I found about two hours into my stint with Poser that it's very lacking - mostly because you can really only create the actual people models in Poser. If you want to put your people into any sort of context you have to use another program in conjunction with it. Said and done, I started to put my people into 3d Studio Max and building scenes around them. Now I've bought Maya, which will replace 3d Studio Max when I become comfortable with it and figure out how to do precise polygon splits without that third button on my two-button mouse. :-) I guess this duality, or threesome, in regards to poser is common. I can't be the only one that find the modelling aside from people lacking in Poser? So, what do you use?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=450589

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez

But I want more control than that, and more flexibilty. Ugh, imagine building a roman street in Poser! :-) 3d Studio Max and Maya are fast and easy-to-use too, even with lots and lots of objects in a scene. P5 does not equal that. THere's a bit of fuzz with the textures in both Maya and 3d Studio Max, but that's a small price to pay. :-)

do a search in the poser forum for geep tutorials. tutorial on making brick wall, desk, room, sliding glass door. it can be done within poser from poser primatives. that being said, I bought Lightwave and am learning to modle in lightwave and bring those things into poser, sometimes it's easyer to brign everything into lightwave. just depends on the scene im trying to build.

fuzz???while i can't speak for maya...in max textures are given a slight blur by default...look under the relevant map's 'properties' subsection in the material editor make sure "blur" is set to zero...not 1.0!there are also other subsections that can affect how things look..the "supersampling" roolout in the same mat editor can have an effect..as can your renderer settings..AA settings?motion blur if it's an animation..OR if it's a single frame of a multiple frame file??? ...max has all the flexibility that poser doesn't just as you say...if things are blurring there's likely a setting that's doing it or a setting to fix it if you look long enough :)

I'm far from the only one here who does all their work right inside Poser and manages to get decent renders out of it. It takes time and study to get to know the lighting ( vast understatement!) and cameras, but it can be done. Not saying that other renderers and modelers aren't superior, mind you--just don't write off Poser too quickly :)

It's not a question of writing off Poser, it's a question of using the right tools for the job. Poser is great for creating a character, dressing and posing it. It is very poor at building, lighting and arranging large scenes. How can you even begin with cameras that don't work properly and the lack of basic functions like multiple select and duplicate? Well, that's rhetorical, because people do struggle to do this in Poser and even manage to make some nice pictures, but it is SO much easier and quicker to build scenes in another program (I use Bryce). The amount of extra time involved in exporting Poser figures and importing them into Bryce is totally outweighed by all the time you save wrestling with trying to create a large scene in Poser.

The name is Poser. And that's what you do with it. Everything else that's been made possible over time is icing on the cake. Poser lacks even basic scenebuilding functions such as duplication and multiple selection, not to mention the PITA of gimbal lock. But even though I used to export everything to render in another program, I've found I do more and more rendering directly in Poser lately...and enjoying it.

Let's see, price Poser, price Maya, price Poser, price Lightwave, price Poser, price Max.....get the picture? 8^) Marque

I use 3ds Max 4.2. I also use Body Studio 2.0 which allows me to open the Poser Engine within Max and run Poser scenes usually with human animation in them. Even though I have Character Studio, I find this easier. Also, Poser has the best pool of characters and textures. Also, Poser 5 has hair and clothing animation now. In Max, they require expensive plugins. I also am using Life Forms to work on pure animation in conjunction with Poser and Max.

spurlock do you have the newest life forms? I upgraded to 4.0 but haven't had a chance to dig into it, is it better than the old version? Thanks, Marque May have to dig it out and install it.

Marque - I have it on order but there was a problem with it not being delivered. Credo Interactive says that they will express mail it to me on Monday. I am looking forward to it, especially the plugins for MAX. I hope they have done away on the 10,000 polygon limit on .3ds files.

When I first got it I looked it over and it looked like you could do a whole lot more with it, just haven't had time. Marque

If it eases your mind I just installed it and used one of the powermoves lfa files. Pulled it into Life Forms, didn't set up the character at all, just exported it as a bvh, brought it in and it worked GREAT! I am impressed! Marque

I didn't even pull in a poser char, just pulled in the lfa and exported it out. This is pretty cool. Marque

I do about half of my renders right in Poser (for portraits of my story characters mostly) and I do the other half for scenes in Vue d'Esprit. The nice thing about Vue is that you can import PZ3 files directly into Vue and they come in with all the textures and transparency already set to go. In Bryce, you have to really tweak to get transparency to even work at all and the textures often look washed out and dull. Vue brings them in perfectly, and you get all the lighting and 3D environment of Vue. Melanie

Thanks Marque for the info!

Aren't Maya, 3ds max or Lightwave too expensive for just a hobby? I don't see the point of spending $2000 for a program of which I'm only able to use 5% of its features. If you want a modeler to go with Poser, I'd recommend taking a look at Carrara, TrueSpace, Pixels:3D or Blender before spending that much money. And if you want better rendering, learning about FireFly and the material room can be a very good start. There are a lot of unexploited possibilities sleeping in it. But buying Maya just because Poser doesn't have modeling capabilities - that's what I call overkill.

Who said this is a "hobby"? I run an illustration business. I make illustrations for magazines, multimedia, printers, and so on. I've previously only used 3d Studio Max, Illustrator and such -- and most of the time I've just drawn my work by hand and then I've scanned it in. A couple of weeks ago I discovered Poser and saw the benefits of it in my illustration business. You use a lot of stock people in illustrations. I can easily pose and draw human character which I can import into my illustrations. And I've had in mind to upgrade my 3d Studio Max for ages now, but decided to migrate to Maya as it appears to be a better program. Except, someone could have mentioned the mouse thing. I could have bought that at the same time. Now I've got to go downtown again, and buy a mouse. LOL

Sorry if I interpreted that wrong - it's just that many in here are hobby users of Poser. Maya for illustration? Seems like that can be done, Alias is also advertising it for that purpose. But I'd classify Maya more as an animation tool, many of its features are clearly targeted to be part of an animation studio workflow.

Well, you can't do THAT much. Generally, you don't need a background since you just use poser figures in Illustrator, and whatever background is required is created there. Mostly it's just simle coloured panels and such. But I also do some work for some ad agencies, and they sometimes require animations. It's enough work to warrant spending the money on Maya Unlimited. I'm hoping to generate more business on this side. It's been a bit neglected, since I've concentrated on the 2d art. I'll probably just hire someone to handle animations and such.

Is your mouse a wheel-mouse, if it does is the wheel a button too, if it is can you configure it as a standard middle button? (yes, yes, don't think so for mine.)

Probably not. It's just a pretty good but pretty standard PS2 type mouse. Nothing fancy, but quite reliable and accurate.

"In Bryce, you have to really tweak to get transparency to even work at all and the textures often look washed out and dull." See tutorial at phantast.comicbabecentral.com on how to solve this problem. There are one or two things you have to know about Poser-Bryce to get the best results, and I have writ them all out for you in that tutorial. The first thing is to stop thinking, "Oh, Bryce doesn't read all the Poser textures". Just forget about Poser textures. Don't even begin to texture a model in Poser. Do it all in Bryce. Much better.

stewer, I think you'd be surprised how many here actually aren't hobbyists. From those who make websets, to those who sell their prints or do book covers. Technically if they sell even poses or textures they are no longer a hobbyist.