Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: Is poser held to a higher standard?

kobaltkween opened this issue on May 18, 2007 · 102 posts


kobaltkween posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 1:49 PM

ok, i had thought about posting this before, but i was afraid of a flame fest. since the 3dbuzz thread seems to be going well, i thought i'd put this out there.   some months ago i was looking something up on some cg sites, and i came across blatant poser prejudice.  from the comments, it was pretty clear that the people posting hadn't looked at poser in an awfully long time. but that wasn't what struck me.

let me preface this by saying i do believe that making your own stuff means that it will have a more personal feel.  and while i think a lot of time and effort in high end apps goes to reinventing life in the same mold, standard pretty girl or bad boy portraits, and most of it is just as derivative if more skilled than your standard poser work, i do acknowledge that making your own stuff means you can implement your own ideas and your own styles more thoroughly than if you just combine pre-existing elements.  i think discussions about using premade or autogenerated content in any application is valid.  and i do think that since price of professional tools generally keeps them out of the hands of hobbiests, and poser is mostly used by hobbiests, the average skill and creativity of works in high end apps is greater than the average poser work as it should be.  professionals should, on average, out-perform hobbiests.  so i'm not trying to make a whole case about creativity and tools.

what struck me was that this was a pure quality issue.  the claim was that poser figures were so anatomically incorrect, and that the possible poses were so stiff, that it was a detriment to your work even as a reference tool.  and then they pointed to addy's gallery and said that, yeah occassionally she was able to acheive decent results but she was more successful some times than others.

so i went to look at the galleries of these vaunted artists that think addy's work is only passing ok, and i was kind of shocked to see pretty poor work.  one person had really stiff, mediocre painted work, another  just postworked photos in very boring ways.  i looked more in the galleries, and was seriously underwhelmed.  and what got me was that exactly the same qualities they criticized in poser work- stiffness, incorrect anatomy, etc. - applied strongly to their own. 

now, personally, i think there's much better posing on average here than at cgsociety (which is  _not _ the place i read these comments).  sounds crazy, huh?  but mostly, i see really bad poses there,  often very little expression, and lots of staring into the distance.  which makes sense because people who are spending time going crazy over the perfect material and texture, the perfect figure or scenery, and have to model every single piece, aren't ordinarily going to spend hours developing poses.   but i doubt that's how those professionals see it.

i think they look at high-end app  pinups and see perfection, look at poser pinups and see only errors.

what's your experience?  do poser faults get called out more than others?  is it impossible to break into any professional cg ranks at all using "poser" figures or content?  is the bias so strong, that no matter what quality the work, people only see the flaws?



Miss Nancy posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 2:05 PM

no, poser is held to the lowest standard IMVHO. the assumption is that the typical poser user's image will have bad lighting, bad/no shadows, bad/no facial expressions, bad poses, bad/no backgrounds, bad joint bending, bad/no clothes fits, bad/no image composition, et al. thus it is customary for folks to post congratulatory messages below poser images at poser-related sites, even if the image is poor, because we've learnt thru long experience that telling 'em their images are poor only results in lynch mobs and hurt feelings. that's why I encourage everyone to join the critique group. it will not only boost one's ratings, but the helpful comments will allow one to improve one's image quality.



Conniekat8 posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 2:38 PM

Quote - no, poser is held to the lowest standard IMVHO. the assumption is that the typical poser user's image will have bad lighting, bad/no shadows, bad/no facial expressions, bad poses, bad/no backgrounds, bad joint bending, bad/no clothes fits, bad/no image composition, et al. thus it is customary for folks to post congratulatory messages below poser images at poser-related sites, even if the image is poor, because we've learnt thru long experience that telling 'em their images are poor only results in lynch mobs and hurt feelings. that's why I encourage everyone to join the critique group. it will not only boost one's ratings, but the helpful comments will allow one to improve one's image quality.

 

What you are mentioning here probably contributes a lot to poser's negative stereotype.

Another part is that I've seen a number of flame war type post from slighted poser artists whom have ventured into the 'outside world' and instead of getting praise, like they do here, have gotten a hefty dose of critique, got their feelings hurt and got combative.  This too promotes the stereotype of poser being a low end wannabee artist application.

Unfortunately those kinds of unpleasant exchanges end up getting more exposure, then some very nice well done pieces in poser.

And yes, there are areas in which poser just doesn't cut the mustard. I think that when anyone from 'poser world' starts getting professional work, they end up finding that out sooner or later, and eventually moving to other applications.

Is it possible to get professional work using poser... well, that would depend on what kind of quality is needed, and in what timeframe. There is quite a bit of variation in what's needed in professional graphics. Many times it's not necessarily soimething that challenges the limits of a high end application or of a trained artist, and someone with a more limited application or skillset can probably do a very satisfactory job.

Could you make a movie like Shrek or some other money making 3D blockbusters with it, on time and within the budget...  I don't think so.

As for me personally, I like to tinker with poser, but having learned a fair amount in higher end apps first, I end up finding Poser very limiting in my particular creative process. Which is not to say that Poser has no merit. It's a surprizingly powerful application, especially for the money, and availability of content and community support makes it very fun to use.

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Anasta posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 2:50 PM

Maybe I'm afraid of change or something but I really like using Poser and since I only use it to make images for fun (just for my personal collection and some friends who like them) I just don't have a need for using any other programs.
 
I guess its similar to how I actually do have Photoshop but continue to use PaintShop Pro because its something I know and am comfortable with. And for 3d modeling, I still design and build in Spazz3D then export VRML to import to Flux (which of course I could model in there but don't know the program so don't use it) then to export again as 3ds. 

I think its all a matter of preference. If you plan on making your artwork a business or would like it shown worldwide then it would be a good idea to use the other/better programs. But if (like me) you just do it for the fun of making something, then stick with what you know "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" right?


kobaltkween posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 3:21 PM

hmm.  let me clarify.  i wasn't saying: is poser perfect or can it do the same things as maya?  in fact, i wasn't even talking about animation (i should have been clearer about that).  this was still images. and i didn't mean here, i meant elsewhere.  if you want to rant on the commenting system here, please do that in another thread because it's completely unrelated.

let me repeat myself : "is it impossible to break into any professional cg ranks at all using "poser" figures or content?  is the bias so strong, that no matter what quality the work, people only see the flaws?"  notice the "poser figures or content."  not,  "is poser limited."  this is about the bias against it, not the quality of work.  as i mentioned, i've generally seen significantly worse posing and expression at other cg sites, and i've rarely seen work as good as addy's worst.  i'm not saying poser isn't limited- i've used it for years and i know its limitations well. 

i'm not asking should poser work get a  pass or saying "poser work is all perfect."  nor am i trying to start a debate about the quality of poser as a tool.  i'm asking whether people turn off the moment they recognize vicky or miki or other "poser" content, or flip to ultra critical. 

so it's better to have a picture in maya or cinema4d or max or lightwave, with poor posing and poor expression and hackneyed composition? with yet another female made from scratch that has 1/10 the quality of the available figures?   or to do badly proportioned, stiff, ludicrously posed cg drawings and paintings?  ok, i'll buy that, but i kind of think that sucks.  and that's honestly what i'm seeing get praised while some of the best work i've seen gets trashed for being based on a poser render.



Anasta posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 3:33 PM

OK what I'm seeing is this:

You're looking for a massive amount of personal opinion on something that everyone is going to feel differently about.

I, personally, would prefer to see a nicely composed, well thought-out and/or high-quality detailed in postwork Poser render than some crap, quickie, slapped together image rendered in what would be considered a 'better' program.

Its about art people... Not how much money you spent to make it. I love Thomas Kinkade, I think his work is incredible. I don't care if he got his paint and brushes online from some exotic over-seas exclusive dealer or if he bought them for $2.99 at Hobby Lobby. Its about the final product and if it looks good.

So yes, I would rather see a beautiful render come out of Poser then something very poorly done from something 'better'


Keith posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 3:38 PM

It's guilt by association (both positive and negative).

There's no debate that really good work using Maya or one of the other high-end suites will blow a really good Poser render out of the water, simply due to the limitation of the technology.

We know it's really easy to do a crap Poser render.  It's harder to do a crap Maya render of the same (lack of) quality if you make everything yourself.

Thus the equation: if it's hard to do, but it's crap, it's still better than Poser because they didn't have to work as hard to make the same level of crap.  And since, theoretically, my program can do better than Poser, I am better than someone using Poser, even though they are producing good images and I am still producing crap images.

Which leads one to the conclusion that people putting out crap images in a high-end program, unless they are using them as practice to get better, are dumb.  I say that because why are they putting all that time in to make crap when the same quality of crap can be produced far easier?



Poppi posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 3:38 PM

"i'm asking whether people turn off the moment they recognize vicky or miki or other "poser" content, or flip to ultra critical. 

so it's better to have a picture in maya or cinema4d or max or lightwave, with poor posing and poor expression and hackneyed composition? with yet another female made from scratch that has 1/10 the quality of the available figures?   or to do badly proportioned, stiff, ludicrously posed cg drawings and paintings? "

To the first part of this ?.....Yes.  The folks I know in the industry do not want any recognizable Poser figures.  Period.  Why?  When they pitch their products it would be a kiss of death to have someone pop up and say...."Why isn't that Vicki as the virtual person in the architectural walk through, etc."

Answer to part 2.....NO....that's absurd.  I also would love a link to some of this pics that are so badly done.  They may have been striving to create a good mesh with excellent topology, and, I'd have to see the pictures to make up my own mind as to the actual quality.  People at CG talk are often more into showing off their "models" than actually playing around posing them.  Over all, you get far less kudos for badly done work at the cg sites than one gets here,.


Anasta posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 3:49 PM

Quote - Which leads one to the conclusion that people putting out crap images in a high-end program, unless they are using them as practice to get better, are dumb.  I say that because why are they putting all that time in to make crap when the same quality of crap can be produced far easier?

 

I had thought we were talking about the 'finished product' and artwork, not modeling and building. 

Imagine this:
You have never before used any CG program and have never seen this topic before. You then go to browse galleries (not just here) to see if there's anything you like. What kinds of images would you be drawn to?

---That is the mind of your average retail customer. That, I believe, is the question being asked.


adp001 posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 3:50 PM

To find an aswer just look at a simple tool: A pencil.
Not anybody able to hold this tool is automatically able to do great artwork with it. But, obviously, it is possible. On the other side: Not each picture perfectly made is automatically art. Some are simply well done handcraft.




Poppi posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 4:11 PM

**I had thought we were talking about the 'finished product' and artwork, not modeling and building. 
**However, at some of the more technical 3d sites folks are showing off their TECHNICAL skills.  Sometimes in hopes of getting commissioned to model something.  

You then go to browse galleries (not just here) to see if there's anything you like. What kinds of images would you be drawn to?
I love, absolutely love, some of the stuff created with zbrush, or zbrush and another base modeller.  I like unusual, one of a kind pieces.  I am not into pinups much.  I sort of also like weird, with awesome lighting.


klown posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 4:14 PM

It is to Poser (even more so to DAZ|Studio) that the 3d community often turns their respective noses at what we do (even though we could do the same with a morph injection)
But some in the 3d community often attack each others work on far more complicated 3d packages who have done incredible work simply from jealousy. I've seen incredible work on raph3d in Maya or Lightwave only to scroll down and read some response that is totally unwarranted. Artists are funny people. That being said; for the most part this echelon of the 3d community is treated as second class citizens (if we're lucky) by most 3D "Artists"


Conniekat8 posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 4:38 PM

Quote - let me repeat myself : "is it impossible to break into any professional cg ranks at all using "poser" figures or content?  is the bias so strong, that no matter what quality the work, people only see the flaws?"  notice the "poser figures or content."  not,  "is poser limited."  this is about the bias against it, not the quality of work.  as i mentioned, i've generally seen significantly worse posing and expression at other cg sites, and i've rarely seen work as good as addy's worst.  i'm not saying poser isn't limited- i've used it for years and i know its limitations well. 

 

Perhaps, for this type of discussion we need to give the 'professional CG' little narrower definition?

As a standalone artist, probably. As a standalone artist, tool that you use is not nearly as important as your work.
As a 'production artist', first you'd have to find a place to work where they actually use poser. I think that's going to be hard to find, if it exists at all. It's not just Poser, but you will notice that most applications that specialize in just one or two things, especially in a somewhat pared down format from high end applications, are not being used very often.

It's same in my field of 3D, which is not in CG. As a director of my depatment, my concern in choosing applications and hiring people is much more complex then the merit of a single application or the capability of a single user. It is how an application or a hiree will fit in the big picture. I do run across nifty aps, for example, which I can not use, because they do only one thing out of 10 things that need doing, and even though great at that one thing, by the time I get the data ready for the next step, in a different ap, I lost all the savings in transitions.

Anyway, what I'm getting at, there are a lot more considerations in professional world, then just the merit of a single application or a single artist.

As for freelance artists, I've a tiny bit of freelancing myself and discovered that many times it's more dependent on how good your promotion and marketing skills are then how good you or your application is. As long as you can produce satisfying results in a timely manner.

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thefixer posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 4:56 PM

*i'm not asking should poser work get a  pass or saying "poser work is all perfect."  nor am i trying to start a debate about the quality of poser as a tool.  i'm asking whether people turn off the moment they recognize vicky or miki or other "poser" content, or flip to ultra critical.  *
IMHO the answer is NO not all people, only the mediocre snobs that "Think" they are the best out there because they use hi-end apps!

I do book covers for 2 different publishers that cater for very different tastes in shall we say literature and I'm hoping to get a third one on board next Month, I only use Poser 6 or 7, Vue6Inf and Photshop CS2, no hi-end stuff here.
They are happy with my work and I have covers in print to prove it, the only peeps who denigrate Poser are the snobs of the 3D art world and they don't matter a shit at the end of the day.

So in answer to your question: NO people don't get turned off, lots of publishers are quite happy to use work done in Poser or any other medium, at the end of the day it's the quality of the work that matters, not what software you used to create it!

Injustice will be avenged.
Cofiwch Dryweryn.


stallion posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 4:56 PM

you can't say poser is never used professionally, if you go to e frontier site and read through some of the customer stories there are some who use poser in their professional work,  it may not be the only 3d package they use but there is use for it even if it is pre visiualization of an idea, but if all you know is poser then you will probably have a very difficult time breaking into the industry

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Conniekat8 posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 5:15 PM

I forgot one more thing... to get hired on as an artist somewhere, a person needs to have a well developed portfolio. Your portfolio will get reviewed by potential employers, among many others. They are judged on several levels. Undestanding of artistic elemennts like lighting, composition, color, communicating a message, and creativity, originality and technical ability within the applications.

