I'd be interested to see a no postwork section in the gallery, not because i'm lazy or incompetent, purely because i'd really like to see what can be achieved using the program itself... by postwork, i mean airbrushing, layering etc,  in fact any external program enhancements or tweaks....does that discount skin textures that have been photoshopped for textures, not if it has been done before applying to a figure....what do you guys think?

I've wanted this for years.  Now more than ever is an ideal time to show what Poser alone is capable of.  Even back in the Poser 4 days, it could achieve some amazing results if you had the patience to learn how.

As for the definition of "Postwork" I think anything goes as long as the render isn't altered in any way (other than cropping or shrinking for file size, and a signature/title line added).  In fact, that is the definition of Postwork; fiddling about with a render to enhance it afterwards.  So, no Postwork, no fiddling.  :)

well that's 2 votes in favour lol, out of two posts i'd be happy to call that a majority landslide Sam, can't wait for the section to appear in the gallery

:b_tonguewink:

i'd like to see this also, but i also know the limits of current figures and would allow for wanky joints and ill fitting clothing, i think this would point out the areas that need addressing the most...

:O)

Well make that a yes for me too

I'm all in for this as well. :)

     It is important to me to try to get the image by render alone because I enjoy making animations.  While I admire the ability to hand-draw details/corrections onto a render, it isn't feasible to do so over hundreds of frames, and it would be well nigh impossible to do postwork consistently enough over multiple frames to avoid a jarringly obvious artifact when the animation is played.

     For still images, I just enjoy the challenge of getting Poser to produce the effect wanted.  Ironic, given the old argument that a Poser render doesn't count as art as would a painting or drawing.  I respect the ability to draw in good postwork, but I don't enjoy doing it myself.  I'd rather spend hours tweaking geometry and material nodes.

My objective has always been to produce the best possible image, regardless of what work flow I have to follow. I've been using Poser for about 5 years now off and on, and although I feel I am at least competent with it, I am nowhere near the point where I feel I am any kind of expert like others here. I can make up for some of these shortcomings through postwork. It is the end results I seek, not the idea that I can do everything within one app.The forum helps me a lot. There are some real whizzes here. People are overall friendly and willing to help an idiot like me, and that makes me feel good about beng a member. I am saving out a lot of the information, and I am going to put together a book filled with hints and tips that I am sure can't be found anywhere else. 

C~

i dont think there's anything wrong with postwork Charlie43, if that's what floats ya boat, my point is, as Sam so rightly said, Poser is now far advanced from the early days and one section devoted purely to non postworked images will showcase what the stand alone can do. So many times i've seen images and thought, why can't I do that in Poser, if they can, only to find out they couldn't and didn't......

Well, it ain't an argument over what is the best method of producing an image, since the answer to that is always going to be "Whatever gets the job done".   Nobody in their right mind would limit themselves to one single tool for a job if there were other, better things available.   It's more of an opportunity to showcase the software's capabilities and the ingenuity of the people using it, which has been sadly neglected.

In any case, there are so many heavily postworked "Poser" renders that should really go in Mixed Media, IMO.  The other thing to consider is, there must be plenty of newcomers who see something in the Poser gallery and wonder how the hell is it possible to do that?  The answer, quite often, is that it's not possible, since it was mainly painted over.

It seems a shame that Poser, with all the advances it has made from (even when I started) in Poser 4, is still treated primarily as a rotoscoping tool by many, when there are some incredible effects, shaders and production techniques available now.

you echo my sentiments precisely Sam................

Well there you go then, a baby girl and a smoking dog say it's good.  :)

i don't think there's much chance of the mods doing anything yet, maybe we should all post renders in the gallery of John Lennon and Yoko carrying placards saying"Give no postwork a chance"......................

Heh.  We'd all get hauled over the coals for copyright violations, most likely.  :)

Perhaps an original render with a similar theme would work.  Mine'd have to have Daleks, though. :D  Hmmm... an idea is brewing.  Never a good sign. :lol: 

Sometimes I "pre-work" textures in IrfanView (which has a nice batch function) or photoshop, but IMO 99% of the pictures "needing" postwork just suffer from less than ideal textures, lights or shaders.

And of course using figures with bad rigging.

Not saying people "shouldn't" postwork, but it would be nice to have a place for "vanilla" Poser renders.

BTW, the real purist of course doesn't even need postwork for the signature.  :-)

Dear Lord, buy the girl a Big Mac, or something.  Great looking render, though.

There was a time when this issue was frequently&hotly debated here.

Now as a person who never renders poser content in posers render engine I must ask why people care so much about this matter?

" I want to see what poser is capable of doing without all the paint overs etc."

