I succumbed to Smith Micro's offer to upgrade my Poser 9 to Poser Pro 2014 for about $100. Poser will never replace Carrara for my short animations (I think), but I do own good Poser content that does not work well in Carrara. Plus I own Lightwave, which the Poser Pro version reportedly can link to.

My question: One of the Poser Pro 2014 Extras I bought is an Infinite Skills (the publisher of the great Carrara tutorials by Phil Wilkes) set of tutorials by one Mark Bremmer, a familiar name ...

So, Mark, any comments about Carrara and Poser Pro 2014 and Lightwave? I jumped from Poser (V.7? I own V.9 also) to Carrara when I saw that Carrara could handle Poser content seamlessly, and with more features. Lightwave is great, but I really like using Poser format content for Carrara animations.

I wondered if we could export a carrara scene complete with camera to poser so I can do a comic render in poser from the exact same angle as my renders in carrara and combine the poser and carrara renders in post :)

Hi Steve K.,

Poser is a tidy program - especially since they've accelerated their render engine. Pro 2014 plugs into multiple programs but there is a slight hitch: the animation, if any, needs to be done in Poser for the imported content. If you are doing stills, this is no problem. While I have LW, I haven't checked out availability of plug-ins to work natively with Poser content, but yes, Poser Pro will import with it. (C4D has a plugin that lets you work with Poser/Daz content natively, just like in Carrara - this is why I use C4D and this particular plug. I got comfortable with it and haven't looked for a replacement)

BTW, for Carrara purists, my day CG job means deadlines and speed are king. Carrara renders reasonably fast but there are no pro-grade render farms available. So, I use C4D for some of it's awesome rendering abilities, but also because I can ship files to render farms with 100's of quad core machines. My last animation assignment would have taken 36 hours on my local Carrara render farm. The pro farm completed it in 10 minutes. Just saying...

I've been doing a running series here at Renderosity about working with Poser Pro 2014. Check it out if you haven't already to pick up some tips that might help.

Bottom line, you won't be disappointed with your purchase - and using all of your content will be a definite plus!

Mark

Mark - Thanks for the input. I don't use a render farm, but 10 minutes vs. 36 hours sounds like a pretty good selling point for C4D. 8-0

I've just done the same - upgraded, that is - from Poser 10.

Whenever I looked at the version comparison charts, I could see that most of the Pro features weren't really necessary for an amateur doodler like me. But I gave in for the 64 bit capability and hope to find the Fitting Room to be useful. The sale price also helped!

Much as I plan to stay with Carrara, I've decided to think more in terms of using pre-Genesis figures and to use Poser more. I'm hoping that the cloth and hair plugin being developed for Poser can be made to work in conjunction with Carrara. If not, then I'll need Poser Pro's 64 bits to create bigger scenes in that program.

Some fun and enjoyment ahead, I hope.

Although I've had poser for several years and recently upgraded to Poser 10 - not pro - I have hardly used it because personally I find it "clumsy" to use (the best word I could think of) I recently tested the VWD cloth sim which requires me to use Poser and I'm afraid it just confirmed my dislike for the program. But the good news is, I understand and hopefully not too distant, VWD will have a version of the Cloth and Hair simulator to work with Carrara. No Poser required. By the way - Mark makes awesome tutorials and if you haven't got his early ones for Carrara I recommend them - If they overlap with Phil's subjects then they do so from a different perspective and he in fact covers things which Phil doesn't.

Thanks for the recommendation, 0oseven. I agree with the quality of Mark's tutorial skills from some excerpts I've seen (here at Renderosity for Poser and I think there were some sample Carrara ones I saw a while back just as I was trying Carrara for the first time).

While not wishing to start any debate on Poser/Carrara (partly because I like them both) I do find that I seem to get better results in animating characters in Poser. It may be down to such very simple differences as Poser having a default timeline of thirty frames (1 second, I think) while Carrara has four seconds default. Someone like me comes along, arranges a pose and moves along the timeline (taking a guess at how far to move) to make the next pose. Somehow I always make a better job of it in Poser's thirty frames but, of course, the remedy is simple for doing the same in Carrara.