On has to admit that use of pre-made content is not going to get you really high marks on creativity, originality and at the minimum cast a shadow of doubt on technical ability.

About various CG sites, a person does encounter a lot of young artists whom are still trying to make it in the field, and whom are in the process of trying to get noticed and building their portfolios, whom are all to conscious of all of the above. 

Also, it has a lot to do with copyrighting too. Poser content, of course is made to be used and expanded on... Lot of times when you are hired to do a piece, the paying customer wants 'exclusive rights'. Well, with poser content, it would be pretty hard to create a very exclusive piece that didn't carry a strong resemblance of another character already in existance. I'd have to review the license agreements for Poser content, and see if you are able to create a piece using it, and then sell exclusive rights to it. 
What's to prevent someone from taking, I dunno, Aery souls Alice, make a portrait with default pose, clothing and ligting, and sell it to someone unsuspecting claiming they have exclusive rights to use that image, for a few grand. I would think that has a potential to be a big can od worms.

You could, by making your own textures and making your own morphs etc... then you could do a final render and scene assembly in poser.  I can tell you, having the ability to do the above, model, UV map, texture, assemble a scene (at lest technically), and knowing several other apps, Poser is the last app I would switch to from the modelling aps to put a scene together. Comparing few other applications I use, it's a pain to use Poser, nor could I do some things in a timely manner in Poser, if I were on a deadline. For one, compare setting up a magnet and adjusting a piece with a magnet, to being able to select a few vertices and deform a mesh in other apps. After a while, if you're spending double or three times the amount of time it takes to create something, you're watering down your income as a professional, to say the least.

The times I do use poser is when I'm trying to prepare content for someone else to use in poser.

Anyway, that's another consideration for professionals, since they often sell exclusive rights to their work.
Also, what if someone wanted to contract you to give them your meshes too? As is often the case in some of the work I do? Poser content license agreement doesn't allow you to redistribute them. 

See, how using Poser and pre-made content can a number of limitations? Lot of times it's not just the look of the end product that matters.

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Anasta posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 6:27 PM

Gah! Am I the only one who does this just cuz its fun and I like it?!


pjz99 posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 8:53 PM

I do it for fun also, I don't expect to ever make a dime off computer graphics.  It's already cost me many thousands of dollars.  Like any community, the computer graphics world is segregated pretty strongly - there are elitists, and there are huge numbers of ordinary people that the elitists look down on.  There is no automatic connection between being an elitist, and actually being good at anything in particular.  

On the other hand .... I think there are a lot of levels of creativity, but I tentatively agree that I don't get too excited over an image that is composed entirely of:

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drifterlee posted Fri, 18 May 2007 at 11:38 PM

For what it's worth, when my father looked at my pin-ups he thought they were real girls, LOL! He asked me where I got them and if I had to pay them for posing.


Zarat posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 2:56 AM

Quote - For what it's worth, when my father looked at my pin-ups he thought they were real girls, LOL! He asked me where I got them and if I had to pay them for posing.

:lol: That's funny! I remember that people who don't care much about the creation of 3D-art are often say something like "wow, this person looks like real" and such things.

Quote - hmm.  let me clarify.  i wasn't saying: is poser perfect or can it do the same things as maya?  in fact, i wasn't even talking about animation (i should have been clearer about that).  this was still images. and i didn't mean here, i meant elsewhere.  if you want to rant on the commenting system here, please do that in another thread because it's completely unrelated.

let me repeat myself : "is it impossible to break into any professional cg ranks at all using "poser" figures or content?  is the bias so strong, that no matter what quality the work, people only see the flaws?"  notice the "poser figures or content."  not,  "is poser limited."  this is about the bias against it, not the quality of work.  as i mentioned, i've generally seen significantly worse posing and expression at other cg sites, and i've rarely seen work as good as addy's worst.  i'm not saying poser isn't limited- i've used it for years and i know its limitations well...

In the recent Buzz3D related thread I said already that I can not confirm this biased approach for the professional artists that I know. I noticed however that it can be difficult to explain the value(s) of 3D-art to professional traditional artists. But that's more of a philosophical thing than something related to technical capabilities of either way to get the result.
Poser figures are sometimes used in professional context in some part of a workflow and sometimes they aren't. If the Poser figure serves the need than it will be used rather than creating a completely new figure.

The bias... Well, even if it does not sound nice I will say it like I hear it all the time: what is considered way above average Poser work here or at some other places is considered mediocre by many, if not most, professional artists. Especially if they studied both, traditional and CG art. Their arguments are that some addy-style pic requires nothing more than some practice. Practising the eyes, learning the applications that are used. Thus they won't consider it noteworthy skill just like it is not really a "skill" to learn a 3rd or 4th language over many years.
While studying art there'll be a point, I think it was after 6 semester, when students are expected to do pictures of way above average quality. A serious pro artist will of course many years after study and with thousands hours of painting only look down on those who dwell all life long on their mediocre level and think of them as great artists.
This looking down is not because of results but because of limits; - self imposed or natural.

Then again, if I ask our professionals what they think about what I did in some of the fancy apps by going most windingly ways to reach my rather poor result they don't look down at it. There are some technical comments and some saying like "oh yes, that's interesting, you should spend more time doing this" - something similar to some of the "great work, excellent, hugs, kisses, luv ya" here.
Ahem... Yes, it is possible to get respected by professional artists for using premade content.
It is not even more difficult than trying it with selfmade content.
If one uses some ready figure and clothes and creates some other parts of the scene by himself the picture suddenly won't look like all the other pictures. If this person has some skill using his chosen app then the result can be a decent picture. Showing this picture to any professional artist won't automatically make them look down at it as soon as the creator mentions Poser. There is some more logic for this statement in my other comment on the Buzz3D thread.

Using Poser right now and posting the results to certain galleries/forums will unlikely convince biased or ignorant people. That now is only the logic behind being biased or ignorant and the natural behaviour of people sporting said traits.More successful could be to use their favorite apps to make art they appreciate and then switching to Poser and do exactly the same.

Take Photoshop and XSI. With Photoshop it is said that one needs not much skill to totally destroy the least bit of artistic content an picture had. With XSI one needs much more skill to (artistically) destroy a pic, but one also needs a long time to see only a simple first result.
PS postworked pics will almost always look like that: PS postworked pics. Another category that is looked down at.

One could say it's the wide userbase that uses PS without a certain level of skill and thus their many mediocre / bad results drag down the few sophisticated results with them.
That's the same with Poser.
Those semi-professionals that fear the sight of Poser content in their sacred galleries have not much in comon with professional artists; except the will to dedicate themselves to their application or technique.
A professional architect won't look down at roman architecture because, if compared to gothic architecture, all they could do was to build squares or rectangles with some simple holes in the walls that serve as windows. - That's now a very reduced description and not an erudite one.
Some aspects of Poser can be compared to roman architecture, others are on pretty much the same level as in more flexible apps. A Poser picture done with knowledge about the application and with artistic skill is a Poser picture; ergo it can not be compared to a Max or Maya picture as it is. It can be compared with the used program in mind and by it's artistic value.
Those who can do this will do it. Those who can't do it today because they still have to estimate and judge about things will do it some far away day.
This leads to: it is definitively possible to "break into any professional cg ranks at all using 'poser' figures or content".


RorrKonn posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 5:22 AM

I could right a 1000 page book about Main 3D App's.

I have Lightwave,C4D,zBrush.been in the main 3D App realms for years.

 

Out of the all the 3D Artist in all the realms.

Only a very very very few could model a character = to Vicky or any Poser Character.

Much less,map,rig animate there character.

Main 3D App's are for 3D Professional Crews not one man show hobbies on a budget.

Very few can do it all in a main 3D app.

To model,map,rig animate your character in a main 3D App.

Would take years to learn it all and get good at it all.

Main 3D App's have a lot better rigs and some killer render engines.

You just can not compare the Fab 5 to Poser.

 

Every Thing is Deferent even the people and the way they thing is totally deferent.

Unless ya spent time in both realms it is difficult to get some one to understand how the others think.

 

Would not Post a Poser Render at CGTalk for any reason what so ever.

 

Some of the reasons the Fab 5 hates Poser.

 

1.It's cheating

2 It's to easy

3 Takes no skill

4 All the renders look a like

5 It's affordable

6 They took 3 months to model a untextured face they modeled that does not quit look right but you rendered a hole character in 10 minutes.

there frustrated beyond words they want there complete character looking correct.but 6 months for it is not practical but they done spent 3 months to get this far.

can not quit after 3 months but ya can't spend another 3 months on the same mesh.

 

Some of the reasons to hate the Fab 5 App's.

 

1There built for 3D Crews

2 Takes for ever to get any thing done buy ya self

3 $$$ way to much

4 The learning curve would strain Einstein's brain.

5  They drive you insane.

 

Out of ever 50 that starts a fab5 app 49 of them just quit.

There hard.Rocket science does not have nothing over them.

 

Out of 100 that do stay they learn one or two parts of the app very few learn all the app.

 

I could go on and on but I think ya get the point.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


Lucifer_The_Dark posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 6:39 AM

I can animate a fully textured figure walking across a room with dynamic clothing & hair, lit with volumetric lighting & even have them talk while doing it & all for less than $200 with poser, there isn't a single high end app that can do the same thing straight out of the box.

Windows 7 64Bit
Poser Pro 2010 SR1


darth_poserus posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 6:54 AM

Quote - OK what I'm seeing is this:

You're looking for a massive amount of personal opinion on something that everyone is going to feel differently about.

I, personally, would prefer to see a nicely composed, well thought-out and/or high-quality detailed in postwork Poser render than some crap, quickie, slapped together image rendered in what would be considered a 'better' program.

Its about art people... Not how much money you spent to make it. I love Thomas Kinkade, I think his work is incredible. I don't care if he got his paint and brushes online from some exotic over-seas exclusive dealer or if he bought them for $2.99 at Hobby Lobby. Its about the final product and if it looks good.

So yes, I would rather see a beautiful render come out of Poser then something very poorly done from something 'better'

 

Lucifer_the_dark, Yep.

Anasta, contrary to the image "they" like to portray to everyone. 

When you get into professional art, or even the point where your showing works in a gallery or museum. The art stops being about art, and instead becomes all about the money.

Just ask that poor old woman that found a jackson pollock painting.

She's been snobbed, scorned, and looked down upon, by the "art community" at large, not because of the painting itself, the painting itself is worth millions,  but because of her profession before she found the painting. 

She was a truck driver.

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein

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Lucifer_The_Dark posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 7:02 AM

They should be careful abusing truck drivers, they have a habit of going on strike & where would they get their caviar then?

Windows 7 64Bit
Poser Pro 2010 SR1


Zarat posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 7:48 AM

LOL!
A truck driver who does Poser art would exercise a higher form of penance then?
For some reason the divine comedy popped up in my head...


scabrat posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 9:11 AM

Quote -  

Some of the reasons the Fab 5 hates Poser.

 

1.It's cheating

2 It's to easy

3 Takes no skill

4 All the renders look a like

5 It's affordable

6 They took 3 months to model a untextured face they modeled that does not quit look right but you rendered a hole character in 10 minutes.

there frustrated beyond words they want there complete character looking correct.but 6 months for it is not practical but they done spent 3 months to get this far.

can not quit after 3 months but ya can't spend another 3 months on the same mesh.

 

 

  1. Who's it cheating, art is is about art, not how it is produced. Whether its a top class render, or something made out of a pile of stuck together milk cartons, IF it is pleasing to the observer, it works.

  2. It,s so easy. Well clearly it isn't, or we wouldn't have so many cases cited of 'crap renders'.

  3. It takes no skill. As above.

  4. All the renders look alike. Just like 'posers' playing with a more complex tool, but don't have the skills to use it.

  5. It's affordable. As are top level tools to non-artists with rich dads.

  6. This is just gobbledy gook with attricious grammar. I'd need to be a rocket scientist to understand it.

Poser is unashamedly nothing like as complex as the high end apps, nor should it be. It is however a potentially powerful tool, usable by those with a requisite skills to produce fine results.

It seems strange to me, ridiculas in fact, that in the case of poser, the very worst examples (and they are numerous I admit) are used to assess the apps abilities, while only the best examples are cited to assess the abilities of the high end stuff.

Surely it is more reasonable to assess ANY tool on the BEST work created with it, not the WORST.

Unless of course it is only about snobbery and spin. ;)


pjz99 posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 9:31 AM

Quote - IF it is pleasing to the observer, it works.

To the uninformed viewer, sure.  On the other hand, when you see GND2 wearing Aery_Soul clothes and hair, against a Bogwoppet backdrop, lit with RDNA lights, in a Martelo pose, with Antje photoshop filter  ............  Note, nothing whatsoever against these merchants, they all make excellent excellent stuff.  And I am kind of pointing out a bad thing here, because this is how everyone (including Rendo) makes lots and lots of money, and this kind of describes many gallery postings here, including some of my own.  For example I use an Aery_Soul hair that is so amazingly flexible and awesome, I doubt I will ever move away from it, even if that brands me as a Poser poser.

All this works great for those that don't recognize it, but when you do recognize all of it, or even a lot of it, it can under-impress.

ps:

Quote - 6. This is just gobbledy gook with attricious grammar.

That's "attrocious".  I am reminded of an old saying about glass houses and stones.

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scabrat posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 9:36 AM

Quote - > Quote - IF it is pleasing to the observer, it works.

To the uninformed viewer, sure.  On the other hand, when you see GND2 wearing Aery_Soul clothes and hair, against a Bogwoppet backdrop, lit with RDNA lights, in a Martelo pose, with Antje photoshop filter  ............  

All this works great for those that don't recognize it, but when you do recognize all of it, or even a lot of it, it can under-impress.

 

LOL, :) :) :) :) :)


scabrat posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 9:41 AM

Quote -
ps:

Quote - 6. This is just gobbledy gook with attricious grammar.

That's "attrocious".  I am reminded of an old saying about glass houses and stones.

 

Agreed. Sorry about that! It didn't read back like I meant it. Apologies, please disregard 6. I tried to delete it but wasn't in time. Ooops!


Richabri posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 9:45 AM

'so i went to look at the galleries of these vaunted artists that think addy's work is only passing ok, and i was kind of shocked to see pretty poor work. '

That's the real heart of the matter too and this is why I believe there is so much animosity from the other cg sites. Because Poser users don't have to spend much time creating each character and prop used they can spend their time on things like composition, lighting, expressioning, etc. This is not considered a strength by these others but a weakness in the quality of the images and I find it pretty ironic to say the least.

