Attached Link: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=7357

Well, if you have "The Girl", here's a neat topic on the Daz3D forums about combining The Freak with The Girl and a morph package to create a hybrid toony male character that complements The Girl really well.

Is it just me, or is there the faint but discernable picture of a Widely Revered Religious Figure on that cheese sandwich? ;-)

Attached Link: http://www.crimsoneditor.com

Another couple of options:

I've become very fond of the free text editor called Crimson Editor. It has a spell checker built in, does multiple tabs for open doucments, and can also do color-coding of things like HTML and Python script. The website touts it as a source code editor, but I find it's great as a general purpose Notepad-killer.

The other thing you might want to check is the SessionSaver extension for Firefox. SessionSaver's main purpose is to let you "undo" the closing of a tab, but it has other cool tricks, and one of them is that if your browser crashes or hangs, it can get back all your tabs exactly as they were - INCLUDING any text you've typed into a form.

Not quite a replacement for backing up via copy-and-paste before you hit the Submit button, but a handy thing to have anyway.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=2063281

Hi Kimberly -

If you really want to hit the ground running with Poser, you can hardly do better than this link. It's an index of all the tutorials (up to a point) done by Dr. Geep, the local Tutorial Wizard around here. Take a break from downloading stuff and spend the next 12 hours working your way through these, and you'll be well on your way.

They're fun too! Sometimes the screens can get a bit crowded with info, but if you're going to be working with any 3-D application's interface, you'd better get used to that!

Wow - Poser 100? Yeah, why think small? I think the 3D holographic thing is more on target!

My wish list would be:
Character voice synthesis. (Code borrowed from Mimic 20) Feed it a text file with your script, and the character recites it (with perfect inflection and gestures, thanks to AI) in a natural sounding human voice you can tweak to your heart's content.

Photo to Character - Using the latest version of the morphable model synthesis technology, you can take a blurry old snapshot of someone, or even B/W surveillance video, import it into Poser 100, and have it instantly converted to a fully-morphed character with high-res textures.

(Unfortunately, the ability to simultaneously create conforming clothing models from the same picture will not be found in Poser 100, but only in DAZ Studio 75. Much to everyone's consternation, the two file formats will still not be compatible. In fact, due to escalating hostilities between the two camps, attempting to import files from one program to the other actually sets your computer on fire.)

Director mode (Added when e-Frontier buys NatrualMotion and adds the Endorphin v8.5 code to Poser) - In director mode, you use a microphone to tell the virtual actors what to do and they do it! "Now Vicky #3, drop your armor to the floor and go pull that sword out of the stone. Right - can you wiggle a little more as you cross the temple foor? Perfect!"

Advanced Content Subsidizing - Once you have crafted the perfect 3D figure, it no longer just sits on your hard drive waiting to be rendered. It actually goes out and gets a virtual job doing freelance computer work, telemarketing, adult entertainment, or whatever else it is best suited to. Whatever money it makes is then funnelled into your account at Content Paradise, DAZ, RDNA or the Marketplace.

And last but not least... the ULTIMATE FANTASY FEATURE:

instantaneous file load and render times! :-)

Hi Mizey -

Clothing is generally created for a specific figure. So clothing that is created for V3 cannot be used without modifications on the figures included with Poser 6 (Jessi, for example).

There is a fairly new utility called Wardrobe Wizard that can adjust clothing created for one figure so that it works with another figure. I have not used this myself, but it has gotten a lot of good press around here. Check it out at www.philc.net. (It is not free.)

Hair is a little more flexible. Often, you can simply scale & reposition the hair model in Poser and get good results. You would use the X Y & Z scale and translate dials attached to the hair prop. Hair will look best if it designed for the figure you are attaching it to, but is much easier to "fudge" onto other figures than clothing. (Note that I'm talking here about hair props & figures you add to your scene - not the dynamic hair generated in Poser's hair room.)

Definitely get the free V3 and M3 models from DAZ, but if you don't also buy the morphs, you'll have to be careful when downloading characters sets for V3. Some of these require the DAZ morphs and some don't.

Good luck and have fun! And don't worry about asking lame questions - everybody was a newbie at some point. Your question is fine - lame questions are more like "Hi whr can I get P6 and all thos peoples for free? thnx bye-bye."

