It looks good -- however, it also appears the shadow bias settings are somewhat off -- assuming the program operates in a manner similar to the source for the rendering engine.

Extract: "It no longer suggests the images with the highest quality can be found there due to a few I won't name (we know who they are) who are hell-bent on its destruction,..." Comment: Can you quantify this for me? Additionally, not naming them makes this more difficult. I do not know who these people are, and your usage of the "we" in the extract above is easily read as all inclusive, which would be in error. Otherwise, it appears to be unfounded and unsubstantiated opinon, and is a rather poor manner in getting the changes you otherwise suggest so, er, eloquently. Note that the last time I spent any length of time int he galleries, the top twenty was ruled by a rather horrid abomination being foisted off on the public as a "pink pony" in what, at the time, was likely the most heavily involved, least effective campaign to change the hot 20 I have ever read. Part of the reason I ask you to quantify it is that I am truly trying to determine how it is that the phrase "hot20" connotes "the best". What it connotes to me is "the most sold" -- similar to the actual thig that inspired and was the idea behind it -- an "American Top 40" sort of thing. No one will convince me that the number one songs on any of the charts are "the best" songs of the day. They will, however, convince me of their inability to apply critical thinking and study. Rather than urging for a change to that one, why not urge for a new one, where the best can be qualitatively established. Granted, it is art, so the closest you will get is a panel of volunteer judges who would consider works submitted by people other than the artist on artistic merit. That strikes me as something that would truly represent the closest to "the best" (a wholly subjective measure, mind you) that renderosity has to offer. Anything else would, in effect, be a popularity contest.

Christian Science is not classified as a cult by any major religious organization. Nor is ba'hai, nor Latter Day Saints, nor Jehovah's Witnesses. Many people like to think of them as cults, but then many people are for more ignorant of religion than they realize. And ignorance is a normal state -- ignorance is the simple and irefutable state of not knowing. It is, however, often confused witht he term ignoramus, which is a person of little or no intelligence. Don't confuse them. Embrace your ignorance and work hard towards reducing it. Ignore the ignoramus - who will be offended by this. Christian Science is a "modern" faith that has some unusual aspects, and is directly responsible for many of th foundation laws and ideals that led to the recent involvement by Congress in the flordia case. Scientology is a large, religiously classified group founded on the principles developed out by L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer and contemporary of Asimov, Heinlien, and Bradbury (all of whom had a yearly card game until Hubbard became what was described as "too into his own lie" by one of the other three [and it has been attributed to all of them but never confirmed by any of them]. Scientology has a great many wealthy adherents, all of whom contribute to the movement, and those contributions are invested fairly well and utilized effectively. Sientology, like any other orgnaized religious or philosophical movement, has a great many detractors, and is frequently accused of various sinister activities aginst those who denounce it. In light of that, I will now need to subject myself to a rigorous cleansing in prepartion of my next session in an unending attempt to become Clear. (think it will fool them, or should I get new locks for my doors?) As noted above, there is no longer any simple way for anyone to know which religious movement is correct. Therefore, if you believe that there is indeed an afterlife, it behooves you to follow all of them equally and at the same time, resulting in immediate spontaneous combustion and discernation of the truth of the matter for yourself. Me, I'll wait and see.

I shall let R&H know of this thread. I'm certain they will find it exceedingly amusing. They also tend to be texture and render engine focused -- the mesh doesn't need to be anything more than simple when you have the full power of Renderman at your fingertips. That said, I'm taking my shit and getting outta here. Obviously no market for it. wait a moment. I'll add some grass clippings and bannana peels and sell it as compost. Hope my son doesn't mind...

I see. What you have run into then, is an issue of presumed expectations. That's a tricky and unsatisfying habit. It means that, ultimately, any program you ever deal with will be, to some extent, displeasing. It would be comparative to my walking into a call center or a restaurant and looking at how they operate. No matter what they do or how they do it, I will always see things therein tht are done poorly, improperly, or without regard to the nature of the business in the manner in which I see it. For this reason, I do not dine out very often, and there are exceedingly few call centers that have my number on their dial logs. You, however, do not have that option available to you -- unless, that is, you were to put effort into writing your own program. Which might be fruitful, and then again might not be. The methods by which Poser and D|S work are very different, and the approach that each company has taken to creating them is differnt as well. Neither are likely to change their methodology in the near term. "Common Sense" is a mythical creation that varies between location and individual -- there is no universal common sense. I will refrain (this once, I'm feeling strangely benevolent) from noting the inherent flaws in your programming worldview. As a side note, I am not a fan of tree structures -- they hamper my workflow. Evidence, perhaps, of not being able to please all the people all the time...

