When using the ‘professional’ software to create your own stuff from scratch it takes a very long time to get to the point where you can create something resembling art. Weeks or months might be spent on preliminaries. When unwrapping a mesh or packing uv islands as closely as possible to prepare for a most detailed texture map, you may wonder, “Is this art?” Whether the answer is yes or no, it is one of hundreds of necessary steps to get to the point where art can be made. No surprise that professionals have no time to fill the Renderosity galleries, though in a sense they do with the content rendered by the Michelangelos and Michelangelas of the Poserverse. There’s nothing more gratifying than to make a render and realize that the image is actually yours, content and all, but perhaps this pleasure is not for the professionals. I can’t conceive of any reason to do your renders in Poser if you can afford Vue or a better application and have a computer capable of running it. Sure, with enough time and effort you can cheat the eye and make a great Poser render, but you could do even better with a superior render engine if you learned to use it. I’m not clear on how Daz content could be introduced into games, unless they intend to do low-poly versions of everything, but I think the ‘Renderosity ghetto’ may have already spread to the Sims. I was looking at some of the available mods and it looked a lot like the Renderosity marketplace. I think it's because the whole dollhouse thing attracts the women.

Mental Roy happen to have a gallery that ghetto Renderosity users like us can visit and most certainly be amazed by?  And if I see yet another IBL-lit car or reflective spheres on a table, there's gonna be trouble.   >:)

SnowS

By the way, kuroyume0161, the teapot is a "unit primitive" in Modo.

Quote - 3d is about creating virtual reality.

I'm NOT against premade stuff.
I CAN model, but I see no need to re-invent the wheel every time for every render.

My point is not "He is a true artist because he modelled it all by himself".
My point is "He is a true artist because he strives for quality".

The problem is, 99,9% of Poser users are happy with using mediocre quality, that's why they get mediocre quality.

There is no reason that you AVERAGE Vicky morph you buy in the marketplace couldn't look as realistic as this.

If only DAZ (Or someone else) would make an ACCURATE 3d mesh based on a real human to start with.
And people would be willing to pay enough for QUALITY to make Poser attractive for professional 3d MODELLERS.

All you'll get for $1.99 is a quick dial spun. And even the "top of the line" $25 Poser stuff doesn't come even CLOSE to these morphs.

You know ..... its a little hard to get things perfect in poser. I try  myself  fairly often to make my renders as good as possible,( I havent posted many renders here lately so don't go by that  completely) BUT theres several things stopping me .....

Every time I think I have my lights perfect because the render looks just as I want it to on my monitor I post it and someone complains that its too dark or its too light or something is washed out or some other problem. It looked just fine on my monitor, not everyone's monitors are calibrated the same ... if at all.

As for characters I never use a character as purchased if ever, in fact the only reason i even buy characters at all are for the textures if I like them well enough. I prefer to make my own characters  and while I only use the morphs built into whatever figure I am using  whatever character I come up with is unique. I have never seen anyone else's characters looking like mine. ever.

On props and backgrounds  I don't use just any old crap unless theres nothing else and even then I try to change the textures on it to make it look better than it did originally. I remember there was a contest I had entered a render in and  even though I had bought the building I was using at DAZ the textures were VERY low res and just completely  took away from the whole of the render because of that.

I never claim to be super good but I think I am decent I KNOW I have a lot of room for improvement. I am trying to learn to build what I need when i cant find it but that takes time and thats something I don't have much of since I am in college right now. But contrary to what you  say I AM an artist though I don't limit myself to just 3D

"Sorry folks, hate to brake you the news, but THIS is the measurestick you will have to live up against if you want to call yourself a 3d artist:"

THAT is the measurestick (uh) if you want to call yourself a professional-level 3D artist and/or animator. It is NOT the minimum skill one must show to be able to say they're simply a 3D artist. According to that logic, the only people who can call themselves football players would be NFL players; the only writers would be those who write best-selling novels, and the only photographers would be the ones who's works hang in galleries or grace magazine covers.

SnowS

edit: I realized Joe's native language might not be English from his quoted text, so I toned down my response.

I feel that an earlier point bears repeating here: many "traditional media" artists consider anything which is created on a computer to be non-Art.  Artificial; fake.  No matter which high-priced 3D software package was used to produce it, or how "realistic" the final results appear to be.

BTW - since when is realism the end-all and the be-all of art, anyway?  Realism might be the holy grail of 3D (to some of us), but it isn't the holy grail of art in general.  Besides which: Mental Roy's (mental roy's?) 3D art in that example gallery doesn't look so realistic to me..........

