My previous thread made me think of this. Within Poser, how do you "do" a scene from start to finish? Feel free to include other tools or software in you process, New users and old pros alike can benefit from each other's techniques. 

Boni

I use Poser to create reference images for my 2D art. So my workflow goes like this:

    Set up the figures and props as desired. My reference characters are "without attire" so I can better see anatomical reference points. The props I use are either ones  purchased or ones I've made myself using a combination of SketchUp Pro 2015 and Cinema 4D R 16

    Export an image of my scene as a jpeg   ( I don't render my final scene  before export)

    Import the image into Photoshop CC 2015. Crop and resize as needed. I do mostly graphic novels so I crop/size to fit my standard image size ( One image per "page")       Load the sized jpeg into Illustrator CC 1015 ( I have a pre-made template)

    Do my "inking" work in Illustrator ( The Perspective tool is a lifesaver!!). Clothing and additional anatomic detail is added by hand

    Export the finished line art to Photoshop.

    Color and shade the artwork in Photoshop. I also will incorporate photographic references into the piece if needed for backgrounds or other details. The final result is below ( Figures: M4, V4, DAZ Horse 2. Jump  and fencing home made in C4D. Tack, clothing and hair drawn by hand)

For this image, I first set up the room using the PICK set that comes with Poser. I textured those items using textures I had made in Genetica. The ceiling of the room has a high ambient value and is the main source of light in the scene.

The furniture came from Poser World, but I made the tea set in Blender, textured with Stitch Witch using Poser renders of flowers, and then made it into a Poser prop (It is in my freestuff.) I thought it would look better on a lacy cloth so I made a very simple one in Blender and textured it with Stitch Witch.

The adult female is BVH's Cynthia, chosen for her busty figure, which is mentioned in the story I am illustrating. She is conventionally rigged. Posing Cynthia was easy but she needed a suitable dress. Dress modelled in Blender, textured in Stitch Witch, draped in the material room. The hair is Isabel hair which I scaled to fit her. The girls are both Kids 4 characters, the shoes came with another outfit by Arah, but the dresses I had made some time ago, they are in my free stuff as well. The dresses are dynamic too, so I needed to run three cloth simulations for this picture. I set them up to run concurrently and then rendered at the 50th frame. I ran Scene Fixer on the hair objects, and EZskin on all three figures. The render was done in Poser using indirect lighting.

These are great!  

mjmdvm: If you use PP 2014, you can add the comic book render in your workflow ... It is nicely detailed and what lines you don't want can be edited in PS.Just a suggestion for an already great technique.

Nannette: I really like that you use a variety of tools and some less k.own figures. Do you know if Cynthia is still available?

Renderon!

Bonio

Boni, BVH took down his site for a while but is rebuilding it. So at the moment, the only way one can buy Cynthia, Angela or Joshua is to contact him directly. He is still a member here.

Good to know, by the way these of you interested in expanding your model collection in your runtimes these are excellent choices.

I am not sure I have a workflow as such.  I also run out of ideas on a very regular basis so to keep me active with Poser in my block moments I often work out some clothing for my characters.  I am no good at modelling and good sci-fi outfits are rare so I tend to mix and match items and then play with the textures.  When I have an outfit I like I save it for future use.  I use the same plan on building spacecraft and locations.  

A number of times when I am reading a book I have an idea of a render, or maybe I read a passage and want create the scene.  It is the same when I am writing and sometimes I can see a scene and that I already have something part built that can be adapted.  So I guess there is no real work flow more impulse than anything else.  

Where my characters are concerned I often start with the figure and an expression and build around the figure, a strange way of working but the emotions generated by the render (hopefully) are important to me.  The only other procedure that is fairly standard is that I tend not to do a background in Poser.  I render over black and save as a .PNG and post work the background.

My workflow is pencil sketching character /base shape of it in Maya/Sculpting/Back to Maya for fixing/back for more sculpting/topogun for retopo/creating and naming groups and adding bones in studio) Poser for weight mapping checking bends and the rest(and lots of cursing in between all).

As far as work flow for renders.

usually just export via poser fusion so i can use Maxwell or something else,but haven't done a decent render in a very long time. (no time) .

Maybe the most helpful thing to do is to highlight the things I think I do differently, and say why.

I still use Poser 7. I've tried more than once to get to grips with Poser 9, and I'm sorry, but I still can't get on with the interface. I use it mainly as a means of running Reality as a bridge to LuxRender; or very occasionally to use some of P9's own rendering features that aren't available in P7; like HDR or mesh lights.

I rarely use the Poser library, apart from a few favourite things (mainly materials) that I've saved. Everything else is loaded from a folder structure which is organised the way I want it, via a Python script that I hacked up myself.

I often use very simple and relatively low-poly meshes in the cloth room. Once they're simulated, I export, add thickness and smooth in an external modeller. Sometimes I re-map if necessary.

I use the animation palette a lot - not, in general, to produce animations, but to easily manage a virtual photo-shoot where I can produce several images from the same basic scene. That may be to tell a linear story, or just to keep my options open so I can pick the best result later.

If I want to combine reflection and transparency, say in a window, I make two renders and composite them together to get the effect I want. I leave the pursuit of physically accurate photo-reality to those who have the patience for it. :)

I render to PNG, in as large a size as I can bear to wait for the render, to maximise my post-work options.

I nearly always post-work my renders in some way. It may be adding filters from Postworkshop, adjusting colour balance, contrast and/or saturation, or just cropping out the important part of the image - much as I would do when processing a photograph.

My chief advice, though, is this - find your own workflow. Don't think you have to do things my way, or anybody else's. Unless it involves stealing someone else's work, it (whatever it is) isn't cheating. If all the pixels in your final image are the right colour, you've succeeded. It doesn't matter how you got there. The trick is to know what those colours should be. :)

Poser -> Vue -> Photoshop

but the last 2 years more

Poser -> Octane -> Photoshop

My work flow usually is:

1 come up with a vague (or only kind of vague) idea for an image

2 load figures and any props that will effect the figure's pose (like a chair)

3 poser figures (sometimes I load and pose each figure one at a time others I load all the figures and then pose)

4 load clothing and other props

5 find I don't have one prop I really need. Hunt on the web for several hours, not find it, try to make it myself waste minutes to hours in the attempt finally give up and change the scene to suit substitute

6 run any simulations

7 adjust textures and run scene fixer and ezskin

8 adjust lights

9 render

10 re-adjust lights

11 re-render

12 repeat steps 10 and 11 several times

13 post work as needed

Sometimes if I'm working on a scene with a lot of characters, I will pose, clothe and texture each character in their own scene and delete the lights before saving. Then I set  up an environment scene and import all the character scenes and position them.

In this scene I posed each person and their horse together (with the horses parented to the person) an a different file. The woman knocking the man off his horse were grouped saved together as was the man healing the injured man.