Attached Link: Matador render

I have occasionally seen Poser prejudice in other forums. That's not saying that every artist, using another program or medium, takes a snobbish look at Poser, but there are some that do. Those critics aren't usually the best or most secure artists. The best artists, that are comfortable with their talents, don't need to spend a lot of time knocking the work of others. A lot of criticisms against some Poser art are quite valid.

One simple, but effective critique, is It looks like Poser. If a person can, with one quick look of a piece of art, tell that it was Poser, they're seeing very specific things wrong with the image, that are common problems with the program and models, that detract from whatever the artist is saying.

Bad poses are a common problem where that alone detracts from the image. It is extraordinarily hard to get natural realistic pose. As much work as I put into it, I can come back months later and see things that aren't as good as they should be. I'm looking at my Matador render and, although I still overall like the image, there are things in the poses that are starting to bother me. I was never happy with the matador's hand holding the cape and it bothers me more now, but I hit a point where I didn't think I could adequately fix it. I reworked the woman's pose a lot and I'm now less satisfied with how it looks as a clapping pose. The fingers don't look right. The foot, closest to the ground, has an odd bend to it and should be touching the ground.

There's something about Poser renders that often leaves objects and characters looks as if they're floating and I'm not sure how to fix that within Poser. I wound up having to paint the cat's shadow and the cat still doesn't seem to be solidly grounded.

There must be lots of other valid criticisms. What is the best way of fixing them?

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

I don't like the way light behaves in Poser. My fix is a common one. Export and render in a different program.

I run the Photoshop blur tool set to darken over all the edges of things overlapping each other... esp. where things meet the floor. I use depth of field, and I boost my contrast and de-saturate.

have a problem with backgrounds; getting a realistic shadow on it. Aside from that, the only problems are my ignerince..;)

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

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

The problem is the background, it looks artificial.
The cat model is not good, there are no good models for a cat beside the toon that is funny, so better don't use them.

Stupidity also evolves!

there are many ways to spot a poser render: nostril glow, giant boobs, freakazoid muscles, no background, no shadows, poor shadows, weird joint-bending, deformed body parts, poor lighting, no facial expression, stock hair and figures that recur in tens of thousands of renders. somebody who has read the books, manuals and asked the experts plenty of questions here (and elsewhere) can avoid all those things. this is probably what 3D snobs object to: poser users failing to incorporate into their renders all the advanced features of which poser is capable. in order to speed up production, they may take so many shortcuts that they're only using a small fraction of poser's features, as intended by the programmers.

A less Poser-looking image than many, gagonrich. But I'll try to comment in a more general way on what often makes Pose work stand out (in a bad way) as Poser. As compared to what you can do with photography or paint, skin still comes across rather plastic in much 3d. Sometimes it is the subtlest way that a shadow falling across collar and face just doesn't quite look as "right" on the face as it does on the collar. Perhaps some of this is in the play of light itself; in paint, you can push a detail or a color for artistic effect. In 3d, how the light falls is calculated for you. To lighten a cheek a little or shadow a nose better requires endless tweaking of lights -- and each move of a light to fix one issue creates a dozen others in return. A larger problem with 3d figures -- a problem Poser shares more with game engines than it does with high-end 3d -- is that the mesh simply doesn't move organically. Poser figures always show, somewhere, that Barbie-and-Ken form of hard parts with stiff joints between them. Whereas a real person, or an artist with some skill in human anatomy, has a more fluid flow. Of course, specifically, it is that in the real body the surface shape is composed of shifting landmarks of bone and muscle masses. Only in 3d do you try to sculpt a single shape for a forearm and apply it no matter what the angle or twist it takes. Clothing, too, in the Poserverse tends towards a single form that is animated; instead of stress wrinkles turning to compression folds as an arm moves, one pattern of folds remains static as the limb moves. Plus of course a sleeve or any other gap relationship stays fixed in relation to the figure as it is posed; clothing does not pull against movement, bunch, flutter (unless made dynamic -- and there are other unrealities that the present state-of-the-art in dynamic clothes reveal). High endian 3d gets away with more because clothing is often modeled into the figure. Also, there is more ability to predict the poses intended and to optimize the shapes towards them. And that's without going into the options offered with joint weighting, soft-body dynamics, mesh editing, etc. Since I don't want this thread to decay into the usual flame-fest I'll leave off the major reason so much Poser reveals itself, except to say that it is institutional, and has to do with how Poser and the Poser community have evolved, the kinds of tools and usages that have become, for better or for worse, traditional.

"What criticisms of Poser are valid?"

IMHO, none of them.

Poser is a tool, and only that. There are some thing it excells at and others where it is woefully short. But, as with all tools, you get what you pay for. And then you have to learn to use it.

Poser is not, and never will be, a be-all-and-end-all program. It has serious limitations in some areas, and does very well (for the price) in other areas.

The criticism should not be directed at Poser, but to the use that is made of it.

But try telling that to any of the "Poser is rubbish" pundits out there - you'd be as successful as trying to explain (logically) to somebody why they should change their religion and/or political stance. (I hasten to add - I NEVER do that - I found out long ago that it's a pointless excercise.) Which is why this post is just my own humble opinion.....

Cheers,
Diolma

Hear, hear ................................ here??? :blink:

Remember ... "With Poser, all things are possible, and poseable!"

cheers,

dr geep ... :o]

edited 10/5/2019

LOL, Doc...
Yup, the phrase is "Hear, hear!" (a shortened form of "I hear you, I hear you!") - the exclamation mark is important - 'cos it's, errmmm.. an exclamation:biggrin:
errmm - sorry, OT to the topic of the thread. Will shut up now..

Cheers,
Diolma

I like Rendo's new feature where you can request non-critical comments in the galleries because I DO do this for fun and relaxation! If I do happen to improve along the way, that's just icing on the cake. As it is I'm very well aware of the amaturish nature of most of my renders. I certainly don't need people pointing the obviousness of that out to me. I'm not blind, I'm just unskilled a bit. :unsure:

Hrm, Diolma, I think you can agree to both points. They are not actually contradictory. As you said, Poser is a tool. As with any tool, it is worthwhile looking at what it is good at, what it is poor at, what requires work-arounds, and so forth. And there is more. With any established tool there will come up schools, conventions of usage, etc. Sometimes these conventions are bizarre and counterproductive; black velvet might be a useful painting media but somehow it has become a requirement to paint Elvis on it (okay...I jest a little to make a point here, okay?) The Poser community -- by which I mean not just the user base and their congregations, the politics of the Renderosity Hot-20, but also the history of 3rd-party support, the love-hate between Poser and DAZ, and so forth -- has various schools of thought and method. Many of them are based around the idea that this is a program for the casual user, for the less experienced artist. Again, not saying these are "bad" or "good," merely saying that when one recognizes and understand trends one is more empowered to follow and use them if that suits one's own growth and process, or go against them with full understanding of what kind of effort that may entail. To be informed is always useful, I think. And besides, there is a certain anthropological fun in looking at how an activity or belief system has evolved and trying to chart its outlines. In any case. It would be hard to argue that Poser the program as shipped, and to a great extend DAZ and their current marketing, push an idea of button-click art. Which can be good or bad, but generally reveals itself. Actually, this idea of click-a-button-get-an-image has not been particularly well implemented. Anyone setting out to make even the simplest image in Poser ends up doing quite a lot of work, and even without intending to, putting in a lot of creative input of their own. The problem comes when a sort of intentional blindness is imposed because of this feeling that one "should" be able to push a button and get art. This is where you see solid, creative work by someone tainted by a stock DAZ hairdo and a broken Poser elbow. The blindness works out like this; the creator "knows" that they are loading stock items and accepting the limitations of those stock items, and they "know" that "everyone does it." So they are aware of following a majority trend, and they are dissuaded from moving out of that mainstream school and looking at what they have done as a truly independent creator. The usual form of this dialectic is "Here's my new image." "The elbow is broken." "That's normal for Poser." Just some simple thoughts from a slow morning on a rare day off.

I believe the problems that make the Poser image scream "poser", is the same for ALL 3D software.

When creating an image in 3D, we have perfect lines everywhere, it feels very mechanical in its look.. The most successful looking images (in all 3D) have real life imperfections built into them.

Scenes look too clean, books on the shelf looking square, perfect egdes... all make the image too sterile... this goes with the people-figures too.

This image was one of my first ones... (Actually it was my very first completed render)

The thing I was proud of was the way I created the tower itself, I actually extuded each of those bricks by hand with random depths. However... look at the building attached to it... too straight!!! If I had done some deforming of the wood and added more clutter up against the structure, it would have had more artistic appeal by looking more imperfect..

Poser fugures need these imperfections...

Next time you make a scene with a dood getting punched in the face, use the morphs to bulge out his chops as the fist connects (people look real ugly in thos snapshots of mid-action... one eye closed... lips in mid movement... look at half of your camera pics from your last party)

Thats my 2 cents,

Its not just "poser", all 3D will look sterile unless we strive to make it imperfect.

Carrara 7 Pro, Anime Studio Pro 8, Hexagon 2.5, Zbrush 4.6, trueSpace 7.6, and Corel Draw X3. Manga Studio 4EX, Open Canvas 5, WACOM Cintiq 12WX User

it depends. if you critisize poser then it has to be the application of the program you crit and not the artwork. things like..is it value for money, how does  it compare to other apps in the same genre.  that kind of crit is valid. if you mean poser artwork then no, you cant crit the poser program itself. you have to crit the artwork alone. nor can you crit the creator of the artwork. the main crit i have is that most artwork done in poser thats put on show feels and looks lifeless. i know this is'nt always the case. i've seen some good life like renders. pieces where the artist has spent considerable time post-working a piece. eroding the corpselike look and giving it life...if i hadn't seen good artwork done by poser user's i wouldn't be able to compare what to me is indifferent or outrighbad artwork. bad artwork..i suppose their isnt such a beast is there. what i mean is work i don't count as art which by the way is like truth. we all have our own truths. we all have our own views on what is art. to a mom a two yr olds painting is better artwork than any msterpiece. that said the mom is looking purely through the eyes of emotion. can we critisise poser re  artwork with any validity..in a  word ....no. jmo

 

billy

 

Poser provides great value for the dollar. Not as great as Blender or Pov-ray, but great nonetheless. :O)

ps..we say that poser is 3d program..in fact poser and all the 3d programs are only 3d representations of 2d objects. we cant walk round them, the models have no depth as such. if we simply  move to another 2d view, copy and print the 3d representation and end upwith  a pic thats flat. unlike photography which shows some of the characteristics of the 3d world. unlike painting which as a 2d medium can also show these characteristics. thats why post work is a necessity. thats where the artwork comes alive. jmo. i have yet to see a render without postwork that looks like it doesn't need it.

 

billy

Quote -  i have yet to see a render without postwork that looks like it doesn't need it.

You haven't been looking very hard.

I think the matador image in message 1 is very nice! but I would just lose the cat and maybe fix up the shadow a bit, not sure how. the tower is also excellent IMVHO however, the granite texture on the baserock is stretched in some areas, hence maybe use a procedural instead (unless it was already a procedural).

i'm always on the lookout if you have one in mind fls 13. for someone to actually create something that doesn't need an edit is rare. if you class repositioning a pose as an edit then fair enough i stand corrected.

billy

 

Quote - the tower is also excellent IMVHO however, the granite texture on the baserock is stretched in some areas, hence maybe use a procedural instead (unless it was already a procedural).

 

Thanks, like I said, it was my first render from a couple years back, its using the trueSpace 4.3 render (no IBL's at that time) and I was learning the basics back then.

Poser has an impressive renderer with Firefly and some kewl stuff can be done with magnets, my main point was to make things look non-3D by creating imperfect surfaces.

The Matador render could use some "imperfections" using magnets (At least thats what I would do to make the figures look less "stiff") It's still not bad at all by its own merits.

 

Carrara 7 Pro, Anime Studio Pro 8, Hexagon 2.5, Zbrush 4.6, trueSpace 7.6, and Corel Draw X3. Manga Studio 4EX, Open Canvas 5, WACOM Cintiq 12WX User

good crit nancy.

does anyone think we could do with a crit forum so that poeple who do actually want to improve can.

that way those who want stroking can post to the gallery and those that would like to know where and how they could improve could post to the pic forum.

billy

I think they had a WIP forum for criticism once, either here or some other site. not sure how it turned out, but if it was here, it musta flopped bigtime. :lol: however, I'd advise against it here, as it would be a magnet for trolls. similarly, people who posted work and didn't get any useful comments would be disappointed, just like they are in the gallery here, when they expect comments and lotsa views, even though they have the bad luck to post a serious image on the same page with alotta giant-boob renders :lol:

http://www.irtc.org/

The International Ray Tracing Competition doesn't allow postwork.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/

Some images are postworked, many are not. Few need it.

http://www.3dtotal.com/

Same here.

http://www.ignorancia.org/

I have downloaded and rendered source files from this site myself, and they don't need postwork.

Big boobs, nudity, stock figure, pose formed by two stock poses (top, bottom), tiny shadows, Poser4 render, no postwork, the same tree model repeated many times, only three lights, scene done in 15 minutes, ........ And the tree model has no top!!!!!

Stupidity also evolves!

Here's an image I did recently. There is some postwork, but it is minimal, some tweaking of the contrast and tonal balance. It didn't need it, but I did it anyway. As I learn more about using Pov-ray, I'm needing less and less of it.

Take notice of the direct sunlight as it moves into the shade and finally the shadowy area. I've never been able to get that in Poser.

Poser lights are strange lights, are like alien lights that pass through the walls.
If an object is too thin it cast no shadows, a plane?, forget the shadows!

Stupidity also evolves!

Valuable crits about Poser?

-Only one undo (and not even with every action you undertake)
-An outdated interface
-An incredibly memory hog
-Slow renderer of mediocre quality
-Selecting for manipulation is a mess.

BUT:

-A node-based material system that is really very nice
-A very affordable price
-Allows people who do not have the skills to create their own mesh/character, rig it, UV it and create all textures, or that do not have the app to learn to do so, to express themselves and have fun with with human characters

The rest? Depends on the user.
Does an ugly, inspirationless website mean that Dreamweaver is a bad app?
I've seen really bad things being done in Photoshop and Max also.

Hmmm, oh I don't know, I have seen some pretty amazing work that has only used Poser as the render engine.  I love Poser and all the apps that I use.  The critisism, that does not mean much, if you enjoy this kind of art, then off you go, if you rather use Photoshop etc, to render off you go.  But as far as myself, I have a blast creating anything that in my eyes looks good.  Sharen

sorry fls13

i had a look at about 30 pics from the sites you mention and can see how with p[ostwork they could be improved. while a lot of them are very good, excellent even most are done within set paramiters. the main one being no postwork allowed. many of the images are out of focus in certain parts of the render. where they shouldnt be. have dark outlines at the edge of a subject.  mismatched lighting, texture that has been stretched and the list goes on.  not having post work done and not needing post work are two different things.to me good art is art that can't really be imroved. every pic i looked at from the sites you urled could be improved.

billy

Quote - Big boobs, nudity, stock figure, pose formed by two stock poses (top, bottom), tiny shadows, Poser4 render, no postwork, the same tree model repeated many times, only three lights, scene done in 15 minutes, ........
And the tree model has no top!!!!!

the urn and the figure are out of proportion to the background. the urn especially looks like a cutout. the figure itself needs lots of post work to eliminate creases etc. the hair is wig like and could do with some tidying up. arms too thin for the body and the list is endless as to how postwork could vastly improve the pic.

billy

Quote - Here's an image I did recently. There is some postwork, but it is minimal, some tweaking of the contrast and tonal balance. It didn't need it, but I did it anyway. As I learn more about using Pov-ray, I'm needing less and less of it.

Take notice of the direct sunlight as it moves into the shade and finally the shadowy area. I've never been able to get that in Poser.

the brickwork on the arch fits together like wallpaper and not brickwork. the brick courses are unevenly matched.

that much sunlight that bright would to some extent light up the room. while she would have a shadow behind her her sking wouldn't be as dark because of rflected sunlight from the brightly lit wall. the shadow on the figure itself seems false. it would be darker in areas around the crotch and where the arms rest against the body. the figure itself  seems to look manniquinesk.

part of the left hand door look like  it's part of the wall. (the left panel closest to the wall.

the table end is much too dark for the amount of ambient light the sun is generating.

a nice render but for me needs lots of post work.

billy

Quote - Hmmm, oh I don't know, I have seen some pretty amazing work that has only used Poser as the render engine.  I love Poser and all the apps that I use.  The critisism, that does not mean much, if you enjoy this kind of art, then off you go, if you rather use Photoshop etc, to render off you go.  But as far as myself, I have a blast creating anything that in my eyes looks good.  Sharen

 

sorry sam..i never said use photo shop to render. i think lots of renders are great. all i'm saying is 99.9% of them could be improved upon with a little postwork in a paint program. if people just want to render and leave it at that all well and good.  i'm still surprised that people who love doing what they do say in so many words they don't really want to produce the best work they can though. still one mans coat is another mans blanket i guess.

