So, i just got poser 7 and will be messing around with it very soon. This is the first 3d graphic application i have ever gotten my hands on. I have used photoshop before, but have never done anything remotely as 3d graphics.

I am very excited about this journey i'm about to take and can't wait to see what Poser has to offer, as well as the artwork it can produce. I am mostly going to be learning how to create realistic characters..... especially in the area of Fine Art... hehe by fine art i mean the body that god gave us, sometimes minus the garments. =)

Who here is interested in the same area? If so, i would love to find a group of like minded friends and maybe set up a msn or yahoo messenger group by exchanging our screen name so we can chat freely in real-time without having to wait around for days for the others to reply to our posts :)

I have much to learn still, but i'm very interested in hearing your learning experience as well as your progression. 

If anyone is interested drop me a private message.

Hope to hear from you all soon.

Oh by the way guys, what are some updates or packages i should get ? since i only have the original Poser 7... without all the packages like models, characters, skins, hair, etc etc

Chiefraven

oh yeah, and i also want to make fantasy type characters.... i have been browsing through the gallery section of this web page... some of these female fantasy characters that some of you have created are simply dazzling

Download Service Release 1 from Content Paradice, otherwise your journey will be a hell of a lot bumpier than you might want! :lol: THEN--look for freebies to use!  There are THOUSANDS of gigabytes worth of freebies out there! Figures, clothes, cars, trees, landscape,building, dogs, cats.insects. aliens, spaceships--YOU NAME IT!

There is a freebie section here ^ just access it by the top navigation bar on Rendo's site. ALSO >>>>>> Look to your right hand bar to "R'osity's Linkshares"

EVERY site there has freebies enough to get you started on renders!  They have links to lead you to more gold out there.  It's raining soup out there, so I'd better hand you a bowl, to get you started!

There are loads of Poser-sites with various agendas, and orientations, so you can take a look around to see what you might be interested in.

First thing is get a full runtime of various models and such to use as a pallette to draw from and find out what you're interested in rendering.

You ought to have models, figures and such installed in the P7 directory.  Check your library pallette.  It might take a couple of tries, and you might have to install them from disk, since the P7 installation is screwier than hell.

Good luck, and above all--HAVE FUN and don't get frustrated--there are ALWAYS workarounds! ^__^ V,,

Where exactly is this release 1 in the contentparadise web page? i dont see it anywhere :(

OOOPS!  Sorry!  I got EF and CP scrambled around.  They're more or less the same, they act different.

Link: www.e-frontier.com/go/downloads/updates

Here ya go!  You will need your P7 serial number before you're able to download., You can get it from your P7 help bar. Just have a pencil ready to note it down with.

Attached Link: Seek and ye shall find (the windows version anyway)

thanks guys... hey if you guys are not too busy right now. i'm in the renderosity chat right now... COME VISIT ! :D

is anyone interested in talking on msn or yahoo? i think it would be a great way for newcomers like myself to be able to chat with one another and push each other and discuss techniques that they are practicing, or share experiences in something they've learned.

Not only would we be able to talk to each other, we can even send our work and samples to one another..  of course, any experienced Poser users are also welcomed, your expertise and wealth of knowledge are what we all strive for. :)

anyway, if interested, drop me a PM

I compiled information that is beneficial to a new user, here it is:

A picture to show you the file structure of a Poser Runtime can be found here:

http://www.daz3d.com/support/faq/index.php?id=94

Unfortunately the above link no longer works. Daz seems to have removed it. I have contacted them and have requested that they put it back, but I haven't heard back from them as yet.

Basically, what it boils down to in a nutshell:

If you are looking for a Character or a piece of clothing/shoes, in Poser you will find them in libraries/character

If you are looking for hair, you will find them in either library/character/hair OR library/hair

If you are looking for character texture addons, hair textures, clothing textures, you will find them in library/poses. Sometimes on the rare occasion, a merchant will package their textures so that they go into the "Camera" folder (.cm2 files). If that is the case then you can either apply them from there, or do what I do and change the file extension to .pz2

If you are looking for props, they are located in library/props

Sometimes you will find clothing and hair or shoes in library/props too, depending on whether the item is actually created and saved as a figure, or it was created and saved as a prop.

Figure items are "conformed" or "parented"

Props are parented.

