I did a quick (well the post work wasn't quick) render of a walk cycle with Sydney and the dynamic shirt I used for the renders on here. I added in the belt from BLLE for Ryan because I wanted to see how it would behave on a character it's not rigged for. Didn't do too bad, but it ended up underneath her shirt. It's on YouTube because I don't know how to post videos here. I never really tried to.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrEstorey

I am going to try draping from frame one and uncheck the draping from zero pose and see what happens.

So I would just have to edit the beginning of the render post production then? Niiiice. I am going to mess with that later today.

I take back what I said. I have actually used the cloth room quite a bit for the renders that I posted on here. The shirt that Sydney is wearing is dynamic. Which lead me to questioning using dynamic clothes for animation. You have to animate the cloth to fit it to the character. I do it by setting the pose I want them in at the 5th frame, reset back to zero pose at frame 1 and run the cloth room sim. Leads me to believe I would have to do that for each frame of an animation, because if you move the character after that, the dynamic cloth stays where it was rendered in the cloth room...

I do have a lot of patience. And I also have a lot of free time on my hands in the evening while at sea. There isn't much else to do, so I work on learning these programs. I haven't had much luck with the cloth room , however. I need to work on that one next. Right now I am still working on lights.

I will be needing one for Sydney G2. I will want to animate it eventually, so that's why I need to learn blender. So I can make conforming clothes for Sydney. I don't think I can animate dynamic clothes, can you?

Yeah, thanks for the offer. I was going to ask for some Jedi Knight uniforms awhile ago, but I think I will see if I can make them myself first before I ask someone else for it. I want to modify them anyway, to get a more primative feel to them (and go along with my story which takes place a millenia before Luke Skywalker is born).

And that's a pretty cool prop. 30 minutes, huh? I have a lot to learn...

I bought Poser 8 back in March just on a whim. I had no idea at the time what it was about or how to go about doing anything. I am one of those few people who can learn something just by watching someone do it, and get an understanding of why they do this instead of that, so I am good about watching tutorials, and I don't think of it as work. It's part of the hobby this has become for me. I am really only limited financially. I can't buy props and characters and all the neat stuff that is on here for sale. I have too many family commitments and not enough free cash. Poser 8 just kind of fell into my lap. I am retired US Navy, and it was on sale in a Navy Exchange in Baharain. I didn't even open it (much like I am doing to Blender right now) for the first couple of months I had it installed on my computer. Once I did, and got passed the initial shock of the interface, I was off and running. I have really only begun to get serious about what I was producing after messing with all the different features and creating Gigabytes of deleted material. Now I am in full swing, and that's why I am on here more than I was when I first signed up. So lets see where the next month or so takes me until I have to get back to sea (I am a merchant seaman after retirement, the sea gets in your blood).

I added both links to my favorites so I can read it more in depth later on. I am definitely going to do some research and reading before I create too many more renders...

Quote - In addition to Acadia's great suggestions, I would recommend trying to not have the render centered all the time. I used to have my characters right smack dab in the center of the render, and once I started deviating from this, I was finding more dynamic ways of image composition. Though if you do a lot of closeups like I tend to do, there's not too many ways around that.. :)  By no means am I an artistic genius, though. I just try to convey what I know. :D

In my first render, Sydney was the only thing in the scene, and it was meant to be a close up camera shot a la a movie scene. And I guess the only other render that she is centered in is The Encounter. I am going to post one more render that I made, where nothing is really centered in the scene. I will put this in the back of my mind. I tend to think like a cinematographer, so in a sense, I am trying to look at the big picture and tell a story.

Thank you for the thought.

Quote - Yeah it's the Mace Winduu saber :o)

Check out my latest, titled "First Encounter". Your light saber is making an incognito appearance. I recolored the blade to match Sith tradition.

Quote - which version of blender do you have?

 

blender 2.5 is not so hard to learn.

I got the latest and greatest stable version, which is 2.6 I believe. I haven't really opened it very much, as I am scouring the internet for tutorials (which there are a lot of, by the way), but you have to wade through some tripe before you find gold.

Quote - If you need another light saber model, i have one in my freebies.

Thanks! I think I already have it! It's a copy of Mace Winduu's purple saber, right?

Wow. The interface in Poser 7 is so much different than Poser 8. Well, not really. But "collections" is where you can store your most often used poses, props, characters. In essence, it's a "my favorites", right?

In Poser 8, that tab is called "Favorites", but the folder for it in my common files is called "Collections".

Another note: I downloaded Blender, but it's going to be quite awhile before I can do anything with it. They warn you that it's not newbie friendly, so I knew going in that it was going to be hard to learn. But it looks so powerful and the things I've seen people do with it are stunning, to say the least. I want to be able to do that one day. Guess that will take awhile, since my real life and job keep me from doing this too much per day...

Quote - As an important note, always post which version of Poser you are using for your final renders.  Through the different iterations, certain features have been added and improved upon which makes specific effects easily achievable. 

Uhhh, yeah. Ooops. I am using Poser 8, and I also use GIMP 2.6 and Magix Movie Edit Pro 16HD. I have dabbled a bit with animation, but I decided to take it back to basics and get the posing, lighting, and all the rest down before I move on to making that next big YouTube epic.