I am about to become a licensee for 3DsMax 9.0 and my first attack, before REALLY getting into Max from soup to nuts, is simply to render Poser7 scenes in Max.

Is anyone using the newest Body Studio for this purpose? I am talking about animation with dynamic hair and cloth and V4 with skin shaders etc.

I have no grandiose expectations about manipulating assets in Max itself with this approach. I am simply looking for a lighting and render platform for Poser animations. 

I am wondering it it actually works.....Reiss claims hair, cloth and procedural shaders (nodes) actually come across.

::::: Opera :::::

Reiss feature summary, excerpt:

• Playback of Poser dynamic hair
  With BodyStudio the dynamic hair from Poser will playback in Max

• Playback of Poser dynamic cloth
  With BodyStudio the dynamic cloth from Poser will playback in Max

• Reload Poser files from within 3ds max
  Instead of reloading your entire Max scene, you can just load the updated changes from Poser.

• Shader Translation!
  BodyStudio translates your Poser shaders to Max Shading Networks, and assigns them to the correct polygons on your characters. For easy transition, all of the base Poser shading parameters are translated into Max Shader Networks. including:

• Object Color

• Highlight Color

• Ambient Color

• Reflective Color

• Color Maps

• Transparency Maps

• Transparency Min, Max, and Exponent

• Bump Maps

• Reflection Maps

• and More!

operaguy - I've recently been thinking about 3DsMax9 when I have the money. I would be interested to know more about this, if everything imports across well from Poser this would be a huge benefit. I use Vue 6 Esprit for alot of my work, while the transition isn't perfect, using my Poser files  to render in this application is well worth it. I hope Max can do the same.

i will keep you posted. I am definitely getting Max9 within the week. I've been calling Reiss studio all day (no answer so far) to attempt to set my expectations.

I already DO NOT EXPECT to manipulate anything at all in Max when importing a poser scene by aid of body studio. I think that is unrealistic. The two worlds are just too foreign.

But if Body studio allows me to move a scene into max with figures, props, animation, dynamic hair, cloth and shaders intact and activated, and I can then light and render with Mental Ray.....hey, I'd be happy!

I think.

Meanwhile, there is no problem getting, say, V4 into Max and working with her. The method is described in many places. But that just means you moved a certain mesh, perhaps with textures properly mapped, into Max. You have to be "all Max" from there, including rigging, morph creation, etc. I accept that as a ground base. I think a case could be made that one would be better off with a mesh more "Max-favored" in the first place.

::::: Opera :::::

From that excerpt you gave us, it doesn't seem to do the procedural aspect of the material room. It mentions the different texture map references that will be transferred, as well as root node colour information (object, highlight, reflective and ambient colours), and it does say 'and more!'... but if they had actually managed to create a system that acurately translated the procedural node system from Poser to Max, wouldn't they have trumpeted it as a mjor selling point instead of hiding it in an 'and more!'?

Regarding Hair and cloth playback - whilst I realise you said this is going to be your introduction to usign Max, I think you could probably use Max;s native cloth and hair simulations to better effect. 

Is there a cheaper option than Reiss that allows you to take in rigged Poser figures, or pre-created poses and animations from Poser into Max? The other parts are icing on a cake, and may be better achieved within Max itself.

That said, I don't own Max (C4D is my workhorse on the occasions I use it), so I could be completely off-bat. I'm only going by what is mentioned in that excerpt, and what I know of Max  from my monthly perusal of 3D World magazine (and its forums).

JonTheCelt

I've just been discussing something similar in the Max forum:[

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2700145](http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2700145)

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Is there a cheaper option than Reiss that allows you to take in rigged Poser figures, or pre-created poses and animations from Poser into Max? The other parts are icing on a cake, and may be better achieved within Max itself.
I just purchased Pomax, available here on rendo. Rigging translation has a lot to be desired, but character poses and morphs and animation sequences come in rather decently! Not bad for about 1/4 of the price of the other. Maps come in too. I haven't tried procedurals.

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=yangaimin

Don't be mislead by the 'animation' import with pomax though, it doesn't bring in a keyframed functioning rig, it brings in a morpher sequence.
I was bummed because their marketplace ad didn't clarify how the animation comes across, but if someone wants to bring in unrigged, posed character and some morphs into Max, it works pretty slick.

And I second what was said about cloth and hair sims being better off done in max from scratch. Much more robust then in Poser.

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Operaguy, before spending a boatload on Max, did you try the Vue option?  It translates the materials very well, and will bring in Poser scenes just like bodystudio claims to I think.

I had the bodystudio with Max 7, and it does not bring over all the procedurals.  In fact, it doesn't bring any of them over, and I don't think the new one does either by that description.  You will find yourself spending a lot of time redoing the materials so they match up with what you had in Poser, and some of them, like the faceoff skin shaders, can't be reproduced.  You'd have to use the Max skin shaders, which render slower.  I think Vue can translate all those skin shader nodes, and it renders almost as good as any Max renderer I've seen.  If all you are looking for is a renderer, Vue is much cheaper and just as good I think.

Just a thought.

i have had a few people give me feedback on the attempt of poser --> Vue route with dubious results....once you actually get things back to Poser quality, the gain in render time is not worth it, not a lot. Also, it's buggy, I've been told. And....does dynamic cloth, dynamic hair and shader nodes transfer over to Vue for render?  I am willing to learn otherwise luvver (or anyone.) I actually have a license for Vue 4.0 Pro.

Also: I should make clear...I am already comittied to Max as my son requires it at his college and I am going to do this "max as poser render platform" as an experiment in his seat of Max, so the purchase price of Max is not an issue.

jonthecelt and luvver, you make a good point -- i see it now -- ..it might bring over connections to .jpg texture files from the material room in poser to Max, but not the real procedurals. I am awaiting contact from Reiss studio and will ask them that directly.

:: Opera :::

As for getting Poser assets in the front door of Max, then using the tools in Max, shaders, rigging, animation, cloth, hair.....yes that is probably not an unlikely path for me, eventually. However, it begs the question....why start with anything from Poser in the first place, at that point? Poser rigging not designed for Max and the mesh would have to be tamed...V4 etc very high poly.

::::: Opera ::::

Quote - I think Vue can translate all those skin shader nodes, and it renders almost as good as any Max renderer I've seen.  If all you are looking for is a renderer, Vue is much cheaper and just as good I think.

 

That's a very good point!  when I want to use something jsut for the sake of better quality render, I use cararra (similar to vue in that aspect), and with interposer in the pro version things come across very nicely, including rigging.

The reason I bring things into Max is for modeling and more nuts and bolts kind of work. I find setting up lighting and enviroinments etc sort of a pain in Max (when Carara or Vue are available).

I hear a lot of good things about Cinema4D, but I'm not about to invest in it for hobby purposes. I got lucky with having Max at work :).

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I think also jonthecelt brought up a good issue about transfering poser dynamic hair and cloth.  It might be better to use the ones that come with Max, for faster rendering.  I never had success animating in Max though.  It was just too difficult to pose figures.  Unlike poser, I could move the animation timeline back and forth, and it showed me in near realtime what the motion looked like.  In Max, the timeline was so slow, this was not possible.  I was able to preview results as a render, but not in the viewer directly.  This could be hardware issue though.

I think the new version of Vue brings over animation of hair and cloth, and a good approximation of procedural shaders too.  You'll have to check that out.

Since you already have to get Max, I guess you can try using it with Poser since you have nothing to really lose there.  But I never had any success rendering Poser animations in Max.  Lots of crashes, and saving Bodystudo scenes in a max file, then coming back later to work on it seemed to always screw up all the materials I had painstakingly set in max.  Maybe the new version fixed this, or maybe it was just 3dsmax that didn't like poser.  Either way, I quickly found that the easiest way to render animations from Poser was either in Poser itself or in Vue or Carrara.  Just warning you that it will not be a cake walk.

