Looks to me like it's a P5 material thing. Figures and clothes that don't come with P5 render fine, P5 stuff does not. And the difference is? P5 materials. Now exactly what it is about the materials, I don't know. But I doubt it has much to do with render settings.

Yes

Waldo: Sure....here it is. This is the Studio 1 lights with the changes to texture strength (1.5) and diffusion (.7000). I also dressed her in some the dynamic duds that come with P5. The blonde hair is awful with these lights, but a dark hair might help. I don't have a kid one to try, I'm afraid. The light sets that work better for this character are the portrait and indoor ones. No shiny dome with those. With those, you can keep your diffusion settings at 1, but still need to strengthen the texture. Spit is right....it is the materials that come with P5. They are basically crap :)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1123573

The overbrightness might be another problem, see this thread for more info: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1123573

Hmm, Shademaster, I'll try this...

Dang, posted a reply with an image, but it didn't go through. I'll try it again. Tried the solutions there Shademaster, to no avail. So what I did in this image is loaded in a second Penny, and applied Blackhearted's Selyne texture (for vicki2) on her. Also used one of Hmann's materials for the dress. Looks much better. So must just be the texture maps that are supplied with P5 are too light.

I agree.....and there is only so much you can do to improve them for use with a good light set. Sticking to default P5 lighting for the default P5 textures....or looking for light sets designed for P5... is probably the only solution until someone at CL decides to address the mounting P5 issues. This is definitely not a DAZ Global lights problem. Penny is one ugly child, isn't she?!!:) BTW GraphicFoxx, since I'm fairly new at this myself, can you tell me what settings you used to scale the adult items to fit the kids? If I ever use these little monsters, I will want to use some of my higher res textures....have no plans to purchase any kid ones in the near future. Thanks!

Giving your character a darker teint also helps. I saw some pretty ugly results when using GI lightsets and light body teints, when your character looks like he/she just went on holiday to a tropical country they tend to looks 'healthier' too :) seriously!

Yes....darkening the tint is better than reducing the diffusion settings. By teint, I assume you mean changing the diffusion color?

Yes

Another thing you can try, which I didn't post here, is opening up the texture, and changing the levels. Opened it up in Photoshop, chose Image/Levels, and changed the mid range to 0.65. Got some decent results. Sandoppe, when I applied the Vicki2 texture to Penny, all I did was double-click the MAT file for the texture set. Everything seemed to line up just fine. But you're right. She is one ugly critter. Trying to figure out these settings, and doing all these renders was the first time I've ever put her in a scene.

Ha! First time I used her as well GraphicFoxx :) It may be the last! :) Thanks for the feedback on using the adult textures....I guess I thought you would have to adjust the size. You know....with all the amazing contributors that CL had listed on the CD extras, you would think they could have come up with better characters/textures. I mean they have the best of the best listed. Knowing their work and the quality they produce, I can't imagine any of them worked on the P5 characters or their textures. Course it cuts both ways I guess.....P5 characters/textures certainly do beg one to go to Rendo, DAZ and RDNA for decent product! :)

True. And it doesn't seem like a whole lot of effort was made going into the figures themselves. Kind of like they figured people would just use Mike/Vicki anyway.

Poser5 - cheaper (I suspect) than Vicky3 + Mike2 + Millenium Kids plus a back-catalog of DAZ animals, plus some cartoon characters, and yet also includes the program. Yet the characters included aren't up to the qulity of the best the marketplace can offer as add-ons to the basic program. Something to ponder on, perchance :)