I am one of those who is waiting for the physical shipment. I am contemplating canceling my order however due to animation questions. I have seen some animation around here and there, that has been done in poser and it all look very rigid. It seems that the only smooth stuff that I have seen has motion capture data added. Does anyone know where some good examples of animation can be seen? 

I saw one animation that had a Star Trek theme. It was okay, however it was not rendered with IBL. Now I know that just one image can take forever to render with IBL, but surely someone must have done an animation with it. 

I would even be happy with an animation that runs smoothly. By that I mean, no sudden jumps from one pose to another, where the character's feet come off of the ground.

Honestly, most Poser-made animations look like online game play, with poor connection speed.

BTW, I really want to like Poser too. :-) Daz is cool, but the animation controlstimeline is horrible.

yeah, unfortunately ya won't see alotta animations using high-quality render settings, if each frame takes 2 hours, and the user doesn't have a render farm. ya need a large staff and alotta machines if ya wanna do a professional animation in a reasonable amount of time IMVHO. perhaps once somebody reads the P7 manual and does an animation with it, we'll know more. however, incorporating video editor functions into P7 (if that's what they did) is only gonna make it even slower to do animations IMVHO.

I see your point. I have thought of creating animation in Daz, (All I have to use right now) and then take the image sequence to After Effects. There I can change the time so that motions slow down or speed up at certain points. I can also add filters as well. Once I get Poser I will post the results as well as render time and settings.

Now that render speeds have improved, we'll probably see more fully rendered animations on dual core and quad core systems.
And jerky animations isn't the fault of poser, it's the fault of animators.

The p7 renderer is fast.

Very very fast.

Attached Link: Poser animations

"I would even be happy with an animation that runs smoothly. By that I mean, no sudden jumps from one pose to another, where the character's feet come off of the ground." It *is* very much a function of the animator's skill - and the time available to do it. I daresay the stuff at the link above doesn't do that. It doesn't have IBL but, as was pointed out, render time makes a big difference. If you look in the animation section of Renderosity (under the Features menu of the sidebar) you'll see a wide variety of animation. Some of it very smooth, some not, based on the animator and his or her skill at the time of posting. There's one called "Poser/Lightwave Drum Test" (http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?section_id=321&page=19) of a drummer drumming where every hit and motion is hand keyframed. The drummer is a little stiff -- not a hair-flailing wildman -- but that was intentional. If you can track down LawnDart's (formerly "LawnDartLawnDart") web site you'll see some very smooth stuff as well. And there are some good examples of Poser animation in the Animation Forum - among the older posts. Come to think of it, there are some very good examples of animation at the DAZ3D website as well. My point is not to single out anyone as an animation guru but that there *is* stuff out there between the two extremes (BVH and completely jerky/jumpy). If you put the time and effort in, you can do alot within Poser. It's certainly possible to do better than anything that's been done but it's not up to Poser, it's up to you. Poser and Daz both will have some limits compared to Max or Lightwave simply because the high end apps allow you a bit more control over boning and joints and mesh. However, for most characters and situations you can go pretty far without having to resort to spending thousands of dollars on high-end apps.

I will check out those links. Thanks. I agree that to skill set is what will make the animation better. I will keep my order and try to set examples and tutorials, times and rendering tricks. Then maybe Poser will be looked at for animation more. I really hope that some of the animations that are displayed in video game cinemas would be possible in Poser as well.

If by "video game cinemas" you are referring to that which I've heard called, "Machinema" undoubtedly Poser can beat the quality. Basically they capture pre-planned motion from games like "World of Warcraft," edit them together and then add audio. Some of them are very cool. However, the imagery looks no better than World of Warcraft screenshots. As far as I can tell they have no facial control and very limited control of what the characters do since they are simply manipulating a character in a game. With Poser, on the other hand, if you have your lighting and rendering set up well you can control almost everything. Hair and dynamic clothing might be limited, but I've seen still renders that met or exceeded Final Fantasy the movie. Therefore I'd have to say tremendous possibilities are there for the dedicated animator. Good luck! Whatever you think of the animations I've mentioned, I encourage you to try your own and post here (or in the Animation Forum) so we can enjoy watching your progress.

learnign to do animation well tames time. Following Disney's training, learn how things should be seen normally first, and reproducing them, and then you add that skill set to creating sequential frames.

