Is it true that Daz Figures are bigger than Poser Figures? I need to make some special clothing, but I don't know if I should make them for Daz Michael or David etc. or Posers James. I also noticed Poser 6 comes with Daz's Michael . Some of the props I need are already made for the Daz figures so should I let this be my determining factor? What are the Pros and Cons?

Depends upon your definition of big.

As I recall, Michael and Victoria are (by default) a few inches taller than the P4 figures. Haven't compared them, height-wise, to the P5/P6 figures yet.

Conforming clothes must be modeled and rigged to fit a specific figure. There are a few clothing-conversion utilities out there which show increasing promise, but a given clothing item will properly work with only the figure for which it is designed or converted.

Dynamic clothes have a bit more leeway due to the nature of cloth simulation, but even they will need to fit around a figure in its default pose, with no intersections of meshes.

I expect that in the future, one size will truly fit all, but that day isn't quite here yet.

DAZ's Michael is not included in Poser 6. Or any other version of Poser, for that matter. He has to be purchased or downloaded separately. RunTime DNA's Laroo, however, is included in P6, and many think that James has a certain rugged handsomeness lacking in earlier Poser males.

Message edited on: 05/19/2005 19:01

I believe that having a diverse figure library has its advantages. In the general population, people have very different looks and builds. I personally enjoy the challenge of taking figures from different creators and trying to make them look as though they belong in the same scene. The bases of Michael 3, Aiko 3, and Victoria 3 are free at DAZ, but you will need to buy the morph packs. There are the free Quinlor monsters, x2000 aliens, and Sixus1 figures available at poserfreebies.com and projecthuman.sixus1.com. Ayume is free from poserclub.jp. Blacksmith3D has an orc. Maya Doll is available for free at studio maya. There are some freebie characters in the free stuff at RDNA and here as well. A few days ago, Neftis was giving away a lo-res version of Elle. And speaking of Little Dragon, he has furrette in the free stuff here...

I perfer to work with Daz figures, Posers' native figures are a little "off" looking to me. Poser comes with no facial hair for male figures, and the older Poser figures did not morph well into over weight people. I also find that Daz hair, in general, is more natural and realistic looking, though some of the newer hair peices generated in the hair room do look quite nice if they are longer styles. I felt it strangely ironic, that Poser 5 had on it's box cover, images of not their own native people, but Daz's Micheal and Victoria. Some people have come out with some nice add ons for the Poser male and females over the years which can be purchased at affordable prices here. I particularly like Arduino's characters, he had a particularly good looking male figure named Claudio a few years ago. Oh course Micheal and Victoria do come with price tags, the newerst base figures are free, but they are very plastic and unnatural looking as is. If you go for Daz you have to buy texture map, hair, clothtes, etc. The Platinum Club is probably the best way to go if you need to buy a lot of stuff.

some girls are bigger than others
-The Smiths..;) Considering the ubiquitous Mike and Vickie (the 3rd generation), you couldn't go wrong making clothes for them..

... which raises the issue that if you want to do anything with them, you have to bring some creativity to the table instead of just approaching Poser as a sort of Chinese menu and take one thing from Column A and one from Column B. Folks used to bitch and whine about how awful the P4 dork was, yet I was able to get some pretty amazing results out of that mesh just by working with it a little: morphing the face into a better, more personalized look; painting a texture that gave it a realistic skin tone; understanding the limitations of the mesh before posing it. In theory, that's why we have this proggie, folks: so we can explore.

The image above is the P4 guy. Not Michael. Not David. The dork. The underappreciated, maligned dork. There was (and still is) enormous potential in this mesh that no one bothered to check out in their rush for the DAZ characters, just as the P5 base meshes had theirs as well. Folks are starting to see that Jessi and James arent as terrible as they might have feared, and considering they come with the program, which means everyone has them, if you trot out a piece of clothing that will inspire their use, folks will use them.

But I guess Ive never understood the reluctance of users to really go in and play with this program. We want everything handed to us: textures, morphs, props, the whole shot, instead of looking at something and saying, "Hmm. I wonder if it's possible to make that from primitives." As much as everyone says no, sometimes it really does feel like we should have a "make art" button installed somewhere on the interface.

Just my 0.02. YMMV.

Message edited on: 05/20/2005 06:49

I also noticed Poser 6 comes with Daz's Michael No it doesn't...... It all depends on your likes and dislikes and kind of projects. I've finished 3 full comics with Poser now. The first one features Don as main character, the second one features Mike as main character and the third one features James as main character. They all look great, but I think I do prefer James, he looks a lot better then the other 2 do. But most of the time I use a mixture of characters, that works the best.

Awww, cmon Sean, there really isnt anything meaningfull one can do with those old ugly P4 meshes, is there ? ;-)

Great DORK render ! :-)

stahlratte

You all raise good points, and I think the best Micheal and Victoria scenes are created by people who change them to look like other people. I like to work with heavier male models in my scenes, I couldn't get the Dork to look the way I wanted him for those things. The bottom line is that customization is the key to creating unique works of art in Poser.

Naaaa... You can't make Dork look real! Just ask Ralph!