In the 3dbuzz thread I recall one of their members referring to Poser as a 'toy'. Yep, it is a toy - a very fun toy and it can be a damned creative toy too :)


Dajadues posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 10:47 AM

Does it matter what others think? If people have plenty of time to make their own models for scenes all the more power to them. I don't have time for that anymore. I prefer to buy my models and or download the freebies for rendering. There's nothing wrong with Poser. Poser is better than most of those highend apps that take years to learn & frankly, I don't care to learn nor spend the money on them. Highend apps are nothing but bloatware with bells & whistles that most users don't even bother with.

(MHO)


Zarat posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 12:18 PM

But all this still means that if one looks after the technical aspects of his picture and the content is somewhat creative his picture can easily stand against any picture made in some high end professional app under the same conditions.

In an more real life production line there would be some people who do only models, other who do only textures, some technicians who know all the ins and outs of some renderer and some other folks to keep the production going. Which one of these is the artist now?
The limits of high end apps are not less annoying as the ones of Poser, but the limits are not really the reason for what Poser is looked down at. It's much more what is done with Poser.

if everybody would start to do his NVIATWAS in Max or Maya then there would be much more content for these apps and of course some people would look down upon the program and the users.
Or to take a different example: many people look down upon Windows98, XP, Vista because of all the users that have no clue how to use their OS and because of all the crappy actions they do. Stuff like getting viruses on their systems, slow their machines down because they install whatever stupid combination of drivers and programs, being unable to read the manuals and help themselves and so on...
How many people look down upon Win 2003 and the like? Much less. But there are much less stupid admin actions and the users usually can't do much harm except the admins let them.
Stupid actions are comparable to crappy/mediocre pictures which are the result of lacking knowledge about the used software.
Creating a 3D model after some real world object, a vehicle, building, whatever, is more technical drawing / engineering than artistic expression. Ergo, the technical drawing that many do in high end apps is on an artistical level comparable to placing models done by others in a scene and set up lighting, textures, bla bla.
While some play with figures and textures, others play with vertexes, nurbs and program/renderengine settings.

I play in a sandpit surrounded by a forest and a rivulet while you have to play in sandbox on an playground... I can with my friends dig and drag around the sand for years in that large sandpit and we have so much more freedom. Yeah, we are totally 1337! - In our sandpit...


Poppi posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 12:51 PM

**Poser is better than most of those highend apps that take years to learn & frankly, I don't care to learn nor spend the money on them. Highend apps are nothing but bloatware with bells & whistles that most users don't even bother with.
**It didn't take me years to be able to model in LW.  Within a month, I'd done a model or two, then began learning the rendering aspects.  Of course, if you don't care to learn that's a good way to remain static throughout your life.  If you have no high end app, how can you possibly label them all as :**bloatware"? ** LW isn't surely bloatware and **zbrush is the closest thing i've ever seen to something with a "make art" button. ** Check out what the new zb3 can do at pixologic.  Awesome, for only $489.

Of course, some would rather plop down thousands of dollars in the marketplace to get the latest stuffages that the others are buying that week.  Fine, it's your money.  You can spend it on what you like.  Me, I'd rather have the app, and the knowledge to make my own content.  "Cause I really don't feel like buying something that with a little effort, and tenacity, I can make myself.


Dale B posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 7:23 PM

There really needs to be a way to divide the modelers/Its gotta be all lovingly handcrafted or it is pathetic' crowd from the hobbyist crowd and the slowly growing "I want to tell a story and this is the method I choose' crowd. I'm starting to try and learn modeling to add detail to the scenes I have scripted; I have no interest in trying to learn how to accurately model living creatures. Since the content is available and useable, why waste time that could be spent keyframing or postworking reinventing a wheel that someone else does better than I could? There is the content mindset, where you feel the need to create each polypoint, and then there is the production mindset, where the final result is what truly matters. My goal is the production; that's why I use Poser. It can't do all that I want in animation, but it does one hell of a lot of it, and it doesn't require investing in a high cost base application that would go mostly ignored. Modelers with far more modelling talent and years more experience and skill than I make their talent available for those like me to pour =my= vision into. Anton's Apollo 2007 doesn't get up from the floor and animate himself, after all. In a lot of ways, he's a blank slate. Any personality he might have would be in the hands of the person animating and lighting him. And once I have things in the can, I would have no trouble listing all the content makers. They deserve credit for their work. That doesn't detract from my keyframing, scripting, lighting setups, scene construction and layout, camera keying, foley, scoring, timing and so on. These are two entirely different disciplines, and you can't compare or disparage one with the other, which is what goes on far too often (and I don't think you are doing this, Poppi, btw ;) ).


Conniekat8 posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 9:21 PM

Quote - 'so i went to look at the galleries of these vaunted artists that think addy's work is only passing ok, and i was kind of shocked to see pretty poor work. '

That's the real heart of the matter too and this is why I believe there is so much animosity from the other cg sites. Because Poser users don't have to spend much time creating each character and prop used they can spend their time on things like composition, lighting, expressioning, etc. This is not considered a strength by these others but a weakness in the quality of the images and I find it pretty ironic to say the least.

In the 3dbuzz thread I recall one of their members referring to Poser as a 'toy'. Yep, it is a toy - a very fun toy and it can be a damned creative toy too :)

 

This is exactly what baffles me... people see one or two people of unpleasant disposition on one of the 'other sites' and right away, they take that to be the majority consensus on 'other sites'. 
The more I read and think about the issue, it seems to me more and more that the 'undeserved dissing of poser' is more of an exaggeration on part of many poser users, based on very few crappy people in higher end CG, then something that actually exists.
As for the crappy prejudiced people, ther's a dose of them just about everywhere, including here. I look at some posts on rendo, and they're just as negative about the high end CG as they claim somesuch higher end CG person was towards them. 

Also, it cracks me up, people are being so critical of the higher end CG people, then they turn around chum up to them and buy their content.  I'd be surprized if that doesn't get them ticked off and decide to not make any more $1.99 content for the ungrateful bunch.
Gah, the more I think about it, the more it gives me heartburn!
[dragon-kitty]

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
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pjz99 posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 9:34 PM

The recent batch of it does seem to be very passive-aggressive, yeah.  Only one person in the 3dBuzz thread was blatantly disrespectful, and his fellows were pretty down on that.

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Conniekat8 posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 9:52 PM

And all this 'Dissing' of poser by the professional level CG... other then hearsay, I'm yet to see it happening.
I've seen poser Dissed one other time, by some juvenile typing (ho r u 2dy) twit on deviant art (which I would hardly consider 'high end or professional CG' in most cases).
I regularly study/read/examine places like CG Talk, where you find more 'high end', and I never hear a peep about poser being dissed.
I also heard of a few cases when someone built their portfolio using Poser and attempted to get a job in a studio, and got rejected, because that's not what they were looking for, and the applicant got all indignant about the criticisam how Poser doesn't really showcase their skills.
For examplke, I'd like to hear from people whom man the Renderosity booth at siggraph, and see if poser is really being dissed as much as I keep hearing it does (I find it extremely hard to believe).

Then I look here, and some of the people whom are vocal about 'poser being hated by the users of higher apps, use the same higer apps and are planing to make morphs and characters etc.

It seems almost like some sort of rite of passage around here, to have periodic, woe is me, poser user whom is not getting proper attention and recognition of their work from the big bad mean elites.

[Kitty pops a rolaid and continues reinstaling apps...]

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Dajadues posted Sat, 19 May 2007 at 11:49 PM

Poppi,

I only do this as a hobby these days. Granted, like I said, if you have the time & money to learn go for it. I prefer to render animations. I dont want to model. Poser suits my needs. I do make some of my own stuff for my scenes but nothing extreme. I do have an old copy of Max for that. I can only spend an hour or so on Poser animating. My job is 35 hours a week little time to play. I find it easier to buy or download the models if I need too. I dont have months or a month to learn new software at the moment. And, a highend app, IS for the most part bloatware. Maya & Max are indeed bloat. Have you seen the size of those programs lately, & the hefty price tag??? If I had the money Maya would be my choice for animations.

(MHO)


RorrKonn posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 12:19 AM

CobaltDreamns Asked why some of the 3D Artist from the Fab 5 App's raged Poser.

So I attempted to give CobaltDreamns a understandable answer.

CobaltDreamns Did not ask what RorrKonn thought of Poser So lets not kill the messenger.

 

ScaBrat Quote "6. This is just gobbledy gook with attricious grammar"

 

ConnieKat* Quote Then I look here, and some of the people whom are vocal about 'poser being hated by the users of higher apps, use the same higer apps and are planing to make morphs and characters etc.

It seems almost like some sort of rite of passage around here, to have periodic, woe is me, poser user whom is not getting proper attention and recognition of their work from the big bad mean elites.

 

I am RorrKonn I am the mean elite.

I can model charter meshes = to V4 or any charter mesh ever modeled and I can even model them in TrueSpace.

http://www.atomic-3d.com/RK_3DArt/RK_Chrome_Portrait_01.htm

Chrome was Modeled in TrueSpace.

TS is considered a toy buy the Fab 5 app's,But they had to respect Chrome.

 

How do I know how some of the Fab 5 Artist fell about Poser ?

Cause I use Poser have Poser Renders at my Gallery

http://www.atomic-3d.com/RK_3DArt/00_3D-Renders_Main.htm

Every now and then some one will rag me about using Poser.

I tell them to show me there character that they modeled that is = to mine or DAZ's V4 etc or Poser stock meshes..

So far none has shown me one then they rag me about my grammar or something.

Search the main app forms your find comments about my grammar.

Got my very first PC in 1998 could not read or right no better then a preschooler.

At least my grammar is = to a 1st graders now ;)

 

I do not care who thinks what about me ,my grammar or the app's I use.

I care that I have proven I am the mean elite with any app and they half to respect that.

 

Some one posted at CGTalk "I am going to teach a class on how to model characters so how do you model characters."

My response got my post censored witch I understand the monitors have a tuff job.

But for years was to long for me.

So I do not go to CGTalk much any more

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


Zarat posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 1:03 AM

Now if only all the "elitists" would spend a day or two in some really professional environment, e.g. some special fx studio or game developer, and then reconsider their elitist status, taking into account that they spend weeks or even months on something that real world industry expects to be done in a few days maximum with at least the same level of quality.
Not everybody who makes a few bucks every now and then is a professional or specialist of some application and not everybody who grows a few vegetables in his garden is a farmer or agricultural engineer.

@RorrKonn: May I ask where you come from or what is your native tongue?
Some of the pictures on your website look very nice. I think it would be good to elaborate the traditional skills.


RorrKonn posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 2:06 AM

I'm from USA Lived in Tennessee,West Virginia,Virginia,North and South Carolina,Georga,Florida.

Was a hoodlum skipped school a lot.

Once when a land lord threw us out he said we where a bunch of longed haired tattooed hippies that belonged out in the woods some where.he meant it as a insult but we took it as a complement.we where heatherns.

I started drawing comic book characters in second grade,in 8th grad art class I painted the cover of KISS Destroyer & Iron Maidens Killers with acrylics.12th grade Art class I drawed the KISS Solo Album of Gene with pastels.

Wanted to be a rock star so played guitar in a garage band.Had a red Gibson flying V.

I have done custom paint jobs on vehicles in Atlanta

Air brushed tShrts and painted billboards at Panama City Beach.

Done Tattoos in Prison

at one time or other painted,drawed with all the mediums.

been making a living one way or the other with some form of Art since I can remember.

had art class in 8th grade,12th grade and a semester in college it was art 101 the teacher asked me why I took it cause she didn't think I needed it I just wanted to be around other Artist.

Went to college 5 years for a computer science degree I never graduated.

I just don't do school very well.
Done sculpturing with deferent clays,I just like Art.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


kobaltkween posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 2:26 AM

ok, let me further clarify a few things.  what i'm seeing is work far below the quality of the poser work being criticized.   way, way below.   in originality, in technical ability, in composition, and most certainly in terms of use of light.  so debates about comparable quality are off the table as far as i'm concerned.  that is, the conversation will go where it will and that's fine.  what i'm talking about is literally seeing stuff i don't think is very good at all and that being praised or encouraged, while the same people speak disparagingly of poser work i consider far superior.  so i'm not getting into any debate about quality.

while i realize this is totally subjective, and i wouldn't begin to say i have the eyes of a professional illustrator, painter or cg artist, i think pjz99 can attest to the fact that i don't think any old poser render is automatically perfect or even good.

as for ps postwork: just about every painted image i've seen at cg society lists photoshop.  about 90% of the 3d images i've seen list it as well, along with maya, max, lightwave or other 3d programs.  perhaps i'm looking at the wrong ones, but they tend to actually be the highlighted "best" ones.

my point is this: i see mediocre or badly painted work, or a mediocre or anatomically ludicrous mesh, and i see people give advice, encouragement, and general praise.  i see poser come up, and then i see specific outstanding artists criticized that, as far as i can see, blows their work out of the water and is occassionally in the same genre (e.g., fantasy illustrations).  i've seen this many, many times.  i have never searched for it.  i don't know why you haven't seen it, but just in casually browsing at various places, i've seen it several times.  many members took part each time, and most times not one member chimed in with a more balanced approach. conversely, each time this comes here, at least one person brings up: "but most poser artwork isn't very good," another brings up, "but poser is very limited, " and so on, even if, as in this thread, such general issues aren't a part of the point.

so it's interesting to me, and what i wanted to know, if you haven't seen this bias.  that said, i'm not getting upset over a few trolls. i'm seeing general conversations denigrating poser in general, and some denigrating specific works that are far and away better than any of those complaining.  i'm seeing people lie about using poser meshes as a base for really great work, and that work being roundly praised until they're "outed."   i'm seeing actual site rules singling poser (and occassionally bryce) out for critical review.   none that i've seen have rules about yet another badly composed render of something that vaguely looks like some movie or tv star, yet another extreme and unrealistically translucent use of maya's skin shader, or another female figure shaped as if by a someone's whose only experience with females was a slightly melted barbie.   or any of the other myriad problems i've seen in the cg world- both 3d and 2d. and frankly, it's all just time learning a skill. how is learning to paint properly any different than learning to model properly?  sorry, but i don't see less talent and artistry in addy's work than those who cover the same themes over and over again. let me see if i can name them:

i love a lot of cg, but i see very, very, very little that is more a matter of vision and creativity than  a learned skill.  most is the same stuff over and over, with no risks and nothing unexpected, but occassionally executed with incredible skill .  so i don't buy that somehow working in maya is more than a technical skill, but that's all that painting realistically is.  i greatly admire technical skill. i think discipline and hard work are greatly admirable attributes, and you have to have both to get good at anything.

