You guys have been so helpful in providing me with info about Mimic. Any body have any experience with Textpuppet? The fact that it doesn't work with sound files seems a huge drawback. Does the speech synthesizer sound half-way decent?

Tony - Thanks for taking the time to perform the test. I look forward to trying it again. While comparing your two models (fast preview v. rendered), I was able to put my finger on part of the problem I am seeing is the way the lights interact with the model in the pose room: notice how the hotspots on your rendered version make the model look as if it were made out of painted plastic rather than the even flesh tone of the fast preview (I am not criticising your work - I know it's a down and dirty version, unretouched). My point is, I think after seeing your rendered version part of the problem I was having may be correctable with careful use of lighting in addition to texture work. Good tip with the head resizing - my heads were coming out a bit on the smallish side. Thanks again for your hard work!

Thanks for the great review. Do you know if Mimic works in P5 on the P5 man? I'd like to lip sync a character that I've created using the face room textures and morphs.

Thanks for the tips, I look forward to trying them out. My main question, however, still goes unanswered. Does anyone know of a way to render a P5 model with the face texture EXACTLY the way it appears in the face room preview. It's odd that that preview is real-time fast and, atleast in my primative attempts, looks better than the rendered texture. I would love to be able to load the photo, morph the face, and render exactly what I see in the fast preview. Any thoughts anyone?

Thanks for the tips.

Thanks for the links and the advice. To answer your question, fls13, I am unhappy with the texture. The photo texture in the face room preview is more realistic than what is finally rendered from the model, even though the photographic texture has been applied. The quick preview sjust features the photo texture, which is better than the mix of phototexture and poser-texture. For instance, the eyes of the poser character end up with the poser texture, as opposed to the photo texture in the face room. What I would like to get is a texture that is pure photgraph, like the one in the face room.

I have used Dramatica, and most of the other programs out there (I was an assitant Literary Agent in Hollywood a little while back, now I'm an entertainment lawyer, but that's another story). Bottom line, Dramatica is the pits. It's interface is visually impressive, but it gives the impression that you only need to push a few buttons and a story structure will pop out. What the program actually generates is a vaguely-worded outline that literally requires its own dictionary to understand. Even when decoded it comes across with the pinpoint accuracy of a newspaper astrologer. Save your money and hard drive space. A better option is to buy a few books on screenwriting. I highly recommend Robert McKee's "Story," so beautifully satirized in the recent movie "Adaptation." I hope this helps.