 

billy

Quote - I think they had a WIP forum for criticism once, either here or some other site. not sure how it turned out, but if it was here, it musta flopped bigtime. :lol: however, I'd advise against it here, as it would be a magnet for trolls. similarly, people who posted work and didn't get any useful comments would be disappointed, just like they are in the gallery here, when they expect comments and lotsa views, even though they have the bad luck to post a serious image on the same page with alotta giant-boob renders :lol:

i'm beginning to think you're right nancy. cg have a great wip board where advice and crit is given and taken in the spirit of good will and learning. just seems funny to post something in the gallery and not want truthfull honest feedback on it. why post it if not to show it off and have people comment honestly on it. yes thats a wonderfull piece of artwork that is....do you really think so...yes but it's slightly lopsided...shut up shut up i don't want to hear anything but praise you eveil bad mouthed person.  rrotflmao

sorry

billy

Quote - " i have yet to see a render without postwork that looks like it doesn't need it. "

That was your original quote.

Then came this: "all i'm saying is 99.9% of them could be improved upon with a little postwork in a paint program."

Which is it? You're contradicting yourself.

And then this, quite accurate crit of the pic I posted: "the brickwork on the arch fits together like wallpaper and not brickwork. the brick courses are unevenly matched."

True except it's the UV mapping that needs work, it's not a postwork solution.

And this: "i had a look at about 30 pics from the sites you mention and can see how with p[ostwork they could be improved. while a lot of them are very good, excellent even most are done within set paramiters. the main one being no postwork allowed."

Only at the irtc site, the others allow it. Did you even go to the sites?

 "many of the images are out of focus in certain parts of the render. where they shouldnt be. have dark outlines at the edge of a subject.  mismatched lighting, texture that has been stretched"

Again, that's a UV mapping problem, not a postwork issue. Do you understand the difference? I think you don't.

Why not just admit you don't know what you're talking about. Oh and by the way . . . . . . . . . . . Where's your online gallery?

Forgive me for sounding stupid, but howcan you import a Pz3 into Photoshop, and render it.  As far as I  know, Photoshop only supports image files, not wavefront object files.  But I'm willing to be enlightened.
David P. Hoadley

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

I wandered in not quite sure what to expect. Limitations of Poser? Characteristics of results?

In any case, "limitations of results" seems to be the subject, and my two cents is that what makes 3D renders "not real" is the unbreachable wall between analog and digital. Organic stuff, whether it's skin or oil paint, is continuous, analog -- in a word, flawed. Digital imitations can mimic flaws to deeper and deeper levels of invisibility, but it is still, always, mimicry. Sure, a photo is made up of "dots," but the dots are not of uniform shape, dimension, or color; they are microscopic stains, not Lite-Brite rectangles or mapboard hexes.

More specifically, look at the PlaySchool reality of DAZwarez. Their recent Rom costume party is a case in point. We get nice white boys posed in authentic gypsy garb from the Marinas by way of ZCMI and Walmart (its secular equivalent). We get horsehair mustaches. We get not just spic and span, but brand spanking new sashes and headbands. Gypsies, contrary to popular prejudice, have always been a clean people, but their finery has the threadbare economy of the poor. This stuff is fake: acrylic silk and plastic gold.

We get Vickie in shoe polish and eyeshadow looking ominously like the kind of girl Dad would not want you to have a permanent relationship with. Miss Ogden 2001 in a movie she should have turned down. Like the Tyra Banks Africans, Debra Paget Apaches, and Shirley MacLaine geishas, her race is not bred in bone. She is no more Rom than Romy Schneider.

What is wrong with this stuff? No flaws. Or if there are flaws, they are carefully manufactured flaws. The bodies and clothes do not look lived in. The textures lack the living reality, the infinite variety, of live skin and undone hair. All Poser hair is sprayed in place. All Poser skin is painted on. It's not the artist's fault, or the tool's, but the medium's.

M

Quote - Quote - " i have yet to see a render without postwork that looks like it doesn't need it. "

That was your original quote. yes it was

Then came this: "all i'm saying is 99.9% of them could be improved upon with a little postwork in a paint program."

yes because no one can be 100% sure about anything. i have yet to see one that couldnt be improved. that isn't to say someone can't do one

Which is it? You're contradicting yourself.

sorry but i'm not

And then this, quite accurate crit of the pic I posted: "the brickwork on the arch fits together like wallpaper and not brickwork. the brick courses are unevenly matched."

True except it's the UV mapping that needs work, it's not a postwork solution.

postwork doesn't mean photoshop work though its often the case. the word post in the context we're using means after the render. if its the mapping then postwork the mapping. but don't tell me it doesn't need post work if thats what you have to do to get it right.

And this: "i had a look at about 30 pics from the sites you mention and can see how with p[ostwork they could be improved. while a lot of them are very good, excellent even most are done within set paramiters. the main one being no postwork allowed."

Only at the irtc site, the others allow it. Did you even go to the sites?

yes, actually i'm a regular visitor to 3d, cg and many others.. i'm also a member in cg 

 "many of the images are out of focus in certain parts of the render. where they shouldnt be. have dark outlines at the edge of a subject.  mismatched lighting, texture that has been stretched"

Again, that's a UV mapping problem, not a postwork issue. Do you understand the difference? I think you don't.

again postwork. work done after a render. if it's the uv as you say then postwork the uv. at least you're admitting somethings wrong,  as you can see i do know what post work is. i'm not that short sighted that i think post work is only done in photoshop. many go to other programs to add lighting effects etc after a trial render. this to is postwork to a render done somewhere else. one of main things uv tuts tell you is to do the texture go check  it and keeep doing it till it's right.

Why not just admit you don't know what you're talking about. Oh and by the way . . . . . . . . . . well i have to admit you certainly seem to know your stuff , well done.

. Where's your online gallery?.........do i need one.

a person doesn't need to create art to like or know about it... is it a pre-requisite that a person needs a gallery in order to comment. i will post where i'm up on a model i'm doing thoughif that will please you. ...billy

for fl13

no texture as yet as it's far from finished.

also for fls13

not all people need a gallery or want one fls

You're a clueless troll and you clearly don't know what you're posting about. It also might not be a bad idea to do some "postwork" on your earlier comments in this thread to fix your multitude of spelling and grammatical errors. If you can't use spellcheck, how are you going to turn out a decent render?

fls.

you obviously understood what i said . what has spelling or grammar got to do with rendering?

sorry i forgot i needed a sleplcecekhr to render. how remiss of me.

and fls, theres no need to throw a wobbler, lifes to short

 

billy

 

Quote - I think they had a WIP forum for criticism once, either here or some other site.

DAZ's "Art Studio" forum. Still in use, but more geared towards newbies.

I've just posted this image, after a light bit of postwork, to my gallery.  If any of you would liket to criticize it, you're most welcome. David P. Hoadley

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

not bad dp but for me the neck seems a bit awkward. looks like its a little to long.

with a pose like that would it be better if the leg on the ground were straighter as it' supports most if not all her weight. she also seems a bit too well lit compared to the wall and for me a bit of shadow in a scene like this would go a long way. jmo. has potential

billy

No one's "throwing a wobbler." :O) You simply overstated your point, and refused to admit that you are simply wrong. The links I posted are there for anyone to check out. Let them make up their own minds.

Of course, you don't need "sleplcecekhr" to render, but this is a forum not a gallery. Do I have to explain the difference there too? :O)

I try to look at work that is significantly better than my own, rather than nitpick work that isn't, and one of the great things about Povray is that the artists often make the entire source code available so you can figure out how they did it, and then improve your own work.

Dear billy423uk,
Thank you for your comment, it is through criticism that we improve.
As for the render itself, I was striving for an effect, in which the woman stands under a pool of light (waiting for a customer), while all else is in deep shadow.  Also, as this figure was experimental (She's the P4 Casual Woman, disassembled, cloned, and remapped by me to accept P4 skin textures. and Eve 4 eye textures), I wanted to see how good she'd look in renders.  While the posing and all is flawed, I was still slightly surprised at how good simplicity can render: Poser Pro-Pack and only two lights.
But of course, there's always room for improvement.

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

i see... if i don't agree with you i'm wrong.  fair enough,  i dont agree with you and i'm sure everyone is capable of making theier own minds up. ..whilst this is a forum it isn't a classroom. or do people who are dislexic or semi literate have to post in a special forum.  orson wells once said if you can read it,  it has enough grammar. it's how i post, deal with it. or don't but cry to someone who cares what your views are on grammar 

i bet everyone can also make their minds up if you threw a wobbler or not as well ...rrotflmao

billy

:)

 

 

Yes Poser art looks like Poser.

Also, charcoal drawings always look to me like charcoal drawings. Something about them ... is it the black smudgy lines? Whenever I see one, I think, "Oh, yes, charcoal drawing".

And your point is??

nice comeback dp

thanks for taking the comment as they were intended. if the lights shining from above would it work better if you showed it pooling round her on the floor. it could also cone on the wall behind her. (lighting a triangle on the wall). i saw you post in uv mapper and i have to say you're doing okay. i still have to learn how to texture myself so i may be asking you for help at a later date lol.

billy

Quote - "Poser is a tool, and only that. There are some thing it excells at and others where it is woefully short. But, as with all tools, you get what you pay for. And then you have to learn to use it.

Since there are areas where Poser isn't perfect, shouldn't those weaknesses be discussed more, along with techniques in and out of Poser to correct those flaws?

I'll certainly agree that lighting is one of the more frustrating components of Poser 5, and presumably still annoying with Poser 6 even though there are some new settings that provide more realistic looks. In the Matador image, I wasn't initially planning on a twilight look. I've learned, with Poser, to accept some of the things it does and integrate that into what I'm doing. In this instance, the twilight appearance didn't change what I was trying to do and I incorporated that in the image. Since it was getting dark, it made sense adding the candles. I used the Candleworks lights on all the candles so that they would cast real lights and shadows in the image. Many of the shadows were overpowered by the global lights coming in from the alley.

I don't get too concerned with the "My tools are better than your tools" kinds of "critics". I've seen enough incredible stuff done using Poser and enough crap using high end software to know that anybody getting too caught up in their tools hasn't got much to offer in useful comments. That doesn't mean that there aren't valid critiques to offer about the general state of Poser art.

The most glaring flaws, in most Poser images I see, are always the poses. That's not so much a Poser problem as a user problem. There are so many poses where I just want to scream at the artist to try and duplice that pose with their body, while looking in a mirror, and then try to figure out when such a pose could ever occur naturally. I did as much to get the clapping pose. Translating that knowledge to a perfect pose with a model is still a difficult process.

Using prebuilt models can lend a sameness to images and the flaws in the models, with their bending limitations, can scream Poser. Many of those things can be corrected in postwork. That then becomes another skillset that has to be learned and mastered. I had to fix the shoulder bulges and bend creases in the woman and a few minor things in the cat to get rid of some mesh stretching. I do agree that more should have been done with the cat, in post, to give the impression that it had fur instead of a texture. I'm not sure that magnets on the matador would help much, other than pulling the sleeve down a bit on the cape hand so that it's not floating. I can see where introducing imperfections can help in some circumstances. The other option is using postwork to add imperfections either in the render or on some of the textures. It is an area that I need to work on.

There is still a WIP gallery here. I've always had mixed feelings about WIP critiques. It was looking at a set of critques at CGForum, for an image that looked almost photographic, that soured me on the process. There were too many people, whose own galleries showed little flare or expertise, offering advice to somebody whose work was clearly better than anything these "experts" had to offer. It was tempting to put up a photo to see how many flaws in the photo these "experts" would find to show how it could be made more realistic. Any time somebody is put in a critical frame of mind, they tend to focus too often on what is wrong than what is right. Try watching a movie for a critique instead of for fun and it takes a lot of enjoyment out of it.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

"whilst this is a forum it isn't a classroom"

It may not be a classroom, but I've learned a lot about 3D asking questions here instead of making erroneous statements. :O)

 

WEll. I have a few problems with lighting, and as someone pointed out, a single "Undo" is frustrating, but on balance I think Poser 6 has turned out to be a fine product. It still holds a few mysterys, especially in the cloth room and face rooms, but nothing is perfect. All "3D art is really 2D", as pointed out. But shadowing, shading, and lighting can do wonders. If I wanted true 3D I would have bought some clay, and sculpted my work.

This one has had no postwork other than adding my blurb, so give it your best critique and I shall stand by and see what reactions it gets.

Dear billy423uk,
In whatever capacity that I can be helpful, you are most welcome.  If you would like to have my Evelyn figure, or any of the Eve 4 (Posette based) figures that I morphed here in the Forums (Olga, Aishwarna Rei, Stephanie Swift, etc), just drop me an email: dph@013.net.il.
That goes for anyone else reading this thread.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

the urn and the figure are out of proportion to the background.
And who said that is an urn?, it's a font and fonts use to be not small!, unless you use it for birds...

Stupidity also evolves!

ricardo, qubromista. :lol: siempre con los pechos grandes! p.s. hoad, I'd be afraid to try to stand on a ladder like that, as I'm certain I'd fall off. but poser girls are more durable - no harm done if they fall off a ladder or a building. :lol:

Dear Miss Nancy,
Thank you ffor yor comment.  However, she's not actually standing on the lader, but rather, she's leaning on it.  Her unseen foot is on the ground.  But thankyou for noticing it, and taking the time and trouble to comment. 
Truthfull, when I rendered her, I was so thrilled by the knowledge that I, and I alone, had succeeded in refurbishing an all but moribund figure that I wasn't paying the closest attention to details. (Or maybe I was just to busy patting myself on the back). 
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley
PS: If you'd ever like a copy of any of my figures, just let me know.

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

Here's something I've been working on. I found a 12 yr. old photo of my daughter and started working from it.

Just wondering what folks thought.

Nice, very nice.  I'm too much of a plodding craftsman to offer any constructive criticism, so I won't even try.  The base figure looks a little like Posette, with Sand-Tyger's photorealistic Posette Blonde texture, but I could be wrong.  Whatever your base, good constructive criticism is a must to achieve decent results.  The Poser sculpter is just to close and and involved emotionally, to rationally judge his work.  I know, I speak from experience.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

@ bevans84**

**So, you know how to take a photograph, so what?
(just kidding)

That is positively beautiful ...

... and ... evidentially ... so is your daughter.

Just my humble opinion ... I could be wrong. ;=]
(but I don't think so)

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Remember ... "With Poser, all things are possible, and poseable!"

cheers,

dr geep ... :o]

edited 10/5/2019

Thank you Dr. Geep. That means a lot to me, and yes, my wife and I think she is beautiful. Of course we're highly biased in our opinion. :-)

David, it's actually V3 with Miss April texture and eyes. I have 5 different V3 meshes that I use, each with subtle differences. The facial features were done mainly in Truespace and Hex, and the collarbone area was done with Clothes Converter.
The only post work was a touch of blur over the whole picture, and just a little bit of noise added.

I have to second what Phantast said... Poser looking like Poser isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I can look at a watercolor and say, "yep, that's a watercolor".  It doesn't mean it's good or bad, just that I can identify the tool that created it.

I've now read (most) of this thread, in detail.

I'll probably not re-visit it, since it seems to be going in the direction that the majority of these type of threads go: ie, nowhere relevant with a bit of (probably friendly and hopefully jocularly meant) sparring going on...

But (just to join in one last time - unless I re-read the thread later and change my mind), an explanation/self-justification from right near the start of the thread...

Someone stated (and no, I'm not going back through the previous pages to work out who):
"Hrm, Diolma, I think you can agree to both points. They are not actually contradictory."

Errm... What both points? I was just stating a single opinion, regarding the original post (and the thread's title). It was my opinion then, at that point and in that context.

Like I said, Poser is just a tool. You can't criticise it for that. Just as you can't criticise a screwdriver for being a not very good tool for hammering in nails. That's all I meant...

Cheers,
Diolma
 

"Subject: What criticisms of Poser are valid?"

If you ask this question of Poser it should then be asked of 3D Studio Max, Maya, Cinema4D, Carrara, Lightwave etc...

I have read alot of negative things from others saying Poser is a toy, I disagree it's a paint brush with alot of pre-mixed paint.

I wounder why so many applications connect to or want to connect to this toy? I think if it wasnt for Poser many people would not be as interested in 3D.

Poser does come with alot of 3D content and more can be purchased or downloaded for free.
Some would say that because you didnt create the model what you render with it is not art,
My question is if I didnt grow the tree but just carved into the wood; would it be less of a sculpture?

