whenever i post a link to one of my animations
i get responses ranging from "Good work" to
" Sorry back to the drawing board kid!!"
but one thing is alway the same:.....

THEY SALIVATE OVER THE CHARACTER MODELS THAT I USE!!!!

I hesitate to mention that i use poser because of the snobbery that i KNOW i will encounter so i keep the subject on the animation.
meanwhile they are animating crudely built models like th one pictured above.

here is a recent responce to some of my animation

"Well I think all the models in both animations kick ass first of all.
The first one I think the animation for the jedi is really good. Almost looks like Motion capture. If you key framed it , then you did a great job.
When the robot comes in from the left, Looks a bit choppy for me. That could be smoothed out a bit.
Also the transition from the two different camera angles confuses me a bit. The robot gets very close to the jedi. Then a camera angle changes and then the robot is at a distance. Like the animation was repeated just from a different angle.
The Lipsync as Aaron said needs a bit more work.
It almost looks as if you only have to transitions. the mouth opens and then closes. If you added the mouth shapes O,E,B,V into the mix you could get alot more out of his speech.
But I got to commend you on such great modeling Skills. The modeling is top notch.
Good stuff.
Michael Loeck"<

I think CL and Daz are missing out on a market that needs them badly!!!

I am assuming this is why they made the Prop Pack with the interfaces to Lightwave, Max, etc.

Could you tell me what group you joined. I learn so much from commentary on people's work. Here I have learned so much about working with characters, but I need to know more about animation as that is my real purpose in learning Poser. By the way, at the marketplace the is a full phonimes pose package, one for Mike and one for Victoria, only around $8 that is helpful with some of those sounds. The real trick is in timing transitions of the sounds and having it match the speech accent which can differ from actual spelling.

They're professional character animators who work in Maya, Lightwave, Max and Softimage and who likely look down on Poser users...and they can't even recognize Poser figures being used? LOL, let them salivate then. :) When it comes to art involving human or humanoid figures, I have seen far superior work in the Poser gallery here than I have ever seen anyone create using a high-end 3D program. Keep up the good work. :) SnowS Hoping his pictures are worth 1001 words.

Attached Link: http://www.cg-char.com/

Wolf, Thanks for revisiting this topic. The mailing list has been in existence for a looong time, I used to subscribe back in Poser 3 days. There are quite a few skilled Poser animators on the list, lurking these days. You're right about the perceptions of Poser in that community. It's generally underappreciated, and yes, that is why we produced Pro Pack, to provide useful tools and content to a community of that caliber. What would really make us happy, is for a fully animated Poser project to find some commercial success and then be reported on to the CG Char community and the professional animation community at large. I hope for all our mutual benefit that such projects see the light of day and find the success they deserve. And Wolf, thanks for showing your work to this group. They can be harsh judges. Cheers, Steve Cooper

I'm inclined to let them keep thinking what they do of poser then as it gets better and better we'll have a head start on them and they'll have to eat there words LOL but seriously what Steve says is the essence of it till someone produces a top notch short they won't be convinced and even then some will say thats cheating so we can't win :o)....you know what really bugs me is the ones that say its cheating using a ready made poser figure NEVER show an image of theres and the ones that can character model keep quiet :o).....oh i could ramble all night on this subject and get really mad at them :o) but i strongly believe we will prove them all wrong one day just wish the day would come sooner...now anyone got a big budget so we can make this movie :o)........Steve

Attached Link: http://66.70.166.29/promo/deep3.mpg

I am in preproduction on a short animated Sci Fi film
using poserpro with C4D

here is an early lighting test in cinema( see link) using a custom poser figure that was a FREE download

Please excuse the "arm through the leg" error
that slipped through preproduction in poser
but this was primarily a lighting test

keep up the Good work Over at CL
:-)

heyas; well, zygote caters to those guys. not daz. daz is our little treasure ;) heh heh heh.... i was thinking the same thing, snow ;)

This is off-topic, but to respond to kupa's comment on a full animation using Poser - I'm working on such a project now in Poser and Bryce, that will hopefully see the light of day in about 8 months. Don't wanna reveal too many details yet, but it will be about 60 minutes or so in length, and is an "intelligent" scifi along the lines of B5, and without the cheesy attempts at bad-ass dialog recycled from "Aliens". Hopefully it will prove that a 3d scifi film can have a good, tight story AND be a commercial success without a $50 million budget. Using hi-res textures and models, I've been getting very good results that don't look at all like Dork or Posette - although render times are crawling on an off-the-shelf pc. ;) I have been working on it since June 2001, and it started with (what I think is) a good story before anything. It's a story and world that's been in my head for about 20 years now that is finally being realized, and has a very extensive, complex universe. The web site will be online in about 2 months. Whether I'll be shopping it for a "deal", so to speak, or releasing it myself remains to be seen. But I will be doing a hell of a lot of promotion on it, and really looking to take it to a huge level. Of course, just having it all finished will be a success to me. But anything extra would be icing on the proverbial cake! :)

wolf, Nice work. C4D renders well. Keep me posted about the project, we can always use good samples of animation for our reel. Steve, I wish WE had the budget... Kupa

Silver, Once we get back into tradeshows, having a project such as yours to promote would do us both wonders. Kupa

I too will be building a promotional web site
for my animated film i plan on releasing it on
VHS and VCD
Most of the new Consumer DVD players support the VCD format (I bought a second one for my home studio for $89 at walmart!!)
the test footage i have burned to VCD on my old lacie scsi burner using Toast titanium and standard CD roms is near DVD quality
and makes a great poor mans alternative to buying a new$$ mac g4 $$$ with the DVD burner

My storyline i based on a story i have had in my head for years also

Heres to the success of your film and mine!!