I worked with disney animation for some time, and some people there were at 10 years PLUS and not getting the high profile animation jobs.

The general public takes for granted the sheer amount of talent, skill and training to pull off an excellent animated piece.

Also bear in mind a full feature film has MANY animators coordinated in order to pull of a story, and many of the animators are specialty people who only animate specific things (like pixie dust)

Look up :ghost warrior" on the web to leanr more about someone who did a short 5 minute animation himself.. literally locked up for a year's time with NO outside distractions at all.

Is it good? Yep. Would it be worth sacrificing every waking minute of a year of my life? Nope.

Also, my REAL hope is even more improved opengl previewing and animation ability. if they can get a few more opengl enhancements, then doing animation is that much faster, because you don't need full raytraced renders for a lot of things.

If I could see the same effects in poser's opengl I see in UT 2004's realtime game, or Halflife 2's realtime game, I'd be in hawg heaven.. and if EF doesn;t do it, I KNOW someone else will within a few year's time.

Actually I'm talking about the types of animations that you would usually see before playing an XBOX360 or PS3 game. Have you seen the animation mock-up of Killzone II? Or the beginning of World of Warcraft. 

I have found the answer to my questions however. A friend of mine uses Poser 6 to make the animation and then render it in Vue 5 with backgrounds. It renders faster since Vue will utilize dual processors. More importantly, there aren't the rendering issue that Poser has. (Little black specs here and there). So now I have ordered Poser 7 and Vue 6 (Pre-Order) I'll post some stuff on this site soon.

I learned quickly that making movies in Poser -- or any 3D animation program when you're the only one doing it and you have one computer -- is all about compromise, and being able to finish them is all about "efficiency planning". You can't have 30fps and expect to get it done in this century. You can't have full-boat highest-resolution rendering and expect your computer to do it any other way than one frame at a time and then export it to a video editor. Etc., etc. My biggest mistakes have been in not spending enough time thinking about their video flow in advance and not concentrating on script, dialogue, sound, etc.; i.e., I need to spend more time thinking as a director and less time as an animator. For example, there are some pretty good 2D "cartoons" out there that tell great stories and are both very entertaining and visually striking. They use simple scenes, lots of closeups, quick cuts and savvy editing --and save +/-75 percent of the workload they would have had without them. I've been learning these lessons the hard way, and have been having to go back to my cinema and directing texts rather than the 3D technical sources when I've run into insurmountable (time-wise) tasks. It is NOT instinctive for me, but until I get my own personal render farm and some illegal aliens as animation assistants, I'm having to learn a little art.

Yeah, I would be happy with a few 5 minute shorts to tell my stories. Well enough to put on a DVD and entertain my friends. I have been going to the Academy of Art University Online but will be switching to the Animation Mentor school next year. I'm still learning anatomy as well.

Okay, I received Poser 7 today! So I tried to make my first animation in it. You will need Divx to view it, and it is really tiny. I'll make longer tests later.

www.fluentmultimedia.comP7_Anim_Test_01.avi

Please right-click and save as. Thanks

looks o.k. to me. how about doing one of the girl next? maybe jumping around or something.

Well, I set up a run and let it render over night. I'm not sure why there is a flicker.

www.fluentmultimedia.comP7_Anim_Teri_Run_Test.avi

Quote - If by "video game cinemas" you are referring to that which I've heard called, "Machinema" undoubtedly Poser can beat the quality. Basically they capture pre-planned motion from games like "World of Warcraft," edit them together and then add audio. Some of them are very cool. However, the imagery looks no better than World of Warcraft screenshots. As far as I can tell they have no facial control and very limited control of what the characters do since they are simply manipulating a character in a game. With Poser, on the other hand, if you have your lighting and rendering set up well you can control almost everything. Hair and dynamic clothing might be limited, but I've seen still renders that met or exceeded Final Fantasy the movie. Therefore I'd have to say tremendous possibilities are there for the dedicated animator. Good luck! Whatever you think of the animations I've mentioned, I encourage you to try your own and post here (or in the Animation Forum) so we can enjoy watching your progress.

