You are not alone Risus.

I felt that way as well when I first started. But Its just like the movie-set when you get to see how the Wizard of Oz really works...

oh, bluescreen behind the actors? wheres the spaceship set???
oh, pause camera, replace with dummy, roll-em! "SQUISH!"
actors reading off teleprompers???

Its all smoke and mirrors, unless you really want to re-render re-render re-render... rechecking till you get it all perfect.

Hobbists try to be the best at every aspect of 3D: ideas, concepts, modeler, shaders, poser, camera/render man... (some cases animator as well)
Reality is, when you are a pro, you end up likely doing only ONE of those things and leave the rest of the process to other pros.

So, as a hobbist do the best you can, copy/paste, fake depth-of-fields, recolor/post-process to your hearts desire. Use everything and anything to make it look good.
Yes, you can get flawless results like you see on the professional Poser covers made by troop of professionals.

I face the same thing with music these days, digital recordings edited and fixed to flawlessness... but it sounds like a robot performed it.
I can make my guitar lose its soul by killing its imperfections.
Grab the gimp/photoshop and have fun and love your creations ;)
Thats why it's art.

Quote - it is the modeling. THAT is what I want to do. sculptris is easy enough. Its like "BAM" I have a wee beasty. But zbrush its like "OAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH slams head to desk

Yeah, I felt like that too at first... do simple stuff first. I made mock-ups of rock sculptures and landscaping with Z-brush since I worked at a quarry and we made rock tables/benches/fireplace-slabs/fountains...

Got paid extra for all that.

Its the crazy interface, but once you get used to it, it gets better.

There is no cheating in 3D... lol.

Even the movies cheat... there is so much postwork done it will make your head spin.

At every professional level, you do what needs to be done within a timeframe.

Keep in mind... EVERY photo you see on the front cover of every magazine on the magazine stand (when you wait in line to buy groceries) has been altered with some sort of photo manipulation software.

Sure you can attempt to be a purist, but you'll have more fun making it personalized with your own brushstrokes, giving it more "life"... at least, thats the way I see it.

Sorry for chiming in late.

I LOVE Manga Studio 4EX.

I haven't seen enough features to warrant myself upgrading to MS5EX. There is a workaround to create doublepage layouts but you need to go to a slightly smaller standard page size.

I use mine with a Cintiq, responds quite well.

The coloring is a little weak in features, but I usually export my inks into Open Canvas or Artrage (depending on the peice).

I use Poser10 as my wooden-doll and set up each panel in a poser scene adding perspective for the foreshortening effect. export the basic render into MS as a light blue and overdraw an ink layer.

I tend to use opacity layers to make my shadowing with blur added. 25%, 50% and 75% opacities (100% being my inking/full black layer) I like doing that instead of using tones.

The MS 3D layer is a bit twitchy to use with multiple figures in a scene, so thats why I just use poser to arrange my panel scene. If I was to do a scifi and wanted to use one of my starships I would consider using the 3D layer and import the obj since I'd import one ship at a time.

I only have the older discontinued Motion Artist, the new one looks like it has some cool features and is geared more towards animated comicbooks than its predecessor. 

if you can afford the 1 month fee, look at Mark Bremmer's poser 10 tutorials on Infinite Skills.

I came from Poser 6 (Poser 8 but rarely used, only bought that 2 months ago, and got the Poser10 upgrade deal, sweet!)

A lot of the tuts refresh the use of poser with some of the newer features. There are a couple ways to do Cloth simulations and I believe the Bullet physics uses the collision detection features, which Mark goes over rather well in his tutorials. Not sure it THIS is the collision ref you are looking at).

I tend to use poser as a wooden doll drawing-reference setup instead of a rendering solution. So there is a few features I rarely use, but I like the Bullet physics to make bodypart react more realistic to gravity.

Also keep an eye on Purplus software.

They buy SM in bulk and sometimes have awesome sales at Christmas.

I've bought from there a lot (Got Manga Studio 4EX,  Anime Studio and Poser 8 from them) all Boxed Smith Micro versions. (I recently upgraded on the last SM sale and went with Poser10) so buying Poser 8 at the time really helped.

Tho its mailed out,  so you'll wait a few weeks for the box to arrive. But the deals are usually worth it. I bought a fair bit of software from them over the years and I havent had a problem (Based in California, so if you're near there you could just pick it up from the warehouse).

Quote - As far as loading a scene with Roxie, well a picture paints a thousand words.

Wow, thats like... Salvador Dali in a box!

Although my image is small on the angle increases it also effects the opaque as well, not just the transparent.

Yeah, Nylon or curtains, this would work sort of the same.

1. Likely when using an alpha mask and layering material nodes, you would use this to fine-tune it.

2. I think everyone has the falloff option in all versions of Poser 5+

3. I've heard you have been very naughty this year, so a potatoe in your stocking is more likely... j/k

But chances are that the man in red and his % probability of actually existing are rather slim, you might have to charm someone with a highter % of existance probability.

if the frame is a different material than the mirror you can go into the material room and turn transparency to 100% as a quick fix

Hmm very cool... might chance this.

Quote - There is a site that has Silo 2.0 for $24.95, downloadable only.  OEM (softdepot.com) has reputable programs (I purchased Poser 7 there for 14.95 rather than Smith Micro's 59.99 sale they had going during the time frame that 8 came out) and they are legitimate applications.

 

They have Silo, Poser, Zbrush, and other programs that aren't the most up to date versions, but if you are wanting to try them out without having to fork out the cash for the latest and greatest, that's a great place to hit.

Yeah, you better check that your CC is not being ripped off.
I helped in getting rid of these rippoff sites, they deal in illegal versions of software.

In all honestly, you probably have a hacked version or a keygened serial for poser.

veselyjsoft was also in this group of pirates.

It does amaze me at how little stuff is made for the native poser figures, why is that? Are they THAT bad?? They have the most flexability within poser with the face room and all. It would be nice to see more skins.