And there's also another point that's been mentioned in these types of threads before, because it's pertinent: give the software / hardware developers a few more years to work on the problem, and pushbutton "Make Art" 3D realism will be commonplace: within fairly easy reach of any 10-year-old with a computer and some basic software.  Given that, the question will then become "who is the real 3D artist?"  The software end-user who makes images on his computer, or the programmer who wrote the software which made those images possible?  Not to mention the hardware developers who produced the high-powered machines needed to drive such software...........tsk tsk tsk -- "art" which drops out of sophisticated PC magic.  The best users of such software being little different from the 17-year-old who's mastered the latest version of Half-Life, and who can use the software to out-shoot anyone else in the game.  Which is an accomplishment of sorts -- but it's not as if he could have achieved it without the use of somebody else's "pre-made content" which made his accomplishment possible in the first place.

I'm sure that he'll brag about what he's done, anyway.......and he'll sound as if he did it all by himself.

BTW - those images in that "3D realism" gallery?  A fair number of people would find the images creepy, rather than impressive.  Some would feel like a plastic mannequin had come to life, and had assumed the appearance of a real person......or else that a real person had been first dipped in hot wax and then posed, à la Horror in the Wax Museum.

Movie critics probably wouldn't approve.  But that doesn't matter: because a high-end naked CG Angelina Jolie strutting around in a cave is a lot more artsy (and less clichéd) than a naked V4 in a temple with a sword.  Everyone knows that.

I'll file "pushbutton art" in the same category as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and quantum computers until when and if it actually arrives. Even then, it will probably be similar to pushbutton photography, though far more difficult since a photographer doesn't actually have to build a world. Not everyone with a camera is a photographer after all, and not every Poser user is an artist.

Quote - I'll file "pushbutton art" in the same category as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and quantum computers until when and if it actually arrives. Even then, it will probably be similar to pushbutton photography, though far more difficult since a photographer doesn't actually have to build a world. Not everyone with a camera is a photographer after all, and not every Poser user is an artist.

shrug  Nor does every Poser user claim to be an artist -- any more than everyone who owns a camera claims to be a professional photographer.

As for "pushbutton art" -- as I've already subtly hinted at above: many traditional media artists consider anything done on a PC to already fall into the category of "pushbutton art".......and therefore, by definition, unworthy of the label of Art (with a capital "A").  Even if it was produced in Maya.

One reason you don't see as much crap coming from the high-end apps, is that what you see is highly filtered, either by moderators or by public, humiliating abuse of those who post less than stellar work so that most don't try. There are plenty of crappy models and renders being made from top-end applications, there just isn't anywhere welcoming to those of lesser abilities in that tier to post them.

Sounds great, can we have the same here?

I love use Poser, since it's so easy to use and gives me the results I want in a very short time. The main reason I switched to Poser was lack of time. I used to model (and stil do occasionally) with Cinema4D for the games industry (some of my models ended in up in a number of RTS games ), but getting older I like to spent time with my family, non-virtual friends, get to bed on time, enjoy nature and so on. So I made the decision to stop modeling for games, but look for software to use in my own games that would give me models as quick as possible. So I ended up with Poser and have been using it ever since. Great for my games and later on my comics also.  Recently, I've left the games industry completely and took on a regular part-time job (working with troubled teens) trying to do something more useful with my life then only sitting behind a computer screen, looking back, it seems a waste of life by now. Still like playing with Poser, but with a time restriction, so the important things of life get not undersnowed by some crazy addiction again. To be honest I was glad to be able to pull away from it all.

That as a bit of background..... I've been one of those pro's as they tend to be called around here. I NEVER laughed about Poser, most of the pro's are a bit jealous of Poser users. I don't have a problem with the application, the problem is in the stuff people create with it. I still am amazed by the rubish the majority produces with it. It's given Poser a bad name and the content (geared at the majority of users preference) is it's biggest selling stubling block. Most Pro's will never take Poser seriously (not even when EF/SM puts Pro behind it's name) due to it's primary focus of the content and community. If the same filtering would have been applied to Poser, it would have gone a completely different direction and Poser wouldn't be in so much trouble is it is now. But by over-focussing on a certain genre, Poser has dug it's own grave and allowed itself to become the stepchild in 3D. The application itself has come a long way and offers a lot, the majority of the users are still the same and creating mediocre images with it, completely wasting the application. The most worriying is that most of these users never get any better at all and are cheering each other on with praising remarks. No wonder most of the 3D world laughs about the Poser related communities when all they seem to be able to do is creating mediocre images pretending they're masters at what they do and calling each other artists.