Well you can see this for yourself with your copy of poser
and the wealth of knowledge about lighting&shaders from expert people like Bagginsbill.

Also What about the subtle enhancements and global post filters that are not so obvious as a blatant "paint over".

Please consider the huge burden that would be placed on the"pure poser " gallery moderators  trying to determine if the lovely&mild "bloom" in a render was the result of good environmental lighting or was it applied later in photoshop.

And we can only imagine the the Controversy& Drama that will ensue in the forums when a talented poser purists has his/her image wrongly rejected on some moderators  "suspicions" that  some hair prop looks to have been "softened" with a post filter.

I think such a "Pure poser gallery would likely result in more bitter,angry & LOCKED threads  than any perceived or material benefits it would bring to the Renderosity site

Just my opinion

Cheers

A hugh portion of images proudly tagged as "no postwork" seem very unfinished to me, probably because, as JoePublic points out, there hasn't been enough attention paid to lights, textures, and shaders. At the moment, it's almost as though just saying "no postwork" gets you off the hook for these things.

A gallery dedicated to showcasing just what can be done inside Poser might well elevate the general expectations of what an unpostworked render should look like.

I'm all for it.

@ wolf - I think you'd just have to take people on trust.  No other way could work, realistically.  Sure, there'd most likely be cheats but sadly, that's the way of it.

As for the why?  I think moriador expressed it well enough.  I could just as well say "Why not?"   In any event, I can't take advantage of the many advances in Poser, since I'm stuck with version 6 but it's still nice to see what can be done with the latest kit, time and ingenuity.  In fact, I'm still pleased when I can coax a half decent render out of my lowly version.  Seeing other people's efforts can inspire me and give me additional info on how to get the best I can within the system's limitations.

Finally, though, it's a lot of fun.  Keep in mind what I said earlier in the thread, though; it's a plain stupid approach if you're working for a client and/or a deadline.  Times like those, it's whatever does the job.  I think everyone here knows by now that clients and their targets don't give a monkey's about how it was made, in the same way as most audiences don't care if a great song was played on a Les Paul or a Telecaster.  But to those who actually use the stuff it's an interesting topic in and of itself.

actually the term "no postwork" is incorrect.. what is wanted here is known in the Movie world as "In Camera"... all the shot, effects etc in 1 shot.

I'm all for it. it's how I work anyway. all the post work I tend to do is add text on the bottom.. since I can't paint to save my life..

[click for full]

so.........post your no-postwork renders.

btw i am a big fan of postwork!

::::: Opera :::::

[click for full]

no postwork

[click for full]

::::: Opera :::::

P.S. Hi Wolf!

You are one talented guy.

Quote - A hugh portion of images proudly tagged as "no postwork" seem very unfinished to me, probably because, as JoePublic points out, there hasn't been enough attention paid to lights, textures, and shaders. At the moment, it's almost as though just saying "no postwork" gets you off the hook for these things.

A gallery dedicated to showcasing just what can be done inside Poser might well elevate the general expectations of what an unpostworked render should look like.

I'm all for it.

  As one who posts no postwork tagged images, i agree with this comment, but as much as images are judged on the 5+ hours or whatever of postwork that goes into them in very often not inexpensive art and graphics programs, i think the "artist" if we are allowed to be called that without postworking has the same rights to be judged on the image and i don't consider to be an excuse....one quote from the Smith Micro website "With Poser’s new Subsurface Material nodes, you’ll transform your scenes into rendered masterpieces with lifelike translucent surfaces"

Agreed!

but would people be allowed to use third party "in camera Effects that do not ship with poser and are not an effect achievable with firefly alone such as global shaders or for that matter BB's third party environmental Sphere lighting prop??

(Attached straight poser6 firefly render and  saved out of poser  uploaded with this forum post "in camera  pencil drawn effect from "olivers art" global shaders applied globally with a native poser6 macro)

Cheers

Thanks. :-)

Problem is, whenever I load any foodstuff in my runtime, it quickly dissapears. I have a suspicion, but so far was unable to prove it.

;-)

I think what we are saying Wolf, is that if it is done within Poser then no matter whether it's a shader, prop etc it is still within the confines of poser, if you then take it into photoshop or another program, add 5 layers, 12 airbrush coats and a few lense filters then it would be considered postworked, basically when your scene is rendered that is our definition of no postwork........

"I think what we are saying Wolf, is that if it is done within Poser then no matter whether it's a shader, prop etc it is still within the confines of poser,"

Very good then sir
thanks for the clarification

Cheers

Here's a render that could very well justify postwork:

The IDL light in combination with the displacement shader used for the sand creates artifacts in the shadows.

