For a long time i'm using Poser....at first it was destined to animation but i realized i was running before knowing to walk, so i started rendering still images, learned a little of textures and stuff like that. NOW i want to get back to animation. I have Poser 6, but i heard of another software called ANIMATION : MASTER and read a little about it and .....now i'm confused. Wich one is more easy to animate and create a more professional rendering movie?

There are a few programs that can do what Poser can do, such as Animation Master and Project Messiah. The difference is that those programs cost a lot more, and also that the content is not pre-made as it is with Poser. For instance, you may have a character and you want to do a scene where the character drinks coffee. In Poser you can get free tables, chairs, coffee cups, etc, in those other programs you would have to model them yourself or convert them from other programs (like Poser or 3D Max). Some of those programs are easier than Poser, Project Messiah is a dream to use, but for it's price, availability of content, and ready made poses, BVH and motion files, Poser is by far your best bet for ease of use. Poser 6 is theoretically able to render proffesional movie quality, but the lack of render farming means you are looking at very long rendering times. My solution is to use Poser for basic animation and setups, and to do the final lighting and animation and rendering in Vue.

My last project was done with animation in Poser rendering in Vue. Im currently working on getting just the Poser camera imported into Vue. That way I can have backgrounds that are in sync with the Poser camera when rendering in Poser. Poser, Vue does work fine. I also have Mimic. You are never going to get any paying jobs with this knowledge but for the money, it is really hard to beat. Dale

"You are never going to get any paying jobs with this knowledge" I got a paying job with my first poser animation. The knowledge you get in Poser applies to most other 3d programs. Once you know what bones and rigging and joint centres and morphs are, the knowledge is applicable in all 3D programs.

i am in a similar boat: got interested in Poser originally because i saw an animation someone had done and i wanted to be able to do it too, but then discovered i needed to learn more about walking before running. but anyway, i can set up animations in Poser well enough, but it takes YEARS to render anything with more than a couple figures or the simplest of textures. so i'm intrigued by this thread. are you saying that you can export the Poser animation scene into Vue and then render FASTER in Vue? i've never touched Vue. how fast is it? is it difficult to learn to use for this purpose? can you also export the Poser figures to Vue and then set up the animations in Vue to begin with? thanks!

Vue can import Poser static files without a problem. With older versions of Vue you had to buy an add on plug-in that enabled animations, but the new versions have it included. Vue Infinite, the latest version, will import EVERYTHING in your Poser animation, including dynamic cloth and hair, textures and motions. BUT... It cannot import procedural textures, such as shader nodes, but it has it's own very powerful material room to make your own procedural textures. It does not import the Poser lights either, but it has a magnificent light system that is much easier to use than Posers lights, and has four types of light (spotlight, pointlight, etc), and it has HDRI, Global Illumination and Radiosity. It also does not import the cameras, but the Vue cameras, once again, are easier to set up than the Poser ones. You can animate some things in Vue, like cars, planes, boats, etc, or loop Poser animations, like the walk cycles, but your main animation work, like character movement, will still be done in Poser. Vue renders much much faster than Poser, and supports render farms. I render about 8 seconds of cinema quality footage a day in Vue (about 8 to 20 hours rendering time), Poser takes 8 (yes, eight) days to render the same thing at the same quality. Go to this site, and look at the Vue demo reel, and you will see a few thousand Poser models marching around, and see the Poser eagle flying, etc. Be prepared to be amazed: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Products/vue5infinite/

As a general rule mastering Poser will not open doors in the job market. Poser, Blender, and a few other programs give more bang for the dollar then most high end programs. But high end programs such as Maya, Lightwave, 3D max is what the studios use. Very few studios are going to take the time for an experience Poser user to learn on one of their high end programs. But some are willing to let someone who has only experience with one high end program to learn another, if their work is good enough. Go figure? Dollar for dollar, the best setup for one person to do animation is Mimic, Poser, Vue. Mimic will save hundreds of hours alone. As said Helgard, Poser is where you do the setup for the People and the objects that they come in contact. Vue is the environment. If I was to do a scene where a man looks up at an airplane shouting. The voice would be recorded and I would use Mimic for the lip-syncing. That file then is imported to Poser where I add the man and all his movements. Vue where the airplane is added. Then rendered. To add a gun to the man its done in Poser. If he is near a brick wall it is done in Vue. If he touches the wall, the wall gets done in Poser. If your really poor and cant afford much. Here is my must buy list. Mimic Poser 5 Vue dEsprit 4 with mover5 One good computer (2 GHz), three slower (800 MHz or better), one four port KVM switch and one hub. (Why a hub over a switch? people are giving them away and they way Im going things it doesnt matter.) This setup will allow you to crank out 15 to 20 seconds a day if you are using all of them. My current hardware setup is 11 coumputers. Two fast ones (2.2 GHz), and nine slower ones (866 MHz) 3 kvm switchs, a 16 port hub and four monitors. Simply overkill. Only one has Mimic on it. They all have Poser and Vue. The environments and even the people dont change that much. One example is where I had two people talking in a school room. Once the room is made, that set will be used for 10 to 100 shots. The same is true for the people, if they are sitting at table in the school room the Poser file that Im starting with doesnt change that much. Fact is I will use the back end of a PZ3 file to start the next shot. Once imported into Vue I render to screen. One computer; one shot. Not across the network. It might take 20 hours to do what the faster ones do in four. But I dont care; I always seem to have a free computer or two. Each program does something better. Poser renders higher quality skin to tones, Vue does environment (Sky, water, buildings ect.) ok. Dale