I appreciate the warning and am realizing it might not be a bed of roses.

You know, I tried going into Carrera with Poser scenes....I didn't end up better off. Especially for dynamic hair, close up, by the time you get the lighting right and ratchet Carrera up to the quality of Poser for skin, hair, closeups, etc.....you either can't get the quality at all or if you do, the render is slower than in Poser.  That was a weeks-long trial with a lot of hard work about a year and a half ago. Maybe things are better now.

I think also jonthecelt brought up a good issue about transfering poser dynamic hair and cloth.  It might be better to use the ones that come with Max, for faster rendering.<<
Possibly...but then I would be into "Max-grief" and might as well plunge all the way! I am hoping that for $179 I can move a Poser scene, with dynamic hair, cloth animation, and procedural shaders into Max and with little/no fuss light/render there with a terrific increase in overall speed. We will see.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote -
The reason I bring things into Max is for modeling and more nuts and bolts kind of work. I find setting up lighting and enviroinments etc sort of a pain in Max (when Carara or Vue are available).

Yeah, I think a raytracer is a raytracer.  I don't see anything in 3dsmax renderings that can't be done in Vue or Carrara for that matter.  Some people point out speed as an issue, but once you start using 3dmsax skin shaders and quality render settings, things slow down no matter what renderer you use.  Mental Ray isn't known for speed either.  Vray might be a little faster than average, but it's a pain to set up the vray materials .  you can't use all max materials with it.

Quote - I am hoping that for $179 I can move a Poser scene, with dynamic hair, cloth animation, and procedural shaders into Max and with little/no fuss light/render there with a terrific increase in overall speed. We will see.

::::: Opera :::::

This is where I think you will be greatly disappointed.  Maybe if you get the new 64 bit max, it will be better going, but in max 7 at least, rendering the dynamic hair that bodystudio brought over was definitely much faster when using the scanline renderer, but the scanline renderer isn't good for animation.  You need to beef up the antialiasing to get nice results on textures and edges, and this will slow it down to near poser speed anyway.  Max can do procedurals, but they aren't in the same ballpark as poser in my opionion.  Procedual materials in max get mapped to object coordinates by default, which is fine for 80% of the time, but  this is no good for animated objects like poser figures, because it makes the procedurals look like they are swimming through the object.  and if you make them explicit mapped- meaning they follow the normals of the objects uv coordinates,then you might end up with some size/scale problems that are a pain.  I'm not a max pro by any means, so these were the things about it that really frustrated my experience with it.

luvver, Poser firefly is a raytracer. I am getting not bad results with it under raytrace. However, we have heard the litany so many hundreds of times about how horrible firefly is, slow as anything, etc. etc. etc., that I am going on the assumption that if one can get one's scene into a "big league" platform with "big league" render engines, one would be able to achieve Poser-like results, but at a much greater speed.

I've already had a failure in this, with Carrera. Is it possible all the fuss to go to the "big leagues" ain't worth it?

What say you?

::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: Click here to play or right click to download, Quicktime

Here is an animation with heavy pressure on the famous raytracer "firefly."

No postwork, Poser only.

I use both, Max and Cararra, and Max is a LOT more ratchet intensive and finnicky then Cararra in just about everything. 
Since it can do a lot more things, there are a lot more ways of going astray in it, and it's much less friendlier towards a new or an inexperienced user then Cararra or Vue are. If you do something wrong in it, there's very little or no warning, and there's not a lot of presets. I was actually floored to find that it's new cloth simulation has about a dozen presets in it, like leather, silk, wet cloth etc... as opposed to just a set of blanks.
I can't say that rendering is any faster, but I never ran comparisons. It's just my gut feeling after having used both.

The nice thing about Max is that it can accomodate a lot of different workflows that happen when building custom projects. I don't get the impression this is important point for you guys (going from Poser to Max).

main reason I have Max is because of it's interaction with Autocad and architectural, construction, industrial segment capabilities which is what pays my bills. If I were concentrating on characters, I'd research tools like Cinema or Maya rather thoroughly. For example, I gather that interposer pro does for cinema exactly what us max users wish to have for Max.
A friend of mine rendered some default settings imports from Poser to Cinema, and they came out looking as good as best poser renders I've seen.
I didn't see it myself, but he swears the rigging came across to.

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wow luvver, you've got me fastening my seatbelt after that last post! Thanks for you specifics.

As has been noted, we are installing Max 9 here, regardless. My son is hell-bent for a career in the game industry and is on his way to a BA in game design. Time for Max for him. 

The only thing I have to risk to try out this 'hoped for home run' is $179.00.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - luvver, Poser firefly is a raytracer. I am getting not bad results with it under raytrace. However, we have heard the litany so many hundreds of times about how horrible firefly is, slow as anything, etc. etc. etc., that I am going on the assumption that if one can get one's scene into a "big league" platform with "big league" render engines, one would be able to achieve Poser-like results, but at a much greater speed.

I've already had a failure in this, with Carrera. Is it possible all the fuss to go to the "big leagues" ain't worth it?

What say you?

::::: Opera :::::

I'll probably get a lot of people who disagree with me here, but I think the same problems you faced in Carrara you will face in Max, plus a lot more too.  People talk about real sss and all that in 3dsmax, and this is true.  But once you start using stuff like that, any minor speed advantage you did have is gone right out the window, and lots of problems in animation will start to surface, like artifacting.  I'm not saying these high end renderers aren't better.  they are for some things, but once you get into those "things", they are no longer that much faster anyway.

hmnmmm luvver, I will not say I am shocked. After that grand adventure with Carrerra, and another with POSERay/POV-Ray (which consumed two days of my life) my experiences have made me dubious. If it were not for the relatively small price of entry on this BodyStudio/Max thing, I would not even be in the arena.

I've just sent a missive to Content Paradise asking if they have a refund policy; they vend Body Studio. Still no answer on the phone at Reiss. I'll email them if I can't get thru on the phone today.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - If I were concentrating on characters, I'd research tools like Cinema or Maya rather thoroughly. For example, I gather that interposer pro does for cinema exactly what us max users wish to have for Max.

Eh, I've seen lots of characters made in max that rival anything done in maya.  and 3dsmax does have a program - two of them in fact- that will convert poser characters into fully rigged 3dsmax bones or biped characters.  Gesturemax and some other one I saw at Daz. Pcharacter or some such name.

I was under the impression operaguy was not interested in workin with the characters directly in max though.

I was under the impression operaguy was not interested in workin with the characters directly in max though.<<

i am not....at the moment.......

I just want to see if I can light and render a finished Poser animation in Max with little fuss. Purpose: render speed gain.

The option of actually working with Max's rich toolset -- on Poser mesh or not -- is another choice I may make. Think I'll let me son be the pioneer on that!

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - Eh, I've seen lots of characters made in max that rival anything done in maya.  and 3dsmax does have a program - two of them in fact- that will convert poser characters into fully rigged 3dsmax bones or biped characters.  Gesturemax and some other one I saw at Daz. Pcharacter or some such name.

 

True, and to summarize, I mentioned earlier in this thread, and in the thread I linked to on the max forum, I've been testing several of them out (as opposed to reading advertising about them).

Also, can you differentiate whether we're talking about 'making characters' in Max, or ipmorting them from Poser with as little nuts and bolts work as possible? Because they're two different subjects.

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Quote -
The option of actually working with Max's rich toolset -- on Poser mesh or not -- is another choice I may make. Think I'll let me son be the pioneer on that!

