Why can't Curious Labs make a plugin for Bryce or work with Corel to get one done? There is no excuse for it.

Because they don't want to?

If they did it probably would`nt work any better than Poser 5.

Nah...probably some kinda family feud type thing...

I thought Bryce was a dead product. Are they still making it?

I dont know about further development.But they still sell it.

Of all the potential plug-ins for Poser this is the most often and longest requested one.
People have been asking for this since the days of Metacreations.
More people own Bryce in common with Poser than any other single 3D landscape or modelling program.
Bryce, while slow, is a superb program for rendering.
With all the plug-in developers around these days I am really surprised nobody has developed a good Poser to Bryce and Bryce to Poser plug.

CL listen up!

Bryce is already owned and used by large numbers of Poser users. A really good set of plugs would really enhance Poser 5. Add the ability to bring Bryce landscape etc. scenes into Poser and the combination of the Bryce materials with those of P5, the huge libraries of materials and Bryce models and you would have a winner.

Any takers?

Regards
STORM

On the other side of the equation, Bryce seems to be just about the only 3D application in the world that doesn't have any way, built in or external, to convert its native format (obp) to something else. I think the same holds true for Vue as well.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Does Bryce have a SDK available?

Bryce is far from dead. It's got eight lives yet to go. I think I know what the problem is and why it hasn't been done. And if it's what I think it is then it's CL's decision not to make one, not Corel's. Can anyone tell me how VUE network rendering works? (Does Vue have network rendering?)

Vue has network rendering, called Render Cow, and it works cross platform. I've not used it so I can't speak to it's functionality.

There is a kind of plugin for Poser to Bryce, Natural Pose by Konan, that can also import Poser animations into Bryce. Vue only has network rendering if you buy Mover4, but you can only render animations over the network, not single pictures.

Guys, this isn't CL's fault. They approached Corel about it, and Corel refused. So let's put the blame where it belongs, not on the scapegoat de Renderosity.

There is another plugin for Bryce called Susanna that brings in poser animations, at least there used to be. Marque

And nuuti is out there too which appears to combine the programs into their own interface. Haven't tried any of them yet.

Joey...if you knew that for a fact you would be breaking NDA. Don't spout rumors.

I heard in another forum that Curious Labs wants a large sum of money to allow another company to make plugins (i.e., to license the technology). Corel probably didn't want to pay the ten grand (or however much it was). bonni

"When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch." - Bette Davis

Joey...if you knew that for a fact you would be breaking NDA. Don't spout rumors And don't rush to conclusions, while you're at it. The information is not a rumor and didn't require an NDA to get it. In essence, Corel wanted serious money from CL to build the plug-in, and when CL said no, Corel said fine and walked away. This is hardly classified information.

In essence you heard from somebody who heard from somebody else who.... You're still spreading rumors. In fact quite the opposite is going around too. See elizabyte's message. In essence what elizabyte said is closer to the truth but it's not the whole truth. All I can say.

Either way, it's a shame. Personally, I'd love to have a plugin similar to Vue.

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A main reason why no third party has developed a plug in is that the Bryce .br5 format is not only undocumented, it's even encrypted! (So I'm told.) Corel seems to actively discourage and third party development, more fools them. Personally, I find that I have the Poser to Bryce path so honed to the utmost efficiency now that a plugin would not really be all that much benefit.

Phantast do tell? Or is it a trade secret LOL

*A main reason why no third party has developed a plug in is that the Bryce .br5 format is not only undocumented, it's even encrypted! (So I'm told.) * It isn't actually encrypted, it's just in a binary format and much of the implementation is pretty unique. Bryce has basically followed a parallel but seperate evolutionary path over the years from most other 3d technologies. I pretty much have nearly complete data on the br3/4/5 file formats, so file convertors are definitely on the cards (it's on my business plan). However, the additional work required to achieve a full (live) data sharing plug-in is economically more questionable, and there's no data yet to indicate whether the Bryce API meets the basic requirements for such a thing. All we can really deduce from the existing im/exporter plug-ins is that the API supports the ability to add and extract data, which by itself is not sufficient for such a plug-in. Bill

Carrara's ancestor (RDS) had a plugin for Poser, and I'd like to see it return. And its not been because of Eovia why there's not one, its CL not making one for it. As we all know from the Carrara list that there is one finally in the cards from a 3rd party developer for sure, and one possibly from Eovia itself from the rumours I hear. Can't say anything about Corel... as I am not familiar enough with Corel. I can say that some have said that it was only until recently that it was possible to work with CL close enough to make a plugin for my favourite software possible. as for the CL bashing that goes on, a lot is kinda deserved. I can't for the life of me figure out why they didn't spend time working on making the app better at posing and interacting with external renderers, especially the most popular ones used around here, the goodies are nice but the hair doesn't export without a lot of work, its got a lot of issues that needed to be worked out (overly cpu intensive aka no hardware acceleration, group limits, etc). Most of us that are serious about our 3d art don't render in Poser, so the Firefly was an unneeded frill for many too. I'm glad for the clothroom, and glad it exports to obj at least.

youre all wrong. its all fault. i am responsibel for no bryce plugin, for slow firefly, for outraguos pricing and nudity without flag.

