hi everyone, long time not here:

this is an issue i've been struggling with since early 2004, when i started using Poser 4... i've always wanted to create an island where all the stories for my comics and novels would take place... i did some first tries with Vue D'Esprit back then (nowadays vue9 seems to the latest incarnation of that software), but the results were laughable.. plus, the whole taking the poser scene into Vue was always a drag back then... i understand nowadays you can open pz3 files directly into Vue, but at what memory cost, i wonder?

so, all in all, i just wanna do everything in one software alone, as impossible as that might be... if i could bring all my Poser models (specially Stonemason's city sets) into Vue, and pose them there, change characters' expressions and such, i'd be a happy camper, but i'm almost sure that cannot be done, can it? I think Carrara can do something like tha, but last i checked, that also was a cumbersome project...

Therefore, i wanna attempt making an entire island within Poser, and i'd like some input from the community on this idea...  I'm thinking of using Terradome for the main layout of the island, specially for building the beaches and mountains... for streets and such, i've luckily had the sponsorship of some really talented 'rosity creators who have provided me with some cool elements.. sadly though, all streets would have to be plain, as i dont have any type of road so far that can do inclinations or uphills... unless i hack the heck out of it... which maybe can be done...

anyway, as far as trees go, i can make some small forests with some of Predatron's sets and many other trees set around in the community... for downtown areas, i'd probably use mostly Stonemason's sets.. and for regular suburban areas, i'm kind of lost, as i haven't found that many cool houses available for Poser besides de "dream home" sets... building each house and decorating it inside i know it's gonna be such a huge task, but i guess it has to be done if i wanna do what i wanna do...

for a little while i even thought about abandoning Poser altogether and move to the Sims 3 community... they have just SO much stuff specially intented for world creation, they even have a tool called CAW (create a world) that can produce results like this:

http://thumbs2.modthesims.info/img/3/2/0/5/8/1/4/MTS2_ashillion_1084757_Avalon-base.jpg

that's an entire island someone built to be used inside the Sims 3 game... in there you can add building houses (most of them available fully decorated), community lots, etc...  this is a visual example of a world in Sims 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_ReX876BK8

So, while that seemed to me like the way to go, i still can't pass some limitations of he Game software itself.. mainly, even the best looks Sims characters still look like dolls and not like humans... what i mean by that is, when you look at poser characters, you KNOW they're not real humans, but some of them look so good you just kind of forget for a second they are, and at most you can say "wow, that's a really cool looking 3D person"... with the Sims 3, you don't get that idea, you just think "plastic dolls" the whole time.. so that's what prevented me to fully immese myself in that 3D world...

and here i am now, wondering if i should embark in this task or let some more years go by so technology can catch up to what i wanna do.. Lumion 3D seemed also the way to go, but i think they're still not fully ready to handle human figures:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoLV8QIm02M

they do have human figures in the video, but i think they're used mostly as decorations, i don't think they can be used anywhere near the way we do in Poser...

so, ideas? Should i really not bother with the immense amount of hours doing an island in Poser would take, and should i want for technology to bring an "all-in-one" software? I thought about waiting for The Sims 4 to be released (with better looking human characters), but since that apparently is gonna be in 2015, i thought of looking ofr something else for the time being...

anyway, enough rambling, i'd appreciate any feedback on the idea and if anyone else has tried this before, i'd appreciate even more knowing how they did... thanks in advance for any replies...

You can pose inside Vue these days but you will need a good pc with at least 8 Gig of RAM if you don't want it to choke. My workflow is always to set up my scenes inside Poser, including people etc. and import them into Vue [9 infinite], the lighting is better in Vue, Terrain work is obviously superior to Poser because that's what it's designed for. I'm about to upgrade my own pc which will have 16 Gig of RAM, the more you have the better it is with Vue, you were right in that thought..

have you tried Carrara??

it works with poser models even down to posing in C directly

has quite good terrains and a modeler for the odd hut ;-)

both 6 and 7 was on 3d mags in the past you may be able to get hold of one just to try it out for minimum cost

Poser only has a visible range of something like 20,000ft. Can't remember the exact distance, so even if you manage to build and load the scene you'll only be able to see a part of it. I have an old Mapps freebie beach scene which is so large that as I recall he recommended loading in segments.

