Attached Link: http://www.merzo.net

Time for a Poser debate and hopefully some consensus.

There are a few very large spaceship models that no-one has converted for Poser, and the main problem has been scale. Some things are just too big to use effectivly in Poser.

The picture shows the Powerloader and Posette in 1/1 scale, the Dropship in 1/10 scale and the Sulaco in 1/100 scale.

I think for big ships like Battlestar Galatica, Enterprise, etc. 1/100 will be the best scale to work with. Smaller might be easier, but if you want to use one of the smaller ships, like a shuttle or the dropship with the big ships they will be too small to use effectively.

If someone makes something for more close-up shots, like the Colonist Complex or the Death Star trench, then he should make that in 1/10 scale, with models released in the appropriate scale.

I am going to build the Colonist Complex in 1/10 scale (for fly-by scenes), and I will release a 1/10 scale dropship with that freebie, and with the Sulaco I will release a 1/100 scale dropship (tiny tiny, maybe with a two pixel texture map, lol). If I get the Narcisis then I will release a 1/100 of that with the Nostromo.

If someone makes the Battlestar Galactica, then they should release a 1/100 scale Viper and Ceylon fighter with that, and if someone makes one of the Star Wars capital Ships, then they should release 1/100 scale fighters and shuttles with that. That way we can make decent exterior space renders and animations. It doesn't help just scaling down the existing models, because then you sit with a polygon count of 30 000 for something that is incredibly tiny. Maybe use polygon reduction for the miniature models and take out things like cockpits and interiors.

Using 1/10 and 1/100 makes the maths much easier for everyone. 1/10 scale is just a ten percent setting on the main body scale, and 1/100 is a one percent setting.

What do you think? Does this sound reasonable? This is just my idea and I hope we can have some debate and if we all agree on the scales, then we can start making those BIIIIG spaceships available and hopefully get some nice space renders and animations going with the planet and star props available.

See the above link for some size comparisons and a good laugh. (see the scales for people and the site author)

When you say "Colonist Complex" do you mean the complex in Alien 2? I've been trying to build that in Bryce, and failing misserably, so if your making it I can't wait. Alien is something I've been wanting to make a scene of for ages and have been collecting appropriate props etc as I find them. If I had the actual base that would be perfect. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with, and BTW I think your dropship looks great. 8) Catlin

I totally agree with what you are saying. Cockpits and interiors are good to be seperate, for rendering animations seperately. I wonder tho, having found the labor involved for a simple ship is way over what the market will bear. I realize that plenty of people might sit down to do a Battlestar just out of sheer fandom, but they can't sell the darn thing when they are done. It would be wiser for recouping the losses to make one's own massive colony ship or whatever. I tried the ship market and found that there was no way to ever make one's investment back, (being that ships are not butt naked sex pots) and you really have to be in it for fun. That being said, I agree that a scale standard is a good idea. Maybe, one step further, would be a group of people working on an original ship for the Marketplace. This way the ship could be really, really cool, I do know that lots of people want really nice sci-fi props, without one person winding up looking like Gandalf the Grey when they are done!;) It is very nice of you Numanoid to do so much work for the community by the way. Keep up the good work!

If I can take a page from Moebius and Ajax from their Dystopia sets, would it be possible to build your models to original scale, then include Scaling Poses to 1/10 and 1/100 for the ships? If you look at Dystopia, there are scale poses to make the cityscape scaled to accommodate standard sized Poser figures OR to scale your POser figures down to fit in Dystopia. I think as a default, the buildings in Dystopia were about 1.5 - 2x as tall as say Vicky. Can you say attack of the 50 foot woman? Just an idea. BTW, I have to agree with caravaggio! There has been some terrific effort and sharing on these recent science fiction models. Thanks muchly!

OH, and....that Sulaco looks great! Amazing work!

Outside of some animations, does scale really matter? I mostly work in 2D images. Actual comparable sizes don't matter as much as whether everything looks good to the eyeball. When I put a Poser character in a setting with buildings in the background and render the image, a viewer has no idea whether the buildings are accurately sized to scale at the appropriate distance or whether they've been shrunk to a size and placed much closer. The only thing that counts is presenting the illusion that they're at a great distance. It's like Hollywood putting people in a physical miniature city. It was interesting looking at the different comparative scales on your site and seeing how different movie and TV ships compare in size. Take two original ship models and the only hint of their scaling will be based on details either on the models or the textures. The difference between the Star Wars death star and a bowling ball are in the recognizable detailing. Otherwise, they're both spheres.

