also don't really want to suggest you spend money if you don't have to either. Have you got some examples of your work so we can see what you're doing and try to understand better where you're trying to go with it? Anyway, I really can't help you with Final Cut, but hopefully someone here knows something about it.

Well, it took me most of a week but I'm finally here and will check back regularly... V4? Who's V4? Oh yeah... she's that naked chick in my runtime... I'm always up for V3 freebies (hell I'm still buying stuff for her), and judging by the other freebies I've got from you I'm sure its good quality work. Being a bit of a SF nut (and a fan of your work) I'm sure I could find a use for it. I could probably have some fun doing some textures for it too... gotta finish the one I'm doing for The Privateer for M3 first though...

Sweet, thanks for the info Anton. Never new that about IBL's (mind you I never really understood them to start with even though I use them all the time) so hopefully I can now take this newfound knowledge and use it to some advantage. I've played with the lighting a fair bit but this whole IBL and AO thing is new to me as I only upgraded to P6 recently to get the P7 upgrade free. (rant) Which BTW I was a bit p-eed off about since when I bought P5, P6 came out about three months later with no upgrade specials, and then they go and offer P5 for free and then give you the bonus deal of upgrading to P6 and then give you a free upgrade to P7 for nix... Oh well, at least I went from P5 to P7 for the price of one upgrade after paying full price for P5... could be worse... but then again why the heck is anyone still using P4 or PP when P5 was offered free and for the price of one upgrade they could be using the latest version... not trying to open a can of worms here because maybe I misunderstood how that worked, but if I understand correctly, either I'm mental or people that are using way out of date versions of poser are... again, sorry I'm, a little bit drunk at the mo' but I've never really understood the whole "I'm proud of using an out of date program that can't really compete with the latest version but looks better than half the crap people are putting out with the latest version so I must be a better artist" thing. If what you're doing on an out of date program is so wonderful, imagine the wonderful things you could create with the latest tools. (/rant) I just know I'm gonna regret that in the morning.... Happy ANZAC Day to all the Aussies and Kiwis out there! EDIT: bugger, my rant tags didn't work....

Well, I've got both. To be honest I haven't used P7 on my G5 dual 2GHz (other than big renders) much but it certainly seemed to be fine. I mostly use my poor old G4 iBook 1.2GHz with 768MB RAM (mainly because it's always with me wherever I go) and P7 seems to render better but the whole thing is certainly more sluggish than P6 was. I haven't had any problems with Logic so I'm not sure what the problem is there... If you're a musician you should just have it ;) In a nutshell: P7 on G5 = Good (especially with dual processors and plenty of RAM) P7 on G4 = Slooooow P7 on Intel = Probably better than G5, but I don't know as I can't afford to buy one to find out :( Just send me a MacBook Pro and I'll be glad to do the testing for you :D

slaps self in forehead Of course! Thanks Miss Nancy, s'all good now.

In another topic here Dale B wrote about a book by Jeremy Birn. He's a technical lighting director at Pixar: "Probably the first, and classic cheat he shows in passing is the table lamp and shade. Lots of newbies get frustrated with this kind of mesh; they think all they have to do is plop a point light where a bulb would go in real life, and it works just like the real thing. Except it doesn't, due to facts like light bulbs are acting as diffuse scattering shells for a source of light that is actually linear (look at a filament; not just a point in space, is it). Lampshades typically have white interiors of translucent cardboard, reflecting much of the light from the bulb back inwards (and bleeding some light through for decorative purposes, depending on the kind of shade it is. How much time would it take to model that shade with optically accurate materials or shaders applied to the required layers?), to eventually win free out the top or bottom of the shade, where interactions with the atmosphere and particulates create the perceived cones of light (and I'm not going to even try to get into atmospheric interactions....) The most common cheat? A point light and two spots, one pointing up, one down. The point basically just illuminates the shade for the bulb 'hotspot' and provides a bit of fill; the spots are what actually generate the light cones, and you have far more control over what is actually happening regarding your scene (you want a party environment? Keep the lamp spots at the same intensity, or make the upper one slightly brighter, to give a smoother fill to a scene. Need a dramatic desk shot? Dim the upper and increase the lower so that the eye is drawn towards the brighter area)." Hope that helps you (I know it was useful to me!).