Attached Link: http://www.turbosquid.com/HTMLClient/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/143707/Action/FullPreview

Hi all, I just stopped by this site. It seems to have quite a cross-section of human and other models, both for Poser and other more generic 3D applications. It seems to have some unique "once-off" characters (link to example - "Cornelius") as well as the standard Vic, Mike, Posette, Dork characters etc. I've got a few questions arising out of my visit to TurboSquid : (1) Do characters like this one have potential (if say I wanted to create morph targets, textures etc.) ? ... has anyone else used these "non-standard" Poser characters ? (2) What does it mean (e.g. in the example of Cornelius) when it says "Jointed : no" ? (3) Is it possible to make other format characters (e.g. *.dxf, *.lwo etc) posable ? (4) Is TurboSquid good to do business with (....and why are some of their models so horrendously expensive ?) regards, Andrew

I just wish I had the money for Turbosquid..;)

(1) The potential is there but it is mucho worko. Even bringing a simple Poser figure geometry into another 3D program and redoing the morphs and bones (joints) is a monumental task. How many months or years do you have to invest? (2) It means that it has no bones - it's only a mesh; or in Poser terms - it's a prop not a figure and cannot be posed as is. (3) Yes, but it is work. You must group each 'body part' (head, neck, chest, forearm, hip, left foot,...) if not done already and set up the bend/twist/joint parameters for each joint (shoulder, elbow, wrist, etc.) between them properly. This doesn't even consider morphs. If you are intent on doing this, I would read the Poser manual as well as getting a copy of "Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5". (4) Not particularly and the reason is the "horrendously expensive" prices that they inflict on the sellers. Most of the good Poser stuff there can be had here or elsewhere (PoserPros, RuntimeDNA, PoserWorld, PhilC, Daz3D). From what I've heard, the seller chooses a price, but if sales are not up to "snuff", TurboSquid makes a more "appealing" (read: horrendously expensive) price fix to the item. My advice: If you want to completely hate 3D CG in no time flat, try taking a human figure geometry and turning it into a posable, morphed figure for Poser as a first project. ;) Best to start simply and work up to understanding the complexities and caveats than to experience them all at once in a bump-rush effort to do the impractical. Might I add that Cornelius doesn't have much potential. Already clothed means that that's it. No choices in creating custom clothing. Already has hair so no choices in hair styles. No mention if a proper UV mapping has been done. For $70 you can get the Michael 2.0 CD from Daz3D, which comes with ALL of this: * Michael 2.0 * Michael 2.0 Texture Maps (standard res) * Morphing Flat Top * Michael Clothing Pak 1 * Michael Morphing Clothing Pak for Clothing Paks 1 and 2 Or get Michael 2.0 figure which has all of these already built-in for $32: # Michael 1 .Obj # Brand New .Cr2 with Michael 1 Morphs # Plus Hundreds of All New Morphs * 105 Full Body Morphs * 243 Partial Body Morphs * 230 Head and Facial Structure/Expression Morphs # .Cr2 and.Obj Files Modified to Fit Michael to the P4 Man Proportions # Endless Morph Combination Possibilities For Differing * Physique * Age * Weight * Height * Ethnicity * Characters # Compatible with Accessories, Textures, and Morphs for Michael 1.0 # Compatible with Accessories made for the P4 Male # Genitalia Option Compare features to price and it is obvious which is the better choice. Kuroyume

Forget TurboSquid. My advice: 1. Surrender to the inevitable: purchase Michael and Victoria from DAZ (either version 2 or 3, depending on your budget). 2. Get a PoserWorld subscription. Lots of cool clothes, at one flat rate. 3. Save up your money, and look at all the stuff at various sites. Once you've got a long list of items you want, go see if enough of them are available as DAZ Platinum Club items, or if there are similar items that are satisfactory. If so, buy a one month subscription, and go crazy buying $2 items. 4. Find merchants you like. Most sites have some way to see all the works by a given merchant. Look each month to see if any of your favorite merchants are having a sale. 5. Check out PoserPros. Many good items at $2.50, with no membership fee. 6. Save up your money again. NOW it makes sense to buy some more expensive items :-)

I have no complains about buying in TurboSquid, but it depends of what you need as a buyer.

The first item I bought there was the Kain character for Michael and I think it was pretty cool.

Since then I have bought many things there, but all of them were job-related (I recovered the investment).

But you have to be careful: Some time ago they were selling a wall (6 polys) in about 5-10 dlls.