Quote - "whilst this is a forum it isn't a classroom"

It may not be a classroom, but I've learned a lot about 3D asking questions here instead of making erroneous statements. :O) sorry fls, i should have said english class, if you have such a need to be right thats okay with me. hows this......i personally don't think most if not all render can improve with some postwork......there ya go. looks like you were right after all and the majority of renders don't need  any postwork. i concede to your more knowledgable judgement and forgo my own personal opinion.  and yes i made an erroneous statement, please forgive me. i promise not to make any more, not to you at least.......by the way i looked at the pics you did in your profile and they're simply divinely perfect...no need for any postwork on those puppies hey.  i  can see you put everything you learned to good use. let me pat you one the back and say well done. i can tell your ego doesn't need stroking though by the great way you showed me how wrong i was. all i ask is that in your infinite wisdom you refuse to reply to me as i will to any of your future posts. i would hate to have a personal opinion of mine shown to be wrong again.  have a good like and happy no post rendering

billy

 

thanks dp

i may take you up on the offer

bevans 4

i learned a long time ago not to crit work of a personal nature lol. that said i think it an excellent piece/ love the hairline and the rest of the pic. if i had to find something i thought could do with a little more work i would ask this question..whilst the blur works well. does it work as well on the body as the face. how would it look if the shoulders had less blur or a little less noise.  also it looks like the light is coming from the front right hand side. she has highlights on the side of the face and the tendons in the neck but none at all on the side of her neck  or sholder jmo

really nice portrait and dp is right about the beauty. saying that if you want real  constructive crit you should have post the image the render represents. to the question...what do i think.....i think it's an excellent job that needs very little in way of post edit . well done

billy

 

Yes Poser art looks like Poser. ... And your point is??

The point is that it's a pejorative comment. What I'm trying to find out is what are the common problems with Poser renders? What can be done to avoid the pitfalls that scream that something is an obvious Poser render? I've seen incredible Poser artwork that doesn't look like Poser.

Charcoal is a very different physical media from watercolor. The differences between Poser, Max, and Maya aren't as distinguishable as that between two different physical art media. A skillfully done Poser render would be hard to distinguish between the other 3D packages. Anybody can tell the difference between charcoal and watercolor no matter what the skill levels were involved in creating artwork with those media. If a person can tell the difference between 3D renders, they're mostly seeing what is wrong with the programs and how they were wielded. An artist chooses oils or pastel because of the texture and look of those media. A 3D artist chooses Poser over other packages because it has a relatively lower learning curve, is considerably less expensive, and has a lot of free and inexpensive content available for it. They're not picking Poser because it has a specific look other than seeing that, in the hands of masters, it can do some very impressive things. I doubt that there is a single Poser user who chose Poser, over other 3D packages, because of something specific in how Poser renders better than other 3D engines.

Some of the better comments that can be received on Poser is that the viewer couldn't believe it was Poser or Vickie. The image bevans84 posted, of his daughter, certainly falls into that category. That could be posted in any 3D forum and not be criticized for being an obvious Poser render. I'd love to see a step by step process of how that image was created. Take a look at Mec4D's gallery for some other examples of images that don't look like Poser even though they are
http//www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=195109

I cannot think of an instance where a person can say that an image looks like it was done in Poser and feel that it's a compliment.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

Catharina (Mec4D) does amazing work, no question about it. However, I don't think any of the renders in her gallery are "Cornell Box" renders, and it's those type of renders that Poser has difficulty with. It lights scenes quite nicely that have an image or set background, but the light goes haywire when bouncing around inside a 6-sided architectural interior. That is its' shortcoming compared with other rendering engines I've worked with.

And billy, good luck with your continued posting of 3DS Max GUI screen dumps. :O)

***"My question is if I didnt grow the tree but just carved into the wood; would it be less of a sculpture?"***

Good one.

8 )

Tom

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

Quote - Yes Poser art looks like Poser. ... And your point is??

Some of the better comments that can be received on Poser is that the viewer couldn't believe it was Poser or Vickie. The image bevans84 posted, of his daughter, certainly falls into that category. That could be posted in any 3D forum and not be criticized for being an obvious Poser render. I'd love to see a step by step process of how that image was created. Take a look at Mec4D's gallery for some other examples of images that don't look like Poser even though they are
http//www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=195109

I cannot think of an instance where a person can say that an image looks like it was done in Poser and feel that it's a compliment.

The problem that some people have with Poser is that it's easy to create mediocre or crap art.  Highly complex, many polygon, humanoid figure crap art.   Often which look like another artist's crap art.

In my case I don't care if everyone recognizes the hair clothing or whatever because I do story, and as any comic reader will tell you, add some text and really crappy art becomes acceptable.
Just like crappy text is more acceptable when shown next to art, even crappy art.

So it really depends on context.

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

rrotflmao.

i think you mean grammar hawkfyr hehe. ..

 

billy

Dear L-rd,
Now it's rrotflmao?   Now where do all these acronyms come from, and  what the heck do they mean?  Judging from series of letters, it looks like it might refer to a tool to unclog a stopped up septic tank -am I close?

Gentlemen, on a seperate issue, please quit bickering so much.  We're ALL suposed to be friends here, no need to getting our egos in an uproar. 

As for the main theme of this thread, i wish to say this.  I personally hold that there is nothing wrong with Poser as a medium.  Nor do I think it's reprehensible that Poser figures should be recongnisable, anymore than that Will Smith in 'I, Robot' bears an uncanny resemblance to Will Smith in 'Independance Day.'  Rather it's nice to meet old friend again, although my personal favorite is Posette rather than Vickies 1, 2, & 3 (I understand that that makes me something of a dufess in the eyes of some, but who cares).

I don't think it's necessary that Vicky, Micky, Aiko, Posette, Mike or Dork undergo a complete body makeover every time we wish to make a render, any more than that Will Smith, Bruce Willis, Charlton Heston, or even John Wayne should have undergone Plastic Surgery every time they made a movie.  There is something comforting in the known and familiar. 

The charge made by 3d modellers that we don't create our figures, but rely on the  creation of others , and therefore our work isn't art, is irrelevent.  If Hollywood had to work by the same premis, then every time they wish to make a movie, they'd have to go out  and breed the actors, and then wait 20 to 30 years until they reach maturity.  It's a ridiculous premis, and time that it was laid to rest.

Poser as a tool has its limitations.  The artist who uses it must follow the first dictum of military strategy: Tailor your goals to fit your means.  Nor should one be too disappointed if the render doesn't quite fulfill one's vision -maybe the vision needs to be adjusted to adhere more to reality.
I've said my piece, so therefore,
I remain, yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

Dear billy423uk,

My point to you was missed, but that is alright I will state it this way.  Everybody perceives their artwork and others differently.  You can't change that, it is in the beholder's eye.

If you or anyone else tells me, I should have done something else to a piece of art, I will listen, but if the critisism takes away from what my point or my perception is, what makes the person doing the criticism right?  I perceive it to be just right, but others did not....who is right? 

Have you ever been to an art gallery in your city? You will see so many artist that state something like this..."I was trying to capture the image of.....whatever".  While you stand their and look, you can't see their point no matter how hard you try....so what makes my perception correct and the artist's incorrect.  As far as they are concerned the artwork is complete. 

Do you understand what I mean?

Sharen

One thing I have long noticed is that many renderers do seem to impart a sort of feel to the final image. In this case it's not down to what the user does with the medium, it really is the medium itself, so I think that the comparison with traditional media is appropriate. Not, perhaps, with the difference between charcoal and watercolour, but say, between acrylic and oils.

Poser renders have always stood out particularly because Poser doesn't raytrace the same way as most 3D packages do. But some other renderers also stand out more than others, for instance, C4D renders tend to have a distinctive character.

Quote - Dear billy423uk,

My point to you was missed, but that is alright I will state it this way.  Everybody perceives their artwork and others differently.  You can't change that, it is in the beholder's eye.

If you or anyone else tells me, I should have done something else to a piece of art, I will listen, but if the critisism takes away from what my point or my perception is, what makes the person doing the criticism right?  I perceive it to be just right, but others did not....who is right? 

 

Do you understand what I mean?

yes sharen. when crit or comment is honestly given it's never written in stone. the creator of the work either uses it, uses bits of it or discards it.  the creator is always right. good feedback should when possible be in the form of advice that can be taken or left.

billy

Sharen

Quote - Poser renders have always stood out particularly because Poser doesn't raytrace the same way as most 3D packages do.

In what respect is Poser's raytracing different?

IMHO,

I believe Poser uses an Interpreted language as opposed to one where everything is compiled. As a result, while it is easy to access the descriptions of figures, props, etc and even make changes in a simple text editor, this results in extremely slow software processing because every line of text code must be parsed every time something is changed. As more complexity is added to a scene, it slows down interaction so much that it soon becomes unworkable.

Herein lies the biggest stumbling block for most users. While there is an immense amount of capability in the program, I am convinced that most of it remains untapped because the more you do, the slower it becomes. Dynamic hair, dynamic clothing, hi poly count figures, multiple light sources and all of the other techniques that would greatly improve the artistic look simply become too unwieldy to use.

And this is only in the preview phase. Once rendering begins, there are additional orders of magnitude to contend with to achieve any semblance of  " realism." How many folks are willing to dedicate their computer to 20 or 30 hrs worth of rendering time per frame to see if they are happy with the results or want to make changes.

My guess is that most "Poser Art" looks that way because, in the trade off between art and time, the majority, of necessity, are opting for the latter. 

 

<"))###<<

where fbx is now cornering the market as a format to transfer figure mesh - texture mapping and rigging between 3d apps

poser could have gone there first but didnt

it either feared to tread or didnt know how

"rrotflmao."

I think you mean:

"rotflmao."

Unless of course you are rolling and rolling.
8 )

Tom

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

sidestepping the hair-pulling and handbag-swinging bonanza

Poser is flawed, there's no denying it. Technically it could do with a big re-think... however, comparing it to some of the arm-and-a-leg-please applications is hardly fair. Pricewise it's a very reasonable and user-friendly application. It has it's shortfalls, but you pay your money...

I have to disagree with the "It looks like a Poser render" being a application-biased comment, even though that may well be how it was intended. A peek into the Poser gallery will often show the same pictures time and time again, and that is more the fault of the artist than the application. * puts on flame-retardant undies*  I don't claim to be an artist, I merely work with the program, so my interest lies primarily in the steps before render than the finished product itself. Sometimes the limitations of the program mean that postwork for a realistic and believable image is unavoidable, which makes un-postworked images of exceptional quality such a rare gem.

For those that strive for realism the comment "It looks like a photo...." is often the greatest compliment, no matter if they work on a pc, with a pencil, or a lump of clay. Poser is just a tool, expecting miracles from it is unrealistic, the real talent ( as always ) lies within the artist themselves.

Michelle

There are a lot of great tools available that people just don't use. The face room is great, at least for the P5's, the cloth room gets the job done, and the setup room is super. All this talk of getting a particular type of clothing for a particular figure would vanish if people just took some time to monkey with what's available within Poser.

poser's raytracing is probably the same algorithm as all the other 3D renderers, but it seems to me (from forum messages here) that they usually use 1 bounce, whereas isn't it normal to use 4 or 5 bounces in all the other renderers? there is a highly technical reason why more bounces will produce a more pleasing result, but using 1 bounce is just another problem due to the user's failure to read the manual. AFAIK it doesn't take much more time to render 5 bounces than it takes to do 1 bounce. however, that's the problem. poser renders are often so easily spotted because the poser user has such a poor understanding of the software, and the figure and image are degraded as a result. I was worried about this when they were planning the huge technical jump from P4 (which was just for posing a model), and P5, which was forced to be an all-in-one app. in the process it left less sophisticated users in a state of temporary (or permanent) confusion, as they had no prior experience with real optics, real physics, shader trees, etc. ad infinitum.

Attached Link: The Children Are the Future

I don't want to spend too much time analogy bashing because relating a Poser look, to the differing textural qualities of natural media, doesn't work for me. Traditional artists choose their artistic media very specifically for the looks those media bring to their artistic vision. Choosing pastel over oil, or acrylics over oil paints, is very much an artistic choice based on the looks those tools bring to the final artwork. Artists, using Poser, aren't choosing Poser for its rendering qualities. Cost, convenience, and inexpensive models are the factors that drive Poser use. If high end packages were the same price, people would be using them for rendering. Nobody is rendering in Poser to specifically get a Poser look as part of their artistic choices. It's simply the most cost effective tool to currently use.

 

As to whether Poser characters need to be altered for each artistic concept, that's a more personal decision that is made. I don't know if that's good or bad. It essentially depends on whether or not the figures enhance the artistic vision. Is the figure usage jarring to a casual viewer? It's fairly ridiculous to use default Caucasian characters in an ethnic environment. A standard Vickie in feudal Japan is going to stick out like a sore thumb. An artist, that uses the same figure character over and over in every image, is probably going to draw criticism. Unless there is a real artistic reason to continually reuse a single character, it is going to appear to be a flaw in the artist's vision. I'm not going to blame John Wayne for looking like John Wayne throughout his career, but I am going to blame whoever thought he was the right choice to play Genghis Khan for making a stupid artistic decision. Hiring the right actor for the right role is an artistic decision and most directors don't use the same actors over and over in their works. As with any body of work, it all depends on how well everything is put together. If you look at an artist's gallery and there's an evident sameness to all the images, and the repeated use of a specific model is becoming noticeably distracting, then there's a problem. If the artistic execution is so spectacular, that it eclipses what might otherwise seem a repetitive drawback, it won't matter. There's no hard and fast rule for this.

 

Don't worry much about a prejudiced modeler perspective that everything needs to be created from scratch. It's a narrow viewpoint and represents a standard that doesn't artistically make sense to someone only interested in creating an artistic work. If I'm creating something that needs a pencil in the image, and it takes me less time to use a 3D pencil I've downloaded than to model it from scratch, using the existing model makes more sense because it saves time and suits the purpose of what I'm creating. Multiply that time saving by every other prop and figure I'm using in an image and I've saved an enormous amount of time without sacrificing anything for the work that I'm creating. On the other hand, there is something cool to be able to have something in an image that hasn't been seen before and is something that a modeler created for his own satisfaction. That modeler can create a figure that's in the exact pose wanted and tailored just right so that there aren't unrealistic shoulder bulges and elbow bends and other things that lend to a flawed appearance in a lot of Poser work.

 

An example of mine that is both, in one sense, a lazy image, and an ambitious one, is "The Children Are the Future" piece I did. It's ambitious because there are a lot of figures in the image that forced me to do two renders because Poser choked and I had to delete half the figures to render part of the image and then restore and delete the other half to render the other part--and combined both parts in Photoshop. The image only uses default or other textures that came with the figures (with the untextured table using an RDNA texture). For what I was trying to achieve, those textures were what I wanted. As it is, the image consumed a whole weekend's time to compose and complete. Changing a dull green texture to a dull brown texture would be extra work that wouldn't make that much of a difference in the final product. It's still not as original as it could have been. People in the Poser community are more attuned to what is and isn't a Poser product. The average person, looking at a Poser render, hasn't seen the same prop, clothing item, or texture, a hundred times before. To a non-Poser audience, those items don't come across as repetitive.

 

Having seen what Poser is capable of accomplishing, I'll agree that most of the criticisms about Poser have to do with the users than with the limitations of the program. Having a program with realistic human figures and a halfway decent rendering engine doesn't guarantee that great art will be created. A person, whose art career ended when they grew out of crayons and coloring books, hasn't got the same artistic eye as somebody who continued drawing or got into photography or some other creative field. It takes time and practice to train the mind's eye--to go from a vision of the imagination to creating that vision in a media to show another person.

 

I wouldn't blame anybody, who doesn't make use of all of Poser's capabilities, for not reading the manual. Nobody, who has read the Poser 5 manual, is ever going to master the Material Room without a lot of outside help. The manual barely explains what each node does and does nothing to explain how to properly use those nodes.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

"I wouldn't blame anybody, who doesn't make use of all of Poser's capabilities, for not reading the manual. Nobody, who has read the Poser 5 manual, is ever going to master the Material Room without a lot of outside help. The manual barely explains what each node does and does nothing to explain how to properly use those nodes."

That is very true, the manual is weak, but I've never failed to get an answer to a question posted here within a couple hours, often from an expert in the particular area of Poser I needed the help with, Stewer being one of them. :O)

the real talent ( as always ) lies within the artist themselves.

Well said, and that applies to every artform and technique. Cheap or expensive isn't the criteria. The end product s what people look at, and judge.

I think, no offense, that you are a beginner with Poser. My first renders were awful and I made lots of mistakes. Just hang around Poser forums and experiment. Excellent Poser artists to look at are FS (photo real portraits), awadisk (nudes), and many others. Invest in some really quality textures like Morris, Blackhearted, and others. You can paint in shadows in Photoshop. Go to www.runtimedna.com and download all the free light sets. They are wonderful. Keep in mind that Vincent Van Gogh died a pauper, and now his paintings are worth millions.

