I still use P4, and am very happy with that! I render in Vue also! May wait for Poser 6. :D

"The only reason that Poser 5 lacks the potential to be implemented in a production environment is its lack of network rendering capability. Even so, with the proper dedication and a skilled post-production editor, even that restriction could be worked around. ;)" I wouldn't go THAT far. LOL. Poser lacks a few other things that could make it far more usable in production... starting with multiple undos (who wants to risk a very important project to Poser when you can only undo an operation once or twice, and some things not at all?), and object instancing. I'd like to see more workflow functionality too, like the ability to duplicate or copy characters in a scene more efficiently right in the viewport. Better light control from the viewport (lights are often hard to find once placed in a scene, and that damn "light orb" control icon it has used since version 1 isn't really helpful when spotlights are involved (which is 100% of the time for me). There's lots of other things on the render-end that would assist in production too... like the ability to render elements of the scene in seperate passes (diffuse, spec, shadows, ambient, etc.) for post-production compositing and image editing/color correciton in programs like Combustion, AfterEffects, and Photoshop. It has a matte material (by Stewer) for rendering the figure with it's shadows (for compositing against photo or video backgrounds), but that's just the start of the kind control you really need in post. I think those are just a few of the features it could/should continue to improve on in future versions before someone can actually TRUST the app to do crucial, time-limited production work all on it's own. ;-) WHen you're talkin about projects where lots of money is at risk, and the timeframe is limited, I don't think I'm trusting that 100% to Poser. LOL. Not yet anyway.

"It has a matte material (by Stewer) for rendering the figure with it's shadows (for compositing against photo or video backgrounds), but that's just the start of the kind control you really need in post." Whoa whoa whoa... Where can I get this material, as I do a LOT of compositing.

maxxx - Agreed on all points in a standard work environment, and if we're talking about right now, today. Give P5 as much support as P4 has gotten in terms of community development, and there's no way to tell what things will look like tomorrow. With the addition of Shade's rendering and modeling to the Poser toolset, and with Python scripting starting to move thanks to people like Ockam, this application is only at the beginning of it's life cycle. ;) As for undo, I've been talking to a few friends of mine that work with game engines, and they think it might be possible to write an instruction shell that would allow for far more than multiple undo's. It's all just a matter of time and resources, I think. I will concede, btw, that I am known by my friends to be hopelessly optimistic (but not stupid), so please take my thoughts with a grain of salt. ;)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1710497

***"Whoa whoa whoa... Where can I get this material, as I do a LOT of compositing."*** Yep, me too. ;-) The matte material doesn't come standard with the app, it was created in the material room using nodes by Stewer some time ago, and I think you can find settings for it in the thread attached to this message. It comes in handy, although in some lighting instances, it does not work exactly as desired, and may require some tweaking on the material or lighting end if possible. But it's the closest thing Poser has to a true matte material like you can find in higher end apps. Scroll down to post #18 by Stewer in that link, and you'll see the material setup for a make-shift matte material.

Thanks... wow that's great. So simple, so elegant! Stewer is my idol. :D Seriously I've been wanting something like this since I saw Terrence walker use something similar in Lightwave, on the "Understanding Chaos" extras. Again, The Mat room is absolutely the best reason to get Poser 5.

I'm middle-aged, and often forgetful. So I finally checked the Curious Labs web site, and saw their original press release announcing Poser 5. I was shocked to see Poser 5 has been around for over 2 years. Now it's even more shocking that so many people or companies in the "Poser business" (DAZ3D for one), still refuse to really support Poser 5. I also remember how many people said they would ignore Poser 5 and look forward to the release of DAZ|Studio. It's been 2 years since DAZ|Studio was first announced, and it is still in a rough beta stage. Come on, let's get with the program.

I love Poser5. I think anyone who frequently uses P4 should give it serious consideration. While others are trying to get their Poser objects into other programs like Bryce, I'm more often trying to get objects into Poser5 from programs like nendo. I just love the interface and the material room and firefly renderer. I still don't understand why underlying objects stick through conforming clothes (couldn't the clothes be made to always render over the body based on surface orientation?!) and I do wish there were a proper omni- or area light. There are a few other hitches to get over but nevertheless P5 is a huge improvement over P4 and I recommend it to anyone already considering it.

The reason to get the poser objects in Bryce is that Bryce(or vue) is wonderfull to create naturals worlds, and poser not.

Bryce is two things. A ray-tracer renderer and a terrain generator. Both of which were unusual and cool when the product still said "Metacreations" on the box.