" In essence, Corel wanted serious money from CL to build the plug-in, and when CL said no, Corel said fine and walked away. This is hardly classified information. " Even though I'm under NDA's I don't think I'm in violation when I say: THIS IS NOT TRUE, PERIOD. So Joey, I challenge you to post a link to someone, at either CL or Corel or actually anybody in a postion pf authority, who has ever said anything like this. Look at it this way, no major 3D company but Vue has ever licenesed Poser. Why would that be? Think about it.

dan, respectfully, but ya know, some of us actually own Poser Pro Pack, and know its got a Lightwave plugin, a Max plugin and a C4D plugin. So you're not right in saying only Vue had it. RDS had it before too, it just didn't carry over to Carrara (partially that was because of Metacreations folding, and I'm glad that situation is finally seeing a reversal)

Attached Link: poser in C4DXL

years ago when i was using Bryce3 and poser3 easy import of poser figure was my dream also Until i embarked upon the HORROR of rendering animation in Bryce!!! as an animator who does not own a render farm for bryce "lightning" I find bryces ultra slow raytracer totally impractical for animation renders!! I often see bryce users proudly announcing they stuck it out for 92 hour renders etc. pardon me but that is just plain ridiculous :-) and would never work for any deadline oriented paid 3D work. As others have mentioned ,those of us who are serious about high quality renders of poser scenes are already using other programs( I use Cinema4DXL See Link) and if you are not willing to spend the cash for one of the alternative renderers already available, than you may as well struggle along with posers weak output.

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for those interested, Cinema 4D 6 ce will be featured on many Sep/03 magazine cover CDs, with an upgrade offer to 6 XL for EUR 99,-. I will try to get a copy of it today and test if it works with the ProPack plugin. Version 6 of Cinema 4D doesn't have the global illumination features Version 7 has, but Cinema 4D is known for having a fast renderer.

But the ProPack plugins are CL-made (or licensed) so it's not quite a conradiction of Dan.

its a contradiction because he said ONLY VUE licensed it, and that's my point... Vue's not the only one! We all know its not true it was only Vue, so there :P

I mean, saying Vue ONLY had a plugin is untrue. My point is that they should have more plugins to work with external renderers... playing well with others is -very- important in my book. That's the real issue. I've heard Bryce is slow, but its still popular among the hobbyists and I think they shouldn't be shut out, their money spends just as well too...

Look at it this way, no major 3D company but Vue has ever licenesed Poser. Why would that be? I don't think it's about licensing fees. If Reiss-Studio can afford licensing the Poser SDK, why shouldn't Corel?

Yes, but I think Dan is hinting at some problem between CL and third parties wanting to make their own plugin - so for THAT purpose the ProPack plugins aren't relevant since they were produced by/for CL, not by Maxon, Discrete etc. Actually, Vue doesn't have a plugin as I think the term is used; Poser must be closed for Vue to read the PZ3 file. It also sounds as if the latest patch to Vue is going to introduce P5 compatibility at the expense of P4, though with a workaround, which is a worrying sign for Vue 5.

In essence you heard from somebody who heard from somebody else No, I heard it from someone at CL itself who was directly involved in the negotiations. No, I don't care to share who because all of you are just a bunch of anonymous handles, and I respect my friend's privacy a little too much. But the facts are true; get over it and move on. Any more questions? Or is it just easier to blame CL for all the Poser world's ills these days around here?

if someone is dealing with bugs in software, or are looking for features in software that they used to have, and find they don't have anymore, I don't see it as unjustified complaining when they voice their opinions on it. only wanting to hear rah rah cheers is akin to sticking head in sand... its a competitive business and it pays to listen to your customer base.

this is why I have bought and bought from Eovia when they have come out with new software, and preordered twice from them, whereas with Poser I waited many months before I took up P5. I'm happy with what P5 does for me... I'm only saying it could be better, and I'd like it to work better with the software apps I use. And that appears to be happening, and you know, I waited until I heard from Eovia that it would really have a chance to happen... because Eovia always listens to me and doesn't treat me like an idiot. Learn from that.

