Poser 5 reviews are starting to roll in. Here's one of the first i've found so far. http://www.computerarts.co.uk/reviews/review.asp?id=998 Poser 4 is a fantastic program. The deeper you delve into it, the more you get from it, and the better you appreciate some of the subtleties of its design. However, it's not long before you discover the program's shortfalls, even if you're a novice. Now that the long-awaited version 5 is here, what lessons has Curious learned? Poser is unique among all of the 3D applications on the planet, for its the only one concerned with manipulating and posing 3D figures, rather than creating and texturing them. Version 5 brings a generous bundle of new features and design refinements, which will enthuse even the most jaded 3D user. First among them is its new rendering engine, Firefly, which is the sole survivor from Curious Labs' attempts to build a 3D modelling application. Firefly includes a ray tracing mode, which enables far greater subtlety from your models, and finally enables you to create genuine reflections; no more Photoshop post-work to create water and mirrored surfaces. Hand-in-hand with Firefly is the new Material room, where you create the textures for your models. This is massively improved, and includes the ability to create node-based textures. Each node is a texture of its own, and these nodes, which can be procedural, or static or animated bitmaps, can be combined or used as operators to create more complex textures. Sadly, the mapping engine seems incomplete, and you can't do things such as change mapping modes from UV to projection, or rotate the maps. This inadequacy is representative of all that's wrong about Poser 5. The program has many fantastic new features, but they've only been implemented in an introductory kind of way, and it's really easy to see how each feature could have been improved or made easier to use. Curious just failed to dot the 'i's and cross the 't's, and it's frustrating to think what could have been. By far the most exciting new modelling feature is the Cloth room, where you can turn any surface or model part into cloth. This cloth can be draped over other objects, it reacts to the new wind generator and is affected by collision detection. Whether you want to create a conforming bed sheet, a fluttering flag or a billowing dress, it will do it for you. Another new feature is strand-based hair. This enables you to grow and style wigs or fur, which can also be made to react to wind. This feature should really be considered more of an introduction to hair, rather than a direct replacement for Poser 4's hair system, which depends upon polygons and transparency maps to create volume and strands. In the Face room you can load in front and side photos of your own face. After aligning a few control points, the program supposedly creates a map and modified geometry that you can use with the default male and female figures. However, we never achieved satisfactory results. Poser 5 includes a whole new high-resolution family, each of whom comes pre-textured. They don't look as good as DAZ3D's family of characters, nor do they have as many body morph targets. However, they are infinitely better than the Poser 4 figures, and they have a greater range of facial morphs than either Michael or Victoria. In conjunction with the Face rooms morph putty feature, they enable you to create just about any face shape you can imagine. If you depend upon Pro Packs plug-ins for hosting within Maya, Max, Cinema 4D or Lightwave, then don't throw away Poser 4 just yet. For Easier to navigate and control Enables greater realism and variety of characters Against Pro Pack's third-party program integration not implemented Many bugs and design flaws Weak lighting modes Verdict Despite many minor, and not-so-minor niggles and shortfalls, Poser can still prove extremely handy for scene visualisation and quick character set-ups. However, it could have been improved much further and you don't have to dig too deeply to see where. On the whole, Poser is a great application, but the fact that the Pro Pack is incompatible with version 5 means professionals will be shy to upgrade immediately.

An interesting review, but what was this guy smoking to incapacitate himself to the point where he couldn't get satisfactory results from the face room? It's by far P5's best feature, incredibly easy to use, and makes the new figures superior to the DAZ efforts.

IMHO, the face room dosn't have nearly enough control points to be really useful for its intended purpose.

...

This reviewer is spot on, especially when he says "This inadequacy is representative of all that's wrong about Poser 5. The program has many fantastic new features, but they've only been implemented in an introductory kind of way, and it's really easy to see how each feature could have been improved or made easier to use. Curious just failed to dot the 'i's and cross the 't's, and it's frustrating to think what could have been."

This is a major frustration for someone, like me, who has been a Poser-faithful since Version 2 and sees the unparalleled potentional. That, the "slap some third party apps onto the old P4 interface" feel, and the lack of documentation too. It's certainly has potential ... I just hope in the long run that's not all it has.