"Anybody can tell the difference between charcoal and watercolor no matter what the skill levels were involved in creating artwork with those media."

(OK - I said I wouldn't re-post in this thread - except if something caught my attention. It did..)

Just wondering....
If somebody created a watercolour picture that looked like charcoal - would that be art? (It would certainly be difficult to achieve, and would require a very considerable expertise.) Would anybody criticise it as "being charcoal"? Would the artist be congratulated for being able to manipulate the medium to emulate a different one? Or would the artist be castigated for using the wrong medium in the first place?

Yup, some Poser pics are obviously Poser. IT DOESN'T MATTER. What DOES matter is the way the tool is used.. With wit, imagination and a bit of thought, Poser can create some great images. Or it can be used as an adjunct to other programs. It's the result that counts, not the tool..

At least, that's my view on it (my best ever images, long ago, where done in school art class, using pastel crayons + watercolours... - alas, the school kept them and I've lost them. They weren't important to me at the time)

Cheers,
Diolma

Gagnonrich wrote: A person, whose art career ended when they grew out of crayons and coloring books, hasn't got the same artistic eye as somebody who continued drawing or got into photography or some other creative field.

In my opinion that  isn't  true: professional critics and galleryholders usually don't have an academic degree on arts, or perhaps they are artschool dropouts, but they have an excellent eye how to promote or sell art. Most of the time they are the people who get rich on art and not the artists. And if they see money in poser- or maya- or 3Dstudio- made images they'll sell it as art.

But perhaps this is a little off topic, this is my opinion:

-Poser is a tool to create digital images, with such a huge amount of support, commercial and non-commercial, that users of other 3D-packages look green of envy.

-Perhaps poser doesn't have the greatest render-engine, but with some effort you can get stunning results.

-Realism or photo-realism is not what it takes for an image to have to be art. We'll just have to wait till someone comes with the first impressionist or cubist rendering. I can imagine that a poorly rendered image without shadows or fancy occlusion ambiant lighting can have a certain artistic value.

-Buying a more expensive package doesn't make someone an better artist, I can imagine that someone who encounters the limits of poser or another cheap 3D-program wants to have a better tool to express his intentions, but if you make trash in poser you will make allways trash. So saying Poser isn't art because you have the money to buy 3D-studio or what'sever is just pure snobism.

-I think internet will change the way people deal with art. People won't go to an museum to see contemporary art but just surf the internet and they will interact with the artists themself. The big disadvantage of this is, that it will be difficult to earn some money out of it, the moment you put your product on the internet it's free for everybody, copyright or no copyright. And if you're asking money to look at it, no-one will.

-How can you improve things when you don't make mistakes?

Attached Link: Irina 2

Alot of good points/comments made here. I'm a P6 fanatic! I can literally spend hours on a single image even before the first render. ALOT of time is spent on getting the pose just right (or close anyway) but mostly I spend a huge amount of time on the lighting. I have many light sets that I cycle thru until I find spmething that's close to what I want and from there on I start adjusting shadows, intensities, individual light angles, etc until my eyes bleed! Sometimes I just cry uncle and wind up with a unsatisfactory render (at least to me). My latest picture Irina 2 is an example - I easily spent the better part of a day on just the lighting! Sometimes the changes I make wouldn't be noticable by anyone else, but I know and if I don't like the change, I make more changes.

I'm also not a big fan of postwork - it just adds more time getting to the final product. I'm not saying I don't do postwork, I just prefer getting it mostly done upfront in Poser.

Yup, I'm definitely a Poser freak!

Cheers everyone,
samhal

i7 6800 (6 core/12 thread), 24 GB RAM, 1 gtx 1080 ti (8GB Vram) + 1 Titan X (12GB Vram), PP11, Octane/Poser plugin, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Oh, and a wiener dog!

Personally, whether or not an image was obviously done in Poser usually becomes a moot point, simply because a lot of the images in the galleries have the "looks like Poser - in a bad way" syndrome (some of these have been mentioned before):

• No shadows - This is one of the worst and most common problems with Poser renders.  It is an understandable problem, since Poser's lights aren't exactly newbie-friendly. With lots of practice, you can achieve great results, but Poser really needs point lights that can cast shadowmaps. A proper GI renderer built in would help too.

• Poor posing - This is the most justified criticism of Poser images by users of other 3d programs (as well as by other Poser users) IMHO, especially since it is the most controllable. One of the best ways to avoid this is to look at actual people or photographs showing a similar pose to what one is trying to achieve. Carefully study the twisting and rotation of limbs also, since only mutants can directly bend their arms straight up without twisting their collars at all.

• Ugly faces - If I had a dollar for every Vicky I've seen that looks like an ugly half-cat-half-Chinese mutant crackwhore, I'd make Bill Gates look like a pauper. The only thing worse than not using any morphs at all is to use too many or the wrong ones in combination.

• Idiotic expressions - This is sometimes more the fault of content creators than Poser users, although the presence of good morphs does not guarantee their proper use. One of my pet peeves is when someone uses "open lips" set too high to open a mouth instead of using "yell", with the result looking like a cross between a spastic and a candidate for emergency jaw surgery.

• Poor scene composition - Composition may be a bit esoteric and difficult to master, but simply placing random figures and/or props in the scene and rendering truly does take no skill whatsoever. This is another of the main reasons users of other 3d programs chide Poser users, and a very justified one. If you put no effort into your image, why would you expect anything but jeers from people who do put effort into their images (whether wholly self-made or not).

While it is true that a large portion of the Poser community is at a more amateur level than other 3d users, and that many of us are doing this as a hobby, there is far too much indignation around every one of these type of threads to take seriously, and there seems to be virtually no ability to see that some of the criticisms of Poser art are justified. Just because you're having fun doesn't mean anyone else is going to care for your 2 minutes worth of posing an overly boob-sized Vicky hovering somewhat near the ground while staring in a random direction and gritting her teeth.

Good Point(s) R_Hatch.

 

"If you put no effort into your image, why would you expect anything but jeers from people who do put effort into their images (whether wholly self-made or not)."

 

The unfortunate other side of this coin, is seeing images like this, followed by comments of nothing but gushing praise.

 

Don't get me wrong... I mean...I  subscribe to being supportive to those who are less experienced, and as mentioned,most folks here are hobbyists and do this mostly for fun. But is it really being helpful to leave "over the top" sugar coated comments on images with obvious severe problems?

Personally,I think it not only does the artist a disservice, but it also isn't helpful to those newbie's who may simply be just viewing the image followed by nothing but happy lovely comments.

 

Many times,the comments are nothing more than the typical "Awesome Work","This is Fantastic", "Amazing" type of comments. So not only does the onlooker think that is acceptable to have the vacant staring default Vicky,has no shadow and her skin poking through her clothes (if there are any...lol) while her feet are sinking into the floor,He/She also doesn't see any reason stated as to "Why" the image is so spectacular.

 

Not only is there no "Helpful" feedback,but most times, nothing is said as to "WHY" the image is awesome.

 

For example "Awesome render,I particularly like way you posed her hands". Sometimes it's helpful to draw attention to a "Good"part of the scene so new folks will see what might otherwise be overlooked.

 

I learned more about art by seeing what people said about others work,than comments made on my own.

 

But then again,I don't post much anymore anyway.I stopped posting art after I lost my Spelling and Grammar Checker in the big crash of 2004

 

8 )

Tom

 

 

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

**"If you put no effort into your image, why would you expect anything but jeers from people who do put effort into their images (whether wholly self-made or not)."

No reason to expect anything but, however decent artists started somewhere and remember their own early efforts. If they bother leaving any critique at all, they are helpful rather than cutting. Example: Here's what's I find wrong and here's how to improve it.

I find the insulting and often simply erroneous criticisms come from people who don't even have galleries and haven't a clue about what they are writing about. Of course you have to only look at this thread to find the proof to that point. They are trolls, pure and simple.

As far as the glowing positives, there are often pics I want to acknowledge, but time is limited. A simple "that's great" is all I feel the need to post, just like there are times when an experimental but flawed render is all I feel the need to post.

**

"I find the insulting and often simply erroneous criticisms come from people who don't even have galleries and haven't a clue about what they are writing about."

 

So what you are saying is Someone with no gallery is smart enough to know what they do like but not smart enough to know what they don't like?

In other words...If someone with no gallery leave's a glowing comment on your image,he is qualified and knows about art,but if he leaves a critique,he's not qualified and knows nothing about art?

 

Tom

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

Hmmm, I have to agree with Hawk on this one. Looking back on this thread I see no evidence of trolls. A difference of opinion does not trolling make. It reminds me of the good old days on AOL when arguements often went as such :

"I'm afraid you have NO idea what you're talking about"

"Stop harassing me!!! I'm paging a guide !!"   :lol:

Having a gallery isn't like a day pass to the Opinion Theme Park, and the lack of one doesn't indicate you know nothing about that which you are expressing an opinion. My Hubby, for example, is a professional artist, yet you won't find his gallery posted on this site ( not that he looks through the galleries or posts critiques, as too many are posting and sitting by their pc watching their view count and "excellent!" ratios and aren't really interested in a professional analysis )

I'm so tired of these ""Cry "Troll!!!" and let slip the dogs of war" situations. I know artists are supposed to be sensitive types, but really...... sigh

Michelle

( not a troll, though I do occasionally look like one in the mornings )

Quote -  

But then again,I don't post much anymore anyway.I stopped posting art after I lost my Spelling and Grammar Checker in the big crash of 2004

 

8 )

Tom

 

me too tom. and my dictionary in the last  bigreference  war. otherwise i'd have know what erroniarse meant...thr rr is rolling round btw.  good post...good luck lmao

billy

The **"You have no gallery so you have no right to critique"** comment has been used here for several years.

 

Just because I don't play the piano,doesn't mean I'm not qualified to know what piano music I like and what piano music I don't like.

 

Please define an "erroneous criticism" or perhaps give an example of one.

 

Am I a troll now becauseI disagree?

Tom

 

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

Your reading comprehension skills rival billy's poor spelling, despite a specific example in my previous post, so I'll keep it really simple for you. I don't like ignorant trolls. Helpful critiques are just fine. Positive comments are always welcome.

spot on dark star.

i'm not a polititian but i can crit the gov. i'm not a priest but i can crit the church. i'm not not a chief but i can crit a meal served in a restaraunt etc. a critique is ones personal opinion on how something seems to he/she the individual be they common  man or egotestical artiste. one of the reasons why good crit works is that no matter how up your own arse you  are, if enough people say somethings wrong there probably is something wrong. a person doesn't need to know the ins and outs of pov ray to see that one object has a shadow and another doesn't.  or a background in medicine to say that v3's arm looks like it's been broken in seven places and antibiotics won't repair it

 

billy

 

fls 13 (I'm assuming the 13 represents your age there but I'm sure you will correct my erroneous assumption if I'm wrong)

 

I stopped reading your posts after the Spelling and Grammar post...I've been around here a long time and I've yet to recall a more ignorant statement.

The only reason I read your last one is because it followed mine directly.

Do you mean this example?

"Example: Here's what's I find wrong and here's how to improve it. "

If this is the example you refer to it still has nothing to do with whether the person has a gallery or not.

 

But alas,I'm now more stupid from reading your stuff.

 

I'll have to remember not to read anymore of your posts.

 

I'm not getting any younger and cant afford to get any dumber.

You are correct..my comprehension skills are really bad,when it comes to reading your posts. 

Brightest Blessings

 

Tom

 

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

Quote - Your reading comprehension skills rival billy's poor spelling, despite a specific example in my previous post, so I'll keep it really simple for you. I don't like ignorant trolls. Helpful critiques are just fine. Positive comments are always welcome.

the s in skill is redundant in fact the word skill or skills is redundant....... reading skills and spelling skills are completely different animals and as such can't be compared. you may as well say. you diving skills are as bad as your algebra..unless of course you're trying to use analogy  which in this case doesn't work. billy starts with a cap......first line too long and a period would have been better than comma after the word post......which would give the following s a cap.....just because someones writing has little or no grammar doesn't mean they don't know how to use it. same goes for spelling. my probs the keyboard and when i writ priperly i din'y nood a spool-licker

 

hear here on the twoll thingy. from experience i've found that if one is to troll it's best if one doesn't use the troll word. if you wish to keep this up why don't you take it off the board and mail me in private so i can block ya lmao

billy.

 

  Spell Checker

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea
Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong or write
It shows me strait a weigh
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can putt the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong
Eye have run this poem threw
I am shore your pleas two no
Its let her perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew

 

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

Quote -   Spell Checker

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea
Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong or write
It shows me strait a weigh
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can putt the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong
Eye have run this poem threw
I am shore your pleas two no
Its let her perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew

 

this  should be in the poetry forum lmao. ...this more than pays back for the wheels hehe

billy

"hear here on the twoll thingy. from experience i've found that if one is to troll it's best if one doesn't use the troll word. if you wish to keep this up why don't you take it off the board and mail me in private so i can block ya lmao"

Why should I? You chose to troll in a public forum and expose your own complete ignorance regarding the technical aspects of 3D programs. Deal with it. But at least you made a new friend in ponytail boy, so it wasn't a complete loss for you. That is if he is a new friend and not someone you knew and PM'ed for help.

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

"Please define an "erroneous criticism" or perhaps give an example of one."
**
erroneous criticism:

**erroneous: 1. Containing or characterized by error; inaccurate: "erroneous conclusions"

**
**criticism: 1. Disapproval expressed by pointing out faults or shortcomings: "the senator received severe criticism from his opponent"
                2. A serious examination and judgment of something: "constructive criticism is always appreciated"
                3. A written evaluation of a work of literature: Critique.

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

I find the whole brand loyalty thing a bit odd. Personally, I'll use whatever I can. I'll throw everything I've got at the screen if it get's me the image I'm looking for. Some people actually look down on postwork, like it's a bad thing. Hell, even the term 'post-work' itself is an odd one. It's all artwork, It's just a matter of doing what it takes to get the art out of your head and onto the screen. By hook or by crook. Posers just a tool and simply learning how a tool works does not make good artwork. Composition, lighting, colour, drama, these things make good artwork. It's not that some images "look Poser" per-se, it's just that some images have been rendered without any thought to traditional knowledge of what makes good art (like Composition). I think some people frown upon 'Poserish' artwork, not because it was produced with Poser, but because a lot of images look like the artist has simply opened Poser up and relied on the software to do all the work for them. If you're artwork suffers because it "looks Poser" chances are you don't need to flip though the manual or find another light tutorial, chances are you need to get your butt to a public art gallery, look at some oil paintings, do some research on art in the library, and put a pencil in your hand, Sketch some ideas. You don't need to be great with a pencil, just sketch some crude compositional sketches, then think about opening the software to start an image. When I look at other peoples images I'm not bothered if it was created in Poser, or Painter, or Photoshop, or Carrara, or Bryce (apart from technical artistic curiosity of course). I'm only really concerned whether their image is good art, powerfull art, something that grabs my interest. It's all about producing good artwork. It doesn't matter how you get there or what tool you use.

Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing?

Thanks dphoadly,(I always enjoy your definitions)

 

I'm aware of the definitions as they are separately.What I was going for was what the 2 words mean when put together and how they relate here.

I also requested an example.

 

I mean,if it's been established that beauty is in the eye of the beholder,then how can any critique be erroneous when it comes to art?

 

Tom

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

Attached Link: WordWeb

WordWeb is a free cut-down version of the WordWeb Pro software. It includes a comprehensive English thesaurus and dictionary, and can be used to look up words from within most programs. Features of the free version include:     Definitions and synonyms Proper nouns Related words Pronunciations     140 000 root words 115 000 synonym sets Look up words in almost any program

Millions of people from all over the world use this top-rated software.

WordWeb 4.5 for Windows 95/98/2000/NT/Me/XP
Free. No SpyWare. No AdWare. No viruses. Works offline.

Get the FREE download

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

Thanks

BTW,What's another word for thesaurus?

Tom

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

IMO, the biggest drawback to Poser is not even the lousy render engine.  It is the lack of actual artistic skill needed to make a render.  If you don't know basic composition, lighting, and HUMAN ANATOMY how can you presume to artistically portray the human figure?  And, then there is the lack of realisation that skin, or anything else, for that matter has channels.  A 4048x4048 color .jpg just doesn't do justice to the actual nuances in skin.  People have fun with Poser.  It is inexpensive.  Good.  But no one has to really take the time to learn about edgeloops, or s curves, or diffusion channels, and, most folks don't bother.  I feel that there is a general assumption in the Poser community that if something was purchased, it must be of good quality.  I see so many textures, specifically, that are anything BUT convincing.  And, those folks who slap a Vicki in the middle of a scene and surround her with a ton of pre purchased photoshop actions....well, that isn't as bad as the folks who oooh and aaah in the gallery and say...."NOW THAT'S ART".  The community is also a good part of the Poser problem.  Why does no one ever say....centering your figure and pointing the camera dead straight on may not be the most effective composition?

