Do you? Why or why not?

I've been out of the digital art thing for a few years but the bug has bitten me again and so here I am. I dug out and reinstalled Poser 11 and have grabbed most of the content I purchased here and at DAZ. But I'm not interested in dropping any more cash in a hobby that I may or may not pursue for any length of time. After browsing the galleries, it feels rather oversaturated with Vicky and her derivatives. So I wondered if anybody still uses the basic figures that came with Poser or any of the older figures (including freebies). They still seem like they'd be useful, especially for nonrealistic renders but I haven't seen anything. Is there a reason for that other than everyone just wants the latest greatest thing?

Yes, I have recently re-visited the Michael 3 and Michael 4 figures in Poser Pro 11. I was not happy with the older textures for their characters, so I plugged the jpg files supplied by content creators into my own Cycles surface or Physical surface shader trees in Material Room, to get a more modern-looking skin.

Resurrected figures still have a place in 3D renders if you are willing to spend a little tender love modifying the textures for Poser 11 Superfly. Low mesh resolution can be improved in PP11 with sub-division, as well as improving bending using weight-map painting, although this will take considerable time and effort on the user's side. Like infinity10, I'm beginning to re-explore some older models, like V3, M3, Miki 3 & 4, and some other freebies too many to mention.

Texturing is only an issue if you're after a realistic image. My interests lean towards toon styled renders or fantasy creatures where it's totally subjective how it SHOULD look. I can see where bending could be a potential problem.

I had V3 and V4 but haven't redownloaded them. Everybody uses Vicky. Yeah, she's a great figure with oodles of content but I'd like to see what I can do with some freebies, the base Poser figures and toons. I'm an all-around noob but not afraid to play around with a modelling program if I think I can create the effect I'm looking for. Sixus1 made some great stuff back in the day. I found H.E.R. and all kinds of content for her all available for free on sharecg.com plus a few more goodies.

Nearly all my renders are part of stories, done in I suppose a typical firefly "semi-realistic" style, ie not really toons but nobody could mistake them for photos. As such I like to use as wide a range of figures as possible. Trying to just use Victoria 4 or Dawn for example to me would feel like trying to cast a film with just one actress wearing different wigs and makeup (and a little cgi jiggery-pokery to change her figure a bit). Personally I like the Smith Micro g2 figures (Sydney, Simon etc, not to be confused with the DAZ genesis 2 figures) due to the wide range of clothing available that can be used in a fantasy setting.

Like Nails, I use many figures, including the older ones, to populate my story renders. I use superfly and try to get realistic, but not photo real images. Except for crowd filler, I don't go older than James and Jessi. Sydney, Ryan2, Michael 3 and Vicky3 are my main characters. I do use newer figures too. I have PE and Lafemme. I use Genesis a little, but not much. Your art is your vision. Use whatever figures fit best with your needs.

For over-populated scenes (like the attached one).. older generation figures are the best to fill up the background. This image was created in 2007 and is using generation 3 plus generion 2 characters.

To be honest, I've always gone by the outfit or character I wish to use.. not the figure - it makes much more sense! :)

Rena

Cool scene renapd.
I still use P4 figures. The main issue is setting materials to make them look good enough..With proper clothing and accessories they are prefect background characters. I once managed to put 50 of them in a scene. I also use Lores characters which I purchased from Daz but P4 has the advantage to have a bunch of preset poses so they take fewer time to pose.

I still use the older figures. Not everything has to be super-realistic. Sometimes I prefer a more illustrative style. And I have a ton of stuff for V3, M3, etc. Much more than for any other figures.

I have weight-mapped versions of V3 and D3 that I still use. Occasionally I even use Posette and Dork, as background figures in crowd scenes and such.

Also...since you have Poser 11, check out LaFemme. She's free, and comes with some nice morphs and textures.

A minimum $3.50 purchase is required, just because that's a limitation of the store here, but if you don't want to purchase anything, I can gift her to you when I make my next purchase.

Nice! Renapd- that's a name I recall from my early days as a "Poserer." I started in 97 -renapd- posted at 3:14PM Mon, 22 April 2019 - #4350445

For over-populated scenes (like the attached one).. older generation figures are the best to fill up the background. This image was created in 2007 and is using generation 3 plus generion 2 characters.

To be honest, I've always gone by the outfit or character I wish to use.. not the figure - it makes much more sense! :)

Rena

randym77 posted at 5:19PM Mon, 22 April 2019 - #4350456

Also...since you have Poser 11, check out LaFemme. She's free, and comes with some nice morphs and textures.

A minimum $3.50 purchase is required, just because that's a limitation of the store here, but if you don't want to purchase anything, I can gift her to you when I make my next purchase.

I've seen her and while I didn't plan to spend any more money, she looks like she's worth buying. I appreciate your offer, but I'd undoubtedly need some stuff to go with her and end up buying those as well. sigh

renapd- Nice image! I like busy scenes. I've been wanting to do something crowded that requires a long look to take it all in.

Justn_Otherguy posted at 9:14PM Mon, 22 April 2019 - #4350513

randym77 posted at 5:19PM Mon, 22 April 2019 - #4350456

Also...since you have Poser 11, check out LaFemme. She's free, and comes with some nice morphs and textures.

A minimum $3.50 purchase is required, just because that's a limitation of the store here, but if you don't want to purchase anything, I can gift her to you when I make my next purchase.

I've seen her and while I didn't plan to spend any more money, she looks like she's worth buying. I appreciate your offer, but I'd undoubtedly need some stuff to go with her and end up buying those as well. sigh

I'm sure that's the evil plot behind giving her away. ;-)

Though she comes with textures and morphs, and there are already some nice freebies for her.

