I just got this in my mail from Sims people. Look how nice those arms look. Now I know they are low res but if Poser figures get outdone by sims it might be time to give up and hang it up. :) Anyway, I found the image impressive and very similar in many ways to what we are doing in Poser. I bet Sims2 will see alot of Poser crossovers.

Yeah, the shoulders are much better, aren't they? ;)

They look very nice. I never checked the Sims and don't know much about them, maybe it is time to find out... Do you think the hair style of the central guy is postworked? It would be nice to have a similer one for Mike 2 o 3...

Yes, simpler is sometimes better. I got my start doing low-poly models for games and still have the feeling that hi-poly does not always mean better meshes. I've seen some incredible work with figures that are under 5K polys.

Oh definately. Hi res is not better. Shape is the most important, not resolution.

only thing with the Sims I get too bored playing all the time, with poser there's never a boring moment! ---Essie

These look good. I've always had the impression that the Sims were created in Poser. But this image makes me think twice. As PhoenixRising has said - the arms look good, not the typical "rag-doll" arms that you often get in Poser.

That looks like cover art....I would be very surprised if the actual characters in the game look like that.... Scarab

Attached Link: http://thesims2.ea.com/index_game.php

Here's a site with screen shots...They do look a lot better than the originals Scarab

EA is working with Alias to provide a plugin that will allow people to use Maya PLE to create content for Sims2.

Hmmm, the girl on the left has a picture of him on her shirt, but he has an image of a different girl...oh no, if she finds out... :)

Anton,I don't know,but I get the feeling that things are starting to change in the modeling world. With displacement maps and better render engines,I wonder if high poly models have much of a future? Look what the new version of ZBrush does with this... Start with a super high poly mesh,shape and detail it,then just extract a displacement map. Put that on a very low poly mesh,and they look the same. SWAMP

Attached Link: http://209.132.68.66/zbrush2/images/displacement/displacementphone.jpg

Here is a link to a larger image. Think of how these models will look with photo-real textures added.

......uhh......wow!...... S.

Yeah High res is overrated really. Anyway, no the Sms 2 figures are better. I think they are around 2500-3500 polys.

Hey Swamp yeah we are all loving Zbrush

Games do look awesome nowadays. Games like Max Payne 2, Prince of Persia the Sands of Time, Need for Speed Underground, etc. look sometimes better than by best renders. New DirectX 8-9 games use features like bump mapping, advanced pixel shaders, vertex shaders, motion blur, soft shadows, volumetric lights and so on... and the poly count is going up fast. Sometimes I stop to think, "Man, this would take ages to render in Poser", forgetting that my graphics card renders it at 30 - 90 fps.

I stopped playing the Sims after Hot Date... I felt that EA was stretching the franchise too much with Vacation, Making Magic, etc... but the Sims2 might be the game to actually get me back to the Sims... mostly because of the dna capabilities... you supposedly will be able to make, like, the guy in the center in the first pic here fall in love with the girl on the left, then they would marry, have children, and the children would have physical characteristics of both parents... now, if they really can do that on a PC game, than THAT is something to be seen. I don't know what engine they'll use for that, but just the sound of it has me trapped.

I like the sims, but I get too bored playingh it after only a few days. I have most of the games, but I don't play them anymore! ---Essie

The quality of todays real time 3d engines is what discourages me... I work on my animation then go play UT 2004 and I'm sad to say at times it looks better (on my Radeon 9800 at least) When Doom 3 comes out I might just give up :D

You all have to realize that when the rubber meets the road the displacement maps and splines become hires models on the 3d card. The only difference is at what point does the model become a 3d mesh vs displacement map data or splines. Also, not everyone has a 3d card that does displacement mapping though that phasing out fairly fast. Then the displacement has to be done as a software render. Also don't be fooled by 3d card renders. A lot of those environments are actually very low poly count. Its the difference between a 3d artist and a good 3d game artist. Anyone can slap a bizillion polygons into a scene and render. It takes talent and skill to make a scene look better with just 3000 polygons. Also material efficiency is a key part of 3d game rendering. Everytime there is a material texture change or state change, the rendering pipeline has to stop to change states. A 3d card can boast 3,000,000 polygons per second but that's with no state changes. If every one of those polygons has a seperate texture and state, that performance drops in the toilet real quick. So a scene in Need For Speed might have 20 shapes with all their textures on one texture sheet to save state changes for example. Also the use of 3d game engines to create backgrounds for poser renders isn't a bad idea. Yeah perhaps poser should be displacement map based or spline based but look at it this way, animation master was spline based 4 years ago and did all the poser users jump over and use it? No. Poser is still the fastest and most efficient way to make 3d material in a timely fashion without reinvention. It has a huge support base of props, figures, clothes etc. Try making all that in Animation Master or 3d Max. Again, if these other methods are so great then why don't you see vast amounts of 3d max and Lightwave and AM stories and comics coming out? Its like construction. Fine someone's got a fancy new way to make a truss beam or make a wall, but, if its not efficient, quick and convienent and affordable, the construction Biz isn't going to switch over. We're still using 2x4s on 16 inch centers for the last 75 years and that doesn't look like its phasing out even though we also use aluminum joists, exotic materials and exotic techniques. Now if someone came out with a cheap package that did displacement maps as the rendering engine and built up a huge, massive support base of fans like poser has then I could see the despair.

Well, low-poly work is actually simultaneously harder and easier than high-poly work. Paradox, I know, but that's how it is' I actually started doing high-poly work long before I managed to figure out decent low-poly work. Case in point, the ent above is only 1200 polygons, with a single 512 x 512 texture (I made it for the game Freedom Force..)

I own the lot, every pack, I don't so much play as just watch, and tell them to sleep every so often, great sand box stuff. That said I have all but stopped using poser, and await 2.0 (sims, halo, halflife) with baited breath. Seems to me that games are rapidly approaching poser's quality, but doing so in realime, and in full motion, with less horsepower. fairly slick. Just think what 3.0 will do... later jb

Attached Link: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=160883&whichpage=2

URL's too big for the box :) http://cgw.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=Articles&Subsection=Display&ARTICLE_ID=200690 Article on halflife 2's character animation setup and the like. "Halo 2" is using displacement maps to lower the poly count of the models while upping the apparent detial, for smoother frame rates, etc. http://halo.bungie.org/halo2updates/allupdates.html "Advent Rising" has also got some slick moves down too. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/adventrising/media.html?gcst=advrsg._devint._01.asx I don't think any game has done cloth or hair properly yet, though the HL2 characters have a full IK rig, shouldn't take long though. "Fable" ("Project Ego" as was)is looking fairly good on the character development front too. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/rpg/fable/index.html later jb