"I can see you haven't studied much art history."

You got me. I only studied a little.

"I suggest you go back and look at art from about the Byzantine era right through to the Renaissance and see just how much "realism" you find."

I'll definitely do that.

"And by the way, South Park is all done in Maya, and it is, officially, 3D. Pretty "realistic" don't you think?"

Actually, it wasn't ALL done in Maya. Maya was used only after the 5th season. Before that, another 3D program was used (I believe 3dsmax, but could be mistaken there). However, the first episode was done with construction paper, so... to answer your question... YES, I think it looks very realistic. Just like the real construction paper cutouts used in the first episode! It looks SO much like construction paper cutouts, that people still believe it's done that way.

"Art is not real life, and it shouldn't have to be."

I'm not arguing this point. In fact, I agree. The only point I was making, again, has to do with the fact that striving for realism in 3D is what drives the industry, and is definitely the most difficult style to achieve, due not only to the user's capability, but also the limitations of their hardware/software. It's also the most VALUABLE skill to possess in this medium. How can one develop a unique artistic style if they never fully grasp the extent of their tools? I don't think there's any doubt Photorealistic rendering in 3D requires the most extensive knowledge of one's tools; from materials/texturing, to modeling, to actual rendering. Mastery of these techniques certainly opens the door to other types of styles, and makes functioning in a 3D environment much easier. To this, I say it cannot be overrated, because it truly is the essence of the genre. "I was, in fact, talking about art in a general sense, not about computer generated 3D images, specifically." I see. Well, then I guess I was misguided by your original post then.

Message edited on: 03/26/2006 20:37

"Realism is a craft that serves art."

Uhm, of course it is. No argument there.

My point, however, is that in order to understand the craft of 3D in its entirety, and evolve your own artistic style, realism (specifically, Photorealism) is something all 3D "artists" should strive to achieve at some point in their learning process. There are many reasons why, not the least of which is a better overall understanding of the application, tools, lights, cameras, materials, and models.

The mastery of realistic rendering is still a lofty goal in 3D; it's usually the reason why technology progresses in the field, and one of the most sought-after capabilities in the VFX and architectural industries (where 3D is used most often). Combining 3D elements seamlessly with live action footage to produce visual effects for movies or visualizations, etc. is where the use of 3D is most relied upon commercially.

Message edited on: 03/26/2006 15:06

"Personally, I've always thought that "realism" is seriously overrated. " Hmmm. Overrated? Traditionally, for the longest time, the purpose of art was to convey what things looked like. You could be portraying something that existed in real life or you could be portraying something fictional (the fictional part being where photography falls short). Either way, artists tried to make it as realistic a representation as possible. They tried to capture what the person, place, or thing looks like as accurately as possible. How similar the art looks like to the thing itself was a measure of how talented the artist was. Making art less realistic became viewed as new and modern, and thus sought after, which meant they had to keep making art less realistic in order to continue being new and modern. Realism is what 3D was created for to begin with. It became a way to capture or reproduce something that might be far too inefficient or difficult to do in reality. It wasn't until people realized how much more efficient animation could be done in 3D did NPR (Non Photorealistic Rendering) become the new fad. Still, Photorealism in 3D remains the hardest thing to produce. Not only on a skill level, but also on a technological level (render times, etc). It's still considered the "holy grail" in 3D, because so FEW people can do it well. All these new IBL and ambient occlusion features in Poser 6 still don't produce the ultimate photorealistic scene/animation. Still takes tons and tons of time and effort to get it looking right. NPR, however, is much less time consuming and requires less resources to accomplish. So overrated? Perhaps, but I'm still striving to achieve it.

Not bad. The foot skating is very distracting though. This seems to be a problem with many Poser animations that I've seen.

$7700? Nice gig! Congrats.

"Max 8 is almost like a different program compared to Max 3.1, it rocks"

Well, I think Max's biggest strength since version 6 is it's ParticleFlow system. One of the best particle systems in the biz that I've ever used, outside of some specialized software or Houdini Master. It also has one of the largest user bases, and there's literally tons of free tuts and plugins out there to enhance your experience with it. Not to mention, Max has always been on the cutting edge of rendering technology, particularly GI rendering, with engines like Vray, Brazil, and FinalRender having their start on the Max platform.

Maya is the best for character animation, hands down. However, if you don't know Mel scripting, you don't get the most out of Maya. Mel scripting knowledge is almost a prerequisite to using the software, which makes it less appealing to "artistic types", but is why it's used so often in big movie studios, who have technical directors to guide the artists.

Lightwave is probably one of the best all-around or general purpose 3D apps. It gives you a huge bang for the buck, and while it may not be as strong as Maya or Max for certain things, it can compete with any software feature for feature. I'd say go with this, unless you have a specialized need for one of the others.

XSI is a great one too, and reasonably priced. However, it's more complex to use than any other I think. Just my humble opinions of course.

