Does that imply that here the subforums with very low traffic represent the worst software? ^.^
Seeing it this way, 3DS Max should work twice as well as Maya and Poser should work about 8 times as well as any other CG application.

Dont forget that you can make a complex subdirectory structure with any modern filesystem.
You should create at least 48 subfolders named like "! ! !" or "+!+".
Further you should avoid short filenames the closer you come to root.
Never let a path be shorter than 240 characters.
Store only a single file per directory.

Going for redundancy is always a good thing...
What should reside somewhere inside the Poser installation can be spread throughout the whole system. ReadMe's included. This way the large capacity of nowadays harddrives will be used in an excellent manner while at the same time it prevents the user from doing what he's best at: conserving digital crap.

Offer formats that are of no use to most of the target group. Offer textures in resolutions that can not be handled by the target app or that are much to low to yield good results.
Provide the ReadMe in at least 20 different variants. Including backward compatible ones.

Create an installer to reproduce your files on every drive and of course into the "system32", "drivercache" and "System Volume Information" directories.
Use the OS-tools to remove user and admin ownership of these redundant file and any possible other rights. For NTFS the effort to screw the FS shadowcopy will surely pay off.

If you create an compressed archive that contains rel. filepaths you should at least try to overwrite as many important files of the target Poser installation as possible. But not the obvious ones like Poser.exe...
Oh, and one thing: never name a file in a way that could let the user know what it contains.

Optional: Offer technical help regarding the installation process and make the user pay for this service.

@cobaltdream: One possible way to interpret ghonmas statement would be this:
Someone should mention it if he uses a model made by someone else.
If the any figure, hair, texture, cloth is not done by the creator of the particular picture and this fact is not mentioned along with the picture in question then it's prejudice.
It's the prejudice of that creator that other can read his mind. They lack this skill and thus is OK if they mention this bad project documentation. The wording is secondary at best.

And I would add:
The workflow should also be documented.
Figures posed in Poser but rendered in Max is not the same as completely done in Poser or Max. Postworked in Gimp or PS is not the same as postworked in Mirage...
But this is now easy enough to be continued without much explanations and examples.
If the documentation is done correctly there is no point to criticise other than the artistic value and the technical execution.

Sadly this means again that finding the reason for prejudice would require psychological analysis. Something I doubt any mortal human being can do without good knowledge about the people in question.
Can you explain to me why my neighbour reacted with the words when he was confronted with input and all you got is a single sentence of him or maybe some few sentences? ... See, it won't work.

What works is asking the neighbor himself why he reacted like he did. Often that won't give you more than a bunch of lies because humans are humans, but with some more questioning you come closer to the truth.
Ergo, the question asked here is not based on logic and no specification can make it logical.
The question how those people who respond here would react under all the given circumstances is a valid logical question.
Maybe this sounds a bit blunt, but you seem to be to focused on finding a truth where none can be found. To interpret requires already to be unbiased.

Yes, this would kill all the fun because without being biased there's no emotion left that could be roused... :tt2:

Thus spoke Zarathustra: The path of the creator.

Err, I mean y into the (x,z) matrix of course, lol... It's late...

@Angelouscuitry: Thanks for the detailed tutorial picture! :D
Now I know what your intention is. g
From what you said, I did it right without using IBL ans without artifacts.
Have not used the Poser ball tho. The only setting on the ball except for the math nodes was "forward normals". No groups changed or whatsoever.

More IBL's to have more brightness? that would cost more resources and you still have no good shadows. IBL + shadow casting on 1 light doesn't work very well.
You would make 1 IBL and 1 light that lights the scene and is responsible for shadows. The IBL only gives some tints to the lighitng but it doesn't do the main lighting part. It's set to a low value.

The weather would be a bit more work. A Brownian motion for clouds could be a good start because this fractal is pretty predictable. Turbulence with some tan() and sin() applied to it could look more realistic than fBm.

The next problem would be the pretty low limit for displacement. A cloud would have several 100m up to ~1km "displacement" in real world. Doing miniature clouds would still require a displacement of a couple 10m. If this is possible, - I have not tried it yet -, then it would slow down rendering coz Poser doesn't like a high displacement value much.
FF seems to be optimized for skin and such things with values for displacement way below 1.
Well, the first part is to have the cloud at a predictable height and location. Using U/V on the volume of a sphere is something that might be not possible with Poser. It's not even with most other apps, IIRC.
Next dirty hack would be to make a hollow sphere with many 2 sided planes towards y=0 and many single sided planes towards y=min/max because there is no 2nd side needed.
One would see only one side of effects at greater height and if looking down from above one would see nothing if there r 2 sides and they r used.
For medium heights and near ground level there can be stripes of volumes as well.
These volumes would act as physical volumes then. E.g. for fog or clouds.
This is such a dirty 1990's hack that I have to wash my hands now just for typing it...

