As someone new-ish (4 or 5 months) to Poser, I'm really enjoying the program. I've seen a couple of entries on websites that describe Poser as a "low-end" app.

Compared to full-blown industrial software I can believe that; but, out of interest, how high does the scale go? Is it through plug-ins for the major programs - 3DS, Maya, etc - or are there examples of dedicated high-end character creation software?

When I win the Lottery, on what should I blow the 10,000 I've allocated for this very purpose...?

The people that did StarTrek Voyager use Lightwave and I believe that the Final Fantasy movie was done in Maya. If its good enough for them, its good enough for me! ;) If I was spending 10k I would probably go for Maya at about 3k and spend the rest on lessons ;) Alternatively, you can get those fancy 3D scanners, so you don't need to model... but I think they start at about 11k and go 40k+ :(

Additional! I think TV people use special compositing (sp?) software to mix grpahics with film... I think one of the common ones is called Flame.... but I'm not 100% sure on that.... I do know it costs into five figures and everybody using has several years training and experience! I'm afraid your 10k might not go very far :( Best wait for a rollover week, or slip a bribe to that drawmaster guy ;)

steerpike: "When I win the Lottery, on what should I blow the 10,000 I've allocated for this very purpose...?" a really nice, long vacation!! forget poser. gives you headaches. not only because your man/wife keeps hitting you with her pan because of empty credit cards ;)

If you're enjoying Poser surely, that's worth 10k. There's a lot of talk on this subject, what you can do with this program or with that program. Poser's only let down by it's renderer, it just doesn't do what the 'high end' apps do but there are work arounds, but for character work, animation or straight posing then it has no equal. You'll find references here to radiosity lighting, or to mirrored reflections, joint controlled morphs and so on. These are all techniques the community have developed during our long wait for Poser 5, you're a part of that community now and that's worth far more than what fell out of your Poser box when you opened it. Now, you lucky person, you're about to witness Poser 5's birth and from what we've seen, nothing but nothing is going to equal it. Go now and prepare for it's arrival...

As long as we are in a perfectly pointless discussion, I'd like to add my 0.2 ;o) Steerpike - if you had money to burn, you SHOULDN'T buy anof the high-end apps. You should buy a lot of Poser stuff (figure, clothes, tex's, motion) and a lot of help (put in your own list of talented Poser people) and create Final Fantasy II in Poser. If you got together the best talents in Poser-land, the combined effort would look 10 times better than any Maya stuff. Your only problem would be coordinating the teamwork and workflow - THAT is where the high-end apps are infinitely better. Poser is not a BAD app, it's a SMALL app. But I dare you to find just one picture from the $$$$$ apps that is better than those we can find in the galleries right here. And I don't work for Curious Labs ;o)

I'd get this: A P4 PC with 2GB RAM and a terabyte of drive space Poser (ver. 5 when it's released) 3ds Max or Cinema 4d A big-@$$ monitor (19" or up!) A ton of ready-made stuff from Daz the Renderosity Marketplace. A good video editing app A good library of special fx and textures And a really nice, expensive dinner for your spouse/mate - once you get started, they'll be wondering where the heck you are... ;) --silver

To me, Poser, is the easiest 3D program of its' kind!!
Out of the box, Poser is GREAT to use.
Rhino, Bryce, Canoma, Carrera...Poser is the easiest to use, period!!!

Some people seem to forget that you ALREADY use other 3D softwares. How do you think that the POSER stuff was done ?

All the POSER character, clothes and props were created with other 3d softwares (Rhino, Amapi, Lightwave, Cinema4D, Strata, etc...). Without these softwares the POSER workspace would be totally empty !

"But I dare you to find just one picture from the $$$$$ apps that is better than those we can find in the galleries right here" (thip) That's because they feature stuff done in $$$$$ apps !!! POSER was only used to "pose" the model and to place objects.

thip, I hope that you're not serious when you say that FINAL FANTASY II could be done in POSER, and that it'll look "10 time better than any Maya stuff" !?!?!?!?

:) Eric

Final Fantasy was created and rendered on over 100 Silicon Graphics Octane computers and rendered over a large renderfarm, taking up to a month to produce 3 - 5 minutes of film. They used a proprietary software they developed specifically for the film, with aid from alias wafefront to design it. Nothing was scanned , the photorealistic human textures were made completely by computer. The only human models they used were motion captures to design the skeleton. Each one had over 100 morph targets and each hair was individually placed on the model. I dont think we could reproduce the film with 100 new northwood p4's and if each of us had maya4 with experience in using it. You simply cant get that kind of detail with downloaded clothes and textures. Even if some of us are good enough to produce certain parts, we couldnt produce all of them, and it would take days and days to render a single still, and thats before we even got to the compositing effects.

Audity, DarkPhoenix - I've read a lot about how FF was produced. And believe me, I've studied the pictures VERY carefully. We obviously agree that computing power and the sheer size of the project would make our imaginary FF II quite a challenge on a Poser-based multi-computer setup, precisely because Poser is not designed for the workload and workflow of such a massive project. My pointless point in my post above is simply that (apart, possibly, from hair) I really think the classic Poser+Bryce or Poser+Vue output is equal to any of the $$$$ packages, and you can find stunning examples of modeling done in very modest packages such as Amapi or Cinema 4D (even the low-end version). Not to mention the texturing done in humble UVmapper by some of the Poser greats we all know. The massive price drops in "the big beasts" that we've seen lately certainly suggests they've had people pay as much for brand names as for actual power. Basically, I just detest the snobbery (not accusing you of it, of course) associated with the $$$$ packages, since they seem to make so many talented people hunt for the big packages instead of build up big experience. After all, 3D in ANY package always boils down to vertex positions, surfaces and rendering.

