I have substance but prefer zbrush myself. I think you mean the underlying structures where one would bake spec maps and normal maps from. You can create those yourself. I sculpt them myself with my own created brushes in zbrush. Blender has that option as well.

you can do a lot of those textures in blender too or another 3d paint app. If im not mistaken there are also free apps that work the same way as substance painter.

I remember delighting in using I want to say Danie and Marformo's buildings. One problem I would have is textures. I am not a texture artist. In what I do have time to create I use Substance or megascans (in Unreal). It used to be before the sale, that Substance would let you use their textures if you altered them significantly. I've asked adobe and been ignored. Guess I will sort that out when the time comes. It seemed to me the meshes were rather simple and the detail was in the materials.I had planned on creating some architecture as I learn Blender and posting it as Freebies. Just have to find Blender time.

I spoke to another artist in the field a couple of years ago when we were working on a project, and he aways said that if you wanna sculpt in your free time, just sculp an hour a day.

This year is probably spoken for. Studying for a new career, estate sale and sell the house end of year. Hard to focus anyway...

Just wanted to chime in with the last few remaining poser renders. The second one I just love the expression. The first, well, just like the way it looks. I do miss messing with poser, Maybe once studies slow down.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 8:56 AM Sun, 19 June 2022 - #4440114

scottl posted at 10:32 AM Sat, 18 June 2022 - #4440090

So, pretty easy to bring Poserr figures into Blender? how do they look?

Not with the rigging. I bring the obj into Blender for morphing, then import it in Poser as a morph :) Those renders were made in Poser.

Bringing the static base mesh to morph or to sculpt clothes+hair into Blender is very easy, but it won't pose.

I do the same as Ohki, OBJ into Blender, which for a non-morphed mesh is as simple as import then export back (keeping vert order on import).  I use an add-on for  poser morphed meshes (which poser exports incorrectly) to change them back to unimesh (in Blender) so I can further sculpt the export such that Poser can use them for morphs.

There are some nice sculpt improvements in the 3.2 version of blender.  Maintaining edges is much easier.

If you're curious as to the level Blender has reached: https://www.chrisj.com.au/ (set faces on stun)

Not nearly so easy to use as Poser, of course :D

scottl posted at 3:50 PM Thu, 16 June 2022 - #4440047

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 8:06 AM Thu, 16 June 2022 - #4440036

More examples of La Femme, Superfly and stuff we can push Poser 12 to do:

Character was hand sculpted by me in Blender, her skin made in Substance Painter. Hairstyles and bikini also by me in Blender. That dynamic jumpsuit is a freebie by gordo with materials by Atenais.

Especially like the face. A few years back I was halfway through animation school. Sculpting figures isn't easy esp the faces. Tbh i've never tried texturing people in Substance though have done many other things. After a hiatus of sorts I need to get back, my passion being environments tho. I just dont have time or patience to learn figures.

Looks really good.

La Femme + everything Ohki makes for her is a winning combo!  La Femme bends so very well, she can be used in dance and gymnastic poses effortlessly.

Poser is very capable of doing some very cool things.  There are figures, add-ons, shaders, morphs hair and clothing.  You can go back and forth between it and Blender without too much trouble.  Superfly is not too far off of cycles so if you know one you know the other.  And it's back to evolving.  In what seems (to me) to be a good direction. :)

Actually, we need more artist that do environments.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 8:06 AM Thu, 16 June 2022 - #4440036

More examples of La Femme, Superfly and stuff we can push Poser 12 to do:

Character was hand sculpted by me in Blender, her skin made in Substance Painter. Hairstyles and bikini also by me in Blender. That dynamic jumpsuit is a freebie by gordo with materials by Atenais.

Looks really good.

     Up until a few years ago i used the heck out of Poser. When daz Studio came along and daz no longer made figures for Poser I was at a loss. I tried DS several times  but never liked it for several reasons. But all the content seemed to be for DS. I didnt see where the Poser was headed. there was some fix to be able to use DS figures etc in Poser but I never could make it work. When I bought a new desktop i didnt think it was worth installing poser. I seriously had alot of content , spent alot of money and it seriously takes a HUGE chunk of time to install. It seemed also that at least for DS and I figured Poser as well there were suddenly all these different figures. With items for them and I had no idea what worked with what. I didnt see the point in buying things that only one for one offshoot of the latest Vicki or whatever. 