Expecting Poser to generate landscapes is ludicrous. Moogal: When I asked Larry three years ago why collision detection couldn't be the basis of conforming clothing, he pointed out that the original legacy P4 clothing were solid, closed objects, and I think where he was going was dropping the entire conforming clothing model (hinged bodysuits scripted to mimic parent motion) altogether. Also remember that the Macs and PCs of the P3/early P4 era would have taken ages to calculate collisions -- the algorithms were always out there, but the computing power was not ubiquitous yet.

Message edited on: 09/09/2004 18:17

Poser 5 can do most of the things that bryce can.

"...and I think where he was going was dropping the entire conforming clothing model" totally off topic, but, um, yeah. And that's still the direction it's going in.

I like the conforming clothing and anyway, what size of memory and computer speed would you need to calculate seven or eight pieces of dynamic clothing all at the same time?

You don't do them at the same time. You do your setups, then drape and run the sim on each piece of cloth and hair. And yes, it can eat up time doing so. But for animation, it is incredible. As for system resources, 512megs is useable, if slow (hits the swap file a lot); 1 gig is better, and seems to be the first sweet spot when dealing with dynamics. I've done them with and Athlon XP-1700, XP-2500+, and currently with an Athlon 64-3000+. Faster is better, but the older 1700 was able to handle the load quite well.

Dale B I was answering previous posts about conforming clothing being replaced by dynamic clothing, that would probably only work if all the clothes could be calculated at the same time.

They can all be calculated at the same time after they are made (assuming they are made dynamic -- and the therefore the base calculations are already in the cr2 -- initially) on a system that meets the basic specs for P5. That's what the "re-calculate dynamics" option in the menu is for. Conforming clothing isn't bad. It is simply an alternative. The most efficient and best overall clothing will be a combination of conforming and dynamic cloth harnessing the strengths of each.

"Poser 5 can do most of the things that bryce can." But not 10% as effectively. Try lassooing a bunch of objects, duplicating them, and dragging the duplicates in the X direction only (for example, in creating a colonnade). When it comes to setting up scenes, Poser with its "one figure must be selected at all times and only one figure" model is hopeless compared to Bryce or Vue. Poser was not INTENDED as an independent renderer until P5, and remains saddled with a system that betrays its ancestry as an adjunct to other 3D apps.

I don't see Poser like a render application and I think CL must not go this way. I think poser is a waonderfull tool to make characters and its accesories and animate them.

I agree, poser is not supposed to be a 3d editor, it actually started as a program for adding figures to other 3d programs which is why, up to version 4, the renderer is not so great. Bryce and vue use an inefficient rendering system where the screen is rendered low resolution, then a bit higher and so on, which is one of the things I don`t like about these programs.

Poser is, for better or worse, a studio app. My definition of 'studio app' is a media development tool which is not reliant on other software to produce final results. SoundForge or Photoshop or Flash MX or Dreamweaver MX would be good examples of other studio apps. Yes, they can work in concert with other applications but for their intended purpose it isn't critical. How efficiently the tools inside the application work is sadly not a valid test for evaluating whether an app is a studio app or not. Poser 1-5 retains the GUI and paradigm of Kai Krause and friends, which was as organic and non-programmatical as possible. As an efficient production tool, Poser suffers compared to the real-world composition needs answered in modeler/renderers like Vue which behave more like OOP (instancing, for example). Poser does need to reevaluate parts of the UI paradigm it inherited. But I've seen enough professional uses of its renderer and animator (USA Today, the Wal-Mart self-check kiosk) to know it has its place in production environments. Is it the best possible renderer for production purposes? No. Is it an adequate tool for producing something original without making additional investments in supporting software? Yes. It was necessary to implement shaders and collision detection to keep up with reasonable expectations, and for the price you can't complain. Something better than Phong shading should have been in 4, but 1998-era desktop boxes weren't really up to the task for results you'd see in a reasonable amount of time. Desktop computers have changed, and the resources pro grade animation requires are a lot closer to the average user's machine. It's realistic for software to keep up. Adding vector editing to Photoshop is feature-itis because it's beyond the needs the application addresses. Not to bash DAZ|Studio, but it is a poser/renderer for which you will have to purchase the animation suite and other features piecemeal. This is NOT a studio app unless you consider still renders an acceptable limit to an application WHICH ALREADY INCLUDES the mechanics of organic form animation in it and DAZ knows this.