i'm curious... poser seems like a very robust package. why is it i see it used mainly for production of 3d pseudo porn and not more for real movies with plots and scripts and stuff? the reason i ask, and i asked on the poserpros board too by the way: i have lightwave for modeling and rendering and animation, deep paint 3d for textures, and i'm thinking about poser 5. is there something i don't know? something i'm not aware of here? poser seems pretty powerful... why nothing of a more serious endevour? thanks! ren

i suppose if you compare it to an industry application, poser would fall short in a few ways. most might agree the render engine is too slow. not that ive run it through a barage of tests, but it is pretty slow (on a comparison scale). then the hair and cloth capabilities... although they work great for some people, its still a buggy issue i think and only compound the slowness of the render. (especially for animations) neither of which any serious production (modeler/animation studio) would want to deal with. in alot of cases, big animation productions have the budget to write there own 3d software and or scripts and addons for established (non-buggy, higher-end animation packages). especially if what they are trying to do is one of those big-budget-boundry-pushers with, like, a year or so in post. i happen to like the whole node thing in the materials room, i think poser has it up on some of the other applications (but that only my opinion, other would disagree) the face room is great too, but again, not a capabilities geared towards serious modelers. others may have different opinions...

are there any instances where poser fans have gotten together with their combined talents and resources and tried to make a production? even a direct to dvd... i remember that barbie doll movie that came out recently looked like it was made with poser, but i also remember that the textures looked cheesy as hell. i thought wow, that's the kind of product than a poser newbie might do... a poser pro would blow that away! i think there should be a group project going, if there's not one already. it would need a writer and a esigner, and then everyone could chip in some bit of help. the person with the fastest computer could render the animation. a cool project that lasts even a few minutes would be worth the lessons learned. cause all the porn is junk. poser has such possibility!!

theres more to a production than animating and so solo attempts are rarely accomplished. if they are, they are lacking in essential story telling concepts, or badly animated or whatever... that said, it leaves only the 'colaborative-effort'. teamwork... and so on a so forth... i would say with resonable assuredness that most of the people who buy poser want to make money at it. out of that percentage, a significantly smaller amount have an advantage over the others. experience... in the industry/ application/ artistic skill/ whatever... and finally from that, an even smaller amount actually do make money at it. finding those experienced people isnt hard. there are a great many people here that do great work. getting them to comit to a project at the behest of someone they hardly know though, isnt new. convicing them to get on board with other people who they dont know and have as much or less experience as they do for no payout (and possibly sidetracking there own personal projects), would be impossible. but who am i...? what do you have in mind?

You could check out what is being done by Greybro with his "Zombie Hunter" movie. I dont know if it is what you would call "professional" but it sure looks like alot of fun ;) Rawnrr

Hey Rich, I agree. I have Maya and Lightwave and your arguement is a strong one. The + side to Poser is the learning curve is easy. Maya and Lightwave is an extremly long one. I have a lot of friends that are in the 3-d world who use Maya and Lightwave and they tell me that Poser "looks to Poser and you cannot customize it and Lightwave and maya is better stop wasteing your time" but I Love Poser. I bet if there was a huge movie or T.V. show were Poser was used and it looked good people would jump on the bandwagon and be like" Oh my gosh!!! we need Poser now every one do poser" and the developers would put more into it. I did an intro type movie for an idea named "Waterdogs" which was a comic book I created. www.markstef.com/waterdogs.html for the comic the 3-d movie is here http://www.markstef.com/wdmovie.html I like it seeing it was the the first animations I ever did. I thought it was successful, definetly could be better though. But right now I am working on a new one that is gonna blow that away. I was going to do a series of eight webisodes 3 minute each then make it a dvd and try selling it. I got all the characters designed backgrounds planes, weapons, etc....and ready to go. The amount of animations and painting backgrounds is killing me though. The new intro should be done by next week. I will post it when it is done. But I think your right people should get together and do something cool. Hey if we can get like four or five animators that would be cool. We can do a Waterdogs episode if anyone is intersted. It is a cross between Charlies Angels/James Bond/Danger Girl/La Femme Nikita/ and V.I.P...... (Don't mess with V.I.P.). Anyway hope ya dig the goods. Chat with ya later -Mark

seaturtle, the movie doesnt seem to want to load... fatastic work btw! :)

try this one http://www.markstef.com/3d.html you do need quicktime....thanks for the compliment