Attached Link: http://www.scifi.com/exposure/exposure.html

10-4 kupa, I will definitely send you a link when I have some final scenes to show, and the tradeshow thing - you're on. :) wolf, best of luck to you also, and if you need any help with anything, let me know, I'm just down the road from ya in Charlotte. (oh, and got your cd in the mail btw, great music!) And folks, it doesn't take a huge budget to do something even halfway comparable to Final Fantasy. Obviously I'm not looking at that kind of polygon count, and I'm doing it all myself on 2 year-old Windows desktops and a '98 iMac, but why can't we be ambitious and bark up that tree? (grin) We've all seen the excellent photo-realistic stills that can be done in Poser even without postwork. (look at Catherina Prezak's characters for Mike...) You just need quality models and textures, (and among other things, patience and practice in Poser) and a dedicated machine or two to render animations OF those stills. And remember B5 was done on old Amiga's... I've spent only enough money to buy 2 pc's and a few models so far, and probably will only be spending about $300-500 in the next few weeks to get the remainder of the models I need. It truly is amazing what you can do on a budget if your determination is strong enough. and $300 is a lot of money for me right now, but it's pretty ridiculous in filmmaking terms. The hardest thing for me is the dialog, and there is some amazing software that will speak and/or sing your text. It works for some things, others it just doesn't, so I am working with student voice actors and friends for the voices. Burgers and beer go a long way, and are easier on the wallet.... ;) wolf, if your story is anything as interesting as the lyrics and music on your cd, then I can tell it should be one awesome movie! --silver

Attached Link: http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/product/film_info/0,3699,2404769,00.html

I know just what Wolf means about Poser discrimination. But Poser is my secret weopon. I doubt Poser could ever become an animators tool of choice. It is 99% used for stop motion snapshots. There are too many mature, powerhouse 3d apps to compete against. Poser could become a powerhouse utility/resource app tho . If Poser could export figures in a more useable, animatable (IK/FK)condition, its sales would skyrocket. The user friendly library structure, along with the huge free/cheap lbraries of everything an animator needs, except motion, & maybe hair (arguable), would make it an awesome toolchest of props, Poses, Figures, Faces, Clothes, Maps etc. It has a smoking fast display quality renderer (sans transparency)also. My partner & I have rigged Poser figures in Max. We had to change the mesh in a few areas (hips/armpits) tho. Once this can be done to an unmodified mesh, then a script could automate the rigging process, opening the door to Poser figures exporting to Max with full IK/FK function. Poser is 100X easier & more powerful for figure making/tweaking s/w than anything out there.

Just a question .. are these "crudely made" models that those in your group are using made from scratch? i mean, did they make them themselves from nothing? If so, that would be a big difference. Usually, from my understanding, those who model in the "larger" programs do so without relying on premade models like the ones in Poser. i think the whole point for many of them is the fact that they did it all themselves with their programs instead of using and building on meshes, etc. that someone else made. If this is true, then i have to ask what the untapped market is ... know what i mean? i love Poser. i really really do. And i want to get better in it. i also happen to think that having the model already there in Poser to build on cuts down a LOT on the work that has to be done to achieve the sort of character i want to make. i have to give respect where it is due and say anyone who creates anything from scratch and doesn't use premade meshes is doing a LOT and with practice can only get better.

One certainly must respect the effort put into these DIY animated models! However, from the business point of view (and that's the main course) what you don't have to re-create saves a lot of precious time & resources. The people who are paying for broadcast quality animations are not the artists, i'd wager, they're the managers & accountants. :^)

There's also the fact that many in the animation world are convinced - not without evidence - that realistic human figures are far more critically judged and less well accepted than non-human or stylized human figures by audiences. This of course doesn't help those of us who have stories about people that we want to tell. It's important to understand such work is going to held to a different standard. (Of course, common knowledge is always true - until it isn't!)

Attached Link: http://66.70.166.29/motions/walkAE.mpg

I have rigged two human character meshes in cinema
before the propack hosting plugin
the process of setting the vertex weights and restriction tags
for the bones was ridiculously tedious and labor intensive. and if i wanted to make a variety characters with different clothing and hair for a short film the rigging process could take
Months!! nevermind the modeling
I have all the characters i need for my film
Mike 2 and all his variations
vicky2 and all her variations
Stephanie
DSi Dina
the Daz gremlin
tons of FREE clothing!!
several awesome free characters like the trooper in the link in my earlier
post in this thread
and a cute little female andriod that i made in the propack setup room
even if i despised poser i would by a copy, buy and install mike and vicky2
and use poser just to export thier various morphed meshes for rigging in max or MAYA etc.

and we cinema users have devised a way too add animated hair( See link) to our Hosted
poser figures by importing their BVH skeletons along with them and placing them inside the hosted figure for camera targeting particle emission and deflection( see attached pic)
so my production is well underway

gryffnn, I agree - Final Fantasy was ripped to shreds by critics (and many in the 3d community) because it was "almost" there with the characters. (Personally, I thought it was great, but the dialog could've used some help.) The main thing I try to concentrate on is making a good story/movie, without worrying about what medium it's done in. If it calls for realistic humans, meet the challenge as best you can. If it calls for bugs... You know what I mean. Shrek succeeded because it had likable characters the audience could identify with. And that's the big secret that sooo many overlook. But we should probably start a new thread for this, the topic has been waaay warped! ;)

wow, now that's cool hair animation wolf!