"As a general rule mastering Poser will not open doors in the job market." What opens doors in the job market is not your degree, your 3D certificates or the cost of your program. What opens doors is showing that you have a talent. That you can innovate and come up with ideas and solutions. The man who was in charge of animation on Monsters Inc. got the job because he made a little internet clip of a one eyed creature singing "I will survive" and then getting crushed by a disco mirror ball. The people who hired him didn't care if that was done in Poser, Maya or Lightwave, they cared that he knew how to animate, how to give expression and to get the punchline working. Do you think that the people who saw "Fifty Percent Grey" (Oscar nominated) or "Ryan" (Oscar winner) care what program it was done with? It is the end result that counts, not the tools. If you want a job texturing Shreks toes, then learn Maya. The odds of you getting to actually animate Shrek because you know Maya are NIL. But make a great animation, have a brilliant show reel, and then doors will open. And if you push Poser to the limit and make people think you did it in Maya, when they do find out you achieved the result in Poser, they will want to see what you could achieve in a high end program.

Many thanks for all the detailed information about these programs and how best to use them. I did look at the Vue 5 Infinite demo reel and WAS amazed. But then I looked at the price tag and was amazed in a different way. (I guess I really am poor.) But I see that the Vue 5 Pro Studio (which includes the Mover and some other modules) can be had for $320, which isn't that much more than buying Vue 4 and Mover 5 separately, but is about half what Infinite costs. I already have Poser 5 and an older version of Mimic. So would this be the way to go? What do you get in Infinite for another $300 that isn't in the 5 Pro Studio, and would a Vue newbie (who has no aspirations of trying to get a job with this hobby) really miss the extra features in Infinite enough to justify the extra expense? Thanks again for the advice! All very helpful.

I couldnt agree with you more pushed to the limits you cant tell the difference between Poser and Maya. But do a search Poser jobs then Maya jobs. The results speak for them selves. As far as getting a job doing animation for someone else, I dont care. I dont have a need to make an outstanding demo reel where I have spent over an hour or more on each frame. The problem with Poser is that one can make a very mediocre reel and send it out. For the person who is sending it to studios, it looks like the best they ever seen; to the poor slob that has to look at hundreds of demo reels looking for that one person that is simply amazing, they see anything that even looks like it was done in Poser and they pull the tape and go to the next. (I cant prove this, but it my strong suspicion) Dale

If you have a reliable connection you can down load Vue and Mover for 168 dollars. That will get you started. I do know that feeling of not having the money for all the toys I want. I have a yard full of things that are waiting for me to spend money on them. Im trying my hardest to get out of credit card dept. I got 2000 dollars back from income tax and it went to paying off the credit card. My up grade to Infinite is on hold until next year. The big down side to Vue dEsprit is it will not import dynamic hair. It will for one frame but it will crash on an animation import. The pulse is; it will run on a slower computer. Dale

i had vue 4 and didn't realize that the new version has the plug in already. That is a very cool news....Vue Infinite HERE I COMEEEEEE!!!

