Well, I am quite new to the Poser Community (& quite new to Poser), though I have been using Max for about 1 1/2 yrs now. I have been reading whatever threads there are in the forum(recent ones and the not do recent ones), and one thing I have found a bit not so cool is most people just tend to grab things off the Marketplace. Not that its bad or something, but whatever happened to the good old days when not so much stuff was sold and quite a lot of stuff was there for free(Including high quality stuff)...and Poser being more of a 'Hobbyist Folks' community, I think that a lot more stuff should be available for free, good quality stuff...and from the Pros in particular. I had been mostly visiting places like highend 3d, and cgtalk before I got Poser for myself. And there I found that a lot more stuff is free(A lot more stuff is sold too, but thats not the point). I have been uysing loads of quality scrips, plugins, etc which could have been charged for, but were instead given away for free. Another thing which I found strange was that sometimes when someone asks for a solution, I am not pointing any fingers, but folks tend to reply : "Ya I think there is an item in the Marketplace that should do the trick, and its just LOL $$ LOL, you should seriously consider that as an option." Not that there is something wrong sending people to the Marketplace, but why not just tell 'em, "Ok, here's how I did it. Here's my file. See if it helps. Use it if you wish." I think that most Poser users are hobbyists. They would rather want to learn whenever they are given a chance to rather than go Dload some script or some model they have to pay for. So, here's to the same spirit. I have done a small head now. And during the course of this month I will also do a low poly body for it. College Vacations. Nothing else to do. Its just coming up. Not completed yet. Here's a test render for it in Max. Will bake texture n put it up for use in Poser as soon as I learn how to make morph targets.(Don't have a clue how to. .but saw a tut in tutorials section. Ne one knows how to do it in mAx)

And the head and the body, and if I mange to make morph targets would be available for free. If not in Poser(Coz I don't know how to do it for Poser), then atleast in Max format. I will try to post the OBJ of the head and the body as soon as I tweak 'em right and they are not looking vey bad. Thanks :) ...And yes make more stuff available for free. The more you give, the more you get!

that looks great! Love esther

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Thanks for ya Tut. I will be reading it and working on it rite away. Thanks :)

ashish, good point re. requests for help with effects etc. and being directed to the Market Place. Sometimes I am looking to buy something and appreciate the point since I seem search impared in some circumstances, but probably more often I am hoping for advise on how to do something myself... I have a thread up now asking for advise on doing grease paint on a skin texture and on doing rust --I have never found any tutiorials that actualy create rust as good as some of the CGI, as opposed to sampled, rust I have seen around. For me a lot of playing with Poser is the doing. I certainly badgered geep for his "Making clothes in Poser" tutorial even though I have plenty of gorgeous $5 outfits from the MP. It seemed from the thread a LOT of people apreciated it too. But I do feel that in some strange way there was an aweful lot on inovation in the hayday of free content (Traveler and Jaager come to mind). On the other hand I am very happy to support a pioneer like Face_off by sending money his/her way. Is it a coincidence that Face_Off gives a lucid and comprehensive tutorial on making the Real Skin Shader yourself? ---------------------------- Disclosure: I put my stuff in the shop all those many years ago because I could not afford a reliable host for my at that time pretty huge P3/P4 Freebies site.

Like the face, and no disrespect here. But theres some unfair comments in your post. There are 1000's of excellent freebies here and other poser sites. A lot of people spend a lot of time and effort producing high quality freebies. Plus don't forget it does cost a lot of money to give stuff away. Reliable Hosting isn't cheap, so you'll find people becoming merchants just to cover their costs. I doubt theres many millionaires merchants here! Plus you'll find many merchants use what little income they make is used to buy other merchants products. So please take some time and look at what you get when you buy here. Some of the stuff here is amazing value and quality for money. It's much better than sites like turbosquid. all the best. Al