::::: Opera :::::

Well, if you go that route, then that's a horse of a different color.  Max seems to have come a long way with it's character animation tools, and just it's overall animation tools in general.  Max was the only software I ever attempted to rig my own stuff with, and it wasn't that hard using biped for the skeleton actually.  But still, nothing beats poser for getting down to the business of animating.  Hands down, poser is the easiest way to make a short movie or video in my opinion.  Especially if you're flying solo on the project.

shrug

Lightwave with the Greenbriar plug-ins for Poser can load Poser animations, .cr2's, rigs -- no problem.  Plus Lightwave has a superb built-in render engine.  Plus you can do these things for a lot less $$$$$$ than you can with 3DS Max.

http://www.greenbriarstudio.com/3D/

But if 3DS has to be purchased anyway: then that might be the way to go.  Autodesk products are top-notch.  Just expensive.  Not that Lightwave is cheap -- but it's less than 3DS.

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

Quote - ...I don't see anything in 3dsmax renderings that can't be done in Vue or Carrara for that matter...

There are TONS of rendering/shader issues that 3ds max can do that Carrara can't.  I don't really know what you are talking about.
I don't have Vue.
Max9 ships with MentalRay, I find it hard to believe that MR would be seriously compared to the C5 render engine.
We won't discuss modelling capabilities, or anything else.
I don't want to sound as if I'm cheerleading for Max; but I'd just hate to see somebody interested in taking up 3ds Max be put off of it by that sort of mis-information. It isn't one of the industry leaders for no reason.

It is true that it has a steep learning curve. That is because there is so much that it can do.
My advice to the OP is to try the free 30-day demo of Max9 and decide for yourself. It is the full version of the application, no features deactivated, AFAIK.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5972446

Friends don't let friends use booleans.

Quote -
There are TONS of rendering/shader issues that 3ds max can do that Carrara can't.

Probably, but what difference do they make if you don't use them?  Operaguy is talkin about increasing render speed by importing a poser scene using bodystudio into max, setting up lights, and rendering.  He seems to want an option that will translate as close as possible the poser materials he already had made in poser.  Vue can do this well, and much easier than 3dsmax in my experience.  Carrara may not translate the materials as good as vue, but the importing of a poser scene seems more stable and reliable than the one offered by the max plugin.  just my experience using it.

Quote - Max9 ships with MentalRay, I find it hard to believe that MR would be seriously compared to the C5 render engine.

Again, for doing what operaguy suggested he wants to do, there wouldn't be much difference in render quality, and much less learning curve, so things move along faster.  If all we're talking about in terms of requirements is raytracing, then what's the advantage of Mental Ray over any other raytrace engine?  It's not like he's going to be taking advantage of MR's scripting or writing his own specialized object shaders.

Quote - We won't discuss modelling capabilities, or anything else.
I don't want to sound as if I'm cheerleading for Max; but I'd just hate to see somebody interested in taking up 3ds Max be put off of it by that sort of mis-information. It isn't one of the industry leaders for no reason.

I don't think anything I said is misinformation, but rather the facts as I have experienced them.  Max is one of the industry leaders for reasons operaguy doesn't seem to need right now.  He just wants to speed up his poser animations, and there's a lot of programs that can do it for him in one way or another.  I just don't think max will be the answer he's hoping it is.

In our house we won't be put off Max; my son MUST learn it for college. His industry is deeply embedded in Max. We are on  board.

And I gotta tell you, I watched four vidoes of "what's new in Max 9" and watched it "solve" a piece of clothing around a morphed model....COOL!
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=7684178

I am not afraid of the learning curve. However, I am not ready to actually plunge fully into Max. First, I just want to see if I can just sneak in the side door and light and render Poser scenes.

I am aware of the one-month demo; also, I have determined that my son can get a one-year second student seat for $168, no renew, no upgrade.

Xeno, can you get Poser dynamic hair into Lightwave?

::::: Opera ::::::

Quote -
Xeno, can you get Poser dynamic hair into Lightwave?

::::: Opera ::::::

 

I don't know if it can be imported directly -- I'll have to check on that one.  I don't use Poser dynamic hair, so I've never had a reason to try.

The dynamic hair solution for Lightwave with which I am semi-familiar is Sasquatch by Worley Labs.

http://www.worley.com/E/Products/sasquatch/sasquatch.html

I don't know if Sasquatch and the Greenbriar plug-ins used in combination would allow you to import Poser dynamic hair or not.  It might be that the Greenbriar plug-ins alone can do this.  I'd have to find out.

Also -- I've been told that dynamic hair works beautifully in SoftImage XSI -- but I've never used the program, so I can't speak to the particulars.

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

Max 9 has a lot of really, really nice features to it.  I can't see why you'd be interested in playback of Poser dynamic cloth or hair, because Max's versions of same are far superior.  Frankly if I had much luck rigging V3 for Max when I tried it I'd be using it now.  The main thing you lack with starting out with Max is a high quality, morphable, RIGGED figure.  If BodyStudio does OK at converting rigging then maybe it's time I gave it another look.  It would be nice to have everything in one app, rather than spread across 3-5.

Why DAZ doesn't offer a version of V4 rigged for Max I can't imagine, they'd make tons of money.  I am still debating switching over to something like Max for rendering, just because the effort in making renders of imported content look good in Vue 6 seems to be beyond me.

My Freebies

Yes.   I do use Poser 7, with V4, and use the BodyStudio plugin version 2.7.02c to import into 3ds Max 9.

It gives very good results, and allows many more possibilities for rendering, however it does not do a good job of importing procedural textures or multiple shader trees.  So as one of the other posters commented, there is an element of fiddling with texture nodes before, or after transferring to Max.

Overall I think it is worth it.  However I should state that I am doing this only for my own amusement, and if I was trying to produce high quality art as quickly as possible, then I would probably find a different route.

Quote - shrug

Lightwave with the Greenbriar plug-ins for Poser can load Poser animations, .cr2's, rigs -- no problem.  Plus Lightwave has a superb built-in render engine.  Plus you can do these things for a lot less $$$$$$ than you can with 3DS Max.

http://www.greenbriarstudio.com/3D/

:Exits Lurk Mode:

Forgive me, but I spent a year  "Interrogating"
 MANY Buyers of the "greebrier solution"
and  Many of them broke down and admitted that
the plugin was at best a promising "Half step" to realizing
full integration of poser content in Lightwave(I own LW 7.5) OSX
the biggest dissapointment is that you have to reset the weightmaps
Manually in those converted poser rigs unless you plan on
rendering  All stills with the figure in the default 'T" Arm sout position .

Like Opera I Gave Carrara  pro  A 7-9 month sincere effort.
 its camera  navigation was a vestigial  artifact from the "glory days"
of" Kai Krause" and "metacreations" I wont BORE you with the many other reasons
I eventually adandonded it.

Right now the Most Complete Solution for me  is Cinema 4D studio with the Interposer pro Plugin
Iinvite you to go over to the Cinema4D forum for all the incredible details

Opera Seems primarily interested in rendering DAZ V4 with POSER Dynamic hair
 In another program  at faster speeds the Poser 'fire fly"
Riess Aledges to do this  "Seemlessly" in MAX and C4D on WINDOWS

I will defer to his ambitions and let him Discover the realty of that gratuitous claim for himself.

:Re-enters Lurk Mode:

My website

YouTube Channel

pjz: >>I can't see why you'd be interested in playback of Poser dynamic cloth or hair, because Max's versions of same are far superior.<<

I have gone up the hill on so much software in my life. Yikes! Therefore, I have some wisdom. "You do or you don't do." My initial strategy in this thread is: 'I am not ready to tackle "actual Max" at this time. I am already facile in Poser, to a degree. However, if there is a known, simple, workable path to simply take a complete Poser scene and slide it into Max for rapid, spectacular render with MentalRay, thus saving me tremendous time in animating short films, and since Max is about to be installed at my house....then that is worth a try."

The decision to actually tackle Max itself...mesh, morphs, rig with weights, props/sets, clothing models, hair grown in Max, Max shaders and textures, animation, facial expression animation, cloth and hair simulation, and THEN lighting and render....I consider that a separate volitional decision and one I probably will take at some point.

