Just wondering if Poser could ever take on Maya, after all both are for creating character animations. So I was wondering if Poser could ever be a professional tool.
Poser is very frustrating to use if you are trying to customise a default figure. I've managed to create some nice distorted faces using the face room and magnets but when I get round to animating them strange things happen to them so I have to consign a good face to the bin. I've been using Poser for a number of years now and I realise that there are a lot of annoying things about it, but I still like it and I have invested time learning it. I'm very frustrated with Poser because I want to create my own figures (so that it's not identifiable as being a Poser figure) but it seems impossible to do this. I have thought about purchasing Maya a million times but besides it being very expensive I keep thinking Poser should be able to do character animation as it's designed specifically for the purpose. I'm really hoping that Poser 6 will be more professional and I hope that one day I will say that I'm glad that I didn't have to go down the Maya route, which to be honest I can't really afford anyway. I just want a program that I can create my own characters and animate them - is that too much to ask?

eecir

No. Poser isn't a remote threat to Maya. If you want to 'creat your own characters and animate them' you might wanna take a look at Animation Master. It's only $250.00 and the character animation toolset is better than any in the industry, including Maya (many Maya pros do their personal projects with Animation Master). There is downside to it, though, mainly that it won't fit neatly into a poly pipeline. But if you're a hobbyist you probably don't care about that.

Message edited on: 08/20/2004 16:02

I don't know about professional animations, but many graphics professionals already use Poser 4 & 5. Check out Scientific American sometime, I believe their artists are still using "Posette" and P4 Man. Periodically you see reports from various areas about "Poser sightings." But Maya, nah ... the aim of Poser is not to be as robust as that tool.

Have you seen LOTR? Then you have seen some of what Maya can do. But one must put things into perspective. Maya is a studio application - it is made to work as part of a production environment. Scenes like those in LOTR were done using dozens of 3D personnel (just watch the credits and be in awe) and even more rendering farms over many years. It has a learning curve that's basically just a vertical line. Maya is a great all-around 3D app, but you'll pay for it with both time and money. Poser is a hobbyist/single-user application (and low end at that). Poser has potential, but is definitely not up to real CA tasks. It's original conception was for quick posed models for traditional artists. I would consider some of the more mid-end apps like C4D, LW, XSI, MotionBuilder, BodyStudio, Messiah:Animate for doing CA. Your workflow, cashflow, and milage will vary undoubtedly. Get the demos and ask in 3D forums like PostForum or 3DCafe about the direction you want to head and what software is geared towards that goal.

The search for a good character animation program for a hobbyist took me quite a while. Here are some of the quotes from industry pros that I dug up in my travels: I have to agree with Martin here. I use Maya at work and AM at home, so maybe I can give it a shot at explaining the differences (hope this isn't against the forum rules...it probably is). Firstly, AM bones can be manipulated with IK controls, while having keys saved as FK. This is brilliant and is THE main thing that puts AM bones ahead of the rest! It lets you pose the character quickly with IK while still getting nice curved FK interpolation. In addition, you can lock a bone so that it's not included in the IK. Maya has nothing like this, and I've yet to find a way to set up anything like it there. Maya also had trouble with quaternion interpolation, which is a requierment for a system like this to work (haven't checked the latest version to verify this). Secondly, AM has bones as opposed to Maya's joints. I guess this comes down to personal preference, but in Maya you need two joints to create a bone. This just meanst a more messy Outliner (Project Workspace), and more to make sure is working correctly. It also impossible to tell how a single joint is oriented by just looking at it in Maya. Thridly, Maya joints have three numbers to define their rotation (Rotate, Rotate Axis and Joint Orient), which has some advantages, but mostly just confuses people and gets in the way. The same can usually be achieved by just using two joints/bones. "Thank you for your suggestions. We appreciate the thought you put into them. I feel A:M's bones are the best implementation on the planet, but they could always be improved. A:M bones are FAR superior to Maya's, but maybe there's something there we can learn from. So, again, thank you for bringing it up." "And "what is better about A:M bones?" If I were to mention one thing only, I would say "smartskin". This tends to be far more powerful then you can possibly realise at first glance - it is a remarkable technology. Maya users would die for something like this." "Ultimately, different programs work differently, and it always takes time to get efficient in a new program. For most A:M users, Maya would appear exceptionally hard to use, clumsy and confusing at the first attempt. A:M is a magical program which is well worth learning. A:M is a purer and more fully integrated design than hybrid animation programs like Maya. As with all programs tied to a solid design philosophy, you either embrace A:M and its philosophies and have a ball, or you fight the A:M design philosophies and have a miserable time."