Actually the quake & doom series of games can be "scripted" so that the in-game engine can be used to make proper animations & short movies, you still don't get decent facial animations though but it's a start :D

**rkanyama....

**well I tried the link above but it doesn't work,  so I went just to your web site. and i got to say...  Pretty nice!! can't wait to see what else you do.

guess it's time to dress up my site..  never did finish it  :

Lucifer_The_Dark: Yeah, Those are cool animations as well, and you are right, the facial animations need a little work. 

Thomllama: Sorry about the link. I just tested it from work and it works just fine. But hey, it did make you visit my site. So that's not a bad thing. I'm glad that you liked it too. I had to learn to use Flash fast.

still no good on this end... "server not found"

Quote - Actually the quake & doom series of games can be "scripted" so that the in-game engine can be used to make proper animations & short movies, you still don't get decent facial animations though but it's a start :D

This depends on the engine... Doom/Quake are meant to be fast paced action FPS games so of course no one cares about expression. A much better engine for this is the Source engine (half life 2 and CS 2) or the Oblivion one both of which do nice facial animation.

The Half life / source one can actually look stunning as in this example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA3OgWspGAc

(and still render in realtime)

That is impressive. The shading comes across as a bit dark and the textures aren't as good as we use in the Poserverse but it's still quite impressive. Especially in realtime.

thomllama: Sorry that you are having a bad time with it. My hands are tied here at work, but I'll see if there is another way for people to view it, once I get home.

tekmonk: Very true, I am curious to see how the Unreal 3 engine will work. I think it's being used in Gears of War. I love that game!

Bobasaur: Thank you. These were the only ones that I could create in the little time I had last night. I'm going to work on something with a little more motion or maybe more scenes, tonight.

Oops. I was referring to tekmonk's half-life examples. I wasn't going to critiqe your samples because they were simply test renders. ;-)

Quote - Oops. I was referring to tekmonk's half-life examples. I wasn't going to critiqe your samples because they were simply test renders. ;-)

 

No worries... I think that I will play around with lights more instead of just adding IBL to the scene. My renders may be faster too. I just need a solution for AO without all of the overhead.

Attached Link: http://www.fluentmultimedia.comTeri_02.avi

I tried to make the motion a little better in this test.

link still doesn't work on my end

Hummm, anyone who where I can store files for use in these forums? Hopefully a free space somewhere. Maybe my host is getting hit hard and failing.

figured it out.. you have the forward slash when it should be a back slash...

http://www.fluentmultimedia.com/Teri_02.avi

ahhhhhh, Doh. I did find a site to host files from called Mediamax.

http://www.mediamax.com/gfxrtist/Hosted/P7_Anim_Teri_Run_Test.avi
http://www.mediamax.com/gfxrtist/Hosted/P7_Anim_Test_01.avi 
http://www.mediamax.com/gfxrtist/Hosted/Teri_02.avi 

So to all, I have moved the files from my website to Mediamax instead. The previous links in this thread are now dead.

pretty smooth considering... you using poser or vue for these?

HEY, not a bad host site..?  think I'll sign up for some storage

Quote - pretty smooth considering... you using poser or vue for these?

 

I used Poser 7. Created  .PNG sequence images, and then put it all together in AfterEffects.

Was that just the Walk Designer for her running? And are you using dynamic clothing?

Have you tried the animation layers yet? 

 
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Quote - Was that just the Walk Designer for her running? And are you using dynamic clothing?

Have you tried the animation layers yet? 

 
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Yeah, I used the walk designer. I have not tried the animation layers yet, and no, the clothing is not dynamic.

I'm impressed with the movement of the clothing. If it's just conforming then something very cool is happening there!

 
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Attached Link: Vicky pumping out the reps

I think Poser is an amazing animation tool capable of some amazing results. It seems interest in 3d animation is continuing to grow here in the Poser community. What I do wonder is if Poser will become a Professional tool in the future. But i think the greatest limitation is not the app one is using but the time investment it takes to create something!

I totally agree. Is that a .gif you have there for Vicky?

Good idea...

ya since Poser gallery file size is limited to 512k ; . ;

Quote - I think Poser is an amazing animation tool capable of some amazing results. It seems interest in 3d animation is continuing to grow here in the Poser community. What I do wonder is if Poser will become a Professional tool in the future. But i think the greatest limitation is not the app one is using but the time investment it takes to create something!