The other default of Poser of having both feet locked in IK helps me too. This restraint prevents the figure losing position unless I want it to. In the DAZ forums I've had help on how to set this up in Carrara. So, again, the remedy is there. But selecting body parts seems easier to me using Poser because the outline of the body part gets highlighted on selection. I get frustrated in Carrara trying to select bones whether directly or by using the Scene tab. Often I select a limb in the scene tab and then lose the selection (or select another body part) when I try to move the Gizmo. Poser is - for me - far less finicky in that respect and the Parameters are easier to get to if I want to use them. For Carrara I've heard of the ERC plugin which is probably a brilliant answer to this and there is also the right-click pop-up menu for selecting body-parts.

Another reason I may find animating easier in Poser as opposed to Carrara is that, in Carrara I'm usually working with a figure in a whole scene, whereas in Poser I usually just try animating a figure in an empty place just for fun. Having to relate a figure's movements to the props of a scene is obviously more complex.

One feature I had hopes of from Poser was BVH export - to create motions in Poser and bring them onto different figures in Carrara - but I always seem to make a mess of this. I guess reading the manual on this point would help!

Hope I haven't waffled too much. And I don't mean to sound off in any way against Carrara - I'm just mentioning how Poser helps me a bit.

Each to his own I guess and yes the one annoying thing about Carrara is that characters cannot be anchored to the floor as in poser though using target helpers sort of solves that. Regarding the default 1 second, I feel the opposite . In Carrara,as you say, it is simple to change and fast. Also don't forget the two buttons - zoom to selection and zoom to playback time.I think Carraras keyframing is great -presume you have V8 or 8.5 which have extra functions. Well yes we could go on forever swapping ideas. If you feel disposed to do that you can join up with the 'CarraTors Forum' which is devoted to animation with Carrara - The forum is organised into topics such as Learning and Skill Building and many others but you need to sign up to get access to all topics. http://www.bond3d.byethost18.com/ cheers Oh ! you should be able to export BVH in Poser 10 - go to file/export and save as bvh.

Today I've used both Poser and Carrara and got what I was looking for from both so, today at least, I'm satisfied.

Strangely, I signed up yesterday evening to Carrarators. Your test videos are showing great results.

Thanks for the tip about the two buttons - knowing about such things makes all the difference to ease of use.

Glad to help and Welcome to CarraraTors - Any questions on Carrara Animation, post them there and all will be are happy to help. You mentioned in Carrara you tend to have scenes open, which I understand makes your animation "laggy" ? Try hiding some scene elements - also ,something often overlooked, is to display the character as bounding boxes - option available in parameters when model is selected - this may help speed up.Actually I quite like working in this mode for roughing out a sequence. See you at CarraraTors

Thanks 0oseven.

I'm in the bad habit of posting replies (in any forum) last thing at night, hence the delay.

I am working my way through Mark's Poser Pro 2014 in-depth tutorials, good stuff. As I mentioned, I have some Poser format content that does not work well in Carrara, so I will be using PP2014. Also, the new features (so far comic book renders and bullet physics) should make it enjoyable. Carrara will still be my program of choice, but "horses for courses". One thing I raised an eyebrow at - PP2014's Library links to 3rd party suppliers of content - Renderosity, Runtime DNA, etc., but not DAZ3D. Historically, DAZ has been a prime supplier of Poser content, but recently many new products are available only in DUF format (basically DAZ Studio). In the past, Carrara has handled Poser content pretty well, but I've had trouble with DUF's. Has Smith Micro decided that DAZ is no longer a reliable supplier of Poser format content?

Regarding poser and daz, I do think that the two companies are drifting apart. When I was more in the loop with daz several years ago, I was surprised at the warm relationships that I encountered between the two when at siggraph. None of those folks work for either company now.