Thank you sir! My head was wrapped around selecting the "Poser application file" since that what the prefs dialog specifies. They should change this to "Poser application folder" on the Mac side (not sure if this is the same situation on the PC). Thanks! I'll be posting with many questions I'm sure (of course I will search posts here first).

Hmm. Thanks for the heads-up. Here are the apps I have: Carrara 5 Pro, Hexagon 2, Poser 7. Will any of these do the trick? I think I'm still not clear on how subdividing the models can change the behavior of the Explode modifier though, breaking the model into chunks like you show above. Whatever you did looks great, so I'll follow your lead. thx- craig

Wow, very cool screenshots. Looks like a great start! Thanks for the starter tips, I'll download UV Mapper and give this a shot. Looking forward to hearing more details. I really appreciate your help. craig

Hi bt, I left you a message on one of the Carrara Yahoo forums, regarding a quick tutorial on how you achieved the explosion effect. The Yahoo forums have had some email problems lately, so I figured I'd try again here. You said you were able to use Carrara's Explode modifier so that it breaks things up in "chunks" as opposed to polys. I am very interested to learn how to do this, I've been trying to figure this out for some time. If you would be willing to put together a quick (yet detailed enough) tutorial, video or step-by-step PDF, I'd be willing to pay you for your time. By the looks of some other posts here, others might be willing to as well. So, without begging.. OK I'm begging.. please, I'd love to know how you got Carrara's Explode modifier to do this. Thanks so much- craig