I don't think she's going to be free forever, so if you're at all interested, grab her now.

I mostly use older figures (I write stories with Poser), because there are more of them, and older figures have more options available for them. I prefer normal sized people as opposed to the freak show proportions that are popular now, so I primarily use the SM figures (P6 and above - love the G2 figures and all the Mikis), and a number of other 3rd party figures, such as Koz & Kez, Antonia, Mariko, Michelle, Femasu, Apollo Max, Rikishi and others. I'd bring in Eroko, but she is tied up right now (Bonus points if anyone gets the joke.)

As others point have pointed out, limiting oneself to 1 or 2 base meshes means that everybody looks like they are closely related to each other.

AFA La Femme - One of the symptoms of madness is doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. LaFemme is great if you are doing NLFIATWAS or pin up renders. But just like every other post-V4 figure, she is limited to early 20's Caucasians and hookerware (unless you are prepared to spend a LOT of time in the fitting room converting V4 content. If LaFemme ever moves out of the Logan's Run mindset, I would use her, but at the moment, she is simply too limited - I got tired of doing pin-up about 14 years ago.

I wouldn't go so far as to say there's nothing for Lafemme. There's a little over 4 pages for her here in the market place, and I'd only label maybe half of it hooker ware, and I'm a prude compared to most here. I also saw an ethnic morph. Yeah, only one, but I know there's also one in the freebie section. No, she's not stocked yet, but she's less than 3 months old. Give her to six months before you bury her.

This thread is about older figures - my go-to meshes are the SM G2 figures. Normal sized figures with normal clothing. It helps that I have 100+ characters for the females and about 50 or so for the males. When I started working on my Star Trek (TOS) series, my goal was to fill my cast with nothing but non-Daz figures. Ran up against a wall fairly quickly, but I did get to a good start - I have managed to pare back V4/M4 to cover the minor characters.

I'll give LF the same 6 months I gave: Alyson 1, Alyson 2 (Including Anastasia), Dawn, Dusk, Kez, Koz, Scarlet, Antonia, My Michelle, Mariko, PE, Paulina, Paul, Miki 3, Miki 4, Rex, Roxie, Apollo Maximus, Rikishi, and even Eroko.

I went all in with those figures - fortunately, I had invested in Wardrobe Wizard, Xdresser, as well as Texture Converter and HCS. Otherwise, I would have been up a creek without a paddle.

If it wasn't for Karanta (for casual clothing) and Tempesta3d (for characters), LF would already be DOA. If one is doing pin up art, she is off to a good start - move outside of that niche and.... yeah.

When the vendors start moving outside of Logan's Run , I'll invest (heavily), but I am not buying stuff I already have. I have several hundred early 20-something Caucasians, and I have enough hookerware to stock Victoria's Secret.

Normal clothing, for normal people, doing normal things.

I don't think that is too much to ask, but apparently it is.

Would your interest be in dynamic or in conforming?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: I use both depending on the scene - I belong to the Right tool for the right job school as opposed to the 1 tool for every use case school. Some things work better as dynamic and other things work better as conforming. Although in a perfect world, a vendor would insure that their conforming outfit could survive a trip to the cloth room.

I don't see the following working as conforming clothing (that pesky below the knee hemline and lack of boob windows):

Or this:

Or this:

These would also be an absolute mess as conforming:

I would pay stupid money for stuff like this - Dior's New Look (Hat, Gloves, Hairstyles - It's a shame most Poser vendors don't have the skills to pull this off).:

I started My Marvel comics based animated film 5 years ago when I was not even a Daz studio user and did not even know how to model

Although I moved to an Iclone to Daz Genesis based Character animationpipeline and became a content developer of my own Custom genesis Sci fi clothing, I saw no reason to replace the main Character "Galactus" ( Freak 3 for poser) with a Genesis version.

My Old seat of mimic pro 3 for lipsincing legacy poser figures, still runs over on my old Vista machine and My motionbuilding & retargeting tool ,Iclone pro pipeline is compatible by default all the way back the Mike & Vicky 2.

I did replace the freebie Galactus armor (from share CG) with my updated version for the final act of the movie.

BTW loose fitting& flared women's slacks are possible with conforming clothing I modeled these last year for the G2F as I do not do skimp /hooker wear in my animated films.

wolf359 posted at 4:55AM Fri, 26 April 2019 - #4350724

BTW loose fitting& flared women's slacks are possible with conforming clothing I modeled these last year for the G2F as I do not do skimp /hooker wear in my animated films.

For such stuff you better contorm hands models and a prop face to the garment. Keeping a body in there is just a waste, and such garments have totally different dynamics than a body anyhow.

ssgbryan posted at 5:04AM Fri, 26 April 2019 - #4350661

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: I use both depending on the scene - I belong to the Right tool for the right job school as opposed to the 1 tool for every use case school. Some things work better as dynamic and other things work better as conforming.

Totally agreed

Although in a perfect world, a vendor would insure that their conforming outfit could survive a trip to the cloth room.

Question of scope. Optimization on one aspect gives compromises on another aspect, if only profitability.

I don't see the following working as conforming clothing (that pesky below the knee hemline and lack of boob windows):

Agreed again. I use a rig donor shaped like a tailor's doll kin to the one that comes with the Prefitter. No or limited dart under the breasts, and breast morphs from simulation not from morphing. You would need to cut breats back quite far to get that look, though.

Skirts just will never be right from a conformer. Mechanics are totally different. Neither will pants ever be unless stretch fabric and very tight.
Dynamic or hybrid is the way to go there.

I have some bulk packs of dynamic clothing pending in store. This is one for Roxie, but could just as well be PE or LaFemme.

other are single, for PE

I am not sure if sale revenue will justify the effort bringing it to market.