Check out the Curiouslabs website, there are examples of how Poser has been used professionally in animation. There is a short cartoon that is supposed to be up for awards in which Poser was used. Other's have used Poser aminations for story boarding for various films. I think there is a bit of snobery in the 3D community against Poser. Sure it has certain limitations, but every animated feature doesn't have to look like Shrek or Monsters Ink to be enjoyable--especially to a child audience. Certainly cartoons as good as the old stop motion ones we grew up with can be produced if someone had the time and inclination. Children don't care if the models have flowing, photorealistic hair or gravity obeying clothes, all they care about is a story that will entertain them. I'm sure that Poser can be used for such things but because it isn't a program that costs thousands of dollars no one takes it seriously.

Actually I think Poser has tremendous potential as a tool for solo animators. One of the things that makes solo animation projects die is the amount of time it takes to model and rig a character in a regular 3d program, and that's assuming you have the cash to buy a 3d app that can do quality character animation. There is also the fact that some who would make great film makers/animators are not great modellers (Pro films are of course team efforts with many specialists dealing with different aspects of the production) and Vice versa. With Poser and the unparalelled availability of quality free and inexpensive props/sets/clothing a film maker can concentrate on the creative aspects of character design and animation and not have to wear a technician's hat as well. Solo animation projects can work. There was a Japanese guy named Makoto Shinkai who made a 30 minute anime film with hand drawn characters, and 3d backgrounds/props that while a bit rough on the character animation side, is a very beautiful, well written and touching film. (Hoshi no Koe) The amazing thing is he completed the animation of this movie all by himself over a 2 year period. The film was a big critical and commercial hit in Japan and is coming to DVD in the US soon. If something like that can be done then anything is possible. After seeing that movie, and some of Terrence Walker's stuff,I decided to make my own direct to DVD movie which I'm just getting started on. It's using Poser 5 and Truespace. It won't be easy but I do believe it's possible. :)

Someone draw up a storyboard for something. Maybe you can draw some interest. Evo

Any Doctor Who fans in this thread? You might want to check out www.who3d.com where there is, among other things, an oft-delayed attempt at group animating... :) Cheers, Cliff Bowman

its tough getting people to rally around another persons project when just about every one of those who would get involved would rather work on their own stuff. at least thats been my experience. ive worked on countless colaborations and the biggest bonus ive found is that, its best to settle on a project together. as a group. something new and fresh. rather than trying to get people to work on your project. (not you, cliff, just 'you' the reader in general) its hard to get people as hyped up and comited to a project they have not invested 'their' time into. i know i would feel like im accelerating someone elses work and ignoring my own. much like some of you, i too have my own production going on. i am essentially doing it myself but i do have support on some levels. i think if anyone interested in a colaborative effort, a broad paint stroke needs to happen first. ... like, concept... whats the idea?

tcsp I couldn't have made your points any better or more accurately - by the time most people (it seems) can call themselves "good" they have a sufficiently strong view of what they want to do to make collaboration... tricky ;)

Great work seaturtle. I'm currently in preproduction to make a movie with poser and your trailer gives me hope i can accomplish what i want. What did you use to make the backgrounds and f/x?

Seaturtle,

That is cool. I am very new to Poser, in fact I have not even started on anything. I have ideas, but haven't started yet. I had no idea Poser could do that. Very inspiring.

I would also like to go out on a limb, I'm probably going to get nailed on this, but I would like to see less porn done. There is enough of that stuff on the web already. In my opinion, porn takes no imagination.

Let me also say though, that a simple picture of of a nude women, or man, is not porn. So don't misunderstand me. There is beauty in the naked body, and MANY people in the gallery have proven that.