::::: Opera :::::

Wolf, I won't be too ambitious. I am 'taking a flyer.' Actually, I won't even take the flyer unless there is reasonable chance of both low grief  and high return, and I have not satisfied myself of that, yet.  It doesn't have to be 'seamless and perfect'; just reasonably low grief.

If instead the Reiss claims indeed turn out to be gratuitous, I will be posting such in this forum.

:::: og :::::

mikesimoni, hmm....this thread is showing that the shaders might be the "low grief" deal killer. I use shaders for skin realism, and for effects on clothing.

Mike, after you get done 'tweaking" the shader issue, do you 1) get back to Poser quality and 2) actually end up with significant render SPEED advantage?

::::: Opera :::::

I end up with speed and quality improvements.
I have started doing multiple pass renders, rendering diffuse, specular, shadow and ambient occlusion seperately and then compositing the result.

Wolf359, I have been debating Cinema 4d for some time, based on the very high quality lighting I've seen in Tlaloc321's renders.  Hmmmm.

My Freebies

I don't think I can add much to this post but I will offer what I can:

Reiss Body Studio (Maya) does what it claims. The biggest problem I've noticed is since DAZ textures are physically large and since there are 36 copies of them your viewport will be really slow unless you scale textures down to a more managable size, like 512 ^2. Furthermore you will not need 36 copies, only two, so you'll spend a little bit of time cleaning up the shader networks.

In response to "raytracer is raytracer" comment, I have performed extensive studies on mental ray's (non-physical) sub-surface scattering and I am confident that nothing in the 3d world looks as good as it does, period. Also mental ray is exceptionally fast as long as you don't use motion blur.

Operaguy, since textures are connected to UVs, if you import V4 all the textures should be in the right place; it seems the only advantage of Body Studio is to automate the process. I believe that you will find that Max's Character Studio may be more flexible than Poser's imported rig. That's not meant to blast Poser (which I use for prototyping characters).

I dunno, I think Body Studio is great to start with but if you really want to take advantage of Max's rendering capabilities, you may want to manually set up your characater.

Quote - I dunno, I think Body Studio is great to start with but if you really want to take advantage of Max's rendering capabilities, you may want to manually set up your characater.

 

Yeah, after testing varous import plugins and methods for few weeks I concluded that my time would have been better spent learning how to rig from scratch, since no export did even a half way decent job at importing a rig.

None of them gave me a keyframed rig. Wich is what interposer does for Cararra and I hear it does the same for Cinema. If interposer does for Cinema what it does for Cararra - which I use, I have no reason to doubt it.

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Quote -

:Exits Lurk Mode:

Forgive me, but I spent a year  "Interrogating"
 MANY Buyers of the "greebrier solution"
and  Many of them broke down and admitted that
the plugin was at best a promising "Half step" to realizing
full integration of poser content in Lightwave(I own LW 7.5) OSX
the biggest dissapointment is that you have to reset the weightmaps
Manually in those converted poser rigs unless you plan on
rendering  All stills with the figure in the default 'T" Arm sout position .

shrug - again

I'll have to get back with you on that.  I've seen the results of Poser figures/scenes imported via Greenbriar into LW -- and I've been very impressed by what I've seen.

Admittedly, I have LW 9.2 (which I am learning), but not the Greenbriar plug-ins -- yet.  I will let you know what I find out after I install them.  I don't know who you 'interrogated' -- but I've heard nothing but good from those with far more experience than I whom I've asked about Greenbriar.

Quote - Right now the Most Complete Solution for me  is Cinema 4D studio with the Interposer pro Plugin
Iinvite you to go over to the Cinema4D forum for all the incredible details

That's fine -- I am considering adding C4D to my toolbox at some point in time.  Along with ZBrush and/or Bodypaint and more.  C4D is a 3D tool like any other.  And I've seen some good results coming from it.  So......I'm not going to start slamming one good app over another.

Just out of curiosity -- does Interposer work with P7 content?

Quote - Opera Seems primarily interested in rendering DAZ V4 with POSER Dynamic hair
 In another program  at faster speeds the Poser 'fire fly"
Riess Aledges to do this  "Seemlessly" in MAX and C4D on WINDOWS

I will defer to his ambitions and let him Discover the realty of that gratuitous claim for himself.

:Re-enters Lurk Mode:

 

Many so-called 'high-end' users would scoff at the very idea of importing Poser content -- ANY Poser content -- into their sacroscant high-end programs in the first place.

Personally, the only reason why I've gotten into 'high-end' programs is to aid in creating content for the #1 3D application of them all -- Poser.

:biggrin:

Poser was like a gateway drug.  So I'll always have a soft spot for Poser.

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

Quote -
In response to "raytracer is raytracer" comment, I have performed extensive studies on mental ray's (non-physical) sub-surface scattering and I am confident that nothing in the 3d world looks as good as it does, period. Also mental ray is exceptionally fast as long as you don't use motion blur.

Yes, the non physical sss shader (misss) in Mental Ray is great- i'm assuming you mean the sss fast skin shader, but it takes a little work getting the best results from it, wouldn't you agree?  First of all, it's scale-dependant, so you have to model to scale in order to get the best results, and if you don't, then you still need to know how to manipulate the scale settings to accomidate the size ratio.  Also to get the best results you need to create custom maps for the different skin "layers".  You don't have to do this, but it makes the result much better.  And if you decide to use blurry reflections on the skin shader to simulate radiosity of the environment, your render times increase dramatically. in some cases.  So this doesn't seem like something operaguy would want right now.

As far as the misss shader being the only thing of it's kind in the 3D world, what about the DT3D skin shader for maya, which has 54+ control layers for the sss, and lots of specular layers and such?  Plus, it doesn't require raytracing, and is oren-nayar shader based.

luvver_3d -I am indeed talking about the fast skin shader. Like anything 3D it takes time  - most of my time with is spent combining head and body textures onto the same map.

I'm not having problems with the scaling ratio. Again I don't know Max but in Maya I scale the imported Poser character to 20 so its normal sized (cm is default unit). I usually set the scale settings around 35 which works for me. I haven't tried blurry reflections (raytrace environmental reflections?) but reflect environment only adds almost nothing to render time and looks just as good (once it's turned down a bit).

I have not heard of the DT3D skin shader, but 54 levels of control?! I'm there! 

Note, if you think you're going to do a rigging job with Character Studio that compares to hundreds of hours of professional JCM/JSM design - well, maybe you'll get there someday, certainly not on first effort.  I don't believe there is even an equivalent technology in Max, for JCM/JSM.

C4D looks attractive - add up the price though.
   CINEMA 4D R10 - Windows   In stock $895.00 $895.00 
   Advanced Render for R10 PC / Mac In stock $595.00 $595.00 
   Dynamics for R10 PC / Mac In stock $395.00 $395.00
   Hair for R10 PC / Mac Pre-order $395.00 $395.00 

Damn thing's almost as expensive as Maya list price and dynamic hair isn't even available yet.  My poor bank book :(

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You won't get into any of the higher-end apps on the cheap.  A big part of what decided me on going with Lightwave was e-on's Vue/Lightwave bundle deal the year before last.  I got into Lightwave cheap -- or at least as cheaply as I've ever seen it offered.  Plus they threw in LWCAD 1.5 for free -- and coming from a CAD-engineering environment, that was an additional incentive for 'riding the wave'.

But no high-end app is going to fall into hobby-level prices.  Not unless if you've got some expensive hobbies.  Or unless if you've got money to burn on 3D toys.....which always helps.

IMO, the $20,000+ that I've sunk into 3D over the last 3-4 years needs to have some sort of justification for having been spent.

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

Quote - Note, if you think you're going to do a rigging job with Character Studio that compares to hundreds of hours of professional JCM/JSM design - well, maybe you'll get there someday, certainly not on first effort.  I don't believe there is even an equivalent technology in Max, for JCM/JSM.