I think the scale problem you'd run into is that if the scales are accurate, you'd either get a tiny portion of the ship with visible characters, or you'd get a ship with 'see that tan dot over there? no..over there over the intake?..;)'
What I've done is if I'm modelling a ship, I don't ordinarily worry about characters (unless it's a shuttle or something more 'yuman sized'..;), and if I'm using characters, I just model the visible part of the ship they're next to. If you're having a flyby, the 'actual' scale may not be that much of an issue, you can 'force' the mind to accept scale by using visual cues such as angle (looking up looks bigger, etc), distance from the viewpoint, putting something of 'known' size in a visible position, etc.
Since you can scale a lot of things in Poser (well, sometimes not all that easily, I wind up typing in values rather than spin, spin, spin..;) you can do what you like. They're all great models, keep 'em coming.

There are plenty of freebie large scale sci fi ships that could easily be converted to poser. I can't really think of many I haven't got sitting here on my HD already. ;) Since most large scale ships have no moving parts, it's more a matter of seeing how any image maps were applied, and if they can be applied properly in Poser. UV maps of course wouldn;t present a problem, but I know some of the trek ships use planar and cylindrical mapping. I think scale is sort of a moot point for larger items anyway, because you have a scale dial in poser anyway. Just scale it up or down as wanted for the shot. Imagine trying to find a vicky3 model, with a galactica full scale in the scene!

What about someone who wants to make a launch animation. Close up of Vicky in a Viper cockpit. Camera pulls back beyond the reflections on the canopy then races ahead of the Viper as it launches with full turbo. Viper emerges into deep space and view of the launch tube fades as Galactica fills the background (Vicky still visible in the cockpit.) Just my $0.04

Isn't that a little beyond poser? A few quick cuts would easily solve that sityation, and also create drama as well. Plus, most large scale models have no interior modeled into them at all. They are the outside shell.

Attached Link: http://www.iw43d.com

thanks for the link..

That stuff is nice, but my GAWD are they high ticket!

I've started work and a Traveller star ship (an RPG) so the idea of how to handle exterior and interior views has been on my mind. I THINK the answer depends on the size of the ship... A scout, such as I'm working on or things like Vipers,shuttle craft, etc, can reasonably be built to full scale with a full scale interior. This let's Poser figures be "posed" directly with them. Large ships like the Galactica, the Enterprise etc. need to be handled with an approach like television or the movies ( a very close analog to the way Poser renders, in stills or animation). Prepare a scaled version at 1/10 or 1/100 for exterior shots. Then model several full scale "set" rooms that are specific, like the bridge, engineering, medical, and several generic rooms that can be "dressed" for several different rolls, like breifing rooms, living quarters, etc. Add one or two exterior "sets" outside airlocks or what not, for close-ups. In either case I would like to recommend that the maker should also concider including a number of pre set camera views that can be used as a starting point for the consumers. Just my 2 cents, mike

Ok, let me elaborate on the idea.

Just using the scale dial idea is not always advisable.

Lets say for instance we have the BattleStar Galactica (which will be available for Poser soon), and you want to do an animation of 20 Viper fighters being launched. You could just scale the existing Viper down to scale, but think of the amount of polygons you would have then.

So you would need an outside shell low polygon Viper for that scene, and switch to a full sized 1/1 Poser scale for the close up shots with the pilot.

Does scale matter?

The reason we are trying to decide on a scale , is so that when ten different people are all modelling 10 different ships from Star Trek, when they are used together in a scene the user doesn't have to try and figure out how much to scale each of the ten models so that it looks realistic.

For still renders this is not so much of a problem. You want the Battlestar Galactica as a backdrop for Vicky, then render it and use that as a background picture. But what if you wanted to animate the Battlestar Galactica fighting it out with a Ceylon Deathstar, and both models where made by two different people, using different scales, do you want to search the net for scale comparisons each time and work out with the scaling tool how much to reduce/enlarge each model.

For medium distance scenes, like the Death Star trench in Star Wars, you have a different problem. The trench in the movie is 3km long. Imagine trying to model and animate on that scale, but you can't use 1/100 because you would lose too much detail on the fighters, so if the modeller made the trench in 1/10, and you just scaled your fighters and pilots down, then that would be easier. But then we would have to agree that medium scale models like the Rebel Base on Hoth, or the Trench on the Death Star, or the Colonist Complex in Aliens, are 1/10 when modelled, so that the user knows what to scale his ships, vehicles and characters to. Imagine trying to do the attack on Hoth, with AT-AT and AT-ST's, and snowspeeders, etc, on normal Poser scale. Imagine the size of the landscape prop. It would be much easier to do the scene in 1/10 scale, switching to 1/1 for close-ups of characters, cockpit interiors, etc.

