Rather than tack this on to the end of the current Bryce 6 thread, I'll start a new one. A lot of people assume that importing Poser figures into Bryce directly (as in Vue) would be a good idea. I'm not so sure. It is suggested that it is advantageous in Vue to be able to import a Poser figure with all the textures in place. But that means putting the textures in place in Poser, which has a horrible materials editor (I'm talking P4 here). You get much better results doing all the texturing in Bryce with its far superior texture capabilities. But in that case, there's no advantage in reading a pz3 file rather than an obj file. What would be neat would be to apply OLE - remember that? Object linking and embedding. In other words, if you have a Poser figure in Bryce (textured in Bryce) and you wish to change the pose, double-click on the embedded figure, the Poser interface appears, you adjust the pose, and the interface switches back to Bryce. Just as you can edit, say, a Corel Draw image embedded in a Word document without leaving Word.

OK... I understand your nick now (j/k). Seriously though... It sounds like a cool idea. Does mean that you need two parties willing to work together on it though (wich might be harder to do)

Attached Link: PZ3 in Cinema4DXl

what about utra realistic skin texture packs like the ones from Cath prezezak and the click and add mat pose file for human textures.??? it is a great advantage to have them import into another program INTACT without having to reapply them to some blank grey obj file. and complex scenes with multiple characters can be a retexturing nightmare

Ultra realistic skin textures work even better in Bryce. You have more control over bump, sheen, ambience etc. If you want to take advantage of Bryce's superior materials, you have to retexture after import whether the texture file is imported with the figure or not. So you gain nothing. Using a mat file saves some time in Poser, but only if you are prepared to have exactly the settings made by whoever did the mat file. And keeping track of numerous mat files in P4 is a trial in itself. Handling complex scenes in Bryce is quite straightforward if you plan your work well. Once you have textured one figure, applying the same textures to another instance of it (say the same character with a different pose) is the work of maybe a dozen clicks. LOL @ Kylara - you're right.

I agree phantast, I want the control I get in bryce regarding texturing and lighting. The ability to OLE for pose adjustment would be very cool though. I get around this somewhat by running poser on one machine and bryce on another and having them networked. One drawback would be that both apps really like to eat memory like candy.

"Ultra realistic skin textures work even better in Bryce. You have more control over bump, sheen, ambience etc." really can please show you me some example photorealistic human skin created completely in bryce "If you want to take advantage of Bryce's superior materials, you have to re texture after import whether the texture file is imported with the figure or not. So you gain nothing." You Miss the point entirely :-) most poser users $$buy$$ content like hi end texture packs because they want to USE them on their poser figures but render them in an environment with way better lighting and atmospheric effects particularly for outdoor stuff. and what about transmapped hair?? can you do that with bryces native materials?? me thinks not :-) "Using a mat file saves some time in Poser, but only if you are prepared to have exactly the settings made by whoever did the mat file." lets be frank here, most poser users are prepared to have the exact settings made by the creator of the third party content they purchase ,thats why they buy them in the first place. "And keeping track of numerous mat files in P4 is a trial in itself." You mean when you load vicky open your pose library and click on the mat pose you want and poof!! she wearing it,,,repeat as necessary :-) "Handling complex scenes in Bryce is quite straightforward if you plan your work well. Once you have textured one figure, applying the same textures to another instance of it (say the same character with a different pose) is the work of maybe a dozen clicks." Can you explain how " a dozen clicks" is more "straightforward" than one click and what about scenes with a variety of DIFFERENT characters all with unique textures and trans mapped hair??? Have you ever actually imported a complex .obj or .3ds file into bryce with 12-15 surfaces and tried to decipher what bryce means by "3Ds mat1,mat2,mat3 etc. IM not knocking bryce ive used every version from version2 to 5 on the mac but the reason VUE is kicking the shit out of bryce as an alternative render engine to poser, is because poser users like to setup pose their figure using their favorite textures free and purchased, and import the whole scene intact into VUE for rendering in a superior lighting environment. we who render in cinema prefer direct import of Pz3 for the same reason. if the import of flat grey .obj file and tedious re-texturing was the preferred method there would not be such demand for direct import of fully textured pz3's for MAX,Lightwave, C4DXl VUE even MAYA.

Actually I have no big issue with texturing in C4D in the same manner as bryce regarding poser imports.