Take a look at what has happened to Vue and Carrara. Vue started out as some hobby application, same as Carrara. Vue has always applied filtering (I guess they've understood the potential danger of allowing poser users to link up with Vue) and keeps their distance from the poser communtiy. Look at where Vue is now and who's been using it. Now take Carrara, same origins and until DAZ took over it had a good user base and some well known names using it. The application was gaining notice in the 3D world..... until Eovia decided to sell out to DAZ. The user base moved on, the 'pros' watching on the fence stopped watching and Carrara lost it's good name and it's not taken seriously anymore. It has the same potential (and even greater) then Vue had, but it lost it's charm with the DAZ branding on it.

If the owners of Poser would have done the same as E-On, they would have grown huge, but the didn't keep the distance they should have (they even turned up at some porn industry related shows) and they've paid deerly for it. Now they desperately try to climb out of the pit they've dug themselves, but most likely they will never succeed.

Quote - One reason you don't see as much crap coming from the high-end apps, is that what you see is highly filtered, either by moderators or by public, humiliating abuse of those who post less than stellar work so that most don't try. There are plenty of crappy models and renders being made from top-end applications, there just isn't anywhere welcoming to those of lesser abilities in that tier to post them

I agree but IMO this can be both a good and bad thing. While you're right that it does lead to improved quality, it also tends to scare away less aggressive artists or those that aren't working in what would be called a 'traditional' CG medium. eg take a look at the fractal section of our gallery here... It's full of interesting even brilliant work, but none of the 'high end' forums out there would give it the time of day. In this at least, they're all the same as poser galleries, ie they worship at the altar of 'nekkid asian/elf chick with a sword', 'generic archi render' and 'hyperdetailed orc with axe' style images. The quality may be high but the themes are right down there with our NVIATWAS.

Quote - If the owners of Poser would have done the same as E-On, they would have grown huge, but the didn't keep the distance they should have (they even turned up at some porn industry related shows) and they've paid deerly for it. Now they desperately try to climb out of the pit they've dug themselves, but most likely they will never succeed.

On the contrary they should have pulled up their sleeves and started digging. The primary market for poser and associated content has always been people who like to render beautiful CG people in various stages of undress. There is no point in trying to distance yourself from your primary market, instead you should embrace it without shame. If your userbase wants to render nekkid people, make it easier and cooler for them to do so. Give them realistic skin, skin deformation, realistic jiggle and gravity, easier ways for characters to interact, easier ways to 'animate' their favorite characters. Add basic behaviorial AI so that users can interact with their virtual dolls, add speech synthesis so they can hear them talk... and so on. That's the poser goldmine right there.

Going after 'pros' who won't give Poser the time of day no matter what they add is not a good idea. People using MAX, Maya, XSI et al (i mean really using it and not just using it to render poser stuff) are not suddenly going to care about poser even if has a few plugins to host stuff in them.

*The primary market for poser and associated content has always been people who like to render beautiful CG people in various stages of undress.

• That's no true at all, the primary market was completely different then what it is now. Poser had a completely different focus when it was first released. The major shift did occur years later and the main figure to blame for this is V3. After V3 was released things started to change and suddenly everyone had to undress the poser figures. Before here release the marketplaces looked very different. If you ever have the time, try comparing pre-V3 content and post-V3 content and you will notice a huge shift of focus. Also a very interesting thing is that up to Poser 4 Pro sales went up, after that sales declined for each version, slowly but surely.

The galleries looked quite differently also. When I came here first they were pretty cool and quite decent, the majority of images were very innovative, inspiring and some even stunning. Now it's the same thing over and over again (with a few exceptions inbetween). If I would be looking for an application that was similair to poser the first time now and would check out the galleries (at various poser related places) I would quickly move on and look for a different application (my wife would never agreee with it now). When I first bought Poser the galleries looked very differently and I had no trouble buying Poser at all(neither had my wife). If I had to make that choice all over again in these days, I feel very differently and would have a number of objections for buying.

"*...'cause if there was one thing she don' need, it's another cross-eyed naked little vicky to feed...

...in the ghe-tooooo....*"

snork

Oh, c'mon, folks - get over yerselves. You got your chain yanked by an amateur writer who managed (most likely by accident) to pull off a bon mot for once in his (to now) obscure career. I mean, think about this... even the cheesy pun-based 'nym (y'all know what Mental Ray is, right?) should've given that away.

