Congratulations to hmann for earning Renderosity's 2003 Merchant of the Year title. hmann is well known for his high quality hair and clothing products. If you haven't seen hmann's wonderful creations take a moment to browse his store (click here).

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How does it feel to be the Renderosity Merchant of the Year for 2003? Well AMAZING!!! Thanks to Clint,Tim, Jeny and all the crew at Renderosity. Also I would like to thank my wife and daughter for helping out with textures and UV Mapping in all the clothes packages as well. Actually I feel very lucky...there are just so many great artists and product builders here at Renderosity...Dark Whisper, BryceTech, Morris, SteffyZ, MayaX, ...just so many, too many to mention. All I can say is that you are all great artists and I appreciate all your work. You are best known for your hair product line. Your newest product, Legend-Hair, is very realistic and versatile. From conception to completion, how much time is typically needed for a product of this caliber? In Legend Hair...probably about 4 months or around that sort of time..I really lost count of time...it just took forever it seemed. The thing is cause it has layers on layers, that style of building makes the modeling a lot slower and I have to be really careful that no layered meshes poke through others and so on. However I could build a hair model that perhaps looks nearly as good as Legend Hair, but without the versatility that Legend has ... and therefore it would cost less. Basically its the creating of hair that can do many things like Total Hair and Legend that kills you time wise...usually it blows out to 4 or 5 times what I originally hoped..so at the end I am usually totally stressed out LOL!!! My idea has always been to make the hairs capable of achieving many different looks, but the end resulty is hopefully that people use them a lot because of the flexibility in the design. All of your hair products utilize texture maps that you hand paint. What tools do you use to create the maps? I use Painter...I love that program!!! I dont even use the the newer versions (7 or 8), I still use version 6.1. You can do anything in it ...create clone brushes that will capture a hair pattern and bend it around corners (if the hair is straight) anything. However even with all this power...I mainly do it stroke by stroke and layer by layer using a one pixel brush. Of course I have got much faster at this...but this is the way I like to do it and looks the best for me. I used some hair scans on my earlier hairs and I like them to some degree but the one pixel method works best for me. I also use the burn and lighten brushes in Painter to create highlights and often layers as well. Plus I have some special brushes I built that create several strands at once. I dont use them a real lot though, cause the hair looks too uniform. So its the old strand by strand method. Your newest clothing products all take advantage of the Poser 5 Cloth Room. Has the cloth room enabled you to develop clothing that moves and flows in a more realistic manner? ABSOLUTELY!!! I may sound biased here...but I would buy Poser 5 for the cloth room alone. For long flowing clothes its unbeatable, its also amazing for tight clothes as well. I have written tutorials on how to use the cloth room in all my clothes packages...once you really understand what it can do...there is no turning back. Conforming clothes are better for shorts and jeans...(Clothes that rub together...say on the inner thighs and so on) Also conforming clothes are better for armour and complexly layered clothes. BUT for material blowing in the wind...pressing against the skin, flowing clothes...any of this stuff...the cloth room is a KILLER...AWESOME!! What programs do you use for modeling and how long have you been using them? I use Amapi 7 from Eovia...I also love that program. Beautiful feel to it once you understand its workflow. I can build very complex objects in it very easily...they have some upcoming versions that are really nice and very powerful. I have to tip my hat to them...version 6.1 was a bit of a mess ..but they took the risk of re building it and version 7 is a winner...(in my books anyway) I simply could not build some of the stuff I am now (and want to in the future) very easily without Amapi 7. I have looked at Rhinoceros and Max, Lightwave etc...and they are all great modelers, but Amapi is equally powerfull in all the main areas and is much cheaper, it does all the main things...and very easily. I have seen masters (like Brycetech) build absulutely awesome heads in it very quickly. I can't wait to see what you are cooking up for release next year. I want to add on and rebuild parts of my world kit for Poser 5...(in fact I have already fixed the lights) I had been in a bit of a no mans land in regards to the World Kit...cause there is Poser 4 and 5 and now Daz's 3d app and they all have different requirements in regrads to lighting and so on. But right now Poser 5 offers the best hosting power...(But I am sure Daz's app will in the near future) So I am going to take the risk and work on Poser 5, I also have several hairs on the boil (and I am challenging myself to go further) The thing is if you take risks and build very powerful hairs and dont take any shortcuts then it takes much much more time and therefore will cost more. So there is always the tempation to pump out a $9 hair for quick sales, but I have resisted so far and all my older hairs are still selling very very strongly. I also want to build more dynamic clothes and take that a step further...there is a lot more future from a design point of view working with cloth simulators and the like. It should be interesting now that Shades developers own Poser, they build a realy good looking renderer...lets hope it finds its way into Poser. Would you care to share any hot insider information with the community? Actually cause I do music composition as well as 3d, that leaves me little time to take part in all the forums...so I have trouble keeping up with inside developments in the community. Recently I have been debating with a guy on the Logic..Cubase SX forum (music) ...about program differences and that has chewed into my 3d building time quite a bit. So thats why I cant be on the forums much these days. So no real tips...other than what I previously mentioned. But I would say to anyone that is selling here. Dont be afraid to charge more than $5 for your product...if you have trully spent the time and feel the product is worth it. I have sold lots and lots of stuff without selling at bargain basement prices because I know that a lot of what I build has taken a long time and a lot of work, so I sell at the lowest price possible without going down to the $5 to $7 price bracket. I dont want people to get the wrong impression...I am not saying that anyone that sells at $5 is somehow less of a merchant or whatever. I am simply saying you do not need to do this in order to be successfull. Do you have any tips for aspiring digital content developers? Yes take your time...build your products carefully. Check them out thoroughly, be your own worst critic...otherwise someone else will be. Do you have any final words? Thanks again to all the crew at Renderosity and the whole communtiy that has bought my products, ultimately you are the reason I am here...Thank You. I really wish all the merchants and customers here a great new year. Best Wishes to all of you. Cheers Harvey Mann