Hi! I recently bought poser 4 and found ut that there's actually not much you can do with it. I was wondering what should I do to learn how to make really cool and realistic looking characters? There are so many programs that are on the market now days and I need some advice on what to buy. Which would be best for designing characters? Lightwave? 3D Studio Max 3.1???? And what would be the best way to learn how learn to create characters? A book? Graphic school? Please if any of you pros out there could give me some adive then I'm all ears!!!

Hummm, that's odd, my husband thought poser was a toy until I did some videos for a project we're working on, he was blown away. Any program takes work, poser just allows you to do some things easier and faster. I own Lightwave and I love it, but I still use Poser for a lot of scut work. You need to look around to see what people have done in poser, I think you'll change your mind. BTW, the model on the cover of the lightwave 6 book sold for millions......sigh I still have such a long way to go! 8^) Marque

Millions? I don't think so. I am not saying that you are lying M, just misinformed, that's all. I have nothing but respect for you, and hope to one day turn out my art and models as quickly and beautifully as you do. Please do not take offence to this post, as I mean none. I just believe that this is an impossibility. What kind of profit can be made by buying one model, one, for millions of dollars? I have never heard of a project that justifies this kind of frivolous overspending. I may be wrong, but I highly doubt it. Let's just say I am in the know. If I have offended anyone, I am truly sorry. I love this community and the welcome(mostly) feeling I have here. I just don't want these kids coming up into 3D now, which seem to number in the thousands these days, to believe that they will be making millions on one model, even one perfect model. For the most part we are thankless worker ants, with all credit for our work(not to mention most of the proceeds) going to some jackass sitting in a huge office on the 6th floor........ Dammit, I started rambling again. Someone just smack me next time I do that, hehe. Marque, I have nothing but the utmost respect for you. I do hope this causes no rifts or animosity. Voodoo(Jason)

Not to mention the fact that it easily could have just been a full body or head scan of a human but I don't know. As far as poser being a toy, Well, I would have to say that is pretty much just that. I have tried thousands of times to get reasonable realist movement out of my characters and never have bee able to without using mimic or BVH files. If I use spline keyframing it always screws up something. For example.... I have a guy sitting on a stool. After talking to camera 1 for a bit he turns right to talk to camera 2. Okay that part was easily fixed from pretzel errors by just using the constant tool to a few frames before the turn. Now, I want him to appear to take small breaths inbetween sentances. This takes subtlety. I worked on one parameter at a time. First round was as far as I got. I made him bend is abdomen periodically, then I was goint to slightly increace the scale of his chest in time with the abdomen but I did not get that far, Just by bending the abdomen back and forth periodically his body now turns back to camera 1 and his head stays looking to the right of camera 2. This obcourse was not planned and bending the abdomen should in no way cause him to turn. Its absolutely the stupidest thing I have ever scene. With spline keyframing all you should need to do is set 3 points your first KF, the second KF being identical to the first, make your change(if the part is doing something different, set that frame and then to help lock out trouble on this side your last keyframe in the move and then another just like it if you are gonna do another different move. THats how I have to do it in Poser. Truespace however I only have to set 3 keframes if I have different movements. I suppose I could use linear but then that wont look real and I'll have to compensate by adding even more keys for acceration/deceleration. The graph window is truely the cruddiest one I have ever had the displesure of working with. It never opens at the current frame, always at frame 1. and it is very difficult to move the slide bar. The track ball is somewhat useless, No physical representations of cameras for easy placement. The axis are not marked when you display the origin so from on persons model to the next its hard figuring out whats what. Especially when Truespace display theirs and is different. Like, Truespace's Z axis is the vertical wheras I believe Poser's is X. Despite all that I do like Poser but it is very poorly designed. I keep telling Weinberg that he needs to see how Truespace and Lightwave are put together. Lets put in perspective. Lightwave would be my $20 toy. Truespace, $15. And Poser, well, $5. I think I am being generous too. If I sound anoid its just cause I spent 7 hours trying animate my figure and its now Sunday 7:38am. Now after all that. If someone like oh, you Marque could clue me in on animating I would appreciate it. I followed the tutorial to the letter once and I recall my animation was all screwed up then too. Go figure. JanP

Oh a please forgive the spelling errors. After all it is late, uhm early, Uhm whatever. JanP

Poser uses Y as the vertical axis some programs use Z but most are heading towards the Y way :o)......Steve

You need to do some reading, that model and the concept she was created for were in fact sold for millions. I never said she was my model, sorry if you got the wrong idea! I wish I was that good! lol Her name is Annanova, and she was created as a news broadcaster. I said I have a long way to go meaning I have a lot to learn before I can create one like her. Would I pay millions for the model and the concept? No. But it is the truth, do some research and you will see that I'm not pulling your leg. I don't have any reason to lie to anyone in the forum, don't have time for that. The more I learn..the more I learn..I have so much to learn! 8^) Marque

I'm not saying that Poser is a high-end animation suite. It's a $250 program. I'm having problems with animations too, but I wouldn't go into something too detailed in Poser, I'll take it into something else. I've learned not to get too frustrated, I don't expect too much from the lower-end programs and so am not disappointed if they don't perform like lightwave or max. But I'm finding that there are some things that it does that don't take too much. I'm not trying to make someone breathe. There is supposed to be a tutorial out there somewhere on breathing, is that the one you followed? I have problems with a lot of the tutorials, sometimes the simplest things evade me. I never thought it would take this much work, but I guess that's why lots of us aren't in Hollywood right now cranking out the next big movie. 8^) Marque