/P

This is the question that frequently gets overlooked when this whole argument comes up again (and again and again and again...)

What is the purpose the user (artist, whatever) is going for?

If someone wants to do professional quality animation or astoundingly lifelike rendering then yeah, Poser is pretty sucky.  If someone wants to get into the professional CG industry then yeah, showing your stuff in Maya or Max or Lightwave is the way to go and Poser is kiddie stuff.  If you want to create 3D objects and people from scratch then yeah, Poser ain't your thing.

On the other hand, there are a great many things that you might want to do where Poser is perfectly fine.

Here's a good analogy: there are a great many comics out there drawn by truly talented artists who have ridiculously great skill when it comes to the pencil (or graphics tablet), some in print and some as webcomics.

Then there's Irregular Webcomics, which is just digital photos of Lego or RPG playing figures.  There's xkcd and Order of the Stick, literally drawn using stick figures.  There's Dinosaur Comics, which has over 1000 strips consisting of the exact same panels of clipart and only the dialog changed.  Heck, there's Dilbert, which uses highly simplistic characters.

By any measure of purely artistic skill, those four webcomics  and one printed comic are pretty much bottom of the barrel.  But the technical skill required by the artwork (or lack thereof) isn't the point.  Order of the Stick, to use one example, is an award-winning comic whose popularity allowed the creator to go into comics full-time.  In this case the art is stylistic and plays second fiddle to story and characterization and the writing.  He's fully capable of drawing more realistically (as he does in one strip), but realistic rendering and the work that would go into it isn't the point.  Hell, in some strips he goes backwards stylistically, drawing even more crudely with crayons.  Yet the whole thing works.

Being able to make a pretty picture of a figure that you modeled from scratch, textured yourself and so on is great.  I don't have the skill to do it, so I applaud people who do.  But until you prove otherwise, all you've demonstrated is that you can make a pretty, static, picture.  Meanwhile, those pre-made clothes and textures and figures and basic lighting that the "artistic purists" complain about?  I've seen very good stories being told with them.  Individually the panels in the story might not be as technically well done but they've demonstrated a skill that the super-realistic creator hasn't.  So which is better?  Both, and neither.

Finally, some people just want to fool around with CG, and Poser is perfectly fine with them.  It's like amateur writing: some is good, much is bad, and a great deal is at best mediocre, but you don't try and pretend that it isn't writing just because there are people who are very good writers out there.

Quote - Oh, c'mon, folks - get over yerselves. You got your chain yanked by an amateur writer who managed (most likely by accident) to pull off a bon mot for once in his (to now) obscure career. I mean, think about this... even the cheesy pun-based 'nym (y'all know what Mental Ray is, right?) should've given that away.

Uh yeah, duh, I knew the name was a pun. I don't need twenty people to tell me that or that the column is meant to yank people's chains. I get the humor. I thought the conversation had been pretty civil and had moved beyond the comments made in the article. I know some people think we are beating a dead horse, but they are free to leave the thread and find something they find more interesting. But then some people desperately need to make condescending comments to others to make themselves feel superior.

Quote - By any measure of purely artistic skill, those four webcomics  and one printed comic are pretty much bottom of the barrel.  But the technical skill required by the artwork (or lack thereof) isn't the point.  Order of the Stick, to use one example, is an award-winning comic whose popularity allowed the creator to go into comics full-time.  In this case the art is stylistic and plays second fiddle to story and characterization and the writing.

This reminds me of another article in the same issue of 3D World on machinima. Machinima is animation rendered in real time, using something like a game engine to create short films. The look is obviously less realistic than fully rendered animation, but like often happens, creative people used the tools at hand to tell their stories. Those who didn't have access to the expensive apps and render farms required to do traditional animation, used the game engine they alreay had for creative outlet, and have gained notice from the 'pros.' As I said, art takes many forms, and sometimes it can look crude or less polished but still be just as valuable because of some quality it contains, that moves people in some way.

"Art" is no excuse for shoddy craftmanship.

Bazze creates accurate models of airplanes.
Stonemason creates accurate models of buildings and streets.

We already have all the "innaccurate" and "crude" and "simple" human meshes we ever need.
There should be room in the Poserverse for at least ONE set of photorealistic human meshes.

Quote - There should be room in the Poserverse for at least ONE set of photorealistic human meshes.