as for originality: the present cover of  "essence: the face,"  (and what i've seen in the preview of all of the contents) looks _ precisely_ like a custom morph(s) of v3, imho. especially looking at maria and model by janek .i personally find that the cg world follows mainstream media pretty closely, so i very rarely see looks so unique that  just about any standard white female of decent quality couldn't suffice as a base.  the same way most actresses are often so similar as to be almost interchangable, especially with dye jobs.  not that the myriad different takes on pretty white (or asian) female aren't wonderful and beautiful, each in their own way.  in the same way that natalie portman  and jessica alba are awfully beautiful in very different ways.  but neither is so unique looking that fygomatic couldn't reproduce both them, as well as many other actresses, with v3's face.  

and i'm not "ragging" on people who can model.  and i'm not saying, "woe is me."  what i'm saying is i am witnessing a huge double standard, where quality is not even vaguely the point of comparison, the tool is.  frankly, i've seen some paintings that were praised that could  and should have used poser or some other reference to get the foreshortening and shadows right.  and honestly, i'm not even complaining about it.  i'm certainly not talking about a review of my own work, which isn't even vaguely in the neighborhood of cgsociety quality. i'm not saying squat about the quality of the applications people use.  and i've seen tons of merchants post who use any number of high-end tools with marvelous skill, and who exhibit purely golden personalities that encourage and inspire rather than belittle and discourage.

to make an example: i once had a lawyer friend tell me that lawyers on tv are ridiculous because not only could women not wear such absurdly short skirts, only 3 colors of suit were ever acceptable in court: black, blue and grey.  that's it.  no leeway (according to her).  so it wasn't: most people who wear brightly colored suits make bad arguments.   it was simply: this is the norm, step outside of it and you're toast.  i know from anecdotal evidence that this isn't so fixed with "poser" figures (quotes because figures made in lightwave or max, with textures done in deep paint, and rendered in carrara or cinema4d really don't have any association with poser other than the community where it's popular).   thefixer mentioned his jobs, i've seen other's post about the money they make doing book covers, i've seen wolf359 say he works professionally with sanctumart figures, m2 and v2, and multiple "poser" works made it into exotique 2 (i think i last counted about 8 in the book preview, with sarsa, addy and phlox being the only artists i've identified).  but i've also seen strong bias and double-standards from whole communities.  so i'm trying to get a feel for how blurry the line is and where it lies.

Conniekat8 - i don't see where you get off ridiculing my question as a rite of passage. if you haven't seen the threads against poser at CGTalk, you must not be looking.  i browse there very occassionally, and i've encountered them multiple times.  and it's like you didn't even bother to read my original post, just glanced at the subject of the thread, and jumped to a lot of conclusions. for that reason i will repost two paragraphs i consider significant:

Quote - let me preface this by saying i do believe that making your own stuff means that it will have a more personal feel.  and while i think a lot of time and effort in high end apps goes to reinventing life in the same mold, standard pretty girl or bad boy portraits, and most of it is just as derivative if more skilled than your standard poser work, i do acknowledge that making your own stuff means you can implement your own ideas and your own styles more thoroughly than if you just combine pre-existing elements.  i think discussions about using premade or autogenerated content in any application is valid.  and i do think that since price of professional tools generally keeps them out of the hands of hobbiests, and poser is mostly used by hobbiests, the average skill and creativity of works in high end apps is greater than the average poser work as it should be.  professionals should, on average, out-perform hobbiests.  so i'm not trying to make a whole case about creativity and tools.

...

so i went to look at the galleries of these vaunted artists that think addy's work is only passing ok, and i was kind of shocked to see pretty poor work.  one person had really stiff, mediocre painted work, another  just postworked photos in very boring ways.  i looked more in the galleries, and was seriously underwhelmed.  and what got me was that exactly the same qualities they criticized in poser work- stiffness, incorrect anatomy, etc. - applied strongly to their own.



kobaltkween posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 2:29 AM

oh, and RorrKonn, i appreciate your contributions to this thread.



ghonma posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 3:26 AM

CGTalk poser threads (after a quick search, i'm sure i missed a few ) :

Poser 1
Poser 2
Poser 3
Poser 4
Poser 5
Poser 6
Poser 7
Poser 8
[ Poser 9

](http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=132&t=479640&highlight=poser) So, what poser bias ? Besides the little debris you find at all sites, the comments are all encouraging and insightful. Not many have ended up at the front page, but besides the first link, they arent that great to begin with so it's not surprising. But i don't see much poser bashing there ?

The fact is, most real 'pros' are more then happy to give anything a fair look. But you do have to do them the courtesy of listening to their crits with a patient ear, and not run back to poser sites at the first negative crit

And this one, the only 'negative' one i found (actually a D|S one):

Bad Poser

Which it partly deserves, because it is definitely a low quality work. And even then, only one user is being negative, an ex poser user mind you.


pjz99 posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 3:32 AM

I haven't seen it much because frankly I'm a noob.  I've been doing artwork in any form since about November of 2006, about 8 months now.  I post here and read here because there's valuable information about the apps I choose to work with, and don't frequent some of the other forums mentioned because they don't have info about my apps.

Not like I was too poor to afford 3ds Max or other apps.  I spent two weeks trying to figure out rigging V3 in 3ds Max 9 before I decided I was wasting my time.  If there was a commercially-available, well-engineered, RIGGED, with JCM or some equivalent, human figure with a large complement of flexible morphs and materials for 3ds Max or Maya, I'd be using Max or Maya.  Money is not important to me.

If I had started with Max 8 months ago instead of the DAZ figures and Poser, maybe in a couple of years I could match pure number of man-hours that have gone into the rigging and morphing of a typical $30 Poser figure.  I do not think that is a good trade of time for results, I'd just as soon cough up $30 and spare myself a few years of work.  Anyone really putting forward the idea that ordinary individuals should be modeling, rigging, texturing, and doing all morphs and whatnot - this screams "you are a hobbyist".  Major animation production houses don't do it that way.  All the work is subdivided in a very bureaucratic way, and huge collections of proprietary content are designed and textured etc, and passed to other workers who may have no concept of how it was produced.  They're only concerned with using it.  This isn't really different from Poserdom except money does not change hands.

Granted, some people are capable of modeling, rigging, morphing, texturing etc a figure from scratch.  These people (e.g. Anton Kisiel) are very cool and brilliant, and I look up to them highly.  They also have many years' head start on me.  Should I stop my artwork and go train for 5-10 years before going forward again?  Someone can try to sell me on the idea that any random person can pick up 3ds Max and do all this in a short time; from direct experience with Max 9 on very high end hardware, I don't think so.  As I continue to learn and understand how these figures work, I really don't think so - JCMs are a very good example.  Seems to me the base model is rather the easy part, the rigging and morphing is where all the work goes.  

Cobaltdream could you cite some of these examples of what you're talking about e.g. yucky work?  I frankly don't go out and look for the stuff.  Yes you are very capable of looking at Poser renders with an unbiased critical eye, but since I don't know really what you're comparing it to it's hard for me to really benchmark anything (not that that's really needed here).

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Paloth posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 5:33 AM

price of professional tools generally keeps them out of the hands of hobbyists Blender 3D is a free modeler with all of the features of a "professional tool," yet the Poser hobbyists--for the most part--won't even touch it. Why? Because--like the professional tools--it's hard to master. Poser by comparison is very easy to learn. Those who spend 3 months sculpting a figure, creating its textures, weight maps, morphs and rigging are liable to post images of their progress along the way. This might account for the poor quality of some of their renders. Naturally, some artists are more skilled than others. Poser includes content created by some of the best professionals in the business. Some professionals spend their careers posing and animating models created by other artists, or setting up scenes comprised of preexisting content. Of course they don't use Poser to do it. I wonder who is more of an artist:-a functionary in a CGI sweatshop or a Poser user with a vision? There really is no such thing as a Poser professional, but I'm sure that Poser artists exist.

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pjz99 posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 5:49 AM

Quote - Blender 3D is a free modeler with all of the features of a "professional tool," yet the Poser hobbyists--for the most part--won't even touch it. Why? Because--like the professional tools--it's hard to master. Poser by comparison is very easy to learn.

That is nonsense and untrue.  "The Poser hobbyists" includes myself, and I have two modeling apps installed on my machine now (Hexagon, Shade).  I use them when appropriate to use them.  Many many "Poser hobbyists" also mess with modeling apps when they feel the urge. 

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Paloth posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 6:01 AM

That is nonsense and untrue. "The Poser hobbyists" includes myself, and I have two modeling apps installed on my machine now (Hexagon, Shade). Then you would fall outside of the "most Poser hobbyists" category that I specified. Granted, I haven't taken any survey. I'm not sure if you can rig, or animate or create UV maps, or 3D paint a model in Hexagon or Shade, but you can do all of this if you spend thousands for a top of the line modeler or download Blender 3D freeware.

Download my free stuff here: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.php?page=2&userid=323368


Zarat posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 6:36 AM

Quote - I'm from USA Lived in Tennessee,West Virginia,Virginia,North and South Carolina,Georga,Florida.

Was a hoodlum skipped school a lot.

Once when a land lord threw us out he said we where a bunch of longed haired tattooed hippies that belonged out in the woods some where.he meant it as a insult but we took it as a complement.we where heatherns.

I started drawing comic book characters in second grade,in 8th grad art class I painted the cover of KISS Destroyer & Iron Maidens Killers with acrylics.12th grade Art class I drawed the KISS Solo Album of Gene with pastels.

Wanted to be a rock star so played guitar in a garage band.Had a red Gibson flying V.

I have done custom paint jobs on vehicles in Atlanta

Air brushed tShrts and painted billboards at Panama City Beach.

Done Tattoos in Prison

at one time or other painted,drawed with all the mediums.

been making a living one way or the other with some form of Art since I can remember.

had art class in 8th grade,12th grade and a semester in college it was art 101 the teacher asked me why I took it cause she didn't think I needed it I just wanted to be around other Artist.

Went to college 5 years for a computer science degree I never graduated.

I just don't do school very well.
Done sculpturing with deferent clays,I just like Art.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

That's very extensive. Thank you. :)
It's not a problem to understand what you write. I have asked coz I thought your primary language is something else than english and 'cause we happen to "meet" regularly in this forum. My native tongue is German...

CS is a odd choice for study if you are interested in art. However, maybe you will finish the degree some day. I believe that it's not totally impossible to do the last few steps if you were able to stand that topic for 5 years already and it might be useful since many companies rather look for some piece of paper than for actual skill.
On your site the whole damnation themed pictures are standing out. IMO, they are the most in themselves complete works.

Maybe you know this site already: community.conceptart.org/
There are some capable and helpful people. Especially the Asians.

About the threads topic and the latest specification: using methods of psychology would do a better job if it comes to separating and delimit the reasons behind certain points of view.
Quality of pictures is a whole different topic, as cobaltqueen said already.

@cobaltdream: Your listing of picture themes deserves 5 stars... Excellent done! gg


kobaltkween posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 6:41 AM

i dunno.  i looked at blender3d, and tried some tutorials.  i didn't stop because it was hard.  i stopped because it was a lot of effort for a tool that didn't have subsurface scattering and needed a hack to duplicate the effect.  and i know of people who at least claim to use other high end tools that have said they found blender's interface to be just too complex.

i could go off on usability and the importance of interface in manipulating 3d objects with 2d tools, but i don't think it's necessary.

to be honest, i'm not sure i could even find them again.  i don't even remember what i was actually looking up to come across them, and i was going to several sites to look up info.  all i can remember is that i was researching painting.  or i think i was?  since then, other stuff including my job has become much, much more hectic, i've given up trying to render anything at a useful size in p6 but can't afford p7 right now, and other various issues that have made this and daz the only cg sites i've looked at in a several weeks. but when i was encountering this, i was looking around at a lot of places for what i think was info about painting techniques.  since the subsequent furor at work, i can only remember a bryce tutorial i stumbled across and these threads. work kind of booted everything else out my head.  at the time, i didn't want to start a thread about poser, creativity and quality, with lots of over-justification, so i figured i'd keep my thoughts to myself.  i only came back to it because the 3dbuzz thread came up and seemed so civilized. 

that said, if there's been an about face in a few weeks, i'd be surprised. 

ghonna - thanks very much for the links.  i actually find them quite heartening.  in response to "running back to poser sites," how many different ways can i say this isn't about  a review i've received?  frankly, i don't think it would matter what program i use- my first post to cgsociety will get slammed (if i ever make one).  because first everything sucks.  i'm guessing that the best tactic will be to gnash my teeth and beat my breast  or wail and moan in the privacy of  my computer room, internalize what i find helpful, throw out the rest, and thank everyone for their responses.   seeing the reaction isn't just,  "model your own figure," and "don't use poser," is very, very heartening.   i have seen people say precisely that.

i'm searching through cgsociety now, and i'm not seeing nearly as much positive as you did.  i'm seeing lots of, "it's better to model your own figures."  and people being outed for using daz content.  and even one person saying that calling anime uncreative is as bad as comparing it to Poser.  and that's just in the choice area.  but one statement was interesting: that functionality like poser would become the norm in 3d programs when we had completed a codification of the biped, and that those who slammed premade customizable content  as from poser (which many members mentioned) would become as out of date as the people who once slammed cg art altogether.  though now i can't seem to find that post again, so i should get some sleep.



Zarat posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 6:53 AM

Quote - > Quote - Blender 3D is a free modeler with all of the features of a "professional tool," yet the Poser hobbyists--for the most part--won't even touch it. Why? Because--like the professional tools--it's hard to master. Poser by comparison is very easy to learn.

Quote - That is nonsense and untrue.  "The Poser hobbyists" includes myself, and I have two modeling apps installed on my machine now (Hexagon, Shade).  I use them when appropriate to use them.  Many many "Poser hobbyists" also mess with modeling apps when they feel the urge. 

From my experience I found Poser easier to learn than Shade, which is easier than learning Maya or XSI, which are easier than CATIA.

Easy means that I can get a picture done without the need to look in any manual and without spending more than a few minutes with program/renderengine specific settings.Further does easy mean that not everything is suddenly totally fucked up because I clicked the wrong button.
This way I came to the order of programs as listed above.
I have never attempted to seriously work with Blender because the other applications are available already.

Poser is more difficult if one makes use of the dynamic cloth and hair and the material room.
But this type of difficulty is not the same as the one that requires to look in a manual because there is nothing that hints the user about what he did wrong and there is no way to use logic to understand the way the program functions.


