I'm talking about something else, I know uvmapping and weight mapping are different animals. I'm saying that UVMapper Pro is breaking the model skins, which is a major inconvenience when reuvmapping a Daz model and then wanting to use it in Studio. I'm not sure if I will even be able to reuvmap a Daz model native to Studio, and still have it work in Studio with its associated morphs like I can do with Poser. I'm pretty sure that I will have to rebone the figure from scratch and make all new morphs. (and I got good sources for that information) Daz hasn't exactly been nodding very much towards us *erotica folks. We usually have to do a lot of mods to a figure to get it usable for our stuff. If its made too difficult for us to mod a figure, you'll probably see most of us sticking to Poser. And that's a shame... but I liken it a bit to the VHS/Beta debacle... Beta was technically better, but people liked longer length tapes. g Its a great little program (though it won't work on my computer), but I'm not sure if its going to be full featured enough for me to get a lot of use out of it, unless I sit down and make my own figures to use for it, or hope someone else does. Which makes me have to evaluate my direction... that's correct. But I do wish it well, because by now I believe only by it doing well, will we see more innovations on the Poser side of things.

*** I'm sorry Xantor, other than weight mapping I don't honestly see what Studio can implement that can't apply to poser figures. *** Since D/S use a renderer which is capable of direct SDS-Renders they could release models which rely on Subdivision. Models would be much much smaller in memory, would bend far better and look good from very close to very far. Poser's renderer cannot do that, up to my knowledge. But it still is wild speculation if DAZ even tries to do such things.

I have SDS in Carrara, I use it pretty regularly on Poser figures by now, I just whack into the vertex modeller and I can choose any material and give it SDS smoothing. Great feature, and I can adjust how many levels of smoothing I want it to have. I just wish I had something like Studio inside Carrara... that would be a perfect little world for me. Actually Studio's bones work quite similar to Carrara bones, its just more advanced than Carrara. Ah, here's hoping to the next version of the program. At least Eovia is close to releasing the Poser plugin.

Ahhh, I see, yes UVMapper does tend to do that sometimes. I can't help you there, mapping models or re-mapping them is a complete mystery to me, kind of like the Bermuda triangle. :) In answer to your point about studio. Studio still utilises a uvmap facility and operates with a Runtime directory. So the implication here is that it will still reference external geometry (seems to insist on it in fact). This means that you will be able to remap models precisely like you can now, without having to purchase expensive software (Unwrap3D is only 40 odd dollars and considerably more powerful than UVMapper) You shouldn't need to rebone from scratch or make new morphs. The primary difference is that Studio, judging on it's insistance for external geometry reference, won't use embedded morphs. So any morph will need to be in an external geometry file and dynamically referenced through the program. I have no idea how that's going to work until they actually implement it in the program and explain it. It appears that it will use a form of scripting engine that will call the morph when it's needed. All a bit of a puzzle there and until they get it to work in-house we won't have much of a clue out here. No, Daz doesn't pander to the erotica folks, this is true. Genitalia appears to be a bit of a no-no with them and in many ways I can understand their resistance to playing in that field. I very much doubt this will change any time in the future. I would find it extremely difficult to believe that any modifications you and the others do to figures would be non-functional in Studio. Regardless of Daz's apparent prudishness in this vein, you use "morphs" to detail anatomy. Morphs do work in studio (after a fashion at the moment) and will work properly later. The difference here is in the way those morphs are applied. It may even be that your option here will be to stick with Poser. It's impossible to judge until these functions are introduced to studio in order to compare them. I agree with you on the beta/vhs thing, betamax was far superior. We had the same thing with satellite broadcasting here in the UK.. BSB used a square receiver that wasn't affected by atmospheric conditions, SKY used a dish receiver that sucks. Sky won, BSB were bought out and we have BSkyB using mesh based dishes that get knocked out in a high wind, rain and several other weather conditions that never even phased the squarial. but I'm not sure if its going to be full featured enough for me to get a lot of use out of it That may be likely. Studio is quite obviously going to be plugin based and infitinately customisable as a result, but it won't hold the basic functionality that Poser does. Then again there's a difference between "Free base software" and a 300 dollar full program. It's even possible that Studio will never match your needs. Can't really judge that yet. *** because by now I believe only by it doing well, will we see more innovations on the Poser side of things.*** That's entirely likely. It's more than probable that one of the things that prevented Poser developing properly was it's complete lack of competition and the idleness of CL because of their market domination. If Studio makes the grade it will be a serious wake up call for the people who rested on their laurels for four years.

