I've been using Poser (now version 9) on and off for a few years now and find that it lacks in certain areas like rendering glowing objects that appear to glow and give off light. I'm considering trying out Blender but only if there would be a significant improvement in producing glowing objects like flames or glowing spheres or whatever I want to glow and appear to be self luminous.

So I have a few questions:

1. Is setting up lighting easier in Blender or Poser? (Lighting is always a challenge for me)

2. Can I get more realistic glowing objects (flames, balls, etc) in Blender than in Poser?

3. Is there a good workflow between Poser and Blender?

4. Oh, and is it relatively easy to paint on the 3d object in Blender?

In general, could I see significant improvement in lighting and renders with Blender as opposed to Poser?

Thanks in advance.

Blender is a full 3D app and it's only limit is the person's knowledge using it. Poser has a more specific function and can generate some nice renders, but it has limits when it comes to certain things. There's nothing stopping you from getting Blender (it's free afterall), watching some tutorials, and deciding for yourself which one suits your needs the best.

Ok... I guess I need this: If someone wouldn't mind doing this for me it would be a big help:

Please show me a translucent and transparent blue sphere that glows and gives off a blueish light in Blender vs the same in Poser (I have Poser 9). And then tell me how much time and effort was given to each application to produce its best work.

If I could see a side by side it would be very helpful especially when also comparing the effort between the two.

Thanks to anyone who is willing to do this for me.

1 - I'm not sure lighting is ever "easy" to set up, that's subjective.  Comparatively I find Blender more versatile because it has lighting options doesn't (the hemisphere light for example).  Also Blender using Cycles does better setting up objects as light emitters in my opinion.  But again that's subjective opinion.  The best thing I can suggest is install blender, and do a tutorial so you can form your own opinion.  I'd recommend looking at Magic Mineral, it gives you and intro to both basic modeling as well as lighting and using an object as a light emitter in the Cycles engine.  That's another thing to consider, Blender has 2 rendering engines and can natively install and use the Lux rendering engine as well (no need for a 3rd party app to export and use it).

2 - I would say yes, I've found reflections far easier to do in Blender's Cycles.  There are several good tutorials on doing realistic and animated fire in Blender using its particle physics.  You simply can't replicate that in Poser.

3 - There can be, you have to pay attention to specific export and import requirements.  In Blender you can set these up as presets so Poser is the main trip up for me (I sometimes forget to check the correct export options or import options in Poser and OOOPs).

4 - Again, how easy it is is subjective.  Blender has good basic tools.  It hasn't caught up to Zbrush yet on either painting or sculpting but its getting there.  Again, there are tutorials available to help with this.

When I have time I'll try to dig out links to some of the tutorials I mentioned and post them.

Blender is several orders of magnitude more complex than Poser. It's a full 3D modeler and as such, its learning curve is rather steep. Even in the same field, it is more complex than other applications, like modo.

If you want realistic and predicatble lighting, then, sorry for the shameless plug, Reality for Poser is the way to go. With Reality you gain access to LuxRender which has physics-based lighting. You place a light in the scene and it will work as it does in real life. You can turn any material to be a light source.

Now, if you have a surface that you turn to light in Reality then objects in its proximity will receive its light. Indirect lighting is always on, no need to do anything special about it.

Hope this helps.

As a Poser user, I have to say that Blender Cycles has a much better render engine ;). But for that it takes knowledge and work ;). And like Paolo has pointed out, it's definitely levels of magnitude more complicated than Poser is :). Worth it to learn, I feel, but not going to happen overnight for certain.

Having said that, while I know that Pret-a-3D is trying to sell his product, there are free options to get things from Poser to Luxrender, as I described in another thread :).

Laurie

I feel like what has been said so far Blender has advantages to it in the rendering department over Poser yes it takes some practice and time to learn but well worth it in the long run IMHO. I know I mentioned this before in another thread and it is intially set up for scenes set up in Daz Studio to be rendered in Blender Cycles but with some tweaking can be made to work for Poser as well. The image on this page which as I said have a set of addon scripts for Daz and Blender cycles the image was set up in Daz Studio and rendered in Blender Cycles https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/Home I think you will find it speaks a thousand words. Blender is truly a great tool to add to any work flow and worth the effort to learn. 

