Hey Chear up, The most important thing is being happy in what you are doing. There is no one on earth that is going to please everyone. I bet you could look at some of the works that the critics made of your art, and something about it you may not like. Thats the way the world is.

Look at the bright side. There was a group of people looking at a piece of fine art analizing it. "Wow, what debth, what insight." A guy comes up and says, "Yes, my pet monkey is quit the artist." 

Strive to do your best, And be happy you have the tools to work with that make you happy. I'm sure the judges that gave you a bad grade, so to speek, wouldn't want you to look at some of there work they had done sometime. 

I remember when I just got out of Art School, I was the second best artist in my class. A girl in honesty was better than I. I went to apply for a job as an Illustrator. Which I really had no clue at what was involved in the real world. As I was sitting waiting for the interview, the boss was chewing out one of the Artist. I can't remember what it was all about. Then he called me in. He was expecting to see someone with experience and a major portfolio. He glanced over it and said, You call this art. At the time I felt bad, but I had a positive attitude. I told my self, I know I'm good. 

I went to an Art School and Got a job at a Major TV Station in my City at the time. When I looked back and thought about what he had said. He was right in the since that I wasn't ready for the big time then. You will chuckle about it one day. Just smile and be happy, life is to short to let someone get you down. Good Luck!

Never once did I smart mouth you, I disagree with the absoluteness of your openion. Not that you don't know what you are talking about. "Not having a clue."  Do you always through out your thoughts like that with people who have a different opinon with insults as you teach.

While dealing in the real world. Daz will not make a model perfect perportioned unless the public demands it. That is Reality. There is a reasons why  V3 is not the way you want her to be. As I said that doesn't make you wrong. It makes them cash because of public demand, and that you seem to want to bypass. There are more people here that use these figures for there purpose than just you. Unfortunalty you are unwilding for anything else to be discussed as to why that is. Because they are the lowest common denominator. Your words not mine.

Well the final threads hit on what I was going to suggest. If you have to have the perfect proportion model, Make it. You said you make models to perfection. I'm sure from this thead you have your followers that will buy your product. DAZ and Efrontier, like everything else follows the money, They are not going to change their main mesh to make her more Ideal to the people who desire that look. They might sometime branch off and do that when the rigging can move the body parts more correctly  without distortions. but what's the use going that direction when their customers demand the Idealistic at this time and point. 

Until then, If you have to have everything  to your perfect porportions, your just going to have to do it yourself. There are programs out there that can make you happy and do it the way you like. Of course theres a much more complex learning curve and a lot more money to be spent. But hey!  go for it. If you look at the artwork that is done with the Mil figures, the largest percentage of the renders are fantasy based. They are not going away from there bread and butter. This is a buisness not a debate for them. I always say don't talk about it. Do it. 

I'm sure you have a good start with your followers. There is room for the perfect perportion girl. But number of sales is a whole new reality.  But if you make her the way she should be you will have her to work with for However you want to render her. And as a bonus, you can then sell her.

Quote - You make it sound like the guy is cutting your gonads off by just making the simple (and obvious, and correct) observation that V3 has a tiny head in proportion to her body.  Absolutely nobody including Stahlratte has suggested that you can't illustrate human beings any way you care to - only that the default V3 scaling is very unrealistic.

 
   I never said he was wrong in his proportions, But what I heard was how bad V3 renders. We are talking about a Charature that is given away, A program that is at a price that everyone can afford. And we get how bad she looks when she is rendered, And if you don't render the person the "Ideal way" She is incorrect. Read his comments. 

   But if you render her not using his standards she looks terrible. I'm sorry, I disagree. No she is not perfect. But I can also look at what he has made in his Ideal porportions and say, I like V3 better. (note: I didn't say I was right) That can be my opion, and mine alone, I didn't saying mine is the only way you can make a rendered V3 characture look good. That is the basis of his argument. Which I accept, but that is not the final word.

   The one thing that he says that you can't get around is if you make V3 8 feet tall along a 6 foot man and try and make her look the same hight using different camera lense settings, you can't hide her hight  within a room that is furnished as example, the furniture gives perspective, Her body or his will show a distortion happening trying to get her to be his same hight. 
   
   My complaint with V3 is she should be at least 3 inches shorter that the man. so when she is in High Heels she is the same hight. That has nothing to do with porprotions, that is sizing of the characture Which is the easiest to correct in the stock figure.

    This Argument is taking on extreams, First off, V3 will not be perfect for everyone, that will be a fact. Some people like more extreams. Personaly I like V3 much better than the correct examples that you displayed. You did a good job of illustraing them, that is not my reasoning. But what is Ideal with you is not nessasly Ideal to me. techniquely you are right. but for personably I also have the same right to have a preference. All that I here is She is not the way that is correct to all the technitions. But who are you or anyone else to say I can't make a figure in the shape that I like best. Says you, thats fine, but I can make a figure the way I want, It's called freedom of expression! or do you want to challange that.
    That's fine. But why do Todays artist make legs longer on a woman than they realy are. Because that is the more desirable look. Shame on them for having a preference. We are not talking about extreams that the mass people don't reconize here, You show the stock figure of V3 with body texture and hair to a person on the street and they may say she is very sexy, pretty, or To beautful, not your average girl. They are not going to say what is it. 
   This is exactly the point everyone is talking about. No wons arguing that your head hights are not well founded. They are the standard you hold true, and the clients you represent. But other company have different standards, are you going to tell me they are wrong for making a characture the way their client find more appealing. Are you suggesting they tell their clients, you don't know what your talking about!

