Thanks, Shawn ... but not sure how that is relevant. Yeah, I did that too ... close to a decade ago (poser 6 into Vue Infinite). This is Poser 2015 (or 2012) in Vue 11.5 Infinite. Also, I'm not animating in Vue either (other than MAYBE the camera, but NOT even that right now.) Thanks anyway.

"... I was using Vue 11.5 Infinite and linking to the Poser 11 Pro executable, but even after linking to the 2012 executable, it does the exact same thing."

Hi Lux ... yes, your assumption is correct. Would need a city and/or buildingS (lots of them) to pull off something like the image I posted. I have searched many, many places and it's either too cartoony or too realistic. This, as I mentioned, has architectural but cartoon/and-drawn look (or something!). It is very SimCity/Cities Skylines in many ways, and I thought of using them maybe as well.

I'm now suspecting it might just be a texture issue ... that is, the answer _might _ be to get a realistic set and then maybe find someone who could redo the textures to something similar (simple) as the one depicted.

Thanks! I'll check it out.

I finally broke down and bought Poser Pro 2014 (well really the Game Dev.'s version), as they finally had a great sale. Anyway, I can't believe no one has noticed this (neither users or SmithMicro personnel) after five service releases (apparently), but ... 

** The "Skip Frames" button is backwards.** When "ON" the playback of animation is smooth (i.e. it shows all of the frames). When "OFF" it is skipping frames (and thefore NOT smooth.) This is the opposite of how it should work -- and did work in all previous versions of Poser. You can verify this is occurring by watching the frame counter as well.

• Not* the end of the world, but it often baffles me how such things get "broken" in the first place. (Next check will be to see if the deleting a keyframe when using 3rd party characters, deletes the character instead of the keyframe. They NEVER did fix this is 2012 PRO, so here's to hoping.)

EDIT:  PS, I realize this could have been introduced in a recent service release I suppose.

Thanks, Ockham ... I really appreciate the detailed info and help.  I will keep this as a back-up plan if all else fails.  Unfortunately, I have to do the ENTIRE alphabet, so time is a serious factor here.  (I actually had thought about searching for "cartoon  legs/arms" and attaching to my own 3D letters (same concept), but it's a lot of characters.)

Thanks again.  

-Tim

Oh yeah, ok that one ... yeah, that's been around a LONG time ... I have version Infinite V5 as well, and I believe it was there way back then.  Unfortunately, I don't think that helps much.  I think I leave that on by default, but I could revisit the project and double-check and if it was off, see if that helps.  Maybe they have upgraded it in recent versions.

Hmmm ... in which version was this introduced?  I have had trouble keepimg up with all the amazing additions to that program.  I have 9.5 through the latest version.  Do you remember what it is called/where it is?

Thanks.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I did with the Vue renders.  The object with IBL/IDL looked mostly fine itself, oddly enough.  However, a wall waaaay in the background was producing flickering/spazzing shadows interestingly enough.  So I just rendered in two passes (got off easy on this one, eh?) and all was well.  There is some MINOR flicker on the object itself, but only noticeable because I am really looking for it.

Actually, I was just inquiring about that not too long ago.  It is certainly possible ... especially facilitated with the plugin available at RDNA's site (the name escapes me at the moment).  However, while it makes it less complicated, it would still be a major undertaking.  I definitely would consider it for any of my professional work that required hyper-realism and some element that required Poser.

Quote - I've rendered animation with IDL set to 1 thread and my usual 8...and no matter what adjustments you make, the shadows will jitter.  My advice is to turn off IDL entirely and just make yourself a set of lights that have shadows set low and some off completely and do your best to simulate the IDL effects.  Otherwise it's jitter city.

Thanks for the info/confirmation, JAG.  Yeah, or just try to avoid rendering in Poser (animation anyway) unless aboslutely necessary.  Or definitely not anything with IDL and animation.  I managed to get it around it rendering in Vue.  I just did a separate pass for the areas where flickering was caused with the IDL lights off.

Quote - You do realize this thread is a year old.

Who cares? So what's your point?  I don't care if the thread is 5 years old (or 10) ... useful input is useful input.   He was providing useful information to a question I had asked ... so again, who cares how old the post is.  

I can't stand "Post-Nazi's" like you who make these imature posts about how old a post is ... it's a trend I see happening on lots of boards, but I didn't think I'd see it here.  Seems to come from the "I'm too cool for the Internet" generation.

Quote - You can always bake the indirect illumination on objects before starting the rendering of the animation, provided these objects are not vue objects (terrains, plants,etc), an dthat the lighting is consistent throughout the whole animation.

Right, but that is not the isssue -- I wanted to take advantage of the "RE-use IDL" feature for when I am setting up my scene, and baking only helps at render time -- or so I thought.

There is also "GPU Anti-aliasing" ... which I have found does exactly what the manual says it will do.  If you have a image or animation with extremely thin objects -- like telphone cables, wires, etc. -- it does a great job of smoothing them out.

Right, okay ... gotcha.    So what would texture AA be mostly used for ... procedural textures I gather?

So if I think about this being analogous to video game settings, Object AA is similar to AA settings in games.  Although video games have multiple types including Supersampling, Multisampling, CSAA, MLAA (and then there is Quincunx, Transparency, and Gamma Correct Antialiasing USED BY nVIDIA).  Not sure how the AA slider would/could translate to thse levels/types of AA though, of course.

Then there is Texture Filtering in video games (binlinear, tri, and anisotropic), with various ub-types and levels, which probably is similar to what Vue is doing with Texture Filtering.  

That leaves texture AA, which I don't think really has an equivelant in games.  

Does this seem correct?