Whilst I understand the appeal of a complete environment, I don't think it is practical let alone renderable. In games there are different levels of detail which are called up by proximity, for example you can approach a "complete" bulding, but the contents/ interior will only load when you open the door, then you'll only see as far as the limits of that room, the next room will not be in the scene or affect rendering until that door is open, the external landscape wil not be in the scene demanding resources, whereas with your complete scene it would be.

Perhaps a series of modular overlapping scenes would be the way to go

have you seen the Pacific Island set?  http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/pacific-point--island-cafe/79921

the island and sky dome are handy runtime items.

 i'm happy with wings3d for modelling for poser, tends to work out better (imo )  to avoid the sweeps and extrude functions,  i move a face then cut/connect to build the model.  it's a box topology program.

I dont see building one huge set in Poser to be workable. Instead I would build smaller sets for each location.

Agree 100% with markschum.

In my early days with poser, I managed to construct an entire mansion for a story I was doing. I finally got everything to load at once and discovered that it was not only taxing the resourses of my machine, but it was extremely cumbersome to work with. Just navigating the camera to the area I wanted to use was a major problem, and let's not even THINK about the lighting requirements!

Think about the way we often do it in the film industry: You may do some location shots to set the scene, but in many cases the room shots are done on individual sets. You build the set you need for a sequence, shoot it, then build the next thing you need. In Poser, this would be like doing a distant render of the island (or substituting a photo of the real thing... simpler) then you could have a series of smaller beaches and buildings (exteriors) then separate room sets for the interior shots. If you need to show the outside world outside of a window, paste a render of that scene on a primitive and put it behind the window.

The idea of a "complete environment" in Poser is an attractive one in overview, but is completely un-workable in practice. You are much more efficient working piece-meal.

My $.02. Your mileage may vary.

MicroCosm at RDNA has a morph for roads.  You could build a small island with roads using that.   No advice on Vue as I gave up on that software a while ago.  

There's this-

http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/-/ultimo-paradiso?item=12615

It looks small, but it's bigger than you think. Vegetates with scripts like Vue, and the water and sand are quite realistic.

You can also grab my "Lynn's Point" it is huge cove with small islands :-)

PS it is in the freebie section :-)

thanks for all the replies... i did Carrara a chance a while ago, but i found it to be too cumberosme to really be bothered with it...

from what i saw, i think Ultimo Paradiso seems to get the job done.. the promo images were done with something called Reality, though... isn't that a plugin for Daz Studio? Regardless, im happy with the light quality you can get in PPRO 2010, so i guess that's not a big issue...

and no, they way i have been working with huge environment before, it's creating a basic layouf of the area without any buildings or very mininal objects in it... i decide where to start building, and then save that portion of the pz3 file alone... like, i'll put all my buildings for that area there, but nothing else... BUT, i'll make sure to have the camera pointing in the direction of other areas... that way, if i wanna render a huge scene, i'd have to open maybe 3 or 4 different pz3 files and render all of them with alpha maps (meaning, no backgrounds), then put everything together in Photoshop... i know it's tediopus, but it's the only way i've found to have huge scenes when i need them...

and yeah, 4 gigs on my comp are absolutely not enough anymore... i think i'll wait to upgrade to the 16 gigs of Ram i have as a cap on my machine, and then give this a go..

i'll check your stuff too, mapps, thanks in advance.. thanks to everyone!

Vue crashes too much for me.  I rarely use it anymore for importing Poser scenes because it always crashes no matter how small it is.  I stopped at Version 7 for Pro Studio and only use it for scenes without Poser scenes.  Upgrades are far too pricey for me too.  They should be more reasonable than they are.  Eon is getting as bad as Adobe with upgrades--too many too soon for far too much.  Especially when they don't seem to be able to fix the Poser import problems.

I use vue and poser (I know you only wanted one software but vue does brilliant islands)

In your comic you want one long shot to set the scene ie a vue shot of the island surrounded by water, then maybe a closer shot (I find vue easily imports PZ3s), then you can do it all in poser.

You can make spherical HDRIs in vue which you can then map onto the BB envirsphere (which is free) so you character can walk around.

I think that is your best bet.

Love esther