So i assume you do not use Poser 7? Poser 7 has a lip synch function. Last time i made something like this was still in vue 4, but it should also work fine in vue 6 i think. Do you import the poser animation? It is strange as like you write it it sounds like animation is OK, just not the lip synch. I do not know that tool, but did you apply your settings and try a test render in poser to see the poser animation is okay? I dont think vue can import from your tool, so apply it on the poser animation so vue uses the finished animation to import.

1. How realistic the lipsynch is often depends on tweaking and what tools you use. If your talk composers default settings dont work well then try tweaking it with the settings or "the way it works". I know tweaking problems as most tools were intended for english language and impossible to tweak for a german animation. So i finally typed "Deaar Mowrer holet den Hummer" to be phonetically close to the german sentence "Der Maurer holt den Hammer". I dont know how your tool works, but i think all require you to enter the text. So look where your char doesnt open his mouth wide enough and add another "e" or "o" or swap characters. The sentence will not be gramatically correct, but the animation and lip synch appear more realistic.

After you have applied the settings and your tool applied the changes to your poser animation, do a preview render in poser to look at it. You can edit it like any normal poser animation, just apply aany changes if needed (opening mouth not so far or such things).

1. there's many many good looking realistic poser figures, depending on what type of char you need. Browse through the market place, there's too many very good chars to list them here.

PS: Photorealism does depend to 90% from these things: Good textures/Materials, good lighting and scene setup. Try adding very small details, small debris, a scratch here and there. Change some textures or edit them. Try out many different lightings and athmosphere settings. Try out radiosity versus volumetric lighting. Add details, objects, maybe a few lights? Make sure your characters skin and clothing textures look good and are high resolution. This decides whether they appear photorealistic or not. Try using post-render settings like lens glare and natural film exposure a bit more.

You will soon have a photorealistic scene, the basic scene looks good and making it appear as realistic as real life is just a matter of tweaking a bit.

I will send you a Message, MRX.

Here's a small thank you rendering to my beta testers, thanks to everyone for your help! 

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1414029

I am currently working on the final version. I'd be glad to see your images if you made any. Be sure to leave further feedback. You always make my day with that.

Yeah, ecosystems is like having a million plants with just a few clicks. Here's an example, took a few minutes to set up the ecosystem, longest part of it was loading the plants due to the high res textures.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1414029

Vue 6 Esprit does not include the ecosystems, but you can buy it as an addon module.

1.33 Ghz is really old, I'd rather save the money for a completely new system. I have gotten my new system (3.2 Ghz celeron, 2 Gig ram, Vista) for just 530 Euro, if you can spend a bit more you can also get a better processor and more Ram. I'd suggest 4 Gig if you can afford it, then you can even handle large scenes. IMO its not good to still invest money in such an old system, even if it can hold enough ram, the ram will be slower and 1.33 Ghz will be too slow for the next version softwares i guess. I used my old system untill it "died", good i didnt invest anything more into it, so i could afford the 2 Gig Ram version. ^^

The conmark L200 usually goes for 200-300 Euro here at ebay germany, but if you're good at DIY electronics, then build a David.  =)
However i am not really a fan of the laser scanners due to the material limitations.

Oh forgot to add to my ROland Picza review: the application draws all your computing power and really needs it while scanning. I have currently set my vue to have the same priority as the scanning process and now vue steals the scanner computing time. SO funny as the scanner always stops when I'm rendering a pic or even a preview. (Having vue render fast is the most important thing... smile)

And i have already sent you a texture update. But dont get stressed by me, take your time to test, i hope you have some fun with my plants.

I will go to bed now, so sorry if my last messages have been a bit short. I will reply to you tomorrow when i get up (dont expect it to be earyl, hehe).  =)

Victoria, i hope you got my IM now.

Well it depends on what you want to archieve or show to the viewer. For a still its easy to trick around with alpha planes, you can have a full forest as an alpha plane for background. For the ecosystem there is generally not much you can do, the more different species you have, the higher the computing power needed to handle these. I made an ecosystem that consisted of over 250 million polygons, but it was just one terrain (with the ecosystem) and the ecosystem consisted of just one plant. Having it this way vue handles and renders the scene very fast, also lighting/shadow options can influence the rendering time a lot. In your case as the preview render is ultra slow, the problem is definitely not the render options or resolution, its lighting or ecosystem complexity. It also helps a lot to make plants or objects in the ecosystem less complex, you can reduce polygon size and save the plant as a special species for this scene. This is especially usefull if you have many plants in a far background and you use the high polygon versions for very far plants or ecosystems. You can also reduce texture resolution for your "far away" plant versions. Other tricks are scaling up a bit - bigger plants means less needed to cover the ecosystem. Also give a try rendering with cheap athmosphere, standard lighting model without radiosity/volumetric/spectral effects, so you know how much rendering time your lighting costs.

For a still just cut anything out that cant be seen, try covering computing and polygon expensive party with plants/objects and delete them. render with less anti-aliasing and do that in postwork.

Yeah, i know what you mean. I also wont die without 3D scanners, but they are nice gizmos.

I dont know anyone using the nextengine scanner - from their specs and demo it looks cool and scan time would rock. 25 minutes for a super-high resolution textured model would be a dream - however there must be some drawbacks or all other systems would instantly disappear. I guess as with all other optical scanners, it will more or less ahve problems with extreme lighting conditions, shiny surfaces and such. STill, if it works like in the manufacturers demo, it would be the best scanner i know.

About digitizers like microscribe: Have never been a fan of these. When i buy an expensive scanner i want to put an object on it push a button and it scans. Not me leading a scan arm manually over the object a million times, especially objects with very fine surface patterns will probably be a pain to digitize. I generally dont like these.

About affordability/price: For private users these are generally too expensive, i have top admit that. Even if you save up all the money for a nextengine scanner: Ask them to try out the machine, bring your own complicated objects and give it a try. If they cant offer a life demo, then dont buy it. (at least i wouldnt)

=)

Quote - > Quote - Plants are NOT boring - we can never have enough vegitation :)

 

Roger that!  This is why I bought the Botanica module when I upgraded but I still have yet to give it a go.  One of these days ... LOL!

EDIT:  No PM as of yet.

Did you get my email? If not I will send a PM.  =)

Thanks for the help everyone! I have sent you PMs. I hope everyone will have at least a bit of fun with my plants. ^^

I will soon start architecture/interior design series as well as some new scenes, but for now i must focus on my plant set, so sorry in advance if i bore everyone with "plants only". I will have other interesting stuff soon, promised.  =)

Well earned! And they don't require you to have the expensive evrsions, my cheap Esprit also got me a picture of the day. ^^ 

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/showcase/?page=6&Index=2650

Awww, just one of the more remarkable japanese items that caught my interest on my last Tokyo vacation. Since i have seen it "in action" I'd always wanted one for the garden.

The waterfalls are great btw, i dont know a thing about truespace, but these are probably hard to do without much experience i guess?

I love your Washitsu, I'm totally mad about washitsus, I wish my living room was one. But sitting on tatami mats would be poison for my back...  ;)

Your shinto shrine reminds me of my Dojo model, i should add your engawa as mine is modeled very basically with vue primitives and boring textures.

Hmmm, i find that quite odd. Vue should really either "decide" where to put the temp files, not just any random drive that is "within reach". Can't say its a "bug" as there is no documentation i could find about the temp files, but it sure sounds odd.