I can't help but noticing that the rapid pace of physics development in games has produced some really nice realtime simulation engines.  It's becoming more than a little frustrating seeing games looking this good in motion when I know what hobbyist animators have to go through to create dynamic hair and/or soft body effects.  For example, of the four programs specific to figure creation and posing, only one of them includes realtime soft body dynamics (in the form of a spring solver).

(I count Carrara because nearly all of the work currently being done on it revolves around compatibility with the Genesis figure)

It would be so great to have hair like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m77Ocf3A3PE

I just don't know what's holding the developers back from implementing these "game" physics techniques in the applications we use. 

Do they feel the results aren't of high enough quality?  It would at least allow us to have more incidental characters on screen if we had something between prop and strand hair in Poser...

Is it too expensive to develop them?  While our apps may cost 5-10x what a game may cost, that doesn't mean SM or DAZ have the resoures of an Epic or Capcom to implement these techniques while improving other key features of their applications.

Is it a technical issue?  These sims run in realtime.  Our apps render "baked" animations.  Is there something particularly challenging in calculating and storing the data from these sims so that they can be rendered?  Perhaps when the sim is run in conjunction with the renderer the results can't be accurately previewed?

I love Poser, and haven't totally given up on Carrara either (though Bullet sadly hasn't yet become the solution I anticipated).  I also have iClone and see tremendous improvement over the previous version.  That said, I am increasingly leaning toward game engines for the large populated environments and "good enough" physics simulations they offer.  Will this gap only continue to widen?

did you ever checked to see how poly heavy game obj are to DAZ/POSER obj..

A nice DAZ outfit alone can have the same polycount then a whole game level..

Less poly's less to compute...

Not to mention the light sources used in CAR and Poser etc etc .. AO, Uberlighting,Volumetric etc etc ...

Its just not the same enough to compare

Chris

lol what he said, the average game figure aims for 10 to 15 thou polys and dont forget there usualy tris NOT quads and that includes the figure clothes and hair. But for the "cut" scenes they do use high polys models much as we do

Quote - did you ever checked to see how poly heavy game obj are to DAZ/POSER obj..

A nice DAZ outfit alone can have the same polycount then a whole game level..

Less poly's less to compute...

Not to mention the light sources used in CAR and Poser etc etc .. AO, Uberlighting,Volumetric etc etc ...

Its just not the same enough to compare

I never said I expected real time results, I was asking why the app developers seem to have so little interest in adapting or competing with these techniques.

Game models are optimized for framerate, it does not mean the sims could not handle or be made to handle higher poly figures.

Many games have models that are similarly complex as older figures, such as the p4 Casual Male.  I would like a lighter-weight simulation for having numerous figures in a scene.  So it's likely they would be simpler or older figures.

Once the simulation is calculated, rendering would be the same as now.  I understand what CPUs and GPUs do.  I'm not calling for a rendering speed-up, rather simple to set-up and apply dynamics similar to what games have been using for the last few years.  ICLone does have a few of these features, but did not make them easy to implement at a user level.  I think a well implemented soft body or jiggle solver could be as easy to set up in Poser as a magnet or a wave.

Quote - lol what he said, the average game figure aims for 10 to 15 thou polys and dont forget there usualy tris NOT quads and that includes the figure clothes and hair. But for the "cut" scenes they do use high polys models much as we do

Tris vs. quads is an interesting point, but I thought most renderers still split quads at render time.  I know t-strips are an efficient way of building a mesh quickly, but again I am not talking about using these techniques for speed.  In many instances the quality of recent games seems to have surpassed what we are even able to do, in a reasonable amount of time anyway.  Games don't use high poly models because they can now do subdivision and tesselation in realtime.  Whether the quality is yet good enough is I suppose up to the individual artist.

I know other people also feel that dynamic hair vs. transmapped hair is a tradeoff.  Transmapped renders fast and often looks quite good.  The one thing it doesn't do well is move like hair.  OTOH, believable dynamic hair can be difficult to create, and (at least in Poser) always slows down performance.  Game developers have managed to do what neither Poser nor Daz developers have done in creating transmapped hair that also moves naturally.  I would love to have that in Poser, though I'm sure others would think it a useless hack.

You want a real kick in the teeth, see this:

Bullet Physics

That's bullet physics, a free/GPL physics engine that's used in a lot of games (and included in a bunch of CG apps) that anyone can just pick up and add to their software. It supports soft bodies, hard bodies, springs, particles, cloth etc and is GPU accelerated besides. How hard would it be to add this to Poser ? But how much do you wanna bet you will never see it in Poser ?

He mentioned how he wasn't entirely happy with the implementation of Bullet in Carrara at the top of the thread...

Is not the question of polygons number, is a question of science, knowledge and how you use this knowledge. Is a question of amateur vs technician and technician vs engineer. Apollo landed in the Moon using computers that were very primitive compared to what you have in your cell phone, but this stone age computers were enough to put man on the Moon. On the other side, you are not able to land on the Moon or even build a wooden bridge using your cell phone.

Rigid body dynamics, soft body dynamics, springs, masses, fluid dynamics is a many centuries old question, it began with Newton. These problems were studied and solved and so, people built bridges, steam machines, planes, ships, factories, industrial machines without having computers or even a toy calculator, all was done by hand and it worked and continue to work today.

Now if you take your mavelous toys that have an amazing computational power and speed, and add a two centuries old problems, theories and solutions a miracle will happen and even more amazing miracles will do happen.

thats interesting,what with the upcoming plugins for poser to lux and octane perhaps some (like face_off) might do a plugin for bullet physics,that would make those poser haters dislike it less? and i know like many i would like as many solutions to a problem in one package,yes i know we already have poser physics but surely two different physics solutions in one program means you are able to do things you couldnt do in either alone.

