Just read this today at the head of the Poser gallery, "This gallery is primarily for images rendered within Poser itself. Images of Poser figures rendered in other applications are still welcome, but what's the challenge in that? See how well you can do using it's basic rendering tools!" If this guideline has been here all along, I deeply apologize for my blunder.

I've been posting in Poser because I honestly did not know any better, and I seemed to be learning the most from the Poser folks. I actually work back and forth between a couple applications. I guess I found it a challenge, but that's not the point. I'm very sorry if I inadvertently broke anyone's rules. It was not my intention, and rules are generally there for a good purpose. I will in future try Bryce or one of the multimedia galleries.

A suggestion perhaps for the site would be some way to paste links in multiple galleries, so that those who use multiple applications could cross pollinate easier? The Renderosity site has been here a long time, and has been very successful with its format and hard working moderators and members. Don't change what you find works best for the community.

Again, I apologize for not looking completely into the expected customs and behaviour. I consider it a privledge to be part of this community of creative people.

you have to be kidding :O no one here is going to kick sand in your face for sharing your work. A lot of times people want to know how you did it if it is unique or had post poser work done. mainly I find the galleries an inspiration. it's just a great place to share what you're up to. keep postin'

yes, i also think it's a bit too restrictive. why should i render in poser when other renderers can do it better? i have an idea in me and i want to make an image of that, i don't want to post techdemos for poser! if i think the image need postwork than i'll do it. if you strictly follow that line, you can't post textured figures, because textures are also done in extern applications, or you can't attach props that have been build in other 3d-programms. nah, if you use poser figures, show them there! :-)

As I've said before, do you want divide up short stories into those written with Word, those written with Word Perfect, those written with Amipro ... ?

Well, I, for one, appreciate the request to restrict submissions to the "Poser" art gallery to images produced in POSER. There are other galleries for Bryce, Vue etc, as well as one for "Mixed Media" for those who use several programs. I like the challenge of making good renderings within Poser, and know that IT CAN BE DONE. When I view the Poser Gallery, I'd like to compare my own work and see what others have achieved using the same criteria. I believe it is deceptive to claim a Bryce render is a "Poser" project. Its like apples and oranges. Both are fine, in their place (and I use them as well as Vue and World Builder too) but I want to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges, and not lump all the fruit in one gallery. ;-) Is that asking too much?

no, but i have just different opinion :-) poser isn't that good at rendering. not bad, but has some serious bugs. poser is about posing - posing poser figures that ship with it, or that you can additionally buy. i want my poser figures and my posing to be shown as good as possible, so i'll choose max to render them every time. that doesn't mean that images rendered direct in poser are per se of less quality: it's the image that matters.

nope... this is a new one on me. there has always been the question if something is done half in poser and half in (bryce/vue/name your other prog here), what gallery does it go in? and then some people post one image to both (which annoys those of us who always page through the 'all galleries.') on the other hand, there's the 'if all you did was render it in (insert program name here), then it isn't a (program name) image, it's a poser image' school of thought. max, lightwave, etc.... they kinda expect you actually BUILT something with your program, ya know? at any rate, the way it is worded, it is a suggestion, not a RULE, so.... feel free to ignore it ;)

Well, I don't think we are debating the merits of different rendering engines here. I happen to agree that Bryce 3D-MAX and other engines have different features and render differently. But they are also SLOWER and more tedious to use as well. So what. The question is do Bryce, 3D MAX, Vue4 etc renders belong in the POSER art gallery, when there are other galleries on Renderosity that have been created for that purpose. I think that the Poser Gallery should represent the work of Poser - which is (and has been since Poser2) MUCH MORE than a simple posing tool.

"at any rate, the way it is worded, it is a suggestion, not a RULE, so.... feel free to ignore it ;)" exactly. that's the way my comment was ment. :-) but just for the sake of argument: figure was made in maya, textures were made in photoshop. you load the figure in poser, pose it and render. why should the image that's rendered somewhere else not be poser-ish? i don't want to show how good poser render engine is (which is not), i want to show how good poser poses human figures. or, prop done in bryce/max/lightwave: why importing it into poser and thus make "poser" gallery entry and not load figure into b/m/l and thus loosing that "status"? what has changed?

btw, i still think that it's important to say what's done where - if it's not poser render, it should be stated so...

