I finally decided to purchase Bodystudio and have had a couple days to mess with it. Since I've seen others making inquiries I thought I'd offer my observations as well as asking a couple of questions that hopefully others may be able to answer.

1. I found the plug-in to be extremely easy to use and well designed. It allows you to bring in multiple poser scenes into a Max environment complete with textures and animation. Basically, the plug-in "hosts" the Poser files so that changes made in Poser will be updated in the Max file when reloaded or upon reopening the scene.

2. Bodystudio does a good job of handling Poser textures to the extent that it can. Image maps and transparencies are accomodated beautifully. You have some options to better emulate shaders using the Max materials system. Given the differences in the materials systems, Bodystudio operates exceptionally well.

3. Each Poser scene has its own null so that scaling and positional/rotational animating can be applied on top of whatever animation is inherent in the poser scene. This makes it a snap to tweak mocap and other motions to match precisely within the Max environment.

4. Being able to work with Max scenes and use renderers superior to FireFly are huge advantages. As a test I dropped a variety of Poser models (from low-res P2 to V3 in the foreground) into a Max classroom scene and rendered it with Vray (see below) to see how the stock settings would render. I was quite pleased with the result.

1. I was clued in to the fact that Bodystudio is not 64-bit compatible and that's the only real negative I have at this point. Hopefully, this will be rectified in an upcoming release so that users can take advantage of 64-bit Max systems.

Now for my questions:

1. Does anyone know a way to extract the mesh/texture data from the files hosted by Bodystudio? It would seem to me that this shouldn't be tough to do (with the obvious understanding that you'd lose the animation capabilities) but I haven't figured out a way.

2. Until we have a 64-bit version the memory limits of XP are a problem (I would point out to those of you not aware, that there is a software switch for the pro version of XP-32 that allows you to up memory recognition to 4 gigs. I'm running a home version so I haven't been able to try this myself. You can find the details by googling it or searching "XP memory switch" on the cgtalk forums.

3. I haven't figured out if it is possible to instance the Poser files brought in to be able to get multiple instances without taking a hit on the texture/geometry file sizes. If anyone knows an answer to this, please let me know.

TheDoctor

Hi!

I havent got an answer to your questions as i dont know what bodystudio is, just wanted to say aaah and ooh to the picture.

I thought it was a photograph at first, wasnt til ive red your text that i realized it was a render, good job.

(Off to search for info bout bodystudio and Max)

Regards / Jonny

Thanks Jonny,

Here's another quick test putting V3 (GND) on a Viper rendered in Max with VRay:

Be glad you got it to work - it doesn't run at all under 64-bit Windows/64-bit Max, and they're not very interested in handing out refunds despite the friendly-sounding refund policy.

Yeah, pjz99,

I researched it here on the forum and learned it did not run under 64-bit systems and, frankly, it made me hesitate getting it. However, I decided it was worth it to me to be able to use it on a 32-bit system since I have a couple other plugs that don't play nice on 64-bit Max and have to still run 32 part of the time.

I bet you could sell yours here if you are wanting to get rid of it. I've had some friends interested in seeing my results and if you'd like, I can check with them to see if they want to buy your license (assuming Reiss Studio will allow the transfer).

Although I agree that the 64-bit incompatibility is a big negative, I still think its worth it to have the ability to render with Vray, MentalRay and Brazil with Poser motion.

I've tested the plug with Poser 7 and most of the models and have had no trouble. Here's a render of Vicky 4 with the Viper:

The 64 bit thing is due to their copy protection scheme - not the software itself.

I don't think you will get XP32 to recognize 4 gig - 3 is about the best you can hope for.

Max 9 - 32bit  doesn't seem to like the 3-gig switch. It will always choke around 1.8 gigs memory usage on me. Max 8 was actually better - I could get it to go up to arouns 2.5 gigs.

Avoid Lightcache and use QMC as your secondary bounce. LC eats a LOT of memory.

"Does anyone know a way to extract the mesh/texture data from the files hosted by Bodystudio?"

I just usually clone the mesh. Maybe I've misunderstood the question.

"I haven't figured out if it is possible to instance the Poser files"

It should "in theory" work fine. Ask at the Vray board.

THANKS Jeff,

If the limitation for 64-bit is due to their copy protection I would think they could do a protected version for 64-bit windows pretty easily, huh? You have any thoughts as to the liklihood of seeing a version anytime soon?

Thanks for the info on the memory switch. Say, do you know what the status of memory usage is under Vista 32? Is there a switch applicable there?

Also appreciate the QMC tip. MUCH appreciated.

Cloning the mesh --- duh, why didn't I think of that?
Muchos Gracias again.

Mark

Your quite welcome - glad to help.

This is from Reiss on June 14th:

*"We're working on that functionality [64 bit ] right now and will make an
announcement as soon as its ready for download."

I'm getting a little impatient also - but Reiss usually delivers the goods.

I don't have any info about Vista - but I think I remember hearing the switch was a W2K & XP thing.

Jeff,

Appreciate that info as it is very encouraging. I put a nice little request in on the Reiss support page myself. Man, I will keep my fingers crossed as I have 9 gigs and an 8-core MacPro that I could put to good use.

Love that avatar, by the way!

Post 1 looks pretty good, though not like a photograph because the tables and floor's reflections are too strong and the scene is spotless (no dirt). This is obviously a universe where entropy doesn't exist. 

I'm not familiar with Vray but know mental ray very well. Posts 3 & 5 don't look much better than Firefly IMHO. Tried Body Studio but stopped using it because it seems like a waste to not take advantage of the tools inside of "more powerful" systems.

Quote - Post 1 looks pretty good, though not like a photograph because the tables and floor's reflections are too strong and the scene is spotless (no dirt). This is obviously a universe where entropy doesn't exist. 

