file IF one could get hold of a full documentation of mtl >format, which Lightwave Corporation keeps guarded. You will There is no "Lightwave Corporation". I think you mean Newtek, of which Lightwave is one of many products. That being said, Newtek did not create the OBJ format, that was Wavefront, which merged with Alias many years ago to become Alias:Wavefront, who recently changed thier name back to just "Alias". No program, really uses OBJ as a native format anymore, other than Poser. It's more of a file interchange format now. OBJ is an ascii format, which means it is entirely too large and slow to work with as opposed to binary formats, which is a large reason why Poser is so damn slow. The format also does not carry all of the modern information necessary for saving complex modern scenes, which is why Lightwave uses LWO, Alias uses ma or mb, etc. Even Poser has to keep a "CR2" file to contain extra data not available in an OBJ.

"No, I heard it from someone at CL itself who was directly involved in the negotiations." AHa. You heard only one side of the story. During a period when negotiations broke down and there was probably a lot of anger around. Believe what you want, but there's a helluva lot more to it than that.

I was thinking of Wavefront (it's a while since I chased this up) but it isn't .obj format that is at issue, it's .mtl format, which is something else again. I have downloaded Babel for investigation, but I can hold my breath on this one. Why? I simply don't bother with textures in Poser, other than to a minimal cosmetic extent. All the serious texturing work I do in Bryce, and having a logical directory structure makes it reasonably easy to find any texture file when I need it (plus a lot are saved in Bryce). Thus the issue of "bringing textures over from Poser" is redundant.

Kudo's to what STORM Stated (post #7) What lmckenzie said in post #8 is basically true, although Bryce and Vue CAN export their Terrains. Bryce doe not have a SDK available (that I have seen) I've never heard/seen anything concrete about Corel approaching Curious Labs or vice versa, or why it was never done at all. I have to believe it happened at some point, but the only thing I CAN'T believe is, it hasn't happened at all during the last 4 years... One day Poser and Bryce will act together, unfortunately, it's not gonna be soon. `Til then, have faith and workaround! AgentSmith Bryce Mod

what would be the point here in 2003??? Look, i was a poser user since fractal designs poser3 and metacreations (meta who??) bryce2 But ,To be perfectly frank both programs have little or No potential for growth( new,paying customers) this can be largely attributed to their Old outdated cores that will never take advantage of the advances in modern day hardware and oudated tinkertoy "Kia" interfaces. Notice the collective yawn from the mac community about the release of poser5 for OSX??? the most common compliment ive heard is "it doesent crash" this is likely more a testament to the incredibly stable Unix based OSX and the fairly homogenous nature of modern day Apple hardware. but sad commentary on where poser is today when"not crashing " is a major acheivement. a poser to bryce plugin now would be like releasing a new patch for windows95 gee thanks but... have you checked what century this is?? :-)

Well, let's go ahead and burn all our pencils and paint brushes also Wolf. Since we can do art on our computers now, those ancient tools have no place in the 21st century, right? The potential of any growth does not lie in your tools, don't blame them. A Poser to Bryce plugin would make a lot of money, the user base is gigantic! Doesn't matter when Bryce or Poser first came out, they are still some of the most popular programs around, period. But, then again, I still use my pecil and paint brushes, I mean...they still work for me. AgentSmith

The potential of any growth does not lie in your tools, don't >blame them. While you are right that some money could be made on a bryce/poser solution AgentSmith, I'm going to go with Wolf359 on this one. The tools can and do limit an artist, if the tools are not the state of the art, or very near to it. Poser and Bryce don't do what I need them to. They are still exactly what they have always been and have not gotten worse, it is me and my needs that have grown. For what Bryce and Poser do, they are fine tools. But for anyone serious about animation, especially of characters, or who needs a rapid pipeline for completing projects on a professional time table, or many other needs/reasons, a Poser to Bryce solution would be no solution at all. There are two factors at work here: 1 - The owners of programs like bryce and poser and several others in this price point provided a way for 3D artists to get started, by offering decent 3D tools at a low price. But those tools have not matured in any serious way lately, even though a large number of the users have. Which leads us to.... 2 - The "high end" professional 3D software solutiions have seen drastic price reductions in the last couple of years. This has closed a gap, squeezing some program out completely, and making the "entry level" far less of a bang for the buck, especially when you consider the bevy of modern features available, such as subdivision surfaces, radiosity, and countless others not available in the Poser/Bryce range. For instance, you could spend around $400 to $600 getting Poser, Bryce and a few other doodads, and then only be about $400 away from a full blown copy of Lightwave or C4D. That extra 400 clams would give you a huge amount of extra tools, performance and options, and also allow that artist to enter the professional realm of output quality. Knowledge in that program (coupled with other skills) will even make you a potential candidate for a job. It's hard to buy three or four programs and spend time wresting with their quirks when only a little more money will get you something really top notch, and that won't limit your artistic potential. Now, this is not a slam on anyone using Bryce, Poser and what not. There can still be some great art produced from these tools. I myself still use Vue on ocassion and enjoy it very much, but I realize it's limited potential in the larger playing field. Truly knowing what your tools are capable and not capable of is a strenght, not a weakness.