Come on Bloodsong! ;) - Where can "Poser Purists" post (a peck of pickeled.. err-umm) ... and compare their work when the Poser gallery is all mixed with stuff from other apps? Why can't the Bryc-ers, VUE-ers and MAX-ers stick with their own Galleries? Afraid nobody will come and look? Aleks said "it's the image that matters" - if so, then it is the render engine which produces the final image and so it should determine the gallery where the image is displayed. The source of any "objects and props" used by that engine is really secondary to the final illustration. So, I encourage all to respect the suggestion, and let the Poser fans compare their work on an equal footing. It might actually encourage some of you to find out how good the Poser engine really is when you know what you are doing.

don't get me wrong, i don't have nothing against "pure" poser renders, but, as you see in the picture, there are some troubles that just can't be fixed (except in tedious post work, which is basicaly the same as rendering somewhere else), like the unability of poser to render shadows of objects that are close to others (hair stops to throw shadows on the face). if this don't bother people, that's fine with me. but it bothers me! :-) i've seen some really stunning images by syyd or, latest by blackhearted, and they are great! i still didn't post anything, because i feel that i still have to learn! ronstuff, i didn't mean "image" as compendium of pixels, but as an idea behind it. why did you make that image, what are you trying to say with it and so on... if, by any chance, however tiny it may be :o), curious labs license the engine of, say, bryce or max, for poser 5, what happens then? would the images made with p4 and rendered in max still be accepted as "pure poser"? what is "equal footing"? no vicky (not every poser fan can aford her), no extra clothes, no commercial textures, no custom morphs made with other apps? that would be boring! no, if the image has an focus (idea) on poser figures, or tells the story with them, then it belongs (just my opinion!) to poser gallery. surely, if i make some sf-spaceship in max and render it, where poser figure could be seen as tiny something in the window, than it has to go to max gallery...

Aleks - the fact that you can make a bad render in Poser doesn't bely the fact that some people can make stunning renders in Poser. And I must agree that the picture you submitted above is BAD! Here is a render I made - only 4 hours after installing Poser. I've come a long way since then, but this image shows what can be done with VERY LITTLE effort, by a total newbie. You just can't compare that for efficiency and user-friendliness to Bryce or any other engine.

ronstuff, if you read what i've wrote, you could have discovered that the image above my post was just an example about the shadow bug. also you might have read that i admire very much people who make good images (be it in poser or not). if you could enlighten me and tell me how do i get poser to render shadows from the hair on the face? also i'd like to know where are the options for water, clowd and wood generator? oh, wait, that's not poser background, my bad...

:=) I hope you realize that this is all in FUN, and not too serious a matter, but my image is 100% poser ;0 and I don't need no stinkin generators to make wood, rocks, and sky. I can use REAL world textures in Poser if I want to. And the secret to shadows is in setting your lights with larger shadow maps and to limit the number of shadow-casting lights to your Key lights. As you can see in my image, the lighting simulates strong sunlight from a low angle as in a mid-morning sun. As for your shadows in the example above, I don't see the "bug" - help me out here - what do you expect from plastic hair without any transparancy? In my picture above, you can see a nice shadow from his hair on his forehead. But what has all of this to do with the Galleries on RR anyway?

Well, for me when I finsih an image I know what it is "at heart". if it is an image that is primarily poser work (props/tex/poseing) and I rendered it with a better renderer then I still think of it as a "poser" work. If I modelled a car in Max and rendered it in poser I wouldn't consider that a "poser" file... even if the render was in Poser.

"As for your shadows in the example above, I don't see the "bug" - help me out here - what do you expect from plastic hair without any transparancy?" ok, here's another one. a good render. with red colour. with circles and numbers. see how the shadows disappear when the hair gets too close to the face (1)? or to her shoulder (2)? that's why her nostrils get no shadow at all, or why the nose sometimes casts no shadow on the face. larger shadow map has nothing to do with it: when you make shadow map larger you only get sharper shadows. in these image there's only one light casting shadow with the shadow map of 2000 pixels. "But what has all of this to do with the Galleries on RR anyway?" message nr. 6 soulhuntre, you're right, that's exactly what i meant with "focus of the image".

