I haven't any interest in animation or modeling. I am interested in texturing and the --to me-- essential nature of lighting in posing work. I'm flailing around in the dark trying to figure out which light does what where in Poser 4.03. Does anyone know what the new environments add as far as real control over lighting. What I need is to be able to see my lights and their relationship to what they are lighting. Which I am now only guessing at-- usually wrongly-- in Poser 4. I'm not just going on this forum, I'm going to call Curious Labs and see what info they can give me-- which may not be much as this involves a script. But I could use some feedback on anyone who has bought the program as the sale goes off tomorrow. I would appreciate any help in this that anyone could give me.

I thought about getting the Pro Pack, but would rather wait for Poser5. It may take a while, but I'm sure the wait will be worth it. If you are having trouble looking for the spotlights in Poser4, but can't seem to spot them, try this trick... Select a "flat screen" camera: the Front Camera, Top Camera, or Left/Right Cameras. Set the scale to 200 or more until you have a full view of your entire scene (you may have to adjust the Y setting to move the scene up or down). At this point, you will be able to see the spotlight floating in the scene. Use a variety of the To determine direction the spotlight is pointing, set all rotational controls to 0, then play with the dials until you can get a feel for the movement of the light. The Y axis will move the camera higher or lower, the X axis, left or right, the Z axis in or out of the scene. If the camera is still not pointed at the figure of your choice, play with the ROTATION dials until you are satisfied with the end result. For natural lighting, I like to use the "Country Set". For dramatic lighting, I use the "Single Source Set". For soft light, use the "Global Illuminatin Set" found in the Free Stuff. And finally: To make your scenes render faster, TURN OFF THE SHADOW/ANIMATION FUNCTION FOR ALL THE LIGHTS EXCEPT 1! This trick has cut my render time into a 1/5 of what it used to be. The more lights in a set (like the global illumination), the more you'll have to adjust, but if you save them back into the library, you'll save loads of time. Good luck. I hope this helped.

A couple of hints: Parent all the spotlights to a single invisible dummy prop to allow you to translate, rotate, and, most handy, scale the entire lighting setup, all at once, simply by changing the parent prop. Use "Point At" on the lights & make the target an invisible dummy prop. Move the target to point the light. To view the scene from each light's perspective, use the "Shadow Cams" selected from Cameras in the pulldown menu under the preview window.

Thank you, Tyger and Nance. I have used the shadow cams, in fact I've found great POV's from up there, but I've had such little luck in trying to use "point at" mind you, I've been pointing at things like the head of figure, which doesn't do much good if it isn't the front of the head.:)) I tried the top camera before but didn't get it out far enough, I guess. That's the view I really need. Up till now I've been starting with a set from a package that's close to what I want and then building on it. I like dramatic lighting and I know this is overkill. All of this is helping a lot. Emily

The Point-At thing does work better if you point at an invisible prop rather than the actual body part. It allows you to make small adjustments by moving the prop around without actually messing with the light or your figure. The other suggestion, Parenting all the lights to a prop, is very helpful when first positioning the lights. You can start with the spotlights just a few feet from your set so you can see everything. After you get them all in the proper orientation and pointing at the proper location (their Point-At targets), you can then simply scale up the Parent-prop to simultaneously move all the lights a hundred feet out from the set (or whatever you need to cover the scene). Also really nice when you've finally got everything perfect, with beautiful lighting on a figure's face... and then, inevitably, you decide you just need the head turned a little more... which totally screws-up the lighting. With the lights parented, you can just rotate the parent, rather than trying to do the trigonometry necessary to recalculate the new vectors for each light. When animating, this parent prop can, in turn, be parented to a figure to keep it from wandering out of it's lights.