A few things here: mit123 - The answer is yes, I will tell all. You'll find it all writ out for you at phantast.comicbabecentral.com/tutorials.htm (Caution! Adult site! Well ... tame adult site, anyway ...) williamsheil - You interest me. I had heard it was binary AND encrypted but my source may not have been reliable. Is this information available? I have ideas for utilities I would like to make. A further point to note about Poser and export. A frequent complaint is that transparencies don't survive the Poser export - Bryce import. The main reason for this is that when Poser writes a .obj file it writes texture information in a .mtl file. However, it only writes a subset of mtl format, and leaves out the transparency information. I don't know why. It would be possible to write a utility that analysed a .pz3 file and then wrote a full .mtl file IF one could get hold of a full documentation of mtl format, which Lightwave Corporation keeps guarded. You will find partial guides to mtl format on the net, but these document only the bits that Poser writes, which makes one suspect that CL don't have the full mtl docs either.

Phantast, you might find that Craig's newest application on his site would be very helpful. Its called Babel, (windows only) it reads Poser PZ3 files and collects all your textures, including transparencies, to a directory. I save my transparency shaders for reuse in Carrara, so I don't have a big problem there. But the biggest problem I find is being able to get my program to find all my Poser textures that I want to use for my scene, and I am able to get my scene shaders set up much faster thanks to his application. this is the type of thing Poser should do, and doesn't. And the idea of making Poser objs the size of bacteria really is a huge pain in my side when making props.

(not to mention the small size of Poser objs means I have to rescale them in Carrara to a size that is usable, in order to make transparencies work at all)

you might find that Craig's newest application on his site would be very helpful. Its called Babel, (windows only) it reads Poser PZ3 files and collects all your textures, including transparencies, to a directory. < Can you give a URL? I don't (at this time) use Carrara, but I've been researching alternative rendering systems for a while now. I'd like to look into this a little bit. bonni

"When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch." - Bette Davis

hmm..as a better brycer that poseur..;) What I've heard is Corel has pretty much left Bryce to twist in the wind..Mojoworld wanted to buy it, but couldn't come up with the cool million Corel priced it for. I know a coupla versions of Bryce have been made less accessable, but Corel's just not talking much about Bryce. We were hoping for a Bryce 6, but that doesn't seem to have any support, even inside the company. They have, on the other hand, dropped the price to under a hundred for Bryce 5 (grumble)..shoulda waited..;)

I wish I'd said that.. The Staircase Wit

anahl nathrak uth vas betude doth yel dyenvey..;)

Attached Link: eovia

the website for Carrara is at the link provided, and the website for Craig's utilities is: http://www.castironflamingo.com/ Carrara has the best renderer for the price, bar none. It is not all that easy at first to get into, some people get confused by the interface, but really its not that different than P5 when it comes to the rooms, etc. Craig has some good Grouper tutorials, but I find that Grouper is not necessary for Carrara, rather the new app that he's created, Babel is much better, paired with my method of importing from Poser to Carrara. You can get better renderers and 3d modelers in higher end apps... but nothing beats Carrara for price to performance :) And the company is dedicated to strong support of the product... that's mainly why I'm happy and sticking with it, and damn glad I never got Bryce *g*

(but Craig has good shader descriptions for hair transparency in his Grouper tutorial for Carrara, and any C user should hit his page for them... don't know what I would have done without his tutorials on transparency!!)

Eovia was offered the time with one of the CL engineers for dialing in a Poser5/Carrara2 plugin. This was just prior to the release of C2. Eovia didn't have time to program the thing before they wanted to release C2. They couldn't release the man power for the programming. Curious Labs are a bunch of bastards for not stopping all developement and programming it for Eovia. Eovia are a bunch of bastards for not completely delaying the release of Carrara2 in order to program the plugin. There... Now none of us need to say it. Sorry for stealing the thunder. I'm joking about the two bastard comments of course (for the record). Oh, and no animals were harmed in the writing of this post. :) As stated above, they couldn't release the manpower so please don't post "well... they could-uh". No they could-uh not. Timing is very important. If we all remember correctly there was a CL meltdown shortly after that so they never ended up getting together. Oh... BTW: I am my own source. I worked at CL. I LOVE Carrara and all the guys over at Eovia. I use both apps in my work whenever possible. I wanted to see it as much as anyone. I was a Poser/Carrara plugin chearleader. Hi... My name is Joe. shuffle shuffle I've been a Poser/Carrara chearleader for 6 years. shuffle shuffle HI JOE! enthusiastic clap clap clap clap I look horrific in a skirt and knee high socks. Maybe that was part of the problem. I know nothing about what is going on now with the 2 apps. I hope that there will be a Carrara plugin. All the best, Joe www.3-AXIS.com P.S. On another note... I finally got around to watching "Dinotopia". I watched all 6 hours straight through. DANG! There was a ton of CG in that movie. It was all really nice too. I suggest giving it a watch if you haven't.