I'm assuming you've already been to the free items archive at www.daz3d.com. (Under the orange menu, click New To Daz and you'll see the Free Items option at the bottom. You have to register to get in, but go ahead, they'll get you eventually anyway.) You can also check out the free library of Poser-ready content at www.runtimedna.com

On the right side of this web page (yes, this one, right here) you will see an entry called "Web Ring Top 15". Many of those links go to sites that have free content. There are more too, just click "Next 15 Entries".

Or were you looking for models of book shelves? Or a free copy of Poser 6? It's kind of hard to tell from your message.

Message edited on: 10/05/2005 15:48

I've used 7-Zip a bit. It's free and open source, but the UI is klunky and kind of lacking compared to WinZip. (Windows Explorer integration is particularly weak.) However it does have a command-line version, so if you're used to PKZip for DOS, you should feel right at home. 7-Zip also offers better compression than the standard ZIP format if you use their 7z format. Mostly, I still use Power Archiver v.6 which was the last freeware version of Power Archiver. It's got a few bugs, but nothing I can't live with - and no nag screens. The feature set is comparable to WinZip. If they ever get the interface fixed up in 7Zip, I'll probably move to that full time.

Other than seeing them in web searches, I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has experience with these "unmetered bandwidth" sites. Do they really deliver what they promise? I don't see how thay can - somebody has to pay for bandwidth, and if any one of their sites gets slashdotted, they're bound to take a bath. I signed up for "lifetime free hosting" with a site once, paying their one-time setup fee. Well, the hosting is still free, but just about all the features I signed up to get (PHP, MySQL, etc.) now carry heavy per-month usage fees. Seems like there's always a gotcha. Has anybody run into "gotchas" with these lo-cost high or unmetered bandwidth sites?

Attached Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/winmerge

Just for future reference, there is a hidden trick in XP (all versions of Windows, really) that will let you disallow all over-writes. (Yes, even the M$ programmers must have seen the insanity of giving the user "Yes, Yes To All, No" but not "No To All.") To get "No To All", hold down the SHIFT key on your keyboard when you click the "No" button. Windows will then skip any files that already exist without over-writing them. There are a number of tools you can use to compare directories and see what files are different, copy or move files, and so on. My favorite was a free utility from PC Magazine called WMatch. Unfortunately, PC Magazine no longer lets you download these free utilities for free - you have to pay an annual access fee to their website. (I guess the bits are free but downloading them isn't.) Instead, you could try the free (as in open source) WinMerge, linked at the top. It will compare both files and the contents of folders and is very handy indeed.

I'm a collector too. I've been collecting Poser Stuff for years, and still have most of it.

Part of the problem is that while so much Poser stuff is free, it can still be considered a "scarce" resource because who knows how long it'll be around for? See a character you like? Better grab it now, because by the time you need it, it might have vanished. (This is more true for free stuff than commerical, but it still applies. I had the Maeve figure on my R'osity wishlist since R'osity added the wishlist, but now I see that it's gone, from both my list and the Marketplace.)

I'm pulled by two opposing forces in this regard:

1. Never being able to find JUST the thing I want/need, no matter how big my collection.

2. That maddening tendency of things to become indispensible just shortly after you have disposed of them.

Fortunately, I've been able to (mostly) curb this tendency in real life. Learning to let go of things has been a tough but necessary learning process. Hey, it's only stuff - but I still get a little misty eyed when I remember the garbage men taking away my old Atari 2600 and all the carts. ;-)

And I'm completely in tune with the "illusion" aspect of collecting. There's nothing subconscious about it. I know darn well that I d/l stuff because I can't spend the time actually being creative. Given immense wealth, I'd sit home all day and twiddle dials on my (gigantic, super-fast) PC. But since I've got to work for a living, I can at least spend a few minutes surfing Free Stuff and feeling like I'm working towards EVENTUALLY doing what I'd really like. I believe this is called "sublimation" in psychobabble circles.

Attached Link: http://www.ebonshire.net/tut-posa/poptop-a1.php

Also, check out the following Tutorial:

http://www.ebonshire.net/tut-posa/poptop-a1.php

Goes over the whole manual process of head-swapping, using the example of putting the Neftoon Gal head on V3's body. Should be pretty applicable to your situation.