Extract: This is just a small aspect of a cultural war going on between religious cultists and the science based community. Comment: Do you seriously believe that? A deep and abiding conspriacy in the battle to save the unfettered minds of the oppreseed under classes... Who is the one under some form of mind control? Incidentally, there are couple of "science based" groups using "science" and doublespeak to ensure that evolution is not taught in schools. And winning. You speak of cultists, ignoring the nature of a cult, to which many "true believers" in science are also members of the Cult Of Science. Cultures do not engage in wars. Cultures essentially bleed into eachother -- and the dominant, more structured, more forceful one will always win. But let's ignore that for a moment, and go with your idea. It is a war. War is won by the best orgnaized, most efficient, best strategists. All of those things exist ont he side of your "religious cultists". So you've lost already -- you are just deciding on how to lose.

Extract: Mesh density generally refers to the polycount or resolution of a mesh. Detailed areas of the mesh need a denser (higher) concentration of polys to define that detail. Comment: Thank you. She was not particularly forthcoming on that piece of information.

Extract: "You must rememmber that this site is composed by the site owners, the artists, the merchants and the purchasers." Comment: You mumble in error. This is a monarchy, and we are visitors. The Rulers have laws that you must agree to when you arrive. If you do not like those Laws, you either leave, or don't sign up. The store did not exist when this site was started, and, in truth, could be closed tomorrow and the site would continue. The value of this site is not the store. The value of this site is in the Galleries. They can make any rule they want to make about what goes into it, and that won't change the value of the galleries. There are 6 Billion people on the planet, more coming everyday. Even if they only allowed people to post variations on mondrian designs, the site would still exist. So, no. Your assertion of a partnership is both lacking in understanding of the actual reality of the situation and inflating of your own importance. On an average day they recieve over 50,000 individual visits that never even touch the forums, store, or ancillary areas. They come just for the images feverishly uploaded every second. A great many of those image uploaders don't care about this, and will continue to upload them. Everyone who has read even a part of this posting can up and disappear right now, and it won't make one whit of difference tomorrow to this site. That's what this is.

Me? I have no clue, truly. I do not use Poser. I have a very smart friend, however, who is very much into using it, and those were her suggestions. However, on a system with specs of 512MB of Ram, a 2GB VM, and a 2G CPU, the person I've talked to has rendered 15 unimesh figures in a raytraced environment in about four hours. This same person also noted that the major problem with the unimesh figures' mesh density (what the hell is mesh density?) is their eyes and mouth parts, which combined have a greater polycount than the rest of the figure. She figure it was an oversight and error on the part of their makers. Outside of that, the largest issue with the unimesh figures is the injected cr2s. Far too many people inject the full morph sets, needlessly increasing the sizes of the cr2s. This was not the case in his example.

what? me? Facetious? I would never be facetious. That would require me to cease mocking others. I live to mock. or is that smock. Perhaps de-frock. The most subtle and refined form of humor is the absurdity of the truth. Not only was I being humorous -- which your perceptiveness is quite good at discerning -- but I was also being truthful. It truly is against the TOS. If, of course, you were to look at it from the same POV as so many herein have done thus far. Always a matter of perception. Mine is flawed by the overwhelming desire to laugh at people and point.