Joe, you should have sent me. Everybody knows how good I look in a skirt!

Ain't that the sad assed truth. LOL You look pretty as a girl. ROFL

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

CL and Eovia have a cooperation agreement now, though :) The announcement is on the Eovia website. The part about it being easier to work with CL now came from the Carrara mailing list owner, Ringo Montfort, its there in black and white if you go looking for the mail, I think he wrote it either there or here at Rosity, I am not sure anymore and would have to look up the post in the archives. Seems that this is really finally going to happen, now, its been confirmed over the list that a third party is working on one. I understand what happened with version 2... it was a huge upgrade from 1.1. The deal is though, that Carrara users were promised an application that worked well with Poser from Metacreations days, and used to have it in RDS, so that's why you hear complaining. I've even searched for copies of RDS so that I could use the plugin and just export to Carrara to render... its hard to even find them on Ebay now. But now that I know there's a plugin in development for Carrara, I'm happy to wait for that instead.

I was fortunate enough to meet Ringo at Siggraph. People, let me tell you. He is one heck of a nice guy. I could party with that dude... Yo! Uh... That was California speak. :) I remember testing the Poser plugin for RDS. Damn... I forgot to put that one on my resume. Thanks for the memory jog. MAN was that thing S-L-O-W (the plugin as well as my brain). If someone is putting a plugin together for Carrara I'm sure it will be much better than what RDS had. I say "if" because I don't want to misslead anyone into thinking I know anything about a plugin being written. If memory serves my right, the plugin was slow because of the RDS code. It would be way faster in Carrara. *** No toxic chemicals were dumped into any rivers (small or large) while writing this thread. *** Cheers, Joe www.3-AXIS.com

Attached Link: http://www.greenbriarstudio.com/3D/

correct link, this one is working on the DAZ studio version coincidentally as well, but what's of interest is the GMI format conversion.

Could it be that the .mtl function is a hold over from Poser 3? It had no transparency to provide, and maybe this part was never altered in the two subsequent Poser versions. The RDS plug-in was Poser 3 to RDS 5.0. It works in RDS 5.5 and it works with Poser 4 - after a fashion. I think it does the part of P4 that is of P3, but not the additional functions.

file IF one could get hold of a full documentation of mtl >format, which Lightwave Corporation keeps guarded. You will There is no "Lightwave Corporation". I think you mean Newtek, of which Lightwave is one of many products. That being said, Newtek did not create the OBJ format, that was Wavefront, which merged with Alias many years ago to become Alias:Wavefront, who recently changed thier name back to just "Alias". No program, really uses OBJ as a native format anymore, other than Poser. It's more of a file interchange format now. OBJ is an ascii format, which means it is entirely too large and slow to work with as opposed to binary formats, which is a large reason why Poser is so damn slow. The format also does not carry all of the modern information necessary for saving complex modern scenes, which is why Lightwave uses LWO, Alias uses ma or mb, etc. Even Poser has to keep a "CR2" file to contain extra data not available in an OBJ.

"No, I heard it from someone at CL itself who was directly involved in the negotiations." AHa. You heard only one side of the story. During a period when negotiations broke down and there was probably a lot of anger around. Believe what you want, but there's a helluva lot more to it than that.

I was thinking of Wavefront (it's a while since I chased this up) but it isn't .obj format that is at issue, it's .mtl format, which is something else again. I have downloaded Babel for investigation, but I can hold my breath on this one. Why? I simply don't bother with textures in Poser, other than to a minimal cosmetic extent. All the serious texturing work I do in Bryce, and having a logical directory structure makes it reasonably easy to find any texture file when I need it (plus a lot are saved in Bryce). Thus the issue of "bringing textures over from Poser" is redundant.

Kudo's to what STORM Stated (post #7) What lmckenzie said in post #8 is basically true, although Bryce and Vue CAN export their Terrains. Bryce doe not have a SDK available (that I have seen) I've never heard/seen anything concrete about Corel approaching Curious Labs or vice versa, or why it was never done at all. I have to believe it happened at some point, but the only thing I CAN'T believe is, it hasn't happened at all during the last 4 years... One day Poser and Bryce will act together, unfortunately, it's not gonna be soon. `Til then, have faith and workaround! AgentSmith Bryce Mod

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what would be the point here in 2003??? Look, i was a poser user since fractal designs poser3 and metacreations (meta who??) bryce2 But ,To be perfectly frank both programs have little or No potential for growth( new,paying customers) this can be largely attributed to their Old outdated cores that will never take advantage of the advances in modern day hardware and oudated tinkertoy "Kia" interfaces. Notice the collective yawn from the mac community about the release of poser5 for OSX??? the most common compliment ive heard is "it doesent crash" this is likely more a testament to the incredibly stable Unix based OSX and the fairly homogenous nature of modern day Apple hardware. but sad commentary on where poser is today when"not crashing " is a major acheivement. a poser to bryce plugin now would be like releasing a new patch for windows95 gee thanks but... have you checked what century this is?? :-)