Hey, I'd love to see that too. Someone was attempting to do just that, and was posting his progress in the forums here, until he got harassed enough that he left. The bending of the model was quite impressive. Rigging in Poser is the real weak point in model realism, I believe. (And lighting if you're rendering in poser).

The major shift did occur years later and the main figure to blame for this is V3. After V3 was released things started to change and suddenly everyone had to undress the poser figures.

If V3 hadn't appeared, another (more or less) anatomical correct female model would have be the leading poser figure. Perhaps it's hard to accept but the market isn't ruled by moral standards. Sex sells and not only on the internet. Back in the eighties there were three kinds of videotapes on the market: VHS, Betamax and Philips 2000. Although Philips 2000 was technical superior to VHF, it died a silent death because Philips didn't want to sell pornotapes.
And there is another economic principle working: The most supported figure will have the greatest support, in another words: everyone loves a winner.
But what the main issue is: Poser is a tool, that makes it possible to visualise someones imagination in such an easy way that you don't need a master degree in computer graphics to achieve that.
For most  people it would be better to keep those  fantasies private, but a lot of them suffer on overestimation and shameless show them to the rest of the world. Those are the same people you see in the pre-auditions of Idols.  You look at them and you tear your sofa apart in an empathic feel of shame.
It would be good for this community if there was a hall of fame but also a hall of shame for the galleries, which would judged by an indepent professional jury., and not the hug-clubs that are haunting this place.
If we could show the best , but also the worst what poser has to offer, perhaps it would be taken mopre seriously.

my €0,02.

Bopper.

I'd say that Apollo Maximus is an example of how Poser's rigging can actually yield very good results.  But since it has been banished to non-standard land, we can never hope to see it used as a model of this.  DAZ continues to go the other direction, making the figures more and more complicated to patch up shotty rigging...

Big words about "art", everybody!

Art has nothing to do with other peoples opinion. Art has nothing to do with accuracy. Art has nothing to do with anything, but itself.

Art touches the heart. Of course there are a lot of works inside our gallery that do not touch our hearts - but they touched the heart of the people who created them. And that touches my heart.

I don't care what this Mortal Rook guy says - if Rendo was, is or becomes a "ghetto" of people being happy with what they are doing, I will happily and proudly be part of it. And simply let the people play.

And another word about "accurate art": who ever tries to measure "art" or even craftsmanship on "accuracy", should place himself amidst Auguste Rodins "People Of Calais" and open his/her eyes.

*A bit more respect for the word "ghetto" and it's original meaning would have been good, by the way.

Heh -- a lot of famous artists have come from the ghetto.  Not so many from the ivory towers.

As for getting someone's chain yanked -- that might be the intent -- but chain-yankers sometimes find that they've managed to pull something large and heavy down on top of themselves......something that the chain was attached to, and that was sitting up above their heads.

Chain-yanking isn't always a safe activity.  Perhaps a tiger is on the other end of the chain.......:biggrin:

For the longest time I thought artists were relaxed, Mellow and Chilled out, But I guess not.

I'm not reading through all of that, but you guys are almost bad as the gear heads (Car Junkies) with their whole Imports VS Domestic thing.

Art is Art, may not necessarily have to be good, but why bash? What good comes out of it?
Most 3D artists I have known have some kind of conflict with 2D artists, and now 3D artist have some kind of hate towards each other just because of the Program we use?

I really don't know what the big deal is someone please clarify for me.

Quote - For the longest time I thought artists were relaxed, Mellow and Chilled out, But I guess not.

Hmm, it's always seemed to me that much art comes from troubled souls more than mellow people. > Quote - I'm not reading through all of that, but you guys are almost bad as the gear heads (Car Junkies) with their whole Imports VS Domestic thing.

Well, if you had read all of that, you would have seen that many of us agree with you, that art has many faces and the tool doesn't matter so much as what is expressed. :) So please don't use the all inclusive "you guys" and lump us all in one batch.

Quote - For the longest time I thought artists were relaxed, Mellow and Chilled out, But I guess not.

Artists, as a group, are no more "chilled out" than any other given group of human beings.  In fact, they're generally a little more keyed-up than the others........

Quote - Art is Art, may not necessarily have to be good, but why bash? What good comes out of it?
Most 3D artists I have known have some kind of conflict with 2D artists, and now 3D artist have some kind of hate towards each other just because of the Program we use?

Sounds reasonable.

Quote - I really don't know what the big deal is someone please clarify for me.