Oops. Just realized most of those quotes were about bones, an important issue, but certainly not the only issue. lol. sorry.

LOTR, or almost any other feature film is not pure Maya. In most cases, studios use a customized pipeline with proprietary software where Maya (extended with numerous plugins) is just one piece of the puzzle. Final renders, for example, happen most of the time in PRMan or Mental Ray and not the Maya renderer.

I really want to stick with Poser because I've invested in it and I've produced a small amount of professional work with it. All I would like is for Poser to be taken seriously in the professional world. If Poser could be developed as an animation tool then have your animations exported to high end 3D software packages I think that would be a massive improvement. I think Poser has the potential to be a program for creating/customising figures and animating them in such a way that this process is streamlined; so that character animation can be carried out faster than any available current program. It could then be added to the high end programs for added effects and rendering. Maybe Shade or Vue would become the perfect partner for this new and improved Poser. I also know plugins for Maya are being developed. Poser 6 I think will define the course of the product I just hope it goes in the direction I want. eecir

I'd be tickled if Poser went in that direction, but I'm not gonna hold my breath ;)

stewer, well, duh... I never mentioned Maya as solely used for LOTR, now did I? ;0)

I think Character Studio for 3dsMax is a bigger threat to Maya for character development. Especially now that it's an integrated part of Max 7.

I'm kinda curious what might develope eventually with Poser and Shade, too. You see little mention of Shade in this forum, but it's been around a long time (17 years?) and has quite a large installed user base in Japan. How well it will be accepted by the rest of the world, I don't know. I imagine with so many registered users at its price point it must have something going for it, but I can't make head nor tail of the demo. lol.

Yeah Shade is a bit strange - it doesn't seem very intuitive. I have a feeling that Poser 6 may be more like Shade i.e. spline based. I'm not sure if I'd like that but Animation Master uses that method and it seems to work well. I did toy with getting Animation Master but no demo as far as I'm aware of has ever been available. I'm curious about Curiouslabs - I just wonder when they're going to give us an inkling of what Poser 6 will be like - it's been nearly 2 years since Poser 5 came out and some info would help my buying decisions.

Well, the general trend in software would seem to bode well for your wishes. You can get free or inexpensive applications today that do most or all of what only a few years ago required expensive programs like PhotoShop, Excel, etc. So, you might expect that in a few years, Poser might indeed be more "Mayalike." On the downside, there just doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in such applications outside communities like these. Even after all these years, there is no real comparable application to Poser except the as yet unrealized potential of latecomer Daz Studio. Compared to the dizzying array of wordprocessors, photo editors, etc., Poser does really stand pretty much alone. Without a mass market of home or business users, it's hard to see huw anyone could afford the development costs necessary to create the type of application you want and still sell it for a price most of us could afford. CL has had problems staying afloat, even given Poser's more modest goals. Even if they (CL) were able afford the time and money to make a more high end application, there's no guarantee that they'd be able to achieve any more penetration into the elite and insular world of studio level CG, where people have a lot of their time and money invested in learning and supporting things like Maya and Max. Also, if you want animation, the fact is that the vast majority of Poser users it seems, don't do much animation. It seems to me that CL has a choice between developing in areas where most of their users want to go or taking a flyer on trying to break into the high end. Given a limited development budget, I think most users would opt for expanded FaceRoom functionality, easier lighting/posing/rendering, etc. ahead of animation or interfacing to high end apps. No doubt this is frustrating for those who've already hit a wall in the latter areas but CL has to pay the rent first. The best solution would have been to develop Poser 5 with a true plugin architecture, allowing others to address these areas, while CL concentrated on the core app. Maybe in Poser 6? At the moment, I just hope that CL has found a semi-permanent home and Poser continues.

Who Cares? Maya does it's thing & poser does it's thing, they're both tools that can be used at different times & that's all that really matters.

"...they're both tools that can be used at different times & that's all that really matters." No one can argue with that. You always dream of the perfect application though, a little of this, a little of that... That's the beauty of plugins.

