Poser AND Daz products have always caused problems with content organization for the simple reason that there has never been a strict standardization. As a result, I have always installed ALL my content manually, renaming, moving, and deleting files and folders along the way.

It's not an issue which is unique to Daz. The content that ships natively with Poser is woefully disorganized as well. As are most of the offerings by independent Poser content vendors. Daz dealt with the problem by creating a content management system. Poser... well... Poser just leaves it up to the user -- which is fine by me and preferred by many.

The advice to actually look at what's inside the zips and be aware of the folder structure is very good advice indeed. Learn now how the files and folders are structured and what you can and cannot move or rename. Then get in the habit of organizing your assets in a way that suits your particular workflow.

The lack of standardization is a PITA, but it's the result of having thousands and thousands of independent vendors and customers, each of whom had/have different ideas of how things should be organized. I don't blame anyone really. It is what it is.

So with that in mind, I believe it's best to be aware of potential issues, and then just be ready to dig in and do your own thing. :) Good luck!

Wow. That's actually very cool. I didn't realize Poser could render animations without a massive investment in processing power. In any case, you've got a real handle on dramatic camera work and rapid cuts. It definitely keeps the viewer interested!

Is Poser dying? Inasmuch as you can say that it's currently "alive," it is almost certainly dying. Everything that isn't already dead is dying. How many organizations that were around 2,000 years ago are still going today? 100 years ago? 10 years ago?

My only concern is how long I will be able to use my vast library of assets. As long as there are ways to convert them for use in one of the evolving apps (Blender comes to mind), I won't worry.

The survey asks which is the latest version of Poser we currently OWN, not which one we currently USE.

I OWN PoserPro 11. Except for cartoon renders, I USE PoserPro 2014, Game Dev almost exclusively. PP11 is still too buggy on my system for regular use.

When adding multiple props to the library, a dialogue box opens that asks you to name your prop. If you click "select subset", you then get the entire list of all the props in the scene in a hierarchy menu. Just click the ones you want to add all together. Then, when you load the prop from the library, you'll load the entire set that you selected. Easy peasy.

If you want to use the duplicate function to duplicate a whole set of props, however, it will only give you the one you have selected. You'll have to do as already suggested -- make a null figure and parent the props to it. Then when you hit duplicate, it will duplicate all the props.

Oh, and as for what I did with your picture... I made tried a bunch of different things in combination and saved about 30 odd different layers, which I think played with, changing the blending modes and opacity to see what would happen, until I got something that looked kinda like what I wanted.

I do remember using Sunlight and Detail Extractor (very gently). Plus Pro Contrast to finish. But the entire process was insanely complicated because I enjoy playing around with it too much.

Hah. Love the expression! And, the hat is awesome! Up close, the skin textures look good. Mouth and tongue are great. It's just the shaders that are off in this one. Fix that and give the contrast in the overall image a boost, and I think it'd be quite lovely.

For a crocheted cardigan, most of that would be in the tex maps, you're right. The pale green shirt in the other render would make a fine cardigan, I'd think, with the right tex maps. I wonder if I can come up with something in Filter Forge. If I get something workable, I'll post it here. I know I can do knits and wool that look pretty decent.

When it comes to Nik Software, I've found that the only thing that works to figure it out is to experiment like mad. And if you get a result you like -- save the recipe. One of my favorites filters at the moment is in Color EF -- Sunlight. And I use Pro Contrast as the last filter in a recipe just about every time.

hornet3d posted at 7:19PM Sun, 03 April 2016 - #4263628

Your right, when I saw the first render it looked uncomfortable to me even though I did not have an idea as to why. The references you use immediately seemed more relaxed although again, without your explanation, I doubt I could have explained why.

I figured it out simply by quickly trying the pose myself. That made it self-evident very quickly. Then, just to be sure it wasn't just that my own wrist is peculiarly stiff, I checked online for references. I have a rule: If something looks wrong, it is wrong. Even when it isn't... many actual photos have bizarre problems -- but you don't get a pass as a photographer just because "it's a photo," right? :D

Just to be clear, I could list dozens and dozens of obvious and blatant flaws with the images I posted above, from posing problems to details in the mesh to shaders to post processing. (Example, top pic: She's wearing an earring, but there's no actual hole in her ear! The skin on the earlobe should be pushed in slightly where the metal goes through. It may seem like a tiny thing, but even subconsciously we notice stuff like that. And let's not talk about the hair.) Actual photorealism -- I've certainly got a long way to go still. :) These days I spend more time trying to make my images look like illustrations. :D

I did these ones about 3.5 years ago. IDL plus gamma correction and SSS are really pretty keen. The skin textures do make a difference on close-up, especially when you boost them in post.

I posted these on DeviantArt, and someone commented on the last one that I should give the model his compliments. I didn't think she looked real enough to talk to. LOL. Thanks Vicki Four, The Girl Next Door!

The pose is much better!

IDL along with gamma correction will almost certainly enhance the lighting. I always uncheck the "light emitter" checkbox on anything with a transparency (hair and plants, usually), though, because otherwise the render will take too long for my impatient soul.

Checking the "crisp" texture option for the skin in EZSkin may also enhance the render of the skin. Sometimes it doesn't work very well. Sometimes it's fantastic. It's a toss-up, but if you haven't tried it, it's worth a go.

I've noticed -- at least in my case -- that most firefly renders come out of Poser with less contrast than they appear to have when you view the render within Poser. Dunno why. Taking the image into an editor for post processing, however, can do wonders for that.

Now, as for photorealism, you can have ideal, you can have real, and you can have realistically ideal. Ideal never really looks right to me. For example, when people (even children), squint with their lower eyelids, there are going to be folds under there. And no one over the age of about 10 has such perfectly smooth lower lids (except maybe the seriously photoshopped 50 year old Hugh Laurie in a L'Oreal ad). She's an adult. Don't be afraid to give her face just a hint of character.

Anyway, you put up a reasonably high res image, so I took it into photoshop and gave enhancing it a shot. When I increased the detail level, it was apparent that there are lots of details in the texture. They just aren't showing up in the render. But you can't enhance them too much in post, or the skin starts to look really dirty. As I said earlier, using the crisp setting on the skin textures might really make a difference. I did add some light effects to give the image a bit more depth. Don't know if the final result is better, though. However, if you decide to give post processing a try, consider rendering with HDR optimization checked and then export as an .HDR image. You get a lot more data to play with and can do quite a bit more. Also, just in case you don't have them, Google is giving away the Nik Software suite of photoshop filters for free. They really are quite amazing, and a lot of fun to play with. And if you don't have photoshop, I believe it's possible to get them to work in Gimp (though it would take some fiddling).

You can see that with the details enhanced that her left forearm needs a few gentle swipes with the morph brush.

Finally, I love the skirt!!. But that shirt desperately needs a better texture. I bet even a tiling texture would work very well.

I tried to update by adding nudity tag to post, but... alas.... it doesn't seem to be working.

Edit: In any case, Teyon's advice is spot on! Use photo references. And the experience of trying to recreate a photo exactly will teach you more than any kind of tutorial.

My own opinion is that the two most important aspects of realism in figure renders are lighting and posing. If either isn't right, the render will not seem realistic. Even with perfect lighting and shaders, if the pose is wrong, it will look like a photo of very realistic... mannequin.

Details are extremely important, as we humans notice even the tiniest details when assessing other humans. For example, in your first render, the position of the right hand, while possible, would be very, very uncomfortable to maintain for even a moment. Try it yourself. The hand moves pretty easily from side to side away from the thumb. But if you try to move your hand from side to side towards the thumb, its movement is much more limited. If you twist your forearm as well, as the model does in the pic, it becomes quite uncomfortable.

When I cover a breast with my right hand, I naturally bend my hand away from my wrist, without even thinking. So, while technically the pose you showed is _possible _, it's very unlikely because someone covering her breast will simply choose to bend in a much more comfortable way.

We will notice such things in a render, perhaps unconsciously, and as a result, it won't look quite right to us.

The solution is to use actual photographic references and to pay extremely close attention to the smallest details.

Notice the angle of the hand covering the breast in each photo:

Fortunately, as you can see, you can find photo references for poses pretty easily. I just googled: female covering breast with hand to get these images.

I think the best posing method is to use a canned pose that someone else created to get started, and then use photo references to fix their mistakes. (Even the best vendors will make errors in posing from time to time.)

Cool! I love the signage there. Animated textures sound like a real treat too. It amazes me how well these sets hold up to close-up renders. I'm seriously tempted to take another look at the rest of the series over at Daz. :)

Does using the DSON importer in Poser 11 still bork the library? It's the main reason I don't use P11 with Genesis products. (And like ssgbryan, I've converted most of my figs to Poser native -- but I still use DSON importer to apply poses or to test something I haven't converted yet.)