As I start to get better with both Poser and Max I am comming to see just what Max can do for me. Layered textures, just to start. it is nice to be able to add layers of texture on top of the poser ones when I need it in Max... or on other scene objects. Posers a good tool .. but often I can't get the effect I want.

Aleks: Thanks for the little red circles, and especially the numbers. That helps a lot. Maybe the angle of your light has something to do with the shadows - do you think? Have you tried a custom shadow-casting spot-light just for the hair? Anyway, from what I see, shadows are the LEAST of your problems. Maybe you could do a side-by-side comparison for me, using the exact same lighting, figure, textures, etc in MAX and showing the difference in rendering ability. Soulhuntre: Your point is well made, and I agree in theory. The only problem is that from all I can see in the gallery, very few people use MAX or Bryce "just" for the final render. Once they get their Poser figure in there they start to make little "tweaks" - a lighting change here - a texture adjustment there, a little "atmosphere" thrown in and it goes on. And there's nothing wrong with that, but at some point the image ceases to be a Poser product and becomes a MAX (or Bryce or Vue)product, regardless of where the various objects in the image originated. The question becomes, "where to draw the line" - and that is difficult to define. Don't get me wrong guys, one of the main things I'd like to see in Poser 5 is a better render engine. But until then, I still think that images in the Poser Gallery should reflect the work of Poser. Otherwise they should rename the gallery to "Hodgepodge".

heyas; i dunno ron. just, to my mind, if it's a poser figure/creature, and you just put it in a vue scene... its still as much a poser work as a vue work. i usually put them in the poser gallery so people can see the poser figure and how it was used. i guess. um... didnt know there were any poser purists. you guys got a club or what? ;) but... if you should put it in the gallery for whatever app you finished the work in.... then wont most stuff end up in the 2d gallery, for everybody who finished postwork in 'shop and psp? ;) (and wont the 2d'ers go on a rampage if we do that? ;D )

Hiya Bloodsong! Well, I think postwork is postwork, and fine for publishing, but unfair for comparison purposes. After all, not all of us use Poser strictly to publlish or strictly for "art". It is great that there are so many artists here, and they definnitely need to show their work, but why in the Poser Gallery just because there is a Poser figure in their artwork? By your definition, almost everything in all the galleries could qualify as "poser in nature". And since the poser gallery has at least 5,000 more images than the second most popular one, I think it could use some "thinning out". As for "poser purists" ;-) - I think that there might not be too many who admit to it, but a lot of people would like to see just how far the current version Poser can go before we abandon it. Personally I have had to find "workarounds" to some poser "bugs" myself - so what - that's just the way most of us learn to use any 3D app. So far, NOBODY has created the "perfect" 3D modeling program, including Maya and Lightwave. But back to the topic, as the heading in the gallery states, "This gallery is primarily for images rendered within Poser itself. Images of Poser figures rendered in other applications are still welcome, but what's the challenge in that? See how well you can do using it's basic rendering tools!" -- And I agree with it all. At the very least, I think people should post the name of the final rendering engine as part of their submission. I would find that information a lot more useful than knowing who made the textures, props or clothing.

hmmm.... i see your point. you know it occurs to me that 'where are poser purists going to post their stuff?' is going to be the same answer as 'where are we gonna post all the stuff that is not advertising some product-or-other?' ;)

Hmmm... maybe I'll put it another way... What group of people was helping me most when I did the render? In other words, if I am in my "poser head" when I do the image then I consider it Poser. If I am playing with a Max technical thing and just pull a poser figure in... then I consider that Max.

ronstuff: "Anyway, from what I see, shadows are the LEAST of your problems." LOL! so, pray tell me, now we know my least problems, what are the others? and how did you deduced them? LMAO!

Maybe we need some Poser Purist Police People (PPPP for short) to send the advertising offenders to the PPPP's Prison!