Hi,
I have seen ads for Poser over the years and have wanted to try it but never really understood it well enough to think that it would be usefull on one of my video projects versus a full blow 3D app like Lightwave or Cinema 4D. I do simple stuff in these apps like logo animations or technical illustrations, not character animation.

I have a client that does workout videos. They want to make a graphic for use in advertising in which a woman morphs from being overweight to being slim while dancing as in an exercise routine. The image can be in silhouette so photorealistic isn't needed. The whole thing would be around 5 seconds.

What I have seen on Poser's website leads me to believe it might be the best route to create this.

Is it possible to take a purchased figure change it to being overweight and then morph it to being slim?

Can you apply purchased motion capture data to the model instead of keyframing a dance routine?

Can both the mocap and the morph happen at the same time?

Can you render out to quicktime with fields to get proper broadcast video?

Thanks for any info.

Is it possible to take a purchased figure change it to being overweight and then morph it to being slim?

Yes. Poser comes with a female figure that has an "endomorph" (fat) morph. IMHO, it's not very good, though. Still, you might want to see if Jessi, the Poser 6 female, is good enough before you buy anything else.

Mostly likely, you will want DAZ3d.com's Victoria 3 figure. The base is free, and you can add your own morphs if you're skilled in a modelling program. You can also buy her morph pack, which is very reasonably priced. It contains pretty good morphs for making her look chunky.

You can use BVH files with Poser, and they should work at the same time as the morphs.

Dunno about broadcast video. I've never had occasion to do that. Someone else here probably knows, though.

1. Yes. What you do with the output (renders) is strictly within all EULAs. 2. Yes. 3. Yes. 4. Not sure. Always best to save out as images and combine in a video app (QT, Premiere, FC, etc.) anyway.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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As an option, Poser allows you to save individual frames of an animation. It will do it automatically as one of it's "Make Movie" options. Then you can take these individual frames and combine them in some other video application. This is the best way to do it because if there is a crash, you can pick up where you left off.

It's not only possible, what you have described is pretty simple as far as learning curve goes for Poser. It wouldn't take you long at all to figure out how to do it once you get Poser. (Except regarding rendering to Quicktime; your only render options are .avi, Flash, and individual frames.)

If you are on a Mac, then Quicktime is available instead of .avi files.

Thanks everyone for the responses. I have purchased Poser, bought the "Poser 6 Revealed" book and have embarked on trying to figure it out. Yes Quicktime is available although I can't see that you can choose between codecs, it's just a very simple output interface. It's good enought to get out to After Effects which is where all the graphic work for the project will be assembled.
Thanks again!

I found that the quicktime render has all the normal choices of codecs, alpha channels, color bit depth that one would expect. Now I just need to get it set up for 720X485 nonsquare mode.