And a guy was selling an item and I bought it just to find out it was a fraud. They were very kind and returned the money and contacted the original creators in order to get me a discount. But I was very nervous for a couple of days.

There are some things you can't find anywhere else. But the same can be said about Renderosity, Daz, Poserworld, etc. It depends of your needings.

That's my opinion as a consumer.

PS Rigging a character is hell.

segart--"I have no complains about buying in TurboSquid, but it depends of what you need as a buyer." Indeed. In re-reading my post, I shouldn't have been so dismissive of TurboSquid. I meant, based on my sense of the original poster, I felt he would be unhappy with most items at TurboSquid -- not experienced enough yet to judge whether they are a good "fit" to Poser or not. Better to start with web sites that have strong collections of Poser-specific stuff, at low prices.

I agree with you totally. It's like sending him to the sharks, hehe. Very sensitive of your part. I didn't think about the link he provided and other info. A better guidence was in order.

I bought a colt 45 (actually from IW43d) before I had discovered IW43d. It was 40 dollars which must have been just about the cheapist model for turbosquid that you can get. When I had problems with it, turbo wasn't much help at all, but then I found IW43d and they fixed everything. Most (maybe everything) stuff at turbo squid is out of my pricerange. Love esther

All. Thank you for your response. I think I've given the wrong impression. I already have Mike and Vic, and - wonderful as they are - found it difficult to get away from the Mike and Victoria look no matter what combinations of morphs that you use. (I have found it easier to get character variations with M1/2 and V1/2, than M3 and V3 - but I have not had roaring success). Same goes - to a slightly lesser extent - for Dork, Posette, Don, Judy, Dina V and Maya Doll. Because of this (my fussiness to get a wide variation of characters), I like to think a bit outside the square and look for characters that are "totally different", or for alternative techniques to disguise the above. I have a small gallery here at R'osity - none of the images deserve an "excellent" rating, but hopefully you can see that I have tried to strive for a lot of variability. Hence this question. regards, Andrew

Hi Andrew, yes I agree it's always refreshing to have a completely new character. No work for a start to make them look different. But as for V3, have you tried messing around with XYZ axes, particularly of the head, to get a different look? You just have to remember to make the hair the same way. Love esther

Hi Esther, Do you mean xScale, yScale and zScale ? ... I've done a little experiment, I tweaked a few head morphs and then changed the xScale down to 93% - lost the "Lauren Hutton" look, and ended up with V3's stern cousin Hanna !! You are right, it does make a difference. I never thought of this before :) cheers, Andrew

Yes, that's exactly what I meant! Love esther ps I hope you've got all the morph injections too for facial expressions etc. You know, eyes bigger, irises bigger, eyes wider apart etc.

yes I have all of the head morphs. I tried this with M2, but didn't really have the same level of success. Do you think this works particularly well with V3 ?

V3 is the only one I tried it with. Love esther

Attached Link: http://www.3-AXIS.com

I am using MAX exclusively right now for the work I'm doing. I still use Poser on a daily basis and bring the models into MAX through the plugin from Reiss Studio. You just can't get the models for MAX at a decent price like you can for Poser. I have bought a few models from TSquid that I couldn't find for Poser. I always go to Poser first. I always have and always will be of the opinion that anyone using MAX should have Poser and the plugin to AT LEAST have access to the great models. Some MAX (and other 3D app) users snub there nose up at Poser. I don't get it! I just think... whatever dude. You lose. Some don't know what they don't know. Yuh know? :) Cheers, Joe

(2) It means that it has no bones - it's only a mesh; or in Poser terms - it's a prop not a figure and cannot be posed as is Actually, it means that the figure is a smooth, continuous mesh, and not broken at the joints like a mannequin. The Cacheforce Poser figures are posable.

Have you downloaded the free human figures from Sixus1.com? They have a very different look from DAZ's. Also, I bought the M3 head sculpture pack from DAZ, and I'm pretty happy with it. You get a new M3 figure with an extra 250 channels, for new head morphs. The only drawback is that you only get the one figure. I wish you got two, one regular M3, one the M2 to M3, so you could use M2's clothing. But still, it's a pretty cool product. Easier than using magnets. :-)

I agree with Randym77! You might Try sixus1.com's Adam and Behemoth & Lilith charactors to increase your character varioations. They are, or were when I got them, all totally FREE characters!