If you are just starting, it's best to get started on the right foot. DO NOT just install files into the runtime! That will only lead to frustration because you won't be able to find anything, and not all files are packaged equally and land up all over the place.

Here is a link to a tutorial on using multiple runtimes.

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=9060&start=0

Another tip is to never just unzip or install anything directly to your runtime. Always unzip or install to a separate folder. Then browse through the folder to have a look at the structure of where things are going and make sure that it's in "proper runtime structure" so that when you move it to the runtime, they get into the proper folders.

Once you get your files installed, the next thing you want to do is to start making things :)

Here are some great newbie tutorials that will get you through the bare basics. They are for Poser 5, but it is still the same in newer versions:

http://trekkiegrrrl.dk/tut1.htm

http://www.poserguide.nimprodaction.com/issues/issue2/cover.htm

http://www.poserguide.nimprodaction.com/issues/issue3/cover.htm

http://www.poserguide.nimprodaction.com/

http://www.canary3d.com/tutorial/3d-intro.htm

http://www.ebonshire.net/tut-posb/index.php

http://www.cooltuna.com/poser/poser-tutorials.html

Dr. Geep Studios ( Basic to Advanced Tutorials. Periodically offers free classes for Poser)

http://www.anniescorner.net/posertuts/GettingStartedinPoser5.htm

If you don't have the Daz  V3 or the V4 figure, you should pick one or both. I'd personally suggest that you go with the V3 one as it's been around for years and there is a TON of freebies around for her, as well as a TON of stuff in the various Poser stores.  It will be a couple of years before V4 catches up with clothing content and stuff  and  V3 stuff won't work on V4 because they are different figures. There are work arounds to getting clothing from a figure to fit another figure. I've included information on that further down.  which is a popular figure, you should get it. 

Victoria 3

3D Models Pack (incl V3)  Free from Daz at Download.com

Victoria 4

But if you want to change the look of her face and body, or use any of the available character addon packages, you need to buy the head and body morphs.

The V3 head and body morphs are here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3008

Also, Michael 3, is available free right now too at Daz3D. Again, like Vicky, you need the head and body morphs to change the shape of his head and body. Those can be found here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3009

If you have both figures, you can get both of their head and body morphs in one package, here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3010

NOTE:  You can use the textures from the character addon packages without having the head/body morphs. 

If you want to change the look of the head/body and have the head/body morphs, do the following:

Install the head and body morphs. 

Locate the morphs you want to use in the "Poses" folder.

Find the set of morphs you want to inject IE:  Full Body, Full Head.... or just certain parts. 

Left  click the picture

Click the Single Checkmark at the bottom of the page.

Go to your Parameter Dials and start turning dials.  (make sure that you have the part of the body you want to adjust as the active one IE:  Morphing the ears, make sure you have the had selected.

Also, you can find many, many free morphs and textures for Vicky, and Aiko, and some even for David and Michael.  So you don't have to turn any dials if you don't want to.  Here are a couple links to get you started.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=55140

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=178490

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=105158

Using ready made character addons is pretty easy.   You need to have the figure and it's head and body morph packages installed.

Load up the figure IE: Vicky

Go to the Poses folder, and instead of looking for your morphs from the packages, look for th character you want to use.  Left click the image that has INJ, click the SINGLE checkmark at the bottom and the morphs for that character's look is injected into your figure.  No dial turning necessary.  Of course if you want to tweak the settings you can, but that's not mandatory.

Next locate the textures (if the package has some). They will be usually in the same library menu as your INJ that you used.   Left click the image for the texture and use the SINGLE checkmark to apply it.  If you don't like that texture, apply another one overtop. 

You can even use a texture from another package.  IE: Morphs from package A  and textures from package C.  Or morphs from packag A, texture from package C, eyes from package D, lips from package E.  the combinations are endless :)  If the packages have their head morphs seprate from the body ones, you can mix and match morphs too. IE: body morphs from package A with head morph from package D.  That allows for even more versatility.

There are lots of sites out there that has free V3 character addons, and some that have for Aiko, Michael and even David.

Hair, clothing and textures are all figure/item specific, which means:

Michael 3.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Michael 3.0
Victoria 4.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Victoria 4.0
Victoria 3.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Victoria 3.0
Victoria 2.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Victoria 2.0
Aiko needs hair and clothing and textures made for her.

