I was reading yesterday that the Unreal Engine is now a free download. looking forward to seeing a bridge from Poser hopefully soon

you can find the download at unrealengine.com 

Yup, and this is exactly what Poser needs running in it's viewport to compete with DAZ's new system.
It's not impossible, especially as Unreal are open to business enquiries etc, but will the people at SM have the sense to do this?

My guess is ... no :-(

There are all sorts of render engines out there; Pixie is an open source version of RenderMan, for example. The problem with a new render engine is accommodating existing shaders, but that's not unsolvable...

Whoa....

Well, I was just taking a look at comparing Unity, Cryengine and Unreal and looking at expanding into one of those engines. I guess someone went and made the choice, for me. :D

I still want to move into Crygengine, though, and Unity has a lot of perks, platform-wise. But, I think that this marketing move is one that deserves attention, so I'm going for it!

Unreal is pretty damn cool, been using it for a while now.  The only showstopper with it for me is getting my head around figure animation :-D

Would be incredible to have Unreal Engine running in the Poser viewport though, it would be perfection itself, and even better if they could have the Unreal Engine node system in Poser as well.  There could be an option for Firefly or Unreal rendering, and the node system you get in the Material Room dependends upon which option you choose.  I've played a fair bit with the renderer and shaders in Unreal, it's an amazing realtime Physically Based rendering system.

The performance makes DAZ's new renderer look ancient already, it's instant, no waiting whatsoever, it's just there.

That's one of the issues with these "new" rendering/game engines - Some of the results are starting to look as good as a top-notch Poser/DAZ render and they're being done in real-time....

But, there is a steep learning curve when it comes down to creating assets. However, that curve is starting to even out fairly rapidly, especially with the content market for these dev platforms starting to open up.

In my opinion, and it's just an opinion, the move towards incorporating more content generation for game platforms is a good one. But, I think that even more effort needs to be directed there. The issue is that there is a ton of legacy content that depends on currently incorporated functions within both Poser and DAZ and these functions may not be easily translatable to third-party game engines, .fbx and other formats, notwithstanding.

I think more targeted development towards popular game engine formats is necessary. But, how does one translate complex node structures between rendering engines? /boggle Some of that might be nigh impossible. What's needed is a "Reality #12" that will export "everything" to a useable, rigged, textured, animated Unreal/Cryengine/Unity figure/prop/environment/whatever. :)

Oh, and add particle effects to Poser/DAZ while you're at it... Oh, and fully translatable custom lighting, too! And, procedurals and... Well, yeah, just mush everything together into one program.... :)

I was reading yesterday that the Unreal Engine is now a free download. looking forward to seeing a bridge from Poser hopefully soon

Already done.  Poser Pro Game Dev exports to Unity, Unreal, and Cry.  Even decimates meshes and bakes multiple texture maps to a single map if you want.

I was reading yesterday that the Unreal Engine is now a free download. looking forward to seeing a bridge from Poser hopefully soon

Already done.  Poser Pro Game Dev exports to Unity, Unreal, and Cry.  Even decimates meshes and bakes multiple texture maps to a single map if you want.

Does the Game Dev version have specific exports for materials into these engines or is it limited to maps?

edit-add: Was looking over fbx file structure and it appears to have some limited support for materials. Mostly specular, if I'm reading it right.

Unity is free now too.You get it all now. Not a limited version. And Unity uses C# and Unityscript. Unreal uses C++ which is powerful but way harder to learn and use. Or at least that's what I have read. I'm going to try to Unity and maybe C#. Unreal does make some really nice eye candy. If you are looking at it just as a render engine Unreal has the upper hand.

There are all sorts of render engines out there; Pixie is an open source version of RenderMan, for example. The problem with a new render engine is accommodating existing shaders, but that's not unsolvable...

Just RenderMan is still in development and still is not available to public,agree about the new render engines and accommodating existing shaders,but in most cases those render engines support simple conversion and if this doesn't help,then suggestion will be learning new engine and make shaders for them  There are few other free GPL renderers which SM can accompany to Poser pro and everything will depends on negotiations between the SM and companies,would love to have better render engine

Thanks,Jura

Glad to see it's not just me who would LOVE LOVE LOVE Unreal Engine as a Poser viewport option.

I was reading yesterday that the Unreal Engine is now a free download. looking forward to seeing a bridge from Poser hopefully soon

Already done.  Poser Pro Game Dev exports to Unity, Unreal, and Cry.  Even decimates meshes and bakes multiple texture maps to a single map if you want.

I guess I should read more than the first page of the manual ;) This will give me something else to do this summer.

I spent some time looking at the different engines that are normally considered these days. (Unity, Unreal, Cryengine)

Unity seems to be great for cross-platform development and the creation of certain types of games. It is likely to be the most flexible. But, it's also extremely complicated, has poor documentation and has some weird ways it goes about doing stuff. (I'm not a code-monkey, I just read the opinions of others.)

Cryengine is beautiful and has some really nice rendering features. But, it also has some issues that a novice might not like and has some documentation issues and such. Unlike Unity, but very much like Unreal, it's more tuned towards First Person Shooters and such.

Unreal seems to have the best of all worlds, with the exception that it is also more finely tuned for FPS. But, it's also open-source and the source code is available to anyone who wants to take a stab at making it do something they want or even fixing bugs before the devs get to it. It's capabilities seem to be improving as far as versatility goes and its development seems to be much more active than either Unity/Cryengine.

Documentation for all these is a complaint, but Unreal seems to have a more active community and its open-source nature means that people, knowledgeable people, can take a look at the code if they have a question and, perhaps, help answer questions and squash bugs and even develope new tools or their own version of Unreal, with all the features they want. (And, put them up for sale for others, too!)

Unreal gets my vote, right now. It's cheap (FREE!) and doesn't require any convoluted licensing agreements. And, it's capabilities seem to be on par with Cryengine, as far as rendering is concerned. (If not at equal level, many claim that new features are on the way that will get it there.)

But, for cross-platform portability and flexibility, Unity is still the likely choice. But, it's very costly at certain levels, I think.

R_Hatch Wrote:
"Glad to see it's not just me who would LOVE LOVE LOVE Unreal Engine as a Poser viewport option."

Thanks, and you bet I would, it would be the most amazing Poser release ever, in fact I just made a post about it :-)
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