The car is also very low-rez and doesn't work well with Poser smoothing, so some parts look jagged.

Personally I'd still rather improve the car's mesh in a modeller than having to postwork it every time I use it in a render.

Quote - I use a lot of postwork, seems crazy not to, to me.  However, these days the images Poser can crank out by itself are light years ahead of what I used to be able to do with it.  No post here, other than to convert the PNG image to a JPEG for uploading:

I agree. But then I enjoy postwork more than setting up scenes. To me it's silly not to postwork the life out of a snapshot (I unyellow teeth and cover up zits and occasionally smooth out a few wrinkles even on snapshots of my friends -- it's a habit).

But I do appreciate seeing just what Poser is capable of doing all on its own.  The initial investment of time in getting shaders and lighting looking good might be quite significant, but in the long run, it's bound to be a huge time saver, even if you still do significant postwork.

It would be gratifying to see, and extremely helpful as well, just what we could expect from this software.

On a side note, I can't help thinking of "in camera" in the legal context, so it sounds rather odd to me. :)

PS I love the motion blur on the render, Paul!

Just implement a tag that people can filter on to see only NPW images if they want.

Ultimately, you do what makes you happy. If you're totally satisfied with a NPW image then great. If you leave it lacking something that PW could achieve then it becomes either a fetish or an interesting exercise, depending on your POV. 

What I'd like to see is something like the lighting challenges at

http://www.3drender.com/challenges/index.htm 

where some talented people took a stock scene and had a go at it., with or without PW and especially some before and after PW images. It's sometimes difficult to see what PW contributes without seeing the same scene with and without it.

that sounds like a great idea lmckenzie, i posted a thread sometime ago about challenges/comps in poser and almost got my head bitten off becuase we had holiday comps already, if anybody wants to set one up as a challenge i'd love to have a go, i dont do Santas, pumpkins or easter bunnies.........:sneaky:

I think some people are under the impression that I dislike postwork, I don't in fact i am quietly envious of great postworked images, but what I want to try and achieve is pushing the boat out with purely poser as far as I can, i'm still a novice and probably always will be as long as the technology advances faster than my capacity to absorb it.......As I mentioned earlier, when I first bought Poser 5 in about 2002/3 I joined rendo and looked in the galleries, played with Poser for a bit and then gave up as i just kept looking and saying WOW, I can never achieve that, in truth in Poser alone nobody could, so maybe the answer is that images that are postworked could have a PW tab ?

IMHO such a gallery should reside on the Smith Micro site, as actually is the case. It's their software, so they should want to showcase what the program is capable of, without postwork. Perhaps they might start contests some day, as Vue does with its yearly Digital Environment Competition.

The Rendo galleries are not very handy for this, they hardly support tags (or do support them but they are not used), and one can pick only one subcategory for an image.

But why do you need a gallery? If you want to see what Poser is capable of, with strict limits (like: still image, unprocessed firefly render jpg output, photoreal, ...) then just start a thread calling for submissions. When succesful, repeat it every quarter or so, and experiment a bit with the requirements stated in the starting-post. A basic rule might be (up to you): no entries/posts without images that fit the requirements. And/or: no comment on images from others. Whatever, your thread, your rules, next time new rules, etc.

You can start off now...

sounds a bit like shut up , conversation over lol

I did not mean that, I meant: you can have what you want the informal way.

In the meantime, getting some results in does not stop anyone from having any conversation about the formal Rendo solution (if any).

point taken aRtBee, apologies for my paranoia..........

"but what I want to try and achieve is pushing the boat out with purely poser as far as I can"....."IMHO such a gallery should reside on the Smith Micro site, as actually is the case. It's their software, so they should want to showcase what the program is capable of, without postwork."

Then you should call it a pure "poser firefly" gallery then.

Here is the issue IMHO

A "pure" poser render  will still only be as good as the modeling topolgy& texturing quality of the canned THIRD PARTY content and even lighting presets you are rendering within poser.

As we know,(unlike those render challenge models in the Imkenzie link), not all poser content is created equal.

A V4 Character pack with the "elite" texture set from DAZ and a IBL studio light set from RDNA, will likely look better and get more gallery hits/challenge votes etc, than poser's "Alyson" using only the content that shipped for her in poser.

So frankly a "pure" poser gallery section or challenge will still likely be dominated by only  those who can afford all of the best third party content& lighting presets.