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Well, let's go ahead and burn all our pencils and paint brushes also Wolf. Since we can do art on our computers now, those ancient tools have no place in the 21st century, right? The potential of any growth does not lie in your tools, don't blame them. A Poser to Bryce plugin would make a lot of money, the user base is gigantic! Doesn't matter when Bryce or Poser first came out, they are still some of the most popular programs around, period. But, then again, I still use my pecil and paint brushes, I mean...they still work for me. AgentSmith

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The potential of any growth does not lie in your tools, don't >blame them. While you are right that some money could be made on a bryce/poser solution AgentSmith, I'm going to go with Wolf359 on this one. The tools can and do limit an artist, if the tools are not the state of the art, or very near to it. Poser and Bryce don't do what I need them to. They are still exactly what they have always been and have not gotten worse, it is me and my needs that have grown. For what Bryce and Poser do, they are fine tools. But for anyone serious about animation, especially of characters, or who needs a rapid pipeline for completing projects on a professional time table, or many other needs/reasons, a Poser to Bryce solution would be no solution at all. There are two factors at work here: 1 - The owners of programs like bryce and poser and several others in this price point provided a way for 3D artists to get started, by offering decent 3D tools at a low price. But those tools have not matured in any serious way lately, even though a large number of the users have. Which leads us to.... 2 - The "high end" professional 3D software solutiions have seen drastic price reductions in the last couple of years. This has closed a gap, squeezing some program out completely, and making the "entry level" far less of a bang for the buck, especially when you consider the bevy of modern features available, such as subdivision surfaces, radiosity, and countless others not available in the Poser/Bryce range. For instance, you could spend around $400 to $600 getting Poser, Bryce and a few other doodads, and then only be about $400 away from a full blown copy of Lightwave or C4D. That extra 400 clams would give you a huge amount of extra tools, performance and options, and also allow that artist to enter the professional realm of output quality. Knowledge in that program (coupled with other skills) will even make you a potential candidate for a job. It's hard to buy three or four programs and spend time wresting with their quirks when only a little more money will get you something really top notch, and that won't limit your artistic potential. Now, this is not a slam on anyone using Bryce, Poser and what not. There can still be some great art produced from these tools. I myself still use Vue on ocassion and enjoy it very much, but I realize it's limited potential in the larger playing field. Truly knowing what your tools are capable and not capable of is a strenght, not a weakness.

wolf359...it's KAI not KIA. The reason some put down Bryce's interface is that they have never bothered to (1)learn it nor (2)understand the why of it. The doodads are there for a reason..not just to look cute. Bryce's interface is brilliant. (Poser's is pretty but is not very efficient) Just a couple of points out of dozens: (1) Bryce is layered. How deep you go depends on your expertise. Most other programs have all the functionality at the same level which can be cluttered and confusing. (2) Bryce is brilliant for beginners. They don't have to mess with x, y, and z. The default setup and direction of the edit controls matches. (3) Off-document edit controls means there's no nightmare of click-dragging the wrong object. (4) Single-view only is not a hardship, especially when with ONE easily-remembered keypress you can get another view, and one more keypress to center and zoom on the selection. Vue's 4-up view on the other hand is difficult to see detail and ALL the views update when you zoom in on one which slows the interface down considerably. Bryce DOES need some work. It needs object heirarchy and subcategories in Skies as well as more work in the terrain editor. Other than that it's nearly perfect!

I understand that Bryce Has a loyal devoted following iwas a die hard brycer and still use bryce 5 on MAC OSX and no offense to spit ,really but you appear to be speaking from the perpesctive of someone who has likely NEVER used a modern day program with a real user definable muliticamera system or comprehensive object/scene manager for handling complex scenes. or true key frame animation timeline or adaptive ray tracer that wont take weeks to render scenes because you chose to have volumetric lights But this is not a bryce VS everybody else discussion :-) the thread starter asked :why no poser plugin for bryce?? and that answer is simple: Future market potention for NEW customers and that means cutting edge software that is relevant to the rapid advances in rendering hardware. APPLE is about to take us into an exciting new world of 64 bit desktop computing followed soon im sure by intel or AMD. what incentive is there from a business perpective for any company to spend a dime hiring programmers to join two Old programs that wont be in a position to utilize the new hardwre comming down the pike. and dont kid yourself the poser and bryce community is relativly small worldwide compared to MAX or Lightwave. and if some individual chooses to hack that old legacy code from the early 1990's to sell a new feature to the pose/brycer base then good for them. but its just not good long term business sense for CL to revisit that old strategy in my opinion

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Everyone has to walk before they can run. The quantity of users actually using high-end programs is small compared to the available base for the lower-end 'entry' programs. And look at the price difference. How many people not sure if they want to get into this 3D stuff will spend those bucks on a high-end program? Besides which I venture to guess that less than 1% of the users are looking to do animation. So far I've taught 9 sessions of Bryce classes and don't go near animation and there has not been one complaint or request for animation to be added. There's definitely still a market for Bryce and Poser and a reason to 'meld' the two in some fashion. Although with Grouper, the need isn't as great as a couple of years ago...unless you do animation.

