Annimation Master, Will it import poser figures?

yes if you export the figure as an obj file and complete;y re-rig and texture it in A.M. good luck :-)

I did not think you could Rig a Poly object in AM? I thought that AM could only animate Spline modeled objects? I did try once to import a Michael export from poser to AM using the object format - AM crashed. The same object did load into a demo version of XSI - but boy it got slow. JP

I believe your right AM is designed for using it own proprietery hash patch models so forget about poser figures in that program.

The current version of AM imports obj files just fine. The crashing problems are ancient history. However, polys and patches are truly apples and oranges for animation purposes. AM patches animate better, but it would be easier to build the model within AM. Importing an obj with the intent of rigging and animating in AM would be an ordeal. Importing an obj into AM for purposes of being a static prop is no problem.

What I have thought of doing is roughing our a character in poser, and then rendering different views as a modeling reference in AM. Poser is perfect for sketching out character ideas, and using different view renders would be more acurate than hand sketches. JP

Sounds like a good idea. I've been looking at AM myself since Eovia has raised the price on Carrara by 50%. I still have Carrara 3 but never got the Transposer plug in that lets you import Poser figures into Carrara. For now I'm using Poser 5 with Shade and Poser 4 Pro with Lightwave. Carrara is indefinetly shelved at this point. Still looking at AM as a new low cost possibility. On another note I see they have dropped the price for Vue 4 to like $69 and with their Mover plug-in you can import Poser figures. Just another combo that works.

Then Ill wait to purchase it when they come out with a poser import export plugin.... looked pretty good but really needed it for a poser tool.

" What I have thought of doing is roughing our a character in poser, and then..." Poser is excellent for making rotoscopes for use in AM. That's becomre a standard little workflow for me.

Tunesy, When you import into A:M, how much do you get. No bones or morphs, nor conversion of polygons to splines, right? But do you get a 3D or 2D figure? Could you describe the rotoscope sequence once you are in A:M? ::::: Opera :::::

If you import the model to AM you will more or less have to rebuild it anyway as the flow of the patches are essential for a functional AM model. The importer can only guess how to lay out the pathes and belive me, it will get it wrong. Also you should understand that OpenGl dont seem to handle the pathes as fast as an polygon model and as an imported polygon model will have the same number of control point in the path model as it will has vertices it will be slow to handle in AM. In my opinion AM is great for less complex characters, if you want to do humans that ar at least as good as Poser models you will run into problems because in order to get the same amont of details (muscles etc.) you will end up with more or less as many control points as you would use vertices in a polygon model and it wont be fun to handle it in AM. The Hash saying is that one control point replaces 20 vertexes( or something like that) but it is not true for a detailed model. In the end you will end up with about the same amount of cp as you would need in a cage for SubD modeling. In case you do it anyway;) Making renders in Poser and use them in AM is a nice procedure but you could also import a low res version of a Poser model. Cut it in parts and save the parts as AM models(AM vill be all to slow if you have the full figure loadedat the same time). Then load the parts as you need them and model around this '3D rootoscope'. I used that method myself for this model. http://home.worldonline.se/hellborn/female/girla1.jpg In the end I got tired of the slow handling in AM and the creases I never could get removed, so I gave up the model after almost 9 months of work. I also did another 'nut' project in AM in order to se what was possible. http://home.worldonline.se/hellborn/tiger/index.htm In order to get somthing happen at all when modeling I had to build it as in 4 parts and even so. With one of the tracks loaded. I had to wait around 3 minutes everytime I added a new control point. In the end i put it all together in a scene. Loading this scene took over 15 minutes! (At that time I was using an 1.4GHz computer) If you not is into this kind of detailed realistic models but rather want to do ,say manga looking characters I must say that the AM tools set is god value for the money. However, considering the current price (and the included tutorial DVDs) on XSI Foundation AM no longer seems as cheap as it did just a year ago. Just my 5 cents

Shade for some reasone has an AM export, go figure that one out. Don't think it imports AM models though...lol Marque

"When you import into A:M, how much do you get. No bones or morphs, nor conversion of polygons to splines, right?" You get just the 3d geometry converted to splines. It's not really worth doing for a model to be animated, as Hellborn indicated above. Importing as a prop works well, though. AM is great for rigging and texturing, but you'll have to do it from within AM. "Could you describe the rotoscope sequence once you are in A:M?" Just render a front, side and top view of your figure within Poser and import them to AM as rotoscopes. I don't care for the '3d roto' method Hellborn mentions above either, although that's subjective, of course. It sounds appealing, but in practice it just slowed me down. XSI Foundation lacks a lot of AM features. You'll have to get one of the expensive versions to have the same functionality. Check out http://amfilms.hash.com/index.php?st=8 to see examples of what people do in AM. For a one-man-show I'd some up AM's advantages with one word: speed (and, of course, the animation toolset). If you google a bit you'll find quite a few Maya pros who use AM for their personal projects. This quote is from a Maya pro: "Ultimately, different programs work differently, and it always takes time to get efficient in a new program. For most A:M users, Maya would appear exceptionally hard to use, clumsy and confusing at the first attempt. A:M is a magical program and it is well worth learning. A:M is a purer and more fully integrated design then hybrid animation programs like Maya. As with all programs tied to a solid design philosophy, you either embrace A:M and its philosophies and have a ball, or you fight the A:M design philosophies and have a miserable time."

I know they have been working and released a couple of AM to Lightwave plug-ins. I would consider these beta at best. If you could get then into Lightwave you should be able to get then into Poser from there. You can find out more information, and links to the free plug-ins, at CG Talk. I believe it was in the Lightwave forum.

As great a character animation package AM is, it just doesn't play well with other 3d packages. If you want to learn to do character animation on a budget it's a good choice though, as long as you plan to model your own stuff.

Yea. AM does not fit neatly into a 'poly pipeline'. There are some studios who use it successfully, but I guess it's pretty much the old 'Betamax/VHS' thing...

In the case that the functionality not is in XSI Foundation it's probably not in the more expensive packages either as there actually are very few things has been removed from Foundation. You will however also find stuff in XSI that you wont find in AM. AM is a greate product. My reason for leaving it was that I got into the second category in that quote. However, as the upgrades have used to be $99 from any version I'm quite sure that if I get some time over at some point I might order an upgrade just to se what's happend since last. I have allways had that kind of love and hate relationship with it;)

Love hate relationship...you got that right, same here, loved the program but could not really use it for professionnal work. Updates would often break features of the previous versions, never found it to be all that stable, but what a great toolset for the money.

Oh. I forgot to mention, Hellborn. One of the AM gurus recently posted over at cgtalk the following:

"Creasing has been solved on two counts:

1. Splines work slightly differently now. You can still use the old kind but with the new type there isn't the 'ribbing' that there used to be.

2. Porcillain has been improved so that it does a better job of keeping detail intact."

Don't know what the last version of AM was that you worked with, but for 99 bucks it might be worth a second look.

Message edited on: 11/25/2004 09:49