Attached Link: http://www.soft-rabbit.com/

A couple of weeks ago, gillan made a very disturbing discovery when he noticed a major Poser bug and even found an early workaround. The original post got a bit buried (partially because it wasn't immediately obvious that it is a major issue). If you use bumpmaps, please take some time and read the original post carefully, because it might seriously affect your work: [gillan's post](http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=454108) It's hard to believe, but the PC version of Poser seems to create *damaged* .bum conversions as long as it exists. I don't know if it really affects all 3.x and 4.x versions, but it terribly looks like it, and (at least) there is a *massive* number of wrong .bum files around. The bug creates a (somehow) inverted green channel in the .bum file, and the results are disastrous: All shadows will have a wrong angle. If you rotate a single light clockwise around a bump, the shadows will rotate counterclockwise - they are only correct at 0 and 180 degrees, and worst at 90 and 270 degrees. The bug is in the .bum conversion itself and not in the way how Poser uses it - in other words, the PC-converted files fail in both the Mac/PC Poser, but the Mac-converted files work in both the Mac/PC Poser. There are two ways to repair the damage: 1) On PC you can open the .bum file in PhotoShop (or similar) and then invert the green channel. This is not entirely correct (it leaves a small mistake in the values) but this will be hardly visible in Poser. 2) On Mac you could do the same, but you should better get the latest set of filters for GraphicConverter (Mac), which now offers a precise repair and is easier to use. The SpeedBump 2.1 set now includes a new filter which repairs the damaged files, and the "CleanUp" feature has been improved to deal with some new oddities that may be introduced by the manual way to fix the issue with PhotoShop. This bug also affects the BUM-to-greyscale conversion of the GreyBump filter. In some respect, the damaged .bum files are a bit like a "M.C. Escher" picture, they represent a bump surface which does not exist in reality and which can't be created as a greyscale template. Every attempt to re-create the "original" surface is therefore useless and can't produce any usable results. If you got problems with specific .bum files in the past, you should repair the damage with the new filter and try GreyBump again. The filter set is available from my website: I have followed various rants about the poor quality of Poser bumpmaps for a long time, but never really understood the point because my own files perfectly worked on my Mac - looks like this is the answer. Cheers, MartinC

THANK YOU MARTIN!!!!

Thanks. I'd read a similar post elsewhere, but this one explains the problem well. Yet another reason to upgrade to the Pro Pack: no more .bum files.

Thanks for the bumpmap fix. I didn't realize Thorsten was yet another programmer who is reluctant to jump into the OS X frying pan.

Many thanks, Sir Martin. This bug has driven me crazy for a while. Thought I'd just have to live with it.