heh, I never claimed that the big moeny packages were all that great. I have a few, they have a lot more potential but I dont think their worth what people think they are. And I will agreee that it usually comes down to the rendering. Ever notice that even the expensive packages come with poor renderers? The only one that renders even decent to start with is Softimage, and of course thats because it intigrates mental ray into the package from day one ... I for one find poser to be a wonderful program and use it in conjunction with my work all the time. It is limited in its capabilities, but is worth far mor than most people give it credit for at first glance. I cerainly prefer it to a certain 1000 dollar plugin that doesnt do its job nearly as well .....

heh, I never claimed that the big moeny packages were all that great. I have a few, they have a lot more potential but I dont think their worth what people think they are. And I will agreee that it usually comes down to the rendering. Ever notice that even the expensive packages come with poor renderers? The only one that renders even decent to start with is Softimage, and of course thats because it intigrates mental ray into the package from day one ... I for one find poser to be a wonderful program and use it in conjunction with my work all the time. It is limited in its capabilities, but is worth far mor than most people give it credit for at first glance. I cerainly prefer it to a certain 1000 dollar plugin that doesnt do its job nearly as well .....

Always considered you an intelligent guy, Phoenix ;o) The thing I enjoy about articles about ILM and their Star Wars work is that they talk more about getting the right result than getting the right package. I assume, of course, that they are so creative and task-oriented (as opposed to package-oriented) because they think that's a better way to do things, and not because ILM can't afford the high-end packages ;o)

ILM slso uses their own propietary packages for animation, which they program to do wht they need when they need it. A lot of the people that work there use the high end packages as well, as long as the results are similar no one really cares what the individual animators use. I believe Softimage 3d is the modeller of choice there.

Program is a tool. Carpenter has hammer and saw. I use Poser to creat the image that I want. It is not the "HI" or "LOW" at all. It is the imagination in the soul of yours.

Umm... no. You could spend the rest of your life working in Poser 4 and you would not equal the work done for Final Fantasy. The system simply doesn;t have the abilities built in. The lighting calculations? Nope. Hell, Poser 4 doesn't even do reflections. The animation? Hell no. Poser 4 doesn't do the cloth simulation OR the hair simulation. Oh, and the muscle/skin deformations. The scene complexity? Nope. Poser 4 would die a horrible death before you even loaded the environment. You can do good work in Poser 4... but usually only for stills. A specific SINGLE frame from Poser 4 can sometimes look arbitrarily good - but an animated film of high quality (FF quality?) not even in a dream. I love Poser, but let's not get crazy with what we think Poser 4 can handle.

I don't mean Poser is the a powerful program.
I use other too, Lightwave 5.6 (yes, still 5.6, just don't want to spend the upgrade money) and Rhino 2.0. I have Ray Dream Studio 5 but abandon it for a long time ago.
The point is, I see people have Tons of Programs and Books but never make a single image. What is that good for?

heh, some people go get programs because they think this is powerful, it will help me create powerful stuff. then they find out its not as easy as they thought and dont do anything. Those people are usuall quite rich or thieves. others prefer to teach. They can make something but just dont have the motivation. they prefer to look at what others are doing. me, i just dont have time. An most of my images are for other people. Once I get away from my current job and can find something else, then all those programs and books will be a little more helpful.

"The only one that renders even decent to start with is Softimage, and of course thats because it intigrates mental ray into the package from day one ..." Just a small nitpick, but Lightwave uses built in multi-bounce global illumination raytracer, whose output can rival Mental Ray on most occasions and which is considerably faster. While it may not have as open a shader architecture, it is more easily artist accessed, and there are plenty of low cost plugins for it to add effects such and subsurface-scattering, new procedurals, and various surface type descriptions.

Soulhuntre - you are partially right. Lighting calculations? Nope, Poser doesn't do well, but I did mention classic, low-end companions to Poser that did. The animation, cloth sim and skin deform? ECM will do a reasonable imitation, though, and Poser 5 will do even better, it seems - and still at a reasonable price (I hope) The scene complexity? Well, even ILM had to hire an expert (according to articles it was Christophe Hery) to get the best from rendering massive scenes, and he spoke of several compromises. I'll stop preaching (probably getting boring, anyway ;o) ) - my only point in this wonderfully pointless discussion was to avoid getting crazy about what Poser can't do when compared to the big beasts. That way, much less talent should be held back by the - IMHO - erroneous idea that you can't make great things w/ small packages ;o)

I'm late for this one, but there are a few big advantages poser4 has over the "big beasts". 1 it's a heck of a lot cheaper. 2 1000% more available ready made content. 3 it's easier to use & learn. 4 the UI is friendlier to newbies. 5 you can talk to the guys who made it, they're human & visible :) 6 one heck of a huge community supporting it. that'll do you for now, feel free to rip me to shreds :) Rob

Flame is a high end compositing program/hardware solution to replace things like final cut and adobe premiere.

i use poser for Posing, and animation. and then i import everything into 3ds Max for final rendering. Poser is a wonderful tool for the price. no other product on the market equals it. even the sometimes crappy plugins for max that are 3 times the cost of poser lack in features. as for the renderings. Max is still behind lightwave as far as renderings go. but with release 5 they should be about equal. dont get rid of poser just yet. realise that poser was not originally intended to be a great rendering software, but rather as a way to easily experiment with the human form and, allow ease of use. if i won the lottery i would bypass MAX, Lightwave and MAYA. and would head straight to Softimage. and still use poser as a tool.