This Vue d'Esprit/Mover combo seems like the way to go, for my purposes and budget. Maybe when my ship comes in, I'll move up the ladder. Thanks for the thoughts.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=2256780

Well, since noone here really even mentioned Animation:Master, I'll stick my two cents in: Animation:Master Costs $299. Poser costs $249. Animation:Master costs $99 to upgrade, whether you upgrade next year, or ten years from now. It's true, you will have to learn to model, and not rely on other people's work to create your own animations if you decide to use animation: Master.If you were hoping to just buy a whole bunch of models online and slap them together into an animation, then, maybe A:M isn't for you. But if you're the type of creative person who's not afraid of making everything yourself anyway, then you'd love it. A:M doesn't use polygons, so it won't import anything mode than a static prop from a polygon program. A:M uses splines. If you can draw or sculpt, you can use splines. You need much less splines to create a model in A:M than you would need polygons to create the same model in a poly program. This saves a lot of time when making morph targets. A:M has CP weighting, smart skinning, muscle mode, dynamics, particles, spriticles, volumetrics, and a host of other features that Poser doesn't. Have you ever tried to get a character to pick up an object, carry it somewhere, and then put it down, all in the same shot in Poser? You can't do it. You can't switch parents mid animation in poser. How about animating a character swinging a sword with both hands, or a baseball bat? Try parenting a poser figure's feet to a ball, so you can make them balance on it. How about making a bicep bulge when the elbow bends, or a skirt that extends below the knees? (sure, you can do it in poser, but WITHOUT having to hack into a cr2? nope) All very easy to do with A:M. Setting up and animating a character in A:M is ten times easier than it would be in poser, thanks to A:M's powerful constraint systems. It's tools like these that made me stop using Poser over 5 months ago, and not look back even once. In fact, A:M's animation features are more comparable to those of MAYA's Motion Builder than those of Poser, in terms of power and ease of use. Will A:M get you anywhere? well, one user is now working at Pixar, and animated several shots in "The Incredibles". His name is even mentioned several times in the dommentary. (Victor Navone). Another worked on BlueSky's "Robots" (Raf Anzovin). Both STILL use A:M for their own projects, and are active members of the A:M community. A:M is also attracting a lot of professional Stop-Motion animators lately. Animators who've worked on such titles as "Corpse Bride" "Nightmare Before Christmas" "James and the Giant Peach", and even "Bob the Builder". If you'd like to see some examples of what's been done with A:M, I'd suggest looking here: http://amfilms.hash.com/ And Here: http://www.hash.com/stills/

The little alien was animated by Victor Navone in Hash Animation Master. I heard that Pixar actually searched him out after seeing his "Alien Song" animation. Hello... I'm sure he didn't get the job because he knew Animation Master. :) ________________________________________________________ "Have you ever tried to get a character to pick up an object, carry it somewhere, and then put it down, all in the same shot in Poser? You can't do it". Yes you can... -------------- "How about animating a character swinging a sword with both hands, or a baseball bat"? You can do this too... ---------------------- "Try parenting a poser figure's feet to a ball, so you can make them balance on it". Uh... You can do this too. -------------------------- You can't animate parenting like in Hash or Max (or insert hi end app). But you can do it. There are tricks to getting around this. It isn't a straight ahead point and click approach but it is do-able. ________________________________________________________ Helgard is right BTW: The studios are not looking at what app you animate with (since this is an animation forum). What they care about is good animation. You can learn the application they use. BTW Many of the big studios use proprietary software. You would need to learn it anyway. It may be a differant story when you get into differant aspects of the program such as UV mapping, scripting and writing shaders but I don't know for sure. CHeers, Joe

"You can't animate parenting like in Hash or Max (or insert hi end app). But you can do it. There are tricks to getting around this. It isn't a straight ahead point and click approach but it is do-able." Sure. You can waste time with workarounds, that'll take twice as long to do, and do the job half as well.....Or you can actually HAVE the tools you need to get the job done. And yes, both you and helgard are right. If the result is good, it doesn't matter what tool you used to do it. But even if you could cut down a tree with a butterknife, wouldn't you rather use a chainsaw? But A:M doesn't stop with just killer, high-end animation tools. It was designed to be one-stop shopping for all your 3d needs. It was created so that one person, with one computer, and ONE program could create an animated film. Now here's the other thing, Price. Poser IS $50 cheaper than A:M. But take this into account: A:M has modeling tools built in. So you don't have to shell out for another program to model. A:M has Lip-synching built right in, so you don't have to shell out another $300 for mimic. A:M has sprite-based particles, on par with Particle Illusion, a $400 app. (Except A:M's particles will actually interact with the scene in real 3D!) Plus all of the other stuff I mentioned before, and all for just $50 more than Poser. (Unless you happen to buy A:M at a trade show, where it only costs $199.) "PS. Poser 6 has more features, and is more powerful than the program that made the dragon in Dragonheart, or the program used for the first Jurrasic Park." Really? So Poser 6 can do those really cool liquid effects from Terminator 2? Because T2 and Jurassic Park(1, 2, and 3) And DragonHeart 1 and 2, and MIB 1 and 2, AND the CG effects in ALL 6 episodes of Star Wars, used the same software, a combination of SoftImage, Caricature(ILM's in-house software), RenderMan, and Alias (It wasn't Maya yet, was it?)