Hmm. Technically possible. There need to be a few other goodies bolted on under the hood, though.... 1) Some kind of soft body dynamics for the actual 'skin'. 2) Some form of softbody mass so that things like breasts, buttocks, and large muscle groups have shape and deform due to forces applied 3) Support for on the fly micropoly subdivision to solve part of the joint problem 4) A new rigging system and some kind of conversion scheme...possibly even a second application...to preserve the usefulness of the current gigacrop of content. Or possibly a dual rig system, so the old stuff works as is, but a also a newer kind of rig that has improvements over the old system. 5) Network rendering of some form. 6) Full bidirectional fbx support. 7) Optimizations of the dynamic clothing (mainly multithreading and increasing the collision detection to reduce the pokethrough issues. Or possibly definable 'zone props' that are simply too 'large' for a mesh to penetrate). 8) Improvements in useablility, performance, and resolution on the strand based hair. Now how much all that will cost........ -_- The last stumbling block would be the industry attitude regarding Poser. It would have to win its spurs bigtime to gain a general level of acceptance in the high end of things where movie quality work is done.

Actually, since alot of the programs we're releasing are available in multiple versions (standard, advanced,etc.) it wouldn't be far fetched for us to offer a "Pro" level of Poser built from the ground up to include the things that would be impossible or difficult to implement in the current Poser. We could continue the Poser we all know as the hobbyiest version, while the new one, which would take a year or two of development anyway, could be the pro version. That way everyone wins. I should suggest it to the boss. See what he thinks.  Hmm...

Now those things that you states would really be something. I made an animation where Teri goes from one standing pose (arm on hip), to a folded arm pose. I managed to get the animation to work without body parts touching each other however once the arms are folded, they dig into the sides of the breast. So now I have to move the camera so that it is right in front in order to hide the error. This will prove to be a problem once I start going off of storyboards. 

Quote - Actually, since alot of the programs we're releasing are available in multiple versions (standard, advanced,etc.) it wouldn't be far fetched for us to offer a "Pro" level of Poser built from the ground up to include the things that would be impossible or difficult to implement in the current Poser. We could continue the Poser we all know as the hobbyiest version, while the new one, which would take a year or two of development anyway, could be the pro version. That way everyone wins. I should suggest it to the boss. See what he thinks.  Hmm...

 

That would be really BIG! I'd totally pay for that as well! 

how about calling it "Poser: Directors' Cut"

Teyon, I was thinking the exact same thing.  It would be nice to see a "Poser Professional" application.  Something specifically for professional level animation.

Other features to consider:

-Interlaced rendering (mind you with HD this might be moot in a few years)
-True Bezier curve animation pallete
-A more robust timeline and key frame management system with the ability to "mark an in point and out point" (like the Avid or Final Cut systems)
-more robust support for third party plug-ins.  (It would be nice to see plug-ins for fluids, for example)

As it is Poser has an amazing (surprising) amount of animation features once you delve deep into it, but a pro level package would be very welcomed.

I work in television as an editor and graphics animator.  Usually I use 3D Studio Max, but I have used Poser on a few occasions with great success.  Forget reputation in the 3D community, Producers only care about results, and I've impressed a few producers with Poser.

I'd really like to see it taken to the next level.

You beat me to the other goodies I want, Thromm....! Considering the success that e-on software has been having with the multiple iterations of the Vue line, commercially it would be a good move. Since we have Poser Artist and Poser X as the entry level and mid-range, there is a definite need for a high end. Maybe borrow a concept or three from e-on. Having a fully customizable interface, with selectable schemes that either match or approximate other well used apps would be a godsend for those who have KKRS (Kai Krause Rejection Syndrome... :P ). Have you checked out the Metaform plug-in, btw? It probably won't work in P7 (i'll have to check it out), but it manages to use Python to create meta-particles in Poser. Smoke, fire, water, have all been created successfully (The downside is the same with Poser as a renderer; the process is slow. But it does work). But yes, having a plugin architecture that would allow the code monkeys and monkeyettes the ability to write useful additions would really raise the bar. I hope Yoshi-mocap finishes his program soon. Even adding portable poor man's optical mocap to P7 is going to potentially raise a few eyebrows here and there....