Hey PJF

I haven't upgraded to P7.  I figured I'd wait for at least 2 SR's LOL!  What have you found out so far?   

Cheers
patorak

Quote - Well, I have to admit that I haven't gone much past reading their advertizing and one phonecall to their techhnical/sales people. They offered a demo and some more technical interaction once I get a demo, so that my experiments with it can give us some answers.  But, I haven't had an opening in my schedule yet to give it a serious shot.  I'd be happy to share my findings once I get to sink my teeth into it.   http://www.garagegames.com/pg/product/view.php?id=1#features

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. Here's an interesting link.... http://www.devmaster.net/engines/index.php 

Thanks for all the info so far!Back in 1999 flightsims were used for strategical display of combat situations. Was not really fancy with 256 colors and block graphics...
The goal was only to get the area of operations in 3D and transfer the position and directions/speed of units to this 3D map rather than gather all info from radar, radio, airspace surveillance and puzzle it together the classical way.

Support for Blender sounds good. All i knew about the engine is what was written in game mags.
On the GarageGames site that you've linked it seems like it is needed to partition a large area into smaller playfields and then you run into the problem of limited visibility due to the playfieldborders.
That problem occurs with all gameengines I know so far. Making an virtual actor at a certain distance away from the camera and linked to its transformation is where the engines crash after a short time because of the amount of ram allocated. Using low caching ends in worse slideshows on fast moves. It also causes more often crashes due to infinite iterations.

I would have to get into this in my free time primarily. Looking at the way how SGI solves problems like these with 128+ node visualisation systems let the attempt to get it done by a small box (PC or Console) appear even more fictional.
Guess that if you get it done, you can become rich very quickly as there are so many fields to use this technology.

Good luck! :)
An FPS where your clients do some team deathmatch over the buildings and areas they r interested in would be fun. :)

Now it's time to update my Blender again. Last time was in 2006...

@patorak:
Found some good docs regarding space models and tensors. IM is in work.

Poser 7 SR1 works well for me. Not more crashes than with P6 and the renderspeed with Firefly is much better now. The visible precision of numbers on param. dials is limited to 1e-3.
The feature of creating collections (favorites) out of the standard palettes is very useful too. Can't find any reasonable arguments not to upgrade.

Hi Zarat

Thanks,  can't wait.  BTW  how are the centers in Poser 7,  when the joint parameter panel is pulled up,  do they fly around like Poser 6?

Cheers,
Patorak

Quote - BTW  how are the centers in Poser 7,  when the joint parameter panel is pulled up,  do they fly around like Poser 6?

Have not noticed any such behaviour while working with the joint param. panel. (Ctrl-Shift-J)
Selecting and Moving deformers or centers with the mouse and tablet works very well for me.
Changing the offset by entering numbers or using dials also works fine.
As long as I don't move anything all stays in it's place and if moved, then the result is analog proportional to what I do with the mouse/pen.

Dunno if we talk about the same thing now... g

The autobalancing however is still totally screwed and causes things to fly around already on selection. Just like in P6. Maybe this autoscrewing is some "feature" to create weird art...
I have it almost always turned off. Can't stand these many balls everywhere.

[Edit]
Forgot to mention the long awaited multiple Undo/Redo feature and Morph Brush before.
Both were working well and fast from original P7 version on.
Only drawback might be the slight delay between clicking an library item and its visible application.
Deleting a figure or restoring it after deletion can take some seconds in bigger scenes or if Poser is running for a long period. SR 1 fixed that somewhat.
[/Edit]

In Poser 7, are the spherical fall off zones colorized when you chose, element style, wire frame?

By default they are set to outline and you can see the red and green ellipse.

Wireframe is only one color which is a bright grey (215, 215, 215) and lit wireframe for falloff zones is not transparent and no help at all.

Whew !  I just finished downloading Lightwave 9.2 !  can't wait to install it !  Anyway,  I was hoping for colorized wireframes for the fall off zones,  but I can always wear sunglasses !  From what all you've said,  I'm sold,  I'm going to update to P7 as soon as possible. 

this is an interesting topic.  Even Apollo suffered from "small hands syndrome" that has been plaguing all the DAZ male figures for y ears.

I personally feel if someone made an AMAZING 3D figure, especially female, that actually BENT in a natural way (sorry we are nowhere NEAR that point yet), people would definitely flock to it- heck you could even get DAZ on board; if it was sold exclusively at their site they couldn't lose for example.

or even if it wasn't- wherever the figure was offered people would jump at the chance.  i'm a little surprised this hasn't been done earlier... Jessi2, Sydney, and Miki are all the same figure lol; and V4 does have some joint problems.

but i'd say overall quality IS improving... i just wish it would move a little faster.  i would imagine people capable of making a near-perfect female for poseable 3D probably have their hands full working for the entertainment industry anyway.  But i'm not giving up, V4 is an improvement, so I'll work with what we got.

Hi Darkworld

Check out the thread Plain Jane (  back on track ) in the Developers forum.  There wil be 3 versions of Jane.  The advanced version Jane's hip will be freed up from the parent bone and fully articulate.

