Hi. I only discovered this wonderful world of 3D art about a few weeks ago, but now I have a question. I notice that the very best, most impressive gallery pics use poser, and other software. (I saw comments like 'rendered in Bryce' - that sort of thing). I only have poser, the pro-pack, and JASC Paintshop Pro. In spite of some rummaging around the sections here, I'm still not 100% clear what things like Bryce, Vue d'Esprit, etc, actually do, never mind how one measures up against another. I want to produce great pics with realistic indoor and outdoor scenes. What, in your opinion, is the 'best' other software to use with Poser? Thanks! Morph

im pretty new to the whole 3d thing too, so my info is lacking and others - please correct me. but i believe Bryce is used for rendering landscapes. and that is the extent of my knowledge!

Vue D'Esprit does excellent realistic outdoor scenes and is rather affordable with a less steep learning curve than Bryce. It also imports Poser easily. Bryce has tons and tons of freebies and tutorials out here and does killer other worlds. You need to study a tutorial to get Poser into Bryce. I just use PhotoShop, myself. PSP does the same thing, I just don't know it as well. You can get plenty of props and freebies to do good interiors to start. I would suggest you try Poser's renderer first and see if you like it. It does ok for me and there is not the hassle of moving stuff. There are free trees in the FS-- look for Virtual Forest. Realistic landscapes are not what Poser was designed for but there are workarounds including backgrounds in PSP. Poser renders with an alpha channel so you can float a background in well. I bought Vue, but I haven't needed to crack it yet. I suppose I eventually will. I've been posing since January. Honestly, the Best Other softwear is Hardwear. A good Graphic's tablet and a Paint Program will get you the furthest. Emily

Bryce and Vue are both good for landscapes, Vue is particularly good if you want plants. As far as I know, renders are done in Bryce because it gives a better result ditto 3D Max etc. I personally render in Poser but do the lights in Psp because in my humble opinion, the Poser lighting is crap :) I have a utility called Virtual Studio which I think was free on Rosity that has better lights. It comes as a PZ3 and you just load it in and do the scene in there - make sure all the figures etc are in the library first. About to get Nerd's Backdrop Tool, which is only $10 and looks pretty good for doing outdoors - it's difficult getting realistic effects with a background image and a bit of stretchy grass. I export my ground plane to Psp and texture it there to avoid the texture stretches, so stuff comes out the right size. Hope this rambling has been some help.

Bryce and Vue are real raytracers , poser is not. If you want images with real reflections and things like fog,fire,glas..you have to use those programs for rendering. And the rendering takes much longer and often its not quiet easy to get poserpeople imported

I use Poser, Poser Pro, Vue and Bryce, CorelPhotoPaint, UV Mapper for Texture Maps and layouts, and AutoCad to create models. I have never had a problem importing Poser into Vue, have had some with Bryce, not much but some. My 2 most used for renders are Vue and Poser. Best renders I have gotten is used by Vue for realistic pictures. I am partial to Vue. You should go to the Vue and Bryce galleries and judge for yourself which is best at renders. Sharen

Thanks guys, for all the advice. Vue probably sounds most practical for me... Partly since it sounds easier to get Poser figures in there, and partly because of the affordability. (I recently had to quit work on health grounds - this leaves me 'time rich' (which is wonderful, and gives me time to make pictures), but 'cash poor' (which isn't just go great, and makes it hard to afford stuff for PC art!)) Thanks again! Morph

Yep, been there, know exactly how you feel. If we can help, just yell. Sharen

Being cash poor, here's some freebies that I highly recommend: DoGA - kinda like putting together models from pre-built sub-parts - but also terrific for props and sci-fi stuff - you can export 3DFace DXF files that you can import into Poser: http://www.doga.co.jp/english Terragen - for creating ultra-realistic backgrounds - save as jpeg or bmp http://www.planetside.co.uk/ Go to PCPlus to download a free, full featured copy of Cinema 4D - use it to create props of all kinds - and truespace 1.0 - both of which have forums here http://www.pcplus.co.uk

it always boils down to personal taste. vue is much easier to use than bryce. both to great renders. for checking the character / pose / scene I use poser, for final renders I use vue.

Attached Link: http://www.pcplus.co.uk/

I went to PC Plus, and Cinema 4D is not there. It may have been there temporarily?!

I generally render in Bryce. But, lately, zbrush is looking MIGHTY good to me. Check out the zbrush gallery, here...and, they do have a free demo. Bryce is hard until it "clicks". They also have a free demo, and, i think both of these would be worth your time downloading. And, don't overlook Strata3d, either. I was browsing all the galleries, this weekend. Some of the renders in Strata are awesome. Also free, strata.... Good luck, and, happy rendering. Me, I'm time poor, but, still love to play with anything i can get my hands on. Pop...POp...Poppi!!!

Now I'm going off-topic, but I think my 'newbie status card' still has enough creds left to get me excused.

I'm not used to this sort of forum. How do people generally say 'thanks'? The board would get awfully cluttered if I thanked everyone individually... Is it OK just to stick a 'thank you' (like this one) somewhere in the thread?

Or are the 'thank yous' just taken as read?

Anyway thanks everyone, and especially scaramouch for the plethora of free stuff!

I think I actually have that copy of Movie4D. It was a freebie on the same PCPlus cover disk that gave me Poser 3 and enabled me to upgrade to 4 at half-price.

I haven't checked it out yet because I haven't particularly heard it mentioned here, but perhaps I will.