When the Poser gallery gets more images like this one http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=35943  I'll play in Poser again.

I think Poser does have problems, and they can be split into at least three sorts. First are the basic technical problems such as the memory management. Second are the problems with the way Poser handles the virtual world it models. In this I'd put things like nostril glow and the bending of elbows and knees. The third group are as much down to the user as the software, and include using standard poses, standard faces, and a lot of other such stuff. And maybe a fourth category is entangled with the quality of the documentation. It's maybe a good thing that Poser 6 isn't the leap that Poser 5 was, but you can spend more on computer graphics textbooks than on Poser before you can properly understand the manual. Those shader nodes nedd more explanation than just a listing of the names of inputs.

Still more good comments! I personally think Poser all by itself (with a good user) is fully capable of absolutely stunning images. It's also capable of complete crap also.

I have some of the other bigboy graphic packages also but for some reason Poser won out overall. I will be the first to admit that my early attempts at anything artistic with ANY of them would be deserving of all the disdain anyone could throw.

I think any of these packages can produce images that rival the best that any of the others can produce. The trick is that the user has to use the application to the fullest. I can create a mountain in Bryce that looks like the Vickie everyone here is talking about. Or, I can make a mountain scene that rivals any postcard avaiable...with no other tool necessary. It's all there if it's capitalized on. Same with Poser.

Too many Poser users don't take their work (or know how to) to what Poser is really capable of. I myself am still learning and I've been at it for....quite awhile now. :-)

Cheers,
Samantha

i7 6800 (6 core/12 thread), 24 GB RAM, 1 gtx 1080 ti (8GB Vram) + 1 Titan X (12GB Vram), PP11, Octane/Poser plugin, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Oh, and a wiener dog!

:bored:___ me thinks this thread needs a separate forum.

:huh:_______ maybe a Poser forum ...

:blink:________ Oh, wait, we're already there ........................ nevermind.

:lol:

Remember ... "With Poser, all things are possible, and poseable!"

cheers,

dr geep ... :o]

edited 10/5/2019

Question: BTW,What's another word for thesaurus?
Answer: synonym finder

     And now would the THREE of you PLEASE quit this immature and childish behavor?!  It is definately not edifying.
David P. Hoadley

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

Edifying??? .......... or Edit-fying ... ????????? We need more edits ......... no?:lol:

Remember ... "With Poser, all things are possible, and poseable!"

cheers,

dr geep ... :o]

edited 10/5/2019

"Edifying??? .......... or Edit-fying"

Dear Dr. Geep,
    Ave Amicus!
    Neither Edifying nor Edit-fying, but rather Edit-frying.  I like to fry my Edits sunny side up, my wife prefers hers flipped over.  But no bacon, not Kosher.
David P. Hoadley

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

:blink:____ You mean they don't make Kosher bacon? (jk-oc)
;=]

Remember ... "With Poser, all things are possible, and poseable!"

cheers,

dr geep ... :o]

edited 10/5/2019

NOT in Israel, they don't!  (Albeit, they do have a way of smoking turkey that comes close.) ;-D
DPH

BTW, do you have a Setup Room tut, and a tut on adjusting th JP's in the hip?  I've created a figure out of odds and ends, but when I bend the thighs to the side, funny things happen between her legs.

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

Attached Link: Resting

> Quote - professional critics and galleryholders usually don't have an academic degree on arts, or perhaps they are artschool dropouts, but they have an excellent eye how to promote or sell art.

 

Does an art degree mean much when applying for an artist position? I'd tend to think that the portfolio is all that counts and that the degree is somewhat meaningless. It would be cheaper to hire somebody, without a degree, who has roughly equivalent talent. In fact, I'd lean to hiring the person, without the degree, because that person has demonstrated more initiative and innate talent by being as good as a graduate with four years of advanced artistic training.

 

It would probably be fairly safe to say that most Poser users aren't major fans of what passes for art in the last half century. I don’t care how hard somebody tries to tell me that a couple geometric shapes represents something profound about man's role in the universe--I'm still not seeing the emperor's clothes. Nobody will ever convince me that dripping paint from a bucket onto canvas is art. Unfortunately, the art world is full of people that have glib tongues and the ability to make crap seem like gold and people with lots of money are silly enough to spend millions of dollars on stuff that those, without the benefits of a fine arts education, consider garbage. I create the art I want to see and thankfully don't have to rely on that artwork to earn a living. I doubt I'd ever have the stomach to spin the kind of BS necessary to be considered a critical art fave.

 

R_Hatch has done a good job of summarizing the common faults of a lot of Poser artwork. The only thing that I would disagree with is equating time with quality. Creating a great Poser image takes a lot of time, from concept to refining poses, to the time consuming render-adjust lights-render process to fine tune the differences between what lights are doing in the draft mode and with final shaded renders, and final postwork tweaking. The best Poser artists produce better work than the worst because they are better artists in all senses of the word. Who knows how much time an uninspiring piece of Poser art took? It could have been ten minutes. It could have been ten hours. It's hard to say.

 

It's probably fair to say that there isn't a single artist showing a gallery to the public that didn't think they were showcasing something worthwhile. Who would take the time to upload an image that they thought was junk? It's the reason that, if I leave a comment, I say something about what was right with the image. I figure, over time, as they continue doing more and more work, they'll improve and see what was wrong with the older effort.

 

A nice thread, a while back, asked artists to show their first and latest works to see how much they've grown using Poser and give some encouragement to starting artists the humble beginnings of many others.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2641035

In some cases, the differences were relatively minor and mostly showed the limitations of earlier models and rendering features. In other instances, the differences were much starker. One of the artists that showed the most improvement was Jenay.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=10631

The two images being contrasted, at that time were the first and "Girl in an Abandoned Rusty Corridor". The thing that hit me most about viewing those two images was how much Jenay improved as an artist. Poses were more realistic. Camera angles were more dynamic. The newer figure had some expression and not just a blank stare. Jenay's artistic skills dramatically improved over the years.

 

For chuckles, I decided to give myself a challenge to create an image wholly out of freely available products (except for Victoria2), using existing poses, and not tweaking anything (other than hiding some body parts to avoid poke-through). I don't consider "Resting" a great image or anything, but it's not horrible. Even by trying to do something as fast as possible, it still took three hours to create. There was about an hour finding all the props and items to put into the image and adding them to Poser, another hour composing the scene and adjusting camera angles and lighting, and another hour playing with renders and lighting, and then a quick color adjustment in Photoshop. The textures in the grass didn't hold up to being magnified and that's not surprising because Traveler probably never figured anybody would try to magnify the grass to that extent. Overall, it's not an awful image even though it's the quickest I've done. For anybody interested, I provided links to all the free items in my comments (all links were good a year ago, but I haven't checked to see whether they're still good).

 

Here's the link that made me question the value of criticisms from artists who aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=219323&page=1&pp=15

Although an artist doesn't have to be DaVinci to critique a work, it means a lot more when the critic has demonstrated considerable expertise with their own work. When an artist, like ernyoka--who's a bit better than me, leaves advice on something I've done, I take it more seriously than somebody whose work is a few years behind what I'm currently doing. It doesn't mean that the other criticism isn't valid. It's like a lot of unsolicited advice we get in our lives. Generally, the last thing I need in life is somebody, whose life is a walking trainwreck, telling me how to improve mine when I'm not unhappy. All I want to tell them is to get their life in order and worry less about mine because that person is obviously not spending enough time cleaning their own house. That's how I feel about a lot of critics. Spend more time improving your artwork and less trying to improve what others are doing.

 

An artistic skill is like any other. It improves with practice. When I said that a person, who, gave up art when they stopped coloring, probably doesn't have as good an artistic eye as somebody who never stopped drawing, I wasn't denigrating what can be created with a crayon. I was talking about the distinction between the practiced skills of one person versus another who gave up too soon. That latter, person, inspired by picking up Poser and getting back into art, has catching up to do and has to make a lot of artistic mistakes before they can get better. The last thing I ever want to do is chase them away by telling them how much is wrong with what they dared to post in their gallery.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

"BTW, do you have a Setup Room tut, and a tut on adjusting th JP's in the hip?  I've created a figure out of odds and ends, but when I bend the thighs to the side, funny things happen between her legs."

I don't have a tut, but perhaps fiddling with the orientation dials of the joint editor dialog box will do the trick. I'd have to see what the problem is in order to see if I had a solution for you and it would also help to know what you did to get the figure to whatever point you're at.

I included a pic that is of a figure created from five figures, 2 shoes, shirt, pants and human figure. I only exported the groups from the human that where needed, hands, forearms, head, neck and shins. There's hardly any geometry under the clothes. The shirt was fitted to the original figure in the cloth room. Exported it, imported it and then used the setup room to create the figure using a .cr2 from the library. The key is in the export dialog box. Check only the Include existing groups in polygon groups box.

Quote - Here's the link that made me question the value of criticisms from artists who aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing.

The problem here is one I've experienced when I've critiqued writing.

"What gives you the right to say that?  How many published novels have you written?"

The problem is defining "aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing".   How do you measure that?  And does it include specifics or the whole image?

What I mean by that is assume someone does a beautifully artistic NVIATWAS image and calls it something like "Assyrian Warrior" or whatever and describes it as their impression of a female Assyrian warrior getting ready to go battle the Egyptians or something.

Someone points out that the facial features/skin colour/whatever is wrong.  It's a John Wayne Playing Genghis Khan thing.  Real Assyrians didn't look like that.  Their temples didn't look like that.  Their swords didn't look like that.

Does the artist (and supporters) get to dismiss that criticism just because the person doing it, who might have professional expertise in Assyrian culture, hasn't produced a render of equal quality (or any at all)?

I'm a geologist and a volunteer firefighter/EMT and used to be a soldier.  Now I don't have the skill to direct a big Hollywood movie, nor probably write one, nor do the special effects or the acting or any of the other elements involved, but does that therefore mean that I can't criticize the laughable science in "Volcano", the horrifyingly bad portrayal of firefighting in "Backdraft" or the ridiculousness in any number of war/action movies featuring the circular firing squad or similar weapon-related stupidity ("Total Recall" being a particular offender in that one)?

Same for writing.  Same for art.

I too included the parts of the huma tha were visable, but i altered the height and length of the pants bwfore exporting, and now they don't bend to the side properly. 1. Casual Woman2 - the pants tear in the crotch DPH

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

2. Casual Woman3 (with Halter Top & Overcoat incorporated into the mesh) - developes Turkish fellahin pants when leg bent to side.

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

Quote - NOT in Israel, they don't!  (Albeit, they do have a way of smoking turkey that comes close.) ;-D
DPH

BTW, do you have a Setup Room tut, and a tut on adjusting th JP's in the hip?  I've created a figure out of odds and ends, but when I bend the thighs to the side, funny things happen between her legs.

:glare: ____ Hmmm, ... that kind of reminds me of an old girlfriend.
(sorry, couldn't resist that one.)

Setup Room tut ? >>>>>>>>  Try this one.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Remember ... "With Poser, all things are possible, and poseable!"

cheers,

dr geep ... :o]

edited 10/5/2019

For what it's worth..Study of Dr Geep's tuts has proven far more useful to me than the manual ever was. I like his sense of humor, and irreverence..as for art for art's sake..(Yawn) who cares? do what comes naturally and if folks don't approve..tough. I use poser as a hobby, and get a lot of pleasure and enjoyment out of the program..I'm not trying to make stuff for the Louve, or the Hermitage, anyway.  "Artistic mistakes?" Har. I have profited greatly from those fellow artists who have taken the time to help me get organized, learn better lighting, work around Poser limitations, and show me better ways to present my material..and this only happens when I make an "Artistic Mistake" so those who want to get the most out of Poser..see, read, and practice what Dr Geep has in his locker before you give up. He's my hero! (along with Zell, fls13, and DPHoadley) and yes, I do post upon occasion, have a gallery, and access to high powered 3d programs, but Poser is what I feel most comfortable with, and that's what I use.

:blushing: _____ Gawsh ........ thanks.

Remember ... "With Poser, all things are possible, and poseable!"

cheers,

dr geep ... :o]

edited 10/5/2019

just to agree with sparky8 - geep's tutorials are invaluable. p.s. billy - now you see what I mean about trolls, as I had used the dreaded term early in this thread. in the context of any forum related to poser, a troll is somebody who sez negative things about a poser render. right or wrong, they're feared by some to the point of irrationality, and there's often an attempt to incite a lynch mob to punish the troll for his attempt at exercising his freedom of speech :lol:

____ Thanks Nance.

BTW - I just (re)posted 2 more tuts ... "Backgrounds" & "UVMapper" in the "Now Playing" section.

Enjoy and view 'em in good health.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Remember ... "With Poser, all things are possible, and poseable!"

cheers,

dr geep ... :o]

edited 10/5/2019

Quote - The problem is defining "aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing".   How do you measure that?  And does it include specifics or the whole image?

I guess it comes down to the purpose of a critique.

 

You're absolutely right that there is no reason why you or anyone else shouldn't be able to critique a work of art. Ebert and Roeper disagree about the merits of movies on a regular basis. These two critics hold regular jobs at newspapers and host a weekly TV show to critique movies. Companies are paying them to tell the public what they think about movies. They disagree about films almost as often as they share an opinion on a movie. It's not that they're always just shades apart where one is lukewarm about a movie and one mildly cold. There are times when one will say a movie is the worst they've seen this year while the other will say that it's one of the best they've seen. As far as I know, Roeper has had no involvement in the making of a movie while Ebert's experience was writing the screenplay for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", a movie that didn't exactly garner worldwide praise. At a professional level, one doesn't have to have cinematic experience in the movie field to be a film critic. That says that one need not be a Poser expert to be a Poser critic. Ebert and Roeper's disagreements also say that there is no universal standard to measure the merit of a work of art. That basically says that it's an opinion.

 

What's the purpose of a critique? In Ebert and Roeper's case, it's to help save the public from spending money on a bad movie that has a better trailer than a plot. Renderosity galleries are free, so critiques aren't going to save any money. Most of the artists are hobbyists doing this for fun, not for money. There should be a different sensibility to critiquing a work that somebody is doing for fun for free and something that a movie studio spent 200 million dollars on. It's a little easier poking fun at a bad performance by an actor who got paid 20 million dollars than some small artist posting his gallery work. I don't feel bad beating up on somebody getting paid more for one movie that I'll earn in my entire lifetime--the actor can cry all the way to the bank. I don't feel like being critical of an artist that's creating artwork in their spare time and hoping it will find a tiny audience.

 

Since comments are left on the image, they aren't influencing anybody visiting that image. A person ha already have opted to look at the image to find the comment. Leaving a critique in a comment box is a fairly meaningless exercise because it has no impact on the number of people that view the image. The critique is seen after the image is seen. At that point, the viewer has already decided whether or not they like the image. That leaves any critical comment now being seen more as advice than anything. Advice is a tricky thing. Not everybody wants it. I don't know about most artists, but I generally don't intend to correct images that I've put in my gallery. I'd rather work on my next image. Any comments, about specific things that only apply to the one image, probably won't ever be acted on, whether I agree with the comment or not. The Work in Progress gallery is probably a better place to leave constructive criticism.

 

If you follow the link I posted to CGForum, you'll find a render that almost looks like a photograph. That portrait looks more real than half the photos I've taken. Looking at advice being offered by others (too waxy; needs more dirt, etc.), they're all looking too hard to find faults when there's nothing really wrong with the image. The critics are offering advice, but not solutions. For the critique that the skin looks "waxy", what rendering parameters need to be tuned to eliminate that "expert's" concern? The poster doesn't know how to provide solid expertise to fix his perceived problem. That poster hasn't rendered anything remotely as realistic as the image he's critiquing. It's not useful advice to the artist.

 

It's hard to leave a critical comment on somebody's image without either seeming arrogant or condescending or a bit of a know-it-all. It really doesn't matter if it's meant as being helpful. Anybody who tries to find fault with something always will. Sometimes it's better to "ooh" and "aah" something that's really nice than finding fault with it. There's no doubt that, if DaVinci were around to post the Mona Lisa here that somebody would find something wrong with it and suggest how to fix it and at least one person will offer that he lose the smile. There's an unintentional touch of arrogance to offer improvements to a master artist. As much as one doesn't have to be an expert to give an opinion or a critique, there are times when maybe it's best not to.