What I say, and what you say, and what anyone else says will never change that. Why do we have liberals and Conservatives, why do we have different religeions, Because we all see things differently. It's the way we want to see them. It's the way different artist express themselves. You should always be aware of correct proportions of the figure. But where does it say you can't make your charatures the way you like them. Wow, Elmer Fudd would have thought someone was taking a cheap shot at him. Where would we be without Elmer Fudd.  We would never have cartoons. It's called lighten up. The world will go on.

I don't understand, Why do you have to keep tweeking Your models to get them right. If you have already tweeked them correctly, all you have to do is save her or him and you have the perfect model!

bopperthijs, 

You hit it on the head, I got to this tread late. First off, When a person is shorter than average, there is usually slight differences in their perportions, the same holds true with the larger person.

The Vickys and Poser4  and all the charactures that are out there are set as a guide for the most Idealistic person of these times within the artist capablities. Case in point Look at the thighs touching in the Loomis drawing. That was great back then for Idealism. But today listen to the advertizements, One such ad in a weight loss promotion, a woman said, before my thighs touched now after so, and so,  they touch no more. 

I studied on Loomis's art and found it very inspiring. But were in a different era. If you look at the Nude paintings in the 1400-1500s Heavy women are more artistic to draw than a thin person. More things happen with the creases that lend itself to lighing and such. That is great for art, but that same reasoning can be implied to the drawing an old building which is more   interesting than a modern building for those same reasons. But keeping it all in context, You don't put a women out of perportion or overweigh in an beauty contest. They are two different reasoning there. It always comes around to what is happening in the the world at that time which is acceptable.

The example of the round anchent sculpture that bopperthijs showed was right on. Yes that looks cartoony for todays standards, but, if that wasn't Ideal for that artist, he could have made her thin. He migh not have had the great tools of today, but making her thin would have never been that big of a problem.

My biggest grip with M3 and V3 is they are so close to the same hight, which was mentioned and correctly so in these threads. It would be nice if V3 standard hight would have been about 3 inches shorter. Then when she wore her high heels she would be about the same size as M3, as apose to 3 inches taller in heels. I hate to have him lean his head back just to have her kiss him. LOL 

I don't do modeling of figures in 3D, I just don't have enough time. I do animation. but I have a big suspission that some of the problems are with the rigging  nature within Poser and the meshes is why some of the problems exist. Best example is the shoulders and legs. When the leg is lifted to high, the top of the thighs flatten out un-natural, as example. These are more probmatical than the proportions on making the figure look good. Things like that have to be touched up in renders and dealt with with magnets or mophs. 

What we are seeing is an evolution in Poser and all the charactures within and making them  so they function more natural. Remember Poser 2, 3 and 4 Charactures. The P4 charactures weren't that bad, but were way off  in capabilities to the Mike and Vicky upgrades. Todays figrueskeeping there body shapes to hold as they move so you don't have to tweek this and that. And messing with the Magnets. Thats great as an emergency solution. But when you have to use magnets in the middle of an animation that you can't get any other way slows the whole production down.

I think that the Loomis samples are a great thing to be aware of. I'm suprised that more people are not aware of the proportional issues in the body. Of course I'm old school, If you are not in an Art Instution where those are the building blocks and you just go into Poser for the fun of it, That will be the last thing a lot of people will think about.    The reality is, We are in the hands of the Artist who make the models. And overall I am pleased, and They are getting better at getting things the way we want them. Rome wasn't built in a year. If it was that easy there would be 10,000 models out ther, and everyone would have the characture they thought was best. 

Have you updated Poser 6's Service Release 3. That is the first thing that hit me reading your problems. I have Rendered 7 Victoria3 figures with hair and clothes, it took about an hour but It rendered. I have a 2.4 GHrts 512 Ram on my new ADM 64. I didn't want to update that soon, but I had no choice, My other computer lost its hard drive. I will update it to have a duel core a little later.

I don't have an extreamly fast machine for poser 6. The 64s don't work to speed up poser 6's renders from what I' ve heard. And I'm not sure the Poser 7 will at least for its imediate release.

Yes! that would be great, but did you hear the other great news, Windy's is going to sell Big Mac's.

I would suggest you email Customer service at EF, I have had good results with there answers. I just havent had problems with Poser 6, Poser 5 I had all kinds of problems with. Make sure you have all your upgrades.

Another good reason to render out in images is, Sometimes just a little spot or something can be rendered as your making your animation. If so, you can touch up the image in Photoshop, where otherwise you are stuck with your results you had just rerendered.  It is usually faster to touch it up than rerender the complete animation again. 

