Hi everyone, I know there are plenty of existing sets for Bryce, Vue, Carrara, etc. but are there any nice outdoor Poser sets with open meadows or valley lakes,  that sort of thing with pretty and open landscapes? I'm looking for something similar to:

http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=8138

http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=8052

http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/-/carraras-bmf-landscape?item=8929&spmeta=ab

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Poser unfortunately isn't conducive to great looking outdoor scenes. You can however check out TerraDome packs at Runtime DNA. PZ3 files can also be opened directly in the most recent versions of Vue which does do awesome landscapes.

Laurie

RDNA's Microcosm is in their deep freeze sale for less than $6.  There are a great many addos for it both in the their freebie section and in their Real Deals.

Textures for Microcosm can also be used on the IC3 ground and water planes.

I don't think it's likely you're going to get products for Poser that on the order of the Carrara, Bryce and Vue ones. There are however a few sets that are usable, depending on what you're after (e.g. Terradome etc mentioned above; Fober's The Lake set at Daz)... if it's in the far background it may not be too bad. And there are also things you can add in (trees, plants) to make the foreground a bit more believable.

On the whole though, if you want to do outdoor stuff in Poser, most of the really good quality work is for city scenes (or futuristic), at least as far as I've seen.

     Bryce and Vue are inherently better at outdoor scenes, but if you are working in Poser, than an environment model is very handy.  I'm a bit surprised that Poser doesn't include one.

     To whom it may concern...

     Doesn't help you right now, but for future reference, I'm working on what will be a freely-distributable Poser environment which is optimized for P8+ and which is big enough to provide a setting for my cottages, Lothlorien trees, and elvish sailboats.  Some of the terrains will be forest, some will have streams/rivers running through them.

     It is a dome-covered "tank" style, but much larger and taller-proportioned than the Millennium Environment.  It won't have the two layers of transparency on the walls (that bogs IDL down), and the juncture of the terrain and the wall will be a gradual segue which will exploit Poser's node material system.  This shows a cottage and Aiko 3 for scale.  I'm also making some modest-poly trees which avoid use of transmapping (IDL consideration again), for populating the foreground.

     I will provide instructions for those who have Bryce, Vue, et al on how to make panoramic renders to re-texture the walls, at each of its standard scales.  Both freebie and commercial texture packs would be welcome.  I have Vue 9.5 Infinite and plan to make some wall textures myself.  ^^

     The modeler screenshot shows a Millennium Environment on the left for comparison.

Good idea, seachnasaigh! I think I'd still like something like that to be a bit bigger yet, but I suppose it depends on the user's needs....

It should be added that the newfound ability to export to a nonbiased renderer like Lux adds intriguing possibilities. Even if Poser isn't really up to dealing with landscape rendering, maybe setting up a nice landscape scene in Poser and rendering in Lux will get good results, and there will be more use for good landscape models. (I suppose it depends somewhat on cost/benefit ratio. If it's gonna take a zillion years to render a decent landscape scene in Lux, people will stick with something like Vue etc, I expect....)

(Believable3D)

Quote - Good idea, seachnasaigh! I think I'd still like something like that to be a bit bigger yet, but I suppose it depends on the user's needs....

* *

Thank you, Believable3D.  ^^

       that is size 1; there will be two larger sizes also. *

Above when I commented on the superiority of urban scenes for Poser compared to landscape scenes, I was thinking of a few artists, but especially of Stonemason. Turns out I was unaware of his Enchanted Forest set (on sale right now): it looks absolutely amazing....

http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=11998&trid=427287546

Thank you everyone for your replies! I know that unfortunately, Poser isn't as ideal for outdoor scenes like that. I've been doing tons of darker lit scifi and dystopian scenes, which it works well for. But I'll check out your suggestions and continue to keep my eyes open for nice outdoor sets!

 LaurieA, poser imports beautifully into vue, but often I will just creat an HDRI image with spherical map in vue and then I will map it to the BB envirsphere which works beautifully.  Also one can buy lots of great outdoor HDRIs if one doesn't have vue eg from safeharbor.

Love esther

@seachnasaigh: Oh my, this looks wonderful and is exactly what I've been looking for since I discovered DS / Poser! Can't wait to get this beauty in runtime (c:

Attached Link: Lothlorien terrain - Poser test

     Oh, speaking of render tests, this was a material test render for pixie dust.  The Posette pixie is scaled way down and will just be a wee small detail in the scene, but when I saw this mat test render, I let out an audible "Ooooooh!"    I really like it, and it's only four nodes, and you don't even need to UV map the dust trail mesh.  ^^

I'll raust up a screenshot of the material room when I get a chance.

Did anyone mention this one?

http://www.sharecg.com/v/39996/related/11/Poser/The-Hills-environment-for-DAZ-Studio-&-Poser

Nobody has mentioned Stonemason's Enchanted Forest?

Yeah, see my Jun 28 post. Still wishing I had bought it when it was 50% off, but am short of $$$.