 

It's a touchy thing offering artistic advice to somebody who is inexperienced because they're too enamored with what they've produced even though it's fairly rudimentary. Is there any real value in commenting on something in an image that is so obviously flawed that it's hard to imagine that the artist didn't see it? The artist clearly should have recognized the problem and it's doubtful that pointing it out to the artist will make it any more self-evident. If somebody has a portrait with the default Face Camera fish-eye effect, worthwhile concrete advice would be how to fix the focal length. That's something that can be acted on by the artist. If the lighting is off and the setting would work well with a free light set, a link to those lights should be appreciated. Offering a link to a tutorial that would correct a problem should be good. Any other advice becomes questionable. Is the critique truly providing useful actionable helpful advice or is it just showing off one's professed knowledge base? 

That's the logic train that I eventually took to providing compliments on what is right in an image if I'm going to leave a comment.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

Dave-I'd pose the figure as you had it in the image you posted and start fiddling with the orientation dials of the joint editor dialog box. That should do the trick.

My view on our little debate here is I'm all for free speech, especially my own. If somebody wants to troll me, fine. Just don't cry like a b*tch when I fire back. And I'm one of Sparky8's heroes, so I can't be all bad. :O)

Quote - > Quote - professional critics and galleryholders usually don't have an academic degree on arts, or perhaps they are artschool dropouts, but they have an excellent eye how to promote or sell art.

considered a critical art fave.

 

Here's the link that made me question the value of criticisms from artists who aren't as good as the artist that they're critiquing.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=219323&page=1&pp=15

Although an artist doesn't have to be DaVinci to critique a work, it means a lot more when the critic has demonstrated considerable expertise with their own work.

i agree it would be nicer if a master modeller gave crit but....

 

a critique comes in two forms. one critiques what the picture does or does not do for the viewer by way of asthetics. does it look right to the eye. is it in proportion. is the left eye where it should be. is the shadow where it should be. anyone can do a  decent crit on these things because everyone has indeed had the exeperience of seeing these things as a common place feature of living in a world where they exist as a reality.  everyone knows what a face should look like. the reason  faces are much harder to do is exactly because something wrong with a face will be spotted much sooner than something wrong with a leg.. the reason being, we look at faces more than legs.. in fact we stare at faces for a large part of our lives. that we can't represent what we see onto paper is a matter of hand eye co-ordination or lack of it. in many cases a person can have a great eye for art and be crap weilding a pencil, in fact he can have a better eye than the artist. what people are doing here is  confusing the creating of art with the discerning of it. as an analogy. ...i get brought a great looking....i say it tastes rubbish...another four people in the resteraunt say the same thing...way too much salt...mistake or oversight bt the chef...who know, the thing is people who didn't create the meal were discerning enout to taste the extra amount of salt...these comments gets passed on to the chef  and the next time i eat there that dish has the right amount of salt.

 

the other way to critique is by comment on the craft. what was used, how was it used. in this case poser. these comments should only be given by those who know their craft. ie. poser and other apps.  to say post work is only done in a paint program is a bit like saying mechanical work is only carried out on a car in the a specific garage.  by craft i  mean the best render engine, light settings and all the other side of how you call things up and correlate them to get an end pice of art. i took a look at the url and wow. the quality of it blew me away. from a technical point of view. that said if i saw someone walking down the street with some of the things i saw from an asthetic point of view i'd have to take a second look.  is it artistic. yes definitely so from both aspects of critique.

 

billy

Quote - I too included the parts of the huma tha were visable, but i altered the height and length of the pants bwfore exporting, and now they don't bend to the side properly.

1. Casual Woman2 - the pants tear in the crotch
   DPH

The hip group needs to completely separate the two thigh/buttock groups. It doesn't.

Two fixes:

1 - int he Cr2, add a line that welds the the two groups (bad idea for pants)

2 - int he object file, create a thin line of polys through the crotch that are part of the hip.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Quote - Thanks

BTW,What's another word for thesaurus?

Tom

Godzilla. I'll let you think about that one for a while ;p

The "You aren't an [excellent] artist; what do you know?" argument doesn't fly. Most of us don't want only "excellent artists" to look at and enjoy our work. If you ask someone to look at something, you are stuck with dealing with their response. That doesn't mean everybody's opinion is equal, but it does mean listening to all your critics with a humble and open mind. If a beer-guzzling cracker looks at a picture of mine and says, "You got the Pearl label all wrong, egghead!" he may be right, and if he is, I screwed up.

I like reading intelligent comments about anyone's work; I learn from them. I think the thing I find the least useful in galleries is the wordful vote, positive or negative. "Awesome, Dude!" is no more interesting than "This sucks!" I'd much prefer that those comments came in the form of ratings, myself. Good criticism is tempered by an understanding of the person's expertise and values. If a Poser technician tells me the Mat Room settings he thinks will make my dragon's scales look more like the crocodile skin I ineptly attempted, I'm glad to hear it. If she also tells me that dragons don't look like that, I shrug. Most of the time, the real technicians are not exceptional artists, I've found. If an artist whose work I admire comments on my composition or the emotional effect or the colors and shadows, I listen, even though many times real artists are not the most coherent and articulate explainers. If a body builder or physical therapist tells me I got the muscles wrong, I listen

A couple of people have hit the nail on the head, regarding what makes "Poser art" bad. A good deal of the bad is in the user's failure to master the tools. We've all suffered from the shy offer of "art" by untrained amateurs who are not prepared for criticism. (For me it's "poetry," meaning ethereal doggerel that doesn't even have to rhyme, thank Walt.) They just want you to coo over their baby, and like most babies, it looks like a fat midget or a shaved monkey. And unlike babies, it isn't going to grow up to be Michelle Pfeiffer or Lance Armstrong. Good Poser art can come from a "primitive" approach (in the Grandma Moses sense), but it's more likely to result from study and practice with the guidance of someone more knowledgeable if not more "talented." Poser by its very nature encourages people to "make art." This is why I occasionally describe it to people as the ultimate bathroom wall pencil. You don't need talent, or even much money, or even a motive more interesting than jacking off, to use it.

"Most of the time, the real technicians are not exceptional artists, I've found. "

Absolutely. A lot of the people who profess to be knowledgeable about their medium of choice often have galleries that are mediocre at best. They may have the best UV mapped node-enhanced all-singing all-dancing image of the week... but the picture often lacks that which I ( and it might well just be my opinion alone ) consider to really make a picture... and that is genuine feeling.

It may well just be a romanticised view of mine, but being an artist is something that you carry in your heart, it's a passion, a way of life. You can learn an application inside out and upside down, but if you don't hold that fire inside you then it will always be technically brilliant, but artistically lacking.

Quote - genuine feeling .

If you mean "genuine" in the extended sense of "accurately represented," I agree completely. As a mediocre visual artist (my medium is words), the hardest struggle I face is getting the "feeling" into a picture. My feeling may be genuine, but my ability to represent it is weak.

Quote - You can learn an application inside out and upside down, but if you don't hold that fire inside you then it will always be technically brilliant, but artistically lacking.

No resolvling this paradox. Craft without art is no better than art without craft. The greatest artists struggle with the intractable tools of their art, but they struggle knowledgably.

I don't especially disagree with anybody's thoughts on critiquing artwork. I have my own philosophies of how I want to help others and prefer doing it by focusing on the positives. If there's an out and out technical problem that has an easy solution, I'll offer that. I don't really think it's my place to tell them what's wrong with their image. If the artist placed their work in a Work-in-Progress gallery or forum, I might feel more comfortable offering constructive criticism. When an artist puts something in their gallery, I think they're putting something there that they're happy with and I don't feel it's my job to poke holes in their dreams.

I've taken some quick looks at galleries from posters in this thread. I saw one with a Vickie with a badly contorted and ballooned shoulder and spaghetti twisted upper arm. I saw another gallery with comic panels that were unimaginatively composed with all straight on camera angles and minimal variations in camera distances. I saw a bunch with poses that, if the artist tried duplicating that pose in a mirror, they'd fall down. Other poses would require breaking bones and ligaments to force limbs into those positions. I saw tons of faces that didn't look right. There were galleries with bad composition. I saw all these things without even trying to look for faults. Imagine how many more criticisms I could find if I had my critic's hat on. Most of these problems stuck out like sore thumbs, sometimes even in the thumbnails. I could spend all day critiquing what's wrong with what I saw. Some of you might appreciate those comments. Some of you won't. Who am I to tell you what's wrong with your artwork? I'm not a Poser expert, but, as many are pointing out, I don't have to be one to tell you what you're doing wrong.

I also saw some nice work in everybody's galleries. If I were taking the time to tell you what's wrong with your least impressive work, I'm probably not spending enough time telling you what's right with your best. Whatever time I spend critiquing the work of  others comes at the expense of spending more time bettering my own work.

As much as many don't like to see a comment that says, "Great work!" or something equally minimal, it's still nice encouragement. Somebody saw the thumbnail, found it compelling enough to open, and was happy enough with what they saw that they took the extra time to say something. I don't know about anybody else, but I don't usually get the compunction to leave a comment much more than 5% of the time. When I do find something striking enough that I want to say something, I'll try to leave more than a small one-liner. Even if I only left a quick 1-liner, it was because I thought that the work was worth saying something about. I'm not leaving the comment just to say that Killroy was here. I just can't find it in me to get upset if that's all somebody took the time to leave.

The big difference between art and technique is that technique can be learned whereas it's very hard to teach artistic talent. Teaching may focus and channel those talents. Teaching cannot create an artist unless the student has the desire to be one and is willing to invest the time to practice and improve.  Much of the artistic learning process is a personal one. Teachers can help show technique. Teachers can encourage and inspire. The real work, of artistically improving, comes from outside a classroom. Improvement is only going to come with time and practice. The amount of time an aspiring artist is going to spend on their craft partly comes from the encouragement they get.

My personal feeling is that anybody, who takes the time and trouble to post a public gallery, is better served by encouraging positive comments than a litany of comments about what they can improve.  If I should ever feel the urge to express my opinions about how others can improve their artwork, there are more than enough avenues where Works in Progress are being posted by artists who truly want criticisms and advice on how to improve what they're working on. Somehow, personal galleries just don't seem like the best place to do that.

Should somebody really want comments on how their art fares in the real world, pick a non-3D gallery to exhibit in and find out how others, who haven't grown accustomed to the quirks inherent in 3D work, view the masterpiece.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

Mark this day in your calendar folks. I'm going to ask if anyone here can say why the most common critique I get is on my "Image Resolution" when I render using Firefly. People keep telling me to use the "Anti-Alias option but here isn't one for Firefly like the checkbox I see for the Poser 4 render engine! Is there some Fine Render setting for Firefly that I'm missing somewhere? Is it simply because I save all my images at 95% quality JPG compression? Have I been getting that stupid thing backwards all this time and should be saving at 5% Quality instead?

laughing

I was wondering how long it would be before someone admitted to going through the galleries of the people who've posted in this thread lol

yeah, miz, I agree. it was a bummer when they dropped the "anti-alias" button. of course, I never thought it should be an option; they should be properly anti-aliased by default. I haven't looked at the galleries of the folks in this thread, dsb, but I reckon they've done some excellent work, hence no need to check. don't bother with mine, however. I only posted a few things here (can't recall why I did it, but apparently I had to do it for some reason), but most of them were deleted, excepting one or two shots I slipped into the forums here.

Miss Nancy ... I'll hold my hands up to checking out the galleries of those who are the most 'outspoken', not just in this thread but pretty much all the others I've posted in too.

Not yours however. I guess you're just too darn reasonable-sounding to be nosey about :lol:

Attached Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

> Quote - People keep telling me to use the "Anti-Alias option but here isn't one for Firefly like the checkbox I see for the Poser 4 render engine! Is there some Fine Render setting for Firefly that I'm missing somewhere?

Ah! Well, now that's the price you pay for professional rendering! Renderers that handle AA with just a simple checkbox don't tell you the whole truth. AA is not just an on/off parameter, it's a combination of supersampling and filtering (click the link for the dirty nerdy details). In theory, you'd want to use an infinite number of samples, filtered with an infinite size sinc filter, resulting in inifinte render times. So in practice, we compromise. In FireFly (and other Reyes-style renderers) you have the shading rate, pixel samples and pixel filter parameters to adjust this compromise to fit your artistic needs: Shading rate controls with how much detail texturing and shading are computed (smaller=more detail). Pixel samples determines the precision with which geometry will be sampled (higher value=more precise). The post filter size and type determine how all this information is being turned into a pixel. A 1 pixel sized box filter is fast and simple, but does not result in the best quality. As said above, the filter for best quality would result in infinite render times (and cannot be set anyway), so you have to experiment here. My preferred allround filter is 2 pixels gauss, although I do tend to use a sinc filter every now and then for strand based hair. Renderers that just have an AA checkbox make an arbitrary choice for all these parameters and give you a simple yes/no decision. Easier to use, but when their choices don't work for your scene, you have no means to make them work, at all. (And unfortunately, most renderers that don't give you the choice of pixel filtering force you to a 1 pixel box filter.) When you look over to the "better" renderers like PRMan or Mental Ray, you will see that neither of them has a simple AA checkbox but all of them have supersampling and filtering parameters similar to FireFly (in fact, almost every FireFly parameter can be found in RenderMan as well).

Well now see this is stuff I didn't know about at all. If I want better quality render resolutions then I need to increase the pixel samples and lower the the shading rate numbers? Is that correct?

Well, that and the pixel filter. I suggest you start with a very simple scene with just a few elements that easily show aliasing (like a box with a very detailed/high contrast texture, a few dynamic hairs) and try out different values for shading rate, pixel samples, post filter type and size. That will give you a feel of how they affect your image and the render time. You can also have a look at how the automatic settings in P6 use shading rate and pixel samples.

By Pixel Filter do you mean the "Post Filter Size" and "Post Filter Type"? I don't see a firefly setting for "Pixel Filter" under the firefly manual settings.

Quote - IMO, the biggest drawback to Poser is not even the lousy render engine.  It is the lack of actual artistic skill needed to make a render.  If you don't know basic composition, lighting, and HUMAN ANATOMY how can you presume to artistically portray the human figure?  And, then there is the lack of realisation that skin, or anything else, for that matter has channels.  A 4048x4048 color .jpg just doesn't do justice to the actual nuances in skin.  People have fun with Poser.  It is inexpensive.  Good.  But no one has to really take the time to learn about edgeloops, or s curves, or diffusion channels, and, most folks don't bother. 

This is like saying that no-one can sing unless they understand the physics of sound. Edgeloops do not art make. Neither, in fact, does human anatomy. Have a look at Modigliani sometime. Neither, in fact, does realism. Look at 1001 artists who painted according to their inner vision, not what the camera saw.

gagnon mentioned "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", a movie that didn't exactly garner worldwide praise. I just received the DVD, and it sez on the jacket: "Film critic roger ebert penned the screenplay of this Russ meyer classic, which isn't so much a sequel to the original (based on the Jaqueline Susann novel) as an ebulliently vulgar remake. Chronicling the adventures of a trio of female rockers who find their way from the heartland to Hollywood, the film features all the Meyer staples: bountiful breasts, lesbian love scenes and drug-fueled descents into murder and madness" I wouldn't be surprised if roger was the one who wrote that blurb :lol:

all true phantast. as long as we look at art in the context, period and style it was created in.

to compare modigliaris work with some of the renders put up as art is akin to comparing silk and a pigs ear. as for the inner vision of poser art. it's a rare commodity from what i've seen.  you can bet most of the good artist who create art outside the box..dali, picasso latrec, esher and of course modigliari will have learned technique and practiced  the edgeloops of painting or its equivilent. they have painted good traditional art of their period before exploring new styles. they know the rules and purposfully break them.  many of those that use poser don't know the rules and when they break them it shows.  we all know what we mean by a crap render. it has noting to do with artistic style as such. it's really about something not looking right. dalis painting look right even though they aren't.some of renasaiance artwork looks right even though it isn't. mona lisa looks right even though it bears little resemlence to the realism. depection of the golden mean in art through the modern movement (squares the get bigger to a ratio of 1.68) have nothing to do with realisim as such but have a certain perfection about them. they look right.

billy

 

some good points gagnonrich

"When an artist puts something in their gallery, I think they're putting something there that they're happy with and I don't feel it's my job to poke holes in their dreams"

personally i have never made a comment in anyones personal gallery. or on any of the gallery pages. though i've had a few giggles.  i would hate to destroy someones dream or ego in such a callous way.  i have made comment when they have been asked for though and found to my surprise as miss nancy pointed out that many who actually ask for crit comment or feedback don't realy want it. they simply want their ego's stroking. after seeing some of the comments and artwork in some of the more voiciferous galleries of this thread (i checked them out as well lol) i have to agree with her.  that said i do think some take what they can from decent feedback without resorting to an attack of the person leaving the feedback. dp to name one to a crit and responded with aplomb.

billy

hmmm...;)

I actually do play the piano, but don't like piano music..;)

I'm also a real technician...and..the prosecution rests..;)

After going from Terragen,  to Strata, to Bryce, to Poser, I can't say how happy I am to be able to put people in a picture..;)

I just like making pictures, and Poser is a tool. If I don't use a Craftsman Crescent wrench, and instead get something from the gas station, I just concern myself whether it will free up nuts and bolts..;) In fact, on average, I use 4-5 programs to make one pic (Wings, Bryce, Poser, Gimp, and sometimes Corel Draw)..;) not to mention the occasional use of Mojoworld..;)

If you're a professional artist, I suppose you can make valid complaints against it. I'm just here to have fun, but that doesn't stop me from trying to improve. When I hit the limits of Poser, maybe I'll start complaining, but for now, I got no beef..;)

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

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

Quote - to compare modigliaris work with some of the renders put up as art is akin to comparing silk and a pigs ear. as for the inner vision of poser art. it's a rare commodity from what i've seen.  you can bet most of the good artist who create art outside the box..dali, picasso latrec, esher and of course modigliari will have learned technique and practiced  the edgeloops of painting or its equivilent. they have painted good traditional art of their period before exploring new styles. they know the rules and purposfully break them.  many of those that use poser don't know the rules and when they break them it shows.  we all know what we mean by a crap render. it has noting to do with artistic style as such. it's really about something not looking right. dalis painting look right even though they aren't.some of renasaiance artwork looks right even though it isn't. mona lisa looks right even though it bears little resemlence to the realism. depection of the golden mean in art through the modern movement (squares the get bigger to a ratio of 1.68) have nothing to do with realisim as such but have a certain perfection about them. they look right.