     Anyway, I was curious how Poser is now? What figures do they use as far as male and female standard most popular. How expensive and can you use older content. sadly, Life has not been kind and at this point there is no ability to buy new things. But, where is Poser at and where headed? maybe one day I can get back in.

Thank you

thoennes posted at 4:40 AM Wed, 15 June 2022 - #4439991

Sasha-16 is nice if V4 is your thing.  If I do anything with V4, it's really Sasha.

La Femme is nice but devilishly difficult to make conforming clothing for.  Not as easy to sculpt in Blender (for me).

There is also Dawn and an upcoming Dawn 2 (a very experienced dev group on this).  From Hivewire, which is now store-fronted here.  More info on their forums.  A lot more :p

I went the same as you.  Poser for years.  Enjoyed LuxRender and Reality.  Daz stopped supporting Poser.  I tried DS.  Gave up.  It just never clicked with me.  Some time later, I happened to attend a SIGGRAPH and noticed Blender everywhere.   I started learning Blender 2.8 (new GUI) and when I got to character work I really missed a lot of what Poser offered.  Now I shift back and forth between them (depending on what I'm doing). I wrote a Blender plugin to make moving back and forth easier for what I was doing (sculpting).  If you haven't tried it, Blender is currently very slick.  Poser is better at what Poser does, though :)

Figure-wise, this is Dawn with some V4 clothing ported using a combination of Poser auto-rigging and Blender sculpting for fitting.  Dawn is relatively easy to fit with conforming clothing.  No extra morphing or JCMs needed for the clothing to work with Dawn.  The (youthful-stylized) character is also sculpted in Blender and applied in Poser 12 (one button Load Full Body Morph).  If you haven't used Poser in while, there has actually a lot of little things done to fix and/or fill in some of the features.  In any case, Dawn has a nice mesh and Dawn 2 is even better.

 

Nothing special here.  Superfly (on an iMac Pro, CPU rendering, about 15 minutes), simple mats, simple lighting.  No JCMs, no fix morphs.  Auto-rigged V4 clothing sculpted to fit in Blender.

I think Poser is viable.  I'm liking where the rendo dev team is going with it.  I'm also liking what the Hivewire team is doing with Dawn 2 (fully cross DS and Poser figure, state of the art, super-experienced figure devs.  Like nothing that's come before).  Poser plays nicely (for my purposes) with Blender.  And I'm thinking this will only improve (things like CyclesX in Poser being actively worked on).

I was using Maya for a few years because I got to go halfway through animation school. But life had other ideas. My maya is too old now so have started learning Blender. I've seen so many cool things it can do. And it's free. Unreal I love but it doesnt take long to go beyond me. 

There are weightmapped versions of the old figures available. A lot of people use Sasha-16, a weightmapped version of V4, because she has the advantage of weightmapping and can use all the old V4 textures, morphs, and clothing. I like La Femme, but there's not nearly as much stuff for her as there is for V4.

I'm also anxiously waiting for Hivewire to release Dawn 2. She's really a whole different figure from the original Dawn, and it sounds like they learned a lot from the mistakes made on Dawn 1.

Oh, here's La Femme:

This is using Blackhearted's HD morphs.  My own character (Blender sculpting, again :)

You can see how well her joints work.  She has a lot of JCM's to do that.  But the result is very nice :)

The clothing is made specifically for her, purchased here from a vendor with way more skill than *me* :D.

This is something I made and it was...  a lesson on what a slippery grip on sanity I had.  OMG those hip JCMs!

This lighting setup is even easier in Poser.  It's just an enviro sphere with a single HDRI source.  Also Superfly.  One click (though the sweet generously free EZDome add-on, which has been updated for P12)

Anyhow, Poser is still alive and kicking!

It can be tricky but so worthwhile. have been working on lighting in Unreal and so much more to it but when its on, its so nice.