Like figures, a texture made for one hair style can only be used on that hair style.

Clothing is also specific when it comes to textures. A texture for a pair of pants, won't fit all pants... just the pants that it was made to fit. Same with all clothing items.

Sometimes you can manage to  clothing item to fit another figure by tweaking of dials and increasing or decreasing the scale percent, but that doesn't always work. Sometimes a clothing item for Victoria 2 will fit Victoria 3, but their joints are different so posing a figure wearing clothing not made for it specifically will be hard.

Some figures can share items more easily than others, here is a link that will help sort that out:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2682279

There are 3 types of clothing:

Dynamic:  This is clothing that you use inside the Cloth room. It takes longer to work with and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it's not too bad, but the results are more appealing in that the clothing actually looks more natural instead of "posed and stiff".

Confroming- Non Morphing:  This is clothing that you conform to a figure. The clothing is made to fit the base figure.  If you change the shape of the figure you will also have to refit the clothing, which isn't always easy if there aren't any corresponding body morphs in the clothing.  Plus posing a character in positions where they are not nearly upright is difficult.  But many prefer this type of clothing over dynamic.

Conforming-Morphing: This is the same as conforming-non morphing, only there are morph dials that you can turn that have corresponding body morphs for easier fitting.  This is the preferred type of conforming clothing because it's easier to fit.

Using a clothing item on a figure that it is meant to be used on, after you have added morphs and adjusted the shape of the body can be problematic because the clothes are made for the default figure shape and not the new morphed up shape. So the clothing no longer fits and you get parts of the body showing through the clothing after you add morphs and change the shape of the body.

There are programs that can help fit clothing from one figure to another, or even from the same figure to one that has been "morphed up" using their morph packages.

The Tailor, which can be bought here:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=677

Wardrobe Wizard (I use this one and it's great). It can be purchased from PhilC's site here:
http://www.philc.net/WardrobeWizard.htm

Clothes Converter, which can be bought here:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3069&cat=131

Things like hair can be used across all figures just by tweaking the scaling and trans dials and then parenting the hair to the figure.

Poses are something else that can be used across most human-like figures with just a bit of tweaking to dig out a hand, or fix a shoulder.

These are all things I learned along the way and found to be valuable, so I try to pass them along because I know how frustrated I was when I first got Poser.  Hopefully you will find the information helpful.

you are already posting and communicating with people with experience by posting in these forums! it'll work better for ya i reacon to post your questions here as then you will get a broader range of answers to your questions, in that some people know one way of doing things and other people know of other ways of doing things, then you can decide which advice you want to follow, also other members here don't like to comment or ask questions, but learn by reading these posts and seeing what people have to say, so by asking your question and waiting for answers to come in you are also helping other people who are not so brave as to ask the question in the first place but do benefit from the advice given.

anyway welcome to Renderosity, the home of many friendly and helpful members, that are always happy to help you out if they can.

even if your question seems silly to you, just ask it as everyone was a newbie once, so will always be happy to help you out.

Wow.....Acadia..:blink:....after your post, I feel like I just gave the poor guy two words and turned him lose!  :lol:

Holy COW!  What a kick-ass post for all noobies!  I wish I had one like THAT when I got started! It took me six to eight months to get half that much info!

@ chiefraven--You have NO idea how lucky you are to get a post like Acadia's! WOW! Acadia is the QUEEN of finding things around here.

Alright, Acadia--I'm not easily impressed or over-awed easily.

@____@;; I'm officiallly over-awed and impressed,too! That is like what the preface to the Poser README file should say!

HI chiefraven.
I make classic pinups myself-
It is the best way to learn this software- I've allways said that makeing pinups is like singing acapella. Minimal item and resource use to create something pretty. And from THER to build into larger more complex scenes.
Buried within my gallery here are some of my pinups:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=25852

LOL That's too funny!

I remember very well how frustrated I was when I first got Poser. I think I bought it in the spring of 2004 but I'm quite dumb when it comes to learning programs, and pretty much need my hand held.  I found the DAZ site and was posting questions, but it was hard because I didn't know the proper terminology for things and while I was getting answers to my questions, the answers didn't make sense to me because I didn't have any experience in the program and all of the tutorials I was linked to seemed to require some prior knowledge of Poser to do them. None were really geared specifically to new users IE: "this is how you add a figure, this is how you change it's clothes, etc.