The reason we should decide on scale now is that we are preparing many models for release, and many people will start doing their own conversions once we start, so we need to make sure we are all working towards the same usable goal, and not make it too hard on the user to make realistic and believable renders and animations.

Within the next six months there are going to be about 100 spaceship models for Poser, with docking bays, space stations, moons, planets, surface scenes, etc. Unless someone wants to run and maintain a website with the scale percentages for each of these ships and scenes, we should just decide on the scale now and save everyone a lot of long term frustration.

My suggestion is just that when you make a model, you include on your thumb and readme what scale you have used, so the other people know what to scale their models to if they want to use them together.

With the Sulaco I will be releasing a 1/100 scale dropship, low poly, with flight wings extended. With the colonist complex, I am releasing a 1/10 scale medium poly Dropship (with folding wings) and APC for long shots, and then if people wnat to do close up scenes, they can use the forthcoming Sci-Fi construction kit for Aliens and the normal scale models to make those scenes. If it all works, there is no reason why we can't eventually have the same for Star Wars, BattleStar Galactica, etc.

caravaggio - when I have finished the Aliens series I am going to launch an idea for a Poser Sci-Fi universe with all original ships, vehicles, characters, scenes, etc. Then people can make ships, uniforms, etc for this universe that they can sell without having to worry about copyright from movies. The Aliens project was a test run for this idea, and this idea will be launched in July with a 200 page website of schematics and pictures detailing this SciFi universe. This universe will combine many elements of all the existing SciFi universes, but is original enough to avoid copyright issues. I don't want to say too much about this now, but the website is complete and has taken me a year to do. All will be revealed in July. (cue dramatic music here, lol)

Trav, the first ship to be released for the Poser SciFi universe will be five different models. One exterior hollow shell for outside animations/renders, and four different interior models of the bridge, sleeping quarters, cargo hold, and gunner turret. The user can then use different figures for different scenes, without having to worry about the seven million polygons that he doesn't actually need for that scene. So I like your approach and idea.

I agree with rreynolds above; often one has to cheat as to scales. It's the same with buildings. If you want a skyscraper in the distance, do you really want an object 200 times bigger than a Poser figure in your scene? However, I also feel that trying to do scenes in outer space with ships and all is really stretching Poser's capabilities a bit too far. Maybe you can do it with a real effort, but it isn't the best tool for the job.

I think scale is important for things like 1-10 man vehicles, because you might want to get a shot with the character on, of in them, but once you get past the dropship size, it's all smoke and mirrors. I rendered a scene in lightwave many years ago, with a character in the foreground, and a viper/cylon battle behind them (and a Enterprise behind that). I used the full scale ships, but just scaled them WAY down for the scene, so I woldn;t have to mess with DOF and such. In real life, the enterprise was probably 10 ft long (so it would fit in the shot), and the vipers and cylon raiders were probably 2-3 feet long each. If you are going to do a long term series of animations, then relativity becomes very important. For playing around, or one of two shot deals, fakery is the way to go. While it would be possible to do something like a short film with poser5, I can't imagine how long the actual render times would end up being, and poser would definitly NOT be my choice app for it... the additional work time alone in trying to emulate what more expensive packages do would make them become actually affordable. LOL!! Plus, while it's nice to have poserable ships, I can't think of many ships that don't already exist in formats for the various 3d animation programs already. I do like your project idea, but Poser just isn't the best platform to develop it for, so I think work arounds and such are in order.

I think great this is a great idea, but I would like to point out another problem Ive found. Some people model in metric, while others model in feet and inches. Its hard to tell which unless you know the actual dimensions. If you scale a model to 1/10 that modeled in say decimeter, you will get different result than one modeled in inches.

Hey Numanoid that idea is great!!! Maybe if I get the itch for making ships again, I could contribute stuff. Are you going to just allow artists to develop their own ideas or are there going to be design guidelines? I think that Gareee is right to a point. Poser has no path oriented animation with animation assistants for ship animation like VUE does. Since VUE automatically imports poser stuff tho, maybe the hideous render times can be trounced that way. I like the idea of the ships and props being poser ready, so that we can animate in Poser when we need to and VUE when we need to. Maybe you could find somebody to do some Python scripting to add path animation to Poser so landing scenes and stuff can be done in Poser. Also I have been wishing for BVH files made to go along with the ships so that some stuff will already be animated, like getting into the ship, or out of it, or operating controls. A ready made space sphere would be cool too. With flat cirles with neat planets on them. Just some ideas....

