Ray, I've been using BodyStudio for a month now (I'm a user, not a developer or tester for Reiss) and I've found it to be the most stable of all the Poser-MAX transfer systems. The image is a Body Studio imported pz3 from Poser 5 rendered in MAX 5.1 using advanced lighting with skylight and one target spot. I had to change only one parameter: currently, transmapped clothing is imported with the material as one-sided when it needs to be two-sided for a complete geometry render and GI shadow production. Not a big deal. Animation import is good - the image is the final frame of a 15 frame Cloth Room simulation. Updating the pz3 works well with pose alteration and new geometry additions - the max file is automatically updated. But there does seem to be a problem with the update of the material file: new materials are not added to the existing max file and I've found it necessary to import the pz3 from scratch to get these. Hope this helps. Ian

Make sure that Raytracing On is checked in the Firefly Renderer (Render - Render Options). Ian

Spit,

Microsoft have acknowledged that there are some problems with reported CPU Usage levels in WinXP.

For info on this, go:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q317751

It might be worth searching the knowledge base for other related articles.

Ian

This doesn't happen to me.

I have ProPack SR3 running on OS:Win2000, Athlon 1GHz, 512MB SDRAM. Task Manager shows zero processor use when minimized and polling for input. Same is true for Poser 5-SR2.

Ian

......doldridg is right in that displacement removes the rendering artifacts, but texture filtering is not necessary.

Here's the simplest material setting needed to overcome the rendering problems with Koz's WaveHair. Note that only a small amount of displacement is required.

I've no idea why this works but suspect it has something to do with the mesh construction. This method also works with Koz's ShortHair.

Ian

I can see two......... the tablecloth and the tarpaulin over the young lady....... but where's the third...?

Ian

PS....... nice image

Alex, I'm using a lights python script for PPP with Poser 5. Had no trouble with it....... works just as well as it did in Poser 4. Ian

Yes

Anthony,

I'm finding that, if I make the diffuse and specular black, plugging the reflect node into the reflection colour channel still gives artifacts with the simple square-prop mirror.

But, if I plug the reflect node into the Alternate Diffuse channel (as in the example I gave above) then everything seems to work ok. I can't understand why that should be......or......am I missing something..?

Ian

........ and here's the simple material setting for the mirror.

Make sure that you set both the diffuse and specular colours to black (RGB=000).

Haven't finished testing to see if there are any limitations with this setup but, so far, I haven't found any.

Ian

....... just to confuse you further, you can use the simple square prop to get a decent mirror.

Here's the simple square-prop mirror with no artifacts.....

Staby,

It looks like you used the simple square prop for the mirror. Instead, use the Square Hi-res prop. You should find the artifacts disappear.

Ian

aleks,

"there is some jagginess around her hair on the shoulders and on that vertical white spot left from her head. are those compression artefacts or is this the firefly blur-algorhythm (i think i remember dimly that i saw already those things on another dof experiment)? "

The "white spot" jagginess is from the background picture used....... I used only a small part of the image in my scene. I'm not sure what is causing the others. There are many variables in the FireFly engine in addition to compression artifacts that could produce jagginess.

It's early days yet, but so far I'm impressed with the Firefly engine. But it seems to have learning curve similar to the one I went through last year with the finalrender engine in max. :)

Ian

er........ sorry, Bill, but I did....

I worked on this scene for so long I forgot about the young lady.....concentrating too much on the water...

Thanks for the tip on camera offset

:) I know the feeling........

And...just a thought.....Depth of Field may also be dependent on the camera's focal length. Haven't checked that..but in my setup I've used 80mm......