Paloth posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 7:29 AM

i know of people who at least claim to use other high end tools that have said they found blender's interface to be just too complex. I think people who have high-end tools would find it redundant and pointless to put in the time learning Blender's interface. It is more difficult than their program of choice because they haven’t spent the same number of months learning it. I'd test this theory, but I'm too busy using Lightwave. Subsurface scattering is CGI icing on the cake. I’m sure it will be added to Blender eventually. In the meantime, you could spend a few years (or the rest of your life) just mastering modeling. I'll be unwrapping and UV mapping in Blender, which is superior to Lightwave in this department.

Download my free stuff here: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.php?page=2&userid=323368


pjz99 posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 7:35 AM

Quote - ... i've given up trying to render anything at a useful size in p6 but can't afford p7 right now, ...

 

As an aside, I cannot recommend upgrading from Poser 6 to Poser 7 in its current state.  The multithreaded rendering was the main reason I was interested in it, and currently it has some very bad technical problems.  Smoothing behavior is very erratic, and depth mapped shadows are inexplicably wierd for reasons I don't understand, e.g. line patterns in shadows that should not be there, even with very very high render settings and very large shadow map size.  I'm done wasting my time with it personally, it'll only be used to set up the scene and do any dynamic cloth or hair.  Even when smoothing worked correctly it was still far slower and lower quality than Vue.  Memory management is greatly improved, but that's really mostly an issue during rendering anyway, and that's FUBAR.

If you spend money, put it into Vue 6 of some version if you don't already have it.

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ghonma posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 7:43 AM

Quote - ghonna - thanks very much for the links.  i actually find them quite heartening.  in response to "running back to poser sites," how many different ways can i say this isn't about  a review i've received?  frankly, i don't think it would matter what program i use- my first post to cgsociety will get slammed (if i ever make one).  because first everything sucks.  i'm guessing that the best tactic will be to gnash my teeth and beat my breast  or wail and moan in the privacy of  my computer room, internalize what i find helpful, throw out the rest, and thank everyone for their responses.   seeing the reaction isn't just,  "model your own figure," and "don't use poser," is very, very heartening.   i have seen people say precisely that.

I wasn't singling you (or anyone else) out... I'm just saying that, that is what many people seem to do when they get negative crits for their poser work. I'm sure you have seen the regular posts about this that are created here right ?

Quote - i'm searching through cgsociety now, and i'm not seeing nearly as much positive as you did.  i'm seeing lots of, "it's better to model your own figures."  and people being outed for using daz content.  and even one person saying that calling anime uncreative is as bad as comparing it to Poser.  and that's just in the choice area.  but one statement was interesting: that functionality like poser would become the norm in 3d programs when we had completed a codification of the biped, and that those who slammed premade customizable content  as from poser (which many members mentioned) would become as out of date as the people who once slammed cg art altogether.  though now i can't seem to find that post again, so i should get some sleep.

CGtalk has more then a 100k members, and out of those barely a few thousand are the 'pros' The rest are the wannabes and the hangers on who have posts full of fanboyism and silliness. So of course every post should be taken with a grain of salt. But in general, the poser opposition is not as bad as most of us think it is. And it will keep becoming friendlier, the more people post there. That's how Vue, Wings and Blender got their own forums at CGTalk after all.

Also this : "and people being outed for using daz content."

This is something I would like to address. Note that in all the links i posted, the artist has clearly and in the first post stated that have used poser. And because they have been honest about what they have used and where, almost no one is jumping on them for using it.

It's the liars and cheats that get the bashing, and have gotten poser the reputation it has at such places. Not that poser is bad, or it's users are not artists, but that some of them like to make fake claims.

Heck you can even see this in our own galleries where we have some rather suspicious photo manips being passed off as poser work...


Paloth posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 7:58 AM

I don't think it's remarkable that people making renders in Poser, using models created by the very best in the business produce superior images to most of those who are struggling to create something completely original. Apples and oranges, yet we still compare.

Download my free stuff here: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.php?page=2&userid=323368


RorrKonn posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 11:26 AM

@ ghonma

 

There all 2006,7

1/2 are in the 2D gallery.

1 thru 9 are more photo shop then Poser.

only one made it in choose gallery.

L33,The still of the moment.

He posted a simple DS render on the "3D form" no spent 2 days in Photoshop fixen's.

it is not that it is DS it's it has that simple 10 second render fell to it.

Posers do it from time to time also.

They always get critics.

 

You half to be nice at CGTalk.So they can not be mean.

The flam wars,arguing that go on here would never happen at CGTalk.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


ghelmer posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 12:29 PM

The flam wars,arguing that go on here would never happen at CGTalk.

That's baloney!!  CGTalk is on par with 3DBuzz when it comes to Poser bashing...  it's lightened up little bit as it seems someone affiliated with Poser advertises there bit it's still all pretty much the same but just not as blatant bashing as it is belittling condecention hidden behind lightly veiled contructive criticism...

G

The GR00VY GH0ULIE!

You are pure, you are snow
We are the useless sluts that they mould
Rock n roll is our epiphany
Culture, alienation, boredom and despair


Conniekat8 posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 3:12 PM

Quote - That's baloney!!  CGTalk is on par with 3DBuzz when it comes to Poser bashing...  it's lightened up little bit as it seems someone affiliated with Poser advertises there bit it's still all pretty much the same but just not as blatant bashing as it is belittling condecention hidden behind lightly veiled contructive criticism...G

 

And many people here on rendo are making sure we don't fall behind in bashing them.  
Pot-Kettle   

The more I read the more I think it is true that many people see the smallest amount of criticisam as a major slam against them.

Oh well.  shrugs  Not my cup of tea.

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kobaltkween posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 3:29 PM

Quote -
This is something I would like to address. Note that in all the links i posted, the artist has clearly and in the first post stated that have used poser. And because they have been honest about what they have used and where, almost no one is jumping on them for using it.

It's the liars and cheats that get the bashing, and have gotten poser the reputation it has at such places. Not that poser is bad, or it's users are not artists, but that some of them like to make fake claims.

Heck you can even see this in our own galleries where we have some rather suspicious photo manips being passed off as poser work...

i can see the point and why people get upset, but i also think it shows prejudice.  i shouldn't care whether something is a photo manip- if i can't tell, then it's still great.  i shouldn't get mad because i spent ages trying to get a  material and lighting correct, because i could do the same thing they did and chose to make my life harder.  that's not something i feel i should be proud of. i emphasize "i" because i really can't speak for anyone else, and i respect how others feel about this.

it's not a cheat to use poser.  what i percieve you're saying is that people should admit to specific short cuts, but not address the myriad of other short cuts they could (and do) take.  that, imho, is prejudice.

and did i mention that most of the images i saw being outed were not poser?  and yet called "crap"  because people thought they were?  but to me that's like saying, "i do things the long way for no reason."  i think people should be praised for getting a cheap solution to look like a custom-made expensive one, not put down for it.  since i usually go the long way in my own stuff (javascript, php & flash, not poser or cg stuff), i have to say i think it's just a waste of time.  i mean, fun and educational and all, but if i were looking to hire someone i can say i'd pick the person who doesn't reinvent the wheel and uses the easiest, quickest, cheapest and most effective way possible to achieve spec.  frankly, that's a skill in itself, and if you only know the long way, it's a more expensive hole in one's knowledge than the other way around.  i consider my propensity to build rather than customize a great, great weakness of mine. 

i mean, i looked at every page of the preview of the "essence: the face" book by ballistic.  every single piece looks so much like v3 i can't see the point.  why not just use the modeling tool of choice and morph away?  and to me, because it's cheating is not an acceptable answer when it comes to producting stuff under a deadline, even if that deadline is self-imposed.

that's just my opinion, and i can see and understand the other side.  i can get peeved when i see short-cuts to realism greatly praised without any acknowledgements of their shortcomings.  but i feel like that's something to get past, not encourage.



kobaltkween posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 4:00 PM

Quote -
And many people here on rendo are making sure we don't fall behind in bashing them.  
Pot-Kettle   

The more I read the more I think it is true that many people see the smallest amount of criticisam as a major slam against them.

Oh well.  shrugs  Not my cup of tea.

well, if that's true, then i feel once again like you either haven't been reading or you've been seeing what you want to see.  pretty much every single post in this thread has gone on about how open everyone should be to criticism and how much better non-poser work is.  the more i read from you, the more i feel like the only response you'd deem acceptable is, "yes sir, may i please have another."  some criticism is helpful and balanced.  and some is just unhelpful and biased double standards.  if there's a shift toward the former it's great, but i can say i've seen much, much more of the latter in the past.  and as i said, i'm not complaining about it. 

let me give another example.  when i was in college i interned for a very "old school." company.  if you had asked anyone, i'm reasonably sure they would have given the right answers about minorities and women.  but in this conference room was a wall of pictures of employees of a branch of the company.  the glass ceiling was made very visible.  because people talked, i know that the only woman to be promoted to management was someone who had had an affair with a big boss, and actually managed to break up his marriage and secure him for herself.  there were just about no ethnic minorities in the entire company, unless you counted grounds workers, people in the caffeteria, and the people who washed glasswares (they were exclusively minorities).  and lots and lots of really racist comments were common around the office.  also, the company's clients were (in general) even more closed.  that's not a complaint.  that's just a fact.  and if one is female and/or not white, it's an important fact.  it was a place where someone who was not white and male would find it almost impossible to advance.  maybe that company has changed since then.  but if someone new was coming to that company (i interned over 3 summers, so i had time to get to know the culture), it would be good for them to know what the lay of the land was.

and here's the thing.  these were basically nice, good people.  they were decent, they were kind, they worked hard.  they were as honest as they could be without being unpolite.  but they were still very biased, still very limited by their own prejudices, and they still hurt a lot of people without thinking about it.  all of us do this to some greater or lesser extent.  in my experience, that place was on the greater side.

you cannot deal with a problem you cannot see.  and getting the perspective of more than one's own eyes is generally a good idea, because there's only so much one person can see.  that said, you can't sit there and tell me someone pissing on my leg is rain and have me believe it.



pjz99 posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 5:46 PM

Quote - ... i shouldn't care whether something is a photo manip- if i can't tell, then it's still great. 

That depends highly on where the "great" part came from.  If I see a very sexy, slick image of Blackhearted/Rio's excellent GND2 (probably one of the best-crafted, most unique morphs of V3 that's commercially available) - "wow, amazing morphing, you really did an awesome job getting V3 to look very different from the default!"  Is that a fair credit?  So much of a given scene can be someone else's work, if you basically just plug it all together while changing very little, it may have great artistic merit, but whose art is it really?  One reason I am so anal about giving production credits, I don't want to be praised (or criticised, really) on things I didn't do.  I wish more people were thorough about this when showing their work and asking for feedback.

When somebody doesn't know the ins and outs, and does praise someone for some work they didn't really do, they get very annoyed.  I can understand the reaction you're talking about completely, where someone posts a quickie render to one of the "big boy" app forums and then gets outed, as you say.  If someone crops a photograph of a face in over their rendered image, however skillfully they might blend it in with photo manipulation - I should be praising their photo manip skills rather than the amazing, lifelike face.

Quote - well, if that's true, then i feel once again like you either haven't been reading or you've been seeing what you want to see. 

No, she's talking very specifically about a recent example - basically Operaguy went over to 3dBuzz and tried quite hard to pick a fight, even with people who were polite and accepting.  IMO Connie makes a good point.  I am sure at least a few 3dBuzz regulars read that thread, and came away with the conclusion "man, some of those Poser users are jerks."

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ghonma posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 6:05 PM

Quote - but if i were looking to hire someone i can say i'd pick the person who doesn't reinvent the wheel and uses the easiest, quickest, cheapest and most effective way possible to achieve spec.  frankly, that's a skill in itself, and if you only know the long way, it's a more expensive hole in one's knowledge than the other way around.  i consider my propensity to build rather than customize a great, great weakness of mine.

This works both ways. A person who only knows the short cut will be in a fix the first time they encounter something that is outside of what the short cuts handle. Someone who knows only the long way usually has a deeper understanding of the work and can often cobble together what they need from scratch, while the other guy is standing around scratching his head. Which is more expensive depends on how badly your system is screwed LOL

Quote - i mean, i looked at every page of the preview of the "essence: the face" book by ballistic.  every single piece looks so much like v3 i can't see the point.

You are not alone, other people were also complaining about the book at CGTalk. But the publisher donates part of the money from sales to run that site, so it can be somewhat excused i think.

Quote - i shouldn't get mad because i spent ages trying to get a  material and lighting correct, because i could do the same thing they did and chose to make my life harder.  that's not something i feel i should be proud of

I understand that you want every work to be judged solely on what it is and not where it came from But IMO in CG, the process is just as, if not more, important then the result. Because it's only the combination of process + result that lets us judge a work fairly. If we only use the result, then how do we discount the powerful hardware and software that is helping the artist, and get to the artist's skill itself ?

Or do we really want the richest artist with the largest runtime and the most expensive apps be the one with the most accolades ? Or the one most capable of deceiving people ?


Zarat posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 6:21 PM

@cobaltdream: One possible way to interpret ghonmas statement would be this:
Someone should mention it if he uses a model made by someone else.
If the any figure, hair, texture, cloth is not done by the creator of the particular picture and this fact is not mentioned along with the picture in question then it's prejudice.
It's the prejudice of that creator that other can read his mind. They lack this skill and thus is OK if they mention this bad project documentation. The wording is secondary at best.

And I would add:
The workflow should also be documented.
Figures posed in Poser but rendered in Max is not the same as completely done in Poser or Max. Postworked in Gimp or PS is not the same as postworked in Mirage...
But this is now easy enough to be continued without much explanations and examples.
If the documentation is done correctly there is no point to criticise other than the artistic value and the technical execution.


Sadly this means again that finding the reason for prejudice would require psychological analysis. Something I doubt any mortal human being can do without good knowledge about the people in question.
Can you explain to me why my neighbour reacted with the words when he was confronted with input and all you got is a single sentence of him or maybe some few sentences? ... See, it won't work.

What works is asking the neighbor himself why he reacted like he did. Often that won't give you more than a bunch of lies because humans are humans, but with some more questioning you come closer to the truth.
Ergo, the question asked here is not based on logic and no specification can make it logical.
The question how those people who respond here would react under all the given circumstances is a valid logical question.
Maybe this sounds a bit blunt, but you seem to be to focused on finding a truth where none can be found. To interpret requires already to be unbiased.

Yes, this would kill all the fun because without being biased there's no emotion left that could be roused... :tt2:

Thus spoke Zarathustra: The path of the creator.


Conniekat8 posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 7:01 PM

@Cobaltdream's *you cannot deal with a problem you cannot see.  and getting the perspective of more than one's own eyes is generally a good idea, because there's only so much one person can see.  that said, you can't sit there and tell me someone pissing on my leg is rain and have me believe it.
*About the pissing on the leg argument, it goes both ways, you know. I'm going to be blunt here: This prejudice that you are trying to convince me exists, I haven't seen it in action. The onlly place I see it, is in some Poser users overblowing things when one of two things happen: (one) They get too sensitive to critique, or (two) on occasion some immature scmuck makes a disrespectful comment.