Before you misunderstand me, I am not critisizing Animation Master. I do think it is an incredible program, just like I think ZBrush, Project Messiah and Vue are all incredible programs for their price. Poser is was originally meant to be an artists posing tool, where-as Animation Master was meant to be an animation program. The users of Poser have driven Poser towards more animation features, and the ready made content for Poser is the one major advantage. >>It was created so that one person, with one computer, and ONE program could create an animated film. Yes, but what if you had to animate a scene with 20 people, a dog, a car and buildings. You would have to model them. And that scene comprizes 12 seconds of your ninety minute film. That is where the strength of Poser comes to the fore, setting up an animated scene with those elements made from pre-made models saves you incredible amounts of time. That is what I use Poser for. For the close up scenes I model my own characters (yes, in an outside modelling program), but for the background and incidental objects I have almost 11000 objects in my Poser library. Need a tin can, just go to the library, get one, place it and render. No modelling needed. And this saves time. And time is what I need more of. I think if Animation Master had the ready made content available that Poser has, and a user base that were not so insistant on making EVERYTHING themselves, it would gain a lot of popularity and a lot of Poser users would start using it. >>"PS. Poser 6 has more features, and is more powerful than the program that made the dragon in Dragonheart, or the program used for the first Jurrasic Park." >>Really? So Poser 6 can do those really cool liquid effects from Terminator 2? Because T2 and Jurassic Park(1, 2, and 3) And DragonHeart 1 and 2, and MIB 1 and 2, AND the CG effects in ALL 6 episodes of Star Wars, used the same software, a combination of SoftImage, Caricature(ILM's in-house software), RenderMan, and Alias (It wasn't Maya yet, was it?) No, I am not saying it can do all the effects. I am saying that it is a more powerful program. George Lucas himself, in an interview about fan films said that one person on his home computer with a ready made package has more CG power available than he had when he started Star Wars. When he made Star Wars one he didn't have all the options he wanted, hence the adding in of scenes later by digital processes. And yes, I have animated a scene similar to the scene of the melting cop in Terminator 2 with Poser. This can actually be done in any 3D program. You don't even need liquid effects to do it.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12351&Form.ShowMessage=2272800

"Maybe we can get some life into this forum and learn something instead of argueing the merits of the various programs." Here, here!

As a general rule mastering Poser will not open doors in the job market. Most studios don't care what program you know, as long as you know how to create good animation. If you watch the "making of" on the Incredibles DVD, many of the animators they recruted for the movie were 2D animators and had no clue about computer animation. After all, Pixar runs their own animation software, so why should they care whether you use Poser or Maya? If you don't know when and where to use squash and stretch in Poser, chances are you don't know in Maya either.

Pixar has their own software, most others use Maya or some others use high end program modified to meet their needs. Almost all job posting ask for skills in the programs that they are using. Show me 10 job postings that ask for knowledge of Poser, if you can, and I can show you 100's asking for high end software abilitys. Why would anyone reinvent the wheel? Poser simply does not meet the needs of most 3d animation studios. Skills in Maya, 3d max, Lightwave does. Dale

You are missing the point, or refuse to see it. "Your" point is taken and understood. Do you agree that this is not a situation of black and white? That there are gray areas? If there is no willingness to look and possibly see that there are other ways, the conversation is over. It isn't a question of who is right or who is wrong. Any of us planting our heals in the dirt and digging in just turns into a waste of time for all parties. Cheers, Joe