Here's a scene I'm working on, rendered in PP2010 with IDL and GC on. There's a single infinite light.

I used RubiconDigital's Poser Sky Generator (available in the Marketplace) which uses procedural shaders to generate all sorts of skies+clouds - it takes a bit of getting used to but it's really good  once you've figured it out.

The foreground landscape element is 'Versatile Terrain' from DAZ, and there are two instances of First Bastion's Rolling Plains, also at DAZ (which is arguably more versatile than the former), further back.

The village and Land Rover are items from years and years ago from somewhere, I really can't remember if they're freebies or purchased. And there's the DAZ sheep and lamb and M4.

There are only two trees in the scene, the nearest by Flink and the one just behind the buildings from Rose Rouge by Powerage, both available here. The forest behind the first set of hills is a curved plane with a stock shot and corresponding transparency map applied: a very cheap-to-render solution with the drawback that it has to match the scene lighting!

In PP2010 you have the option to generate Z-Depth and Position maps, and these can be used to generate depth of field, distance haze, weather effects etc. in postwork.

As you'll see from the screen grab, it's not an immersive environment and there's little leeway for camera movement, so forget sweeping vistas and animations.

If you want to do more ambitious things you really need Vue. I've no idea how good Carrara is, nor what the current state of play with Bryce is.

Quote - Yeah, see my Jun 28 post. Still wishing I had bought it when it was 50% off, but am short of $$$.

My bad. I was reading when I just woke up and must have scrolled too fast past that one.

Attached Link: Poser terrain, size large, full size view

     Progress update:  This is one of the large terrains for the Poser enviro set.  Where the waterplane turns red indicates area outside of the walls.  In that red area, I'll make an outer terrain which mates up to the inner terrain.  The purpose of the outer terrain ring will be for Vue owners to make 360 degree panoramic renders with which to texture the terrain walls.

     For scale, there is an Aiko 3 standing beside a Celtic cross at center (0,0).  There's another Aiko 3 on one of the bridges, and there are some low-poly cottages on a plateau.

Nobody mentioned RDNA Terradome and its addons

http://www.runtimedna.com/Runtime-DNA-s-TerraDome.html

Attached Link: large enviro, Lothlorien terrain (no wallset), Poser render test

  Laurie did, in the first response to the opening post.  

Poser render test of the large (third size) enviro terrain, without the walls as I don't have the pano images made yet.  Notice the moist dirt streambanks, the terra rosa footpaths, and a few areas with exposed rock outcroppings.  This is easily changed by drawing red/green/blue onto a black canvas.  Poser then reads off the RGB components and assigns different textures and displacements to each color of the map.  The idea is that you can make footpaths or roads which fit your placement of trees and cottages.  You could also make red correspond to patches of garden, for example.

This is the RGB map used:

I still need to make some low-poly filler trees which use mesh leaves rather than transmapped squares for the leaves, in order to populate the forest.  Using that method of modeling will allow Poser to render in IDL with the least RAM burden.

Very cool :)

Laurie

I like your "world in a tank" more and more, Seachnasaigh

Thank you, Ometeotl and Laurie.  ^^  With the P9/PP2012 release out of the way, now I can get back to work.  In P4-P7, transmapped foliage for trees was the best solution.  Since P8 introducing IDL, such a myriad of overlapping transparency polys are a bad drag on rendering.  So, I've been concentrating on making trees with mesh leaves;  these render much faster.  Here is a test of a couple of low poly "filler" trees:

I still need to import the terrain nether regions into Vue and render panoramas for the backdrop walls, and I'll make some equirectangular sky renders for the skydome.  (Glaseye made the sky in this test render).  And I want a low poly bush/hedge model, and maybe another low poly tree or two, for populating the enviro.

Other terrains will follow - an Australian outback, using the RGB discriminator to add roads for those Mad Max scenes.

     The medium and small enviros will allow denser foliage to be used, for less powerful computers.  I want everybody to able to play with this if they wish.

"Also one can buy lots of great outdoor HDRIs if one doesn't have vue..."

sIBL is a great plugin to automate using HDRIs for various applications including C4D, Max and Maya. There's no version for Vue or Poser (though perhape someone might create them), but you can download some great free HDRIs from their archives. Highly recommended :-)

http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html 

poser dynamic hair makes kewl looking grass.  

i can't find it right now, but i had a scene with the big horn grazing on a grassland.

Quote - i had a scene with the big horn grazing on a grassland.

  Moo, y'all.  

    Oh, I forgot to post the pixie dust material.  Here 'tis.

Customized P9 splash screen:

.

seachnasaigh, that is so cool. Thanks :). I don't have Poser 9 yet, but from what I see, it can be used in Poser 8 as well.

Laurie

Thank you, Laurie. :)   That material should work in P5 and newer.

  found an old screen shot for the grass

Hmmm, Misty, I can see using that dynamic hair grass in the foreground of a big scene, while filling in all the background with the "cheaper" displacement grass.

Oh, an update:   after some experimentation, I've found these changes beneficial to the pixie dust:

.