Quote - lol what he said, the average game figure aims for 10 to 15 thou polys and dont forget there usualy tris NOT quads and that includes the figure clothes and hair. But for the "cut" scenes they do use high polys models much as we do

Alice'game hair = NURB

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53Z3VHGQjE8&feature=related

Part of the issue may be that, IMO, not that many Poser users do animation. If you're used to doing stills, then the compromises needed to get the performance might indeed be viewed as a step backward.  

IIRC, DAZ has marketed games oriented stuff which I think incorporated decimating the figures to lower the polygon burden. I'd love to see an easy to use system that incorporated normal maps, ligh maps etc. to help with performance issues, even if the thing ended up using Poser 4 level figures.

Something like the Scratch interface (http://scratch.mit.edu) is probably much too simplistic, but it might be a beginner level interface that could get people interested. IMO, you have to have something that would be easy enough and produce reasonably satisfying results to get the ball rolling. I'm not sure that incorporating it into Poser would fly for various reasons e.g. cost, complecity etc. Having an easy way to export Poser content and have it consumed by a separate application might work. I havent really looked at any of the game creation apps or iClone to know if anything suitable exists. I say games but an easy to use, scriptable animation system in general would be appealing to me at least. It wouldn't have to be some nitro powered mega FPS marvel to begin with.

"Part of the issue may be that, IMO, not that many Poser users do animation."

With the exception of the "layer" system posers animation tool have been ignored for the last Five versions

SM has no interest in people creating animation in poser beyond the minimum to drape a cloth sim.
The primary focus is stills with SSS skin and improved joint deformation for better....Stills.
not saying there is anything wrong with that but thats  the priority in this user base.

Cheers

Thanks for the Scratch link, lmckenzie... Wasn't aware of this and I'm always on the lookout for interesting open source projects that are Mac PPC compatible. Looks kinda fun.

Quote -  

I know other people also feel that dynamic hair vs. transmapped hair is a tradeoff.  Transmapped renders fast and often looks quite good.  The one thing it doesn't do well is move like hair.  OTOH, believable dynamic hair can be difficult to create, and (at least in Poser) always slows down performance.  Game developers have managed to do what neither Poser nor Daz developers have done in creating transmapped hair that also moves naturally.  I would love to have that in Poser, though I'm sure others would think it a useless hack.

I beg to differ. Dynamic hair looks better than transmapped, moves pretty well in an animation, and renders faster. The only problem is the, in my opinion, quite frankly rubbish styling tools. Oh, and that Poser, upon saving a scene, will sometimes "lose" my hair simulation.

(btw... actually I agree with the main gist of your argument wholeheartedly.)

Something to consider when comparing anything in a game to performance in regular applications: Control. Games are great in that they have a very specific polygon count, they have very specific character models, and they do what they do within very specific environments. In a nutshell, other animation packages have to deal with the unknown, with whatever the user throws at them.  Cloth simulation for film animation is actually a lot more complicated in some ways than what games have to deal with otherwise, there wouldn't be entire departements dedicated to simulation in film studios.  Not to mention the numerous plugins and addons available to simulate dynamics of all types. If it were simple, everyone would be doing it.  Just something to consider when comparing. I'm not saying the comparison is wrong or unfair, just that you need to keep in mind some benefits games have that other software doesn't.

With that said, Poser is in need of an update to a lot of its tools. Luckily, we're always researching what's out there and how best to integrate it into Poser's current toolset/code (usually that's the trick). 

Quote - With that said, Poser is in need of an update to a lot of its tools. Luckily, we're always researching what's out there and how best to integrate it into Poser's current toolset/code (usually that's the trick). 

Cool.

Still, it would be nice if you made the tools that are there work properly.

I quite like the Poser cloth and hair simulations, even with all their limitations. But I get frustrated when a "save" can destroy my simulations, or make a prop spin into a strange angle or become invisible.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to put you or the company down. I think, in the short space of time I've been on board, Poser has made great strides forward. And it can do an awful lot, for a fairly decent price.

But some of the buggyness does have a kind of beta vibe to it...

(And don't get me started on the Queue Manager! Hahahahaha!)

If you put the simplistic physics situations from games into PoserPhysics, you'll get close to real-time.

In regards to cloth simulations, you've probably seem this before, but it's a prototype I did with PoserPhysics - and it's showing the realtime simulation speed.  youtu.be/B07Q8gKhn8s 

There is also this video....http://youtu.be/CZO7ZD21lu4

Note that some developers find a way to cheat on animations.  I think the team behind the soul calibur series use two bones in the breasts to control movement.  Those hairs might be bones plus a smooth/bend feature.  A lot of animations are also pre-determined as much as possible.

They also have engines customized to do these sorts of thing well in real time.  Poser isn't tweaked for real time.

Quote - Note that some developers find a way to cheat on animations.  I think the team behind the soul calibur series use two bones in the breasts to control movement.  Those hairs might be bones plus a smooth/bend feature.  A lot of animations are also pre-determined as much as possible.

They also have engines customized to do these sorts of thing well in real time.  Poser isn't tweaked for real time.

Again, I wouldn't care how fast or slow the simulation ran if it meant not having to manually key morphs or magnets for the length of an animation.

I don't consider anything that looks acceptable to be a cheat.  If there were a way to do in Poser what the Soul Calibur team did, I (and others) would be doing that.  It might be possible to add extra bones to "soft" objects, but what is lacking is any kind of bounce or spring effector to automate their inertial movement.