Making the fact that the image was not touched after the render somewhat moot. IMHO

Cheers

no, not really. everyone is free to make their own content, avoid light presets (which they should anyway..... seperate rant there!) etc.

so, enough of the arguing the little points. we get bogged down in those. lets just do it.

so basically what you are saying wolf, if i understand you correctly is that whether you call it a pure poser gallery or not, whatever the criteria , the galleries will or are purely dominated by "those who can afford all of the best third party content & lighting presets" which can also mean that the postworked galleries are dominated by those who can afford all of the above plus the graphics software to postwork, which leads me to wonder why anyone bothers to post in the galleries? except the few who fall into the above categories?, not trying to be an ass here, i'm just wondering how people really percieve the galleries and what motivation is there to emulate your favourite artist/style/genre if you can never afford to join the big boys league?

Quote - I'd be interested to see a no postwork section in the gallery, not because i'm lazy or incompetent, purely because i'd really like to see what can be achieved using the program itself... by postwork, i mean airbrushing, layering etc,  in fact any external program enhancements or tweaks....does that discount skin textures that have been photoshopped for textures, not if it has been done before applying to a figure....what do you guys think?

I'm all for a no postwork or a 'pure firefly' section, I'd love to see what others render in Poser. Such an addition would be welcome. I don't care if people edit, enhance, alter, postwork or whatever you call it, their images or not, but I'd love to see what people can get out of Posr without that. I know what lot's of people can do with Poser in their workflow, but I'd love to see what People can do with Poser only also. That is hard to determine at the moment.

Quote - I'd be interested to see a no postwork section in the gallery....what do you guys think?

Imo, make it a subsection of the Poser gallery (genre, I think it's called). 

I agree with so many of the comments, I think what irks me most is the attitude that some people seem to have ie: a non postworked image is worthless/shabby unfinished and that somehow somebody spends 20 minutes cobbling a  scene together and calling it finished and demanding applaud. I have probably got close to a thousand or more pz3's or pzz's stored on various media that never even made it to worth finishing let alone posting in the gallery as i am sure many other guys have and spent countless hours trying to get the best results i could ,i've learned along the way, not as much as i could probably, but i am never going to learn if i believe that my future lies in airbrushing my  poser shortcomings in an external program. I think i've pretty much exhausted my feelings on the subject (thank the lord they cry) and all i can do is continue to post my shabby. unfinished poorly lit nonpostworked images in the galleries ...........

*but as they say. patience is a virtue. also knowing your program inside out.. which is something I don't see with the uses of poser... with trueSpace and the built in Lightworks render engine,  I knew exactly what I would get for X setting. I did that by working with tS, not with postwork programs. I can see this proposed gallery mainly for that. learning what the program can actually do.

(yes I can see the issue with the light and the DOF - that was a limitation of how trueSpace 4.3 processes renders.. I did'nt find away round it.)

still a great scene regardless khai, imho

"which leads me to wonder why anyone bothers to post in the galleries? except the few who fall into the above categories?",

Well you have to ask the people what motivates them to post in a web gallery
as the reasons will vary
the ones who model tend to post images to show case their modeling skills
Texture artists  to show case their texture painting skills
and so on
 perhaps some poser user post images to highlight their compositional skills
and artistic& lighting choices with their content.
 

"not trying to be an ass here, i'm just wondering how people really percieve the galleries and what motivation is there to emulate your favourite artist/style/genre if you can never afford to join the big boys league?"

Consider the possibility that not every poser user aspires to join the "big boys league'
some just want to use what ever tools "in camera" or post camera to make their finished pieces.

Trust me even the "big boys" perform post render adjustments(Gamma,Bloom etc) to their
Vray,Mental Ray Arnold,Renderman, Maxwell,Modo  etc renders.

 As for the suggestion to post such a gallery on the SM site, well IMHO that would be nothing more than a FREE advert for the DAZ inc  $$$Store$$ unless you restricted it to the SM's poser native content.

Welcome to the Smith Micro "FireFly" Gallery:

Female figure V4 available at DAZ inc
"Carmen"Texture&morph set by "tony puryear"available at DAZ inc
Sci fi clothing outfit by 'Uzilite" available at  DAZ inc
Hair by "Quarker" available at  DAZ inc
Downtown urban environment "Urban sprawl 2 "
by "Stonemason" available at  DAZ inc

Render engine: smith micro "firefly"....... with no post processing

Cheers

wolf359, i find those remarks quite enlightening.....quote "and so on perhaps some poser user post images to highlight their compositional skills and artistic& lighting choices with their content. "   it would appear that the third group is way down the food chain in your view, may i remind you however that if it were not for hobby modellers cobbling together a scene, there would not be much demand for the models, textures and poses that create so much income in the communities... just my humble lower class opinion sir

I'll bring this up to admin. :)

thanks Kimberly, most appreciated