Okay, it's mornng, I've calmed down (a bit). I'm not going to address everything - this thread's exploded in all directions. I accept my original thread title was ill-considered - I was angry at the response my husband had received when he emailed the admin staff about this product. I typed when I should have stopped and thought.

It was not a case of "dragging Sekhet into it" - the whole thread was about a single product that he had produced. I still maintain that producing a piece of bondagewear for a figure described by its supplier as a "young teenager" is inappropriate. This goes beyond finding it merely offensive - (generally I just ignore such things), but IMHO the issue here goes deeper. I admit I hadn't realised how common it was to morph Laura into an adult - she's not a figure I've used much - but her basic look and intention from DAZ is for her to be a young teenager - not a teenager (18+) but one aged 13-14. The harness is not a parachute harness or anything else - the straps are highly impractical for anything else - but is sexwear. Even Sekhet had his doubts about it - click his Details button on the freebie. I agree with him - he shouldn't have done it!
It is dangerous to associate children with sex. Yes, Conniecat, maybe my view is coloured by some of the people I work with professionally (I'm a mother myself of a teenage daughter so perhaps that also colours my responses). I have dealt wih a number of pretty appalling sex cases recently. One that sticks in my mind was a septuagenarian who complained because English law would not allow him to have sex with a 12-year old. He drew on sexualised children images from the media to bolster his twisted view. The harness for Laura touched a raw nerve for both me and my husband.

Poser porn has always and always will be a significant part of poserdom, but there should be limits to what is available. I felt, and still feel, that this particular freebie goes beyond those limits.

As regards a 3d depiction of a surface, a photo is just a collection of inks on paper - it is what they represent to the viewer that matters. English law describes "photos or pseudo-photos" of children when discussing child pornography.

If my thread title was overinflamatory, then I apologise, but I was and am angry about this.

Unfortunately, I can't post any more responses for a few hours, as I'm likely to lose access to my computer for a while - I'm not retreating from the argument. I'll be back (said in suitable Terminator accent!)

First of all, on the subject line, it was meant as an attention-grabbing byline, not as a statement of fact! I'm a Poser user myself, so on the interpretation most of you are taking, I'm accusing myself of being a pervert too, which was not my intention towards any of you.

Rather, it's products like this that get us all labelled as perverts, which was the point I was trying to make. R'osity, by accepting this freebie, seem to be endorsing that attitude.

As for the figure looking grown up, I don't see it. Physically, she is no more developed than my 14 year old daughter, and her face looks like the results of an amateur facepainter at a school fete.

Yes, a mesh can be morphed, but when this bit of gear is available for so many adult female figures, what is the point of producing it for a child?

Trekkiegrrl, as I thought I'd made clear in my original post, I have no problems with adult porn (I've produced some myself, though not for posting), but I am revolted by child porn.

I don't know about the specific hair you have, but most dynamic hair comes attached to a skull cap. You can use the scale dials and magnets on the cap just as you can on any other prop; the hair then follows the distortions in the cap.

I find the shadow cameras very useful for seeing where the light is pointing. They show you what the light is illuminating as you alter the parameters.

quetzalcoatl1967 - You do like setting yourself challenges, don't you?

I'm old enough to remember the Tripods TV Serial from the eighties (BBC ; don't know if it ever made it across the pond). One thing I remember is that the tripods walking were extremely unconvincing in that.. They only ever showed them walking for a few seconds and they looked like they were about to fall over as soon as the camera was off them. (these would have been physical models, of course).
  I think there is a basic difficulty in making a 3 legged creature walk. Maybe thats why no animals are born with 3 legs? I think realistically the only way to do it is to treat it like a one-legged man on crutches, with the two outer legs moving together.

I've seen the War of the Worlds critter as well, I think it might have been at Daz, but don't quote me! My memory is it was not fully articulated.

I must learn to type faster!
6 posts in the time it took me to compose my response! It only goes to support my final paragraph!

On the loin cloth you can "constrain" the polygons at the waist to stay with the body, then do the simulation and it should stay in place. remember to set the cloth to collide with the relevant parts of the body.

Confusing when you start, isn't it? ;-)

"David" is a figure that you can buy from "Daz" . Infact, you will find that something like 90% of the free stuff you see is for the various Daz figures rather than those that come with Poser. The most popular daz figures are Victoria 3, Victoria 4, Michael 3, Stephanie Petite (aka Stephanie 3) and David. Frankly you will find that you need to buy at least one of the Victorias and Michael 3 if you want to make use of much of the oodles of free stuff you will find here and elsewhere - I would seriously look at how the numbers would work out for you on a Platinum Club membership at Daz for a few months. In general hair, clothing etc. made for one figure will not work with another.

