please see the attached thread. http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12375&Form.ShowMessage=286236

Count me in! Mocap

i'm in too, i always felt that animation was sorta neglechted in this forum

I have wondered why there is so little animation seen here. A contest might perk up interest. In fact, when (ahem) another site anounced a May contest for digital artists, I was reading the rules eagerly until I came to this one: All entries must be in JPEG form...

I, for one, would love to see some more Poser animations. Thats the main reason I started in on Poser in the first place.

If anyone is interested, we've been playing with some beginner animation challenges over in the Carrara forum (really simple stuff). Look for the words "Animation Challenge" in the subject line. Maybe some of the challenges will be adaptable for Poser. I've been using "The Animator's Workbook" by Tony White as a guide. --Terri

Im guessing because of limited hard drive space on renderosities unix box (Or whatever they use to serve). but yah, i would love to see you're guys animations. I recomend using Avi divx codec. loses very little resolution at 1/50th the size of uncompressed formats.

Attached Link: http://server3006.freeyellow.com/3908/stats/SITH.MPG

Character Animation is definately the reason I bought poser And i have my own web space to link to but I cant use the Divx codec because its not available for the Macintosh I do use media cleaner 5 to out put my movies for the web so i can create files as windows media player ,Mpeg, Avi and if course .mov Mocap

Attached Link: http://homepages.tesco.net/~thistle/

Hey Mocap, I heard that there may now be a version of the DivX codec for the Mac. I think the URL is http://www.projectmayo.com (Hope this helps!) I'm a huge animation fan too! If anyone wants to check out tons of Poser animation, (plus a few Poser related goodies to download), feel free to drop in on my new website. (There, shameless plug over!) :) Dave.

davidm I looked at your webpage nice. I also looked at your gallery; I found both had a nice clean crisp 80 commercialism look. I don't know if this is intentonal or not but it looks good and creates a nice unique 3D style.. Sadly many 3D artist, are production minded and don't take the time to also develop a Style beyond subject matter. I like both your page and gallery. (I can see a style developing in my work, but I am just not there yet. My 2D work has a vary stong sence of Style.) I also agree that many people over look the importance of a good Ground Texture maybe I will post some work that I had fun with on the ground textures. I have to ask what is Illusion? Is it a software package for SFX(or do you just mean that; illusion. Damn I love to animate, but never can think of any thing to animate. You are obviously a creative fellow. Well I bookmarked your page in hopes of checking out your animations your thumnails look great... Wow, Inspire, Mimic, Poser Plus you have some nice toys.. I am just getting my with Poser 4, Bryce 4, and Truespace 3SE a free version that came with a magazine... Though my animation is doing well for marketability! MOCAP I am downloading you MPG can't wait to see your work.. Deimos.

Attached Link: http://www.coolfun.com/illusion/

Hi Deimos, Glad you liked my website and gallery. :) I guess the look IS intentional. (I like to keep things clean and easy to navigate and wanted to give the front end a "magazine" feel). I've had some stick in other forums for "under-designing" things, but the site actually has quite a lot of Javascript in there, it's just tucked out of site invisibly. So far feedback has been 99% positive. :) Glad you agree with my views on using Poser's Ground Plane. I don't have a landscape generator program, (and my Inspire skills are a little basic), so I tend to use photos for most of my backgrounds. The BIG challenge is making the character look like it's there. (I still get a buzz when I see one dropping a shadow as it moves) Great fun! :) Illusion is a clever effects program made by Impulse. Basically it adds pre-defined effects to still images and AVI footage, much like an electronic "flip book". (The effects are 2D and use OpenGL). If you did a space anim, for example, and you needed to blow something up, you would just create an animation where at some point the model disappears, import the anim into Illusion, and at the point where the ship is destroyed, simply paste one of Illusions amazing explosions on top. It's simple and very easy to use! (I've added a link to the program above). Also, there's a mini "review" of Illusion 2 in the "Talking 3D" page on my website. I must be honest, the majority of my anims use motion capture data, (mainly 'cos it's so darn good!), but anims like the TRex stuff were made with Poser the "hands-on" way. (I love that model!) I started out with a free copy of Truespace too, it's a great program! I mainly switched over to Inspire because of it's Lightwave pedigree and the possibility of a future upgrade to the "Big L". (Unfortunately, my lottery ticket has failed to deliver, so I'm waiting for Inspire 2!) :) Mimic is a real "must have" program, it's WAY TO PAINFUL to animate speech without it. It's not 100% perfect at lip-synch, (but pretty darn close!), but for what it achieves it's a real bargain. It's a pity that there isn't a version for the Mac though. Still getting to grips with the Poser Pro Pack. The motion blur is a great addition, as are the new import/export facilities, but I'm a little disappointed with the character creation side. (Bones are easy to set up, but I still find the grouping tool very tricky to use). If anyone wants to turn any of my LWO characters into Poser dudes please feel free to do so! (Just drop me an e-mail) :) Glad to hear Deimos that your animation is proving commercially successful!! I wish that I had more time right now for animation, but studies are draining up most of my time and energy. Sorry for the HUGE post folks! Good luck to all entering the animation contest! Dave.

I think it would be great, the only problem is the files tend to get so big, even with the best compression codec.

Attached Link: http://digitaldreams.bbay.com/supermodel_strut.avi

As an example, this one is 4 1/2mb, I hesitate even to put the link up, as it is going to slow down Bill's server if everybody clicks on it at once. It runs 28 seconds, no sound. It will take 20+ minutes to download on a 56K modem, while I think it is cute, I don't think it is that cute.

I recomend using Avi divx codec. loses very little resolution at 1/50th the size of uncompressed formats. DivX on Mac is a pain. There is only a beta version, with bugs. I got the OpenDivX codec from Maya, but it didn't allow playing the DivX AVIs made by Windows people. I like the Sorensen codec in Quicktime.

Great idea! Animators are WITHOUT A DOUBT seriously overlooked not only on Renderosity but just about everywhere else (DAZ, Curious, etc.) David: I too enjoyed your site, I looked at every single animation. Some of them were really entertaining nice work. Also, nice tips on the use of the ground plane. I just recently discovered this on my own and am still a novice at it ... I have been using Adobe After Effects to comp everything. Looks very nice, but what a pain! Poser 5 BETTER have a "render alpha WITH shadows" option!! -Tim

Attached Link: http://www.web-runners.com/hhallow1.avi

Also, here is a short animation I did for the Halloween contest here at Renderosity this past halloween. They only mentioned stills (did not say you could NOT enter an animation) ... but I entered it about 10 minutes too late (or something like that!) because of server problems. Arggh. It called it "Pumpkin Boots." This is just over a minute long. It took me roughly 26 hours straight (from concept to final encoding) to complete -- that includes animation, sound mixing (I think it was 4 tracks), video editing work, titling, etc. Enjoy ... -Tim PS> Sorry, but this puppy is about 18 MEGS. Need to re-encode it with DIVX I guess.

Hi Tim, Thanks for your comments! Glad you enjoyed my website and ground plane tips. I think it's just about possible to add a Poser character into any scene! I tend to do things the easy way by just importing a photo as a background image within Poser, that's as far as my compositing skills go! :) Will check out your anim "Pumpkin Boots" :) Dave

I think it's just about possible to add a Poser character into any scene! < Well, almost ... but then you get into realism. And the real challenge comes when you MOVE THE CAMERA. Then it gets VERY complicated. I have successfully done some MATCH MOVES using Poser and Bryce, but it takes a lot pre-production calculation and a lot of tweaking. If only I could work on this stuff 24/7 ... if only. ;-)