dueyftw, Yes, I do agree with you 100% that having skills in Poser is not what is required by animation studios. But what are animation studios looking for when they hire someone who knows 3D MAX? They are looking for a modeller to model the wheels of the cart Shrek rides in. When they require Maya, they are looking for an animator. But the job you get applying for those adds will be to animate Shreks' eyelash in scene 17, frame 2007 to 2340. Is that what you want to do? To give an allegory (I hope that's the right word, lol): If you have a degree in Web Design, you may get a job at a Web Design company running maintanance on a big website. But program a big website independantly, on your own, and make it succesful, you might get hired to program a big website, whether you have the qualification or not. I work with film animation companies, and they are sick of hiring people with all sorts of degrees and qualifications who can't actually do the job. So now they just search the web, and forums like this, and look for people with natural talent, and the desire to learn, and they train them themselves. As the examples above show, a lot of people get jobs because of what they can do, not what their qualification says they can do. I will give you an example of how to get a job. A friend of mine in South Africa heard that a movie was being made there called "The Ghost and The Darkness", with Val Kilmer, etc, about two lions that killed 130 people in 1900 sometime. He turned up on the set with a full latex model of a black African tribesman from that time period, complete with a stomach that could be ripped out, entrails and all. He wandered around the set the whole day, until the director eventually called him over and asked him who he was and what the model was for. He explained how the model worked, and that they could use it for scenes where the lions kill someone. He got the job doing all the latex effects for the movie. He was sixteen!!!! He has since worked on Aliens, two Disney TV films, and various other movies, TV programs etc. He didn't even finish high school, he has no qualifications, but he can DO, what is what people want to see. So the point is this: If you want a job, with long hours and low pay, study Maya. Anybody who can follow a tutorial can learn to do this. If you want a career in animation, learn to animate, and show your talent. Knowing how to animate, and knowing how to use Maya are not the same thing. Knowing how to animate is knowing how to make things look "right", no matter what software you are using. Knowing how to animate is understanding movement, and "flow", and light, and shadow, and mood, and all the things that knowing Maya doesn't guarantee you know. (Remember: South Park is modelled, animated and rendered in Maya. The success of South Park has nothing to do with their Maya skills, but with their understanding of animation. South Park could have been done in any one of a 100 programs, including hand drawn animation.)

"You are missing the point, or refuse to see it. "Your" point is taken and understood." Is it? I didn't start this thread, and the only reason I entered it in the first place was because no one at all offered any information on Animation Master, and I felt it was necessary to have at least SOME info from both sides in a thread titled,"Poser 6 Vs. Animation:Master". But the real point is this: There is NO real comparison. Maya, XSI, Lightwave, A:M, Pixar & Blue Sky's proprietary software all have very similar tools, and work in very similar ways. Poser DOES NOT have many of these tools, and the tools that it does have take a very different approach to the task than professional quality tools. Poser is very good at SOME things. For digital comics, and still work requiring realistic humans and a quick turnaround time, and the occasional info-mercial or forensic study animation (which is all the professional animation I've seen done with it), It gets the job done. But to think that experience with Poser is going to make it easier to learn professional quality software, or to imagine that a demo reel filled with stuff like this: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=2256780 is ever going to get you a job in a professional studio, is simply self delusional. My final word on the topic of Poser vs. Animation:Master: Do you want to truly Master Animation, or do you just want to remain a Poser?

Do you want to truly Master Animation, or do you just want to remain a Poser? At no point in this thread has anyone insulted Animation Master, or it's users, or said that it is not a good program. So why do you feel the need to belittle Poser users? This is an animation forum, not a software specific forum. Why are we arguing about the merits of the various programs? Why are we not discussing animation tips and tricks? This is the reason that I never post to this forum. Because no-one ever talks about animation, they talk about software. I am an animator, I use whatever program I need to get the job done. I have used Project Messiah, Vue, Poser, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, 3D MAX, Wings, Hexagon, ZBrush, Mimic (for Poser and Lightwave), Poserspeak, Flash, Swish, Comixware, Javascript, Editstudio, After Effects, Particle Illusion, Premiere, etc, and every program has a use, or else it wouldn't exist. My point is that software does not make you an animator. I have even used screen capture from a computer game to which I had applied my own textures to the model to get an effect I wanted. If you are going to discuss animation, I will be in this forum. If you are going to argue like school kids (my dad is stronger than your dad) about what program makes you cooler/richer/more employable/more masculine, etc, then I have no interest in taking part in discussions. So here's my challenge: I have done Stupid Animation Trick No 1. I have No 3 ready. Who is going to stop arguing about software, and teach me something? I challenge you. I dare you. Teach me something!!!!! Something not software specific. Something cool. Something silly. Something original. Something fun. I dare you. (PS My dad is most probably stronger than yours, anyway. Really)

That's why I'm done here.

just another quick question. (and NO it is not about which software is better) is it possible to imprort on MAX 7 the animation we create in Poser 6? Like we probably do in Vue infinite?

Attached Link: http://www.reiss-studio.com/

It's threads like this that make me glad I'm a 2D animator!

What brand pencils do you use? ;)

LOL @ stewer! Don't get me started on the Faber Castell VS Staedtler debate.....I won't be drawn on that subject!! ;-)

It's threads like these that make me glad I shovel crap out of stalls at a stockyard for a living. Although, I suppose one could fight over the type of shovel used. :)