It's a good idea to have models in different scales, though it is perhaps more useful to think in terms of the mesh complexity as well. As I've seen it described, 1 Poser-unit is 96-inches, or 100 inches if you want to simplify the arithmetic. So your 1/10 model would have 1000 inches to a Poser-unit. Or about 25 metres. Have a fiddle with the translation dials and you'll see this. Poser uses a bit of a different scale, and more decimal places, than other modelling/rendering programs, which has implications for importing and exporting.

Mmmmm, It seems to me that everyone is underestimating the abilities of Poser here. When my website goes up in June/July, you will be able to download a short film featuring 20 spaceships in an aerial dogfight, with planets and a spacestation, stars in the background, etc. The aerial dogfight was animated in Poser, and then the planets and stars were added in Vue, and rendered in Vue. The entire thing was done in 1/10 scale as a test. So why anyone thinks that Poser is not the best platform for this kind of thing is beyond me. Some of the more advanced programs have features like "explode" and motion paths, but if you look at some of the scripts available for Poser you can do many of these things in Poser. Poser has a vibration script just like Vue, it has a bank and steer script just like Vue, and a tracking script for cameras is coming soon. Remember, doing a still render and an animation are two totally different things. In a still render you can use smoke and mirrors, but in an animation things start looking very funny if your Enterpise spaceship is the same size as Vicky. The secret of doing animations is to do short clips, long shots and close ups, some in small scales and some in normal scales, and combining those in your video editor. That is the way all space films are made. There are already Poser sets available that can do Planets and stars, and doing an animation of a Star Wars Empire Star Destroyer docking with a space dock is exactly the same as doing an animation of a car parking, except that your models are scaled 10 times or 100 times smaller. PS I work with three people who are studying 3D animation at college, and they work exclusively in 3D Studio Max. They were amazed at how easy it was to animate a space dogfight scene in Poser, so why anyone thinks Poser is not the best platform for this needs to be explained.

Whether you are using Poser native units or metric units is irrelevant. The model that you place in your scene is scaled to it's real size, so when you import the above Sulaco, relative to everything else in the scene it is 1/100th scale. If you import a car model, it is still exactly the same size compared to the human characters regardless of what unit of measurement you have your Poser application set to. Yes, the Sulaco is 38.5 meters in the above picture. So changing your Poser measurements does not change it's size, it just converts that measurement to feet or Poser native units or whatever your have it set to. Seeing as the models we are making are for Poser and Vue, this doesn't have any implications for importing/exporting.

OK Numanoid. Now you have my mouth watering. I am truly impressed by the breadth and depth of your project here, not to mention your ambition. I wish you all the best in this project, and may you prove everyone wrong! }-) BTW, I agree with your math.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1701926

I maay be a little confused here. Poser, as far as I can tell, has a default scale used for the figures, where 1 unit on the translation dial seems to be 96 inches. I don't know of any Poser setting which changes this. Is there one? Numanoid's proposal seems to make sense. Whether we talk about 1/10 standard, or 25 metres to a Poser-unit, we're talking about the same thing, but when I've made physical models, it's the ratio between reality and the model which I've used, not between one scale model and another. So be careful about how you use terms like 1/10 scale. OK?

One reason is the difficulty of arranging scenes in 3D space in Poser compared to other programs. This is at least true of Poser 4, I haven't heard that Poser 5 is better in this respect. I'm not saying you can't do it, it's just relatively a pain. Poser's poor lighting is another reason.

Hey where are those python scripts for flying the ships with the banking and stuff? I've not seen them, are they on a diff. website? If so could you plop an url? (If we are allowed too, I guess...) I apologise if they are here and I have not seen them.... If these things already exist for Poser then I think you are right that Poser is a fine app for these space dramas! :) I am still think that VUE is the way to render animations tho. With the nice crossgrade price for it and mover, it's basically a must have for a Poser user. This of course means that making them for Poser is def the route to go.

There are many ways to accurately measure in Poser. In free stuff there are various rulers, callipers, etc. Dr Geep has an excellent explanation of measuring and scales in his tutorials. I use Dr Geeps method when building stuff, and I use this python script to measure large or complicated objects. It can measure in about 200 or something types of unit measurements.

Search for MeasureIt in > Poser >free stuff >Ulilities PS It is measuring from Pointer 1 to Pointer 2, the two red props.

http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/ Here are scripts for banking and steering. Soon there will be scripts for cameras to follow ships, etc. I render everything I do in Vue, but I set up most of the animations in Poser before the time, and just use Vue for the lights, cameras and neat tricks like vibration and banking. All the models work in Poser and Vue.

Attached Link: http://time.absoluteavp.com/alientech.html