Well, here is my first real attempt in Vue. I obviously need some help. SO, please feel free to critique and offer suggestions. A little "how-to" would be nice, too...but I don't want anyone to spend a lot of time. I'll point out areas that I already know about. (1) Is it too dark overall? (2) Guitta and ArgentiumThri-ile helped sometime back with lamp settings. But they still don't look as good as the example Guitta showed. So, are they OK or what can I do? (3) Textures: (a) I used the bricks from Vue for street texture. Would like to find a nice cobblestone texture. Any help appreciated. (b) The "planter": I made it with cylinders and just added a texture from the regular materials. It sucks a bit. I might have a "wall" texture I can use, but I stuck that on there for now. I'm scared the stones in the wall textures I purchased might be too large in scale. If so, is there a way to "shrink" a texture scale? (c) Lamp post texture. All the preset choices I used made it come out too gray or silver. Can I adjust the material in the editor to make it less BLACK? (4) Speaking of the planter in the foreground...is it OK or does is it too "loud"? (5) The carriage. Notice the reflections it has on it. It reflects the street texture in several places. I think it may also be picking up the blue tone from the "park" in the left rear of the picture. And where the driver's legs go...it seems to be reflecting the colors from the building. How can I fix that here? (6) I think I need some sort of curb or sidewalk in front of the buildings but I can't figure out a way to make one that is flat and follows the curve of the buildings. (7) Back to the "park". It's blue in there. I think it may look OK, but do you think it needs more "stuff" back there? I think it may be too dark to show up. Perhaps some tree trunks in the distance? (8) The stars seem too big. You think? Should I darken them a bit? Or make them smaller in some postwork? (9) I have some lights (point) in the buildings, but some seem to show up better than others. I plan on putting Vicky in there (with proper dress) and perhaps a driver. I think the driver needs a tophat. I have a medieval dress I think I can get by with for Vicky. But I don't have much else suitable for a male driver. One of the reasons I'm asking for help is because I don't want to waste any more time on this project if it sucks too much already. I mean, if I can't correct the problems I have cited (and the ones I expect people will tell me about). I have limited techinical ability and will try to fix things but I'm not a genius like so many others. I guess I am asking for a lot...but don't waste a lot of time on me. ANY suggestions and help appreciated. As I said, I'm learning and can't do much of the difficult things. PS: Sorry for the large pic size...just wanted to provide as much detail as possible for those who would like to help.

Oh, and one more thing...is nearly 2 million polys a lot?

Oh Chuck, this came out just great....I love your buildings too, and the lighting came out just right! Sharen

Hi, Chuck. I agree with Sharen, I think the lighting came out good. It seems most of your questions have to do with materials/textures. A few suggestions. (You may not want to play with this in your picture, rather on a plain cube) Material scale controls how large/small the material looks on a surface. The larger the material (like, 1000 x 1000), the better, as you won't have so much repeating. If you put a material on your cube (like bricks), look at the scale (at top right, the little number thing under the material preview). Fool around with the numbers; the material will get larger and smaller. This is how you scale it. You said the coach was reflecting bricks...easy fix, go into the material editor and turn down reflectivity on that particular material. If you open the materials summary at top, you can find the coach material very easily. For resources for textures and materials, go to Cool and Groovy stuff at the top of this page. Some good resource in there. Also, I go to Google and type in Free Textures or something like that. Even if the textures are smallish, you can use your 2D graphics program (like PSP or PS) to flood fill a larger canvas and make the size larger. Overall, I like the composition and look of your picture a lot, and think you've done an excellent job.

I was beginning to think I'd not get a response. (5) Reflections on carriage: I tried changing reflection, but when I clicked the plus sign, and then clicked on the carriage portion, it said it had 5 textures. I tried the "split" button (not knowing what it would do) and it seemed to combine everthing into one texture. So, I went back to Poser and changed the reflections there. That seems to have fixed it. (3b) I applied an outside texture but it's not quite right. I played and tinkered a bit. I'll delete everyting in the scene (except it) so I can get faster render times till I figure it out. Thanks for the site listing. I'll check it out. Yardwork, and out of state visitors has kept me AFK for a while today. Again, THANKS mucho.

You're very welcome, Chuck. For the textures on imported Poser items, usually when you click the + sign in your object browser, the things that drop down out of it are individually listed. If I need to find a texture or part of a complex item (like your carriage, for example), I click on each part and watch the mesh window until the section I want comes up. You may be able to get to that particular material that way. But adjusting the reflectivity in Poser works fine as well. Not sure about your comment 3b above...what outside texture? Outside of what, the coach? You mentioned in your first post that you thought the area outside the gates looked empty. I looked at it again, and you're correct. A few suggestions for hiding empty spaces like that: create a wall out of a cube, texture it with bricks or something darker, and set it out there. That will cut off the horizon, and make it look like something is out there. Or you can enlarge a tree and sink it into the ground so it appears that there's more vegetation out there, without having to create a whole bunch of trees. For the size of the stars, you can reduce or enlarge them by going into edit atmosphere, then the last tab, where it has star brighness. If you play with that slider, you'll see that it makes them either hugely bright or you can get them down to pinpoints. Can't wait to see your final version!