wolf359...it's KAI not KIA. The reason some put down Bryce's interface is that they have never bothered to (1)learn it nor (2)understand the why of it. The doodads are there for a reason..not just to look cute. Bryce's interface is brilliant. (Poser's is pretty but is not very efficient) Just a couple of points out of dozens: (1) Bryce is layered. How deep you go depends on your expertise. Most other programs have all the functionality at the same level which can be cluttered and confusing. (2) Bryce is brilliant for beginners. They don't have to mess with x, y, and z. The default setup and direction of the edit controls matches. (3) Off-document edit controls means there's no nightmare of click-dragging the wrong object. (4) Single-view only is not a hardship, especially when with ONE easily-remembered keypress you can get another view, and one more keypress to center and zoom on the selection. Vue's 4-up view on the other hand is difficult to see detail and ALL the views update when you zoom in on one which slows the interface down considerably. Bryce DOES need some work. It needs object heirarchy and subcategories in Skies as well as more work in the terrain editor. Other than that it's nearly perfect!

I understand that Bryce Has a loyal devoted following iwas a die hard brycer and still use bryce 5 on MAC OSX and no offense to spit ,really but you appear to be speaking from the perpesctive of someone who has likely NEVER used a modern day program with a real user definable muliticamera system or comprehensive object/scene manager for handling complex scenes. or true key frame animation timeline or adaptive ray tracer that wont take weeks to render scenes because you chose to have volumetric lights But this is not a bryce VS everybody else discussion :-) the thread starter asked :why no poser plugin for bryce?? and that answer is simple: Future market potention for NEW customers and that means cutting edge software that is relevant to the rapid advances in rendering hardware. APPLE is about to take us into an exciting new world of 64 bit desktop computing followed soon im sure by intel or AMD. what incentive is there from a business perpective for any company to spend a dime hiring programmers to join two Old programs that wont be in a position to utilize the new hardwre comming down the pike. and dont kid yourself the poser and bryce community is relativly small worldwide compared to MAX or Lightwave. and if some individual chooses to hack that old legacy code from the early 1990's to sell a new feature to the pose/brycer base then good for them. but its just not good long term business sense for CL to revisit that old strategy in my opinion

Everyone has to walk before they can run. The quantity of users actually using high-end programs is small compared to the available base for the lower-end 'entry' programs. And look at the price difference. How many people not sure if they want to get into this 3D stuff will spend those bucks on a high-end program? Besides which I venture to guess that less than 1% of the users are looking to do animation. So far I've taught 9 sessions of Bryce classes and don't go near animation and there has not been one complaint or request for animation to be added. There's definitely still a market for Bryce and Poser and a reason to 'meld' the two in some fashion. Although with Grouper, the need isn't as great as a couple of years ago...unless you do animation.

Anyone in business will tell you they do not ignore exsisting user bases, that would be foolish! SO many things in this world are sold as add-ons, accessories, etc. SO MANY...billiions are made each year by that practice. "poser and bryce community is relativly small worldwide compared to MAX or Lightwave." Ouch...sorry to be the one to open your eyes; let's look at galleries and how many pics are in each... Lightwave 3,581 3DSMax 8,632 --- Bryce 40,773 Poser 92,131 This kinda ratio exsists in just about every online communtiy that is not high-end specific. It's simple, how many 3DSMAX's can you sell at $1,000-$3,500 and how many units of bryce can you sell at $80-$300?? A LOT. I've visted online communtites in Russia, Germany, UK, Denmark, etc. The same kind of ratio exsists there also, Poser and Bryce are the biggest. Beacause, they are the biggest bang for your buck, period. Their not the biggest in the professional industry, but that's not the point. (they weren't meant to be) Point is, how many units and users are there out there that could use this? Again, a lot. Curious Labs has done one of the smartest things I think they could ever do, make it so other (high-end) programs can more easily import Poser stuff. If they had followed Wolf's way of thinking, that they had an outdated piece of software and did nothing, then Poser would be way less than what it is now. Again, your reason why there is no Poser/Bryce plugin misses the point. It doesn't matter if you have the best/newest/most expensive piece of software on the newest/fastest/64 bit computer. If you can't draw with a 99 cent pencil, you aren't going to be able to draw with a 10 dollar pencil. Although, yes I admit, there are some truly great 10 dollar pencils out there, lol. ;o) We all aren't going to own the new Mac and a $1600 piece of 3D software. Most people will probably never do that, and that's cool. But to discount a tool that still works well, just because its not new...is the wrong thing to focus on imo. Well, I think its an oversite to think an add-on for an older program would not sell, anyways. AgentSmith

I have to disagree with the idea that Poser is somehow obsolete and that everyone who started with it has moved on to more professional applications. I think this ignores a number of things. For one thing, it's like saying that $200 cameras have no future because everyone who started with one has felt the need to move up to $2000 Nikon, simply not the case. Another issue is the fact that aside from the still unrealized Daz Studio, Poser is the only application that does what it does without taking a huge leap in price and learning curve. With the proliferation of high speed connections, the web is increasingly going to be used for publishing more sophisticated 3d content. At the moment, it's mainly limited to low resolution figures like Avatar Lab and the Sims but that will change and Poser could be positioned to provide a lot of that content - with the right export capabilities, which is of course the original topic of this thread. Computer generated 3D human figures will always be a compelling application, for everything from art to porn to advertsing and other applications. Despite it's drawbacks, I think Poser is still the "premier" application in that space. Far from being a deadend, I think there are markets which Poser hasn't even tapped yet. I saw something on CL's site or their newsletter about a new Poser 4 based "Poser Artist" program which may be a step in that direction. Hopefully, I'm not imagining the latter, I don't see a reference on CL's site. I think it was in an email. Along those lines, I've thought for a while that a somewhat simplified version of Poser 4 could be marketed as a kind of "Poser for Kids," a real digital paper dolls application.

Conan Hunter, the once program manager of Bryce for Corel had Bryce set up to do the same thing; to be split into two products, a simpler version for kids, and a professional version that was to progress past the "hobbyist" level. Still, to refer to the actual, original question again, lol. I see some kid had made a converter to turn a Bryce scene file into a Vue scene file (It's in the Vue Forum), now it's not perfect, fand rom what I hear and is for Mac only, but I guess it works. CastIronFlamingo has made a small utility that takes Poser lighting setups, and translates them for import and use in Bryce. From what I have seen myself, it works great. So, it's do-able. But by whom? AgentSmith

It sounds like it's already possible to at least import the Poser stuff (as obj?) into Bryce and fiddle with the textures. I don't know if Bryce has any scripting or an apy you can use but it seems like if it did you could pretty much write a utility to read a pz3 and pull it into Bryce textured and ready to go - assuming they're no subjective decisions involved. Worst case, even if Bryce is "dumb," it might conceivably be possible to write code that read in the pz3 and "automated" Bryce by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. And then again, of course, perhaps not. One difficulty that arises in doing that with Poser is it's use of non standard UI elements in Windows and probably the Mac as well. If Bryce still has the same off the wall UI elements it would be a problem. Interesting that someone at Corel had the same idea for a "junior" version of Bryce. I sent my Poser Jr. idea to CL so you're my witnesses if the use it and don't want to pay me :-).

It sounds like it's already possible to at least import the Poser stuff (as obj?) into Bryce and fiddle with the textures. I don't know if Bryce has any scripting or an apy you can use but it seems like if it did you could pretty much write a utility to read a pz3 and pull it into Bryce textured and ready to go - assuming they're no subjective decisions involved. Worst case, even if Bryce is "dumb," it might conceivably be possible to write code that read in the pz3 and "automated" Bryce by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. And then again, of course, perhaps not. One difficulty that arises in doing that with Poser is it's use of non standard UI elements in Windows and probably the Mac as well. If Bryce still has the same off the wall UI elements it would be a problem. Interesting that someone at Corel had the same idea for a "junior" version of Bryce. I sent my Poser Jr. idea to CL so you're my witnesses if the use it and don't want to pay me :-).

And look at the price difference. How many people not sure if >they want to get into this 3D stuff will spend those bucks on >a high-end program? Besides which I venture to guess that Sure, but we were talking about people who are not just now "getting into this 3D stuff", we were talking about those of us who bought Poser 1 and Bryce 1 in the mid 90s and simply can't get the functionality out of them that we now need. >With the proliferation of high speed connections, the web >is increasingly going to be used for publishing more >sophisticated 3d content. At the moment, it's mainly Don't hold your breath for that. It's been tried for years and even with high speed connections, there really isn't much use for 3D "on the web". Now, 3D data embedded into applications that are driven by real time data over high speed network connections is another thing. For instance, you will soon go to the doctor and much of your body will have been scanned and translated into 3 dimensional models for diagnosing and study. But this is something entirely differnt than what Poser does. >But to discount a tool that still works well, just because >its not new The "newness" of a tool is not in question, the modernity of it's features and functionality are. Don't confuse the map for the territory. >Ouch...sorry to be the one to open your eyes; let's look at >galleries and how many pics are in each... You have !!GOT!! to be kidding with this bull$hit! LOL That is the most rediculous thing anyone has said yet. Ok, fine, let's play in your sandbox for a minute. Any Bryce or Poser user can download a character, a pose, and some clothes, push a couple of buttons, render and poop out some "art", then promptly post it to the online image gallery of thier choice. The average Lightwave, Max, Maya, etc user will produce only a fraction of that volume because they are performing far more complex tasks, like setting up advanced particle and dynamics simulations, or modeling a unique character that everyone else isn't using, and creating for it an animation rig of high enough quality that it doesn't fold and crease at all the joints. And then lets not forget that while you were busy pooping out 512 Poser images, the users of the other programs were working on movies, television shows, commercials, product adds, behavioural simulation demonstrations, and all number of other cool things that exist outside of the relatively tiny world of online "art" galleries. >If you can't draw with a 99 cent pencil, you aren't going >to be able to draw with a 10 dollar pencil. I see the point you are trying to make, but it's simply not true. Yoyoma could not produce the same quality of music on a $100 cello from sears, you can't win the Indy 500 with a Ford Focus, Michelangelo would not have created the same art with finger paints, and Final Fantasy could not be made using Poser. You need the right tool for the right job. Look guys, Bryce and Poser are cool, but they don't do everything. That doesn't make anyone bad people for using them, but defending them like they are the holy grail is really rediculous.

Sure, but we were talking about people who are not just now "getting into this 3D stuff", we were talking about those of us who bought Poser 1 and Bryce 1 in the mid 90s and simply can't get the functionality out of them that we now need. No we're not. Quoll...you're totally missing the point. That being there are enough Poser and Bryce users (and new ones every day) so that the cost of developing a tie-in would be recouped. And the fact neither program can do "everything" is beside the point.

Is bull$hit the same as bullshit or does it cost more? I wonder how close we could get to Final Phantasy using Poser with the Maya Plugin? It may be doable

You don't need Maya to recreate Final Fantasy - you need an army of top-notch animators. Most shots in FF weren't rendered in Maya anyway, like most large-scale productions it's PRMan that does the number crunching.

"You don't need Maya to recreate Final Fantasy - you need an army of top-notch animators." I agree all you need to do" Final Fantasy" is a moderday HARDWARE ACCELERATED program with FBX support ,particle Dynamics,collision detection, REAL volumetric lighting,MULTIPASS RENDERING, shader nodes, network rendering, file referencing for real team collboration. and an optical human mocap system.

Attached Link: Poser to bryce

IM curious why this plugin is not a popular solution other than being PC only it seems to work well whos tried it??

It seems foolish for either company to try to hold up the other for megabucks. They both stand to gain, so they should share the costs involved. Maybe what they're really concerned about is a potential competitor looking at their code. In that case, they should fund a third party to do the development, which might even be cheaper. This same money issue has apparently limited Poser 5s face room to the included figures, with CL supposedly wanting big money from Dax to add Vicky and Mike. In that case though, since CL had to license the technology themselves, they're probably trying to recoup their investment, understandable, but not necessarily the best long term idea. I think rather than investing in FireFly, CL perhaps should have created an interface to a third party renderer the way Daz is doing with Studio. FlyerX has done a great job on enabling us to render Poser scenes in POVRay.

"REAL volumetric lighting" What's the difference between real and non-real volumetric lighting? I think rather than investing in FireFly, CL perhaps should have created an interface to a third party renderer the way Daz is doing with Studio. If you compare 3Delight and FireFly, their features are mostly identical: "3Delight is an advanced RenderMan-compliant renderer featuring a wide variety of features such as depth of field, motion blur, surface displacement, atmospheric effects, selective ray tracing and global illumination (ambient occlusion and color bleeding)." The only exceptions here would be the lack of GI in FireFly (The renderer itself is capable of GI, it just lacks the appropriate nodes. Pixels/Tempest ships with a node for ambient occlusion.), where on the other hand, 3Delight has nothing comparable to the material room (shaders for 3Delight are written in a C-like programming language). Still, iif you want to use 3Delight with Poser 5, go ahead and download my plugin, it's free and the MacOS X version is in the works too.

Attached Link: Dynamic volumetrics

***"What's the difference between real and non-real volumetric lighting?"*** I mean the ability to define the appearence of suspended dust and animated wind that wil be maintained during dynamic camera moves and animation perhaps its been updated but when this pseudo volumetrics was announced months ago early users indicated it required a fairly broad background object for the effect to render correctly. has it been updated to render with no background object and will maintain its appearance during animation??

Why should it change appearance during animation? You can make it do that if you want by attaching time-varying shader nodes to it, but otherwise it's static. The requirement for background geometry is there for all RenderMan renderers I know of, e.g. it works just the same way in 3Delight. I could not find an explicit description of it in the RenderMan Specificiation 3.2, but it appears as if Pixar's PRMan is also calling Atmosphere shaders only where geometry is.

so if you are doing a space scene animation with a volumetric search light beaming from the nose of your craft the light wont render against an empty space background in pixars renderman but will render in MAX LW and C4DXL????

I don't have PRMan to verify it, but yes, it appears so. All the RenderMan compliant renderers I tried do so and the RenderMan specification indicates that Atmosphere shaders are not being applied to empty spaces.

Attached Link: http://www.eonreality.com/

"Don't hold your breath for that. It's been tried for years and even with high speed connections, there really isn't much use for 3D "on the web"." Well the lack of infrastructure and the small number of current applications doesn't equate to there no being a use for it. Don't forget the reason Meta dropped Poser and it's other apps to concentrate on that very area. Now I thought from the beginning this was a poor decision, but only because the timing wasn't premature. It seemes that for years, people touted the 'year of the' network, or client-server or today, web services. None of them happened overnight but they happened. Currently, there are retail sites where you can view clothing, cars and other products in 3D. These are just the tip of the iceberg. The possibilities for training alone are enormous. Applications like Eon Studio (link) are already being looked at for Homeland Security training and simulation. The military already makes enormous use of 3D simulation for training and missino planning. The same thing is going to happen in the civilian sector as well and the internet will be the logical, cost effective way to deliver that content. Eventually, no one will dream of riding around with a realtor looking at homes when they can do a 3D walkthrough of 100's of them on the web. You won't buy clothing without trying it on your 3D avatar first to see how it looks. It certainly beats crowded mall parking lots and cramped fitting rooms. Why trek to the store and look at sofas trying to guess how they'll look in your living room when you can download a 3D model and view it in a 3D scene of the actual room. And surprise, most of these applications won't require the high end features that Pixar or Disney use. On the contrary, they'd be a waste of bandwidth. Even in it's current state, Poser created content pops up in places like local TV commercials. Someone at Renderotica was recently looking for artists do do cover isslutrations for books. People are using Poser to make small movies. There are varying requirements and it's simply unrealistic to suppose that everyone doing even "professional" work needs, wants, can afford or has the time to master high end applications. That's why there are a probably a lot more business trips flown on Cessnas or Beechcraft than on Gulfstreams or Learjets. In short, I think the uses of 3D on the web are limited only by imagination. At this point, we just need fatter pipes. If you build it, they will come.