What makes you think that any app has some kind of obligation to 'play nice' with any other app ? All apps have prop. file formats that they dont expose to anyone else, you cant open MAX files in Maya, you cant open LW files in XSI, you cant open Blender files in Wings... So why exactly should you be able to open D|S files in poser ? What the app is supposed to do is support open file formats like FBX or pointoven or COLLADA and import/export to those so that any app that supports them can use the content. And D|S is the only poserish app that does this. Our good ol poser OTOH supports no such format and people have to actually reverse engineer the pz format and write custom plugins for the damn thing.

Real generous isnt it ?

Quote - judging from the postings in its forum, ZBrush seems less complex to learn.    Plus, the ZBrush folks sculpt their models out of some simple mesh blocks made in their Maya or 3DSMax app. -- they choose ZBrush as their final modeling tool.

Note that all those wonderful brush modelling features of ZBrush work best on meshes that are astronomically dense, like in the multi-million poly range (which is equivalent to more then 20-30 V3 meshes)... This is not the kind of heavy mesh you can use directly in most apps, including poser, and certainly not for a single char/prop. So you will have to create a low poly version first and use displacements for the detail. But zbrush's 'non brushy' modelling tools are very primitive, so in general you will need to use a dedicated modeller (even a free one like wings will do) to get the initial mesh before you start zbrushing it. Also you will need a good UV mapping tool, because zbrush only supports auto UVs.

You could use a 'simple mesh block' like a sphere or a cube to start but the mesh you get this way will be hard to rig properly in poser and will give you all kinds of artifacts in a render.

Depends on how you are using poser i guess. If poser is your main 3d app then the latest versions are of course the best, they have more features, the renderer is more advanced and you can use it more effectively. But if you mostly import poser stuff into other apps for rendering or whatever, then you lose a lot of the benefits of poser 5 or 6 IMO. The extra overhead of the 'advanced' features of 5/6 may even get in your way more then the 'simpler' features of Poser 4.

So i dont think you can actually call it 'living in the past', more like 'using what suits your needs and budget.' In OS terms the analogy would be sticking with XP cause you dont really need Vista as yet :)

Well if those pix are accurate then consider this guy as another 'run to buy when it comes out' customer ! Cause at first glance that mesh seems much better then what there is currently in V3, and i would love to use it.

As for the whole 1st party/3rd party/better product thing, i agree with XENO...  I see these occasional spikes for other figures, like recently for that gloria one, but frankly there is no lasting interest. At least not enough to make creating high end products for them a feasible idea. Cause Poser users generally get bored with stuff quite easily and it's quite possible that by the time you make a nice product for a figure, no one will want to buy it anymore cause they'v moved on to the next new thing. Only 'V' remains one of the few constants, mainly because a) DAZ push it very aggressively (like that free base mesh thing) and b) it was the first to the market in a time when we had the over stylized P3/P4 fems. Plus the amount of detail in her bosom surely helps sell her as well :P

My only wish is that some time in the 'V' series they will release a cage version of the Vicky mesh. So that those of us who use other apps to render her would be able to use her more efficiently.  Right now i have to deal with a 70k poly mesh that is a b**** to manipulate/render or get by with a low quality low rez alternative. A 10-15k mesh that has the same sorta morphs and nice topology would not only look nicer in the apps i use (after making it a SubD) but also render much faster for me. Poser has a smooth mesh feature too now doesnt it ? If so it would also benefit i think.

Ah well one can hope...

The flip side is that if you render poser content in other apps and then post them in the poser gallery, then poser users get mad... Or just ignore the pix altogether (no comments etc)

Really nice work IMO, you'v gotten the camera match and lighting down almost perfectly and it's an interesting theme... makes you want to see what will happen next.

Now as for crits (and this is just my 2c)

1. I'm having some trouble judging the scale of the dragon and how 'deep' it is in the scene. ie is it a huge dragon way above in the trees or a small dragon above the girl's head or where. The main reason for this is that it is un-naturally crisp and has no depth of field on it. You should blur it to match the depth of its placement in the scene. eg if it is near the trees then it should be as blurry as them. Same thing for the guy. Also since the dragon is presumably moving, it should have motion blur as well, especially on its wings. Otherwise it looks like a stationary prop someone hung in the sky. I would also change its color a bit so it becomes less lost in the green of the trees.

2. To me the horse seems to be floating on the path. The main reason for this is it's hooves have no contact shadows. Look at the rocks on the left of the path, notice how they have well defined shadow/dark areas at their bases ? You need to duplicate that for the hooves as well to ground the horse. The soft diffuse shadow works fine for the bulk of the horse but not the hooves cause even on very cloudy days, things that are almost touching each other get strong contact shadows. Easiest would be to just paint them in. Same thing for the guy and his boots. Just keep em subtle.

