This may be a bit off topic, but I think one of the things that Poser has over Maya (or any 3D program for that matter) is the "Poser economy" What other application out there can support multiple marketplaces that provide tons on new and unique content? For whatever reason, Poser is a product that people will pay money for add ons, and in that sense there really isn't anything else like it. From my perspective of being a non animation artist, I find that Poser has the content available to allow me to quickly take the images and concepts in my head and transfer them down to a media to share with others. Which when you think about should be the goal of any art based tool (from the Pencil to Maya). Now don't get me wrong, Poser is not the perfect product by any means, and could use some substancial improvements (faster renders, ability to render many objects, new user interface, etc). But at the end of the day I still find it to be the quickest way to get the job done. Now back on topic, one thing you may want to check out is Carrara. They have a plugin that will read Poser files (with full texture support). Basically you would set up your animation in Poser, save the file, import it into a Carrara scene, add any other effects/props you need, and then render the animation. The only thing I don't like so much about this is that the Carrara renders seem to have a little less detail than the production renders from Poser 5 or Daz Studio. But for animation this may not be an issue.

Thanks for the excellent ideas. Though for what I'm trying to do, it may take to much time to get cel shading done. Oh well, guess I will have to go for the "realistic" look in my work. Thanks Josh

Very cool! Thanks for the link. A lot of "mudane" cars there to work with!

The one with posable smoke is good, and renders real nicely in other programs. Some advice with working with cigs and poser models. Set the parent of the cig to whichever hand you want the model to hold it in. This will make it much easier to manipulate, otherwise you will drive yourself crazy trying to re-align it with the hand when you repose your character.

Another way to go is to simulate a cig by using the cylinder prop (much easier to shrink as the cig is smoked). You can do a render and then do some post processing in Photoshop. If you have EyeCandy 4000 they have an excellent smoke filter. To post process the ash on the cylinder I use the Baked Earth filter from Xeno-fects. The attached image is an example using the cylinder method.

Hope this helps.

J.B. Settle
http://www.n2comics.com

Excellent tutorial. I have an interesting problem along these lines. When I import another poser character into a scene (using the File->Import->Poser Model), the cameras for the original file are imported as well. What makes it a problem is that there are 2 main cameras in the scene, so when you click on one character you get a different (and jarring) view than the other. Is there any way to change this so that when you import a poser file into a scene you do not import the cameras? Thanks J.B. Settle

Marque, Go to Project->Blueprint->Load from File menu option. Select your texture map. Uncheck the Resize and Crop box when you select your texture map. Then goto Project->Blueprint->Resize Canvas and the canvas will be resized to the texture map. From there you can begin your texturing. Some nice features are that you can onion skin the blue print by pressing overlay blueprint button at the bottom of the real draw window. Hope this helps, J.B. Settle

The site seems to be working now. JBSettle

Morning (or evening/afternoon depending on where you reading this from), yes I have tried the demo. The nice thing is that its fully functional for 30 days. Also all you have to do is buy the serial number and the program in unlocked. I would definitly say try the demo and see if you like it. I was just caught off guard by it, it seems in this day and age new tools are getting harder to find. I was playing with the texture templates for Mikes morphing armor from Daz last night, and was amazed at how fast you can get it to produce some nice textures for it. Also, since the areas are objects you can easily tweak the textures down the road. For example if you don't like the gold armor, all you have to do is select the area and pick a new texture from the drop down. No repainting or anything like that. Good luck with the program. Thanks J.B. Settle

Black Cat, I currently use Bryce to build city scenes for my Graphic Novel. It does take a bit of practice and excellent reference photos to get it right. Lately I've been experimenting with using Nendo to create accurate buildings and then texture mapping them in photoshop. Once there saved as obj files I can import them directly into Bryce. If you want I can post a test render from Bryce and you can see if it will satisfy your needs. Good Luck J.B. Settle

Melanie, It is pretty much what I thought it was going to be. In a stict sense it is a prop kit. But more loosly it does transform Poser into a program that can render final scenes. Which for outdoor scenes is much nicer than having to export poser models into Bryce. I'm still trying to determine if the 3d world kit model will work for city streets, playing around with that concept this morning. We shall see. Thanks JB

Thanks for the feedback lalverson and leather-guy. I went ahead and picked up the core kit last night. I'm actually pretty impressed with it, and will have some good uses for it. I'm going to try and work with it and see if I can use it for an urban environment. It would be extremely beneficial to be able to do all my rendering in poser. Currently I have to export to an obj file and import into Bryce. As Micheal and Victoria become more complex so does the import process. I will check out Daio's textures for the armor. Thanks again JBSettle

Good glad to know I'm not the only one with a Daz3d problem lol. Well its good to know there not going out of business any time soon. If that happened I would go into serious withdrawals. I shudder at the thought but they should also open up a Bryce store. Now if we can just get the Bryce and Poser programmers on the same page life would be grand. I wonder what the next must have item from Daz3d will be. I'm already trying to talk myself into the Micheal changing armor and textures (even though I have no practical use for it right now :( ) Later JBSettle

Thanks Steve for the interest. Here's some source material to work from: http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/asia/iranveils.shtml http://www.unc.edu/depts/europe/conferences/Veil2000/images.htm I'll let you know if I find further sites for source material. Thanks JBSettle

A pleasure to meet you all. I'm glad you are enjoying the comic book. As I said before its been an interesting experience. Now trying out some new technology before I start up work on Issue 3. Mainly centering around Micheal and Victoria 2. I'm sure I'll be asking all kinds of questions to the group in my quest to explore these new models. Irene: Yep I'm a photoimpact user, I'm slowly moving over to Photoshop 6 though. The masking and shape objects in Photoshop are a little more powerful than the ones in Photoimpact 6, will definitly give Photoimpact 7 a whirl when it comes out. Igohigh: Glad you liked the tutorial. As you can tell from the page I mean to add more down the road, but its hard to find the time. Also want to work on some tutorials about integrating Bryce and Poser. Again thank you all so much for the warm welcome! JBSettle

Attached Link: http://www.n2comics.com

This would be great for the project I'm working on. I'm using Poser and Bryce to create a graphic novel for the internet (www.n2comics.com). And a set like this would come in very handy. I've had to create sets for subway cars in the past for the project (though the set was done in Bryce with Poser characters imported). One general question to the group, poser's ground/background "space" seems to be very limited, I know that Daz and this company have been working on making sets and stages for Poser. Has anyone played with these and know how practical they are inside of Poser as compared to creating your own sets in another 3d package and importing the poser files? Thanks JBSettle