In short: i need to create an island where all the characters of my comics are going to live... therefore, it's not a tiny island with one palm tree... I'll be placing buildings (probably most of stonemason's city sets), houses, vehicles., etc, in it... it'll be a world for my characters... so, it will be a HUGE island. The island obviously will have beaches pretty much all around it.

years ago I tried to accomplish this in poser and then laughed at the results... so, in order to accomplish such as a task, as poser users, what software would you recommend?

Mojoworld 3, Carrara 6 Pro, or Vue 5 infinite?? I don't have a beast machine, so resource saving is a consideration...

i'd really appreciate your feedback

Vue does the nicest looking isands I've ever seen.. good enough and used for the Pirates of the Carribean movies as well.

if you are looking to buy one, go for vue 6 infinite, not 5.. if has the cool eco and plants painting, which is MUCH easier to make things look exactly how YOU want, not how the software wants.

Also, rather then making one BIG complete island, why not break it up into "sets"? That will be much easier on your system resources, and it's exactly what TV shows do as well.

Vue would get a vote..it has pretty good palm trees..;) but seriously, it should work. Surprisingly, I see very few Mojoworld pics with water in them, although one of their promotional pics is a woman on a beach...go figure..;) I only have Carrara 4, so I don't know from 6.

Bryce can do a decent island, or make a good background for one. Version 5.5 is still out there, and still free...whaddayagotolose?..;)

If you are not  in dire need  of vast eco systems (which are only need for vast wide shots)
then please consider Vue 6 easel it imports poser figures still an animated even using the poser shaders
and only cost $90 USD

cheers

As a complete aside with regard to Wolf's recommendation, Vue 6 Esprit is apparently on sale all next week for $99, so might be better to step up to Esprit rather than Easel if that is an approach you are planning on. 

Right I forgot about the sale

good point

thanks for the advice.. and I definately will work on the island in sections... but I want at least one aerial shot of the whole island from afar, then save different version of the island with this or that area populated...

I"ll check into Vue 6, but was thinking maybe carrera 6 pro would have been more useful... then again, thanks for the advice!

Carrara 6 doesn't come default with Transposer and will likely need it. For those that have C5 or Transposer and P5 or P6, C6Pro would be a nice suggestion, it might do better than Vue in some cases. For those that don't I would suggest Vue 6 (I personally was a bit disappointed in the capabilities of the plant editor and anything other than big wide open landscapes look just a tiny bit off). For anything but big wide open landscapes C6 looks a bit better (in my opnion), hair in C6 looks just great (although it has a few bugs).
So as usual the answer isn't clear cut, it depends on what you want. If all your shots are outside use V6. If most of your shots are inside with a few of the island (and you can get around the Transposer issues) use C6. For anything in between it's your choice. Currently V6 is more stable, C6 is very new and needs a few service releases.

ahhh, hadn't thought about that, that C6 is pretty new... will probably hold on that then...

and yeah, I might go for vue 6 anyway, as most stuff I'm planning is outside shots, with some city shotw where you can see the landscape in the background... but I can always render that and use it was a background pic in poser... then again, in C6 I might do this and also enjoy the render engine for better blurred shadows and whatnot...

I'll still keep an eye out... thanks again!

Since you do not have a beast machine, I honestly think Vue is a bad choice. I don't own a beast machine either and running Vue 6 Easel with poser imports turned out to be a huge problem. I ended up returning Vue and I'm back to poser, leaving huge scenes alone until I do have a better machine.

From what you saying, it sounds like you may need a good machine first and then worry about the software again.

That might be a wise choice... make do with something less advanced, like bryce and poser/ds in th emeantime, and save up your cahs to upgrade your system. you can probably spend $500 and get a system with twice the power you currently have, especially with holiday sales coming up.

Quote - If you are not  in dire need  of vast eco systems (which are only need for vast wide shots)
then please consider Vue 6 easel it imports poser figures still an animated even using the poser shaders
and only cost $90 USD

Question (since Vue5 is the latest version I have):

Does Vue 6 Pro/Inf/etc and/or Easel allow in-app character posing of Poser figures, or do you have to tre-import with each tweak, or ...? And does Poser have to be open alongside Vue while doing it?

/P

You can repose Poser figures in Vue 6 (would have to check which versions do this, as I think there is a break point on this one), but you would need serious memory. Poser doesn't have to be open, but Vue does calls to the Poser app, so you get a hellacious memory load from this. One way to mitigate that somewhat is to forget the Poser shader system and use Dave Burdicks SkinVue (which requires V6 Infinite, as it is the version that has wxPython), and shrink the uber textures down a lot in PS or PSP or Gimp. It isn't quite up to handling animating in Vue, so I haven't played around with it too much....

Quote -
Question (since Vue5 is the latest version I have):

Does Vue 6 Pro/Inf/etc and/or Easel allow in-app character posing of Poser figures, or do you have to tre-import with each tweak, or ...? And does Poser have to be open alongside Vue while doing it?

/P

It does allow reposing in Vue but as you are effectively opening poser at the same time, there's a significant RAM hit by doing so.  You don't have to open poser yourself, Vue does the linking itself

[edit] X posted :)

Does Vue 6 Pro/Inf/etc and/or Easel allow in-app character posing of Poser figures,*

Yes But you mileage may vary depending on what figure your are reposing in vue
and honestly ??why bother thats what POSER is for
ultra easy posing of figures. in a realtime previsualization environment.
I have full posing morphing and conforming available in Cinema4dwith interposer pro but i dont do very much reposing even in Cinema.
if you take you time and properly previs your figs in poser with some OGL test renders you wont need to do any major reposing in the hires hi quality  render app.