offtopic, but hey, what's the difference between UVMapper Pro and Unwrap 3d... I'll check into it if its really doing more.

http://www.unwrap3d.com Aside from price, there's quite a few things that are different. It's apparent from what I've read that the new version of UVmapper will be extremely impressive, but I suspect it will also have an impressive price tag. Aside from multiple projection and mapping utilities, unwrap3d will allow you to uvmap a variety of model formats. So, no more hard work converting 3ds to obj and praying the file size isn't crippling. Formats supported can be found http://www.unwrap3d.com/formats.html and a feature list http://www.unwrap3d.com/features.html Retailing at 39.95 US, it's quite a bargain, and gaining popularity and support rapidly.

oh gawd... a uv relax function... here I go to buy the fricking thing... thanks for pointing it out to me. I kinda like UVmapping, call me geeky, weird, or something g I don't just use morphs, on some figures I've actually added geometry for genitals. The Daz figures are woefully inadequate regarding the number of polygons in the groin... morphs only look ok at a distance, and sometimes not even then.

Just don't assume the referenced geometry of newer figures will be in OBJ format... they may not be. I'm actually adding geometry to figures, so its going a lot beyond uvmapping. I'm familiar with the uses of weight mapping. But I'll wait and see if Studio is going to be right for me... at this point I do not have enough information to be sure that its going to be useful or not. It may end up being that its not, it may end up being that it is... we'll see. What I require out of my figures and programs is that things are heavily customizable by me. Poser is that. Carrara is that. I'm not sure yet if Studio will be. the way Carrara bones work and the way Daz bones work are similar... just C doesn't have weight mapping yet. Here's hoping that gets put into the next version...

Just don't assume the referenced geometry of newer figures will be in OBJ format Quite honestly I don't mind if it isn't. Most of the other formats are compressed by one routine or another making them far smaller, resulting in the ability to have much larger collections in a much smaller area. Quite frankly I much prefer 3ds or lwo format because they retain all the part information and are eminently animateable, obj is just too damned big sometimes. That in my opinion is where Poser fails dramatically. Being utterly incapable of reading grouping information from 3ds and other formats. I would have a hell of a lot more fun with 3DS models (smaller) as figures and we'd have a huge amount more variation in available characters because those from other applications could have been incorporated (by those who can afford them) possibly driving the development of the millenium folk further through that larger competition field. Studio obviously does and will support obj as a geometry reference, I /really/ don't mind if it branches out to other things, I have a huge amount of vehicles, characters and other things that I can't use in Poser because of the pain in converting the damn things.

hmm, I don't have any problems using 3ds files in Poser? But then I don't use Poser's importer for converting them... I use a nifty utility called 3dWin. http://www.tb-software.com/ yeah I agree in principle that a proprietary format would be better... I dont think they will be able to use LWO due to file format copyright issues. But I don't know how open a Studio format is going to be. All questions that will be answered down the road... they are rather important to me. You know what one of my Poser and Studio pet peeves are... that damned smoothing algorithm. Sometimes you want to turn it off ... lol. Carrara is so great for that... I can define in the vertex modeller if an edge is smooth or hard, I smooth the edges on organic models and I give hard edges to things like my gemstones.

Why not? Cinema4D imports lwo with grouping and texture information intact, it imports 3ds with grouping and texture information intact, C4d also imports and exports various other formats as well. It may not return the boning information but that's because it uses a different system to the other software types (for obvious reasons). So why Poser has to import the things as a solid grouped unusable object is quite beyond me. I don't have any problems using 3ds in poser, what I have a problem with is if I import a 3ds file all the texture information is lost or misinterpreted, the file is a single solid object with no animateable parts (unless I import piecemeal) and is non-functional in every aspect. I don't mean props here but characters and models that are animated in any other piece of software. I'd like to see that problem sorted in Studio or it'll just be another funky toy for a limited and bloated 3d format. I agree with you about the smoothing algorithm, it IS irritating, highly, and it would be great to be able to selectively turn it off for some parts.

well, importing a format and referencing it as external geometry are two different things... :) It may be to their advantage to have a proprietary format that is tweaked to the program. I just hope they have utilities for working with the files. I think we are in agreement on this though... thats why I use a converter that doesn't mangle the texture information. (though I rarely make anything in 3ds format, as I do my modelling in Carrara/Amapi) Would be nice if Poser didn't mangle them, but oh well.

