Hi! Perhaps someone can answer a few questions for me relating to Poser bump maps. In the past I've avoided then, in part because bump maps appear to give a "dirty" look to many renders. However, perhaps I've also avoided them because I don't fully understand them - certainly not a very good reason. Anyway, the issue of bump maps was raised yesterday when I went to use DAZ's new high resolution textures with Stephanie. I believe it was the bump map that bogged my renders to a stand still. Since I generally don't need 4000 x 4000 pixel texture maps at 300 pixels per inch, I ran my Stephanie textures through Photoshop and reduced them to 2000 x 2000 at 150 pixels per inch. This also allowed me to make a few anatomical modifications for more realistic renders. However, both the original and my size and anatomically modified bump maps are giving me problems. So 1. I've often heard that to create a pseudo-bump map for Poser, one first takes a texture map and reduces it to a gray scale image. Next, one inverts the image and saves this negative image as a JPG, TIF, or whatever. Finally, upon loading the image file into Poser 4, the software converts the bump map into a BUM (actually a bmp?) file. Alright, if this is so, then why isn't DAZ's Stephanie bump map a negative image. Sure it has a strangely dirty appears, with dark skin blemishes light. However, features such as Stephanie's lips and nipples are dark, just as in the original texture map. So, what gives? 2. How does one reduce the size of Stephanie's final BUM file, without sacrificing too much detail? In my case, I reduced the bump map first to 2000 x 2000 pixels at 150 pixels per inch and then 1500 x 1500 pixels at 100 pixels per inch. These gray scale images made for relatively small jpeg files, but converted to huge bump files - something like 12 MB! No wonder Poser bogged down. So what do I do to get reasonable size bump maps that show texture in the lips, nipples, and so on? 3. Finally, I might be mistaken, but it seemed as if DAZ's MAT files loaded Stephanie's bump maps (in jpeg format), without converting them to BUM files - at least I can't find in BUM files afterward. Yet, when edited the MAT files to load my modified texture and bump maps (all as JPG files), Poser asked for the converted bump maps. I then had to skip past the bump maps and deal with them manually afterward. What's the story? Even after all this hassle, I think DAZ's Stephanie is going to turn out to be a great Poser character. Even with the lame bump maps I ended up playing with last night, I got some great test renders. I can't wait to see what all you creative folks do with her in the way of morphs, textures, props, and poses. Thanks for all of your help. Take care.