Well, I agree partly. Of course, I'm not saying that everything in the Poser gallery is of equal merit with Modigliani. Most Poser pictures have little or not merit because artistic talent is not a common thing (or it would not be prized so highly).

Whether artists (in any medium) must learn classical techniques before they are "allowed" to use modern ones is a matter of dispute, and I know some professionals who would strongly disagree that the merit of, let's say, Damien Hirst, has anything to do with whether he could paint a realistic painting if he wanted to.

But what is absolutely clear is that the technical concerns of the modeler in 3DMax are nothing to do with art. No photographer needs to know the chemistry of film in order to compose a good photo. She can leave that to the technicians. The artist needs to know about esthetics, and have a good imagination. If you have that, the raw materials you use don't matter much.

   I really need to get around the forums more often. I have to agree with damn near everything I've read in this thread. BUT I have to add a few things. first, start with the latest first, critics. I always welcome crtics. I don't usually re-work a render once it's posted, but I do read the comments and try to apply what's said to the next project. Having only been part of the 3D communinity- and the "Rosity group- for almost 2 years- on the 14th it'll be 2 years-, I definately feel like I'm still learning and willing to listen to what others have to say. With that, I also have to say that there are those out there that seem to enjoy tearing things down just for the shear hell of it- I have not seen that in my gallery here, but I have run into it on other sites.

 As for Poser, I have to say that if you have the desire to do something and you only have one program to do it with, you'll find someway to get it done- folks are more than welcome to take a  look at my Red Sonja work and the train I did to see samples of that.  Like Clint Eastwood once said,"A Man has to know his limitations." In the case of 3D art programs, this is especially true.If you know what the limits are, you can almost always find a way around them and expand on them.

Quote - I saw another gallery with comic panels that were unimaginatively composed with all straight on camera angles and minimal variations in camera distances.

Hi! That's me!  Well if it's not me it should be me.

The problem, though is not only looking at the end product but what the intended result it.  It's similar to comparing the work of George Perez, noted for his beautifully complex and rendered backgrounds and characters, with something like, say 9 Chickweed Lane or Pibgorn where the artist has a much simpler style.  Both are doing illustrated story but one obviously takes a lot longer than the other to do.  In my case it's obvious I'm making a calculated speed vs quality decision.

That's why I said earlier about context.  In my case the repetition of panels with minor chages, aside from being a great time-saver, serves two purposes.   One, it reduces the amount of detail needed.  In my strips with the three (later two) guards on the tower (http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1241050) my choice of camera angles was restricted because the only scenery in the shot was the tower they were standing on and a skydome.   Other angles would have shown that not only was there no landscape, the three weren't wearing anything from the knees down, a conscious decision to save render time and allow me to manipulate things faster in the computer (it was chugging with those three and their armour to do what little posing was involved).

Second, keeping sequential images (mostly) the same is a classic techique from sequential comic art.  The shot with arrow/thud/carry on sequence is straight out of any number of sources, so you have to keep the same shot.  It loses comedic effect otherwise.

If you compare it to other images I've done http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1083836, and http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1077215 where there's variation in angle and shot, well, in those case that was for a more serious story.  The first, especially, uses very different camera angles to give the impression of an extended passage of time, that the character has been on the balcony for a few minutes over those three panels.

When people talking about tool vs art, this is a case where I'm treating Poser as a tool.  I look at it the same as pencil or pen drawing.  You can make beautifully detailed looks like they could be taken from a photograph quality artwork, or you could have Dilbert.  Both serve their purpose.  In the strips I'm not aiming for extraordinarily beautiful renders, but some decency (which is why I kicked myself for overlooking a thigh-penetrating finger that someone pointed out in one of them).

I'm definitely not an artist (but I play one on my computer, lol) and have no background in art, but... there's always a but :)...

Personally, I don't care for the Poser renderer.  It's too slow and almost always needs postwork which I am absolutely terrible at.  That's not to say I haven't seen some really amazing images created with nothing but Poser - I have seen some that look like photos.  I've also seen some that look like, well, bad.  I started out with Pov-ray and still seem to get (in my humble opinion at least) much better results than with Poser.  Of course, I'll be the first to admit I don't know much at all about Poser except, well, posing and exporting figures.  I do know I've made more than my share of flawed images  - bad poses, expressionless faces, etc.  It's taken me a while to get used to the idea of modelling with poly's in programs like Wings3D and Poser instead of modelling with macros in Pov-ray, but hopefully I'm improving.

I do wish more people would pay more attention to things like shadows and making sure a figure's feet aren't below ground.  I can understand for alot of people here (myself included) all this is just a hobby.  I can understand everybody has a different definition of "art".  I can even understand having to tone down scenes because of hardware limitations.  I'll be the first to admit my stuff could use alot of improvement.  But we all have our pet peeves about things that just distract from the image too much to be ignored.  In my last upload, the figures legs look horrible in the lighting, but I didn't want to change the lighting (it was more important to the image than the person) and got tired of messing with it.  But it's still a distraction.

On the comments & criticism thing - I love getting critical comments.  I love getting advice on how my images can be made more appealing.  There's not much anybody can say that would be worse than what I've thought about my stuff - even the "this sucks" type (of course it would be nice to know why it sucks, but...).  I even have a tagline that I include with all of my images - "All comments, criticism and advice greatly appreciated."  And I really do mean "ALL".  I rarely apply the advice to that particular image, but I try to keep it in mind for future works.

I still remember a critique about one my IRTC images from few years ago - "an image should tell a story, should have a sense of past, present and future, should have all the elements of a novel - all in a single frame." (well, maybe not those exact words, but close enough).  I still remember advice about eye movement within a picture.  Hopefully I've been able to make use of it.

 

Whether artists (in any medium) must learn classical techniques before they are "allowed" to use modern ones is a matter of dispute,

i agree with you about the classical techniques phantast. but would they be better equipped to create art if they learned about the contemporay techniques of the medium they use?  i've seen it said that an artist just pics up a pencil and makes art, do they? or do they pic up the right pencil for the job along with the right paper. do they just draw or do they use strokes of differeing angle and strength.

But what is absolutely clear is that the technical concerns of the modeler in 3DMax are nothing to do with art. No photographer needs to know the chemistry of film in order to compose a good photo. .

i'm struggling to agree with this point. when anyone  creates something of worth artwise, don't they have to know about composition perspective and all the other things that go into a good piece. doesn't the camera angle need to be just so, the focal length etc

how can someone pull or create a worthwhile piece using max, poser  or any other 3d app unless they do know how to use some if not a lot of the technical aspects of said programs. is'nt that a bit like saying someone who does pencil art doesn't need to know the pencil needs sharpening, or someone who does watercolour that the paper needs stretching. or the oil painter that if you put a fluid undercoat onto a geso ground the other oils will move easier when applied.

at the moment i'm trying to do a model in max. at this stage it's pretty much rubbish. when i started it was out and out crap. as i learn some of the technical side of the app it improves.  if i really knew  the technical side of the app i think i could create a reasonable piece of art. the trouble with 3d art is that it's unlike a pencil. someone with talent can pick a pencil up and master the strokes in a short space of time. the learning curve of someone with talent who gets a pencil for the first time is short. give that person a 3d app and ask him to create art and it stops becoming easy to him. his new pencil has a lot more variables to master before he can create as he did with a pencil. he may know all about how to draw art but he'll be starting from scratch with the app.

it's nice to have a discussion without shouting don't ya think lol

 

billy

 

Well, yes, you need to know some techniques, but you need to know the ones that are relevant to the end result you want. To create a good pencil drawing you have know which pencil to use and how to grade your strokes, but you don't need to know the chemistry of graphite. To create a good photo, you need to know about composition and lighting, but not about silver halide.

In 3D art I am as happy to pick up a Vicky that someone else modeled as I am as a painter to pick up a brush that someone else made. What matters for me is what I go on to do with it.

Attached Link: 11 year-old art prodigy

I had shown this link in the past and still consider it amazing. Keep in mind that an 11-year old is in 5th grade. This gifted girl was drawing fairly realistic people before kindergarten when most expectations are that a child that age can draw a face out of a circle and a few dots for eyes, nose and mouth in reasonably correct positions.

This is a good example of what cannot be taught. Akiane has an amazing raw talent. Teaching can impart the experiences and wisdoms gained by the history of art and shorten learning by trial and error. It's not likely that all the teaching in the world will turn the average person into the artist that Akiane has become at her age.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

But what is absolutely clear is that the technical concerns of the modeler in 3DMax are nothing to do with art.

This statement is not valid.  Most folks, when doing a model, don't just see....wow, today, i'm gonna play with some polys and make something.  Most folks, when making a new model, actually have a whole scene in mind from the beginning, including atmosphere, backgrounds, model posing, lighting, etc.  For every critter one sets out to make, there is most likely a scene/story behind it.  Not to mention, a good model is a work of art in itself.

Quote -   Most folks, when making a new model, actually have a whole scene in mind from the beginning, including atmosphere, backgrounds, model posing, lighting, etc.  For every critter one sets out to make, there is most likely a scene/story behind it. 

In that case, the intended end result is the whole scene, which is quite reasonable. I do this also to some extent, in that if I have in mind a picture I want to create, and it requires a model I can't find ready-made, I'll maybe model it myself as a means to an end. But it makes no difference to the quality of the final picture whether the model used was made by me or some other person. It also makes no difference if I hide any defects in the model using postwork, if the viewer can't tell the difference.

Quote - Not to mention, a good model is a work of art in itself.

This is true only in two cases: (1) in a colloquial usage of "work of art"; (2) if the model is such that it could be judged in the same way as a sculpture. Making a 100% accurate model of a printer-scanner will never be a work of art no matter how good a model it is.

and it requires a model I can't find ready-made, I'll maybe model it myself as a means to an end. But it makes no difference to the quality of the final picture whether the model used was made by me or some other person

except that it is not a "one of a kind" model.  Generally, things that are unique, like an original oil painting by a master, say, as opposed to a print of the same painting, are more "valuable".   Vicki is Vicki.  No matter how morphed, she is still recognizable for what she is.

2. if the model is such that it could be judged in the same way as a sculpture. Making a 100% accurate model of a printer-scanner will never be a work of art no matter how good a model it is.

I have a very good friend who models in the field of Product Design.  I should see him later on.  I'm sure he has a whole different take on this.

What is unique is the picture, not what appears in it. To draw an analogy from another artform altogether, a root chord of C major can be the same chord in any one of a hundred pieces of piano music. It's not unique at all. But a Beethoven piano sonata is unique, even if the component notes are not.

And it matters not what someone in product design says. One must be careful not to confuse between what is difficult and what is art. A 100% accurate model of a printer-scanner will never be a work of art even if it takes a lot of work and skill to make, because it lacks any sort of profundity. It's an accurate model of something. That's it. That's all it is.

But we've had the "what is art?" thread quite recently so i don't propose to repeat it all again here.

So, a couple of  my suggested improvements for Poser the program:

1. Make the firefly renderer faster and more responsive.  I didn't realize till I picked up Carrara during the DAZ firesale what I was missing.  I realize once you hit certain levels of complexity in terms of polygon counts, number of raytrace bounces, effects, shader complexity, etc. your render speed is going to take a hit.  But at least when I throw the kitchen sink at Carrara I can still do minor things within the program itself (like resizing the render window frame) whereas Poser, once you hit render is pretty much out to lunch - and sometimes it takes your whole computer with it.

2. Improve the pic correlation in the preview window.  I can't stand it when I try and grab a figure's shoe and I end up with their hair.  It's even worse when you're trying to select something that's even closer to something else.  Yeah, I know use the drop down lists...but really I shouldn't have to.

3. Easier lighting - some sort of lighting "wizard."  I'm serious about this.  Lighting takes way too long.  I know some people really enjoy setting up lighting (well I think some people do) but I find it incredibly tedious and very seldom satisfying.  I'm not saying get rid of the existing lighting capabilities.  What I'm saying  is I want tried and tested one button lighting presets, optimized for quality and/or speed.  I want a simple list of lighting options like: interior night, interior office, exterior midday, exterior sunrise, interior bottom lit, etc.  And I'm not talking about Poser's IBL, it does some things well but it's by no means a complete answer.  I've also tried other peoples' canned light sets and they don't quite get it either. I want to hit the button, maybe input a location/direction of the major lightsource and bam - realistic direct, ambient, shadow, highlights, occlusion, etc.  Then I can add from there using already existing lighting capabilities if I want.   Sure I realize there's probably going to need to be some customization depending on your given scene, but I want that to take minutes instead of hours.

Basically with the lighting I'm tired of having to recreate "day" light everytime I have an outdoor scene, or lab interior lighting every time I want to create a lab scene.  These are known quantities and should be as easy to generate as slapping a texture on a figure.  I shouldn't have to toil for hours recreating these things.  I should just think, lab, interior, overhead, blue-green tint, heavy shadows, hit the button, enter a couple of parameters, whamo lights are set up and then move on to more important stuff.

4. An easier way of making changes across various shader nodes attached to different material zones.  I've been intending to write a python utility to do this myself, but haven't had time, and I think it's ridiculous to pay for something like that (I realize there are some products out that do this), when it's something so obvious it should have been included in the first place.  The make changes for all materials button included doesn't really do what I'm talking about, before you jump on me for that.  When I change the highlight size in one material zone, I want an entry in the right click menu which will allow me to either propagate it to all other material zones on the figure or bring up a popup checklist of the other zones on the figure, check the ones I want to apply the change to, hit o.k. and have the change take affect in those other zones.  I curse the program in my head every time I have to visit each node in a figure's material list just to tweak the diffuse color.

I don't care about being an "artist."  All I care about is getting the images in my head onto the medium in the quickest, most efficient, easiest, most complete and most gratifying/satisfying way possible.  Anything that breaks the flow of pure expression is a negative and is a candiate for fixing.  Until someone gets the mental telepathy thing together and I can just pay somone else to render my thoughts, doing it myself is the best method.  As such I want the best results in the shortest amount of time.  The more time I have to spend working with/understanding technical details the less time I can spend doing the ultimate goal which is visualising my intended images.  It sounds trivial, but there have been numerous occasions that I've spent so much time just trying to fix what seemed to me to be a stupid technical issue (getting the shadow to fall in the right place, manually making a figure contact the ground because for whatever reason "drop to floor" doesn't really drop to floor, etc.) that my creative energy was spent doing that rather than creating the actual image.  That's frustrating and unecessary when doing digital art - the computer should be taking care of as much of the technical drudgery as possible.  Anything and everything that does that is gold in my book.

Quote - Big boobs, nudity, stock figure, pose formed by two stock poses (top, bottom), tiny shadows, Poser4 render, no postwork, the same tree model repeated many times, only three lights, scene done in 15 minutes, ........
And the tree model has no top!!!!!

hey you forgot the temple and the sword! and those boobs arent regulation size 8

"3) Easier lighting - some sort of lighting "wizard."  I'm serious about this.  Lighting takes way too long.  I know some people really enjoy setting up lighting (well I think some people do) but I find it incredibly tedious and very seldom satisfying.  I'm not saying get rid of the existing lighting capabilities.  What I'm saying  is I want tried and tested one button lighting presets, optimized for quality and/or speed.  I want a simple list of lighting options like: interior night, interior office, exterior midday, exterior sunrise, interior bottom lit, etc.  And I'm not talking about Poser's IBL, it does some things well but it's by no means a complete answer.  I've also tried other peoples' canned light sets and they don't quite get it either. I want to hit the button, maybe input a location/direction of the major lightsource and bam - realistic direct, ambient, shadow, highlights, occlusion, etc.  Then I can add from there using already existing lighting capabilities if I want.   Sure I realize there's probably going to need to be some customization depending on your given scene, but I want that to take minutes instead of hours."