I just think for the simple act of animating a character in the future Poser should out do Maya. Maya has a whole heap of stuff bolted to it that can only slow down the animation process. Poser has to improve in the future as it's one of the few dedicated character animation programs available. With character animation taking off as it has e- frontier would be silly not to exploit the market. Do get me wrong Maya is a great program I just can't afford it and I do believe in the potential of Poser, Vue, Shade integration. I guess I'll just have to wait for Poser 6 and see what happens.

" I just think for the simple act of animating a character in the future Poser should out do Maya. Maya has a whole heap of stuff bolted to it that can only slow down the animation process. Poser has to improve in the future as it's one of the few dedicated character animation programs available."

The "heap of stuff" Maya has bolted to it are actually there (for the most part) to assist in the animation process. Just about everything in Maya is ultimately geared toward complex animation.

In order for Poser to even make a dent, it would need to be restructured from the ground up. I'm not saying the current animation tools in Poser are horrible (they're actually quite sufficient), but they suffer from a stop-and-go workflow and efficiency problems that need to be addressed.

If you've ever seen someone adept with Maya or 3dsMax or Lightwave do their work, then you'd understand how efficient those programs can be compared to Poser. Of course, Poser makes things a lot easier in the fact that you don't have to start from scratch on a project, but mostly all the "extras" that are integrated into the high end programs are there to assist the modeler/animator in their job, and contrary to common misconception, they actually do just that.

Poser has great potential though, but I don't expect it will come anywhere near what these other programs like Maya are capable of. Not without totally abandoning it's base market. Message edited on: 08/21/2004 15:30

Poser beats Maya in some cases, now before i get yelled at LOL, think about it, if you want a quick animation showing, lets say the correct way to lift a box.....you wouldn't need all the bells and whistles of Maya, the job could be done very quickly in poserm if its for work, time is money...and you see these type of things all the time on adverts and discovery channel type programs...Steve

"With character animation taking off as it has..." This is true to a certain extent. Poser fills the animation need, as Steve says for some in-house work, local TV, even amateur films. Poser still images show up in a lot of surprising places as well. My feeling though was that Poser would have achieved much greater popularity. I thought that as soon as an inexpensive and relatively easy way to create 3D human figures was available, people would flock to it the same way they have desktop publishing, photo editing and even "movie" making. Everybody and his brother seems to be cranking out their own Christmas cards, editing their digital photos and messing with a camcorder. Surely, there must be millions of people who gave up on art because they couldn't draw more than a stick figure. Those are the folks I thought would be snapping up Poser. Not so, at least not millions or even hundreds of thousands I imagine. Maybe they don't exist, maybe Poser is still too hard to use, maybe it's marketing or maybe there are just too many people who're uncomfortable with naked polygons, I don't know.

Have a look in the Cinema4D forum. Kuroyume0161 has some posts outlining hiw extensive work on a fully featured Poser to C4D plugin including full animation. That may be a more cost effective way to go.

C4D is very expensive once you add in basic plugs.

If I was going to spend that kind of money I would buy Maya.

C4D is fun, though. For a hundred bucks Maxon will sell you the full version of the 'only 2 or 3 years old' XL 6.3 which is a lotta bang for the buck, but it's pretty weak for character work.

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.

"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." Well, one could argue that point. 3dsMax, for instance, has a HUGE selection of plugins (many for free, but also many for pay) that are much more robust than any other 3d software out there. The plugin libraries for 3ds are vast. Plus, there are companies like Digimation who's sole business is producing plugin content for 3dsMax, much like Daz produces content for Poser. Not to mention all the .3ds/.max specific models for sale out there dwarfs those available for Poser. Dosche 3D makes tons of content specifically for 3dsMax also. So what I'm trying to say is that Poser isn't the only 3D software people are willing to pay money for add ons, and in reality, doesn't have nearly the economy of some other apps.

I have Carrara but I have decided not to spend any more money on upgrading this. I've been looking at 3D applications for ages now and have decided that if I'm going to buy another program it would be Maya as it's the best application for the kind of work I want to do. The only affordable application I will buy (if it's worth it) is Poser. I have to use this until I can afford Maya or Poser starts doing the kind of things I want it to do.

I never mentioned Maya as solely used for LOTR, now did I? ;0) I know you didn't, but many people act as if Maya were the one over er kill app that renders Monsters Inc with a single mouse click.

"...but many people act as if Maya were the one over er kill app that renders Monsters Inc with a single mouse click." It isn't? Next you'll be telling me that Prozac won't make me happy, steroids won't make me an Olympic champion and a Ferrari won't get me laid.