And does Poser have to be open alongside Vue while doing it?

 No

attached screen shot in V6 "easel"

Cheers

Quote -
Yes But you mileage may vary depending on what figure your are reposing in vue
and honestly ??why bother thats what POSER is for
ultra easy posing of figures. in a realtime previsualization environment.
I have full posing morphing and conforming available in Cinema4dwith interposer pro but i dont do very much reposing even in Cinema.
if you take you time and properly previs your figs in poser with some OGL test renders you wont need to do any major reposing in the hires hi quality  render app.

The reason why is rather simple, since Vue and Cararra etc. don't do just rendering:

I get a figure put together. I import it into (app). I build a terrain and etc. for it there, then realize that -- waitaminute -- the rocks/grass/furniture/etc my figure is sitting on? Well, the figure doesn't quite mesh together with it all in a natural way, since the floor/furniture/whatever ain't exactly flat. So... time to re-pose.

Even pre-built, with a facsimile prop in Poser to closely approximate the figure's expected contact points, I find it a far easier concept to tweak things in the final app than to go back, tweak, re-import, rinse, repeat, etc... you know?

And what if I decide to change something in mid-workflow?

That's why I was curious.

Reg'ds,
/P

I'm not sure it matters enough to have the ability to do exact placement, since the interface isn't quite as easy to see things (at least to me) without doing short test renders.

And if the actor is sitting in the grass, his/her feet can be imperfectly positioned, since they would actually be IN the grass. The trick is getting something to satisfyingly muffle the contact points so it looks natural. My biggest complaint with 3d pictures is the perfection....all lines are smooth and even on terrains, there is no real matter extending from them. Even with the new displacement materials, there are no blades of grass...and the grass plant isn't very good for tight shots anyway...it's very much intended for background (as are all of Vue's vegetation).

For things like that, I would put the actor and some important props together and import them together. Then, it's just a matter of positioning the little group into the scene (possibly to  replace a pre-existing chair or something).

Carrera's hair as grass, though....that has a lot of potential once they get the poser issues worked out.

The good thing about MojWorld is that there are hundreds of worlds that you can download, explore and tweak to your liking. You could find a suitable Poser island with beaches on many of them, but it would be more difficult to create your own. Also, faking the tropical vegetation would be more challenging than it would in Vue Infinite, but I've found that MojoWorld handles Poser imports with a greater degree of stability. Still, for a fully customized, earthlike island, Vue would probably be the best bet. Carrara isn’t in the same ballpark when it comes to landscape and plant quality, and it’s so buggy at this point with the Poser imports that I can’t recommend it.

Quote - Carrara isn’t in the same ballpark when it comes to landscape and plant quality, and it’s so buggy at this point with the Poser imports that I can’t recommend it.

AGREED!!!

Quote -
And if the actor is sitting in the grass, his/her feet can be imperfectly positioned, since they would actually be IN the grass. The trick is getting something to satisfyingly muffle the contact points so it looks natural. My biggest complaint with 3d pictures is the perfection....all lines are smooth and even on terrains, there is no real matter extending from them.

Not necessarily; you can hammer in a lot of roughness if you work on it (esp. objects at a distance). Even in Vue... folks simply don't use what's there (for instance, in the terrain editor you can simulate trees by pebbling the mid-distance terrain, then applying a decent texture to it).

My big thing is how the figure contacts the ground. Not all of 'em stand up, and setting a figure pose to contact the not-so-flat ground requires a bit of tweaking. Simply doing all that in Poser first is a bit of a pain (requires the mini-terrain "ground" bit to be exported out of Vue, then into Poser, then drag both it and figure back in, etc.).

Since (in Vue or Carrara) there's a way to simply adjust the figure on-the-fly in the rendering app, it saves a lot of steps in the workflow, y'know?

Quote - Carrera's hair as grass, though....that has a lot of potential once they get the poser issues worked out.

Anything Grows (a Cararra plugin) has been able to do this for ages now. ;)

/P

thanks once more.. I had high hopes for carrara 6, but since it's still too early for it...

I went ahead and got mojoworld 3 pro... quite a nice engine!!! even with a very complicated alien world (with a weird atmosphere that needed a plugin to work), in normal render settings, it still rendered pretty quick... need to try poser imports next...

but so far, until I get a better machine, Mojoworld is the winner for me...  but I willd efinately check into Vue in the future, when higher tecnhology is more affordable

If you do get a new machine, you can set up network rendering with vue...that's a pretty cool feature and works easily enough. You can kick off a big render job to your nodes and start to work on your next one....that is a wonderful feature. Especially if you do lots of renders with the same scene- which I suspect you will be doing.

Attached Link: MJW 3 and Poser 7

Strangely, I haven’t experienced a problem with the import of Poser 7 files into Mojoworld. (This is strange because I’m generally assailed by every software conflict in existence.) I think as long as you stay clear of Poser 7 procedurals everything imports without a hitch.

Bonjour

Quote - Strangely, I haven’t experienced a problem with the import of Poser 7 files into Mojoworld. (This is strange because I’m generally assailed by every software conflict in existence.) I think as long as you stay clear of Poser 7 procedurals everything imports without a hitch.

The problem between Poser and MJW 3, IIRC, is that you need to point MWJ to your copy of Poser 6 as it will not recognize a copy of Poser 7. Quite unfortunately, I am not at all optimistic this situation will improve. Hubert Holin

I don't have Poser 6. I pointed Mojoworld at Poser 5 a long time ago and installed Poser 7 since then. I can open files generated in Poser 7 in Mojoworld, but maybe it's 'Poser 5' that's actually doing the opening.