Today I've been playing with a much cheaper, much more low-tech solution - I got that 3D Cyclotron thingie from DaZ3D -
It's pretty good in itself, and bestof all I can see it will be easy to add my own scenes to it!

Morph

It's perfectly OK to thank as you just did :-) There are demo versions of both Vue d'Esprit and Bryce, that is a good way of getting to know both softwares and see which one is most suitable for you.

Attached Link: http://host1.bondware.com/~syydr/

Morphy, As I scrolled down I see you already caught my idea. I was going to suggest that you head over to RunTimeDNA and pick up their free Infinity Cove (works basically like the Daz thingie). These let you use photos (or any 2D art as a background. Add in a couple of props and you can create a nice scene. (RDNA link attached) You'll probably move to more advanced techniques, but these are good, cheap ways to start. I never got the hang of Cinema4D, but the renders I see from it are fantastic. I use Carrara, an updated RayDream Studio for modeling and some final renders, mostly. You see some RDS (and other 3D software) on EBay occationally. Good Luck! mike

Thanks again everyone, for all the good advice. I've just been playing with that cyclotron gizmo from Daz, and here's a first draft of my first effort. Crits welcome (her pose is a bit stiff, isn't it?). I also spent an hour or two messing around with my freebie copy of Cinema4D, and I can honestly say that, even just a few hours, I produced results that were absolutely... appalling! I can see the learning curve for Cinema 4D will be quite steep! Thanks again, everyone. John

I don't think her pose is any stiffer than many already in the galleries-- but the camera angle is very very stiff and static. Needs a dynamic POV. Get some yaw and pitch in there. Emily

Actually her pose isn't bad! Heck, you've even got some expression on her face! It took me months to get that far! mike

Thanks. Here's the updated version, looking for that more exciting camera angle. I think this is more interesting, but I was sorry to lose the nice mountain scenery. Because of the shape of the backdrop, I couldn't get an interesting camera angle AND mountains. Oh well.

I promise this will be the last pic I post in this thread, but I'd value your opinion. I think the lighting in the previous post looks more realistic, but I love the dramatic dawn/sunset effect of this version. The problem is... Does it make the figures look too 'cut and pasted' on to the landscape? John

I don't think they look like cutouts, but you lost those cool shadows. Here's what I do. I don't move the camera and I render with a couple of different kinds of lighting and then blend it in PhotoShop-- or PSP, doesn't matter as long as the prog has layers. Sometimes use overlay, sometimes soft light in 50% or less transparency. That way you can have your sunset and the shadows too. That expression is killer now that I can see it well-- you're too good to be a newbie. You have to quit now.;-) Emily

Thanks, Emily. You kinda lost me with talk of overlays and such (see? AM SO still a newbie!) But I think you answered a question I was going to ask in another thread... When I keep seeing people talk about post-rendering work, I didnt' know what the heck they were talking about (I thought that when the render finished, the pic was finished). But your message has given me a clue. I suppose (if I were any good with PSP, I could airbrush on little clouds of dust around their feet, footprints, that sort of thing... Anyway, thanks again for all the help! John

This render gives an example where a small amount of postwork - touchup would help. The Dork's speedos are a little messed up, and Mike's thong has a little hole in it. I can easily fix the hole in the thong. It would take a bit more ingenuity to fix Dork's speedos.

That example really helps, thanks. Believe it or not, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to use another program to do that! I would probably have tinkered with it forever in Poser, trying to fix it there. But I can certainly see how there are cases were a judicious blob of 2D cyber-paint would be a lot quicker and easier! I bit the bullet and ordered Vue yesterday. Realistically, unless I have a major change in my circumstances (eg, a lottery win!) I'm never going to be able to afford any of those big 'high end' programs. Vue is just about affordable even if I have to live on thin soup for the next month to pay for it! Also, after checking through the galleries, I find that Vue (or partly-Vue) pics do more for me that just about anything else. Thanks again! john

I hear you can save a scene in Poser as a pz3 file, then import the entire scene directly into Vue. Then you can render the scene there. I don't think any other program has that capability. That is a massive help. Ron

Ron is correct, it works great to import a Poser scene directly into Vue as a pz3 file. Textures, bump and transparency maps are intact after the scene is loaded into Vue. You can't pose it after import though, it will just appear as a bunch of rigid objects. But you can't have everything ;-) Just make sure that you have the latest Vue patch, if your version does ship as version 4.06-2, you can download the patch from the E-on Software site. The patch fixes some Poser-related issues and a whole lot of other things. I'm sure you will be happy with Vue, it's a great software! You will also find the Vue community here at Renderosity very skilled and helpful.

Hhhhmmm... That should read as "If your version does NOT ship as version 4.06-2..." of course!

Thanks for the tip about the patch. I'll check that out. My fingers are itching, waiting to get hold of this software. Maxon seem to be a little slower than some other companies when it comes to shipping stuff. I've been checking my order status for the past few days, and it always just says ' In stock. Pending.' Maybe I've just been spoiled by Creative Labs - on the two occasions I've purchased on-line from them, the goods arrived the following day. Oh well. In the meantime, I've been messing with Terragen. It's quite impressive, and I think it will be great for producing 2D backdrops. John

Shucks. And now I owe Maxon an apology. They must just be a little slow updating order status on their site, 'cos within 30 mins of posting that last message, the postman arrived with the program! I'm off to explore strange new worlds. I may be gone for some time... :)

Happy rendering, Morphy, have fun :-)