I'm not familiar with Vray but know mental ray very well. Posts 3 & 5 don't look much better than Firefly IMHO. Tried Body Studio but stopped using it because it seems like a waste to not take advantage of the tools inside of "more powerful" systems.

Thanks for the comment. None of the images posted here were intended as showpieces and were merely tests to confirm a variety of Poser models/animtions would render properly in Max. 

Regarding your final comment, I think a couple observations are worth making:

1)  Everybody will agree that Max, Maya, Messiah and other tools offer much more sophisticated character rigging solutions than Poser. However, if you are simply looking for the option of using clothed characters with a huge range of clothing/prop options pre-rigged and ready to animate, you cannot touch the advantage of having access to the Poser world. My business is forensic animation and if a client needs to have a pedestrian in a scene dressed a particular way or, say, a policeman -- well, Poser permits us to generate a reasonable character in a fraction of the time it would take otherwise simply because of the vast (and inexepensive) content available 'off the shelf' here and on other sites.

1. Being able to use the Max render environment is a huge advantage, in my opinion, because it is SO much easier to light and work with cameras than within Poser. Granted, you can do almost anything inside Poser if you are willing to take the time. But those of us used to being able to grab and move spotlights and their targets within the workspace pull our hair out using the Poser paradigm.

2. There really is no good "fast" render option with Poser unless you accept the preview mode as good enough. In my opinion, just being able to QUICKLY render fully textured Poser animations from easily controlled cameras makes Bodystudio worth the price of admission. 

So, I guess my question to you, given that you gave up on BodyStudio, would be what your alternative is? Did you give up on Poser animation completely and animate all your characters elsewhere? If so, don't you miss the huge ready-made content available in Poser? If not, don't you miss the rendering/lighting/camera advantages of Max/Maya? I'm just curious as to what part of the equation I'm missing since you didn't find BodyStudio to be useful.

Thanks!

I don't know why I want everyone to conform to my will. It's a good thing I'm not in a position of power ;)

I used Body Studio because I wanted to render Poser content in Maya, and I wanted to use Maya because of Renderman. What turned me off from Body Studio was the inability to modify Poser animations. To me it would be a winner if you could animate in Poser and modify and tweak the animation it the hosted program. 

Another thing I didn't like was the sluggish viewport caused by multiple copies of extremely large textures. Things improved if I scaled down the texture / bump maps. I don't understand why a new shader network (as it's called in Maya) was created for, say, the forearm and the thigh when they use the same texture (mil 3 and earlier).

I'm sure I've tried every Poser to Maya plugin out there except the Greenbrier plugin with varying degrees of success. For the longest time, my favorite was Trinity4Maya but it was beta for three years because the developer had a personal crisis I guess, and their forum disappeared two months ago.

Independent of that, rigging Mil3 characters in Maya is a little difficult due to their exorbitant poly counts. I have had incredible success rigging Poser 2 - Poser 4Hi, Poser 6, Mil2 characters and mild success with V4. All these other characters work so much easier because their poly counts are much lower and / or (in the case of Poser 6 and V4) their meshes have few or no triangles.

That's when I started modeling subD humanoids and I've gained a huge increase of rendering speed. If there's anything that I must have, I just import it using the standard dialog and connect the texture maps in the normal way, which takes no time.

It's really cool that you get paid to play with these programs; in that case this is prolly a good solution. I'm an aspiring film guy and flexibility is very important to me.

Good info there, Replicand. I divide my time between L.A. and San Jose but confess that I enjoy the film projects I work on more than the forensic stuff. But, hey, you gotta pay the bills.

I completely agree with you about rolling your own character meshes. I've been using Modo lately for modeling and took Steven Stahlberg's "modeling cybergirls" course last year, which helped my technique a whole bunch. More recently I picked up the "Essence: The Face" book, which was very enlightening on several counts. I particularly appreciated its suggested workflow using FaceGen as a starting point for building human heads. Since you're a Maya guy you won't get any use from the cool Max plug-in for skin shading that's included but I highly recommend it to Max users.

In all honesty, I also have to say that you'll be a better animator and have better results if you follow your approach and I much prefer building and rigging my own characters when time and budgets permit. However, I often get clients with just a few thousand bucks who need a settlement or mediation presentation with some character motion on an insanely short deadline. They almost always have a photos available (often pretty brutal crime or accident scene pix or even morg photos) and in forensic presentations anything you can do that comes closer to matching the person depicted is a plus. Usually the character motion is not complex so, for us, using Poser for the setup makes a lot of sense. BodyStudio lets us render the result pretty painlessly within the crime or accident scene we built in Max. 

Since we rarely deal with facial expressions or speech, we've started creating 3D head models with FaceGen when we are given decent photos of the person's face. Thus, we can create a really nice textured likeness that we export as an OBJ file and then substitute it for the Poser character's head. We're not going for film quality, so using conforming clothes works just fine and we have a presentable customized character without having to do any rigging.

Having said all of that, I'll acknowledge that the high density of the Mil3 characters is a bitch as is the texture load. That's why I'm really hoping ReissStudio releases a 64-bit version soon. 

In the end, I guess the peculiarities of forensic animation make this a particularly apt solution since production values are not required to be as high as commercial or film work and the emphasis is on speed and shortcuts to get customized stuff done on time.

Like everybody else out here, I'm an aspiring film guy too, by the way. Figuring out how to do decent effects on a shoestring is one of my favorite pasttimes. You might enjoy seeing some of the stuff I did on a short here: www.lodohappyhour.com Click the VFX notebook to see a breakdown of the FX I did. We used FrameForge3D and Poser for a bunch of Previz, by the way.

Take care and maybe someday we'll cross paths.

Mark Johnson
www.forensicarts.com