3. The grain and quality of the 3d elements is different from the backdrop. This is why for best results you should never ever use jpg files as backdrops. Most jpgs you get on the net have compression artifacts (those blocky things around edges) while your render doesnt. So either use a clean uncompressed file like a BMP or TIFF or first compress your render separately and then composite it over the backdrop so that both have artifacts.

Besides that it's excellent work !

Quote - I just looked at your gallery. Those are really good renders. So you're working on a procedural skin shader, are you.  HEHEH

Shame on you, picking on procedurals.

Heh ! Well i just like using the right tool for the job so using an algorithmic approach to something like a bruise seemed a bit overcomplex to me is all. But i admit that everyone likes working differently and what i consider 'best' may not be something another person would like in their workflow.

So it was just a thought, no hard feelings or anything i hope :)

Quote - Now how quick can you paint a bruise then test it in a render? Then change your mind about the colors, size, position, several times. I can't do it in 5 minutes.
Another thing is, if you want a bruise on one of the seams, like the back, you're in for a treat trying to paint that. You actually have to paint two separate bruises and get them to line up.

I think you are kinda underestimating just how powerful texture painting tools are these days.

Quote - I think maybe the "hobbyist" market, which seems to be mostly what Poser caters to, doesn't care that much about saving a lot of time. Maybe I should be peddling my "medicine" to the pros? :) LOL

Well im not exactly sure how using procedurals makes anyone more of a 'pro'. Just because Poser didnt get a material system till recently doesnt make the technology cutting edge or anything. Quite the opposite in fact... most other apps have had them for so long that their use has become a cliche. Heck back when you didnt have texture mapping the only thing people used were procedurals. What you are doing here is exactly what they did in the 80s and early 90s (which might be fine for a retro look of course.) Try looking at some of the old CG shorts by Pixar and others and you will see what i mean.

I rather like your 2D work... you obviously have the technical skill and the work is generally well done with interesting themes and decent composition and color choices. The only flaw might be that perhaps it looks a bit unfinished. I think to improve it you should try posting it on the more serious art sites so you can get feedback on how to polish it even more. I'd recommend conceptart.org for one...

About your poser/3D stuff i agree 100% with Acadia... Because of the nature of 3D art, it takes a lot of efort to make it look as alive and attractive as other forms of art. Straight renders rarely look different or appealing enough to be something a person would want to buy... esp when the same characters and settings are seen again and again in the galleries. A bit of postwork can help sell your renders so its definitely something to try out.

Wouldnt it be easier to just paint it in PS ? Or you could just paint a bruise image and layer it onto the skin map using nodes. Would look more real too i bet...

Are you planning to animate your scene/char in Maya or use poser animation in Maya ? Cause if its only for a still you can just export an OBJ file from poser and open it up in Maya. You will need to setup your textures again of course, but you should do that anyway to take advantage of the better options available in Maya.

In the case of tablets, it isnt a question of large or small, but what your style of painting/drawing is. If you like to paint primarily with your wrist (ie small precise strokes) then a smaller one works much better then a larger one. In this case a large tablet will actually tire out your hand. And if OTOH you like to make large sweeping strokes with your entire forearm, then the large format ones work better. Generally for postwork or textures, where you need controlled strokes, a size like 6x9 is a nice comfortable size to work with.

Of course the best bet is to actually try out different sizes and find which size is most suitable for you.

Well chemical photos also use particles of silver halides as their 'pixels' so that is also digital in a sense since the light is recorded on these discrete elements. That is where the term 'film grain' comes from and refers to how fine the particles are.

But I understand what you mean here, that there is too much rigid structure in anything to do with computer systems and they may not accurately duplicate real world or organic phenomenon. I know for sure that im able to appreciate real paintings better because i can see their paint strokes and smell the paint rather then the impersonal nature of CG work. However IMO this is still no excuse for people to make tedious art. Many artists overcome the limits of CG to produce breathtaking work that they never touched outside their wacoms. Look at some of the work of Linda Bergkvist for example:

http://enayla.cgsociety.org/gallery/

She works entirely in digital media (in painter and photshop i believe) and yet produces beautiful work. It really is all about the artist, not the tool (2D or 3D or analog or digital)

I always thought that it was the opposite, ie quantum physics proved that 'analog' reality was made up of indivisible units (of energy and matter) when everyone had been thinking it was one continuous stream. The word Quantum/Quanta itself means discrete unit BTW

In any case it is very refreshing to see the previous few comments around this place. I wish more poser users thought the same way as you guys so that we could see better quality work. Usually i find a lot of Poser work to be quite dull simply because it is so generic (even if executed brilliantly) I mean if it was work done in Maya or MAX, then at least you could forgive the cliches cause the technical difficulties are enormous. But in Poser where everything is so much easier and you get a lot of stuff prepackaged for you, i would think that at least there would be more originality in theme, but its usually the opposite. Never quite understood that frankly...