Well said sgacity. Sites like Renderosity swallow enormous amounts of bandwidth and require a high level of maintenance. In other words--they require money...and lots of it.

Windows Media Player doesn't support Flash. Some browsers have the Flash plugin built in which simply means that they don't have to go to Macromedia's site to get the plug-in. I guess you could say if it's already installed, the user will not have to "Do something". Hope this answers your question. BTW don't worry too much about browser compatibility. The plugin is very small and shouldn't be too much of a hassle for the user to get if they don't have it, especially if they're using IE (Activex controls will automatically install the plugin without having to download, save, install and restarting the browser as Netscape browsers will have to do). -SanV

There is also a new program called Swift3d that does the same things and it does gradient shading. It's pretty interesting. I haven't used it but it looks to be a good product. -SanV

Yes I believe Macs do have printscreen but I doubt anyone would want to printscreen, load a paint program, crop, and save the image. Too much of a hassle. Generator is almost like an addon for Flash. It can dynamically create images and other information. It can also access databases (so you could do a Weather forecast that changes dynamically in Flash). Check the macromedia site for more info. -SanV

Aradtech's replys are almost identical to mine! In fact we both posted two messages each one after another to answer one question. I guess great minds do think alike :) -SanV

Thanks Arcady. The question I have is why is Poser so expensive if it's only posing (I heard it's animation capabilities are bad)? Oh well. I guess I'll start saving for the next upgrade to Carrara :) -SanV

Hmmm. You could try Adobe Streamline if you're going to be doing more tracing. If this is the only one you're doing and it's not too complicated you might as well trace it by hand. Else get Streamline. -SanV

Let me clarify and correct my previous post (I just looked at the Flash you had up :) Everything you wish to do would be very easy except the right click and output to JPG part. To selectively load the layers you could set up different movie clips inside the main timeline or, if you wish to decrease the size, you could do the "Load Movie" action. Hope this helps. Email me if you need further help. -Sanv

Actually, I believe the only way to do this would be with Generator. You could try using a CGI script or ASP but that would require a LOT of work and time. -Sanv

Fur, why don't you just use the Trace Bitmap function in Flash? Import the JPG or TIF and Trace Bitmap it. Try different settings. The default Trace Bitmap settings are very bad. -Sanv

Yes, I've already bought Carrara (no way could I afford 3D Max!). I was just curious since the Carrara render of the 3 Balls tutorial file and the compositing tutorial's (which is amazing) render was extremely impressive. I don't have Poser or Bryce or Max (can't afford it) so I was just wondering what I was missing--and from the sound of the responses it sounds like I'm not missing much! Thanks all.

Oh and how is Carrara's renderer compared to Bryce 4 and Poser 4 (I'm pretty sure Poser's is the worst of the bunch?)? -SanV