Neither of those two will convince me of existence of some sort of a prejudice against Poser. I understand the analogies that you are offering, and what it is that you think you are seeing. I'm telling you, I don;t see the same thing you are seeing. And also, no amout of your explaining, or for that matter, if I get 10 people telling me the same thing here on rendo, I'd still be extremely skeptical of this prejudice you speak of existing - among 3D professionals - those that count, not some immature snotty ignorant schmucks exhibiting bad behavior or a small handfull of knowledgeable people with unpolished people skills. 

If you want to convince me of this prejudice existing in any serious fashion where I would consider it a problem, you'd have to show me at least several hundred posts by a number of different reputable people in 3D industry disrespecting Poser or poser users. You know, people like Stonemason - to pick a name most people are familiar with and to follow your analogy of fitting into a prejudiced corporate culture you described.
I need to see much more substantial evidence then your emotionally charged argument. I mean, you haven't even presented to us what formed your opinions, other then a few hearsays and assumption that it is a widely accepted fact that this prejudice exists.

I'm sorry if that irritates you, but, without some more solid proof, I'm not going to change my mind to soothe your feelings. We'll have to agree to disagree, and I would very much appreciate it if you could do it without comments about my capacity to understand things.

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
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Boni posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 8:42 PM

This topic has come up every year ... both on other CG sites and on the Poser sites.  I was concerned when I started doing work and building a portfolio over at CG Society so ... I asked them outright after seeing some "put downs", in the competion forums.  I was told that it wasn't fair to the artists who modeled their scenes from scratch to compete with images that were prepackaged.  Now here is the cool thing that I found out, from one of thier administrators.  They are re-evaluating the whole Poser issue, based on people who are there for the "image" not for the 3d modeling aspect of the art.  (I think part of it is because e-frontier has become one of thier sponcers).  Something that would even things out a bit.  They were courtious and explained their "bias" and why.  And that that was changing.

Second thing ... In the Essance the face books ... I recognized at least one image PRINTED in the book that is from our Poser gallery.  Rogue So ... as has been said in different aspects of this thread ... there isn't a real bashing of Poser ... it's HOW it's being used.  If the user is "lazy" and trying to pass off prepackaged. (barbie doll dressup) work as high end 3d modeling ... yeah, I'd get a little annoyed too.  

Remember if you want to use Poser for professional art ... (as I'm working towards myself) you have to put the work into it.  If you are having fun as a hobbiest ... the rest doesn't matter, does it? 

Cheers
Boni

Boni



"Be Hero to Yourself" -- Peter Tork


ClawShrimp posted Sun, 20 May 2007 at 11:37 PM

I really don't think it matters what software you use, the result is what is important.

Ultimately, if you can make something uniquely yours it doesn't matter where it comes from. That is why I love Apollo so much! I have at least twenty unique characters in my runtime that not one single person on Earth has, and for the most part their Apollo roots are practically non-distinguishable. Why would I start from scratch when I can start with Apollo as a solid foundation?

Having said that, I think the Poser community is its own worst enemy when it comes to being taken seriously. There are far too many images being posted that are essentially assembled rather than created. Character morph, texture, pose, clothing, light set, background, even photoshop action...all bought. I'd defy anyone to label this as art and keep a straight face.

If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards...checkmate!


RorrKonn posted Mon, 21 May 2007 at 12:02 AM

@ CobalDreams

Thanks, I am enjoying this thread.

I understand you are searching for answers, to multiple questions.

It would be nice if some one could tell you the answers.

But I don't think there are any understandable answers when it comes to humans.

Ya go asking why do humans do what they do.

If we solved that question we would not only solve the Poser dilemma we would solve all of earths problems.

Thou paradise on earth would be nice,I have my doubts it will ever happen.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


Conniekat8 posted Mon, 21 May 2007 at 12:21 AM

@RorrKonn:  HAHA, well said my man! :)
I love what one of Charles Dicken's characters said about things like that in his novel Hard Times:
 "This life.... It's a muddle!"

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
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Rodma_Hu posted Mon, 21 May 2007 at 4:31 AM

Enjoyable read.

For me, the underlying question to the thread is, “Am I good enough to make a living at this?”

The answer: Some of us may find a way. Some never will. Others don’t care.

If you are willing to take a step beyond what you’ve come to identify with, you may be ready to find out.

It’s very simple, but scary as hell.


Marque posted Mon, 21 May 2007 at 10:20 AM

What is art? Ask the person who pees in a jar and sells it successfully to the public as art and even has the govenment sponsor it. I don't bother with what other people think of what I create I just enjoy doing it. I have made some rather good money with it, and with that I can pay for what I collect at the stores. Half the stuffage I get I haven't used, but if I do need it it's there so that doesn't bother me. When I first got into programming folks gave me a hard time about using Visual Basic. I got "a true programmer does it all from scratch". Hummm. How much time would that take if I just want to write something to use? I think Poser is an awesome program. I love Maya and the more I learn the more I love it. I will still use Poser because it does what I need. I was going to do some work on a film recently which is why I bought Maya. The idea that I had worked using poser as a base to get the idea across. This person hired 3 people from L.A. and put them to work on it. All Maya folks. When I walked in she introduced me and says "this is Marque, she's trying to learn Maya". I didn't let it bother me. None of the 3 were able to do what she needed and she told my husband later that I got closer than any of them just using poser. Her predjudice bit her on the butt. I have since done what she needed in Maya but have no desire to work with her. If you need to dig a hole and you can't dig it unless you have a shovel...if you aren't willing to use any tool to get the job done,  then you will never get it done. Just use the tools that get the job done and don't worry about what other folks think. You are the one with the finished product. I see a lot of head models that look incredible in the maya forums, but that's as far as the artist gets. So they bask in the compliments for a while and then go on to create another head. Some folks never seem to get the whole thing done. They are usually the ones who look down on those of us who do. At any rate, if I make money great, right now I'm just into learning and having fun with it.
Marque


RorrKonn posted Tue, 22 May 2007 at 3:37 AM

What drives me insane with any app Maya / Motion Builder, Poser or any app.

Is Character will not bend realistically with rigs.

Now if you morphs every joint then ya can get realistic bends but it takes a long long time.

Sorta like V4.

 

Eventually they well have a layered meshes a skin mesh over top a base mesh.

I seen the early stages of a Maya plug like this a while back,it looked promising.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


Conniekat8 posted Tue, 22 May 2007 at 12:38 PM

RorrKonn, have you seen stuff like this before?
http://jhaywood.com/croiProjectArm05.htm

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
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RorrKonn posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 1:05 AM

That is Max 5, old school,that is just the biceps,shoulders would have had 10 bones with a few points attached to them just to get the shoulder to bend half way correctly.at the time of Max 5 bet there was a rig plugs that had weights.

Max 9 probably has weights built in.

 

But even weights do not help much with a body builders shoulders and hips.

Morphs are the only way to get each muscle to been 2/3's the way correctly.

 

It is just beyond rigs to do muscles correctly.

There are around 20 muscles in a shoulder a lone all moving a little differently.

No way you are going to get one bone to move all 20 muscles correctly.

 

Until a bunch of Programmers & Doctors get together.

And codes a app 10*'s more advanced then any thing on the market to date.

We are never going to have a 3D app that Moves human muscles correctly.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


FrankieV posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 1:19 AM

Hi RorrKonn

 

Been hanging around a bit and I believe that you will probably get your wish sooner than you think.

 

I picked up Daz Studio and the FBX export a while back and I’ve been running a few tests to see how useful it would be to me.

 

Based on your notion that its not possible to get a rigged and properly deforming character out of Poser here are a few examples of Victoria 4 animated in Motion Builder and rendered in Max.

 

There are a few issues that I’m not ready to comment on but the results so far have been very positive.

 

The specification was to take a Daz3D model as purchased and move it through a pipeline with out modification and maintain the original usability. Very primitive work but from Daz Studio to Max to Motion Builder and Back to Max took a total of 45 minutes or less excluding rendering time.      

 

http://www.3d-frankiev.com/OutBox/vic4test.rar

http://www.3d-frankiev.com/OutBox/vic4test2.rar

 

Also I did a key frame morph test as well once again based on the same specifications. Total work time 8 to ten hours excluding render.

 

http://www.3d-frankiev.com/OutBox/havefun.mov

 

Every thing was done using a base three point lighting set up and the scan line render.


RorrKonn posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 2:54 AM

Excellent Video's,As good as I have seen out of LW,Max,C4D,Maya,XSI.

But, there is always a but is there not there.I hate the buts.

But there no better then I have seen.

It is not Poser it is any app in existence LW,Max,C4D,Maya,XSI etc etc that can not move a body builder realistically with out morphing.

And we are talking a lot of morphing.

It is not very practical to try and spend that much time on morphs.

So we use rigs cause we do not have 10 life times to make a 3 minutes Video.

 

Not even ILM,Pixar etc etc or any and the Studios have I even seen them try to mimic a realist human.

Pixar only does cartoons.

LOTR ah I forgot him name,the little deformed human that looks like a monster.

called the ring precious.bit the dudes finger off LOL I done forgot all the characters names.

Anyways that is the closest I have seen a big studio try to due it's not nudity but a 3D humans body not covered in cloths.but he was not human did not move like a human.

 

The Kingdome of Heaven had some 3D Characters dressed all in cloths that there face looked realistic for 90 frames and not much movement.

 

In theory ya could morphs a body builder to move correctly but if he big studios are not even going to try it.we must be crazy to try it,LOL

 

But Poser, D/S Artist seems to be the only ones pushing for realist 3D Characters bodies head to toes.

So there for I am camped out here to get educated :)

 

Any ways i imagine ILM gets 100's of Video's like yours every day.

There all = to each other.How do that pick who to hire ?

If you gave then a Video of a body builder moving corectly,some thing thay have not even done them selfs.

and can make the morphs body builder as fast as a rigged charater.

Bet that would stand out to them.

 

So all ya need to do to rule Hollywood is code a app that make characters even body builder move realistically.

and make the characters ready to move in a few hours.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


FrankieV posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 12:34 PM

Ahhh I see where you’re going. What you’re talking about is cutting edge stuff.

 

I can’t speak for the other programs that you mention but recently a couple of tools have been add to Max that will make body dynamics possible, for that program, in the near future.

 

Skin Morph Modifier:

 

Is a modifier that allows the deforming of a mesh based on the rotation of a joint controller and the set position is morph based on the position it is set and the completion of the rotation. Of course we are back to the “but” of the morphing idea.

 

But.

 

Skin Wrap Modifier.

 

Is a modifier that allows a mesh to be bound to a sub-surface object that overrides the skinning solution that has been applied or even driven by a sub-surface skin as you mentioned.

 

With the skin morpher you can now build highly accurate muscles at the element level that behaves as by design with out having to depend on the limited ability of the rig. Once you have all your muscles behaving properly as individual groups you can “wrap” your skin around the entire frame.

 

 Between the two it is now very possible to create a muscle system that has the same dynamics as a human being that has been rejected in the past as it was to complicated and expensive a process that really had no audience impact.

 

If you’re interested I did do a tutorial that demonstrates a very basic muscle design using Max.http://www.3d-frankiev.com/maxtuts/max8_video_tutorials.htm

 

But if your really interested in the roll of human dynamics in a production environment then the person to watch in that area would be Paul Neale at PEN Productions.

http://paulneale.com/3Dimages/ogre/ogreRig.htm

 

He has been doing some amazing work in the area of accurate character development and has a list of film and television credits that you might want to check out. I’ve seen his work on the Dresden Files and it’s amazing stuff. 

 

Also another place to check out.

http://www.cgcharacter.com/

 

A rather limited solution based on the technical factors to pull off a complete solution but it does demonstrate the possibility of human dynamics becoming a standard rather than working with a limited control system and then fixing the problems for the shot afterwards.

 

How does this affect Poser? Well I don’t what to get into that Dodge verse Ford argument but it “seems” to me that Poser is a platform that is used by those that don’t want to be involved in the technical aspects and requirements yet want to produce visually appealing images. For them it’s just a matter of time before human dynamics is included in the box as CG graphics as a whole has always been driven towards a realistic and accurate real world representation inside a world of fantasy.

 

And of course:

 

There will always be the but. ;)


Conniekat8 posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 12:42 PM

Quote - Ahhh I see where you’re going. What you’re talking about is cutting edge stuff.

 

I can’t speak for the other programs that you mention but recently a couple of tools have been add to Max that will make body dynamics possible, for that program, in the near future.

 

Skin Morph Modifier:

 

Is a modifier that allows the deforming of a mesh based on the rotation of a joint controller and the set position is morph based on the position it is set and the completion of the rotation. Of course we are back to the “but” of the morphing idea.

 

But.

 

Skin Wrap Modifier.

 

Is a modifier that allows a mesh to be bound to a sub-surface object that overrides the skinning solution that has been applied or even driven by a sub-surface skin as you mentioned.

 

With the skin morpher you can now build highly accurate muscles at the element level that behaves as by design with out having to depend on the limited ability of the rig. Once you have all your muscles behaving properly as individual groups you can “wrap” your skin around the entire frame.

 

 

Ah! Thanks for vringing that up Frankie :)
I remember reading about something like that few months ago, but couldn't remember enough buzzwords to google it, and even though I have and use Max, it's not for biped rigging... 
Looks interesting... LOL, maybe when I retire I'll have time to tackle it.

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
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ccotwist3D posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 1:17 PM

I recently began working on a what I would consider a medium-sized scene using and Silo, Z-Brush, Photoshop, and Carrara Studio. I built and textured everything in the scene, including the male and female characters. It's taken three months to complete it, render it, and do the postwork.
If I spent as much time on a single render using poser I'm sure the results could be as good, or better.


KeremGogus posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 1:19 PM

Hello friends,

I am always trying to stay away from that kind of discussions about which 3D software is the "best" - especially on forums like cgtalk.

Well, as I Vue D'esprit user I can say same thing happened to me too. I posted my work to some forums and get insulting feedback because I noted that I used Vue.

Now Industrail Light & Magic used Vue on Deaman's Chest and every shutted their big mounth about it. CGtalk had to open a section for the software  and Gnomon prepared a basic training DVD for Vue.

Same will happen to Poser too. People getting tired about extremely complex interfaces.

I learned Maya - actaully after a year, still learning. But when I need figures to me scenes I am still using Poser. Also I still couldn't figure out everything about organic human head and body modeling. And I just bought "Secrets Of Poser Experts" book and after I saw the work there I decided to use Poser more...

