Ah so I see... BatLab! Thanks!

Quote - it's not bad - v4 is the disease and decimator is the cure :lol:

Indeed.

Has anyone used any of these poly reducing softwares with animation? If so, which ones and how'd they come out?

Quote - Hi,

No I haven't tried animating but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.  The V4 above is properly welded so it bends without splitting at the seams. I found clothes and hair can be more difficult to reduce while keeping an acceptable result, but I guess if things are moving around in an animation it might be less noticable than in a still.

 I took a look at the DAZ decimator and it looks good. Since I already have Balancer I wouldn't buy another mesh reduction program unless it had major advantages. I see DAZ are offering a bundle with a program to reduce texture resolution. That raises a good point, that there is little value in reducing a figure mesh if you are going to use a high resolution texture on it. For animations I think thet would be even more relevant.

The rigging is in the CR2 file. So long as the resulting reduced mesh has the same group names it will basically work. What I did for the above figure was reduced V4 in Balancer, save the resulting .obj file as V4lores.obj, in the geometries directory. Then take the DAZ V4 Cr2 and modify it to point to my new V4lores.obj file instead of the original .obj file. This now works as a figure, although as noted above the morphs no longer work ( but magnets will still work ). 

Yes, a good point indeed. Low res models with high rez maps could cause a bit of a hassle... which is why I thought this was a good tool to begin with... the tool you suggested seemed pretty cool but the texturing thing was also a concern... and a pretty big one.

I checked out the one you suggested and it seems interesting - maybe worth the $26 to check it out.  Thanks.  :)

Quote - They aren't going to do it.  All they have to do is say there isn't enough interest and they've got an out.  The people at daz aren't supporting all of the products they sell now, so they sure aren't going to put the effort into a decimator for poser.

DAZ cares about 3 things.

1.  Their "free" figures and the profits their figures generate (addons and clothing).
2.  Their free DS and the profits the DS addons generate.
3.  Carrara, which is expensive. 

Anything else is trivial to them.  That means your poser decimator probably isn't going to happen.  It doesn't fit into what they do.  Maybe if you'd stop assuming people are being a smartass and stop out smartassing them, maybe you could understand the situation a little better.

The people at daz are greedy.  If what you ask for isn't in their plans for greed, they probably aren't going to do it.  Plus you shouldn't assume what a company says is true or the whole story.

right

Quote - I have the non-commercial version of Atangeo Balancer ( $26) . It works very well for me. The picture is a V4 reduced to 10% of the original vertices count. The texture mapping is retained and the groups are maintained and welded. Pointing a copy of the original V4 Cr2 at the new mesh gives a good low resolution useable figure. The swimsuit and hair in this picture are unmodified. Note that Balancer has maintained the volume of the figure so the swimsuit still fits as good as ever.
A downside to reducing the mesh vertices of a figure is that morphs won't work. The latest version of Balancer has a feature which can maintain the verticies at a boundary, so I think it would be possible, for instance, to make a low resolution body which can weld to the original head. That would allow the original head morphs to work. I haven't tried that myself as yet.
I have no connection to Atangeo other than as a satisfied customer

NICE... have you tried animating any of the models you've reduced? I'm really curious about that aspect.
Does it keep the rigging etc... for adding BVH files to the "shrunken" model.

Yeap, those other tools are available - based on what I've heard from Daz Studio users Decimator kicks ass.. but that's just what I heard. Thought it might be of interest to Poser Users so I 'attempted' to help out and help to raise a stink about getting it for Poser (who wouldn't more tools to choose from??) but alas, doesn't appear to be much interest. Fair enough.

As for the 90/10 quote

Quote - I don't think DAZ is going to support poser because... you know they make DAZ studio.

 
Uh, I uh... contacted Daz and the engineers over there said uh.. if there's enough interest they uh, would do something like that even though they... you know make DAZ studio and not POSER... hence this post....

(yep, we can all be smart @sses but what would it prove?)

Yeap - that was the research I was referring to. There's tutorial on that product HERE

Not 100% sure what "animate a scene by cache" means but it appears as if I'd need to have both Poser and 3DS open. I contacted the merchant about that and about long animations and animations with multiple characters and their strain on resources.

Thanks for the heads up.  :)

Ah so I see I see.. Thank You! Now is the time for a little research and it looks like I'll be orderign this one.

I will let all know how it works (when I figure it out!) ;-)

Hm.. interesting.

OK - I googled "Poser2max" and didn't find much more than I've already seen. There was a plugin I got on DAZ3d (I think) something like "pCharacter" something... didn't do much at all for what I'm looking for.

I think the problem I'm having is not with still images but with animations... lots of the tutorials etc for importing Poser into 3DS Max has something to do with OBJ files... exporting an animation in OBJ format is like an image sequence with each file being about 18 or so megs... WAY too big especially when you talk about 1000+ frames.

Hm.. if anyone knows which plugin Markschum is talking about I'd seriously appreciate it because i haven't been able to find much outside of Poserfusion for Poser Pro and that plugin from DAZ. Again, that would be fine if I wanted to render images but I'm looking to do something more like this:

http://www.sharecg.com/v/29322/Animation/cinema-hall
http://www.sharecg.com/v/31468/Animation/mister-smith-fack-Lara

(of course with a little more action but I can't even get Poser characters to move inside of 3DS yet)

Thanks for the help. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for any new upgrade prices.  :)

Quote -
Vue and Carrara can load Poser content directly. For Cinema, you need either Poser Pro or the Interposer plugin for import.

Rehashing an old thread but I see that "InterPoser" only works with C4D - what is the best/easiest way to render a Poser animation inside of 3DS Max? (Or is Poser Pro the only way?) I've tried the OBJ files etc. but it takes WAY too long applying the textures etc etc etc and I've seen some REALLY great Poser renders in 3DS on the web, I just can't seem to figure out the best workflow!

Thanks!

Damn, I just saw this... all I can say is I gotta get on the ball with my animations! I'll be sharing this link myself, this is VERY impressive. Good job.

Amateur stuff my arse!  :)  I'm working on something myself but it's not done just yet - when it is I'll get it on there. With as many people using Poser  I'm surprised there wasn't a bigger response.  Maybe most people aren't using poser for animations? Interesting.

Doh! Nevermind. Found it.
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=61742

Thanks  :)

Quote - There may be some bvh files in frestuff that would give you a good run cycle

Is there a way to turn a bvh run cycle into a PWK file? That way I could take various running styles and apply them to a walk path. Seems like a longshot but I'm seeing that if I want two people running (as in one person chasing another) - if I use the Psoer walk cycle, both runners have the same motions and timing. Both their left feet hit the ground at the exact same time etc.  Kinda looks like how runners look in a marathon.  :

Quote - look very closely at the keyframes in your animation , there may be two similar keyframes at the end of each cycle (end of one and start of the next. Delete one of them for a smoother action .

Will do