I was wandering around the web, looking for breathtaking images to use as desktop images, and I ran across artwork by a man named Steven Stahlberg that made my mouth drop open! I haven't done too much investigating except looking at images done with these various software programs, and the figures, to me, look more realistic than Poser figures. The females I've seen created with this software look... soft. And completely realistic. Has anyone used Alias PA that is also using Poser, and can perhaps shed some light on the differences for me? If this isn't an appropriate topic for this forum, please feel free to email me. :) WitchyGrrl P.S. If anyone is wondering what the heck I'm talking about, the site is here

Alias/Wavefront Power Animator is a high end modeling/rendering package. Its up there with the likes of Maya, SoftImage....etc. I'm just guessing here, but I would think the figures are NURBS. -Robert

I may be wrong here but I think Alias PA costs about the same as a large house LOL.....I'm not knocking Steven Stahlberg's work though coz it is amazing, the hover bike image was a long time wallpaper on my PC and I think I read he took 5 years to make her....Is'nt she the future virtual super model that was mentioned in the forum a while back

What's the difference between Alias and Poser? About twenty grand... <> Seriously, it reallly is the NURBS that make the figures look so much softer and more realistic than polygon meshes like Poser uses. If you really want to get into this, then buy a copy of Martin Hash's Animation Master... a NURBS-based modeler that doesn't require a Silicon Graphics workstation to run. It's only about $200.00 and the results you get are incredible. (However it has, to put it kindly, a steep learning curve.) You can find out more about it at http://www.martinhash.com (and the Alias home page is at http://www.aw.sgi.com ) -Nemo

Whoops.... my bad. Animation Master is spline-based, not NURBs-based, and the home page is http://www.hash.com. Rhino3D is a NURBS-based package that doesn't cost the earth (but still runs a couple thousand dollars, instead of the two hundred Hash will set you back.) -Nemo

LOL that's a lotta money :) I've got a pretty big house, but I'm not willing to sell half of it for a program, and the other for a workstation running 1.5gb of RAM :) So... NURBS make the figures look like they have some fat on 'em... very cool. I thought maybe I could conjure up some food for my Poser figures and maybe they'd be a bit more fleshy :) (j/k) I love the results I get with Poser, I was just really taken aback to see that even better results were being achieved with another program, but I understand why now. I'll definately check out that webpage. Thanks! WG

NURBs and splines both have a much softer look than meshes using polygonal vertices, because they're based on geometric curves or patches instead of little sharp polygons... :-> Organic metaball-type modeling can get you the same rounded, soft kind of look (like in Amorphium or Nendo, or using the Blubble plugin with Ray Dream Studio, to cite three fairly cheap applications.) -Nemo (not a modeler. Don't even play one on TV.)

Slight correction on the price of Rhino3D. Directly from www.rhino3d.com it costs $795, $195 with academic affiliation. DVDirect & SafeHarbor both carry the "retail" version of it for a little less... You can also find it even cheaper through academic software houses. Only reason I know so much about its price is because I just bought it recently, and let me say.... it ROCKS! There are also a few "workspaces" out there for it that make it look alot like A/W PA or SI if that is what you like.

I do not understand. NURBs are just one class of splines, Non Uniform Rational B-splines, with some interesting math to let them approach quadratics more accuratly. So a NURBs modeller is a spline modeller. What sort of splines does Hash use? Here's a really nice pointer to some of the math issues: http://www.csl.mtu.edu/cs390-2/www/NOTES/notes.html

Wiz (he is smart!) asks: "I do not understand. NURBs are just one class of splines, Non Uniform Rational B-splines, with some interesting math to let them approach quadratics more accuratly. So a NURBs modeller is a spline modeller. What sort of splines does Hash use?" Oh, God... don't ask me that, please... :-> Seriously, my understanding was that AM uses some other kind of splines, but if there's only one kind of splines, then I guess it doesn't... or something. Don't know much about splines. I've only used the demo version of Animation Master and the beta version of Rhino, and with both of them I found myself bested very quickly. Very, very quickly. I like Amorphium, though. -Nemo (I think I'll have myself a little lie-down now)

I think a lot of us are familiar with Steven Stahlberg's work... he's done Two Virtual Actresses. A while back I spoke with Coop about incorporating nurbs into Poser, and he told me that for the time being, Mesh Forms are so integrated into Poser that it wouldn't be economically feasable to do, but time and the market would dictate what direction Poser took. Alias/Waveftont Products like MAYA and Power Animator are the TOP of the TOP END Folks. If you were at SIGGRAPH there would be no doubt about it. A Gentleman I spoke with at Digital Domain, a 3D Motion Picture Group, told me we're at the point of doing Virtual Actors now that looked real. With the Trickle Down Technology we have, we shouldn't have to wait too long before we see it coming our way. And Nemo... you should have done the Tutorials' that the Rhino Beta had posted ;-)))

I tried, but at that point in time (about a year and a half ago) I was very new to 3D and to computer graphics, so even the tutorials were over my head. Rhino is an excellent program, however. -Nemo

Can you get the same soft effect using Pnurbs script in 3DStudio? Just wondering. I believe that is how Mobius constructed his Hi Res figure, and she is very soft and detailed in closups. Just a question from the Computer Impaired corner. :D

All NURBS, All the Time ;-))) Until you render, that is... Rendering converts the NURBS into Mesh for the purpose of Rendering... So all Rendered stuff you see, even Alias Wavefront, are meshes...

I hung around the HASH booth at SIGGRAPH for a while, and watched a couple of demos. Animation Master uses their own brand of spline patches (analogous to Rhino NURBS surfaces, I think), which they claim are better than everyone else's. My impression was that AM is a cool product, especially for the price (it was $175 at SIGGRAPH), but it's not designed to be used in conjunction with other products. For example, it can import polygon meshes with four-sided facets only, and each facet is translated into a single spline patch, which would not be practical for complex meshes. The export capability may be more versatile. I haven't used AM myself, so I may be wrong in some of these details.

Veth....Pnurbs will smooth things out somewhat as it subdivides the faces...more faces..smoother mesh. I does do a fairly good job at rounding things out also..th efaces don't seem to be all in the same plane as the original face, though I'd have to really check this to be sure. If you render your figures in Max, just apply the Pnurbs when the scene is done...you never have to put up with the slowdown associated with the massive face count.

Dave says: "Animation Master uses their own brand of spline patches (analogous to Rhino NURBS surfaces, I think), which they claim are better than everyone else's." Well, I feel better now. At least I know I'm not losing my mind... :-> I remembered that Hash is emphatic that their splines aren't NURBs, though what kind of splines Hash does use and how it differs from NURBs splines I couldn't tell you. -Nemo

If they really wanted to be a player, which they COULD be, in a big way, they'd make their Spline Format, open source, and have IO for all the popular formats, including a IGES NURBS Conversion I/O to their own spline code... But, they're not, and probably will go the way of the BetaMax...

....er, where is this Pseudo Nurbs script? Is it included with Max? I can't find it anywhere, in Max or on the web.... Thanks.