I also used Poser on a musicians Video too

http://artofkerem.sitesled.com/isis.htm

Because we needed a female character and I am the only 3D guy on the team and I need to "solve" this. So what's important here is the result not the tool...


stallion posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 2:04 PM

i was reading an article in 3D World magazine about "Budget 3D films" and one of the films in production the principle software used was Maya, Cinema 4D and Poser. so Poser will inevitably make its way more into the professional ranks all in due time

You might as well PAY attention, because you can't afford FREE speech


fls13 posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 7:01 PM

There are some very bad ideas that have taken root in Poser:

1: Excessively high rez figure models with bad topology.

2: A fetish for excessively high rez textures when they aren't really necessary.

3: The concept of conforming clothing. Clothed figures should be clothed figures and then you just pop on the head of your choice just like you do the hair figure/prop of your choice.

The program itself is awesome as a character creation/scene setup app, just a few very bad ideas in the content/implementation. I'm sure there are others. I see some steps in the right direction. Apollo is the most excellent recent example.


ClawShrimp posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 8:02 PM

An extension of your second point fls13.

Super mega hyper realistic textures that are simply hi-res photos pasted onto UV maps - ignoring the material room and all it's node treasures.

It's like painting human features onto a plastic doll. It wouldn't matter how great an artist you are, it will never look 'real'.

If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards...checkmate!


fls13 posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 9:00 PM

ClawShrimp,

    I saw a documentary about the Newtsuit and noticed that it's constructed similarly to the Apollo arm/shoulder rigging of Apollo. Great minds thinking alike or coincidence? Regardless, it's outside the box thinking and Poser does need more of that.

   As far as sites like cgsociety, I've found some really talented pros do hang there, but there are also a lot of folks who just want to model their own characters from scratch and do a damn fine job of it. Haven't found that site elitist at all. Hell, they have a Blender forum.


Spiritbro77 posted Wed, 23 May 2007 at 9:44 PM

Quote - Gah! Am I the only one who does this just cuz its fun and I like it?!

 

Anymore? Probably. :) Wasn't always this way, but now.........it's all about being a merchant, or how many views and accolades you get. If anyone has the audacity to critique a pic honestly....massive shit storm insues. And be careful saying your happy just having fun.....if you're not in with the "gotta sell sell sell" clique you're not fitting in with the program don't ya know lol .God I miss the old days when you could tell it like it is around here. When it was about learning the app and sharing with others. And yes.........having FUN!
One of the reasons I bought a DSLR and stopped rendering :)


SeanMartin posted Thu, 24 May 2007 at 8:04 AM

Would not Post a Poser Render at CGTalk for any reason what so ever. I have. Successfully. People commented a bit on some minor details, but overall the reaction was very favourable. Did I mention it was a Poser render? Nope, because I wanted to see what would happen when folks looked at the final result, not the tool. True, there are times when a Poser render is pretty blatant about being a Poser render, but that's immaterial in my book. All that matters -- here and at any other site -- should be the final work. If people find out after the fact that it's Poser, they seem pleasantly surprised, which is as it should be. Look at it this way: I used to do work that exclusively used the P4 guy, and folks were convinced it was Michael. It all came down to the texturing I made for it and the morphs I'd constructed, but under it alll, it was still the P4 guy, polygon-created eyebrows and all. But the Michael snobs were sometimes amazed that I could mimic (or exceed) their favourite toy. It's all in the tools. 'Nuff said.

docandraider.com -- the collected cartoons of Doc and Raider


Anasta posted Thu, 24 May 2007 at 12:33 PM

Quote - > Quote - Gah! Am I the only one who does this just cuz its fun and I like it?!

 

Anymore? Probably. :) Wasn't always this way, but now.........it's all about being a merchant, or how many views and accolades you get. If anyone has the audacity to critique a pic honestly....massive shit storm insues. And be careful saying your happy just having fun.....if you're not in with the "gotta sell sell sell" clique you're not fitting in with the program don't ya know lol .God I miss the old days when you could tell it like it is around here. When it was about learning the app and sharing with others. And yes.........having FUN!
One of the reasons I bought a DSLR and stopped rendering :)

 

I remember those days as well... When I first joined this site, I uploaded some pics had a few people look at them and even got a comment or two on each. I loved that! It wasn't about how many friends I had here, it was about someone actually felt my pics were worth the time to look at and gasp possibly say a few words about. 

I'm not afraid to say I'm just in it for fun, I don't feel the need to sell things. Although, based on this thread, I have started making my own content (skins, backgrounds and still painting hair when I have time :P) but not because I'm looking to break into the art world. I do it because if people sometimes (not always) feel that an image is not as good as another due to it containing nothing but purchased and/or downloaded content, then I'm going to work my hardest on making my images look as best they can with my abilities using what content I'm able to make as well as final composition. 

Someone earlier in this thread had mentioned something along these lines: 

"How is it that you can create a completely original image using content thats made available to the general public and is in hundreds or thousands of other images?"

Its for that reason that most of the things I do make as content, from this point on will not be available for everyone. Call me selfish, but if a girl (like me :P) wants to be original, then she's gotta start somewhere.

As for the comment about the 'super photo-realistic' skins...
I think they're great and I think they make an image really -pop- but its not always necessary. I use Aiko most of the time and she's hardly the most 'realistic' of the models. Since most of those types of textures are made using photos of real people and I don't know anyone who wants to be a 'skin model' and I'm not really into setting up my digi-cam and being one myself, guess that leaves me with my painting skills. I think artists who paint things from scratch should be given just as much praise as those who went 'super-mega photo-realistic with enough creases and wrinkles to make a raisin proud.'

Just my thoughts...

Ana


jjroland posted Thu, 24 May 2007 at 12:46 PM

I do it for "fun".  I do it because I have a burning need to express myself on paper - artistically - whatever.  I suck at drawing (but not at creating) and these applications give me the ability.  

I may not be a great or even a good artist - but the world sees with spider eyes and damn it I have a lens too.  

I dont care about using other peoples work either - but I do have a personal rule to put my own spin on it.  As of yet I don't think I have used a single thing without altering it in some way.

As far as friends go, well I personally like to make them.  It's nice to meet people with similar interests.  Im not about the popularity though - 2 good friends to me are worth a million so/so ones.

I don't expect to ever see my work hanging in a gallery.  I highly doubt I'll ever manage to sell anything (Im too prone to giving stuff away if I ever get that far).  My biggest hope is that some time in the future, my grandchildren, or great-grandchildren will be able to look at stuff I created, or wrote and get a little glimpse of who I was.  If that hope is too lofty - so be it. 


I am:  aka Velocity3d 


Cryoc posted Thu, 24 May 2007 at 3:24 PM

You know I an extremly new to the 3d art relm I have been looking at getting into it for about 3 years and couldnt afford to do so. I am currently serving over seas in iraq wich is beside the point here but will make sense in a minute. I got into this because while Im in my downtime here I have nothing to do except for miss my loved ones back home. I just got poser 7 after looking and fiddeling with daz. I personally feel and would have to agree with Anasta!! I think its about the fun and for people to turn there noses up at the rest of us trying to have a good time with our art work is ludicris. Art is art weather you take a symple program and pose a pre fabricated charicter into a scene, splat some paint on a canvas or go all out in the rediculously expensive programs out there. How does it make you feel that is the question? Does it relax you and give you somthing to to take your mind off the stresses of everyday life. If it does then what does it matter what everyone else thinks!!! Who cares if you can recognize the character. Sheesh!!!!!!


RorrKonn posted Thu, 24 May 2007 at 11:51 PM

I just watched Pirates of the Caribbean, At Worlds End.

Killer Video.

 

Killer zBrush Portrait of Captain Jack Sparrow.

http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=036819

 

So what does Captain Jack Sparrow do ?

He does what makes him happy.

So I guess the moral of the story is do what ever makes you happy and don't worry about what others think.

Some will love you some will hate you.

All that matters is I do what I believe in.

So let them rag me, hate me.

Don't care.

 

D/S,Blender,Gimp is all Free.

 

@FrankieV Those are some kool tools.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


kobaltkween posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 4:01 AM

ok, let me, once again, clarify a couple of things.

the point isn't about making money.  the point is about getting feedback from a group of people who don't have the eyes of a poser artist, and who are often used to a certain quality of work.  the point is about participating in a much larger world of computer graphics than a few poser sites.  i haven't been asking could someone get a job doing poser work, since i've already seen people say they've done so, i've seen sites of poser artists list their commercial work, and i've seen professional poser work in the comic shop (john van fleet and a poster for brian haberlin's neobeauties).  as far as i can tell, the fact of the matter is a lot of the people paying for illustrations are mostly people in marketing who have an eye for gloss and slick and an interest in fast, good, and cheap.   and no interest at all in the process as long as it doesn't involve trouble or cost for them.

other communities, that's different.  on the one hand, it means that people who aren't accustomed to (and therefore at least partially blind to) vicky's myriad joint problems can look at your work, or that people who don't have only the daz' meshes as their notion of 3d children can critique your images of kids.  i can't tell you how many times i've seen something land here and have people just lavish it with praise, me think "nice, but a bit risque," then have my boyfriend see it over my shoulder and go, "oh, my god!  what the hell is she wearing!  who put her in that?!"  in terms of appearance and what an image says to people, the norm here is not necessarily the norm for your average citizen. 

sometimes, it's good to have an outside opinion to get some perspective. and it can be great to hear from people whose expectations are higher than those within the poser community.

on the other hand, it's not helpful if  they're seeing only what they expect to see, and not what's there. lots of people care about process to greater and lesser degrees, with biases in different places.  understanding where those biases are is key, in my experience, to interpretting the feedback you get.  if people say, "stiff and lifeless," but they actually mean, "i can tell that's a daz figure," then you know you don't need to work on your posing abilities but your morphing or your painting abilities.  if people say, "you should learn to model your own stuff, that's not unique enough, " but what they actually mean is, "i spent a month making a figure almost identical to that one, and years learning how to,  and you should have to work just as hard," then you know to ignore them unless you actually have to work with them.

so most people's reactions here have been helpful.  i have to say, i still see a bias, but a waning one.  even what people have posted here tells me that.  people don't feel it's "fair" to judge something just on results.  and while there's a concern about short cuts to effective or realistic depictions of humans, no one seems to be concerned with short cuts to skin shaders, types of  lighting, fluid dynamics, particle systems, draped cloth or any of the myriad aspects of 3d that have become more automated.  for instance, poser is a "toy" because it doesn't have global illumination, instead of other apps being a "cheat" because you don't have to script your own.  so, imho, i see an interesting slant.  you can take short cuts on most things and not say anything about it, except for figure modeling. and then, you can take short cuts, but you better say what they are.

if Rorr Konn was right about me asking "why," i could philosphize on the need to see every human as incredibly unique and impossible to codify, while it's fine to autogenerate countless species of plant life.  but why hasn't ever been my question.  what and how much has been, and i've gotten some answers on that.

personally, like i said, i find the whole bit about judging "process" a slippery slope.  it's like saying i should care whether someone made their special effects in cg or with actual models.  or used green screen or actually built the scene.  or decided to make paints from scratch or bought them.  unless i'm actually trying to duplicate the process, i don't personally see the point in trying to figure out if something is toon shaded maya or hand drawn or a mixture of the two.  i don't see a reason to say computer coloring is fine in comics, but 3d is a cheat that should be avoided.    judging process always seems to me to be even more subjective than judging results (it always seems like the comparison point is one's own process), and it appears to me to hold one back to the process one knows instead of opening one to the processes one doesn't know.  it especially seems to hold effort in a higher esteem than efficacy, which i just personally need to avoid.

but that's just me.  most people feel differently.  knowing the extent to how they feel differently is important in interpretting their feedback.

as for caring what anyone else thinks, if i didn't care at all about that then i wouldn't publish my work online or anywhere else.   the only reason, in my opinion, to publish artwork rather than keep it to one's self is to create a reaction in someone else.  the whole act of publishing, releasing it to the public, is simply sharing artistic expression with other people.  if it makes 0 difference whether anyone else sees it or not, why share it? that isn't to say i hang on every person's word, or need to please everyone.  or even that the reaction i (or anyone else) want(s) is as simple as praise. 

mostly, as far as i can see, publishing art is about communication.  there's a difference between saying what you believe in, and not caring if you're either unintelligible or saying something other than what you mean.  or even just having someone tell you how you could communicate more clearly.    i've seen and even experienced the beauty of having an editor.  same ideas, just much more clearly expressed.  i don't just want to do what i like, i want to do what i like and grow within it.  learning doesn't happen in a vacuum, and neither does growth.  i don't want to look back 5 years from now and see myself at exactly the same place artistically.  now that's just me.  i'm certainly not trying to tell anyone else how to live their lives.  but it has nothing to do with liking my creations, nothing to do with pleasing others, and nothing to do with following or forging my own path. 

a good teacher can help you acheive the goals you set for yourself.  a good community can do the same thing.  some communities are good for some people, and not for others.  i wanted simply to begin to get a handle on how good non-poser communities were at helping poser artists grow, and if the bias i kept witnessing both in forums and in site rules kept most non-poser communities from being helpful.   i'm seeing a "no," but with the added codicil of, "better make it damn good work, not median for that site."



Anasta posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 4:41 AM

OK I believe its time for me to be honest here.

When I first joined this site, I only knew about Poser. I come from a virtual community that makes 3D objects and such that is uploaded to a virtual mall and sold for virtual money. I had learned that several of our community creators were using a program called 'Poser' to make this absolutely amazing artwork that everyone wanted to collect. I wanted to be a part of that. 

That was about 5 years ago. 

When I first started using Poser, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing but because I'm extremely stubborn, I stuck with it. I remember uploading to that site some really horrible images and getting crazy amount of love for them because it was a community that I've lived in for years (8 years at this point) but I knew I didn't compare to what others did. That was the point where I joined this site for the freebies and to get critique on what I made. 

I have a friend who once told me, "I upload to renderosity for artistic value but I upload to cybertown for ego." If I was asking for fluffy comments and mucha love I'd just upload all my stuff to cybertown but to be honest, I spend more of my time and attention here because it helps me grow as an artist. 

With that taste of my background, I give you this:

From my personal experience, Poser is an incredible program that can create wonderful artwork that I have fully gone (virtually) broke trying to collect. When it comes right down to the general public... those who don't know as much about CG and 'big-ticket' apps and all the other drama that is involved in creating 3d artwork... they're really only concerned about what it looks like, not how it was made.

