calling blenderheads

It works for me.

....actually people using this MSN groups thing is a real pain ...Norton IS constantly blocks my access while I am trying to set things up, the finished page links seem to be buggy and people can't access the larger images I am putting up....rather than battle this I might just kill it off next week after curious folks have had a chance to have a look at it - BTW 5 pics now. ..grrr....grumble....bah!....stifled by Redmond again. sorry about this... neil

Hi Neil! Nice to see your ongoing promotion of Blender! I'm VERY content with the new Yafray 0.0.8, and although Blender doesn't allow you to import the trimmed NURBS SW uses (for the high quality faces), I still think it's a very good alternative (read: free & open-source and very capable) to my SW - Maya setup. I think when it comes to doing non-educational work, the money argument is gonna make me use Blender.

As for your problems, I'll try to help/give some advice:

1. Norton Internet Security (or firewall, whatever you are using) is very resource-consuming. I used it for a while (got it bundled with my PC), but it's a pain really. Then I tried some others (both commercial and freeware) and I was amazed by the power of the free Sygate Firewall!!! Very easy to configure and just as effective (maybe even better because you can configure it more easily) as Nortons Firewall. Plus it hardly uses any resources! I use it in conjunction with the free Avast! virusscanner, but although I have fought all my viruses with it for more than a year now, I cannot garantee it's better than Norton's. It does however update almost dayly! Sygate -
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2. MSN groups is not really a good service in my experience. Try Yahoo! groups - in my opinion they are much better (user friendly), and good looking aswell :o)
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"Norton"

So you install (expensive) malware on your computer....

....then complain because it doesn't work right and blame it on Microsoft?

Were you born that stupid, or did your mama make you take lessons later in life?

Hi again Eout, I hope you liked the samples,

a) For folks that don't know the new Yafray version 0.8 just out has more functionality carried over for Blender access - it now supports absorption and dispersion in raytraced transparency, and OpenEXR hdri among other things.

3) I agree MSN is not the greatest - disappointing because I thought it would be quick and easy - I will search out alternatives starting at Yahoo! thanks...

regards neil

Neil,

There are ways of removing the dreded Norton virus, but it's not easy!

Muggs