Ah, Little_Dragon. I figured, no joints, no posable bones. That should be stated somewhere if it is indeed posable in Poser. :) It can get confusing as .obj files can be one continuous mesh, one continuous mesh divided into groups (I do this rather than withstand the use of Poser grouping tools - which do the same thing), or separate object groups with unique vertices. Some programs treat the .obj groups as 'sections' of the single geometry, others (like C4D) as separate geometry objects. Either way, you can have the groups contiguous or discontiguous (welded points or not). Turbosquid's terminology is not very exact here ...

Randym and SteveJax - yes I also have the Sixus1 characters - but how far can you go with them, as they have limited textures and morphs ?

They've got more textures and morphs than that model you were looking at at Turbosquid. :-)

Well From what I've been told Mike 2 Clothing will work for Adam with a few tweaks. I haven't had the chance to try it yet. Also, if you get all the Morph's for Adam he can look very different and is probably as versitile as Mike in the face changing departments. As for textures, Well I haven't futzed with any yet, but if you're using Poser 5's Face room, you might be able to tweak Mike textures to fit. I dunno though as I haven't tried. You could always try making your own textures for Any of the above figures. I'm sure there is a market for Decent Male Figure textures out there as there is a huge gapping hole in the market there with everyone doing textures for the gilrs and hardly anyone doing textures for the guys.

I've played around with some of the additional face morphs for Adam. They don't seem to make a dramatic difference, and some of them - such as "eyes sunken" - make his face go lumpy like porridge, even when I dial the morph to a small value like 0.6. I'm not sure why this is the case. I'd send a screendump of this morph, but I'm sending this reply from work (naughty me). I think that the bottom line is - and this is what I am learning - that any character has potential, provided you are willing to do some work outside of the Poser environment (e.g. other 3D apps, paint programs etc.) In the case of Sixus' Adam, there is a set of blank injection morph dials to further customize him. I don't know what I would do with these, but I imagine that I would have to create morph targets outside of Poser, and then assign them to these dials (?)

Just drifting back to Turbosquid... They do have some free stuff. You have to be careful about what you can import into Poser, and about scale effects when you do. Some of the free stuff is good, some is barely adequate for background use. It may only be halfway to what you need. For instance, many material groups, but no texture maps. Have a look and try some stuff out, if you're a novice. You'll learn a bit about using Poser, at least. Some of the paid-for stuff is available elsewhere for less, possibly direct from the artist.

Wasn't Turbosquid the one that was selling a basketball for something like $900 or some such obscene price? Melanie

Andrew, since you mentioned Posette, have you tried the morphs in P4FemMagic?

Attached Link: http://www.innuendo.ev.ca/

For making your own head morphs, worth checking into Extreme Morph 3D. (I write software, don't make models, so I can't report a personal experience)

randym77--"M3 head sculpture pack from DAZ, and I'm pretty happy with it. You get a new M3 figure with an extra 250 channels, for new head morphs" Hmm. I don't see a product at Daz with that name. Are you talking about the M3 Head Morph Pak? I guess not, because that should inject into M3->M2 as easily as to M3... Whatever it is, it shouldn't be too hard to transfer the channels to M3->M2 using some utility. Once I know what you're referring to, I can take a look at the CR2 to confirm that...

"Hmm. I don't see a product at Daz with that name." I'd provide a link, but as I understand it, you're not allowed to link to product pages any more. Search the DAZ store on sculpture and it should come up.

Ok, thanks -- I see it. Bought it. Made copy of original M3->M2. In text editor, copied lines from Achilles' M3 MM, under actor head / channels: targetGeom JowelInR ... until just before targetGeom HdAfrican Loaded the modified CR2 into Poser from library. It worked! the new morph poses inject fine. (This works because the heads are identical, so morphs are compatible). - - - - - Shameless plug: And if you REALLY want M2's clothing to fit on M3's body, then buy WardrobeValet when it comes out next month. Select target figure. Select cloth. Push button. You might also be able to adapt satisfactorily using existing utilities: Clothes Converter, or The Tailor (see DAZ forum entry about using M3->M2 and M3 as "manikins" in the tailor).

I'm not very good at editing CR2s. I've tried, but it rarely works right. :-P

Hi, I've been there. Turbosquid thinks that motions of 120 frames worth $200.00!!! Does anybody here would pay $20 for my original motions for Poser? If so, I'll find a way to put them for sale. If it's a good idea, please let me know. I put in the Renderosity freestuff two of them (Celebrity Walk & Blended Natural Sexy Walk) and I have 2,500 downloads in three days. So I think they have been approved by the Renderosity Community. Those motions are not there anymore because for now I don't a Internet server to host them. Thank you all. Nevermind my poor writing. English is not my native language.

Only for a good laugh......