Imagination Works makes a full line of Dinosaurs!

-SMT

All dinosaurs are full articulated Poser figures. The tails pose especially well.

aw, but the texture seems badly stretched on the belly and back...

and where is Imagination Works? This looks great by the way. Sharen

Attached Link: http://www.iw43d.com/IW_Prod_Img0.htm

Write to Tom or Pam for special "Poser" version pricing. pam@iw43d.com

maybe someone should explain merchandising to them. very expansive and little or no info about (at least) poser figures. 150$ for 4 posettes?!

They're newbies to the Poser world. That's why I'm trying to give them a hand. The prices listed on their web site don't really reflect the direction they're headed, but instead reflect the market they're getting out of. They DO realize that selling to the Poser market is completely different, and that the pricing is not only set by the typical profile of the Poser user (home hobbiest) but by the market prices set already established by companies such as DAZ and and the Renderosity market place. Typical of the new Imagination Works products is "Amy", a totally new female figure available at TurboSquid http://www.turbosquid.com/HTMLClient/FullPreview/FullPreview.cfm/ID/164701/Action/FullPreview Amy is a completely new mesh and priced $10 less than Victoria II. Even though she's still under development, she looks better than Victoria straight out of the box, and poses better. I'll have more on her, later...

Hate to say it, but I'm not impressed. With Amy, her hips/shoulders ratio is way off - only a few women at the gym look that way and steroids are suspected. The bikini picture highlights the problem. (It's almost as bad as the original Dina.) 20 face morphs isn't very much these days. What sort of facial morphs does she have? Are there any ethnic morphs? Does she have any body morphs? It also mentions different outfits included. Is that the bikini, tank top, pants, and dress? Are there others? I will admit, this looks better than their Poser Action Babes ... shudder

smallspace, that's ok. we can use more of the professional developers. but i've just been there at squid and i can not agree with you about "amy". she certainly (well, that's my taste) doesn't look better than vicky, not even posette. her body is much more artificial and just lacks details. 20 morphs for a face isn't much, and though i know it may be still a beginning, i'm not sure how many people would hand out 50 bucks for her AND even more for a whole new wardrobe that can't be used for vicky or posette. that is what i meant under merchandising. i'm not sure if poser users can give that much money. coneirning her better posing: it's really hard to tell, judging by those small pictures. if it is so, than they should show it in BIG. :-)

I think our own ScottA has already done many of these, free-of-charge. Hopefully these were not based on ScottA's work. Their raptor's obj file was mapped with a variation of projection mapping that causes the edge polygons to be perspective-distorted, or shrunk in the direction they were projected. Their raptor's obj file should be remapped, using the method of "edge-stretching" you see in DAZ models. I don't know if UVMapper Pro allows stretching of edge polygons, but UVMP's worth the money even if it doesn't. The tail shows signs of poor bending (no curve parameter).

As I said, she's still under development. The final version should have well over a hundred morphs of all types. There are already far more outfits than mentioned at turbosquid. There are two things completely unique about Amy. 1. She wasn't made from a scanned mesh that was then reduced. Her mesh was hand built from the ground up to be optimized for Poser. She really does bend better. 2. She uses cylindrical mapping wherever practical. No seams, no distortion. I'll be making some illustrations over the next few weeks that I hope will show off Amy better than the admittedly lame pictures at TurboSquid. Hey! Tom's a modeler, not an artist :) -SMT

nyar1ath0tep, None of the Imagination Works models is base on anyone else's work. They are all original meshes created by Tom Knight or one of his employees. Tom Works almost exclusively in 3D Studio and Studio Max. He doesn't use UV Mapper, and he almost never uses projection mapping because of the inherent distortion. -SMT

Actually, SMT, I followed the link to IW and was pretty impressed with some of the human model work. I didn't see "Amy", but there are some truly nice pieces of work in there. The only problem I see is that most are one-shots -- from what it appears, things like body armour (and some of that future stuff is very impressive, IMHO) aren't interchangable as they are here at Mattel, which makes it difficult for the hobbyist to justify the expense. I'm curious-- who's he aiming his marketing at? The serious pro? The not-so-serious pro animator? The high-end hobbyist? All of the above?

Show us a reduced texmap template for Amy... this should be good. I have to agree about her face looking like a 1950s window mannequin -- does no one value scanning actual heads any more? Also, that butt looks as flat as Posette's. If she doesn't wear Vicky or Posette clothes, you've got an awful uphill battle to convince us to buy her. If DAZ can remap Michael to take Vicky clothes and Vicky to take Posette clothes, Amy's designers have no business reinventing the wheel -- unless they've made some quantum leap in improvements in those clothes.

Hmm. Duane, gotta disagree. Sure, DAZ and CL are the big hunk of the market, but that shouldn't stop IW from proceeding. Yeah, as you say, it's an uphill battle, but as long as they know what they're getting themselves into, I say the more variety, the better. I mean, otherwise, we'd all be driving Fords, since what was the point of Chevy or VW?

Looks tempting to me. From what I saw Amy includes hair and textures. Those are added expenses for Vickie and company, are they not? And since I don't own Vickie et al., no worry about the clothing investment from me. Be fun to try and make my own. jon

VirtualSite, Tom's been doing these types of figures longer than most everyone. Back in the early 90's he produced high quality figures for Acuris, Viewpoint and Infografica among others. The Poser figures you see they the IW43D website right now are simple conversions of some of his previous library of 3DS figures. Amy is his first figure designed specifically for Poser. She scales well. She bends extremely well (hey! she can do the splits without huge deformations) She has a little bulge in her midsection that comes out when she bends at the abdomen. Her underarm is much better. She has 5 outfits at this current moment (including a knockout fetish corset and boots) and a ton more on the way. Her teeth are completely accurate without having to buy them separately. Negotiations are underway with the top morph makers to give her a full suit of morphs comparable with Vickie II. While she's really still in beta, the finished product WILL be better than any other figure, or Tom will keep working till she is! -SMT

duanemoody, Amy isn't single skinned, like Posette, or even dual skinned like Vickie. She has separate mapping for head, torso, arms, legs, hands, feet, eyes, and lashes. Each portion of her body is mapped in the way that best suits it. While you wind up with more texture files, each file has far less wasted space and is very easy to paint. This also means you can use hi rez maps where they are needed most, and low rez maps elsewhere. I assure you, Amy's butt is MUCH better looking than Posette's! (she also has hi definition genitals, the like of which no other Poser character possesses...but hey, this is a family forum, so I can't really go into detail:) -SMT

Interesting. At first, I'd worry that the seams would be too visible, but what you get in return (less distortion) seems worth it. If you need a morph maven for her, lemme know...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?Who=gryffnn

wow, i honestly cant believe the negativity in this thread. when i saw the raptor in image two, my jaw dropped. that has to be the best character design, modelling, bump mapping and texturing ive seen on a poser dinosaur to date. its fucking incredible. the ONE little niggle i have with it is the stretching of the tex on the snout, but that would take a second to postwork. the mouth could also use some more detailed mapping, but those legs.... the claws... jesus. and no, i dont know smallspace or imagination works - this is the first ive heard of them both. i love it. i want that raptor. where do i buy it? i cant find it on their site... the one thing that scares me is their pricing... id be VERY dismayed to find that dinosaur pack costing $150.. cheers, Blackhearted, Dark Corner

DarkCorner, This is why In really don't like sending people to the IW43D site yet. It really hasn't been updated to reflect the new Poser market. You'll notice that the dinosaur pack isn't in the Poser section, it's in the 3DS section. IW's 3DS models are always going to cost more than their Poser models, because they are for a different, more high end market. I assure you that when a group of Poser models becomes available, it will be competitively priced with the same type of models from other companies. -SMT

DarkCorner, If you are interested in availability and pricing for the dinosaurs in Poser format please email pam@iw43d.com -SMT

pam - you can call me gabriel, 'Dark Corner' is a little too formal :) besides, its the name for 'Dark Corner Studios', a joint venture between Kiera and myself. cheers, -gabriel

Ok, gabriel, but I'm not Pam, I'm Steve. Pam is the sales director at IW43D. Me? I don't even work there. They're just very good friends of mine. :) -SMT

lol. ok, just figured from the email address. ill email her in a sec.