Do you animate or render only stills??? Do you render large multi character scenes with one figure with a few basic textures an NO tranmaps??? :-) I prefer to bring in my humanoid characters fully textured and ready to render in C4DXl's render engine and powerful lighting system. but it you prefer to reapply 35 different textures to flat grey .obj files thats fine for you i suppose but for us with deadlines to meet the old fashioned hardway is not acceptable and proves nothing :-)

Hey, Poser MATs are non-translatable to Bryce. Second, Bryce imports Poser image maps, but they are adapted to Poser, so you have to change the ambience, the specularity, the bump and so on. Might be tedious, but it's simple and straightforward. Transmaps are no different than other image maps. So, no flat grey OBJ files. You want to tell me that Cinema accepts Poser textures without any need to change anything? I've got C4D 8 demo here which doesn't use the information in MTL, unlike Bryce, which asks me where are the image maps.

wolf359, I really don't think you are in on the plot here. Who's talking about native Bryce materials? Import an obj file from Poser (processed in Grouper first, of course). It may be grey on import, but it should contain between 3-12 (roughly; depends on clothes) separate meshes that share common textures, and will be called things like "Figure1_skin" not "mat1" if you've done things properly. Select the skin mesh. Open the materials editor. Apply whatever Poser texture you like, and now set specularity, bump, etc to whatever pleases you. And add the transmap if required, e.g. for hair. You have much greater control over the texture here than if you tinker with the textures in Poser. The mat file doesn't help you much. And I say that mat files are a pain because in P4, the library system collapses under the weight of the 100s of them. Put too many mat files in one folder and the scroller shrinks so small you can't use it. And there's a limit to the number of folders you can have. Great. Yes, it would be nice to retexture an entire figure in Bryce with one click, but a dozen is not too bad, and it's the price you pay for getting better-looking textures than you could otherwise. If you want some examples, look at my gallery here. Most of the images may have been posted to the Poser gallery, but they were all rendered in Bryce. As to what I've ever done, I've done narrative series 100+ pictures long all done in Bryce with extensive importing of Poser figures as obj files. It's a process I do every day. I think I have it down to a fine art now.

"Import an obj file from Poser (processed in Grouper first, of course)." Is grouper free and available on the mac platform?? "It may be grey on import, but it should contain between 3-12 (roughly; depends on clothes) separate meshes that share common textures, and will be called things like "Figure1_skin" not "mat1" if you've done things properly.Select the skin mesh. Open the materials editor. Apply whatever Poser texture you like, and now set specularity, bump, etc to whatever pleases you. And add the transmap if required, e.g. for hair. You have much greater control" and if you have a group scene with 6 characters ALL wearing different textures the process would have to be repeated for ALL of them correct??? "if you tinker with the textures in Poser. The mat file doesn't help you much." which is why VUE is so much more popular for poser import MAT poses are the preferred way to texture poser figures ..just ask around the poser forum :-) "And I say that mat files are a pain because in P4, the library system collapses under the weight of the 100s of them. Put too many mat files in one folder and the scroller shrinks so small you can't use it. And there's a limit to the number of folders you can have." well i Use PPP4 And P5 OSX and can access mulitple runtimes so this old limit is not a problem and PC users have Pboost that increases thier folder limit as well as multi runtimes in P5 "Yes, it would be nice to retexture an entire figure in Bryce with one click, but a dozen is not too bad, and it's the price you pay for getting better-looking textures than you could otherwise." if you are using the poser textures as a you describe they are only "better looking" because bryce uses a non adaptive high quailty ultra slow raytracer :-) "If you want some examples, look at my gallery here. Most of the images may have been posted to the Poser gallery, but they were all rendered in Bryce." I checked your Gallery I saw NO scenes with more than one poser figureor any scene with visible volumetric lighting effects like the ones in the VUE gallery and VUE users have direct import of Pz3's and can skip the whole "Grouper" re-application process. "As to what I've ever done, I've done narrative series 100+ pictures long all done in Bryce with extensive importing of Poser figures as obj files. It's a process I do every day. I think I have it down to a fine art now." im sure you do but i see NO Evidence that direct import of PZ3's are some how limting as you want to believe particularly since I can access and alter all of my materials natively with cinemas SLA procedural shaders if i choose not to use all of the ones that load with the PZ3. but to each their own :-) take care

I have no problem playing with my poser materials in Bryce. Like has been stated previously, I enjoy the extra control of all of Bryces texture channels. I do not mean that I use PROCEDURAL SHADERS, but that I import the Poser figure's texture map in Bryce's material editor. At this point it is also easy to paint custom transparency and specularity maps and place them into the appropriate channels.