I would suggest either saving your own light sets that you're happy with into the library, or saving sets that you consider well lit as separate .pz3 files, and then just open em up and pop your figures into the scene. Using those libraries to their full advantage can be a real time saver, especially with complex material settings.

Attached Link: Michael and Victoria?

"Generally, things that are unique, like an original oil painting by a master, say, as opposed to a print of the same painting, are more "valuable". Vicki is Vicki. No matter how morphed, she is still recognizable for what she is."

Now you're placing a definition on art and we can spend a lot of time arguing what it is and what it isn't without ever having a definitive answer. I've provided a link to one of the winners in the DAZ future contest. Are the two figures Michael and Victoria? I don't know. I'm guessing they are since they won a DAZ prize. If you don't think that's far enough from them, I'm sure others can show you stuff that looks even less like the base figures.

What's art? Is walking around, dripping paint from a can onto a large canvas, art? Fine art critics say it is and value work by Jackson Pollack in the millions. Of course, when a potential unknown Pollock work is found, the art world doesn't want to really say it's a lost Pollock unless somebody can physically trace the painting back to Pollock through receipts and other authenticated transactions. That says how ephemeral art is--depending on the name of person who created the painting, it's a masterpiece or worthless junk. Personally, I lean to the latter no matter who drew it. I was reading a backissue of Smithsonian and there was an article about how to exhibit unusual works of art. This art ranged from hazlenut pollen spread on the museum floor, to milk on white marble, to dozens of bowls of rice lined up in a straight line, to polished stones in a diamond pattern on a slab. If anybody put these in my yard, I'd call the cops, and have somebody get that crap out of my yard. As to how somebody else can call it art and put it in one of the greatest museums in the world, I'll never know.

Considering that the art world finds many things as being art that most of us would probably agree are far from it, do we really want to start defining what is and isn't art in the digital world? Is using a commercial 3D figure in a work any less artistic than pouring milk on marble? I don't think that artist made the milk or the marble.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

"That says how ephemeral art is--depending on the name of person who created the painting, it's a masterpiece or worthless junk."

Art is alot like designer fashion.  Or at least the "professional" critics and collectors want us to think it is - otherwise they'd be out of a job.  The acutal work isn't nearly important as the signature.  Maybe this is why digital art is looked down on by alot of the "traditional" art community - there's not really any way to commoditize it.  Once you display it on a web site, there's no way of making sure that you have the only "authentic" copy making it worthless in terms of money.

I'm going to be brave and define art - anything that is visually appealing to the viewer.  The perfectly modelled printer mentioned above might not be art to me, but someone else might think the contour of the case is much more artistic than a simple square box.  The spilled milk would be just a lesson in liquid dynamics for me, but if someone likes the pattern it makes, it's ok with me (just clean it up after you're done admiring it, lol).  Just for the sake of controversy... I've never really found Picasso or even Monet that appealing.  Dali and Escher on the other hand were masters.

On the mass use of Vicky - I view Vicky as a tool, just like Poser, 3DS, Pov-ray, etc are tools.  Just like a small pointed paint brush and a wide flat one are tools.  Sometimes these tools are fine, sometimes they need a little modification.

don't let the art snobs be buggin', y'all in general, art is any visual, auditory or other experience that somebody intends to share with others, or to express his/her feelings

Every time I read one of these debates I keep seeing the same apparent disconnect between the mindset of the artist and what I lovingly call the 'rabble.'  Most of the people who post images probably don't frequent this forum.  I suspect that most of those who do come here are the ones who are fairly serious about art - with the exception of a few like myself who come here mainly for the humor and the drama. As someone said, and it bears repeating, a lot of people use Poser just to have FUN. I have to assume that the people whose images exhibit all of the deadly Poser 'sins' catalogued here are having fun.  Some of them seriously want to improve their technique and their knowledge of art and a lot of them are probably just as happy not to.

Taking snapshots, playing volleyball on the weekends or backyard grilling, I think we all have activities we may enjoy but don't necessarily want to spend hours reading up on,  practicing technique, contemplating strategy etc. At some point, what was fun becomes work, and unpaid work at that. I know that it may sound like heresy but for some people, working to learn and correct what may seem like obvious fatal flaws to some crosses that personal and indefinable line between fun and not fun. Personally, I don't even bother to save 90% of the things I play with, but I enjoy playing. Of the few that I do save, I'm acutely aware that the more I try to achieve some minor degree of 'perfection,' the less fun it is. By the time I get to actually trying to smudge a crinkled joint, I'm definitely ready to call it quits. Now I can spend hours tweaking some program I'm writing and enjoy it all the while but that's different. I enjoy both activities but the effort/fun equation is definitely different for each. I suppose that would make me a bad artist if I claimed to be one. I don't inflict my creations on the sensibilities of gallery viewers but I don't see the harm in any equally inept practitioners if they choose to do so.  Perhaps it creates a bad example for budding talents but what aspect of life is not filled with bad examples.  Those who really want to invest the effort will find their way in spite of the plethora of vacant eyed, buxom, crinkly limbed Vickis.  This isn't Hollywood where the public's love of dreck makes it difficult for the next Copolla to get his masterpiece greenlighted by the moguls.

The problem, IMO, is not so much Poser's image as it is the fact that perhaps some people are unhappy being associated with it. I'm reminded of the series of car commercials where owners are offended because people assume that they are a certain way because of the wheels they drive. That's life. Poser is like the public pool. The sexy hard bodies are always outnumbered by the annoying, noisy kids, old men with their unmentionables hanging out of their trunks and and cellulite laden matrons in suits they really 'shouldn't' be wearing in public. Everyone wants to draw people, going back to those stick figures with inverted triangles for skirts.  It's a natural human impulse.  Poser makes it 'easy and that is it's 'crime.' Renderosity's 'crime' is that it doesn't assume any requirement other than having fun and enjoying what you do.  If you want to share that, great.  Assuming that everyone would or should share any level of motivation beyond that isn't realistic. There are certainly other venues where much more is assumed and even required for entry. E-Frontier could probably improve Poser's image by simply raising the price to $3,000, giving it a more complex interface and renaming it after some South American indian tribe. I would think that a simpler soultion is that if you enjoy using it, don't get caught up in an ego bind by what other people think about it and don't spend time worrying about how other people are using or misusing it and how their efforts are received. The other way lies madness, frustration and money for the makers of booze and antidepressants - then again, perhaps that is the route to true art and cut off an ear while you're at it. I say have fun, whether you're practicing laps for the Olympics or doing cannonballs - and remember to wink at the fat lady in the thong, you'll make her day.

N.B. Now Of course I know this IS how you artist folk have fun so enjoy but remember - we have you outnumbered, all your bases are belong to us, and our Vicki's breasts are waaay bigger!

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

lmckenzie!!  Good to see you back, man.  You've been sorely missed indeed!!  Are your computer woes behind you, or is this just an interlude in the storm.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using Poser to have fun. Or, for that matter, to produce pictures for technical purposes that have no artistic pretensions whatever. I have seen, for instance, an aircraft safety instruction card done with Poser, with Posette adjusting her own oxygen mask before helping the little kiddy beside her.

Any criticism of a Poser image has to take into account the intention of the creator. If it doesn't aspire to Art, one can hardly complain about it being not.

I don't think it's "folks having fun" that bothers me. What bothers me is the trivialization of art. I suppose that sounds pompous, but there it is. I've made my living in the writing arts for 35 years -- as a teacher of writing, as a writer, as a manager of writers. I don't think I've ever been in a milieu, except for a few years at university, where people appreciated that good writing, of any kind, is hard work. People appreciate that good basketball playing is hard work. Writers -- and artists -- are people who "should get a real job."

Good writing, like good art, is "invisible." It looks natural, effortless. Anybody can do it. And Poser fosters that trivialization. I have great respect fo the technical expertise of the folks I encounter here, whether it's 3D technique or compositional technique or knowledge of color or details about Aztec armor. I think the folks who decorated Altamira took technique as seriously as they took "vision," and in that sense those bulls are no more "primitive" than a Rubens painting of Europa.

That doesn't mean the "art evangels" should be descending on the Philistines with machetes. But when we talk about boys who just want to have fun, we should remember that some of those boys think those of us who take this stuff seriously are, well, worthless nerds, and those boys grow up to be men who make our lives difficult, personally and financially. And, incidentally, having fun by creating degrading ugly pictures of women is marginally less nasty than pulling wings off bugs.

I sincerely think that it is possible to have "fun", and work while doing it.  It's fun for me to sketch out something I'd like to see rendered some day.  It's fun for me to try and achieve, often through trial and error, exactly what I had first visualized on a piece of paper.  I find it fun to texture and light it.  It may be work, but it makes me feel happy.

I find it no fun to dig through folders for something someone else had fun making.  I find it no fun to twist dials with not much chance of undoing if I hate what I get.  Shopping IS fun.  But, I don't even like to shop in Poser.  My friend who does product design has fun creating and rendering the best coffeepots that he can.

That doesn't make me, or anyone else an elitist.  That simply means my idea of fun may not be the same as that of other folks.  Some folks think it is fun to get so drunk you throw up on your shoes.  I don't. 

Having fun is one thing.  BUT, why for pity sake's do so many folks feel the need to post under a friend's image the comment.....Now this is ART!!!  I mentioned fun, and that phrase in my earlier post to this thread.  If its fun, great, enjoy it.  But, must it be qualified as art in comments?

the need to post under a friend's image the
comment.....Now this is ART!!!

I don't think it's "folks having fun" that bothers me. What bothers me is the trivialization of art. I suppose that sounds pompous, but there it is. I've made my living in the writing arts for 35 years -- as a teacher of writing, as a writer, as a manager of writers. I don't think I've ever been in a milieu, except for a few years at university, where people appreciated that good writing, of any kind, is hard work. People appreciate that good basketball playing is hard work. Writers -- and artists -- are people who "should get a real job."

Good writing, like good art, is "invisible." It looks natural, effortless. Anybody can do it. And Poser fosters that trivialization. I have great respect fo the technical expertise of the folks I encounter here, whether it's 3D technique or compositional technique or knowledge of color or details about Aztec armor. I think the folks who decorated Altamira took technique as seriously as they took "vision," and in that sense those bulls are no more "primitive" than a Rubens painting of Europa.

That doesn't mean the "art evangels" should be descending on the Philistines with machetes. But when we talk about boys who just want to have fun, we should remember that some of those boys think those of us who take this stuff seriously are, well, worthless nerds, and those boys grow up to be men who make our lives difficult, personally and financially. And, incidentally, having fun by creating degrading ugly pictures of women is marginally less nasty than pulling wings off bugs.

I like to draw.  I've always liked to draw.  I can't "draw" anything in Poser.  I have only presets to work with.  I think that is what I like least about the program.

And, Mickma, you are so right about the trivialization. Scarcely do you see a comment...."What a fun image!"

I don't think I've ever been in a milieu, except for a few years at university, where people appreciated that good writing, of any kind, is hard work...

But when we talk about boys who just want to have fun, we should remember that some of those boys think those of us who take this stuff seriously are, well, worthless nerds, and those boys grow up to be men who make our lives difficult, personally and financially.

You know the "poor, suffering, misunderstood artist" role is just begging to be joked about.

And I say that as someone who writes, and critiques writing, and edits, and even has a column about it.  Sturgeon's Law rules in all arts.

I think a big problem with Poser are the artists.  There's a ton of fine Poser artists out there making gorgeous images.  But there's simply too many people who simply use V3 and bought packages, maybe turn one dial or two and call it a new character.  Looking at probably a vast majority of images out there, you can almost instanteously say, "That's V3!" or "That's Posette!" or "That's Aiko!"

Not to mention most of the scenes revolves around some big breasted naked chick doing something just for the sake of being naked.  I like to comment and give excellent ratings to people who don't use nudity if only for the sake of novelty!!!

Oh, work can be fun, no doubt about it. Particularly for people whose work is creative.

But lmckenzie has a valid point, that if someone likes to muck around in poser making gravitationally-challenged nudes, then, in a free country, they have a right to do so. The result is not going to be a work of art, and I have no particular wish to see the result, either. One cannot say, "You should not do this". But on the other hand, if the person in question chooses to post the results of his play on an art site, they shouldn't be too surprised if the comments aren't very positive.

I agree also that Poser definitely fosters a no-brain approach to image creation; you can buy not only the model and the texture, but also the scene file, the poses, the light set and the camera position. So no wonder the result is along the lines of "painting by numbers". The effect is actually similar, in that any ready-made of this sort will lack any individual style. That's what the artist brings.

As I've said before quite recently, if you can glance at a Poser image and immediately say, "That's by so-and-so", then it's good. Quite clearly, the artist is bringing an individual vision to bear on the medium. And this does happen.

Alas, poor Yorick!—I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now, get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.

  STOP PALESTINIAN CHILD ABUSE!!!! ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS

Putting aside issues already mentioned, Poser is unnaturally difficult to use and maintain due to its appalling interface design, including (but not limited to):

• Reversing the concept of toolbar and document window:  The document is a tiny floating window, while the toolbar is the background of the MDI window (mostly blank space forced to full screen).  You have to work with a microscopic document using about 1/6 of the screen to keep the 'toolbar' areas accessible.  Also, being forced to work 'full screen' makes it hard to work with other tools and references at the same time.

- The program forces all content to be categorised by file type.  You cannot keep all the files related to a single project in the same folder/tree, but have to navigate up and down trees through an interface that hides the tree structure from you trying to remember where what you are looking for was last found (ad infinitum).  This is a common mistake of naive programmers - not realising that file types are distinguished by extension and that real-life projects consist of many file types from many programs contained together in a folder or set of folders.

• By default, all content (from almost any source) is unnecessarily cryptically and inconsistently named with undefined abbrieviations which are hard to find on Google (and even if you find a technical phrase that seems to match, is it really the correct interpretation?).  Also out-of-the-box and third party content is riddled with broken references which require a third party tool to fix in reasonable time.  As a result, it takes a lot of work to rearrange and debug a Poser library into more usuable form (within the limitations of the prescribed structures) - Subversion/TortoiseSVN is a must have for managing change control and detecting whic files change during upgrades and additions of new packages.

• Poser, like many programs of its ilk, wrongly assumes that computers are single user (which has not been the case for 10 years or more).  Setting up a home computer so all the family can use Poser is a merry dance of startup scripts, creating individual libraries for users, figuring out how to set permissions so that noone can see each others Poser content (but at the same time allowing Poser to see enough not to drop the library from its list of libraries).  Because Poser requires one folder in each library path to be called Poser, this means DAZ sees all poser libraries as having the same name 'Poser', rather than 'Joe's Library' or similar.  Contrast this with normal applications where work is document-centric and accessed from anywhere the user desires to keep it using Windows Explorer as the main interface (an application should open on demand, not be opened and then open documents).

• The controls are not well labelled and are very coarse.  The dials are near impossible to control with a mouse (even the top laser models), cannot be moved in small steps, and have no keyboard action (such as arrow keys up and down).  It is RSI waiting to happen - moderate use becomes uncomfortable over time.  It is a critical (and well documented and recognised) design error to make controls look like pictures of real knobs, and this is a good example of such error.  It seems odd for a product of this price that noone could be bothered to consult a interface design expert at any stage during the last 6 versions.

One could go on - I can smell a blog article coming one day - but in the end, Poser has no competition in its price range and DAZ Studio, while improved, has similar design problems.  For people like me who want to doodle and play as one of several hobbies (and therefore do not have years to dedicate to learning a professional package nor the budget for one), it's the best (only) choice to be had (alongside DAZ Studio). 

  

 

 

What'd ya mean it looks like Poser?!?!?!

Sorry couldn't resist! :)

Seriously though, as I've said before, I always go out of my way to make my images look as unPoserlike as possible.  When you run a website based on Poser figures, you always have to stay one step ahead of the competition.  I never use Poser figures straight out of the box, even if it means just going into the face room and tweaking a little bit.  For main characters, I do much more than that.

And as others have said, I don't render in Poser. Lately I've been using Cararra, which is not only quicker to render but looks 100 times better.   And I almost always use Photoshop to touch up the rough edges.  Things that look a little weird like the creases in the arms (elbows), or to shave a few inches off the huge padded shoulders you get with a lot of male clothing.

It takes some work, and while I'm sure I can't fool the professionals, I'd like to have my images look as unique as possible to the lay person (non-artist).