Yes, there's the skin morph modifier in max that allows clothing to conform to your figure- like conforming clothing in poser, and you can wire morphs in the morpher modifier to be controlled by joint rotation, ala JCM's in poser.  You can also go one step further than poser and wire your texture parameters to be controlled by your morphs as well.  Maybe that's possible in poser too, I don't know.

well, no answer at the Reiss studio phone again today and no answering machine. Also, no response back from Content Paradise on "do you give a refund if I don't like it."

My urge to speak with Reiss is dimming, however, due to the excellent responses in this thread. Thank you everyone.

It's odd, but a $3495 program such as Max offers a free trial, but a $179 plug in is 'caveat emptor' all the way! My risk, money wise, is with Reiss in this project, not with Max!

Although I guess you could say my risk is that if I actually fall in love with Max, I am looking at $3495 for commercial use!

::::: Opera :::::
 

Quote - It's odd, but a $3495 program such as Max offers a free trial, but a $179 plug in is 'caveat emptor' all the way! My risk, money wise, is with Reiss in this project, not with Max!
 

 

As I said before, use pomax instead, it's only 50 bucks and it does most of what you need for the moment. Of the Poser to Max transfer plugins out there it is the best value for what it does.
Plus, the vendor is here on rendo, and can be reached, and is very nice at that.

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It might be that at $179 per shot, they can't afford an answering machine -- much less a secretary to answer the phone for them.

I've known some "businesses" where the "office" consisted of a 5'X5' $50-per-month rental room space -- furnished with a phone hook-up and an answering machine sitting on a beat-up table.

Perhaps they actually do have an answering machine -- but nobody's checked it for messages in the last month -- so the memory is full.

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

Connie, I am now looking into it, thank you. It's got to support dynamic hair and cloth.

well, google sent me only to the sales page in rendo
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=53935

and searching on rendo I found this page
http://www.freehomepages.com/yangaimin16/
which is a non-rendering folder on a webserver somewhere.

Not enough information even to venture $50....and really, it is not about the dollars...it is about the investment in learning curve and going deep with a product. that has some history and userbase to it.

::::: og :::::

Quote - C4D looks attractive - add up the price though.
   CINEMA 4D R10 - Windows   In stock $895.00 $895.00 
   Advanced Render for R10 PC / Mac In stock $595.00 $595.00 
   Dynamics for R10 PC / Mac In stock $395.00 $395.00
   Hair for R10 PC / Mac Pre-order $395.00 $395.00 

Damn thing's almost as expensive as Maya list price and dynamic hair isn't even available yet.  My poor bank book :(

Well, if you drop Dynamics you can save ~$400.  This is not really necessary - and not the same thing as Poser cloth dynamics.  Clothilde is included with the MOCCA module and is cloth dynamics in C4D.

So... if you get Cinema 4D R10 XL bundle you get:

Cinema 4D R10 base
BodyPaint 3D (now part of the base!)
MOCCA (advanced rigging w/ Clothilde)
Advanced Render
Thinking Particles
Network rendering (3 seats)

*** Add module:Hair

That is $2195+$395 = $2590.  That's better than Max or Maya Unlimited (eh hem, Complete does NOT come with Hair, Fur, or nCloth!).  And the Hair module is indeed available for R10 - or do you want me to prove it (I have the R10 Studio bundle). ;0)

Rethink your comparisons. :)

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

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

Bodypaint is a part of the base?  That's worth looking into.

Is it the full version of Bodypaint?  Including compatibilty with other applications -- such as Lightwave?

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

Quote - None of them gave me a keyframed rig. Wich is what interposer does for Cararra and I hear it does the same for Cinema. If interposer does for Cinema what it does for Cararra - which I use, I have no reason to doubt it.

Cararra uses 'TransPoser' and Cinema 4D uses 'interPoser'.  No affiliation betwixt and between. :)

My biggest problem with interPoser is that retrofitting 'Poser' into Cinema 4D-speak (as it were) is not a generally simple task.  Cararra uses native bones/joints through TransPoser and might even be able to support master-slave dials (e.g.: JCM's) because it has old ties to Poser through MetaCreations and may be using the touted Poser SDK (which is what Reiss Studios and Vue use).  Not being a big company like e-On et al (just me), I have never got a straight answer on acquiring and licensing this so-called Poser SDK through Curious Labs or e-Frontier - so it's all scrounge and workaround.

I try not to make comparisons between BodyStudio and interPoser Pro as they are two different solutions.  BodyStudio is exactly like the old free plugins from ProPack - mainly unalterable Poser scenes for rendering in the target app where alterations can only be done through Poser.  interPoser Pro is more like Poser itself in that you 'load' fully rigged, posable, animatable, conformable, parentable, morphable figures - but to accomplish this required much work, 'rule breaking', and some unfortunate compromises for various reasons.

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

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

Quote - Bodypaint is a part of the base?  That's worth looking into.

Is it the full version of Bodypaint?  Including compatibilty with other applications -- such as Lightwave?

No, this is the Cinema 4D module version of BodyPaint 3D.  Funnily, if you get the full version of BodyPaint 3D (with other application compatability) you get the Cinema 4D base as well because the two have been merged in both instances.  So the differences are somewhat vague after this merger.  Best to read the differences carefully when at Maxon's site.

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

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

Quote - well, google sent me only to the sales page in rendo
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=53935

and searching on rendo I found this page
http://www.freehomepages.com/yangaimin16/
which is a non-rendering folder on a webserver somewhere.

 

LOL, never mind, you don't appear to have read any of what I wrote about having tested the plugins we're talking about here. Oh well, maybe someone else will benefit from it.

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Thanks.......with that information, C4D has just jumped up a couple of rungs in my consideration over what I should plan on buying.

Buy BodyPaint -- and get C4D.  That's......great to know.

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

don't dismiss me connie, with your attitude. send me to a solid support site for the product. I am glad you tested them. So far so good. But where is the site for pomax?

::::: Opera :::::

 

Quote - And the Hair module is indeed available for R10 - or do you want me to prove it (I have the R10 Studio bundle). ;0)

 

No need to be confrontational - that was quoted off the Maxon site.  When you try to buy it direct, it shows:
Hair for R10 PC / Mac Pre-order $395.00 $395.00
Maybe it's only available through the bundle?

Good to know where dynamic cloth hides, it doesn't exactly jump out at you from the product page.  I wish their product literature was structured more like a business app's and less like a game brag sheet.

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Quote - But no high-end app is going to fall into hobby-level prices.  Not unless if you've got some expensive hobbies.  Or unless if you've got money to burn on 3D toys.....which always helps.

 

I pretty much do, although I'd like to know beforehand if $2000 is going to get me a fun toy to play with (e.g. if there's some hope of passing the rigging between the apps).

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> Quote - > Quote - And the Hair module is indeed available for R10 - or do you want me to prove it (I have the R10 Studio bundle). ;0) > >   > > No need to be confrontational - that was quoted off the Maxon site.  When you try to buy it direct, it shows: > **Hair for R10** PC / Mac Pre-order $395.00 $395.00 > Maybe it's only available through the bundle? > > Good to know where dynamic cloth hides, it doesn't exactly jump out at you from the product page.  I wish their product literature was structured more like a business app's and less like a game brag sheet.

Not being confrontational, but when I go there and select "Software" and then Hair from the US Online shop Modules list, there is no 'Pre-order' (same for UK and International) - which I checked beforehand.  The Hair module was released with R10 back in Oct/Nov 2006.  Maybe you are getting an older or varied link?

The cutsy names (Xpresso, COFFEE, MOCCA) can make it difficult to determine what these exactly are (Xpresso is a graphical script node system, COFFEE is a textual script OOP language, and MOCCA is, of course, the 'advanced' Character Animation module) and what features they contain.  They likes their acronyms for some reason.