Anyone in business will tell you they do not ignore exsisting user bases, that would be foolish! SO many things in this world are sold as add-ons, accessories, etc. SO MANY...billiions are made each year by that practice. "poser and bryce community is relativly small worldwide compared to MAX or Lightwave." Ouch...sorry to be the one to open your eyes; let's look at galleries and how many pics are in each... Lightwave 3,581 3DSMax 8,632 --- Bryce 40,773 Poser 92,131 This kinda ratio exsists in just about every online communtiy that is not high-end specific. It's simple, how many 3DSMAX's can you sell at $1,000-$3,500 and how many units of bryce can you sell at $80-$300?? A LOT. I've visted online communtites in Russia, Germany, UK, Denmark, etc. The same kind of ratio exsists there also, Poser and Bryce are the biggest. Beacause, they are the biggest bang for your buck, period. Their not the biggest in the professional industry, but that's not the point. (they weren't meant to be) Point is, how many units and users are there out there that could use this? Again, a lot. Curious Labs has done one of the smartest things I think they could ever do, make it so other (high-end) programs can more easily import Poser stuff. If they had followed Wolf's way of thinking, that they had an outdated piece of software and did nothing, then Poser would be way less than what it is now. Again, your reason why there is no Poser/Bryce plugin misses the point. It doesn't matter if you have the best/newest/most expensive piece of software on the newest/fastest/64 bit computer. If you can't draw with a 99 cent pencil, you aren't going to be able to draw with a 10 dollar pencil. Although, yes I admit, there are some truly great 10 dollar pencils out there, lol. ;o) We all aren't going to own the new Mac and a $1600 piece of 3D software. Most people will probably never do that, and that's cool. But to discount a tool that still works well, just because its not new...is the wrong thing to focus on imo. Well, I think its an oversite to think an add-on for an older program would not sell, anyways. AgentSmith

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I have to disagree with the idea that Poser is somehow obsolete and that everyone who started with it has moved on to more professional applications. I think this ignores a number of things. For one thing, it's like saying that $200 cameras have no future because everyone who started with one has felt the need to move up to $2000 Nikon, simply not the case. Another issue is the fact that aside from the still unrealized Daz Studio, Poser is the only application that does what it does without taking a huge leap in price and learning curve. With the proliferation of high speed connections, the web is increasingly going to be used for publishing more sophisticated 3d content. At the moment, it's mainly limited to low resolution figures like Avatar Lab and the Sims but that will change and Poser could be positioned to provide a lot of that content - with the right export capabilities, which is of course the original topic of this thread. Computer generated 3D human figures will always be a compelling application, for everything from art to porn to advertsing and other applications. Despite it's drawbacks, I think Poser is still the "premier" application in that space. Far from being a deadend, I think there are markets which Poser hasn't even tapped yet. I saw something on CL's site or their newsletter about a new Poser 4 based "Poser Artist" program which may be a step in that direction. Hopefully, I'm not imagining the latter, I don't see a reference on CL's site. I think it was in an email. Along those lines, I've thought for a while that a somewhat simplified version of Poser 4 could be marketed as a kind of "Poser for Kids," a real digital paper dolls application.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Conan Hunter, the once program manager of Bryce for Corel had Bryce set up to do the same thing; to be split into two products, a simpler version for kids, and a professional version that was to progress past the "hobbyist" level. Still, to refer to the actual, original question again, lol. I see some kid had made a converter to turn a Bryce scene file into a Vue scene file (It's in the Vue Forum), now it's not perfect, fand rom what I hear and is for Mac only, but I guess it works. CastIronFlamingo has made a small utility that takes Poser lighting setups, and translates them for import and use in Bryce. From what I have seen myself, it works great. So, it's do-able. But by whom? AgentSmith

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"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

It sounds like it's already possible to at least import the Poser stuff (as obj?) into Bryce and fiddle with the textures. I don't know if Bryce has any scripting or an apy you can use but it seems like if it did you could pretty much write a utility to read a pz3 and pull it into Bryce textured and ready to go - assuming they're no subjective decisions involved. Worst case, even if Bryce is "dumb," it might conceivably be possible to write code that read in the pz3 and "automated" Bryce by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. And then again, of course, perhaps not. One difficulty that arises in doing that with Poser is it's use of non standard UI elements in Windows and probably the Mac as well. If Bryce still has the same off the wall UI elements it would be a problem. Interesting that someone at Corel had the same idea for a "junior" version of Bryce. I sent my Poser Jr. idea to CL so you're my witnesses if the use it and don't want to pay me :-).