A more elegant solution would be a script that creates volumes inside the sky dome sphere at locations determined by gray-values of the math nodes. For example the lighter gray parts of the turbulence stand for clouds and where it fades to darker gray the cloud grows thinner towards object y=0. This volume is then made partially transparent and some shader does the texturing job. This way any light from sun or from surface can easily be taken into account for reflections on clouds. Shaders without y would require the transformation of the theoretical y into the (x,y) matrix with modified riemann mapping theorem. (like it's done when rendering the final 2D pic)
But there's maybe some need for a biholomorphic map for y. Maybe isogonal mapping is enough since the orientation shouldn't change anywas.

That's now BB's job for next week. Period. :tt2:

Ok, I think BB will have some fun figuring out how to shade cloud layers. :D
Your method to get an scene-matching IBL image is cool. For some higher quality picture the additional effort surely pays off but the best part is that no other applications are needed except Poser itself.

Patorak, that's as how I understood it at first.
I never saw this kind of artifacts as Angelouscuitry experienced them if doing a skydome.
The confusing part is 1) how exactly he placed the spheres to get these artifacts and 2) what he wants the reflection to look like.
As BB said, the shading area subdivision, or min. shading rate, would make very high poly skydomes useless.
I think up to 1000 ... 5000 polys, depending on hardware performance, are fine for most cases.
Together with figures, hair and clothes that's a heavy load for an PC.

Angelouscuitry, I forgot to answer that sphere-question. A sphere is only the shape, it can be hollow or not like an billard ball, can have an theoretical wall thickness or a real one like an basketball.
The Poser sphere primitive is hollow and that means you can not tell Poser that you want some attributes (colors, shaders) for the sphere volume. There are no points inside the sphere that could store these attributes.
If you model a massive sphere and import it to Poser, you can assign attributes to the volume and create some sort of (animated) atmosphere for example. For an sky you would still need an additional sphere because of the way the texturing works.
1 sphere for the skydome, 1 sphere inside the first one and a tiny bit smaller that simulates some atmosphere that can be faster calculated than the Poser atmosphere node.
For example useful for fog (moving) over the ground, volumetric clouds, rain, ...

Or simply as a mean to apply filter mathematics to the picture. I.e. if you look through sunglassed you would see a filtered version of what you see normally without the sunglasses.

So is this thread now about procedural sky or image mapped sky? confused

Quote -

Cute! gg

... No the atmosphere composition was not directly for Poser. the numbers can be useful to apply the settings from picture 1 in this thread to an realistic dimensioned and and functional atmosphere.

What I would like to know is how you have set up the single balls/spheres to get the artifacts.
And if possible, what kind of sky reflection you want finally and what lights you are using and their settings.
Best would be the scene file without copyrighted content of course. :biggrin:
It's less work than listing all light settings and prop coordinates.

16 million polys and Poser sounds not good...
Your use of turbulence looks great patorak. :)

Quote - > Quote - Blender 3D is a free modeler with all of the features of a "professional tool," yet the Poser hobbyists--for the most part--won't even touch it. Why? Because--like the professional tools--it's hard to master. Poser by comparison is very easy to learn.

Quote - That is nonsense and untrue.  "The Poser hobbyists" includes myself, and I have two modeling apps installed on my machine now (Hexagon, Shade).  I use them when appropriate to use them.  Many many "Poser hobbyists" also mess with modeling apps when they feel the urge. 

From my experience I found Poser easier to learn than Shade, which is easier than learning Maya or XSI, which are easier than CATIA.

Easy means that I can get a picture done without the need to look in any manual and without spending more than a few minutes with program/renderengine specific settings.Further does easy mean that not everything is suddenly totally fucked up because I clicked the wrong button.
This way I came to the order of programs as listed above.
I have never attempted to seriously work with Blender because the other applications are available already.

Poser is more difficult if one makes use of the dynamic cloth and hair and the material room.
But this type of difficulty is not the same as the one that requires to look in a manual because there is nothing that hints the user about what he did wrong and there is no way to use logic to understand the way the program functions.

Quote - I'm from USA Lived in Tennessee,West Virginia,Virginia,North and South Carolina,Georga,Florida.

Was a hoodlum skipped school a lot.

Once when a land lord threw us out he said we where a bunch of longed haired tattooed hippies that belonged out in the woods some where.he meant it as a insult but we took it as a complement.we where heatherns.

I started drawing comic book characters in second grade,in 8th grad art class I painted the cover of KISS Destroyer & Iron Maidens Killers with acrylics.12th grade Art class I drawed the KISS Solo Album of Gene with pastels.

Wanted to be a rock star so played guitar in a garage band.Had a red Gibson flying V.

I have done custom paint jobs on vehicles in Atlanta

Air brushed tShrts and painted billboards at Panama City Beach.

Done Tattoos in Prison

at one time or other painted,drawed with all the mediums.

been making a living one way or the other with some form of Art since I can remember.

had art class in 8th grade,12th grade and a semester in college it was art 101 the teacher asked me why I took it cause she didn't think I needed it I just wanted to be around other Artist.

Went to college 5 years for a computer science degree I never graduated.

I just don't do school very well.
Done sculpturing with deferent clays,I just like Art.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

That's very extensive. Thank you. :)
It's not a problem to understand what you write. I have asked coz I thought your primary language is something else than english and 'cause we happen to "meet" regularly in this forum. My native tongue is German...

CS is a odd choice for study if you are interested in art. However, maybe you will finish the degree some day. I believe that it's not totally impossible to do the last few steps if you were able to stand that topic for 5 years already and it might be useful since many companies rather look for some piece of paper than for actual skill.
On your site the whole damnation themed pictures are standing out. IMO, they are the most in themselves complete works.

Maybe you know this site already: community.conceptart.org/
There are some capable and helpful people. Especially the Asians.

About the threads topic and the latest specification: using methods of psychology would do a better job if it comes to separating and delimit the reasons behind certain points of view.
Quality of pictures is a whole different topic, as cobaltqueen said already.

@cobaltdream: Your listing of picture themes deserves 5 stars... Excellent done! gg

Quote - Also I look at htings this way, in my schooled profession, which is Civil Engineering and Land Surveying, when somene tells me (full of excitement) that they found their property corner, or pored concrete on their patio, it's extremely difficult for me to show them the same excitement as another neighbor might, and when I try, it's extremely hard for me to not come across as contrived.

Well, I'm also no artist inasmuch as I got no formal training. I have to work with artists sometimes and in my family are / were quite a few whose artisitc POV's collides with my scientific (theoretical physics) POV on a daily basis...
It's fascinating what someone with many years artistic experience and a good amount of talent can see where others see nothing, no matter how long they look.

If I point out something then it's mostly physics or medicine related stuff because that's what I see first and most precisely. The ability to rejoice with someone about his artwork is limited by my ability to see a picture as an expression or personal achievement of this person. Therefore, if I don't know the artist well, an emotional analysis of any picture is a difficult task while it's easy to analyze the picture in any scientific or psychological way.

And this is one important point I think. Most people see in a face not more than what they need to see in to survive an encounter. They can't point out asymmetries or mathematical expressions that describe parts of the many shapes in a face. After they were told what they have to look for, they will see it. And sometimes one will only see these things to an extent of being blind for any beauty in a structure.
But all (healthy) humans can see without much training if something is wrong with a human face. Something like to regular teeth or to big/small eyes or a strange skin color or ... can be continued ad infinitum.

Often the teeth are not visible in paintings. If there's a need to show them then they are often depicted not ultra realistic.
For artists without profound knowledge about histology many issues are simply not relevant.
Doing the teeth right but failing on the different skin areas and types won't lead to a better final picture than failing in all areas. lol...

Finally the eyes/teeth can be used to convey something and doing them in a realistic way could interfere with what the artist want to convey; what leads me to the next quote...

Quote - Here's an example of teeth that (at least to me) seem to fit the character. Rather then looking like they were transplanted from elsewhere. http://features.cgsociety.org/gallerycrits/5225/5225_1179324324_large.jpg

They look a tad plastic for a realistic character, but the whole character in the image looks a tad jelly/plastic like, so the teeth fit the rest of the character. Also, the lighting and ambient is consistent with scene lighting. Where there is very little light, the teeth are darker. The highlights are bright, but they don't have washed out hotspots, but just a tiny litlle sparkle.

Something my mom always taught me about drawing, painting art in general is that you almost never use pure white or pure blacks in images that are supposed to have a level of reality to them. In reality, things that may appear black or white to us are never pure white or black.

This plant looks great with these teeth because they incorporate important attributes of this specific plant.
What worries me about this picture is the reflection of the pencils lac (or is it like in french "laque"?) that is to dull, the clay that is to reflective for clay and not reflective enough for enameled clay and the paper without surface structure and the light's wavelenght that would cause a bluish reflection on the periodic table on the desk. And so on...
But the teeth look well done for the purpose.
A good start would be if teeth are not always plain white or gray but have the natural gradient that the hydroxyapatite crystallites have by default. The worst job would be to get the around 1100 noteworthy diffraction patterns of this material right. That sounds like long long render sessions...
Maybe 2 refraction patterns, gradient color and a rough, irregular surface would do the job for the beginning.

Now if only all the "elitists" would spend a day or two in some really professional environment, e.g. some special fx studio or game developer, and then reconsider their elitist status, taking into account that they spend weeks or even months on something that real world industry expects to be done in a few days maximum with at least the same level of quality.
Not everybody who makes a few bucks every now and then is a professional or specialist of some application and not everybody who grows a few vegetables in his garden is a farmer or agricultural engineer.

@RorrKonn: May I ask where you come from or what is your native tongue?
Some of the pictures on your website look very nice. I think it would be good to elaborate the traditional skills.

Hmm. What effect you want to have exactly?
After reading the posts I'm somewhat confused about everything except the sphere's internal attributes.

The internal attributes, or the atmosphere, are not existant because the sphere is empty for the renderengine. If you make a massive sphere you have of course material attributes at any point inside the sphere as well as on its surface.It should then be transparent on the inside so that you will see something...
Some atmosphere that comes close to the one you posted in your first msg. would have these attributes:
Light wavelength [R,G,B] = 4e-07, 4.25e-07, 6.15e-07
Star Irradiance [R, G, B] = 1350 1250 1400
Transparency treshold = 0.94
Modifier = 0.97 (for an 150km high atmosphere)
Modifier = 0.8 (for an ~ 3km high atmosphere)
AO modifier = 2.7           
Twilight width = 0.005 (for r = 17000 km)
Incidence at horizon = 0.165
Out of some meteorological computing...
now, if you want the blue to be less intense or dark, you would adjust it slightly with color math and primarily via the irradiance, transparency treshold and it's modifier.
BB got it somehow right in the description, I think, and that means that you have to cheat a little since you can not input meteorological data 1 to 1. Rape one of the nodes and use poser math to limit the effects.
The artifact that looks like a object which isn't in your scene should be gone after filtering the results. A colorrramp can do some good here. And of course all the +, -, *, mod and clamp stuff.
I can not rebuild the scene like described in post #2 because I fail to see any 2nd dome there or where it was placed. I only see one sky dome ball prop and one small ball prop there.

But all this still means that if one looks after the technical aspects of his picture and the content is somewhat creative his picture can easily stand against any picture made in some high end professional app under the same conditions.

In an more real life production line there would be some people who do only models, other who do only textures, some technicians who know all the ins and outs of some renderer and some other folks to keep the production going. Which one of these is the artist now?
The limits of high end apps are not less annoying as the ones of Poser, but the limits are not really the reason for what Poser is looked down at. It's much more what is done with Poser.

if everybody would start to do his NVIATWAS in Max or Maya then there would be much more content for these apps and of course some people would look down upon the program and the users.
Or to take a different example: many people look down upon Windows98, XP, Vista because of all the users that have no clue how to use their OS and because of all the crappy actions they do. Stuff like getting viruses on their systems, slow their machines down because they install whatever stupid combination of drivers and programs, being unable to read the manuals and help themselves and so on...
How many people look down upon Win 2003 and the like? Much less. But there are much less stupid admin actions and the users usually can't do much harm except the admins let them.
Stupid actions are comparable to crappy/mediocre pictures which are the result of lacking knowledge about the used software.
Creating a 3D model after some real world object, a vehicle, building, whatever, is more technical drawing / engineering than artistic expression. Ergo, the technical drawing that many do in high end apps is on an artistical level comparable to placing models done by others in a scene and set up lighting, textures, bla bla.
While some play with figures and textures, others play with vertexes, nurbs and program/renderengine settings.

I play in a sandpit surrounded by a forest and a rivulet while you have to play in sandbox on an playground... I can with my friends dig and drag around the sand for years in that large sandpit and we have so much more freedom. Yeah, we are totally 1337! - In our sandpit...

LOL!
A truck driver who does Poser art would exercise a higher form of penance then?
For some reason the divine comedy popped up in my head...