I'm looking to develop an animation with 100s of characters in one scene. Can poser do this and how do I go about doing this? Is there a tutorial? easy replicate? Thanks!!

First thing you need to do is upgrade to a Supercomputer...

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You would probably need to do multiple renders and then composite them. Start with the furthest back and work forward. Lots of TV and movie stuff is done this way. Some of the better desktop video programs could likely handle this, like Adobe Premiere and others in that Prosumer range. You can learn a lot more info at the link to Digital Video.

Little Dragon and (I think) Jim Burton has bot made scenes with loads and loads of Poser characters, all in one scene. In Poser. It can be done. The trick is to find some relatively low poly figures. Don't expect to be able to load 100 V3's into Poser. But 100 Posette could be possible, depending of course of your computer and how much RAM you have.

The question is, do you absolutely NEED to do this directly in Poser. Sure, it can be done... but that doesn't mean you have to do it. Poser isn't the best software for such a task. Creating a still scene with 100's of figures is one thing, but for animation is another. Do you have any other 3D software? There's a variety of ways you could achieve this in other software a lot easier than in Poser, depending on what you have available and what your budget is. Is this a serious project or something just for fun? Since this is for animation, how REALISTIC do you need the crowd to be (do you need them animated as well, with random realistic movements)? There is software out there specifically designed for such things, but I must warn you... it's VERY expensive, but the results are professional quality. Here's an example: Massive Software You can also do some great crowds rather easily in Character Studio for 3dsMax if you have that. It can also be done via instancing on low-poly figures much easier than you could do it directly in Poser. So I think the answer you seek depends on your needs.

what about if you pasted the figure to the background a 100 times in different poses.It could be done that way. For A still pic O whoops he wants to animate it good luck. let me know how long it take s

Message edited on: 08/19/2004 08:31

Use lo poly figures or, if you have something simple like people running around, render a single person as a video clip, then use that video clip as texture on 100 simple squares.

" Use lo poly figures or, if you have something simple like people running around, render a single person as a video clip, then use that video clip as texture on 100 simple squares." Good solution, but it could be problematic. What happens if you need the camera animated to where the tops of the squares would be within the range of sight? It would kill the illusion of depth. The low poly figures are probably the best way to go, but if you need an animated crowd, you're in for a possible animation nightmare. I think the best advice is to animate and render the crowd in "layers", and composit the final shot in a good video editor. There's a mat material available (by Stewer I believe) that will assist in compositing. Either that, or outsource the project to a more capable software. Again, it all depends on your needs. If this is a professional project that you're on a budget with, I'd avoid using Poser for such a thing. You'll be dealing with all kinds of workflow and stability issues when you start getting that deep with figures, and it could put you totally out of your timeframe.

The low poly figures are probably the best way to go, but if you need an animated crowd, you're in for a possible animation nightmare." A good opportunity to learn Python scripting ;-)