As far as the FACE ROOM, it is where I have spent 90% of my time, so I know it in and out, and it has quite a few shortcomings. I believe the reviewer was speaking of actually getting a face/head that looks like the person you want it to.

It's a lot of fun, and you can make some interesting faces, but it has very frustrating tools, is missing some important items/functions, and ultimately you can't make a virtual Bob, John, Tim or Amy.

Thanks for the review post!

-Tim

"IMHO, the face room dosn't have nearly enough control points to be really useful for its intended purpose." Yes, and it is never made clear exactly where those control points (or the red lines) they control go. And saying the way the points control the dots is a bit frustrating, is an understatement. However I have learned, through a lot of use, lining up the red lines appears to me much more important than where the green dots are located. -Tim

Add to the list:

• Low-res texture-maps created
• No way to intergate with body maps / no body map created
• No support for other figures, including children figures. (perhaps future figures can be supported?)
• Awkward controls
• No UNDO (program-wide problem)
• Not enough morph targets with default figures
• No practical way to save a head, and;
• No way to work on the head later

These last two have been the most recent source of frustration and disappointment for me.

I probably missed a few, but those are the main ones that concern me and make the ROOM mostly useless, other than as an entertainment.

-Tim

Actually, a pretty reasonable review. He didn't go out of his way to bash the prog, but he didn't gloss over short comings or drool over it in a sales pitch thinly disguised as a review. Looks like within the time normally alloted for reviewing on a monthly, he gave it an adequate going over, good and bad features. This part though: "This inadequacy is representative of all that's wrong about Poser 5. The program has many fantastic new features, but they've only been implemented in an introductory kind of way, and it's really easy to see how each feature could have been improved or made easier to use. Curious just failed to dot the 'i's and cross the 't's, and it's frustrating to think what could have been." And the part on the Pro-Pack integration is going to be telling for ComputerArt's target audience. A lot of them are C4D, Lightwave, Max, and other pro-app users, and they'll read it, and probably pass and go to something that integrates with their pet apps.

" integration is going to be telling for ComputerArt's target audience. A lot of them are C4D, Lightwave, Max, and other pro-app users, and they'll read it, and probably pass and go to something that integrates with their pet apps" Long live the poser4 propack !!! -wolf359 founding member of "the 12 animators"-

Long live the poser4 propack !!! Yep, very true. I think the review is spot on, it describes my perceptions of Poser 5, in the rare cases that I got it working. ;P

HiYa

I agree with all. The review is quite even tempered on some of the "not quite there" functions.

Regards the Face Room - I ran an experiment all day yesterday.
I had been given the DVD collection of the sixties series "the Prisoner" and I thought that given the huge amount of good quality pictures you could reconstruct the faces of Patrick Macgoohan et all.
So I thumped the DVD in and started at around this time dumping off images into PhotoShop via the screen capture of PowerDVD - searched for the most likely images(do you know how rare a full profile and full face is in films?)

By maybe 09:00 I had whittled the umpteem images down to 4
fiddled with the resolutions and stuff and was ready for the Face Room...

My first experiment was with The girlie who played Sonia in the Girl who was Death (episode 14)

I agree with all that is said above - I worked and worked at that damn face, and you have to keep going with that face room session. if P5 crashes and you revert to a saved version - zip - nothing you can do. Pretty frustrating.

I found the position of green dots and the red lines really have no bearing on each other, concentrating on the red lines and using the dials do get the better result.

As a parallel test I tried the sam sort of thing with V2 and the CakeWalk tutorial. With a couple of one sided squares at 90 degrees to each other I began to get much better results. V3 looks as though she may be even better it seems.

So do CL go back to their Third Party and tell them to "get this working?"

I suppose we are in for a series of service packs as the various third party suppliers of Rooms for P5 get their act together and make the rooms more user friendly.

Still, early days...

PaulC As soon as I can I will post the test images. At the moment I am emarking on Patch Watch#2 of the 2002 season...

Sorry that should be embarking...

well CL is an echoing void - one can only download cow skulls so often..

