If you check with E-Frontier and RDNA there may be an alternative prize package available. You might also want to determine if you are legally able to transfer the prizes you were awarded, and that whoever you sell or trade them to can activate them and get support from E-F.-R

I don't think anyone is suggesting you have to keep track of it, particularly if you don't intend on selling your work. It's a moot point.

I'm not a Poser merchant but I have to keep track of what I can use or not use because I sell the resulting animations and illustrations. And I don't have time to keep track of it, so I just don't get anything that is restricted.

I grant that I still run some risk for all the stuff from the "olden days", but frankly, I can't think of a lot of it that I use now anyway, because the program has moved on, and either the stuff is outdated, or there is a better replacement.

But it's not accurate or fair to presume that only merchants really need to be concerned. Anyone who wants to be able to sell their work needs to know what rules apply to using someone else's content.-R

Miz:

With regard to "commerical use", I've stopped downloading any freebies that are restricted to non-commercial, specifically because I might misplace or loose the documentation. Some of my work is "personal" but some of it is commercial, and I agree that segregating the runtimes is a big PITA.

So I just don't use ANYTHING that's restricted to non-commercial use.

If one is an actual hobbyist, then everything they do is "personal/private" and there's no concern.

And if someone says, "Hey, I'd like to buy a poster of that!" and it does contain "restricted" material, you have to tell them no. I have. And yes I had to explain why. But I didn't sell it.

Now, may just be me, but I never ever under any stretch of the imagination considered the term "Commerical use" to mean I could sell the thing (shader, model, whatever)-and certainly not with my label on it to claim it was mine.  I don't know where that idea keeps coming from, but it isn't correct. -R

Well, I tried to resist the urge, but maybe it's because today I'm wearing my tight shoes. . .

Nope. not possible to copyright a dial setting. That technically would require a process patent in order to actually derive some sort of government sponsored rights protection.

Meaning that copyright is not the only means of rights protection available to someone in order to derive benefit-or at least fair credit-for their work, effort, innovation, and generosity.

There are also thingies like license agreements, which say in basic terms that "I made this, and I expect you to respect my efforts in doing it. In return for said respect or other fair compensation, you may -blah blah blah -but you may not -yak yak yak-."

Perfectly legal and complete. Totally restrictive. Doesn't matter who "owns" the dials, the license agreement says "I figured this out-please use it according to the rules".

Now many of you may know that I frequently "give away" node settings and stupid shader tricks in the open forums. I also have penned a couple of tutorials on them and given those away for free. No strings. Just that kind of guy. But that in no way means that someone else can't restrict the fruits of their labors-even if they offer it for free.

Nothing keeps anyone from "tweaking" the dial settings that come as a freebie, in a merchant package, or in a tutorial, save for their own moral sense, and the respect for the work of the other artist.

You can argue the semantics until doomsday. You all know the difference between right and wrong, and you know when you are ripping someone else off.

I mean, the gentleman who started this could have just kept his mouth shut, and probably no one would have been the wiser. The fact that there was a perception that something about the idea seemed wrong should be enough to tell you it's a bad idea.

I make no judgement, and will not debate the points of "selfish" or "greedy". I will only say that all the online communities used to be flush with superb freebies of all kinds, and now it seems that much of what remains is subpar, or not of any great use. Selfishness of this sort seems to be widespread.

Let him with no pitchfork cast the first stone.

This is my personal opinion and reflects no sane thoughts known to humanity.-R

I personally agree with ynsaen on the release concept. If you make them available for development of commercial products you create a potential for a nearly infinite variety of figures, morphs, etc. -R

I think he means the feather option in the Tool Options window. Essentially, you're doing the same thing as feathering the selection after the fact, but if you set it in the tool options it presets the marquee to feather by X amount. Then you just select as usual. However, if you use ctrl+ A (command + A on Mac) it doesn't apply, you have to manually set the marquee. Then you just invert the selection (ctrl/cmd + shift+ I) and delete to get your fade.

Found the solution in Cinema 4D for how to set up the particles. Look in your documentation for the tutorial on Particle Systems and the mini-tutorial on using metaballs for particle objects. Play with it a little. I'll work through with the demo version and get a better idea of the effects, but again, if I have an idea of what exactly you need to create I can tell you better how to do it. A frame or sequence of frames might be helpful too. E-mail me tonight and we'll arrange something.

Got your last e-mail. I'm downloading a demo of Cinema 4-D to get you specifics. Please e-mail with descriptions of scenes and what you are trying to get. I'll get back to you.

I can give you some general pointers on where to start. First of all, how are you planning on matching and compositing the 3-D work to the film plates? If you're going to import them into the 3-D program as back ground, you can use a particle fountain to simulate spurting blood and match move the fountains emitter with your back ground plate. You could also just import your film frames and hand animate in 2-D with something like Photoshop. I'll e-mail you more details, on these options, as the how-to is too lengthy to post here.

Thanks. Will have to get Poser 4 then.

You might also find a book on stage or film lighting at a half price tpye book store. The problem with Poser (at least v. 3) is that with 3 light sources, there's not a lot you can do, and as far as I know gels are completely out. Basic lighting theory says that you have a key light, which is your main light, and a fill light, which should be shifted into the complimentary color of the key light. In other words, if your key light is yellowish, your fill light should be bluish. This technique can be found in paintings going back to the Renaissance. If you have a white key light, then your fill should be a slightly bluish grey, because the human eye tends to perceive warm colors over cooler ones, and presented with white will always shift it slightly toward red or yellow in the brain. Also, I've found that if you pick a neutral (grey) as the highlight color in the poser renderer you loose some of the orange cast of the figures.

I had some similar quirks crop up during a video capture (totally unrealted to Poser). The avi file format is written based on which version of Media Player you have, as MS is always tweaking things (and not always for the better) and can wreck some of the codecs. Most of the programs look for avi in Windows, but poser may load it's own codec. Upgrading media player might be one solution. Of course, I'm one of those barbarian mutants that actually edits in After Effects.

Python is a lot like java, as far as I can tell. It's kind of the defacto language for Linux scripting as I understand it. What is Poser Pro? I haven't heard of it. FYI, you might look at a product called Blender, which is a free higher end 3-D system scriptable with Python. It's out of the Netherlands but I think there's a link to it in the free software section of 3D cafe.

What software are you rendering out of; doesn't sound like Poser to me. 128 mb will render in Lightwave with no problem. A lot depends on your system clock speed, and a lot depends on the software, and finally, it depends on what you're trying to render. If you're going for hi-res stuff with lot's of transparency and refraction then it's gonna take a long time. Your system may not have locked up, it just may be taking so long between instructions that everything stops, including the update to the system clock, etc. We used to have that problem on the old SGI's with Wavefront. They were still churning away, you just could tell they were churning away.

Tried to post a rather lengthy reply but it appears the script failed. I don't have any direct experience with Cinema4D, but I can tell you Bryce isn't that flexible. Blood is infinitely simpler to do with practical effects (i.e squibbs, blood capsules, karo syrup and red food coloring) than with a 3-D system. If your film is in the can though, you're gonna have to find some alternatives. E-mail me and I'll be happy to offer some free advice on how I would do it with a 3-D system.