Message edited on: 03/03/2006 17:32

I agree with xantor to a point. All the people here wishing for things like automatic soft body deformation, hdri with fast render times, blah blah, it's just unrealistic at this point. Think about what Poser offers right now for the price, it's almost unbelievable what you're getting: No other software under $300 offers you strand based hair dynamics, dynamic clothing, a POWERFUL node based shader system that rivals just about anything the 'big guns' have, IBL with AO, awesome 3D characters and meshes that no other package can give for the same price. Compatibility with several really great 3d packages, etc. It's already ridiculous how much Poser offers you, yet people are never satisfied are they? All I want to see in Poser 7 is a good stable program with improvements only to the already existing features. Perhaps an improved raytrace engine that is optimized for faster and cleaner results would be great. More functional and useful undo command, and an SDK for developers.

I think Poser is a great application for what it is. A hobbyists tool. What other application in it's price range has what it has? Like a powerful node based shader system that rivals anything the high end apps can do in the way of shading, plus a strand hair and dynamic cloth system on top of that? Come on, it's one of the best apps you can get for under $300. The fact that it's overlooked by the pros isn't of any consequence really to individuals looking to make a short movie on their own. Sure, I think the high end stuff looks somewhat more refined and perfected, but think about the money and effort that one must put into the software to get that result. Then compare that to what the Poser users are achieving for under $300, and it's a wash. If I had the money and time, I'd buy something like Maya or 3dsmax, take a training course, and use it to WOW people. But if I just wanted to transform my ideas into something creative as quickly and efficiently as possible, I'd use Poser. Why not?

I've been following it since it started. Really interesting info for animators who need to use dynamic hair for video. Operaguy has his work cut out for himself there. The Maya and Max examples look pretty darn good, and seem to render pretty fast. Might be hard to match them.

Definitely play with damping values for the dynamics, Operaguy. Poser has a few options for that, and it's the same principle as dynamic cloth. Without the damping forces, the hair appears too jumpy and restless, just like with dynamic cloth. Higher values should cause the dynamic strands to come to a rested state faster. Also, you'll want to experiment with bend resistance, root stiffness, and position force to keep the shape of the hair.

All these examples so far are looking good. I think the 3dsmax renders look the most realistic so far, but the Maya ones seem to have the fastest rendertime.

Message edited on: 02/07/2006 02:09

It's a good technique, but why is there a white halo around the iris in your example render? Is this a side-effect of the raytracing? If so, I'm not sure I'd want that to occur, because it makes it appear as if the character is wearing contacts or something over their eyes.

This looks good. I think once you refine the upper body movements, it will really be great. I love the way the feet bend when he takes a step. Well done.

When I use Poser, I use Poser 6 exclusively.

"It mentions the ability to export the models, including textures and bones (with the extra plugins) to high end programs like Lightwave, but it sounds like you'd have to animate them within the high end program, not Quidam." If you're exporting to a high end program anyway, why not just animate there? This sounds pretty cool.

3dsmax 5? I have you beat, Quest... I'm still using version 3 for modelling!! Heck, I found a few free maxscripts on the net that give me almost as much modelling functionality as they have now in version 8! Well, ok... not quite as much, but good enough for me. The only reason I didn't upgrade since Max 3 is because I can't afford to yet, plus I'm waiting to see what happens now that Autodesk purchased Alias. Maybe we'll see a 3ds Maya. haha. I bought Bryce just before Xmas, and have been playing around with it. It's a nice little app for quickly putting together some large outdoor scenes, but I'm not thrilled about the material editor, and I miss being able to script out tedious things. Does Bryce support scripting?

"Some people use premade light sets because they struggle with positioning and adjusting lights. Now yes, they could put in the sweat equity to learn how to do it that way but why should they have to?" Well, that's true to a point, but then you're always going to be dependant on buying or using free light sets that someone else made, and the downfall to that is that eventually you might come across a time when you want something specific, and have to compromise your vision because you don't know how to do it. If all you know is how to open your wallet and purchase stuff, eventually you might run into a proverbial "brick wall" of creativity. When you know how to do something yourself, without depending on merchants for EVERYTHING, then there's no limits to what you can do. In other words, you aren't going to find exactly what you want every time, unless you pay someone else to do it for you. So then what's the real difference between a studio that uses Maya with sub-specialists in rigging, lighting, etc., or the Poser hobbyist, where a single artist is depending on others for different parts of a scene? Truth is, the high end apps are not really catering to the tech savvy audience much more than Poser is (unless you get into the scripting end of things, but then again Poser has Python, which is largely geared for "techies" as well). The difference, aside from price, is the depth of the applications. To elaborate on this, I point to the aforementioned "Character Studio" in 3dsmax. Most Poser users think it's too complex compared to Poser. The truth is (and I've used both), CharacterSTudio is actually EASIER to use than Poser. Rigging is easier (Poser's rigging is hard to master), animating is easier (doesn't suffer from the IK and gimbal lock problems Poser has), and the workflow overall is smoother (you don't need an outside app to interchange animations or poses from one character to another; every character rigged in CS can use each other's poses and animations with little to no tweeking required). That's just one example, but because the program is considered "high end" then everyone just assumes it must be hard. It IS more time consuming to learn certain things, because there's so much it can do, but once you learn it, many things that are difficult in Poser are much easier done in these other apps. Sure, you can get into really techie stuff too if you wanted to, but the same thing can be said of Poser. I guess the bottom line is that if you want more stuff, expect it to come at a price. Literally.