Here is the image I promised

Judy on the left (time taken 7 hours)
Victoria 2 on right (time taken 1 hour)
inset is one of the DVD images for comparison..

hair slapped together to hide big bulging foreheads..
Texture a modified Gaia form SteffyZ(on both)

I suppose one of the things I might try is to do a front and profile of Victoria and put that into the face studio and see how close Judy conforms.

I'm glad I"m not the only one that has had problems with the face room. I have spent hours and hours and hours trying to recreate my own head in the face room. I have had my boyfriend take multiple pictures of me, thinking that maybe the lighting or angle was hindering my results. I could never get the green dots and red lines to line up correctly, in fact after a while they began to separate from eachother and get further and further off where they were supposed to be. Not that you can tell exactly where the green dots are supposed to be in the first place. After all my efforts, not once did I get a face that even closely resembled me. I attributed it to personal error along with buggy green dots, but I'm getting the feeling that I can't make me.

Unique Eh Morganah? I wouldnt even attempt to put me in the face room some things are best left alone! Paulc

This is 10 minutes worth of work in the face room. Look familiar. This is just a rough draft, no tweaking or anything. Yes, I know I used a B&W photo, but it's all I could come up with on short notice. I'd do a tutorial, but the feature is a no-brainer.

Pretty good review there I think...I have to agree with the cloth room comments, that alone gives a huge degree of added realism IMO, whether it will take over conforming clothes remains to be seen but I'm extremely happy with that portion of P5 alone.

laugh No, not really unique, Paulc ;) I've just always had a burning desire to have a 3D representation of myself. Maybe I'm just crazy, but I can't be the only one around here that wants to do a self-portrait. Fls13, I'm glad that you are having better luck than I. Maybe I should try someone elses face to see if I get better results.

Fls13 NoBrainer???? Read the above comments Yup I suppose if you just thump in a photo and go for it,it is a no brainer. and no I cannot guess who it is And please do a tutorial for the likes of Morganah, Timoteo1 and myself (amongst others) We all seem to have missed something that makes this a no-brainer.

Morganah and others - Don't touch the individual green dots until you've got it almost perfect with scaling and repositioning, using those controls to the left of the front/side images... 10 minutes messing with those buttons will save you HOURS of work (and actually produce something useful ;).

Yeah, no-brainer for sure. This is coming from the same person that told me (and acted like I was the idiot) that you could get hi-res texture maps (above the 512x512) becuase you could simply "do what you want with them in Photoshop." LOL! Sorry, yes, flame was in the FULL ON position. It's just plucks a nerve when someone acts like we're the idiots and have no clue what they're talking about. -Tim PS> I have no idea who it is either.

I honestly spent more time writing this up then I did doing the Poser work. Just save this image as your template.

Spanki: Good point ... especially the X-axis scale, that seems to be key for me. Also, if you don't use a tripod and/or the person's head is not level when you take the picture, the rotation control is a must. -Tim

Looks nothing like the photo

I don't have time to do a full tutorial on such short notice, but I do have a couple tips that should help. 1. In the face room, rotate the default head mesh so that it faces directly at you. Do a print screen of the face room and save it in your photo app. Crop the new image so that all you have is the little window that the mesh sits in. Save it as your template to use to line up the images you want to use in your new character. Open your front and profile (F&P) images. Upsize the template so that it can be lined up with the F&Ps and use those images in the face room, not the original photos. 2. Adjust the color mapping of the F&Ps so that the skin colors are reasonably close. 3. Do use the morphs in both the face room and pose room to tweak the mesh. 4. Do post work where needed on the face room texture in your photo app. When you open it up, you do need to save it as a different file, and then you reapply it in the material room when you go back into Poser. In this attachment, I combined the original photo I used that became part of the texture and the new rendered character, which still needs work.

You stated that you can't do post work on a face room texture and I've clearly demonstrated that you can. So who doesn't know what they're talking about? I was able to get a reasonable resemblance to a recognizable person in a matter of minutes, I said it wasn't a finished product, and you just refuse to see it, so suffer. Hopefully, the other folks who have had some frustrations with the face room will benefit from my tips.

FLS I guessed Sagal on the first shot, good work. that article glossed over and missed so much. The hair room an introduction to hair? sorry while no one, not even Kupa, said that it would replace completely transmapped hair, it's a damn sight better then an introduction it is a full fledged strand based hair system. and just becouse the reviewer couldn't do some things it doesn't mean they couldn't be done.

LOL "so suffer " Why? Problems round the chin old man, as far as I can see. My clients certainly would'nt accept that or could you be going for caricature Who cares! I've had enough of this trolling I,m off to do something else Tim,Spanki and Morganah my regards Frank I'm not playing your games

For the record, I NEVER said you "can't do post work on a face room texture." Why would anyone say such a stupid thing? Of course you can.

Either you can not comprehend what I have written in the other thread, or you simply did not read it. I simply stated that no amount of post-work can increase resolution ... it's a non-issue.

On a postive note, I enjoyed your mini-tutorial, and I DO think it can help a lot of people get better results out of the Face Room. HOWEVER, unfortunately it will not solve the problems I mentioned above and overall you still can not get an accurate face. Your image does not do Steven Segal justice IMHO.

It reminds me of the figures in a lot of console sports games, where they have tried to make the players look like their real-life counterparts. They typially loosely resemeble the person, and with the help of their name/number (the picture of Segal in your case) you identify them. But do they REALLY look like the person ... unfortunately, NO.

-Tim

For the third time now, it's not a finished effort. What part of that don't YOU comprehend? I think getting a head mesh to loosely resemble a specific person in 10 minutes shows the face room is pretty damn impressive. An hour or two of total work will get you an excellent character. The face room textures maps are 150 ppi, no lie no CYA. Ignorance is you.

Thankyou everyone for your tips reguarding the face room. I will try, try again, and hopefully get some better results. As for Mr. Segal, a characature at best. Of course, I would expect more than 10 minutes worth of work for a complete replica. Like I said, I've spent hours and haven't gotten anything decent. If I have a major breakthrough or come across any useful ideas, then I will let you all know. I haven't given up yet.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=882854

Morganah, check the attatched link.. hope this helps.

Spanki: Thanks for the link to your other post, very informative. I do have one question though ... how did you get the face map to combine so nicely with the body map? Was it because you used another map first and combined it in the Face Room? Maybe you could post another mini-tutorial on this unless, of course, my initial guess is correct. -Tim

Frank: If you want to continue to lie or delude yourself (whichever the case may be) that they are 150dpi, go right ahead ... I'm not wasting any more typing on it. I could post pics from the file properties of three diffrent applications that report it as 72dpi, but then you'd just say I changed it. Anyone with half a brain can check it and see for themselves, end of story.

"An hour or two of total work will get you an excellent character."

Yeah, maybe "A" character, but not "THE" person. Tell you what, please post a pic of your best effort sometime in the near future. I'd love to see how much an hour or two (heck take four or five if you want) would improve the charicatures you have shown so far. I honestly would LOVE for you to prove me wrong ... really. It would mean the Face Room could be taken seriously, for me.

-Tim

Tim, my first image in that thread may be a little decieving... for that character, I only used the face room as a place to morph the head (not based on any photo) and then only applied the shape to the character. The texture (both head and body) being used is Byte Me Ok's "Oxanna" for Victoria. But since you asked... be sure to check out the "Texture Variation" tab (on top of the 'Front view' window)... that will let you adjust the skintone of the head texture in various ways. It's still a guessing game, since you can't see the body texture, but when you apply the texture, it tries to 'blend' the new head with the body, so you can keep messing with it until it's close. g'luck.

Ahhh ... I thought maybe it was an non-FR texture. I've tried the Texture Variation tab quite a bit, but can never get satisfactory results. But thanks for the tip anyway. Cheers! -Tim

I've proven you wrong on so many points already. :O) And yes, everyone, check out the ppi on the FR textures, so you can see for yourself. And Tim, please post SOMETHING in the way of graphic art work on this site . . . .anything. I'd love to see it!!! You run your mouth and hurl insults around, so let's see something! Or are you, like Narsil another guy who runs his mouth but posts no work, too busy doing work for clients? HAHAHAHAHA

Thanks, Spanki! Hopefully this evening I'll have time to try it out.