As I work a lot with poser (5) I was wondering wheather it was possible. Now before I start, don't tell me how difficult this is, I know it's very close to impossible, so just tell me what you think about it. Is it wearth the effort, or wouldn't you care to buy it, were someone to make it. I find it extremely dificult to make good ( photoreal ) environments for Poser ( no backdrops but real environments ) Hence I was thinking of a new terrain modeller ( not that I'm capable of making it myself )that includes an export modus to poser formats. What would it look like? I hope that most of you know what the map editors of the strategy games EMPIRE EARTH or EMPIRES DAWN OF THE MODERN WORLD look like, if not, the map editor of AGE OF EMPIRES comes pretty close. This would make it a lot easier. The thing is that you look down on a big plane from above and that by scroling your mouse, the camera takes you down to the ground, as if you realy stood on the plane. Holding down the "~" key or both mouse buttons at once and moving the mouse at the same time, you can look around. Only moving the mouse results in going forward in the direction you were looking. The rest would be the same as the map editors mentionned above. Only the texturing of the ground plane could be done in layers ( e.g. first adding a ground texture or a sand texture. Than on top of that you ad a grass texture, or actual 3D grass. Maybe you should also be able to import figures and props into the editor to see what it looks like in the terrain. Also it would be handy if you could rescale the trees and other vegetations that you could create. (It would be like selecting units and buildings that you want to add to the map in the map editor. Only here it would be vegetation ) and then rescaling them. Maybe for advanced modellers, you could include the following: model a mountain or a cliff from scratch in 3DS MAX or MAYA and add it to the list of preset terrain features so you can use it in the editor. Obviously I'm missing a couple of interresting features here, but it's only an idea of mine. If you would like to respond, please do... Peevee P.S. If you like it, don't steal my idea please...

All of what you describe can already be done in poser 5 already. Take a basic medium resolution plane of significant enough size. Using displacement and the shaders, you can effectively create any terrain you want to in much the same way as the other terrain editors on the market already do. Effective use of a simple modeller and some proper planning for material zones, and you can get some rpetty cool stuff. Combine that with something like Runtimedna.com's Microcosm set, and you can pretty much create any sort of terrain in P5 natively.

Realy, well I'll give it a try... First I have to make a proper study of the shaders thow....

To help with that -- at least, to get you started, lol -- head over to rdna P5 exploration forum. There's a bunch of folks who sorta sit there doing nuttin but playing with all this cool stuff, lol

There are a number of terrain modelers that will produce a mesh object that can be imported into Poser. Also look for the sky dome prop. This is a really big hollow sphere that can be used to produce a realistic looking sky. Poser 5 and Vue have a pretty good integration. Poser 5 for character and Vue for Landscaping. Poser figures into Vue for rendering.

Yes I know about Vue 5 but the problem is that it doesn't really work for poser files bigger than 200MB and you can't adapt the poses in vue ( just wondering now, would mover5 solve that? )