I agree that CL / Daz / Renderosity are way better than Turbosquid and 3d02. You might call it stupid, but a friend of mine recntly purchased Masha from 3d02 @ $189. And I must say though the figure was impressive, you get content nearly as good as Masha with Poser, for 1/10 the cost. And the stuff at Daz is also very reasonably priced. But thats not the point, Its not about don't buy anything...its about try doing it yourself if you can and tell others how to do it. Back over in the Max community, I had people helping and I don't once recall anyone suggesting a plugin product to get good results(To save time, sometimes yes)...rather everyone said "Shit, you don't need to buy a plug for that, try doing this instead"...even though most people using Max can afford to buy $500 content(If they can spend $3500 on Max, $1200 on Brazil..)and thats how you groom new users up and build a strong user community. So the next time someone asks "Hey, how did ya do that? Its better to reply I changed the Spec like this, The Trans like this...". rather than "Just dload that scrip and do it". ..And yes face_off's done a great job putting up that tut for real skin. It helped me a lot(Although I am a Procedural Skin Only guy), and for that I will always be thankful....but one must also remember, the skin tuts and the supporting files at CGtalk, Highend3D (And even the tut face_off's tut is based on) are all free. The real skin shader is ofcourse a great product for Poser and has brought never before seen realism to Poser renders.(I too own a copy :)) So the msg is, as long as its not against some damned copyright / illegal, share .pz3's as a lot of people like me probably wonder how people like face_off get 100 times as good renders using the same product, and in some cases the same base files as we noobs do! And can I mod a body and set its UVs the same as M3 / James so that the textures are compatible? Would that be somekind of copyright issue? And can I use James as a base for modding a new figure (keeping the UV's same)? Would that lead to some copyright violation? Coz that would really save a lot of time! Thanks :)

Oh gawds...back to the model it yourself mess >:(. Not all of us have the time nor the desire. Some people are better at tutorialw/texturizing/modeling/making pics. Based on your assumption we are all hobbyists, that would mean we all have REAL life jobs & work 40+ hours a week. That leaves little time for most of us to learn every damn program out there. I prefer making pics, so I will continue to buy. I'm so sick n tired of this if you don't make it ALL yourself, you aren't getting satisfaction. I'm perfectly satisified. Since I have a real life job, it's taken me close to 1 year to get to Chapter 7 in Shade O.o. Haven't had the time to open the book in months, let a lone create a pic. >:(.

And can I mod a body and set its UVs the same as M3 / James so that the textures are compatible? Would that be somekind of copyright issue?

It might be. You should probably run it by DAZ/CL first.

And can I use James as a base for modding a new figure (keeping the UV's same)? Would that lead to some copyright violation? Coz that would really save a lot of time!

I would think it would be okay, as long as you RTEncode the OBJ.

Poser used to be all freebies. But with the dot-com crash, it's become expensive to get the kind of bandwidth you need to host Poser freebies. You may discover this for yourself when you try to find a host for your head.

Many of us Poser users don't do real modelling on our own. I can't afford Max, and I doubt I ever will. I do use Anim8or, but am nowhere near proficient enough to make my own figures. And it takes me a long time to make a prop. So when someone asks me for something, chances are I'll direct them to the MP. Of course if I know of a free item that does what they want, I'll recommend it, but more and more things are MP items now.

IOW, we are telling people how we do it. Which is usually to buy the stuff.

It would be hard to use the "you can do it yourself" theory with poser because it is not a modeler so for a poser user to model clothes or detail props would mean learning a new program like most others I have shade but can't find the time to go through the manual well enough to even try it out yet, just trying to get a hand on the material room nodes, hair room, cloth room and basic lighting and displacements, not to mention Mimic, Bryce, and keep up with all the content goodies from sales testing them to ensure they work and all "time is of essence" because I work 35+ hrs I go to school 20+ hrs then there's 8+ hrs a week travel time study time vary and if I am lucky sleep time and maybe squeeze in a render or two, so often the build it yourself is unrealistic for me, but I understand what you are saying, and don't forget Python scripts. So buying another proggie is out of the questions at this point. My head is already about to explode ;-)