This thread, while being very informative, has kinda shut down alot of motivation towards making new things in Poser. By asking specifically if people feel Poser is looked down on by other app users, it makes those of us that still mainly use this app feel 'less than worthy' and is really a depressing subject. 

I know it was not intended that way but think of the newbies. The people who are going to help our artistic community to grow. You were a newbie once, do you remember how it feels?


RorrKonn posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 6:32 AM

I have posted WIP's for help in the app's forms but I have never posted any of my Art in the CGTalk or any of the big tickets Final Renders Forms.

 

I did inter The renders that I had the TS meshes in them at TrueSpace.Image contest.

http://www.caligari.com/Gallery/ImagesGallery/default.asp?SubCate=Images

I knew they would not make the gallery thou.

I just wanted Roman to see what I made with his TrueSpace.

 

All my renders sux and I know it.

I like to model that is what I 3D for.

But it is fun to render stuff now and then.

but I have 20 renders and 2000 meshes.

But I do not spend a lot of time on my renders.

Do not spend the $$$ on the best render engines.

 

Characters are faster to model then a car motors.

But characters take a lot of time to get to bend 1/2 way correctly.

I have spent most of my 3D time learning to get characters to bend correctly.

 

If I get a poser character made that bends all right I hope some of you all will make some nice render with the character.

 

The Fab 5  app's have a lot of bias between them.

a million threads this vs that app.

a million threads of my app's better then your app.

and there is bias between renders and modelers.

the modelers go you would not have nothing to render if there where no meshes.

the renders go you would have no use for ya meshes if you did not render them.

 

There is a huge deference between hobbyist forms and pro forms also.

hobbyist forms there hobbyist doing this for fun and enjoyment if they achieve perfection then kool.

pros half to achieve perfection they are under enormous pressure to achieve perfection.

any WIP I have ever posted got critiqued with a fine tooth comb and any flaws no matter how small was commented on.

you need thick skin and can not take it personally.

 

Pros use poser as a plug max 4,5 had a poser plug called character studio that was poser 4 meshes rigged in max format.

it is a fact that poser characters are some of the best there is.

 

u can buy meshes at sites like http://www.turbosquid.com/

very few of the pros make every thing that is in there commercial renders.

they do not have the time.

They pay a lot at turbo and if they can't find what they need.

They will pay you $3000 for a car or a character provided you can deliver it yesterday.

 

Now what is the deference between turbosquid and renderosity other then the price ? none.

 

One of the best car modelers AndyK started in TrueSpace went to C4D.

 

Anyways if you want to grow as a artist you need to be critiqued.

but you half to be willing to be critiqued.

I will critic one of my renders that every thing in it I done so I would not hurt any ones feelings.

http://www.atomic-3d.com/RK_3DArt/3D_Damned.htm

1 the chain is flat spotted top left.

2 the bump map suxs.

3 the lighting suxs.

 

If I posted this in the CGTalk gallery I would expect to be told it suxs.

 

I enjoy TrueSpaces,Posers, CGTalk, zBrush etc etc Galleries.

Is there a deference between the galleries ?

 

The philosophies on the deferent forms verys day buy day case the artist very day buy day.

but the Constance has always been 1000 threads about what we feel 10 threads about 3D.

Where human after all.

 

if ya start a thread and asked how they feel about this,ya get a lot of responses.

if ya start a thread and ask how do I do this, ya get a few responses.

any form in any app.

 

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


kobaltkween posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 10:56 AM

Anasta - actually, i'd rather know as a newbie what i'd face than after spending 5 years learning an app.  i think it's a disservice to newbies to not let them know that if they venture out of the warm and fuzzy realm of poserdom they're going to face harsh critics, trolls, and even some great artists who just plain have a bias.   i think it's much more disheartening to face it without warning, and it creates the situation some have been going on about- poser artists who expect more praise than the average user and are less receptive to criticism than the average user on a more broadly defined art site.  also, i think it's more heartening to know when it's not your work that inspired the term "crap," "cheat," or other demeaning terms i've seen associated with poser art elsewhere.  

but then, i also don't think you should lie to kids about the world just because it might make them sad to know the truth.  i think truth will always make people stronger, not weaker, and that hiding the truth from people only makes them weaker.  i don't think ignorance is something to be cherished or cultivated.

so i can't say i'm worried about newbies' reaction to this thread, or veterans for that matter.  i can see your point, and why you might see things that way (and totally respect that), i just feel differently.

RorrKonn - that's my favorite image (so far) in your gallery.  i think the elements and how you combined them are awesome.



Cryoc posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 11:59 AM

You know Im not saying I will never venture out there and try to utilize some of the software out there such as maya ect.but right now I can't and am happy with what I can do here!!! Further more this is what makes no sense to me what are people who are against the program apperantly or have issues doing in a poser forum???? hmmm? sounds to me like there are some bored people out there just wanting to come and stir the pot alittle!!  Now Im a very outspoken and somtimes maybe too out spoken person and maybe a little to blunt at times and since I am new here I am going to bite my tounge on alot I have to say because I respect some of the people here!!  I find it funny how ever that there are so many people out there trying to use the left side of there brian to do things that are generally done in the right!!!


Cryoc posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 12:16 PM

Rorrkon I completly agree about being thick skined!! I welcome critique of my work I have no problems with that!!! It makes you better but I also think one who critiques the work if they are going to say the negatives they should say the positves and should also maybe because they have more expierience offer a little advice or knowledge!! I realize it is an imperfect world so you can't expect that from everyone!!  Now could it be that there are people out there just wanting to keep the potential down just because they see abillity that scares them!! They want to keep them down so they dont have the competition somday!!! It's like that every where you go though  In my civilian job there is alot of that!!!  I am grateful to the modelers out there who model and put there stuff up because I dont have the time or money to do it on my own right now!!! maybe some day I will!!
My only render I have on here I used alot of great models done by other people!! I didnt credit it because Im new and havnt learned all the proper edicate on this site yet but with time. I consider my self a sponge and am always willing to learn and not affraid to look for it or ask?
So to every one out there who helps I say a huge thankyou!! because they are doing  a great service to me right now weather they realize it or not!!


mertext posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 12:49 PM

This debate has been around for years. And back in the poser4 days I would agree with the opinon, but toaday its a diferent story, Poser has been used in MANY mainstream places. Its an excellant application for creating quick simple animations and imagery, In the right users hands its versatile and can create a whole realm of possibilities for a reasonable price.

Poser , as a rendering tool, is great, but thats what it is, It doesn't model, it doesnt create movie quality animation ( Im talking hollywood here). BUT it does allow somoene to learn the basics and tinker and create decent quality animations, and with post work, Excellant quality still renders. 

Why is is so often frowned upon, aloofness  and fear , thats why. Why use an application that only cost $250 dollars and can run on the average desktop to create , when you can use a $5000 application that requires high end systems and 30 man hours to create the same image? Those high end apps are the status symbols of those companies , look at us we use MAYA. etc. 

Poser has been breaking ground though, http://www.e-frontier.com/go/poser/stories shows the progress of Poser today and its capabilities. Is it the industry standard, NO! why. well would you want to be the one to say, hey can we scrap our 10 yerars of investment in this this $5000 dollar application , and buy a $250.00 app that does the same thing, OH BTW, we can lay off a few artists as well because we really wont need as many to do what we do anymore. So there is no way these high end artists will accept this application, because then it will soon be learned that not quite as many of them are needed. Who wants to slit their own throat. Accepting Poser as a capable applicaiton will do just that.

aka MCDLabs
also known as Daniel Merrill a grumpy old disabled Jarhead.
checkout my freebies at
https://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=mcdlabs




kobaltkween posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 1:01 PM

mertext - that's why i don't think it's good for me (again, not trying to make choices for others) as an artist to care about someone else's process unless i can learn from it.  i noticed there's a some  of talk among cg artists about getting respect from fine artists.   and references to the same debate between traditional photographers and photoshop jockeys.  and it goes back further to painters and photographers.  it's easy to get wed to a process, and not be open to change that's more efficient and cost-effective because it comes with a new process and a different creative experience.  and a good healthy does of fear that one's own talent and skills that were so prized aren't actually so valuable any more.  fear isn't beneficial to creativity.  nor is jealousy or self-righteousness.



mertext posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 1:34 PM

Quote -
This thread, while being very informative, has kinda shut down alot of motivation towards making new things in Poser. By asking specifically if people feel Poser is looked down on by other app users, it makes those of us that still mainly use this app feel 'less than worthy' and is really a depressing subject. 

I know it was not intended that way but think of the newbies. The people who are going to help our artistic community to grow. You were a newbie once, do you remember how it feels?

 

Remember that this was a discussion of why the "industry Standard" applications look down on poser. but Poser wasn't really created to be an Industry standard tool. Can you learn the basics from Poser. YES! Is it always used. NO! Poser allows you to set up rigging, lighting just like in other applications, its just that many users just use the prefabbed items they installed into the application. But somone had to amke the prefabs. Yes my niche isnt in rendering , I use 3DStudio Max for making props , clothes and other items FOR Poser. Why , because its a fun app that allows me to create and make wonderful images in my spare time as a hobby. Do I anticipate becoming the next ILM prospect , NO. Or to have Pixar beating on my door wanting me to come work for them, NO. But I do expect to have fun continuing to create what I want. I have the added advantage of having access to some of the tools out there to create what I need. And the benifit to a community like Renderosity , is we as artists often work together to help each other out, something you WONT find as often in themainstream application communities. If you as an artist need a certain item for your scene, this is one place you can go and say "anyone know where i can get a..." and you will either get a link to a resource , be it free or a small fee (small as in compared to maintream apps price) or somone will pop up and offer to MAKE it for you for nothing, Countless times I have spoeken to somone in chat here who needed something simple, and I would pop into Max , whip it up and send it off to them same day. You will not find that type of community support for the other type of applicaitons.

So do NOT be discouraged because you have chosen to learn poser, be glad, because you are a memeber of one of the best 3d communities available.

aka MCDLabs
also known as Daniel Merrill a grumpy old disabled Jarhead.
checkout my freebies at
https://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=mcdlabs




Cryoc posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 1:47 PM

Mertext that is what im talking about right on!! You are the type of people that I am glad I have the opertunity to meet in places like this!!   Someday I do hope to be able to produce models for somebody and give back to this community of wich I dont have alot to offer to right now!!


RorrKonn posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 3:32 PM

It is hard to say some things with out hurting some one feelings or getting them mad at you.

but I am going to try and explain this in a nice way.

 

You can not replace any of the Fab 5 app's with Poser.

I like poser but I accept Poser for what it is.

 

I just have Poser 5 will get 7 soon

But Poser 5's shadows are ruff.

when I have poser open along with C4D zBrush etc etc

half to be careful with Poser or my PC freezes,this is a pain.

Poser is not all that stable it crashes.

 

Takes for ever to load a character in Poser

Can not load a city scene with cars and characters in Poser much less animate it.

Poser work space is small.

Poser renders slow,do not know of a renderfarm for Poser.but with it's instability would not even try it.

Posers dynamic hair is not the best.

Poser dynamic hair,cloth takes for ever to render.

 

Poser has monumental high Polycount.

Poser does not support Sub division LW calls it SupPatch,C4D Calls it HyperNURBS.

 

C4D is stable never crashes.

But they just got dynamic cloths and hair.

C4D rigs are not the best.

For Characters you would not replace C4D with XSI either.

 

C4D 8 and earlier did not support nGones witch was unreal to me.

I like C4D 9.C4D ,C4D is getting better and getting support for characters.

 

XSI had the best sub division system and killer tools for characters but there UI is old,kills me.

Not sure they have a forest.

 

Max crashes, u need to spend a lot on plugs.

LW's divided in to two seperate app's

Maya does not have the best polygone tools.

 

None of the Fab 5 app's are even close to perfect,eather.

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance


kobaltkween posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 3:51 PM

pardon, not to disagree in the slightest, but isn't the polycount the figures, not the app?  i mean, apollo is quite reasonable.  in a related issue, could you explain the functional difference between smoothing and subdivision? i'm curious.  i'm sure it exists but,  like the difference between global illumination and ibl, i need it explained to me.

actually, i've been thinking of a separate thread.  i've definitely reached the limits of what poser 6 can do for me.  i had been thinking p7 until pjz99, who had been saying great things, just gave up on firefly.  so it's time to stop spending on content and start saving for another app.  i've been thinking of getting people's opinions on midrange (priced) apps.  c4d is definitely out of that category (sniff, sniff- it's the most interesting to me).  do you think it's worth it to ask here? 

on they other hand, maybe i should just use d|s, since i'm interested in painting, too.  but i love sss, and  playing with lights and materials, so i don't just want to paint over everything.   i'm not sure what to do.  i'd be very interested in advice.



RorrKonn posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 8:19 PM

Say it's a HyperNURB thing.

Chromes poly count.

in C4D is only 1504.

In Poser would be 22,936.

That is a deference of 21,432,That is a lot of polygons.

http://www.atomic-3d.com/RK_T_HyperNURBS.htm

 

XSI,LW are the only two app's that I no of that will sub divide a tri.

http://www.atomic-3d.com/RK_Tutorial/RK_T_Mix_Sub-D_Tri-Quad.htm

 

Now I will try to explain this.but the explanation will be off it is not 100% accurate but ya get the point.

I do not know what this technology is called but I assume all the Fab 5 app have it.

Ya load a mesh in light wave that has a polycount of 100,000.

but LW does not count what u can not see

so since we can not see the back the polycount is only 50,000.

but if the characters nose poly count is 500 LW would use all the polygons for a close up of the nose.

but if you back the camera up so ya see the character from head to toe then the polycount of the nose would be only 5.

since LW has subpatch the 100,000 polycount mesh would only be 10,000 in LW.

Since LW does not count all the polygons the meshes poly count would be only a 5000.

So what a 100,000 polygons mesh looks like in Poser is = to what a 5000 polygon mesh looks like in LW.

 

LW has a polygon reduction tool that takes a Poser mesh at 50,000 and reduces is to 5,000 also.

Most app's have polygon reduction tools.


 

Blender for 3D,Gimp for 2D is free.

Can't tell you much about either.

 

if u go to Fab 5 forms and ask which app to use it starts a this vs that app war,it's a religion to some.

the sensible ones will tell you to try all the demos.

reasonable advice but this takes a long time to do and if u do not know any thing about 3D main app's pointless.

and it really depends on what u are going to do.

if you want better renders.

Max stock render engine is 10*s better then Posers.

but they have plugs like VRay that is 10*s better then Max Stock render engine.

We are talking $$$ for those renders thou.

 

If they all play well together LW,Vue,Poser would be a real good setup.

For anything all the way to animations.

Not the best of all times renders but some real nice renders.

 

http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/

 

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/

 

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance