No problem. Thanks a bunch dialyn! I'll check into those today. I'm also going to try film references, as well. Any good filmmaker has spent time coming up with ways of visually demontrating a character's idiom without relying on lots of dialogue to build impressions, so someone out there has surely made a study of it. ;)

dreamhost. 8 dollars a month gets more transfer than you'll need in a lifetime. If you still can't afford it, send me an e-mail at softriver@studioverite.com and I'll see about hosting for you. We've got more transfer and drive space than we can use by a ton.

Merry Christmas, ShadesofMoods! Thank you for taking the time to find my work and to comment constructively. I hope your holidays go well! Now get some rest for all of us! =D Jean

I recommmend Dreamhost. (www.dreamhost.com) The plans are affordable ans scalable, and their support team is fantastic. They also give access to lots of site licenses, a large Knowledge Base, etc. Check them out.

Nothing works! That was the model I wanted, one that I've seen everybody use, and wolf359 posted a movie with it! I wanted it, but I'm never going to be able to get it! DAMNIT! DAMNIT!DAAAAAAMNIT! Life just keeps fucking me over! If it isn't a death in my family, it's something else! For future reference, I would like to apologize in advance for any inconvenience that my untimely death may cause anyone, should it come to pass. This thread is a disgrace and an insult. Jean

I'm not argueing, that, GC. My question is whether or not there's a real workable fix for it that's fair? If they listed by favorite artists (i.e. artists that were on other people's favorites list) would that be a decent solution? Would it be any less prone to abuse? I mean, it's easy to complain about a problem with the Hot 20, but complaining won't fix it, unfortunately.

I have thought about all of this, and my associates and I have come up with a suggested list of revisions:

1. All members must vote for an image every time they log on.

2. All "votes" shall be assigned randomly to images posted within the voting period.

3. Comments will be assigned randomly as well. Especially the really nasty comments. If you notice someone blasting your image for some reason, don't take it personally, they probably just wrote the comment while looking at the latest NVIATWAS.

4. Any image with a significant number of votes/comments will automatically be removed from the random vote tables, since the randomization process is showing favoritism.

5. Anyone who wishes to contest the random placement of their vote may request a review from Spike (?) who may change that vote to a different random image.

6. Voting for an image you like, for any reason, is now a TOS violation, and will result in a warning on your member record.

7. Anyone who wishes to have a warning removed may request a review from Spike, who may instead choose to assign that warning (randomly) to another member.

Come on, guys, lighten up. :P There's no real reason to be so upset about this. It's just one of those things. I have a friend who received calls from the art director at Sony based on a work she presented. That work never made it to the Hot 20 here. One member was recently contacted by Sci-Fi Channel over another non Hot 20 work.

Anyone who cares about quality art work will be able to generally recognize it, whether it's in the Hot 20 or sitting in the 'Least Commented' section.

So, breathe. Drink a cup of coffee. Smoke something if you're the sort. Save your energy, and wait a few weeks, and I assure you that there will be another opportunity to post a rant in a thread exactly like this one if you feel like it. ;)

And not even a mention of Poser being on CSI:NY the other night? How sad. Dork and the horsey, re-creating crime, on national television, prime time... and no one... even... noticed... sniff

I guess my question is why no one ever gets Hot 20 images and says, "And special thanks to softriver who is the coolest person on earth!!!" walks away sulkily before the long list of complaints starts

Note on collision: It's touchy. The biggest thing is to make sure your cap and hair groups all have collision checked in their properties, as well as anything it might collide against. Also, make sure that no verts are already causing intersections. Poser bases its collision on the idea of the edge hitting the poly surface. If part of the hair isalready intersecting the poly, it invalidates your collision detection. ;)

Sorry I'm late to the party. ;) Ok. I don't have the time for a full tutorial right now, but I can toss in some sound advice. The first thing you should do is try to focus on styling and stay away from the "growth" controls. When you get ready to add dynamics, you'll want to focus on wind effects and motion effects. Motion effects will be calculated in your simulation automatically. The spring and dampening dials are still a bit erratic to me, but gravity works ok as long as you go light on the dial. With wind, my forum has another tutrorial that explains the basic concepts of adding a wind force object. Again, go light on your dials or you'll waste a lot of time. For dynamics I tend to run a simulation, scrub it (that is, open the animation palette and move the slider back and forth slowly to see each frame) and then tweak my dials and repeat until I get the effects I want. Usually for a still render you can run ten frames of simulation and get a good one. For an animation you'll need to run the full series, which takes a while. The good news is that each frame is only 1/30th of a second by default, so one bad frame won't be noticeable to the human eye. (I tend to intentionally add an occasional out of sync frame to give a bit of entropy to the animation). Things that will help to keep in mind: Optimize the crap out of your hair. If you only need 10 verts/strand, then only use 10 verts. If you can drop the population by 1/2 by upping the thickness settings a bit, do it. Materials, materials, materials. Get really comfortable with your materials room. You're going to be spending a lot of time there. Using the right materials can cover up a lot of mistakes. One trick that I use is to add a touch of translucency to my hair mat's. DO NOT ADD REFRACTION or REFLECTION. Reflection isn't as bad as refraction, but both are machine killers. I've had a single 800x600 render take 42 hours with reflection in my materials. A touch of ambience, a touch of translucence, and some creative use of noise and cartoon nodes can really help you get great looking hair with a low strand count. :) Hope this helps. I'll do a detailed tutorial when/if I find the time. =D

How much you wanna bet once a Big Enough Player creates the first designer human (I mean a complete genetically engineered clone, not a "test tube baby") said Player will be able to patent, trademark & copyright real live people as opposed to graphic or literal representations thereof? According to the US Patent office genetic patents can not be allowed for a complete genome. You can patent parts of the genome, individual genes and sequences, but the entire human is off limits. Beyond that, even patenting a genome would not grant you trademark on it. Copyright would only apply to the specific genetic combination you used to create your human (if at all), so other human not sharing that genetic pattern would be fine. Don't boggle too much. That idea was already covered and granted precedent years ago. Google for "bacteria patent genome" to learn more. =)

Attached Link: http://www.studioverite.com

A restaurant announces on its menu that it uses only Tyson meats. The next day Tyson's SWAT team arrives and padlocks the restaurant for trademark infringement. No, but Mike Tyson might show up. I hear he's desperate enough that extortion isn't out of the question for him, at the moment. ;)

Good to know the freebies will still be available, Helgard, even if we have to walk around the corner to get them.

Keep making all the cool stuff, and please don't let the recent changes get you down. (And please do announce them here. I don't have time to search every site to support the people who help the community out every day, and it would make me very, very sad to miss out on your nifty stuff!)

Best Regards,
Jean