I guess that it all depends on the expectations. If the original poster is hoping to start using Blender and be able to render Poser figures in a few days than that expectation is wrong. From experience, both personal and from watching people I taught how to use Blender, I would budget about three to six months before being able to render anything of value.

It all depends on previous knowledge. If you have experience iin something like modo or Maya then Blender will be fairly easy. If your background is in Poser alone then three to six months is fairly realistic. In fact it's pretty optimistic.

Cheers.

try blender !!! it has quite a few render engines that work "well" with it

(well dont mean easy but possible)

it can do pretty much anything poser can do and a lot more besides

BUT its a b**** to learn ;-)

on the other hand if you like it you can make your own props/cloth even dolls if you want to

If you try to use any software without manuals or tutorials, then it would probably take you somewhere between three to six months to come to grips with it. Poser or Blender or Vue: don't go there without cracking a manual or viewing some tutorials or you will be frustrated and disappointed.

However, in the case of Poser (and ancillary software) there is a price consideration. Blender is free. Now, there are those who claim "you get what you pay for"... this was true in the '90s, certainly not true today. At all. Which is why free software runs super-computers and stock exchanges whilst the pay-for stuff invites viruses into your PC, all-the-while slowing down, inevitably.

Since both Poser and Blender and Vue and modo and Luxrender all return better results after investing quality study time, why not go with something that costs nothing first. You can spend a couple of days doing BlenderCookie tutorials and BlenderGuru tutorials and be up and rendering images in -- NOT three to six months -- a few days.

A caveat: graphics card. To harness the power of Cycles, you need an NVidia late-model CUDA-enabled graphics card with as much VRAM as you can afford. With Cycles, the amount of VRAM is directed related to how much you can have in your scene at one time when you render. Of course, you can always do composite images...

Anyway, my vote: Blender FIRST. It's time well invested. BTW, my daughter is building a house -- well, she's having it built -- and she sent me the floor plan, from which I made this in Blender. Notice, no Firefly schmutz in the angles... Blender does AO right. :biggrin:

I did this in Blender from a Blender Guru tutorial. Although I knew how to model already, I knew next to nothing about Blender. I was happy with it ;). It uses a fluid sim, sculpting, particles and the Cycles render engine. FWIW, I think my glass turned out better than his. LOL.

It all comes down to your willingness to learn and your dedication to it I guess.

Laurie

Sheesh, Laurie, I was going to show some other stuff I did, but WOW, think I might play around a bit more until I get somewhere closer to what you made. :woot: that's just awesome!

I'd wager Laurie was following Andrew Price's tutorial on simulating fluid in a glass.  You can find it here and do it yourself.  The video is just under 40 min in length, doing it along with him might take you 2-3 hours.  Well worth the time.  Also its worth noting that Andrew uses a flat plane as a light emitter that emits a round glow, something that might interest the OP, its a neat trick and simple to do.

Another similar tutorial can be found here which does a few things different but again, well worth watching.  Video length is about 30 min.

Since the OP mentioned fire, here is a tutorial by Blender Arsenal on creating fire in Blender.  Its just over 25 min in length, he mumbles a bit but still a good informative video tutorial.

::TIP::  When I do one of these tutorials myself, I use my HDMI capable TV as a second monitor.  This allows me to play the video on the TV, pausing it as necessary, as I follow along in Blender.  I find this is REALLY helpful for me in being able to follow the video and duplicate what is being done as I can pause the video and look at setting and copy them into Blender without switching windows.  I actually moved my TV and mounted it to the wall just above my computer for this reason.

I'll echo what Robyn said above, how long it takes anyone to learn to do these things in Blender seems pretty subjective.  It may take some 3-6 months to learn things, and some may find Blender difficult to learn.  It didn't take me that long and I've not found current versions of Blender any more difficult than other professional software.  There could be many reasons for that (background, experience with other 3D software, environmental distractions, amount of free time, etc.), but its certainly does NOT take that long for everyone.  I would say someone who had a Saturday without distractions or interruptions could do both those fluid tutorials and produce an image they could share.