I don't think anyone really knows why Clothilde was attached to MOCCA but Hair is sold separately (and not attached to this or some other module).

No animosity intended. :)

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

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

Quote - I dunno, I think Body Studio is great to start with but if you really want to take advantage of Max's rendering capabilities, you may want to manually set up your characater.

 

I have to agree with this,mr is a beast & you'll never get 'spectacular' results by just using whatever settings bodystudio imports it as...mr is the kind of tool you need to tweak a bit to get the most out of it..& just like Poser, mr doesnt have a make art button
while mr does come free with 3dmax I actually prefer to use finalrender or vray,(or even Scanline for absolute ease of use)

Cheers
Stefan

PS:does Bodystudio still triangulate the mesh on export?

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quote: PS:does Bodystudio still triangulate the mesh on export?

I dunno; I could never get rid of the faceting.  I've stopped using it a while back. I've also become fed up with the high poly counts of Poser characters, so I'm creating my first SubD humaniod.

I use BodyStudio almost every day - have for several years - and am VERY pleased with it. It does exactly what it says it will do. And it opens to me a world of Max features and plugins for my work. I have a big multi-core machine and I've watched ram and cpu usage carefully - firefly stinks at utilizing the cpu. Other, 3rd party rMax renderers but down the house.

Regarding reiss not replying - they are a very small company and it takes them a while to get back with you. Have you tried email?

**

stonemason:** yes it triangulates.

jeff, do you bring scenes with dynamic hair and cloth from Poser7 into Max9? I am wondering how that pans out.

Well, i am going ahead.....
I'll be installing a month trial of Max in the next few days and I'll be taking a flyer on Body Studio. I realize my results may disappoint or require more tweaking than 'zero', but hey, I am flirting with Max and any tweaking will be part of a real learning curve for the entire platform.

::::: Opera :::::

Dynamic hair - no. Posers dynamic hair is such a pain that I never mess with it.

Clothing - yes. Works very well.

Overall I think you will be pleased with the new setup.

Quote - stonemason: yes it triangulates.

 

I thought that's what happens when something that was originally modelled to behave as a patch or a nurbs surface gets imported as an old fashioned mesh in Max.  
Am I off on that?

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Quote - Cararra uses 'TransPoser' and Cinema 4D uses 'interPoser'.  No affiliation betwixt and between. :) 

 

Oh, oops!  LOL, you're right!  I got the names smushed into one. 

I feel like I need to clarify myself: Transposer in Cararra does what my friend says Interposer does for Cinema. My bottom line was that Body Studio doesn't do as many things as the above two products (which was confirmed by other users here).

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Quote - I thought that's what happens when something that was originally modelled to behave as a patch or a nurbs surface gets imported as an old fashioned mesh in Max.  
Am I off on that?

 

Never mind, I answered my own question!     I need more coffee this morning!

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Finally spoke to Josh at Reiss today. He confirmed the specific claims made for his product. The user can expect to get mesh, texture maps and dynamic simulations along with keyframed animation over to Max, at which point one can light and render. No rigging or morphs. He said 'basically you are lighting and rendering mesh with textures, already animated"

He also confirmed what several users above in this thread stated: the translation over from the Poser material room to Max does not include procedural shaders, such as AO nodes, cloth effect nodes like velvet, or any math, blend, noise.....etc.

At best one can expect that the actual .jpg texture maps from Poser will be found...and will have been attached to corresponding roots in Max.

Fair enough. If it actually does that, and I can work up the Max lighting and rendering with the result of getting a certain flow going, I will be gratified.

I made my purchase. Max is here also. It might be a gradual process for me to report back, I am slammed with other projects that terminate July 1. Also, I won't be reporting back until I get a little ways into the learning of Max lights and render.

::::: Opera :::::

click for full size

This is a still from a 240-frame animation that is typical of my type of scene -- interiors with dark corners and interresting partial lighting, human model with good skin, dynamic hair and cloth.

This is a 700x800 pixel frame....I'm hoping to get this over to Max, back up to this level of quality, and realize at gain of speed that is worth the game.

::::: Opera ::::::

May I suggest checking out the Max training at Lynda.com.

It's a fantastic deal - 20 something bucks a month for a bunch of full screen tutorial movies covering every aspect of Max. They even have some free videos to watch so you can see if you like the style.

As for your rendered image, you will have NO PROBLEM reproducing that in Max.

Thanks for the link. You can bet I'll visit Lynda.

I'll be going over to 3DBuzz for training as well, starting backwards, of course! Lighting and Render. 

As soon as I downloaded the trial of Max, Autodesk began to feed me training links, also. My son won't be loading his full Max until he gets a his new laptop situated, so I went for the 1-month trial of Max.

Actually, the frame above is both wrong-shaped, oversized and over-resolved for animation, so it is not exactly a 'fair' test of what I'll be doing. But hell, I figure use a tough example!  Render time about 876 seconds for the above, as there are agressive settings.

::::: Opera :::::

Something very interesting when you're looking for render speed: the RT2 render plugin (there's a Max version). RT2 doesn't render on the CPU, it renders on the graphics processor, and is MUCH faster than any CPU based render engine.
One of the things that I'm trying to get tested at work is how the RT2 render engine works on dual graphics cards (SLI / Crossfire). We have machines with dual 7950GX2 cards (thats 4 fast GPUs in a single machine!), and I expect RT2 to be at least 100 times as fast as MR with similar settings on such a setup.
I do not know whether the RT2 render engine can render with the quality you want. But if it does, I guess it would be a great asset to animators.

On a side note, I'd really love to see a standalone Renderman-compliant renderer that renders on a GPU using OpenGL / HLSL shaders. Preferably as an open source project.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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I will building a new computer later this year and am thinking of going high on the graphics card to accomodate two monitors, but more important snappy response in the working window as I move things around.  Your findings would be way-pertinent on that score...

My only issue on a really powerful graphics card is that when my gamer/designer son gets wind of it I may need to lock up my tower!

off to google 7950GX2 and RT2 render.......

::::: Opera :::::

Snappy interaction is almost as important as raw rendering speed. Most of my actual work time has been spent waiting on my graphics card.

I just moved to an ATI x1900 and Poser is a whole different program - much faster interaction. Posing is a breeze rather than, dial/wait dial/wait rotate/wait.

I was on a Nvidia Q4 750 - which was ok about 5 years ago. But the jump to the x1900 has significantly improved my production speed.

Poser on 2 or 3 moniters is also a real boost. Have you library open on 3/4th of the 2nd moniter along side your parameter controls greatly speeds up finding-loading-saving items, poses etc.

Make sure and get a card that has good DirectX performance - Max is much faster when using DX over OpenGL.

You also may want to read up on gaming graphics cards vs. workstation cards. One will give you fast rendering, the other will give you snappy triangle processing.
Not very many excell at both.

here's one article that touches on the subject:  http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-23018-Graphic-Cards-Workstation-vs-Gaming.html

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OG - you mentione 3D Buzz. I received some of the best (app specific) Fundamentals and Advanced Modeling courses from them.

However I offer my humble opinion that you will get most joy out of ditching the conversion plugins and make your characters as "Max-specific" as possible. It will save you grief in the long run.

repllicand, thank you for your opinion.  not only have others in this thread said the same thing, but I am  almost sure others are thinking it!

It's just that I have this path laid down for me that might succeed in a workflow for an artistic enterprise that can fund my music composing and drama writing. I am nearly there in Poser. But it is too weak on the payoff end of things. 

It is very likely that getting my hands on Max, working with it for lighting and rendering, and encountering the limitations of this particular shortcut will simply make me throw up my hands and jump in the Max (or XSI; i am attracted to that program) lake with both feet.

I appreciate your wishing to save me grief; I may have to suffer some to take your suggestion fully to heart.