I installed and uninstalled Poser more times than I can count because I was frustrated to tears. Not only did I feel really stupid for not being able to grasp the program, but when I had Poser open I couldn't find anything and nothing seemed to work. My runtime was a disaster because all I did was dump stuff in and as we all know that doesn't work well because there is no continuity of names between folders for packages. I was also embarrassed because despite all the help I was getting I still couldn't  figure out the basics in the program. It got to the point where I felt like a huge pest and  I was sure that people were just as frustrated with me not understanding as I was with their answers.

Finally in October 2004 VooDoo from Daz got me into ICQ and spent some time with me walking me through each step of adding a figure, changing it's clothes, finding a texture adding lights, and a pose and doing a render. And that was the very first render I ever did in Poser. The very first and it took me 6 months!!!!

After that I just mimiced what he showed me until I was comfortable and then tried different clothing, a different pose etc.

I vowed that once I got better at Poser that I would pass along the help that I was given in an organized fashion that made sense from start to finish, and I promised myself that I would do whatever I could to help new users so that they didn't experience the frustration that I did.  Not everyone can learn by trial and error. I know I can't. I need an organized, structured and coherent learning setting, otherwise I can't piece all of the information together to make sense. Maybe my dyslexia contributes to that, I don't know.  But if information is given to me in bits and pieces I feel overwhelmed and frustrated.

So over the years I have accumulated links and combined answers which I have given along the way into one "mini essay" post. It's my way of paying forward. It started off small, but has grown, and I still add to it when I think of something new that may be helpful, or come across another link that might benefit. Then I bookmark the most current version and pass it along as needed.

Feel free to pass along the essay if you see a new user who may benefit from it. I created it as an education tool to be used and I don't mind people passing it along here or anywhere else where they think it might be of use.

Quote - Wow.....Acadia..:blink:....after your post, I feel like I just gave the poor guy two words and turned him lose!  :lol:

Holy COW!  What a kick-ass post for all noobies!  I wish I had one like THAT when I got started! It took me six to eight months to get half that much info!

@ chiefraven--You have NO idea how lucky you are to get a post like Acadia's! WOW! Acadia is the QUEEN of finding things around here.

Alright, Acadia--I'm not easily impressed or over-awed easily.

@____@;; I'm officiallly over-awed and impressed,too! That is like what the preface to the Poser README file should say!

It took me only two weeks with Poser 4 to do my first Naked vicky in a temple with flower. If I had found any freebie swords at THAT time, I'd have been a stereotype user. :lol:  Seems like it took forever to figure out what I was doing.

In the spirit of lost and clueless noobs EVERYWHERE--I salute you.  And I meant every ,gapemouthed word of the previous posting! I copied the post to My Documents.

You can't have ENOUGH help with some things! ^__^ V,,

chiefraven - watch out how fast your runtime starts to bulk up with the freebies and even the purchases you makef rom time to time - got to manage that !  Happy problem in a sense.  And of course, you're doomed to be hooked on Poser.  Tralala, doomed, I say - I should know, lah-lalaala falala dumdeedum.

well, I just jumped in and floundered around..;) Even after all these years, there are lots of fundamental things I haven't done (animation, adding lights, magnets), as well as advanced stuff (hacking cr2 files, creating python scripts) that I'll likely never do..;)

just 2 things that should help

1. there are NO stupid questions. Don't think it's a stupid question, there are people in here from newbie to braniac.  Well, actually, there is one stupid question; asking for copyrighted and pirate materials. 

2. Make mistakes. Flounder, @#$% up, just go 'I wonder what would happen if?' . You'd be surprised how much of scientific research is making mistakes...why not 3d rendering? I have more fun thinking up stories 'excusing/explaining'  the mistakes I make in the picture, than making the picture itself..;)  Sometimes you may stumble onto something someone else has looked for.

Have fun, welcome to the madhouse..;)

thanks for the encouragement everyone... i'll keep you all posted on my journey

Attached Link: Dr. Geep and Poser University

Quote - Also: Do not forget the GEEP!

I didn't :) He's in the list of tutorials in my essay :)