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

It sounds like it's already possible to at least import the Poser stuff (as obj?) into Bryce and fiddle with the textures. I don't know if Bryce has any scripting or an apy you can use but it seems like if it did you could pretty much write a utility to read a pz3 and pull it into Bryce textured and ready to go - assuming they're no subjective decisions involved. Worst case, even if Bryce is "dumb," it might conceivably be possible to write code that read in the pz3 and "automated" Bryce by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. And then again, of course, perhaps not. One difficulty that arises in doing that with Poser is it's use of non standard UI elements in Windows and probably the Mac as well. If Bryce still has the same off the wall UI elements it would be a problem. Interesting that someone at Corel had the same idea for a "junior" version of Bryce. I sent my Poser Jr. idea to CL so you're my witnesses if the use it and don't want to pay me :-).

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

And look at the price difference. How many people not sure if >they want to get into this 3D stuff will spend those bucks on >a high-end program? Besides which I venture to guess that Sure, but we were talking about people who are not just now "getting into this 3D stuff", we were talking about those of us who bought Poser 1 and Bryce 1 in the mid 90s and simply can't get the functionality out of them that we now need. >With the proliferation of high speed connections, the web >is increasingly going to be used for publishing more >sophisticated 3d content. At the moment, it's mainly Don't hold your breath for that. It's been tried for years and even with high speed connections, there really isn't much use for 3D "on the web". Now, 3D data embedded into applications that are driven by real time data over high speed network connections is another thing. For instance, you will soon go to the doctor and much of your body will have been scanned and translated into 3 dimensional models for diagnosing and study. But this is something entirely differnt than what Poser does. >But to discount a tool that still works well, just because >its not new The "newness" of a tool is not in question, the modernity of it's features and functionality are. Don't confuse the map for the territory. >Ouch...sorry to be the one to open your eyes; let's look at >galleries and how many pics are in each... You have !!GOT!! to be kidding with this bull$hit! LOL That is the most rediculous thing anyone has said yet. Ok, fine, let's play in your sandbox for a minute. Any Bryce or Poser user can download a character, a pose, and some clothes, push a couple of buttons, render and poop out some "art", then promptly post it to the online image gallery of thier choice. The average Lightwave, Max, Maya, etc user will produce only a fraction of that volume because they are performing far more complex tasks, like setting up advanced particle and dynamics simulations, or modeling a unique character that everyone else isn't using, and creating for it an animation rig of high enough quality that it doesn't fold and crease at all the joints. And then lets not forget that while you were busy pooping out 512 Poser images, the users of the other programs were working on movies, television shows, commercials, product adds, behavioural simulation demonstrations, and all number of other cool things that exist outside of the relatively tiny world of online "art" galleries. >If you can't draw with a 99 cent pencil, you aren't going >to be able to draw with a 10 dollar pencil. I see the point you are trying to make, but it's simply not true. Yoyoma could not produce the same quality of music on a $100 cello from sears, you can't win the Indy 500 with a Ford Focus, Michelangelo would not have created the same art with finger paints, and Final Fantasy could not be made using Poser. You need the right tool for the right job. Look guys, Bryce and Poser are cool, but they don't do everything. That doesn't make anyone bad people for using them, but defending them like they are the holy grail is really rediculous.

Sure, but we were talking about people who are not just now "getting into this 3D stuff", we were talking about those of us who bought Poser 1 and Bryce 1 in the mid 90s and simply can't get the functionality out of them that we now need. No we're not. Quoll...you're totally missing the point. That being there are enough Poser and Bryce users (and new ones every day) so that the cost of developing a tie-in would be recouped. And the fact neither program can do "everything" is beside the point.

Is bull$hit the same as bullshit or does it cost more? I wonder how close we could get to Final Phantasy using Poser with the Maya Plugin? It may be doable

You don't need Maya to recreate Final Fantasy - you need an army of top-notch animators. Most shots in FF weren't rendered in Maya anyway, like most large-scale productions it's PRMan that does the number crunching.

"You don't need Maya to recreate Final Fantasy - you need an army of top-notch animators." I agree all you need to do" Final Fantasy" is a moderday HARDWARE ACCELERATED program with FBX support ,particle Dynamics,collision detection, REAL volumetric lighting,MULTIPASS RENDERING, shader nodes, network rendering, file referencing for real team collboration. and an optical human mocap system.