::::: Opera :::::

If you're seriously going big on the graphics card, be aware that the 7xxx series is the previous generation.  The 8800 is the big dog on the block currently.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/products.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce8.html

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Quote - > Quote - stonemason: yes it triangulates.

 

I thought that's what happens when something that was originally modelled to behave as a patch or a nurbs surface gets imported as an old fashioned mesh in Max.  
Am I off on that?

 

but poser models aren't patch or nurbs based..yet when bodystudio sends the poser mesh to max it triangulates it..that's the main reason I never got any use out of bodystudio

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PJ's and Connie, thanks for the links. The response of shadow_29 at TechSpot was very detailed and eye-opening. PJ, lol, I was conversing with my son last night and he told me the 7's were dead and the 8's were great! I wonder if those are only gamer cards, though. More research on hardware later.

:: og ::

They're gamer cards, but they do OpenGL reasonably well, and DirectX VERY VERY WELL.  In my opinion they're a very serious option when thinking about Max (DirectX preview rendering).

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8108755

Viewport Renderer

• DirectX® viewport shading displays materials as they would appear in other real-time applications.
• Support for all shader types is now available via MAXScript—including HLSL and Cg shaders—along with shader performance enhancements. Work with CgFX files alongside .fx files in the viewport.
• Maximize productivity and creativity with multithreaded viewport.

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Quote - > Quote - > Quote - stonemason: yes it triangulates.

 

I thought that's what happens when something that was originally modelled to behave as a patch or a nurbs surface gets imported as an old fashioned mesh in Max.  
Am I off on that?

 

but poser models aren't patch or nurbs based..yet when bodystudio sends the poser mesh to max it triangulates it..that's the main reason I never got any use out of bodystudio

 

You're absolutely right about triangulated mesh not being of much use. 
Especially if it's important to preserve the original (poser obj) topology!

For some reason, before I had my morning coffee yeaterday I thought max triangulated everyting that wasn't a patch or a nurb on import... then when I opened the figure I've been working on, I had all neat quads staring me in the face. Oopsie! I had a duh moment... 

I was doing something till wee hours the night before with showing and hiding edges examining how the cloth sims came out, and was seeing triangles everywhere (LOL, in my head).

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Quote - PJ's and Connie, thanks for the links. The response of shadow_29 at TechSpot was very detailed and eye-opening. PJ, lol, I was conversing with my son last night and he told me the 7's were dead and the 8's were great! I wonder if those are only gamer cards, though. More research on hardware later.

:: og ::

 

Well, here's what I deal with...
At the office, the terrain modelling that we do is all triangulation of point clouds containing couple milion points each... the meshes I handle end up having several milion triangles. 3-5 milion on average. And I get to do almost no rendering at all, it;s all calculations and massing models.
Without 4 GIG of ram and couple of quadro series of workstation cards I couldn't lift a finger. Now, that's the higer end extreme, that you may not ever reach. 
That also depends on how body studio handles importing. What I've seen is that the imports aren't exactly sparing on the triangles since each animation keyframe appears to become it's own set of OBJ's. (if I remember right) I know pomax does for sure, since I used it more recently. I believe body studio does something very similar.

Quadro's have great capability for rendering stills and animations where you are rendering each frame and creating an avi or similar. It pretty much screams through it, but only with programs that are able to take advantage of it's features (like max). 

Where gaming cards seem to have an edge is in real time 3D graphics, where seeing a fully rendered low poly scene in a flash is important for gameplay, and testing the gameplay. 
In gameplay you often only see a portion of a scene, and it's effective loading gets done between the gaming engine, system power and graphics card power (to put it rather simply).

When a level modeller is creating entire model, and going through handling several levels of detail, building it all together in Max, this instant loading and rendering of a small portion fo a scene is not nearly as helpful as the ability to smoothly handle a number of triangles, as vectors or as massing model.

Having said all that, I'll give you an actual example: Working on a poser scene with couple of characters in it (500,000 triangles max) at the office with a 3GHZ-4gig system and 2 quadro cards in it, or at home on a2.5GHZ,  2 gig system and a 2-year old nvidia 6800GT, I can't tell a difference in making models and handling scenes. It's not significantly smoother or faster at the office. 

But, taking one of my work related projects with several milion triangles in it, and working on it at home, I can't do at all. Maximum I can handle at home is a project with 1.2 mil triangles before I crash and burn. At work, the largest one I had so far is 7 mil, and didn't crash. I did something silly trying to load couple of versions of a 7 mil triangle surfaces at onece, and did crash... so the limit is somwehere between 7 and 14 milion.

I haven't done a lot of animation comparisons between the two. When I need to render architectural or similar presentations, I set up several of the office and home computers into a rendering farm, and let them crunch at night. Often we create presentations that have up to 20-30 min worth of drive by's, and flyovers that take several days to render, so I haven't concerned myself with speed improvements less then 50% at the time.

If I can get more output from a two little more of the middle of the road machines then from one super duper latest one, I get the two middle of the road. The prices for the latest and greatest are often so jacked up that you can often get two for one.

Now, if I were practicing quake or similar gameplay for competition, or bragging rights, then I probably would get a $4000 or so gaming powerhouse.

Whenever I have my way, I get the machines from theese guys: http://www.xicomputer.com/

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Quote - But, taking one of my work related projects with several milion triangles in it, and working on it at home, I can't do at all. Maximum I can handle at home is a project with 1.2 mil triangles before I crash and burn. At work, the largest one I had so far is 7 mil, and didn't crash. I did something silly trying to load couple of versions of a 7 mil triangle surfaces at onece, and did crash... so the limit is somwehere between 7 and 14 milion.

 

From your description, memory on the card is very likely a factor.  There are some 8xxx cards with 640 or more MB of display memory, what have you got at home?

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Quote - From your description, memory on the card is very likely a factor.  There are some 8xxx cards with 640 or more MB of display memory, what have you got at home?

 

of course it is :)
We're talking about a difference of Nvidia 6800GS to a dual Nvidia Quadros, 5000 series on my CAD station at the office. 
On this computer (my secondary work machine), which I use while the other one is cruncing work related things (love the kvm switches :D ), with Nvidia 7800 the amount of triangles I can handle at once is larger then at home.

What I was getting at is that I didn't create a 'hobby' scene yet to exceed the abilities of my home machine, and I tend to use hi Polygon scenes.

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Heh, heh.....my home machine is better than my office machine........by a pretty wide margin.  But that figures in my case -- because I'm not doing 3D work at the office.

My 4G's of RAM and my heavier video card both reside at home.  Along with my 3D apps.

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

My resolve has pretty much failed me:
http://area.autodesk.com/custom/?id=4547

:unsure:

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Drooool!
I thijnk it can simulate drool too :)

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http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=7636671 

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I read up a bit on this.  Remember that although it is ingenious - have to give Joe Stam credit for productivity while at the airport ;) - it is still only available in Maya Unlimited.  $7000 USD.  For that you can buy several of the top end 3D apps in their top forms with plugins to spare.

People like to drool over this stull - but you pay for it significantly.  You can get Cinema 4D R10 Studio with Mograph and several major plugins for about $4000.  Include XSI and LightWave3D or just 3DSMax and you are at about that price.  Maya Unlimited is geared towards professional studios and thus the price tag.

Drool all you want but if you don't have $7000 laying around to squander on this is it really worth the ooohs and aaahhs?  If I were in a professsional 3D biz where I was makin' the dough this would be a drop in the bucket investment.  But for hobbyists, this is either 'my inheritance has arrived' or 'I've a new credit card with a sufficient limit to pay for the next ten years'.

Think: Is it a worthwhile investment?  I can't see any advantages.  If you are aiming for a studio career, you could do better with Maya PLE (cost $0)...