Message edited on: 09/26/2005 12:45

Randym77 says:

We're an odd group. What would be called "prosumers" in the electronics business. Not quite consumers, not quite professionals. It's always a small group...

I think your example here runs pretty much counter to your argument. Back when I bought "Prosumer" video gear in the early 90's, it was a small market. Now, it is a HUGE market! Video cameras used to be consumer (<$1000) or professional (>$10,000) and only a couple of models in between - now look at the choices all along the price range between those two points.

And you know what? It took years for "prosumers" to get the same tools professionals had in the world of standard video. Not so in the new world of HD video. The Prosumer models come out with feature sets comparable to the pro rigs within the same time frame. Some companies are even INNOVATING in the prosumer space now, and only later adding features into the professional space. In some ways, prosumer has swallowed professional.

Which makes sense. Only so many people can work full time in such a small industry. The potential number of serious hobbyists or semi-professionals is far greater.

As for the price of D|S and assorted plugins matching that of Poser, lets see a show of hands: How many people who bought Poser went out on the same day and bought all the content and extra utilities they thought they'd need to use with it? Anyone?

Now raise your hand if you frequently check your bank account to see when you're going to be able to afford the next Poser goodie you've had your eye on? I know mine's in the air.

I think what D|S represents is pretty much a new type of financing for consumer-level 3-D apps - and the first "payment" is free. Instead of having to drop a sum of money all at once to get in the game, you can work your way in slowly. You might buy the magnet plug-in this paycheck, and the more expensive cloth room plug-in (let's say) two paychecks from now, but you WILL be spending the money. Eventually, you may spend MORE than you did on Poser, but in smaller, more palatable chunks.

What's more, DAZ gets to develop the app a little at a time, instead of having to make this huge investment in programming all at once to try and match Poser's feature set.

And of course, having the tool is going to fuel your appetite for content and the revenue it represents, as has already been mentioned.

Hey, Ben - Just wanted to put in another 2 cents. I've occasionally downloaded freebie props in non-poser formats (OBJ, 3DS). Although I'm not neccesarily looking for "instant gratification" when I create a scene, I DO want something that I can actually use. If a prop is not scaled properly when I import it, that's a big tipoff to me that there are likely to be other problems as well. For example, the axes of these kind of props can be totally out of whack, or go out of whack when you scale the prop to the size needed. In Poser, you do most of your serious tweaking by spinning dials to move objects and revolve them around the X Y and Z axis. Imagine trying to position a bracelet precisely on a model's wrist in this fashion, when the axis about which the bracelet rotates is at some indefinite point about 10 feet off to the side. The bracelet behaves as if it's attached to a huge wheel. As you rotate the wheel, the bracelet goes flying off the screen and you have to translate it back into position, then rotate again. Repeat. Repeat... It can be done, but no sane person wants to do it. Easier to find a bracelet that actually works the way it's supposed to. Also, if I import an object and it's way out of proportion, sure I can scale it to where I need it to be, but it's like getting a message from the creator in big red letters: I DON'T CARE VERY MUCH ABOUT MY WORK, OR ABOUT YOU FOR THAT MATTER. Translating file formats between 3D apps may not be the black art it used to be, but there are still gotchas. If you're going to be making products for Poser, investing in a copy of Poser would be wise.

Attached Link: http://www.win-utilities.com/dba/index.html

Yes, this is SO annoying. Seems to be a limitation of using the standard Windows Open & Save dialog box that they didn't bother to code around.

A while back I had a utility that put 2 buttons on every Open and Save dialog box system-wide. One dropped down a list of recently used folders, the other a list of recently used files. (The lists are program specific, so Open and Save dialogs from Poser show the recent Poser files & folders, other apps show their own files and folders.)

After using this utility, I found I could never stand to use the plain 'ol WIndows dialogs again. For certain apps (Poser especially, and also Paint Shop Pro) this utility made life bearable. Alas, the utility was for Windows 9X only and ceased to work under 2K/XP.

The GOOD news is that I found a replacement! It does exactly the same thing, plus a little extra. Runs on all versions of Windows and includes support for the Microsoft Office dialogs as well. It's not free, but for $20 it'll save you so much time you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Click the link and don't look back!