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Attached Link: Poser to bryce

IM curious why this plugin is not a popular solution other than being PC only it seems to work well whos tried it??

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It seems foolish for either company to try to hold up the other for megabucks. They both stand to gain, so they should share the costs involved. Maybe what they're really concerned about is a potential competitor looking at their code. In that case, they should fund a third party to do the development, which might even be cheaper. This same money issue has apparently limited Poser 5s face room to the included figures, with CL supposedly wanting big money from Dax to add Vicky and Mike. In that case though, since CL had to license the technology themselves, they're probably trying to recoup their investment, understandable, but not necessarily the best long term idea. I think rather than investing in FireFly, CL perhaps should have created an interface to a third party renderer the way Daz is doing with Studio. FlyerX has done a great job on enabling us to render Poser scenes in POVRay.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

"REAL volumetric lighting" What's the difference between real and non-real volumetric lighting? I think rather than investing in FireFly, CL perhaps should have created an interface to a third party renderer the way Daz is doing with Studio. If you compare 3Delight and FireFly, their features are mostly identical: "3Delight is an advanced RenderMan-compliant renderer featuring a wide variety of features such as depth of field, motion blur, surface displacement, atmospheric effects, selective ray tracing and global illumination (ambient occlusion and color bleeding)." The only exceptions here would be the lack of GI in FireFly (The renderer itself is capable of GI, it just lacks the appropriate nodes. Pixels/Tempest ships with a node for ambient occlusion.), where on the other hand, 3Delight has nothing comparable to the material room (shaders for 3Delight are written in a C-like programming language). Still, iif you want to use 3Delight with Poser 5, go ahead and download my plugin, it's free and the MacOS X version is in the works too.

Attached Link: Dynamic volumetrics

***"What's the difference between real and non-real volumetric lighting?"*** I mean the ability to define the appearence of suspended dust and animated wind that wil be maintained during dynamic camera moves and animation perhaps its been updated but when this pseudo volumetrics was announced months ago early users indicated it required a fairly broad background object for the effect to render correctly. has it been updated to render with no background object and will maintain its appearance during animation??

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Why should it change appearance during animation? You can make it do that if you want by attaching time-varying shader nodes to it, but otherwise it's static. The requirement for background geometry is there for all RenderMan renderers I know of, e.g. it works just the same way in 3Delight. I could not find an explicit description of it in the RenderMan Specificiation 3.2, but it appears as if Pixar's PRMan is also calling Atmosphere shaders only where geometry is.

so if you are doing a space scene animation with a volumetric search light beaming from the nose of your craft the light wont render against an empty space background in pixars renderman but will render in MAX LW and C4DXL????

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I don't have PRMan to verify it, but yes, it appears so. All the RenderMan compliant renderers I tried do so and the RenderMan specification indicates that Atmosphere shaders are not being applied to empty spaces.

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"Don't hold your breath for that. It's been tried for years and even with high speed connections, there really isn't much use for 3D "on the web"." Well the lack of infrastructure and the small number of current applications doesn't equate to there no being a use for it. Don't forget the reason Meta dropped Poser and it's other apps to concentrate on that very area. Now I thought from the beginning this was a poor decision, but only because the timing wasn't premature. It seemes that for years, people touted the 'year of the' network, or client-server or today, web services. None of them happened overnight but they happened. Currently, there are retail sites where you can view clothing, cars and other products in 3D. These are just the tip of the iceberg. The possibilities for training alone are enormous. Applications like Eon Studio (link) are already being looked at for Homeland Security training and simulation. The military already makes enormous use of 3D simulation for training and missino planning. The same thing is going to happen in the civilian sector as well and the internet will be the logical, cost effective way to deliver that content. Eventually, no one will dream of riding around with a realtor looking at homes when they can do a 3D walkthrough of 100's of them on the web. You won't buy clothing without trying it on your 3D avatar first to see how it looks. It certainly beats crowded mall parking lots and cramped fitting rooms. Why trek to the store and look at sofas trying to guess how they'll look in your living room when you can download a 3D model and view it in a 3D scene of the actual room. And surprise, most of these applications won't require the high end features that Pixar or Disney use. On the contrary, they'd be a waste of bandwidth. Even in it's current state, Poser created content pops up in places like local TV commercials. Someone at Renderotica was recently looking for artists do do cover isslutrations for books. People are using Poser to make small movies. There are varying requirements and it's simply unrealistic to suppose that everyone doing even "professional" work needs, wants, can afford or has the time to master high end applications. That's why there are a probably a lot more business trips flown on Cessnas or Beechcraft than on Gulfstreams or Learjets. In short, I think the uses of 3D on the web are limited only by imagination. At this point, we just need fatter pipes. If you build it, they will come.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken