1. People who sell third party texture add-ons for as much as (or more than!) the cost of the original item. 2. People who actually pay money for poses; how lazy can you get?

Hey, I'm lazy and proud of it. But seriously, wouldn't it depend on what you're using Poser for? If you are getting paid to put a scene together--and Poser characters are just a small part of it--it may be more cost-effective to buy poses than to spend hours making them yourself. Especially if you can add the expense to the client's bill.

"2. People who actually pay money for poses; how lazy can you get?"

Poor lazy newbies who aren't used to posing. It amazes me the number of people who judge without considering experience.

I'm afraid I agree on this one.. being a newbie myself and ultimately lazy in every sense of the word (sitting with feet up right nowL).. I think the whole point is poser makes it easy enough to create your own poses with the turn of a few simple dials.. everything about this package is made to be user friendly (ALMOST everythingL).. but hell.. it's all preference I guess. Very good point about large scenes and characters being a small part though. Dolph.

I am currently considering a scene with literally HUNDREDS of figures in it (rendered in multiple passes)and I figure I will need 20-40 unique poses to pull it off right. If someone had a package of that many poses that were even close to what I needed, I would seriously consider paying for it...

While I've never purchased any poses (although I have plans to), I have downloaded a lot of them. If I can find a pose already made that is close to what I need, then I use it and tweak it to what I need. I rarely use a pose exactly as I found it. I've saved hours of work doing that and to me, it's worth buying or downloading a large package of poses just in the time savings alone. In between working full time, attending classes, doing reviews, maintaining my sites, and working on my home business, an few hours saved a week goes a long way. -darlisa

"how lazy can you get?" Dunno, I haven't reached any limit yet.

""how lazy can you get?" Dunno, I haven't reached any limit yet. ROFLMAO! You beat me to that one! Heheheheheheheheheh.......

1. People who actually pay money for poses; how lazy can you get? I'd say there pretty lazy since they rely on a computer to draw their images in the first place... whoops forgot to hit my render button... Actually I use pre-created poses to save time and money, whenever I can. Thanks to folks like WyrmMaster, WH Whitney, Schlabber, Eric Westray and the dozens of others.

Hell, I use pre made poses all the time. And I am no where near lazy. It's just not what I care to spend hours doing, if I can get one close to what I want and tweek it. I'm a modeler and texturer, posing (to me) is supposed to be somewhat 'point and click'. That's why there is a "Pose" lirbrary, and not a Modeller built into Poser. At least IM(hardly ever)HO ~EA

I have to admit I have bought poses and have used Schlabber's poses. I have also made poses but find that is is much more time effective to use a starter pose that is close to want I want than to spend hours making a pose. I spend weeks making the textures and morphs and would rather spend 15 bucks to get 30 poses than to spend 20-30 hours making them. 20 hours of labor even at minimum wage would be a lot more than 15 bucks. Some people also have a better talent for it than others. Some days I just don't have the patience to fiddle with this finger and that when I could just pick up a pose pack. If you think about it this way 15 dollars is half an hour of my cheap freelance rate basically. Seeing as it will take a lot mroe time than that it is a valuable investment. But I do agree about textures being more than the original product and often times things are priced outlandishly.

A lot of times I'll have to create a pose from ground zero simply because there isn't even anything out there close enough to start from, and let me tell you, it is a frustrating, time consuming, headache inducing, make you snap at everyone in the house who even looks at you, type of process. So, if I can find something out there even remotely close to what I want that I can adjust and alter to fit my needs, I'm gonna grab it without a second thought. It's not about laziness, it's about efficient use of time and resources. I spend days, sometimes weeks, on my images and if I had to do every single pose from scratch it would take me months to do a single image. I don't have the luxury of spending that much time on my work, especially if I'm working with a deadline. Kate (who also agrees about some of the third party add on prices out there)

Ya know, besides the fact that calling anyone lazy is just plain rude, the argument that purchasing an item -- ANY item -- to create an image makes one lazy is invalid.

Traditional "pencil and paper" artists hire models to pose for life sketches. Landscape artists will often pay astounding fees to travel to exotic places to paint foreign cityscapes or beautiful natural scenery. Writers will read someone else's books and watch shows written and produced by other writers in order to gain inspiration.

An artist who doesn't pulp the paper, blend the pigment, weave the fabric, or create poses from scratch is NOT lazy. He or she is merely using an available resource wisely while learning the finer points of a chosen art form.

TygerCub

I've paid for textures, poses, morphs, reflection maps, and light settings. I guess I am the epitomy of laziness. But then again, I work a 60 hrs week. :P JVR

Hm. Touched a nerve, did I? C'mon, folks, it's not that hard doing your own poses, once you figure out how the figures work, and what their limitations are. Generally, when I've tried use canned poses, I've spent just as much time un-pretzling them as I would have making the pose myself, from scratch (and most poses, canned or not, only look good from one camera angle). Canned poses just seem to subvert the whole idea: I mean, it is called "Poser," right?

Tyger cub: Um, a single sentence doesn't make a rant. And of course the fact that some artists travel and some writers read doesn't make them lazy: a better analogy would be a writer paying someone else to crank out all the descriptive passages because they're too hard, or take too much time.

No it isn't that hard but it isn't an efficient use of time for me ... By that same token you should never go to the marketplace for anything. I could complain about you buying textures etc but that would be silly. To each his own. If you want to spend hours making one pose then more power to you but don't knock people that don't want to waste their time with that when something is inexpensive and already available. If peopel want to throw their money away on it (your perspective) then that is cool but if people want to invest their time in other things that is cool too :)

Making some things--photoreal textures, complex models--would require tools and/or software I don't have and can't afford. But posing is built into the program.

Actually some pose packages are well worth it, especially if they are designed right. The partial poses are the best IMHO. I can quickly select on pose for the legs and another for the arms. I make comic stories for money and I don't have time to pose each figure everytime. A good stock pose is a great starting point for a figure. Also, things like everyday poses like standing, sitting, conversation etc. are very valuable time savers. I agree on your first item though. My peeves are: 1) Bad camera angles and bad previews. 2) Non-listing of components. 3) Poor installs ie textures end up not in the texture dirs. 4) Ridiculous prices on things I can make in 1 minute in 3d max. 5) Wigs as figures when they don't need to be. 6) Skin textures that look great in the preview only to find out that the lighting for the preview made all the difference. 7) Poses that include facial morphs and hair positions.

I'm with Mason on this one for sure and not with Mosca - posing is just mechanics, mostly. Why should I spend loadsof time fiddling with getting every finger right if there's a hand pose that does it nearly right to start with, just needs a little tweaking? Better I concentrate on composition, content, story, camera angle, lighting. The interesting stuff. I'm all for saving time on chores - especially when you have kids, a business to run, a life.... Poser takes a big chunk of my nonexistent free time already. Mosca, you're way wrong. Complain about something else instead. But the post you started this thread with had another point, and one I agree with - expensive add-ons. And worst of all, when someone sells textures or similar for a freebie!! Yuck. :] FishNose

I apologize for the "rant" label, Mosca. You struck a nerve by calling people lazy for doing something that does not come naturally to them, and my reaction was the result of your comment as well as all the similar ones I've seen in the past. The sentence was, however, a rude comment. Yes, Poser includes a pose library, but I find a majority of the stock poses to be unrealistic in settings. Suffice it to say, if someone wants a realistic pose, yet cannot figure out how to fix the stock poses, then buying a pack that contains the needed items will go a long way towards creating the finished image; which is the idea behind using a tool like Poser to complete a scene a person might otherwise lack the skills to create.

okay, that was kinda funny. (^_^)

Another argument for purchasing poses, in my opinion, is that they often give me a lot of inspiration. Just the other day I had downloaded this pose set and was going through it when I came across this one that gave me a really great idea for an image. Of course, it required a bit of work as I like to work things like gravity, etc. into my pictures, and I didn't like one or two aspects of the pose, but without it I wouldn't have ever come up with that idea. So, this may not be the case for everyone, but I certainly find those pre-fab poses to be very inspirational if nothing else. I think that, what's more, you cannot argue that people are being lazy by purchasing ready-made poses, and then complain that such poses take you too long to work into whatever shape you want them to be. If you don't like buying poses, fine. If you think people who buy poses are lazy, fine but you should keep your mouth shut. However, you cannot combine those two into a single argument - they are very different. Aaron

You guys are a lot more serious than me. As someone who just uses Poser as a hobby, I think creating the poses is a big part of the fun. But I see why ppl would buy 'em...and I've definately downloaded 'em. And I too am definately(and desperately) still testing the far reaching limits of my laziness...:) Haven't hit the wall yet...:) Beav

Some artists have an incredible knack for poses. Eric Westay poses (in particular)are such an inspiration. There are times where the pose is just so 'right' you gotta build the scene around it. I've seen enough textures with Catherinas 'Kora' as the base to last me a lifetime. Now that's a real rant.

Here's MY pet peeve, somebody who hangs over my shoulder when I'm shopping, constantly nattering at me, "You don't have to buy that, you could make it!" Lord, it drives me crazy!! You'd think I was using their money. I buy poses and textures and models. I try to change as much as I can. Only been doing this since January. I learned how to pose people taking canned poses apart. I think there has only been one picture I've posted where I left the pose alone as it came from the package-- and that was a miracle. As it is, those days I get involved in Poser, I have to be careful I don't stay up all night and well into the next day-- I really do welcome anything that saves me a bit of time. I work harder and longer on the face and head than anything other than propping the set. I want to tell stories eventually, not position mannequins till my fingers are falling off. On the matter of textures, if the texture is intricate enough and provides a ton of variants [at least 4]-- yeah, it's worth more than the original package. If somebody just did a PhotoShop fill job, I'd rather it never made the MarketPlace at all. And! Inflation does sorta seem to be hitting several marketplaces lately, not just Rocity. Awful lot of $30 packages out there. She says, as she buys Styxx's fabulous Trouble Shooters. Not those, I don't mean those. Emily

Mosca, PhilC made a model. He's selling it for $30. I'm making 8 textures (taking an hour or more for each one) in each of 6 different colorsets. So that's 48 textures. Plus bumpmaps for each one. That's 96. Plus transmaps, which gets up to about 120 (variations). I'd say that would be more than 150 hours worth of work, if you add in the back-and-forthing needed to check seams on every single texture. And not to mention setting up MAT's and packing the mess. So should I charge more than $30 total for all 6 texture sets? If I charged you all what I charged a client (as a professional CG artist here in NYC), I don't think anyone would enjoy it. So I think pricing each of my 6 texture sets at about $25 is bloody reasonable. So Mosca, feel free to whine all you like. The fact of life is that time is money. My time = your money. If you think I'm overcharging - feel free not to buy it. Lyrra

Lyrra - some texture sets are worth as much or more than the base model. It's the 1 texture, or several color variations of the same 5 minute Photoshop fill that get annoying. Seeing lots of those makes us forget sometimes the really good textures that are available as well. If someone can take stock (purchased) characters, clothes, textures, and poses, yet still make a picture that touches others, does that lessen their skill any? Suppose PhilC had a contest where you had to use his Romantix set with Lyrra's textures and Schlabber's poses. You'd still see a very wide range of pictures and a very wide range of skill. There's still that special touch - artist ability, inner eye, whatever you call it, that will always separate the good from the great from the Masters.

Mosca, You listed two pet peeves but you left off number three... 3. How lame can some marketplace complaints be...

Gotta love someone who tells you that you make your art the wrong way. ;)

L you guys are all great. he says during his five minutes physical movement for the day.

I believe my husband put it best in the same way he justifies spending more to have the fence rebuilt then doing it himself... He gets paid around $50 an hour or more for what he does. Granted, he couldtake the day off and do the fence and get the labor for free or he could pay some fellow $20 an hour to install it for him. When you look at it in true cost, it's just more effective for him to hire someone else to do it rather than doing it himself and coming out -$30 an hour in the deal. Just something to think about.... Someone who is mass selling 20 poses for $1 a piece... which would take over an hour of work if not closer to 2.... okay, we're up to $20 to have someone else to do it vs $50 to $80 worth of time to do it yourself. Yeah your own labor is free, assuming you don't have a job or have other things to do like chasing a toddler or mowing the lawn (which incidentally isn't cost effective to hire out cause our dog scares off the lawn crews ;) ) .... so long story short (too late), Isn't really laziness, it's just cost effective. 30 people buy the pose set, the person who made them gets back money for their effort, and all the people who purchased it get to get on with their art an hour sooner and effectively save some time=money doing it. Lilfox

hmm ... - should I answer to this (esp. point 2 of the origin post) ?? Am I an as... if I sell poses ?? It sounds a little bit like this when I cross-read your posts here Mosca ... Maybe the price of 60$ for my CD (containing 5000 poses, 300 faces, lots of hand-poses, lights etc ...) is not correct - because ... uhm ... you all could do this on your own by just turning this and that wheel in Poser ?? Maybe I should stop giving away free poses - because you all could do this on your own ?? Maybe I should just give up doing working in 3D - I could just download a lot of Royo, Valleyo or any other image or photo ?? Maybe, maybe ... Hmm - let's try another example ...: Ever heard about Linux ?? - Hey, it's free ... why did you bought Windows ?? - you can programm your own OS by just using VI (btw: that's a free-ware text-editor) or Why do people give away so much money for "programming" their websites in HTML - it's all readable and you don't need any programms else than a text-editor to make websites ?? It is absolutely senseless to discuss about prices or things in a marketplace (the real ones as well as the virtual ones). The solution is quiete easy: If you don't like the product - don't buy it !! If it is to expensive - don't buy it !! But calling people lazy if they buy things is something that is just noones right. If I buy a Ferrari noone would call me lazy because I spent so much money in a car - I could reach my target also with a way cheaper car. Oh, well this all has taken me so much time - geeeeeeeeeeeez I could have done a lot poses more in the time answering that post - and btw: I got a lot of money for doing homepages for other people - that's my job - and it is also my job to help people getting a good website. That is what I get paid for and honestly - I never said: "Why don't you just learn HTML and make your website on your own" - that's not what the people want me to say when they give me an order ... Happy posing Schlabber

Well said Schlabber. :) In fact, I just gave up getting an archery pose right, which included having my husband stand and pose numerous times (the mans handled more medieval weaponry than anyone I know) and downloaded yours. :)