Ok I rendered these two today to make a little comparison between Bryce and Poser renders. Each program has it's good points and I don't mind rendering in Poser but sometimes you get a better result in Bryce. So what do you think? Catlin

Well, Fred over there is a hammer man, can't abide those folks who think they can do everything with a scredriver, and George, well George is weird because he uses pliers for everything. Me, I have the whole toolbox of packages, and try playing on the strengths of each..it hasn't made me a better artist (only talent could do that..have to get some..;), but I've imported Wings objects with hundreds of faces, but not that many colors. Seems to work ok. No reason you can't use them all. (thanks to the good folks at Digit, Computer Art, 3d World, et al

wich is wich catlin i like the right one better but i see you didnt put a spotlight on the left one so how can we compare if the light is diffrent?

The left one is Poser, and the reason there's no spotlight on his face is 'cos I haven't figured how to do that yet. The right one is Bryce and I like the way the pores stand out which means the slight reflection on the skin makes it look like he's sweating a bit. 8) Catlin

I dont believe anyone here is trying to argue that the poser crap scanline renderer is comparable to bryce :-) it was asserted that direct import of PZ3 is not advantageous. for you artist who only ever render ONE figure and NEVER do any character animation ,manual reapplying of textures are not a big deal but some of us Do much more complex stuff and for us import flat grey object files and reapplying the textures would be a ridiculous process. So direct import of fully textured PZ3 is a great feature for our render app of choice be it C4DXl or LW or MAX or VUE.

I think I have had up to 11 figures in some of my images (that one is over at renderotica), I use the volumetric lighting on occasion and definitely the premium render settings on quite a few occasions. I do as you note, only render stills as this is more in keeping with my photographer leanings. It may indeed be advantageous to someone working on a timeline type of project and I wouldn't say no to having it. It is just that it is something I can work around in a, to me, not very painful process. I would much rather have the ability to pose/adapt/tweak. Not to put too fine a point on it Wolf359 but your gallery here is not full of the type of images you talk about you doing. If they are posted elsewhere than renderosity why not toss a few of your C4D and other more advanced works in here for us to judge you credability.

And Wolf359, I am not intending the previous in any antagonistic manner, I am genuinely curious. To that end I will apologize now as to the tone i may have put that last para in.

Attached Link: poser animation in cinema reel

this "Debate" becoming pointless really the thread starter implied that directly importing a PZ3 with textures intact puts you at a disadvantage somehow its nonsense :-) Iam an animator yes I have a few still shots of single figures in my gallery but my primary work is poser animations renderd in Cinema4DXL via a plugin that allows me to alter the poser animation in poser and update the imported file in cinema automatically I dont know why you are so defensive about bryces lack of support for native poser files :-) but the fact remains that Riess studio is producing plugins that imports PZ3;s into MAX ,MAYA and greenbriar studios offers plugins that convert the Cr2 of a PZ3 into Lightwave and C4DXL with testures intact and Amazone 3D has a plugin that imports PZ3 into Cinem4DXl as well some of us just dont care to run everything through "grouper" and retexture everthing we want to setup lighting import characters and render there wiil likey NEVER be Direct import of PZ3 In bryce anyway so itsprobably best that you guys have a workaround however labor intensiveand tedious BTW I still use bryce in fact I just hung a new 6FT by 6FT canvas print of some of my original Cinema models renderd in bryce (see pic attached)

"this "Debate" becoming pointless really the thread starter implied that directly importing a PZ3 with textures intact puts you at a disadvantage somehow its nonsense :-)" No, I said it isn't an advantage - not it is a disadvantage. There's a difference there. You haven't addressed my basic point, which is that the texture settings a Poser figure would come into Bryce with directly from Poser would not be those that would give you the best results. Therefore, if you want the best Bryce render you still need to adjust ambience and specularity on every texture. Therefore, whether you have an obj import or a pz3 import, you still have to go over every texture and adjust. However, once you have a few standard skin textures stored in your Bryce materials library, it is easy to click on a mesh, apply a generic skin material, and then just change the specific texture file. If you do this, it doesn't matter whether the mesh has an initial material on import from Poser or not. It's true that the pictures I've posted here are single figure ones, because that's what's popular here. Elsewhere I have scenes certainly with up to eight figures in one shot.

Wolf359, thank you for not taking offense. I thought I had seen more of your stuff somewhere but couldn't find it. BTW those are really cool prints. I was not defending the texturing on import issue with bryce. I just wanted to note that for me and some of the others here in the forum, that it was not what we would consider a major need for bryce 6. As I said previously, I wouldn't say no to having it. Also as Phantast has noted, even if it imported with all textures correct/automatically (including trans and bump maps) you would still, mesh by mesh have to adjust the channel levels (at least ambience) as far as my experience goes. At present none of those import plugins will work for me with CE+ to my knowledge so for me it's an academic issue.