Hey Marque, I didn't really know that it sold for so much, I never really read much about it, but now I want to. Everytime I look at that picture I'm just amazed by it. Lightwave though was used in many Hollywood films for the realism of space combat and effects it can make. It's one of the main programs Babylone 5 used. But then again, if you really want something well done, and just as good as Hollywood stuff, you'll be working on your project for a long time. Like the video I'm currently trying to do, I might be working on it for about a year. (Yay for me) Greeg72

Good luck with it, you know sometimes the person working out of the den may not get it done as fast but it will probably be great! We may not be Hollywood, but we bad! lol I just never realize how much work it really takes. You might check out her site at www.ananova.com I can't get her to play so I will try later. Marque

Just found out you need real player version 8, at least the free version to see her. Off to work. Marque

Uhm I've seen Annanova a few times and unless they recently updated here look, the LW 6 portrait is not her I don't think. I'll have to check in tto it. The tutorial I was refering to was the ones in the Poser manual. JanO

Hummmm, in the book on the inside cover it says it's her and gives the website url. Marque

I think Annanova renders herself to fit your display device. Like on a cell phone she'd be ASCI art. =) They've really toned her hair down. It used to be blue or green.

Hi! It's the guy who posted this message. I've got another question for all you pros out there!!! I took a strole in the poser art gallery in this website and was amazed at all the great and realistic looking characters and was wondering how do they do it??? I've tried almost everything in poser but I still can't really get anywhere. I mean, I can't even create my own character with a new face! I mean all poser let's you do is adjust the eyes mouth frown and all that kinda stuff but no matter how you try you can't really create a face of your own, how do you get about this??? I'm asuming that the images in the poser art gallery have not been done with poser alone but by importing them to another thinggi like 3D Studio max and Lightwave! So is it possible to create a really good and realistic looking character by using poser for on it's own??? And if it is, where do I start??

You have to make magnets and morph targets. You should read up on those, they allow you to make the face that you want. You can get some morph targets in the poser freestuff area and see how those work out. As for most people, I think they mostly use poser to do the actual model, the other programs are mainly for background, postwork, clothings, objects and so on. However some can be used to alter the look of a character like in lightwave, but I don't think many people are using that program.... at least I think... Greeg72

The Poser 4 models and the Vickie and Mike figures have many built-in morph targets. Click on the head, and adjust the shape of the face, eyes, nose, mouth, etc. It takes some time, but you can create very distictive looking faces. (Also, there are many additional morphs available at sites like morphworld, etc.) As for more realistic renders, again, it's a matter of taking the time to work with the program. You can use texture maps to make the skin look more realistic; play with the highlight colors and values as well. Try manipulating the lighting -- use spot lights to punch it up. Transparancy maps can make the hair and eyelashes (and eyebrows on Mike) much softer and more natural. Finally, while you can render fine images just using Poser, to really polish the image you should take it into Photoshop or the like and touch it up. Get rid of all the jaggies and artifacts, draw or paint hair and clothing, adjust the levels, try some filters to liven things up. Check the links here and at other sites. There are lots of tutorials out there by people who have mastered different areas of the program. It's like any artistic endevour: you need to put effort in to get results out! Good luck!

There are two Ananovas: The first is the hi-res model you see on the cover of LW6 and the close-up promotional stills on her site in the A-Files. The second is the lo-res one they actually use in the animations. My guess is that they discovered late in the game that the model they created in LW had too many polys to successfully render animations on the kind of deadlines they have, and they're holding off on using her until desktop workstations are fast enough. When I was looking carefully at some of the A-files pics, I noticed something curious and posted this back in September. It's the same exact mesh as Posette. Now, Zygote sold this mesh in other formats for other systems, and Posette was originally designed in LightWave itself (the animation engine Digital Animations uses for Ananova.com). Zygote has no formal record of designing this figure, and DA refuses to answer emails asking about Ananova's geometry. Some interim work with the basic Posette head morphs allowed me to duplicate her head and face shape perfectly and nearly all of her features, with the exception of a few nose, mouth and eye points which are possible with the morphs freely available at MorphWorld (morphs which predate Ananova.com). Her eyes are the most revamped feature from the original mesh. Look carefully at the canned Ananova animations available for download in .AVI format and ask yourself if this figure has even the number of polys in Vicky's head. (10000 v. 3000) The 50 pages in the LightWave manual on organically modeling a head from scratch are worth the price of the book alone. Sadly, it seems you really need LW to do most of the tricks they demonstrate for building each part of the face.

Um.. the original Posette was created with scans and remodeled in Nichimen N-World (now Mirai) and Wavefront Visualizer 4x.

My bad. Mortier's The Poser Handbook had a photo of one of Zygote's workstations with Posette in development and I mistook one app for another. Either that or Mortier told the artist to put something up on the screen to look good.

Ah hah so it is a diffrenet model You know, Annanova is so over hyped I mean she sucks. The news delivery that is. haptek.com offers real time awesome looking 3D characters(full body or just head) that can speak any text in a number of langusges that ican be automatically entered in the script files. In fact long befor Annanova even existed Haptek and SONY were talking with each other about "news on demand". It really hasn't happened yet but the fact is is that hapteks 3D figures that use JAVA(and needs an accelerator card) delivers news truely on demand. Whereas Annanova has to be rendered first You do have to download a free plugin but its quicker than downloading RP 8 and there is very little waite time for the info to flow. Just the time it takes to load the JAVA applet. I'll do a screen capture of the head I use on my site and post it here. you tell me wether or not that head looks real. Back with the pic in a second

One of the reasons I like Poser is that I think this is the future of User Interface design. Mimic is another example. News is Okay but what about ReadMe/Help files?

Posers's interface is certainly "pretty." But I do not see it as the future. If it is we are in serious trouble JanP