Well, it gave me hope.

I have long been rather tired of the new Who and find that I still enjoy the old stuff a lot more - I long for the days of four 25 minute episodes, cliff hangers to keep you looking forward to next week with just enough time to tell a full story and get to know and enjoy and care about the characters.

This episode didn't provide much of a story but the dialogue and performances were good fun, with Capaldi providing a Doctor who can project the authority, dash and dynamism of Pertwee, with a good dose of the humour of Troughton. Not to say that he isn't his own Doctor though. I think that he's the best thing to happen to the show since The Day of the Doctor and may just save it for me. In any case, I'm interested in watching Doctor Who again!

Hi, Thanks for the reply - I also picked that one up in the way back when. Unfortunately I'm looking for something a little more specialised. I should have posted links before...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaiwan

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yixing_clay_teapot

I suspect that I'm going to be out of luck though.

You know, in fairness, human arms aren't raised that way - not without breaking the shoulders. If you try to raise your arms from your sides like that, they don't go much above the shoulder at all. To raise the arms naturally, they need to twist at the shoulder, leaving the armpit facing forward. I would be interested to see how they compare that way.

Still, I have to say that SP3 remains a favourite of mine - I always thought that she was the better looking of the 3rd gen family, both in face and with the more natural body shape.

Oop! I'm must be really over tired!

I've bought stuff from here before...

http://forender.aca.ca/

They have a fairly good range of old, new, and sci-fi weapons

Different types of media all have their own aesthetic and when we can simulate these different media within, roughly, a single workflow, then the question is not what technique does this image require but what aesthetic? I guess I use all this stuff not because I'm any sort of artist but because I'm an odd sort of pragmatist when it comes to some things.

Outside of the Poser and perhaps the CG community as a whole, I do think that the natural media aesthetic is preferred - searching through forums about such diverse things from tarot cards (many commercial packs have used Poser) to book covers, again and again, folk recognise Poser renders and don't generally seem so keen on them. So from a commercial perspective, I do think that this kind of postwork/shader is something worth pursuing. When a friend asked me to come up with some book covers for him, he was very certain that he didn't want a 3D or photorealistic image. He wanted something both a little modern but with a nod to the pulps of the past. So, I sat down with Postworkshop and played until I came up with a style that he liked. (not that he pays me - but he is a good friend)

It is worth noting another advantage Poser/Studio users have with using this kind of Postwork over those using photographs. It's not enough to come up with an amazing node set up for Postworkshop (or Filterforge which I think also uses them), because what you get out still depends heavily on what you put in. PSW does allow you a little brush work to help but still, your render matters. And that means, above else, lighting. You need to get the right lighting and colours (which can all be managed a little further in post) and then you'll get the postwork you want. For my last image and most of the book covers for Milton have really needed bright flat lighting for the PSW style to do its thing the way I want.

Quote - If we made a skin texture that was painted in the style of painters,like Boris ,Royo etc etc.
Had a painted sky background.
Had painted textured buildings.
Wouldn't that make the render look painted ?
Wouldn't that work ?

I don't think that the render would look painted, just the figure. However, that method has some potential for surreal effect - check out the film Mirrormask. I remember Dave McKean giving a talk about it at the showing I went to in Brighton - he painted the textures that were used on the 3D creatures in the film.

Quote - philebus:

I really like the three koi portraits.

How did you create the three different paper styles for the fish?

Klebnor

It's been a while since I made those styles, took a bit of trial and error and a whole bunch of nodes. You start to get a feel of how to get different effects by playing around with the various building blocks. All three of those styles and one other are in my freestuff should you want to use them.

 As this thread shows, there are actually quite a lot. For myself, I generally aim for a natural media look to my images. There are three routes - shaders (such as those sold at RDNA - not cheap but worth is and on sale every now and then), filters (such as photoshop filters or stand alone programs such as Postworkshop Pro), and over painting (I still use my old Painter IX.5 which I can't afford to upgrade, but these days I think that ArtRage is a viable alternative to do the job).

This was an attempt at overpainting...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1622488&user_id=221587&np&np

This was an early experiment with the Virtual Painter Plug In...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=859523&user_id=221587&np&np 

And some of my own styles for PostWorkShop...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2029931&user_id=221587&np&np

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2099480&user_id=221587&np&np

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2102465&user_id=221587&np&np 

Personally, I think that Poser renders lend to this kind of postwork far better than photographs - thanks to what gives rise to the uncanny valley in efforts at photorealism. The trouble with useing a photograph is that it is just too acurate an image and that can limit the illusion but the 3D models that we use, however good they are, don't quite manage that and those little failings help to create the illusion of a drawn/painted image.  

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=859523&user_id=221587&np&np

 I've just come from seeing this.

After the The Fellowship of the Ring, for all the liberties they took to make it work as a cinematic narrative, it still felt like The Lord of the Rings and I was buzzing with excitement for the next film.

Not so this time, I'm sorry to say. I couldn't see the point in some of the liberties they took this time around, while others were clearly there to lay foundations for the third film, which I guess will focus on the conflict with the necromancer and be 99% original material. The tone seemed to change so much from scene to scene that the film didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. Also, it didn't seem very well paced to me - it just isn't a good sign when I find myself clock watching at the cinema.

It seems to me that the film has two big problems: 1) The Hobbit is a children's story, while they want the same audience who went to see the Lord of the Rings 2) They want another epic trilogy, which means padding with a whole lot more original story.   

Aye, 3rd gen figures still figure in my work - I have some great products for them and they do have their own look and that adds variety in my runtime. Like others, I'm not sure what I would buy for them now and that is also a point that I have reached with the 4th gen figures.

If I had a 3rd gen wish list, it would be weight mapping / joint corrections, and a new set of expression morphs - as WandW mentions, these are the biggest weekness in these figures. Expression can make or break an image for me and I remember how much I loved Miki and Koji just for what they could do that way (Mankahoo's figures are also great in this regard). I remember that there were a couple of extra replacement heads for V3 (I have them both) that  have some great expression morphs that were worth the purchase alone.

Ahhhhh...I still like the look of the old DAZ Dragon - a bit low poly by today's standards, with some texture stretch, etc, but still, it's a great shape and head.

Another oldie that I like the look of - who also needs some quality texture work - is the Story Book Dragon.

I generally aim at natural media effects through mats, PS Plugins, or overpainting, so sometimes the model quality isn't so much of an issue as the look, which means that these two have a safe place in my runtime.

I have to add my vote for the Swindhelm dragons though - they are awsome!

I would also be interested in purchasing this. I have the old version that was sold here which works with Poser 2010 but I really want to move competely to 2012 now.

Support is always a major issue with new human figures but I buy them anyway in the hope and because what I crave is a variety that morphs alone can seldom provide (unless they are very dramatic - such as Blackhearted's morphs, both body and face).

Sixus1 figures always tend to have a certain something that marks them out as Sixus1 but never so much that I've felt it intrudes on the image, instead it serves to enrich it. I don't do a great deal of fantasy, so I don't have all that many of the fantasy figures - but I do dabble in horror images now and then, so I do have a fair number the others and based on those alone, the HumanZ development is something that I'm looking forward and feel I can buy into with confidence.