Incidentally, I'm deducing that wolf359 is a Mac user and hasn't used Grouper (yes, it is free, but not for Mac). Without Grouper (and esp. the 1.4 version), THEN, yes, the importing business is a hassle. Someone in the Mac community really ought to have a go at making a Mac equivalent - fire up whatever the Mac equivalent of Visual Basic is (what is it? Is VB available for the Mac?) and run something off. Once you understand the concept, I don't think the programming issues are too demanding, and the original author over at Castironflamingo might be happy to advise.

Yep Im Mac Guy :-) We Do have "Metroworks code warrior" for writing programs but im certainly no programmer :-( anyway thanks for the kind words on my prints Incarnadine they look really nice in my apartment the one on the right was a 78 hour render to disk!!! but worth it for sure take care guys :-)

I think people want bryce do is import the poser animation with the model, personally, it does'nt matter if this is doing by importing a obj sequence, a pz3 file or anyway, i think the better way is by obj sequence importing becasuse it opens bryce to almost any program can esport obj sequence. The texture, well, you can make it in bryce after importing.

Aye, this is a cool thread! One thing I've determined from the nearly daily, "Poser to Bryce, how to?" threads in the Bryce forum is that patience is the key. I use Poser nearly every day. I never render anything in Poser (ecxept to test collisions and placement of clothing/hair) because I am ALSO impatient, and it's lighting controls are just plain primitive compared to Bryce, or any 3D app for that matter... I've never used Grouper, and have no need. Bryce's "Family" function works just fine for me. For whatever reason, my brain has no problem keeping track of the tens of thousands of file locations when importing a figure, and I don't mind re-assigning alphas and bumps from Bryce's wonderful Material Lab. I never cared about the names of the objects, because I can just select them and re-name them. Although I love the upgrades from Poser 4 Pro to Poser 5, it's unstable even at 512MB DDR for me and considering it's proprietary mats and hair, we're still stuck with Alpha-channeled hair outside of Poser 5. Procedural textures will always blow away photo-textures, that's why they were invented. Bitmapped textures by definition lose accuracy when rendering, and although you can't beat good hi-res textures, I love to re-texture clothing with Bryce's procedurals... Not attacking or dibelieving anyone, these are my experiences with Poser. I use it for Posing, and that's it! And although I don't appreciate Wolfie's "tone" (textone?!?) much, I really DO appreciate your insight and I LOVE your huge prints! I recently did a 10x5 banner for my brother's band, all in Bryce, and that was our first Render-to-Disk usage (9600x4800), and it turned out wonderful. We also made a label for his bass-drum head, all in Bryce, the text was heightmapped from my brother's design... Other than Poser animation, which Bryce doesn't support anyways because it doesn't do morphing, I can't imagine having any need for Bryce to read .Pz3 files. (shrugs)

Just curious but how long was your render to disc for that 10x5?? my recent one was 78 hours!! thank apple Mac OSX for Protected memory and mutlitasking so i didnt have to surrender my whole computer to one render like in the bad old days of Mac OS9 :-)

I too would never do renders in poser, but there are some cool features in vuepro that when combined with mover4 give you an unbeatable solution. Vuepro allows you to link textures either directly or selectively (or store them with the file just like Bryce) so if you have a texture you are finessing in PS (or any paint app) it will automatically pick up the new version of the texture after you save it. this feature should definitely be in Bryce6. Also Mover4 with Vuepro will automatically pick up posing or material changes to your figures via the same kind of linking. When you re-pose a figure and re-save the pz3 vuepro asks you if you want to pick up this new version and it also gives you the option to bring in the changed materials or not. this feature would be great in Bryce6 as well. As you can see the connection directly to the pz3 is really handy and when combined with the linking materials it eliminates all the hassles associated with maps and still allows you to keep your procedural textures where you want them. Say you just made a much better prodecural skin texture - you can just say no when it wants to update the skin map. That being said - a full vicky3 figure pz3 takes awhile to load (about a minute or so on my dual 1ghz g4) so its best to alllow the new pose to come in only when you are ready for the final pose. Curiouslabs still uses a ridiculous ASCII format for the files and this makes the files like 10x larger than they need to be. I'm pretty sure DAZstudio will be using binary files internally and if it really takes off I'm sure e-on and others will start importing native DAZstudio format. Anyway for people who do a lot of poser stuff - the vuepro connection is a pretty good one and if there is a Bryce6 I sure hope they pick up these nice connections. I'm on the Mac so I can't use grouper and I hand group (via family) just like shadowdragonlord, but that is time-consuming and I'd rather spend time making killer procedural textures, or hand-painting some nice ones, and of course on the scene itself. Vuepro and mover4 offer me this freedom. take it with a grain of salt and apply where needed ; ) Scott