"You are missing the point, or refuse to see it. "Your" point is taken and understood." Is it? I didn't start this thread, and the only reason I entered it in the first place was because no one at all offered any information on Animation Master, and I felt it was necessary to have at least SOME info from both sides in a thread titled,"Poser 6 Vs. Animation:Master". But the real point is this: There is NO real comparison. Maya, XSI, Lightwave, A:M, Pixar & Blue Sky's proprietary software all have very similar tools, and work in very similar ways. Poser DOES NOT have many of these tools, and the tools that it does have take a very different approach to the task than professional quality tools. Poser is very good at SOME things. For digital comics, and still work requiring realistic humans and a quick turnaround time, and the occasional info-mercial or forensic study animation (which is all the professional animation I've seen done with it), It gets the job done. But to think that experience with Poser is going to make it easier to learn professional quality software, or to imagine that a demo reel filled with stuff like this: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=2256780 is ever going to get you a job in a professional studio, is simply self delusional. My final word on the topic of Poser vs. Animation:Master: Do you want to truly Master Animation, or do you just want to remain a Poser?

"You can't animate parenting like in Hash or Max (or insert hi end app). But you can do it. There are tricks to getting around this. It isn't a straight ahead point and click approach but it is do-able." Sure. You can waste time with workarounds, that'll take twice as long to do, and do the job half as well.....Or you can actually HAVE the tools you need to get the job done. And yes, both you and helgard are right. If the result is good, it doesn't matter what tool you used to do it. But even if you could cut down a tree with a butterknife, wouldn't you rather use a chainsaw? But A:M doesn't stop with just killer, high-end animation tools. It was designed to be one-stop shopping for all your 3d needs. It was created so that one person, with one computer, and ONE program could create an animated film. Now here's the other thing, Price. Poser IS $50 cheaper than A:M. But take this into account: A:M has modeling tools built in. So you don't have to shell out for another program to model. A:M has Lip-synching built right in, so you don't have to shell out another $300 for mimic. A:M has sprite-based particles, on par with Particle Illusion, a $400 app. (Except A:M's particles will actually interact with the scene in real 3D!) Plus all of the other stuff I mentioned before, and all for just $50 more than Poser. (Unless you happen to buy A:M at a trade show, where it only costs $199.) "PS. Poser 6 has more features, and is more powerful than the program that made the dragon in Dragonheart, or the program used for the first Jurrasic Park." Really? So Poser 6 can do those really cool liquid effects from Terminator 2? Because T2 and Jurassic Park(1, 2, and 3) And DragonHeart 1 and 2, and MIB 1 and 2, AND the CG effects in ALL 6 episodes of Star Wars, used the same software, a combination of SoftImage, Caricature(ILM's in-house software), RenderMan, and Alias (It wasn't Maya yet, was it?)

You might want to ask on the Hash Online Forum. You can find a link at hash.com. Most hasher's don't hang out here at renderosity...

Well, since noone here really even mentioned Animation:Master, I'll stick my two cents in: Animation:Master Costs $299. Poser costs $249. Animation:Master costs $99 to upgrade, whether you upgrade next year, or ten years from now. It's true, you will have to learn to model, and not rely on other people's work to create your own animations if you decide to use animation: Master.If you were hoping to just buy a whole bunch of models online and slap them together into an animation, then, maybe A:M isn't for you. But if you're the type of creative person who's not afraid of making everything yourself anyway, then you'd love it. A:M doesn't use polygons, so it won't import anything mode than a static prop from a polygon program. A:M uses splines. If you can draw or sculpt, you can use splines. You need much less splines to create a model in A:M than you would need polygons to create the same model in a poly program. This saves a lot of time when making morph targets. A:M has CP weighting, smart skinning, muscle mode, dynamics, particles, spriticles, volumetrics, and a host of other features that Poser doesn't. Have you ever tried to get a character to pick up an object, carry it somewhere, and then put it down, all in the same shot in Poser? You can't do it. You can't switch parents mid animation in poser. How about animating a character swinging a sword with both hands, or a baseball bat? Try parenting a poser figure's feet to a ball, so you can make them balance on it. How about making a bicep bulge when the elbow bends, or a skirt that extends below the knees? (sure, you can do it in poser, but WITHOUT having to hack into a cr2? nope) All very easy to do with A:M. Setting up and animating a character in A:M is ten times easier than it would be in poser, thanks to A:M's powerful constraint systems. It's tools like these that made me stop using Poser over 5 months ago, and not look back even once. In fact, A:M's animation features are more comparable to those of MAYA's Motion Builder than those of Poser, in terms of power and ease of use. Will A:M get you anywhere? well, one user is now working at Pixar, and animated several shots in "The Incredibles". His name is even mentioned several times in the dommentary. (Victor Navone). Another worked on BlueSky's "Robots" (Raf Anzovin). Both STILL use A:M for their own projects, and are active members of the A:M community. A:M is also attracting a lot of professional Stop-Motion animators lately. Animators who've worked on such titles as "Corpse Bride" "Nightmare Before Christmas" "James and the Giant Peach", and even "Bob the Builder". If you'd like to see some examples of what's been done with A:M, I'd suggest looking here: http://amfilms.hash.com/ And Here: http://www.hash.com/stills/

Carrara is a good choice too, especially with it's ability to import animated poser scenes, like Vue can.

J-Patch is not actually true NURBS. It actually works more or less exactly like Hash Splines.

What I like: Vertex modeler Terrain editor Skies Trees (Need wind and pruning) What I think it Needs: At least one, if not more, professional quality rig with professional quality constraints (Like Animation Master's Anzovin Rig) the ability to save and re-use animations for full and partial figures. The ability to conform a full or partial figure to another with an identical skeleton. Dynamic Hair. Dynamic Cloth. Liquid Dynamics. Basically, a full set of character animation tools so that one doesn't really have to rely on poser to do everything.

Tunesy, there is one other theory I have that I haven't tested out yet. instead of tilting everything, move the camera veeeerrrrrrrrry far back, and shrink the production frame. if there's something behind where you've placed the camera that will get in the way, then try using a wide angle lens and a small production frame.

Your first question is a very good one, I'm curious to see what everyone else is going to say... I was thinking of suggesting too the plug-ing gurus that they experiment with re-usable poses and animation (provided the figures have and identical skeleton).

You can also make your own blend styles for the walk designer.

Great suggestion! I'll definitely do it.

The one you posted on cgtalk looks better, I think.

How far did you try to lower the horizon? I got it to go all the way to -2000, and by then I was in the outer atmosphere, so I stopped....

Well, I got some pretty good results lowering the horizon to -100in, but I started with a rather large world. Tilting the scene or just raising it up may be your only option, but here's the quickest way to do it: Ctrl+A, Ctrl+G. Tilt (or raise) then Ctrl+Shift+G. Don't parent everything to the terrain, that's madness!!!

Lower the camera closer to the ground and rotate it so that it's pointing up over the horizon, or make the world size bigger in the terrain editor which will make the terrain bigger, but adds more features, rather than just rescaling.