1 Cloth room Bugs, Sorry on that one. I don't work with the clothroom, It always eats up render time (using that freature) which is the slowest feature in most programs.

2 Animation. I don't have the answer for that, other than, You need to Test run a frame before you spend 30 hours working in the dark. Render a  few scenes whenever the lighting changes in a scene or clip. You always need to do this. As of yet the Previews don't show you an acurate example of what the final render will be. As far as anyone knowing if Poser 7 has fixed those problems, No one knows yet, it hasn''t been shiped yet, they are taking pre-orders.

3 Displacement, Blotchey appearance on figures scaled over 200%! This has to do with bucket size and render nodes to the best of my knowledge. I seen a lot of people have this problem. I am on Runtime RNDA. In the Forum they have the answer for this, or you will get an answer for this. Just type in Displacement Problems and do a search. You will get some answers. I'm sure someone will have the answer here, but I am on the forum there, mostly because I don't have the time to spend on a bunch of forums, and look at the new stuff everyone has out.

4 Hip-centric animation. I'm not completely sure what you mean by that. If you are using poses form your library and they are not set up correctly, There is nothing you can do. They will fly all around when they meat the halfway point inbetween the two poses. You can see what is happening on your graph editor. When the two lines meat the next frame they flip. My suggestion is to Use your first pose out of the library then go into what ever motion your animation going. You can always try that second pose, but if at the part where the two points meet and start to spend. Delete the second pose. work from there.

Or are you taking about you are having trouble animating your figure because you are having trouble understanding how the hims work. This mostly comes with experience. but You need to work with IK on when your moving your characture around on the ground. You will switch off your IK when you need to finetune a movement with the legs. (Sometimes you need the IK on the hands also, but that is gereraly an easier part to work with.)

Back to your IKed feet. This is only a general guide. You move one leg forward with IK on to take a step using either the Parameter dials or the Translate Tool. After your happy with your leg spacing, You then move your hips forward with the dials or Translate tool again. Make sure he looks balanced between his feet. There you can twist him at the hips just a little, or you can pull him forward by the hand if the IK is on in that hand, unwhich, alot of time in doing it this way gives a more natural body motion. ( you can fine tune your body parts later.) You can repeat this process. The IK is very good once you understand when and how to use it. It is great for spinning opn the spot. But you ususally have to correct the legs bends with the IKs off if you make the characture twist to much.

I'm kind of going to leave you with that, because if you are talking about something else, I won't fill you in on useless information that you may already know. good luck

They allready had mentioned poser7 renders faster, up to 4 times faster if you have a dual core processor. Since I am big in animation, I like the Talk designer potential, although there sample was not that impressive, I have to think that it is better than what was shown. I also like the new animation advances. 

I think the 2nd reason went over the Render advancements. With different ways to render for individual taste, You might go back over the reasons to see what they have already went over so far. I suspect that the next two items are completetly different. I can't imagine that the last two are any less eye poping in relation to Posers of the past.

I know a person that has ran it through the ropes as a betta tester, He was completely hush, hush, about it, but metioned how stable it was. All I know is how excited he was about what he could do with it.

My feeling is most of what is wanted will come, If anyone thinks that they are holding back implamenting these features just because they are not putting forth the effort or what ever, that would be foolish.

I think what EF is trying to do is put in the features they hear on the peoples wish list and taking on what they can do within a certain frame work when they think they have enough of these features warrent an new upgrade. I also think what they are doing is trying to implament these extra freatures so as to not price them selves out of the already established market. If they get there program out and correct any updates needed they can move on to the next set of features.

To wholesale create all these new features wholesale, and scrap what they have would be suicide. You can't just change the exsititing rigging so that all the charactures with all there clothing are obsolete. Not all, but a large percentange of the people are happy with most of what poser has to offer.

It's like you only have the money and the room for a macineshop that can only tool up to make one or another product, you had decided to make tricycles, and later you decide you want to make bicycles instead, now you have to scrap the tricycicles and retool for bicycles instead. Well that's great for the ones wanting bicycles, but you lost the tricicle market.  Now you are the new kid on the block and have to compete with all the other established companies that make bicycles. You are starting from scratch.

Believe me, if there wasn't a good reason for EF not to rerig the figures and add all the extras, you would have them asap. There is no doubt about it ,that the rigging is an older  tech. I'm an animator, and what they have the biggest short commings are within animation, with there rigging. Your learn your craft, and you will get the results you want, it just might take a litlle longer than with the high tech programs.

Take a look at all the people that use Poser now, They have room to improve, yes! but they must be doing something right . The whole process is much more complicated than, just lets ad all these new features. Just look at the new features in animation they have added. sound simple, but if it is that simple, the people that seem to thing so, are missing there calling and show EF how easy it is do.

dphoadley, Your Icon pictureyou use is the best picture I have seen for my taste. It just cracks me up. It is a combination of funny, and as a matter of fact, all in one. If I looked at your Icon without reading your copy, I would have no Idea what to expect. A Professor or a comedian. You have my first place vote for originality.