Cheers
Patorak 

To start with, if you are using POSER at all you are using a VERY LIMITED rigging system. Nothing you can do about it really. You want better result from any mesh, take into into a program with more powerful rigging tools. E-frontier still hasn't fixed the 1 parent per bone problem as of P6. (Last version I bought.) That said. Mike and Vicky 1 & 2 were more realistic looking than Posette and Dork back when they were released. No one in Poser land cared about poly count really bout then as long as what they bought worked. The Unimesh series of figures offered limited morph compatibility and the most important feature in my book, a Universal texture map. With the Unimesh line, and my Lightwave modeling skills, I can move any morph from one figure to another. Unimesh meant that my texture purchases and any texture work I did on my own would be of use on every unimesh figure. M3, V3 and A3 were then given away for free. Can't argue with that. I got almost the entire AEON line of figures from Dodger which gave me more variety. The reason I will continue to use Unimesh and support them is that I have a small fortune invested in their clothes, textures, morphs. V4 really was only made to sell new maps and morphs. DAZ had to do SOMETHING because they played the Unimesh out as well as every genre they could think off for them. Her mesh might be nicer, and knock 10K polys off compared to V3, but her incompatibility makes her worthless to me. I know there's a V4 that takes V3 maps... Blah blah. Don't really care. Mapping is only half the battle and I never had any luck with any of those commercial morph movers. What V4 offers in better posing is useless to me too. I do naked people only 1% of the time. 99% of the time I would use her, all her improved topology would be hidden when I'm working with her. I have always been a fan of the Reduced Res figures. I own every reduced res figure made. RRM2 and RRV2, as well as RRV3 and RRM3. The RRUnimesh figures come in around 24000 polys Vs Unimesh 72000. Their mapping is a little off on the back which has always made me crazy, but otherwise they are great stand in's. I think DAZ has mad a mistake straying to far from the original Unimesh. Apollo Maximus has to be one of the most beautiful meshes I've ever laid eyes on. There is not a single one of his 40,000 polygons waisted on that mesh. His default pose is MUCH better that the Unimesh "T" which give him better shoulders, with less stretching. He's a friggin' work of art. Still not going to use him all that much. No reduced Res figure to stand in for him, and can't use 99% of my stuff without jumping through hoops. He's a FAR superior model to M3 or other unimesh. But look at things from a resource point of view, and he's a whole lot more work without enough payoff. IMHO. Daz's popularity is the same as Windows Vs Linux. The reason I use Windows is not because I love it so much, it's that I'm locked in by my investment in other software. The same way I am now locked into DAZ Unimesh. Oh... I'm typing this from my Xunbutu Box, sure. But I need to run Lightwave and Poser, so I still need a Windows machine weather I like it or not. If I ever make any decent money I'm going for an 8 Core Mac Pro and 30" Monitor. Till then, I'm stuck with Windows XP. Same thing with DAZ figures. (Only I actually still like them.) They're not the best in any way... except in support. As it turns out... that is the most import way. When my graphics machine suffered a thermal meltdown recently I got stalled on a project I was almost ready to release. The Poser figure *I* always wanted. I've created my OWN Ultra lo Res Unimesh figure. I call him Reslo. The picture I've attached is Full res M3 in the foreground and Reslo in the back sporting the same bump map. P4 Renderer in P6. M3 is 72000+ polys, Reslo is under 2600! No type-o. Twenty Six Hundred Polys. Reslo uses Unimesh mapping, but even tripled he's under >5000 polygons which makes him usable as a Real Time Rendered character these days. He's actually about 1000 polys lower that the figures used in Second life!!!! This will give me a figure I can rough out animation and poses with, then replace with the Real M3 if I need to render a close up. (Or RRM3 if I don't need to be THAT close.) For the poly count of a single Naked M3 I can have almost 30 Reslos in a scene. If you do a search at Poser Pros for Reslo, you'll find some earlier versions of the figure dressed as a Cop. As soon as I get a new machine with something better than an an Intel815 graphics chipset, I'm going to finish off his morphs, versions of him for all Unimesh figures, and submit him to DAZ. I'm hoping to have versions of all the morphs included in RRM3. If DAZ doesn't see his value I can always Objaction the mesh to it's respective figures. What has always bugged me about the DAZ line and conforming clothing in general is the waist of a full nude figure just to wear a conforming outfit. Officer Reslo will use the same head, arms and hands as Reslo... and take the same Unimesh textures for them, but will be a stand alone dressed MESH. Some features I'm working on are rolled up sleeve morphs, and a short sleeve material transparency. This the direction that I think the whole 3D industry is moving. I'm going to be working on a set of Displace maps for Reslo (And consequently for all Unimesh figures.) that will provide him a lot of detail that we usually use higher res mesh and morphs for. That's how I'm going to fill in details like the ear. With displace maps. So the real answer to the topic question of "Why are DAZ High Polycount Meshes so Popular?" is that they are so well supported. Right down to my making them LORES.

wow that's a long read.  good article though.  i agree completely, it's the blades, not the razor that keeps people interested.  so when there is legions of content of a figure, that figure's fate is already fixed as "popular"

i do strictly high polygon work so i have zero interest in a low rez figure anyway; i do love V4 but she still frustrates me a little bit, i find it much more difficult to vary her facial expressions in a convincing way than V3.

that said, i will continue to use her and i had no idea there is a version of V4 that supports V3 textures??  i really need to get that version but i'm not sure where to find it, i don't see a sign of it anywhere at DAZ.

I may be wrong about the V4 that takes V3 Textures. I assumed there was one because Daz ussually has a version of their new mesh that supports the older version. V3 Had a V2 version. But now that I think about it... they ussually use the new mapping and support the old poses. Some one will remap V4 to V3 at some point. I checked your gallery and I see why a low res figure wouldn't matter much to you. I'm trying to hone my modeling for RTS work, and in Poser... I always wanted to animate street scenes with lots of people. If your just trying to render King Leonidas M3 or Apollo is great. If you want to render an animated charge of the 300 though.... Reslo to the rescue. :biggrin: Or... if you want to use an M3 Character in video game mod.

Joe@HFG
Your Reslo would great for arch-viz background people and still scenes that require crowds too.

actually yes i found her, she installs automatically with victoria 4.1

odd that there is no mention anywhere on Daz's site about this- it's definitely handy!

V4.1's body three quarters remapped. DPH