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

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

Well, if you're a student, you can get it at a pretty significant discount (94% off).

http://www.studica.com 

Maya PLE produces renders with watermarks, the student version doesn't.  If $7000 is out of someone's reach, so is $4000.

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They might put it in 3ds Max 10. They do own both softwares.
But there's already a lot of upgrades going into Max 10 though,... maybe 11.

Friends don't let friends use booleans.

Quote - Well, if you're a student, you can get it at a pretty significant discount (94% off).

http://www.studica.com 

Maya PLE produces renders with watermarks, the student version doesn't.  If $7000 is out of someone's reach, so is $4000.

Very true.  It all depends on your goals and means.  Although PLE adds the render watermark, you are free to use it for an unlimited time with all available features.  There is no better way to learn and master the software for 'goal-oriented' reasons than this.  If you are aiming for a career which requires Maya experience, you can't beat gaining the experience for nothing and then having the 'real thing' at your disposal when employed.

Otherwise, I don't see the point of investing $7K to get a great cloth sim if it isn't with profit expectations (unless one has enough wealth that it doesn't matter).  One has to live within ones means and Maya Unlimited is one of the costliest solutions in 3D (besides maybe Houdini).  Again, it is aimed directly at professional studios and the price reflects this.

Ya know, Endorphin is the ultimate figure dynamics solution out there.  Is it really worth dumping Poser's sub-standard dynamics for $9500?  If you are doing the next SpiderMan or similar movie with expected profit margins - yeah.  Otherwise, you'd better have a rich uncle.. ;0)

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

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

I think you missed my point - the student license of Maya Unlimited renders without a watermark, is fully featured, and (if you're a student) can be had for $370.  It is a perpetual license as far as I can tell (the one for 3ds Max at Studica definitely is perpetual).

And by the way they even have Cinema 4d XL for a similar uber-cheap price ($280)
http://www.studica.com/MAXONComputer/

although through that vendor, Maya Unlimited actually seems to be less expensive than a comparable pack of C4D + extensions.  This is all with the understanding that one meets their student ID requirements (thankfully, I do).

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Do you think they'd accept a student ID expired in 1986? LOL

Friends don't let friends use booleans.

Quote - I think you missed my point - the student license of Maya Unlimited renders without a watermark, is fully featured, and (if you're a student) can be had for $370.  It is a perpetual license as far as I can tell (the one for 3ds Max at Studica definitely is perpetual).

And by the way they even have Cinema 4d XL for a similar uber-cheap price ($280)
http://www.studica.com/MAXONComputer/

although through that vendor, Maya Unlimited actually seems to be less expensive than a comparable pack of C4D + extensions.  This is all with the understanding that one meets their student ID requirements (thankfully, I do).

I gotcha on that - but you MUST BE A STUDENT (with proof) to get the benefits.  And almost every single Student License that I've ever encountered strictly forbids 'commerical use!!!'.  So you can use it similarly to the PLE version in every way except for the lack of watermark (and commercial endeavors).

At this point it is a matter of apples and oranges. :)  You can get a free version with a nasty watermark to stop from proliferating as pro-commercial work or you can get a student version without the watermark provided that you never use it for commercial purposes - or the lawyers pay a visit.  Autodesk is notorious for KGB tactics in such endeavors - don't know if that has changed but don't ever get caught using a student license for payed work!

If you are honorable - which I believe you are - you can get the student license and make cool renders for public display but not for private profit.  Once you are in position to profit from your work, you'll need to upgrade the license to full.

That's all that I'm saying. :)

Robert

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

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

I wonder if the publishers recognize "hobbyist-students." This is most of us....we are not in actual school, like Evan my son, but on the other hand we are not commercial and boy are we in 'learner mode."

I know for certain this is a gray area (hobbyist, non-comercial.) I guess their position is -- students (real, enrolled students) can and should get the student version. Others can work on the PLE version. This leaves the hobbyist out. So, without a specifically created category for hobbyist...we non-commercial people have three choices:

1. purchase the full edition
2. get ple, but your renders have watermark
3. find a legit student who will purchase a second student copy for you.

On point three, I was told by both Studica and Academic Superstore that Evan could purchase two copies, as long as one was perpetual and one was permanent.

I am about to confront this soon, because I am on a one-month trial of Max. I am facing $3500! I have a vendor here in Los Angeles who has told me I won't have to pay that much, but he has not quoted price to me yet, because I have not pressed it.

If I fall in love with Max, I would never use it for money-making without purchaseing full commercial license. I have no illegal software in my studio. But short of that, I confess I am tempted to have Evan purchase a second student copy, and I would work with that right up to the point of actually going commercial. I am still working out the morality of that, and in fact may attempt to contact Autodesk directly on this issue.

[update on my Max trial: I have not yet installed it; consumed with commercial website project for next week]

::::: Opera :::::

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There are quite a few more differences between Maya PLE and the student version than the watermark.
Not being able to load any plug-ins seems like a biggie to me; so does all the disabled exporting  features.
The student version would give you a much better feel for what Maya could do in production.

Friends don't let friends use booleans.

I'll add one more thing to my prior post. When I discussed the above chain of thought with my vendor, RFX

http://www.autodesk.com/cgi-bin/nadealdis.pl?dealid=USD354

and after listening to my studio workflow and plans, he strongly suggested I take the one-month trial of SoftImage XSI as part of my decision-making process.

As I had already been to two user meetings and poured over the site and forums for XSI, I am already interested. 

He said my soup-to-nuts XSI seat, with hair and cloth and several render engines, would be less than $2000.

Of course, soup-to-nuts for XSI does not included their cute little facial expression module FaceRobot, which is $25,000 by itself!

::::: Opera :::::

P.S. Maya Nucleus....that is in development, right? Wonder if it will be "folded into" the current $7000 for Maya? Doubt it. Here's how the thinking goes: 'This module is not expensive for a movie production effects house, because frankly it is far less than the salary of one expert animator, and our claim is that the purchase of the license will certain allow you to hire one less animator due to its power." That's the exact logic told to me concerning FaceRobot, and you can tell that logic is in play on the page for Maya Nucleus. More power to 'em, it actually makes sense, but does not help us drooling artists!

I now see that kuroyume has stated that Maya Nucleus is indeed part of the current $7000 for Maya.

Noted.

::::: Opera :::::

Nucleus is included in Maya Unlimited 8.5, it's the name for the unified dynamics engine (fluid, particles, cloth, hair, fur).
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=8824876
http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/m85demos/Maya85_FB_Videos/nucleus2/nucleus2.html

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XSI might be the most practical solution for you. Might not. Can't hurt to try it out. If you get to the point where you need/want more features, you could always upgrade to the unlimited version.

The toolsets looked comparable to me. I think either one of them can do about the same things, with a couple features that the other doesn't have.
Maybe the biggest difference is that there are a million billion trillion plug-ins for Max, a lot of them free and very useful. XSI is more limited in that area. Google, if in doubt.

Characters has always been a focus for XSI, so it has somewhat a lead in that respect, IMO. I'm not a character animator, so maybe I'm not qualified to make that judgement.

Friends don't let friends use booleans.

click for larger image

hi all,

just bumping this thread up.....
my trial of Max and my purchase of Body Studio are sitting here patiently waiting for me.
meanwhile I am learning Flash and creating my first Flash website. Sheesh.

I should begin my experimentation with Max and Body studio in a week or two, will report back.

Meanwhile, my son Evan has begun at the "other end" of Max, namely modelling. You all probably know about the famous teapot in the life of Max students. Evan just sent me this render, his first day of lighting.

::::: Opera :::::

An update of my own:  Reiss BodyStudio does not appear to work with 64-bit Windows/3ds Max.  Very big disappointment (and not cheap either).

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Quote - An update of my own:  Reiss BodyStudio does not appear to work with 64-bit Windows/3ds Max.  Very big disappointment (and not cheap either).

 

Ouch! That sucks! :(

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