Ok, I am a beginner in Poser, so I have a BIG question for you experienced users. I can see in the "Art Galleries" section of renderosity a large quantity of real stunning pictures. I mean, high quality characters, textures, light and so on. But what about making MOVIES with poser ? Or maybe with Poser plus something like MAX or C4D and so on ? Are Poser and Poser artists just confined in the "still pictures land" ? Is there running a project to make a "motion picture" with Poser ? About you opinion is it impossible ? Is it a "too big" challenge ? Thanks.

I've been using Poser for serious animation work for about eight months now, and it's a real pain in the butt sometimes. Because of the sometimes odd geometry of some of the clothing -- even the most basic things like t-shirts -- body parts have a tendency to pop out at the worst possible moment, and you can't always turn off the offending part in the hierarchy window. The damn thing is: this could be a terribly sweet program for animation work, but both CL and DAZ have a long way to go, it seems, with their not-so-conforming clothing.

I agree with VS about the clothing. I will add that I have seen no hair that I can even force to behave properly, most especially female hair. The range of motion in the available products is so limited that I have to resort to tricking the eye. I really want Poser 5. Badly.

Ok, maybe Poser IS NOT "the software" to make "Final Fantasy" quality-like motion pictures. BUT, (this is what I ask) maybe is good for low cost productions. For "near good quality" productions. Do you know about projects in this direction ? (If you think about: there is a LARGE market of low cost movies such for example 3D movies for the TV, or for children. There, the quality requested is not FF-like.

Yes, you can make movies. I have seen some good stuff. It is hard to do, but it can be done and you will have to make some compromises, maybe lots of compromises. But you can do movies if you are willing to do the hard work. The only reason I even mention Poser 5 is this: There is a basic principle from cosmology. Until you can go faster than the speed of light, don't bother going anywhere too far. Because, before you get there in a sub-light ship, the faster-than-light ships will flash right by you. So, I would say, do trailers, use it for story boards, cartoons, that sort of thing, but be prepared to drop everything and convert to Poser 5 when it arrives. They supposedly have the clothes and hair stuff fixed.

What I would like to know, is what is the most comfortable and good in price solution to do animation an a pc/mac. Ive been playing aroung with Poser for a while, but havent figured out for example how to create moving cicles on my own like for example klimbing one step of a stair and, save them somehow and and ad the saved move a couple of times to do the whole stair, instaed of doing all stair steps manualy. Or what is about speeding up and slowing down animations like in cinema4D where you can do this "up the ramp" - for speeding up and "down he ramp" for slowing down and allready created sequences. Is the a software witch ic more comportable and payable?

Slowing down and speeding - use the 're-time animation' option.

going up and down stairs - the trick is in the graph editor, make sure the interpolation shows a straight line to stop the feet from sliding about.

saving - use the pose libraries or turn it into a walk cycle, start with the right foot.

cosmology - I'm not going that far! and what you learn in 3 and 4 will help you in 5

Final Fantasy - good animation is possible but they used mocap, that'll work in Poser too but yeah, the renderer's not up to much. For the web however, it's perfectly adequate.

Hair - check out Kozaburo's tutorial and make some morphs, you'll soon be swinging, swaying and bouncing with lifelike hair.

unexpected nudity - the tailor sounds good, personally my site at www.1st-shock.com doesn't need much in the way of clothing ! I tend to go for the options where this isn't going to occur, choose you clothing carefully, but there's always the grouping tool or a carefully placed magnet.

art galleries - I wish there were a forum for showing off animations, there are some relatively inactive lists like Poseamation and Flash_erotica but the sad thing is there just aren't many of us animators here......

Read the past posts in the "3D/2D Animation" forum for links to some Poser animations.