The do-it-yourself is also an economic thing. I have bought around 75 products at Renderosity alone so I am not cheap but my situation requires I spend only Poser earned money on Poser products unless I have a $ job that requires a specific prop or clothes. That aside, when it comes to certain things I can manage, textures, basic lighting and node work, I do enjoy learning it with the help of an expert. The books I have wasted money on have been useless, especialy as compared to the free tutorials and advise the comunity has gifted me. I go to the market place when it comes to utilities, geometries, or sheer grunt work I don't have time for and am happy to compensate someone else for doing. Yet, I love to learn how to do what I can possibly do and I apreciate all the help I have recieved. At the risk of insulting some generous old-timers, the quality of clothes and textures has improved exponentialy since the "Freebie Days" but there is absolutly less substantial free stuff I believe --someone who cared could check and sort the upload dates in Free Stuff and servay how many old extinct Freebie sites have been replaced. Freebies aside from some notible exceptions are becoming more a newbie thing while the experts go commercial to offset their costs. The quality of new comecial stuff by the top independent developers has skyrocketed, putting Daz and Curious Labs and other corporate/big-site vendors to shame, and competition and volume have driven down prices sometimes rediculously low so that I have gotten monstrously good products for $5, Which do you prefer? A $7 hair from 3Dream or a $25 hair from Daz? The reason I miss the "Frebie" spirit isn't so much money as Eve, Azura, Morph World 2.0, Yamato JPs! Mr. Maya and Koziburo also come out of that era. Nea is one of the most if not the most exciting thing to happen here in years? There was a joy in that. As for the do-it-yourself help, the community is and always has been very generous to me, but there has been this slide from the days of instructionals on hacking .cr2 in Poser 3 to slick commercial products in Poser 6... even if no one is actualy making money.

The Poser market is basically about a few different categories: models, morphs, scripts and textures. Poser itself is not a modeling tool. So if you don't have a certain model (say a car, or a house, or sexy lingerie, whatever), you'll have to have both a modeling program and modeling skill. Most Poser users have neither, a small category has a modeling program, and an even smaller category has both a modeling program and modeling skill - and time to do their own modeling. No wonder so many Poser users prefer to buy a cheap model, with textures included. Poser isn't a texturing tool either. So if you want to make your own textures, you'll have to use a paint program, and you'll have to have some painting skill. Same arguments as above, hence the incredible amounts of texture sets in the MP and in freebies. Scripts: that's something else. You don't need a specific tool for creating scripts, a simple text editor suffices. But not many of us are programmers. Not that many scripts either in the MP or in freebies. Morphs: that's just about the only thing that any user could do himself/herself; just twiddle the dials until you come up with something you like. And that's why a standalone morph isn't to be found in the MP. Sharing ideas and work is a wonderful idea. Sharing a .pz3 file would be a problem though. Most .pz3s contain non-redistributable things like copyrighted morph targets, copyrighted embedded meshes, copyrighted textures. Sharing tutorials? Look at the tutorials section over here. Some pretty good stuff, I learned quite a lot there. Look in the Poser Technical and Poser Python forums. Some great info there. All freely shared. So what you're calling for is what is actually already happening here, and has been for as long as I can remember.

@stallion *" It would be hard to use the "you can do it yourself" theory with poser because it is **not a modeler** ... "* (Note - emphasis mine)

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@svdl "Poser itself is not a modeling tool." (Note - emphasis mine)- - - - - -

Umm, .... 'scuze me? cheers, dr geep ;=]

Or ... ;=]

Or ... ;=]

What would you like to make today? cheers, dr geep ;=]

TouchDr Geep. 8 ) Tom

;=]

Oh good Doctor, Did you finish the clothing tut? If so, could you post the link? I remember seeing the original post, that you were going to do it, but I never saw the actual tut. Did I just totally miss the boat on that one? Thanks a bunch! All hail the Poser King Geep!

Okay sorry, forget it. I searched and found them. It's tut #069.

Touch It's amazing what Poser can be bullied into doing. And that house - built only from primitives I guess? - that's really something, I confess.

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"bullied?" You should see what others are making using Poser. cheers, dr geep ;=]

That looks great Doc. So could you prescribe me about twelve or thirteen more hours, so I can build something like that or maybe after cherokee69 finish I could just buy that one ;-))

Well, Its hard to build a house only using primitives! And it looks pretty good too. Will try that in Poser. Thanks :)

"It's amazing what Poser can be bullied into doing." True and it's a toss-up as to which is more time consuming, "bullying" Poser into doing something it really wasn't designed for or learning enough of a freebie CAD program that was designed to do just that. A lot of folks would rather grab a free or inexpensive house and do neither. Poser and Max are two different products with different audiences (though they sometimes overlap). IMO, a lot of the do it yourself capability in Poser has been garnered through hack and crack and the results have been amazing. The program itself has added new capabilities as well. Still, for various reasons, the main preference I think, is going to remain the use of premade content. Max is and always was about starting from scratch. Poser never was.