Now this is cause for celebration. Two threads ont he same topic, both filled with people with the same desire to make a rule change on a privately owned site into some sort of societal attack on their rights as they struggle in vain to discern the motives behind the change in rules. Those of you doing so are all ever so enjoyably simple. The more I look around this place, the more I find cause for laughing out loud at the antics herein. The Reason behind the rule change is irrelevant. For those of you with less capable vocabularies, that means it does not matter why the changed the rule. The overwhelming bulk of this thread is filled with poorly concieved and utterly indefensible arguments, as well. We have consipracy theories, darwinism, social engineeering, religion, sex, perversion, and digital models of infants whose gender is impossible to distinguish without social clothing conventions provided seperately. Good lord, people. It is apparent that you are so desperate for some semblance of adult conversation that you are willing to accept this instead. Stop. Sit back. Breathe deep the gathering gloom. Then get on with discussing the actual issue at hand, not the assumptive why or the hand wringing worry. That issue is that a rule change has been made. That rule change has since been modified or is in the process of being modified. Talk about those modifications. I agree, incidentally, that it will raise the spectre of sexism in art, but that spectre has always been exactly that -- a spectre. A half formed phantom, an illusion -- something that is used to scare and or frighten young children and the feeble of mind. However, the changes do accomplish what needed to be accomplished. Instead of an outright ban that would, in effect, create a massive workload for the staff, they have gone with a much more sensible approach and made the limitations effect the dress conventions of the location in which the site operates. As for everyone else, piss off. You don't run the site. I don't, either -- but I'm not accusing people of pedophilia or censorship or trying to make it seem like they are some sort of "anti-art" or hate fairie pictures. Someone said that Renderosity is a "give and take" place. In short, your assumptive reasoning is incorrect. For a small fee of 30.00 USD, I will correct it for you, although in so doing you will lose the entire structure of your argument and need to repost. Someone else inferred that people have no place to go (as well as mindlessly stating that the efforts here, predominantly created by people having fun, are inferior to other CG sites, predominantly created by people trying to get a job or working in the field -- now that is a real winner of a thought loop) other than here. Aside from being patently absurd and obviously made due to a lack of awareness, it too is eligible for the previous offer. One thing that I think would make much of this less troublesome is for the administration to invest a few minutes in pointing out that while they might have an interest in what people think, they have no true need to make changes based on the views of membership. It is their right and responsibility to do what they feel needs to be done. Not what the members feel. Indeed -- my post here, and those posts of all those who I am mocking, are all violations of the Terms of service, and everyone involved in doing so could recieve a warning for having done such or summarily be banned (I expect to be so by the end of the year, myself, given my procliviities). Since I am feeling generous, a list (inclusive of my own, which I cannot number) of those posts which violate one or more provisions of the TOS -- but purely at the discretion of the administration of this site: 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 23, 28, 30, 34, 38, 45, 48, 50, 51, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 96, 97, 99, 104, 105, 107, 108, 112, 118, 119, 123, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 141, 142, 145, 146, 152, 153, 154, and mine. (at the time of this writing, there are 161 posts, so the above list may expand) So stop it. Now. Deal with what really is, not with what you think it might be or why it might be.

Having returned from my daily joy (I make people feel small for a living), I am able to look closely at your scene as described. I note you use the phrase "Lowest posible res textures in each case" in your list. According to the person from whom I am getting my information, that means that those textures are roughly 2048 by 2048 in memory, and effectively 16 million colors at the minimum, for each figure. That means 10 textures for the people, alone. Even with the texture resolution limitation (which only applies at rendertime and only to calculations performed), those items are going to occupy between 1 and 1.5 GB of memory all by themselves (images are stored uncompressed in memory). That does not give you much play room for shadow maps, calculations, mesh storage, file storage (10 CR2s with all the joint morphs is still a lot, and the joint morphs are not injected), and similar. It is suggested (I am discusssing this via IM at present) that you open the textures for each of those figures that are in use and save out a copy of them at a 1024 by 1024 size. The squaring will not affect the texture. Then apply those resized versions and attmept your render again. Also, check the size of shadow maps if still in use -- there are some lightsets that use extremely high numbers that are a holdover from earlier versions and are poorly suited to the lighting features in Poser 5 and 6. Shadow maps above 1024 should be used with extreme caution and only if the shadow cameras are properly set for the scene, and shadow maps of 2048 are a waste of resources. After that, give it a shot at rendering.

lmckenzie, having read the TOS again recently, I must point out to you that the link provided includes accounts of beastiality, which is specifically against the Terms of service, and may well get you banned. svdl, It is not our votes that count. What "we" think means absolutely nothing -- your post 368 does little except to show off a fine piece of work in modelling. Unless you want to count using it as an excuse to poke the administration in the eye. Your previous post, however, raised a good question which was addressed directly.

Graven image, in the specific translation you noted, means something which is a sacred representation of a supernatural force (such as a deity). Remember that the Bible was not written in English, and in translation often loses a great deal of the context and subtle nuance of language. In particular, idiom and connotation are frequently not easily transliterated, and such is specifically the case here. Your driver's License example is faulty in extreme. Christianity and Islam also accept much of the core elements of later books than Genesis, and it is there that you find that, yes, indeed, while God did make Adam and Eve in the buff, he did it in a location that was not harmful to them -- Eden. Within Eden, they dwelt primarily in the Garden -- a nice, neat, park like setting that approached the sterile in some respects. Once they were cast out of that Garden, they were required to wear clothing to protect themselves from the ravages of the world and to remind them of that original sin by God. So that argument is fallacious as well. Tsk tsk. Religion, perversion, science, philosophy, history, art, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I am definitely going to hang around and mock this place more often. Even my regular haunts aren't this entertaining.

Go through the MAT file in a plain text editor program and search for that texture. It will be there. Change it to something else.