Not really, they both need to be able to read grouping and texture information, they both need to be able to set up relationships to the file parts, so it doesn't matter if it's imported or referenced there is still the file information that has to be utilised by whatever the system is. Mind, I think we're just dotting eyes and crossing tees here. :) I've tried a variety of converters for files and most of them mangle information in some form or another, I'll take a good look at the link you provided and see if that offers better facilities than I have at the moment.

Manually reading an obj file has advantages for hand editing, and temporary watermarking or signing, but... normally this would be for editing points or materials etc. Using software like 3DExplorer or whatever it's currently called allows you to edit the material settings, part naming, and other things for several file formats. The primary advantage of an editable format like obj is bypassed by that facility. Same with the .mtl file generated by wavefront object format, it's a handy way to edit material settings seperate from the actual geometry file, again the need is bypassed by utilities like 3DExplorer. About the only advantage that obj now has over other formats is the facility to hand edit vertex and vertice, even writing your own object if you have the patience to bother these days. Unfortunately as a text form rather than binary the file size becomes hugely bloated with complex models and that's a disadvantage because of the amount of ram eaten by it (still an issue for some computers). And of course programs like Poser that choke on the refresh rate. Unfortunately not having Lightwave the facility it offers is unavailable to me, I threw my money at Maxon instead. :) Deep Exploration, that's what it's called now, and it looks like it's been improved considerably... damn my bank account has suffered enough lately... sigh

LOL. Be nice if Maxon made it easier, Mocca is a very daunting plugin and while it's powerful as all hell, the learning curve is so steep it's an overhang.

"But since I've already made a $2000 plus deal on a DS ALPHA render- I've already made ALL my money back! I make MONEY because I DO STUFF, not WHINE ABOUT STUFF. Go over to the Poser forum if you like to whine about stuff." Wow, that is about the most condescending thing I have seen in a while. I am glad for yout hat you made some cash with the D|S render... more power to you and a bright future. But don't assume that this means everyoen who doesn't like your favorite tool are whiners. D|S studio is cute, and I am sure it will grow up to be a useful application - but there isn't a thing it does right now that can't be done in Poser 5. The OpenGL preview renders are nice - but I know none of my clients would be happy with them. In its raw form 3Delight is certainly capable of going toe to toe with Firefly... but at the moment at least for my purposes I need more support than the alpha version od D|S is goign to give me aroudn the renderer. I like Daz, I hope D|S works out well... but to imply that anyoen who doesn't think it kicks as is a whiner who never "does anything" is short sighted.

Questor- Other than Mocca, is C4D's base set up pretty primo for just modeling and rendering, etc? And is it set up to import PZ3's yet? I ask because I'm looking at picking up 8.5 (or possibly 8.5 XL) with my tax check, but I'm doubting something fierce I would need any animation set ups, since I mostly do stills. AF

Most of the interesting render features for C4D are in the "Advanced Render" module which unfortunately is not included in the base 8.5 package.

Cool. I was thinking about picking up singular modules along with it, rather than the whole XL package, which might cost a bit more, but is still worth it. So the render extras will be on the list. I do know I don't need the full studio, because of the animation extras, and I may not even need the Dynamics. But the poser import is likely the most important thing to me. I mucked around with Bryce beforehand using OBJ export, and with subdivided materials, you might as well just bash your head into a brick wall.

Argoforg C4d is set up primarily as a modeller, it does come with an excellent built in render engine but as Stewer mentions, the "real" power is in the Advanced Render module. You can get a lot more information from the Maxon website regarding the additional features added on by the module. Thus far I bought the base pack and Advanced Render on release, followed by Shave and Haircut, Mocca, Thinking Particles and Pyrocluster as module expansions just before christmas, next purchase will be the Dynamics module. Having said that, my next purchase might have to be the 8.5 upgrade, they've done some interesting things to the material dialogues and interface that look like fun to play with and the new sub-surface scattering for character models looks like glorious fun. If you have a penchant for outdoor scenes you might want to consider X-Frog for trees and plants and the Ozone plugin for skies. Cinema has it's own terrain generator so unless you have terragen you shouldn't need much of anything there. PZ3 import doesn't exist (as such) for Cinema 8 or 8.5. The plugin (somewhat broken) from CL is for the version 7 release IIRC, but there is a workaround to make it function in 8. There is however an excellent import utility (free) that actually works from Amazones - I have the url somewhere if you ever need it). I highly recommend this plugin for use with Cinema 8 as it works properly with poser objects, mat files and other things. Other than that I could go on for hours singing the praises of Cinema, I love the program even if I am incapable of doing much with it yet. :)