At the moment Daz are giving away their 3D starter pack, which includes low res versions of M3 and V3, and various other useful bits.

On the loin cloth question, are you sure that the loincloth you have is a conforming piece of clothing and not a dynamic one? If the latter you need to parent it to the hips and use the cloth room. It's more complicated, but can produce much better results when you want cloth to flow.

The scene you are working on sounds quite ambitious for a first go: generally I find Poser works best with 4-5 figures at most. If you want to do lots of figures look to the lower polygon count ones, such as the P4 ones or the low res ones from Daz.

If your computer will handle Vue 6 it should have no problem with Poser: my laptop is fine for Poser but the the display goes haywire with Vue (graphics card issue). Have you got the service releases for Poser? SR1 is a must have, though some people have reported problems after installing SR2. They are available at the e-frontiers website.

When I started just over a year ago, I found a book called Practical Poser 6 by Denise Tyler and Audre Vysniauskas invaluable; it has now been updated to PP7. Also, don't be afraid to ask questions here, or just browse the threads- you will learn a lot!

I'm sure Phil C will not be upset at my saying that the only way to make really top quality clothing is to model it from scratch in a modelling program.
  Having said that, the clothing designer bundle offers a very good shortcut for those of us who lack the skill and/or time to create from scratch. Even for clothing made in another application I tend to use the obj-to-Cr2 converter to make conforming clothing - that is a real time saver!  So I would say that although not a must-have, I certainly do not regret buying the bundle.

An alternative starting point would be to try something like the (free) morphography quick suits for M3 and V3. You can import the meshes into a modelling program to complete them, and you would probably find a UV mapping program (UV mapper, either the free "classic" version or the pay-for pro version) useful. Again this approach will not instantly produce top quality clothing, but will give you a starting point.

Making Poser clothing is neither easy nor straight-forward, so be prepared for frequent set-backs and frustrations.  Good luck!

I run on a Dell Inspiron 9400, with centrino Duo core. I've recently upgraded my RAM from 1gb to 2gb and have really noticed the difference, especially in rendering multi-figure scenes.

 It handles Poser 6 and 7 fine, although it will not preview with the shaders showing in  Poser 7  and there are one or two other issues with the preview view, mostly solved by reducing the texture size for preview rendering. These problems are due to the inadequate graphics card: when I upgrade I will pay more attention to getting a decent one, to solve this and so that I can run Vue6.

Another issue I've had is tiny insects ("thunderbugs", or I've heard then described as "wheat-flies") getting inside the screen. Dell (after some argument) replaced the screen last year, but this summer I've had them in the new one, so I suspect a design problem.

With any computer get Windows XP if you still can, and get the largest HD you can.

An update after a little more testing.

   Resaving the clothing does work, BUT only if you load it into a "clean" scene. If you have V4 in the scene, even if you delete her before you resave the clothing, it doesn't seem to work. At least, this is what I have found with the V4 MFD and the Selene dress.

This had bugged me as well!   But on a quick test both your suggestions seem to work, Kirwyn, so thanks.

Hmm. A straightforward workaround for another of the "Things I Hate About V4". If this continues I'll end up liking her!

To some extent it depends what you mean by "realistic". Ideas about what T-rex would have looked like have changed a lot in the last few years, from the upright  shape, to the "giant turkey" look.

I've even seen serious suggestions that it would have had feathers!

Which look did you have in mind?

Personally I like P7 for the morphing tool, the multi-level undo, and the faster rendering (and the fact that it will render things that P6 couldn't handle on my computer). The main bugs with P7 that cause me problems relate to the cloth room - recalculating dynamics when you have more than one item of clothing on a figure makes it go haywire, but can be worked round by deleting the simulation and starting again.

On the female figures, over all I personally prefer V3 to V4, mostly because of the range of stuff available for her, and  her more mature looks. V4 always looks more like a teenager to me, though she does morph well.  V4 is also a resource hog; poser noticeably slows down when I load her, and I suspect that she makes P7 less stable. I certainly get more bits of poser weirdness when I have her in a scene than when I use other figures!  Having said that, I suspect V4 is the future and there are some very nice items being produced for her.

One more concrete suggestion; when you decide what you do want,do consider a Daz platinum club membership and/or a Poser World subscription. Depending on how much you expect to buy both can be very cost effective.

I've had this happen sometimes with the Daz figures - M3 seems particularly prone to it. The morphs just don't seem to "take" when you inject them. Sometimes its just the FBMs that don't work and you can still adjust the individual body parts, other times nothing works at all.

  Either way, I've not found a solution apart from closing down poser and starting again. Usually then everything works fine.