Yet another test render (one of these days I might actually finish an actual composition before it turns into a test for a new technique). Note that this render bends the rules a bit - it was actually rendered in Vue 5 Infinite, and started out as a test to see if the Poser import routines had improved any since Vue 5 first came out. Alas, they hadn't. Vue 5 still has real problems with Poser 5 shader-tree materials. In some cases they're easily fixed if you know your way around Vue's shader architecture, but others seem impossible to duplicate. I can't remember the pose used for the figure, but I was delighted to discover that the dress and sweater from "Rumors' conformed without so much as the slightest poke-through. Partly due to the clothing quality, I think, and partly due to the "Nova" figure not havng vastly different proportions from Victoria 3. The only thing that broke badly in the import was the eyes, where the importer couldn't handle the transparency properly. So the transparency and reflectivity for the two 'layers" in the imported Actual Eyes was tweaked to come up with something more natural looking. If you look closely you'll see they still don't look quite right, pupils aren't meant to be reflective. Anyway, with an otherwise rather nice Poser import now fixed up, I turned on one of Vue's global illumination atmospheres, set the render quality to "Ultimate" (aka "Masochistic") and set it rendering. It couldn't take long, I figured, since there's just the figure and no backdrop or props or anything like that. The actual render took 22 hours. OK, so I'm using a dual 1GHz PowerMac G4, which isn't a powerhouse by today's standards, but 22 hours is a long render time. Long enough, I felt, to warrant sticking it in the gallery. So just imagine there's an attractive background for now, and consider this a comparison between the results of the pseudo-global-illumination possible in Poser and true brute-force global illumination from Vue 5. I personally think Vue 5 GI renders do look better, particularly if you're aiming for a cool, slightly overcast fall afternoon ambience, but I'm not sure if the improved quality of the results was worth the huge increase in render time in this case.