Attached Link: http://brian.curiouslabs.com

Hi Questor, It's too bad CL didn't go into further development with the C4D plugin. I worked on the first release of the PzrForC4D Pro Pack plugin a few years back when I was still employed with CL. I wrote a tutorial a few years back with Ringo Monfort who was involved beta testing the plugin. However, I would be interested in obtaining the import utility you mentioned above. Can you also send me the URL? I just re-installed C4D v7.3 with BodyPaint. Although I prefer LW for rendering, I do like the C4D modeler and would like to revisit the rendering engine. Thanks, -DefaultGuy

You can find info on the Amazones plugin in these threads: http://forums.mec4d.com/viewtopic.php?t=215 http://forum.mazak-grafikwelt.de/viewtopic.php?t=11 cheers, Stefan

Thanks Stefan!

Stewer pretty much answered the question for you, there's also some information buried in the Cinema 4D forum on this site. The location for the version 7 (and 8) Amazones plugin is http://www.amazonescity.com/

You cant edit or make figures in daz studio but you can with poser 4 and 5. You cant edit the daz file format but you can edit the poser format with poser 4 and 5. Till daz studio isnt a very slow render only program then the makers and users of poser dont need to worry too much.

In its present state, daz studio wouldnt be a good replacement for poser 3.

1.) I'm a poser newbie. Have been for over five years. I take umbrage at the condescension of Veritas, and if there are issues with that umbrage, then please, by all means, call me out in a separate thread and I will come to do battle. Being beaten into submission by a girl might be fun, too... 2.) D|S will not replace Poser. Doing so would require the merger of DAZ and CL, with The new company formed deciding on the further development of D|S over Poser. It may do so on the computers of people whose efforts to produce work they like have been so frustrated that anything would be better. That this is a sign of their unwillingness to learn and adapt and overcome is a point for other debate. 3.) D|S will not succeed well initially if they do not effectively support 3rd party products currently int he market. This is analogous to the condition of the Poser world between Poser 3 and Poser 4, which opened up the effective market to what it is today. 4.)Poser would be doing much better if development of it had not been utterly stopped for three years. IT would also be doing a lot better if folks didn't seem to think that their options for inclusion are better than the ones CL actually did. 5.) D|S will be slammed thoroughly in the same way that Poser 5 is. For the same reason: expectations that are excessive on the part of members of the community. Neither program is 3DS Max. They are not modelling packages, they are charactr animation and presentaiton packages -- as noted earlier, the mid point between 3d clip art and full blown modelling apps. 6.) Both are entry level applications. Entry level applications are not bad. Without entry level applications, there would be no discussion at this moment. 7.) DAZ has never, ever said that D|S would be free. They said the BETA would be free. 8.)D|S will, in version 1, be better than Poser 4, and likely equivalent to Poser 5. They have a robust community, a very well known set of desires and abilities (also known as working goals), and a great team of interested folks working on it. Verion 2 and Poser 7 will decide the fates of the two programs, not Poser 6 and Version 1. 9.) Discussion of what it "will soon do" does no good to those of us who do not wish to experience the unique pleasures of alpha testing. What needs to be discussed is "what it does do". At this moment, since the bulk of my content is 3rd party or self developed, what is does do is screw up my figures. It renders them pretty nice, though. It is not odd to me that it supports most DAZ figures -- I expect it to support them without fail or issue -- but if it does not support 3rd party content, then it's value to me is none (And I was more excited about it thatn Veritas long, long ago -- an affordable option? Gee, now there's an idea!) 10.) The D|S vs Poser flames will be going for a mighty long time. Since all I want is something that lets me keep having fun, this should aid in my humor...

The reason I was disparaging about daz studio was because people have been saying already that it is better than poser but now that I have tried studio I can see that it is not. This IS only the alpha but unless there are major changes in the full version 1 it still wont be better than poser. By major changes I mean something like the set up room for `studio. Getting rid of the binary figure files or at least making an editor for them. I am sure that there are other things I have not mentioned.