What I wouldn't give for a modeling program that was based on the Poser paradygm and interface style (dials mainly). I can understand putting primatives together. I can understand magneting primatives and then putting them together, but I can not remotely grasp even the most elementry program like Anim8tor or Wings or Ray Dream... the list goes on. I can't ever get that bending tool in Anim8tor to work though I love that Anim8tor subdivision actualy smooths forms. I had such high hopes for Metaforms for making smooth things with "welded joins" since it used the Poser Interface and I can make whatever I want but fancy clothes using it, but the edge artifacts make whatever I make unusable except with serious post-work. The bottom line is I can not manage extrusion, splining and all that but I have made real satifying stuff just moving primitives around an using magnets to bend and twist and distrort them. Add posable props like tubes and rectangles with joints (courtesy geep) and it is amazing what you can make, the problem is welding vertices as even boulean stuff can be faked (geeps arch). Finaly, I have impared motor function so Poser lets me fly-by-wire so to speak, that is, working everything with dials rather than dragging and click-dragging.

"I can't ever get that bending tool in Anim8tor to work..." Ha, you're not the only one! Look around and see if you can find a copy of a program called "Simply 3D." Not dial oriented necessarily but the "easiest" modeling program I've seen. There's probably something out there that works the way you want, they're only a jillion modeling programs out there.

Ugh, so much google junk to plod through. I thing I found the parent site but no mention of that product. Personal pages turn up that V.1 did not support .obj format but all I can find for the product is cheapo software dumpers selling what appears to be v.1 but I would like some screen shots if possible and then I worry about the ,obj issue. Maybe ther is an application to convert formats? I have not turned up a retailer for v.3 and the only tutorial I found to give me a look are video which I am too slow to download. I don't want to trouble you but could you get me the URL off the actual program? I have tried various URL possibilities without success.

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Whew! It took a while but I fown a 30 day demo still apparently available (the download started). Micrografx kinda did a Metacreations and ditched all their old products which were sold to Corel. Corel never released Simply 3D afaik. It had/has some nice features like animated textures, adjustable texture placement/scaling, animated deformations, animated lights, point lights etc. but it's basicaly a primitives only modeling tool with hardly any support for moving vertices other than a profile editor so it's only good for props. The hierarchical list of scene elements is nice as well. There are a lot of free models included though perhaps not in the download version. I've seen some pretty nice models made with it though and it's a shame they didn't develop it further. You may be able to find a copy for next to nothing on EBay. It imports .obj and I've imported Posette--maybe Vicky too. For getting back into Poser, you have to export a VMRL (.wrl) file and use a converter to get an .obj which seems to work fine. It's a "dead" program but if you can find it and it suits you... For what little "modeling" I do, I use the free "Art of Illusion" which seems to be more understandable to me than Anim8tor or Wingz.

I go to the market place when it comes to utilities, geometries, or sheer grunt work I don't have time for*

Me, too. Especially when I've got contract work with a deadline, I just may not have the time or inclination to create a completely new complex texture map or something. My clients couldn't care less if I bought it or made it all myself, if I rendered parts of it or painted it 100%. They care about the end result, and so do I.

Then again, I come from a graphic design background, where you use what you need to use to get the job done, and you don't worry about it if you didn't create the font or take the photograph or whatever.

Although, if the knowledge of how to use Maya (or 3D Max, I'm not picky) would just appear in my brain fully formed, plus the knowledge of how to "Poserize" stuff (conforming, boning, joint parameters, all that stuff), I'd be much more inclined to use that knowledge to create truly original stuff. Until the day that the knowledge appears in my head, though, I've got deadlines to meet and a real life to live, so I guess I won't be doing much modelling any time soon...

bonni Message edited on: 06/08/2005 02:55

lmckenzie , The full version of Simply 3D (not sure if it's verison 3 or 2) has been on some cover discs here in the UK. If you want to make rooms and buildings then Floorplan 3d I see is still avalible on this month UK discs. I know for sure its on last months Computer Shopper (June 2005). It allows DXF export, which imports fine into Vue where you can re-texture easily (but vue 4 standard can't export anything except terains). Importing into Poser gives a model with just material and the scale/rotation is wrong. I've not trying converting to .obj with another package but it might be possible. Al

Thanks for the help. Silo looked good but didn't want to spend the money. Art of Illusion seems realy realy good if I can absorb the tutorials. Will probably buy Simply 3D on eBay (I'm in Canada) as I like it conceptually, but is there a free program that can convert DXF to OBJ?