However, I have also seen pics, not here, at least I don't think here (the memory ain't what it used to be), that steps over that line.

Sorry if I have offended anybody.

Ren

Attached Link: http://hometown.aol.com/jerr3d/splash.html

But for the solo animator Poser is a great package because of its easier learning curve.

Here is a link to my "story in progress" done with Poser 4.

well then, i say a group project is in order. i'm going to start a new thread dedicated to the idea. thanks all for your help, and i hope to see you all there. good luck on your solo projects. i can't dl any movies where i'm at, but feel free to send me stills for a deep critique (but no nudes... gov. has sort of a thing against military people getting naked e-mailed pics...) thanks!

Well, my own personal experience with using Poser for storytelling through animation is this: 1 - The real value in Poser lies in it's content, not the program itself. There are all these great characters, clothing and hair models around that make setting up characters for your animations very easy. But then.... 2 - Poser as a program alone offers nothing of benefit to an owner of Lightwave, Maya, C4D or other similar software. Poser's rendering engine is less capable and far slower, the lighting is harder to work with and more limited, no particle fx, no built in modeler for creating props, landscape, etc. In the end you get a character all dressed up with no where to go, stranded in Poser. Sure, you could make props in your other 3D app and import them into Poser but the set up time required to do this is usually long and hard enough that I am better off bringing the raw Poser character into Lightwave and setting it up natively there. Add to that the extra time poser takes to render at a lower quality (and without options like cell shading, multi-processor rendering, OSX support, etc) and the whole process is simply not worth the time. 3 - The final stumbling block for me was always the animation controls. I personally find Poser very clumsy and slow to work with when animating so I simply don't use it's animation tools any more than necessary. Also, the default rigs produce ripping and creasing in the model, which is simply unacceptable. It kills me having all this great content at my fingertips yet not being able to use it for any of my animated stories. Solutions? I have only found two that work for me. The first one is to bring Poser character meshes into Lightwave or Maya and set them up with a whole new animation rig. It takes some time but will end up being a character that can be reused in a better workflow for me. The second solution I am hoping to find in DAZ Studio when it is released. If Studio is everything they claim it will be then I will have a modern, fast tool to use this great content in with a quality output and hopefully a much better level of integration with other applications. Of course, if you can live without all the characters and clothes and can model them yourself, no need at all for Poser or it's content. That being said, Poser is still capable of creating great animated stories for a user, assuming that user has some story telling skills to begin with and applies them through patience and perseverance. BTW, for what it's worth, I think a storyboard and animatic are crucial building blocks for any animated story of any length! I would wholeheartedly recommend making them. Best of luck to you!

I put a few cents in here. I was taught to use lightwave first (on an Amiga) so it is the standard that I use to compare 3D software. Now my lightwave knowledge is dated a bit (last used version 5.0) but I can tell you why poser isnt used more:
the key framing system is horrible!
Now in lightwave there isnt a keyframe unless I hit "create key" in poser if I move something on frame 11 it is as if I created a key, every time. without more numeric control it is hard to control how things move as well.
those have been my experiances anyway.

are there any instances where poser fans have gotten together with their combined talents and resources and tried to make a production? <<< Well, such things are started here every 6 months or so... But I have never known of one that got very far. So far, only PAID collaborations or one-person animations are the extent. I think.

I think it's far easier to animate the characters themeselves in Poser than in Lightwave. I love the control the dials give. I wish the graph editor was bezier based though. The biggest problem I see, as has been said already, is that it either takes a lot of time for an individual to do or a diverse staff and the money to support them (and keep 'em focused). I have several tests I did for the 4-minute music video animation I'm working on now in the "Animation" section of the Free Stuff. Both the "Baby Test" and the "Drum Test" were done almost a year ago. My Poser things (like "dude, you suck" were done before that. they were for fun so they took much less time. This one animation has taken soo long and it's only 4 minutes (including a 4 piece band, 6 warriors, 2 dancers, and a baby). Time is the critical factor. Most people don't have enough.