This is all about the topic of having your characters in daz studio or poser eat(animated).

The only way i've done it is stick a spoon into a bowl or plate then repeatedly scoop and then put into character's mouth.  Problem is..the food won't be taken by the sppon. and also if it's a premade food prop..there is no way to cut pieces out of it..The food prop will always remain the same. .You can make it invisible but that's totally unrealistic to make it invisinble after the first bite or even after a few bites.

So that's one problem with eating in Poser. your food won't gradualy disappear.

The other  has to do with chewing. I use James and the M3/V3..those are the characters i use.
Although there are morphs..there is no morph to move the jaw to make the char chew. Also, there is no morph in the neck to pass food.

So, seems making realistic eating is very hard. I've never seen any one do animation for eating.
So it seems to me, we have to do unrealistic eating or skip it all. Which is fine i guess, but well..making characters eat seems to be a challenge

Hey...that got me thinking..HOw about having a contest to make the most realistic eating?

anyways thanks

This is vastly harder than you probably think it is.  There are so many problems to overcome just working with Poser to do this I can't even list them.

I will say if you want to demonstrate how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop, I have the perfect item for you.

There are several full/empty props (spoon, bowl, cup) in my 1910 Kitchen set (not free):

http://graphxemporium.com/boutigue/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65_98&products_id=240

And I rigged up one eat-and-chew pose for Posette, but that's most likely obsolete:

http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Kitchen/PosetteEatPose.zip

Also see the food in this free set.  I think the bread has a bite-out morph, but
may be misremembering.

http://www.sharecg.com/v/18160/Poser/1930-Refrigerator

Also a full/empty cup and glass in my free 1950 Kitchen:

http://www.sharecg.com/v/38319/Poser/1950-Kitchen

soup , cereal or oatmeal is easiest because you can morph the level of the food in the bowl.

chewing should be doable, but I may be thinking of M4 with the lower jaw. 

the poser magnet might do the adams apple swallowing bit.

Yes. With my full/empty props, you can make them look like soup or cereal with
materials and displacement.

For more chunky food, you'd have to model separate pieces, parent them to the
spoon or fork, and make them disappear and appear at the proper moments.

Most of the Vicky-Mike family already have the necessary morphs for chewing,
Open jaw, side-side jaw, open lips, cheek bulge.

I had to add a couple of MTs to Posette for the chew-eat sequence.  (The MTs
are in the set, I think.)

This is something where it's probably best to break the animation down into sub-animations and then change the amount of food as you go.

Chewing might be accomplished by a combination of morphs that wouldnt naturally go together, like open teeth/close mouth or something along those lines. Hmm. I'll have to experiment with this a bit.

I actually added swallowing to Digital I's T-Rex expansion. Chewing is actually a semi circular motion, which is tough to do, morph wise. Ypu would actually need a number of specific morphs to accomplish it.

For a figure that has a separate lower jaw body part, it might be easier, but then ther are also MANY different types of chewing.. tough chewing, mild chewing, ect. You have to add a ton of morphs to a figure to accomplish they many tyes, and the odds are, it would hardly ever be used.

Eating is something that's shied away from even in live action movies / TV shows unless it's crucial to the plot, because watching somebody shovelling food into their gob isn't hugely attractive.

You may think you've watched someone eat in a movie or on a show, but they're more likely to have made 'I am eating' actions and faces without actually putting anything into the top end of their alimentary canal.

Unless having an animated character obviously consume something is central to your project, I'd go with the same approach.

Quote - Eating is something that's shied away from even in live action movies / TV shows unless it's crucial to the plot, because watching somebody shovelling food into their gob isn't hugely attractive.

You may think you've watched someone eat in a movie or on a show, but they're more likely to have made 'I am eating' actions and faces without actually putting anything into the top end of their alimentary canal.

Unless having an animated character obviously consume something is central to your project, I'd go with the same approach.

Quoted for complete agreement!!!!

Quote - ... shovelling food into their gob isn't hugely attractive. ...

Unless it's Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. :)

Quote -
Unless it's Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. :)

Yes but that is an example of a carefully directed plot driven scene
made to further whatever eroticism the writers wanted to project.
it is ironic that two vital Life process ,Food consumption& Waste elimination are best "implied" in movies and not graphicly Depicted.

Hence the "unless" indicating that I generally agree with this sentiment but know there are exceptions.

I immediately thought of that scene in whichever LotR movie where the Stewart of Gondor was eating while his son and his army were be slaughtered by the Orcs. Perfect example of why eating is not normally shown unless it's relevant to the plot. Don't know which was more abhorrent: the scenes of him shoveling food ingloriously into his gaping maw or the carnage paralleled outside.

Besides, I am of the mindset that NOTHING should be in an animation that's not crucial to the plot. To paraphrase Chekhov: if there is a gun hanging over the fireplace in the first act someone had better use it before the end of the play.

Quote -
I immediately thought of that scene in whichever LotR movie where the Stewart of Gondor was eating while his son and his army were be slaughtered by the Orcs. Perfect example of why eating is not normally shown unless it's relevant to the plot. Don't know which was more abhorrent: the scenes of him shoveling food ingloriously into his gaping maw or the carnage paralleled outside.

Yes that was a very powerful and sad scene in

"Return of The King"

It seemed to Symbolize the Selfishness of "Denothor" and was as if he was consuming those soldiers Lives himself with each bite
Loved those Films!!
but I digress.

Yeah, I suspected it was in "Return" but since I don't watch them as separate movies these days, they all tend to run one into the other and I remember it as one really long movie.

Now I'm digressing. But what's a little digression among friends?

in mainstream cinema they must include scenes of smoking, eating, drinking and drug use
that are not germane to the plot, because the audience will become restless if they don't
see some familiar activities.  in addition to product placement, they're part of the repertoire
of cleeshays by which the genre is defined IMVHO.  I've never seen any of these poser
clips with anything but smoking, now that ye mention it.  I've tried still frames of eating and
drinking, but even that looks lousy.

I'm wondering if you could simulate the food vanishing from the plate by using magnets to shrink the food where the spoon goes in.

Probably, but you would have to map out -exactly- where the spoon was going, the size of the portion taken, create the morph for that one spoonful, then repeat it for every consecutive action. You would also have to involve texture changes and either normal mapping or out and out displacement mapping to keep the visible food surface from looking like deformed geometry.

Basically, you are getting into the same reasons you don't see very many CG characters barefoot. The amount of work required to do it well enough to keep from breaking the suspension of disbelief isn't worth it most times. Now it was worth it in 'Avatar' , as the only time you really see feet in motion is during Jake's run after getting his avatar.....which works as a dramatic device to separate the kitty cat from the chair bound marine with the busted backbone.  But those few seconds of toe wriggling took a =lot= of manhours to get that good; about the only thing as complex is hands and facial expression, and both of those take far longer, as they do more.

Quote - Eating is something that's shied away from even in live action movies / TV shows unless it's crucial to the plot, because watching somebody shovelling food into their gob isn't hugely attractive.

They seem to do it more in British shows-and they talk with food in their mouths as a result.  I did love the breakfast scene in One Foot in the Grave" where an obnoxious lout goes to wee, and  Victor (who had been fishing) replaces his food with his bait of live grubs and leaves.  Unfortunately for Victor, they  meet again...

Well I was going to have my character chewing cereal in the morning but what i ended up doing is him just looking at the cereal box  saying "This is too sugary.." and instead grabbing an orange and tossing it up then catchingi it. Then i cut to the next scene.

hehehe. good way to skip the eating part. :)