Looking at all the joint bending issues in Poser I get very frustrated.This should not be the usual Poser-complainment but I like to see Poser working more like other major 3D Apps.Please don't get me wrong P7 is the best Poser ever,but it is more about the basic Poser limitations I am talking about.I want somekind of Motionbuilder for the masses.Now that Mb is only playing in the High End League the road is free for a bigger Poser.Call it Poser pro,Poser Infinite,or Poser XStream if you like.Important to me is that figures get an uncut Mesh with a weighted Joints/bones System that is up to date.Skining included of course to fix unwanted joint distortions.Groups shouldn't cut the mesh anymore.Groups are for creating a morph area,so all your morph targets from your basic Poser can still work.This will require a figure converter to use all your content,I know.Not to forget a Foot/Floor detection to eliminate the skating effect. Maybe it is possible someday, to run an advanced Poser as a Plugin for C4D,Lightwave,3DS Max or Maya,using the rigging features of its host application.Come on ,E-Frontier - please do it.

Naturalmotion endorphin. Bucktooth

Didn't Messiah: Animate already do that WITHOUT existing stuff? It's much cheaper than youknowwhat...

Asking for cheap non-platform locked rigged content is unreasonable. It'll never be cheap- static figures are rather expensive these days and Turbosquid MAX models cost a ton. They might not work as well as expected, because animation is a different beast overall. V4 would have too many polys for efficient, practical animation usage. Masha, TS' offering, costs 175. Not much compatibility with clothing, props, and her face isn't unbiased like 3rd party figures are.

I'm hoping for DAZ|Studio but DAZ does seem to care about selling more copies of Victoria using Studio as a catalyst. Just my opinion though.

Quote - Maybe it is possible someday, to run an advanced Poser as a Plugin for C4D,Lightwave,3DS Max or Maya,using the rigging features of its host application.Come on ,E-Frontier - please do it.

The thing is, why should they do it ? For eF to even consider a 'pro' version, there would first have to enough demand to justify such a massive project. Vue managed to pull it off cause they got a few big studios interested and that alone got them the budget and testbed they needed. Poser though is largely shunned by the industry so it will be very hard for them to find a backer. I mean not only would they actually have to buy seats of every app they want to create plugins for but also find enough people to test it and enough customers to sell the pro plugins. That's a pretty tall order IMO.

somebody will eventually write a "pro" version of poser. by then, it will be called something else, and it will be owned by somebody else. given the current situation, where folks have trouble with basics like lighting, render settings, animation and shaders, it would be unwise to expect significant sales from a "pro" version right now, meaning the price would be astronomical.

As far as I know, there is an ample market for GOOD-INTERFACED animation apps that cost considerably less than the new Autodesk-ed Motionbuilder Professional versions.

Of course, the people that complain about proportions in a figure but only render flat-looking images won't be the ones using it. CGSociety members- that's more like it.

But CGsociety members do use Messiah. :D

However ,I am willing to pay more for a Poser with modern animation Features .It doesn't need to run in an host application,that might go to far.I think weight mapping ,skinning and foot /floor detection is essentual.After all I think the secret of Poser's success is ,that you get first class but cheap content for it .On top you get a program for animating it.Imagine all base content sold at Turbo Squit.Poser Would be nothing more than a free add on..I use to say :You buy Poser for your Content,not Content for Poser.

Quote: "You buy Poser for your Content,not Content for Poser."

I think if this were literally true, the market for Poser would have dried up (or shrunk dramatically) as soon as DAZ|Studio came out. Clearly this has not happened, so I think your assumption is a bit off the mark.

In fact, your question seems to put the lie to this. If it were so, wouldn't you just buy Messiah: Studio Workstation for the extra $150 and import the content you could buy from DAZ? Instead, you want high-end features incorporated into Poser, so it seems you place a pretty high value on remaining "true" to Poser, for whatever reason.

BTW - I think the secret of Poser's success is that you get a realistic naked doll to command as you see fit. Just sayin'. :-D

Bad joints are not the result of the "primitive" Poser joint system, but of bad rigging.

Poser is perfectly capeable of anatomically correct joints if you know what you're doing.

If you want weightmapping, use a program that can do it.

But don't expect a weightmapped and ready to use Vicky to be had for anywhere near $20.
Or any of their clothes.

Jim, using Messiah does mean he has to rig over. ;)
Looking at how-badly unified the Wavefront format is, you might even need to re-UV coordinates. Much better off making a seperate character in LW and port to Messiah with minimal problems.

p/s: Vicky 4 has great joint area handling, but it screws up morph data support. So it's Poser's fault still. :D

I'd be happy just to see Poser fix the foot/floor issue to stop the damn skating.  I can do pretty much everything else reasonably well with Poser as is (in fact I still use P5) but I can't get a decent walk cycle that doesn't skate.--T

The foot/floor skating issue can be addressed using Python. Download this script and try it out.
It's certainly not perfect, but it is a start towards non-skating walks, on surfaces that do not have to be perfectly flat.

Sounds interesting--does it work on a Mac?--Tim

It uses Tkinter. So - no Mac.

I think the secret of Poser's success is that you get a realistic naked doll to command as you see fit. Just sayin'. :-D <

Absolutely.  I believe a quick scan of the Poser gallery would confirm this....

Seriously, as someone who has never had a chance to play with any of the more advanced 3D programs, I don't know what I'm missing, and that's a good thing. I can easily imagine a better render engine, a better interface, and figures that bend more realistically -- but for about $200 to get up and running with Poser, a Vicky, some clothes, lights, scripts, and tons of freebies, it is truly an amazing program. 

As Miss Nancy points out above, at some point technological progress, affluence, and an even larger user base that includes more very skilled artists will intersect, and somebody will create the program to take advantage of this alignment. Til then....