Good question -- write a letter to the editor at 3D World magazine, and perhaps they'll deign to condescend and provide you with an answer.

Quote - > Quote - For the longest time I thought artists were relaxed, Mellow and Chilled out, But I guess not.

Hmm, it's always seemed to me that much art comes from troubled souls more than mellow people. > Quote - I'm not reading through all of that, but you guys are almost bad as the gear heads (Car Junkies) with their whole Imports VS Domestic thing.

Well, if you had read all of that, you would have seen that many of us agree with you, that art has many faces and the tool doesn't matter so much as what is expressed. :) So please don't use the all inclusive "you guys" and lump us all in one batch.

Sorry for the being inclusive, Didn't mean it that way lol.

As for writing to 3D world, I don't have the right words to write to them =(

Quote - > Quote - I really don't know what the big deal is someone please clarify for me.

Good question -- write a letter to the editor at 3D World magazine, and perhaps they'll deign to condescend and provide you with an answer.

Well, to be fair it was just one columnist, who is known for his sarcastic and biting humor and where everyone is fair game for criticism. 3D World in general is not (openly) condescending to its hobbiest readers. As has been said, there are tutorials and content offered for daz/poser/bryce users.

Quote - Well, to be fair it was just one columnist, who is known for his sarcastic and biting humor and where everyone is fair game for criticism. 3D World in general is not (openly) condescending to its hobbiest readers. As has been said, there are tutorials and content offered for daz/poser/bryce users.

Very good -- and good to hear.

The thing that I think that a lot of proud "high-end" connoisseurs fail to realize or acknowledge about Poser has to do with the fact that there's a large & growing market which is comprised of lowly Poser hobbyists and users.  In other words: there's money to be made.

It's amazing how many artists forget all about their purist tendencies when someone waves a check under their noses..........

Quote - One reason you don't see as much crap coming from the high-end apps, is that what you see is highly filtered, either by moderators or by public, humiliating abuse of those who post less than stellar work so that most don't try. There are plenty of crappy models and renders being made from top-end applications, there just isn't anywhere welcoming to those of lesser abilities in that tier to post them.

Sounds great, can we have the same here?...That as a bit of background..... I've been one of those pro's as they tend to be called around here. I NEVER laughed about Poser, most of the pro's are a bit jealous of Poser users. I don't have a problem with the application, the problem is in the stuff people create with it. I still am amazed by the rubish the majority produces with it. It's given Poser a bad name and the content (geared at the majority of users preference) is it's biggest selling stubling block. Most Pro's will never take Poser seriously (not even when EF/SM puts Pro behind it's name) due to it's primary focus of the content and community. If the same filtering would have been applied to Poser, it would have gone a completely different direction and Poser wouldn't be in so much trouble is it is now. But by over-focussing on a certain genre, Poser has dug it's own grave and allowed itself to become the stepchild in 3D. The application itself has come a long way and offers a lot, the majority of the users are still the same and creating mediocre images with it, completely wasting the application. The most worriying is that most of these users never get any better at all and are cheering each other on with praising remarks. No wonder most of the 3D world laughs about the Poser related communities when all they seem to be able to do is creating mediocre images pretending they're masters at what they do and calling each other artists....

The way I see it is that Poser really isn't a true fleshed out 3D platform.  It's a rendering tool with some utilities built in to make it easier to deal with already complete meshes. (boning, materials/textures, etc)  In other words, it's a hobby tool.  I don't put it in the same class as anything which is actually designed to construct meshes and create them from the ground up.  I also don't put it in the same class of tools used most commonly in professional rendering/animation either.  In short, it's a hobbyist tool and the users, community and publishers seem to recognize that.

The publisher's job, in this case, is they have to keep their product alive.  Poser became popular not because it was some awesome 3D tool.  It became popular because it automated many complex tasks and presented some decently powerful options using a click of a button.  But, all of that takes up space and programming skills necessary to support them.  Thus, the package is trimmed and cut to give exactly what the publisher/devloper wants even if it part of a much larger market segment.  (ie: You can get a spreadsheet to manage your checkbook, you don't need an online stock portfolio manager with dedicated feeds to your PDA every 5 secs.) Poser is a check-book management piece of software and not a stock portfolio and futures trading tool.

So, they have to tailor their site to the people that buy, or would buy, their product.  That's the hobbyist.  Hobbyist like experiencing their hobby and sharing that experience.  So, the easier it is to do that, the better it is for the publisher and the hobbyist/fan.  That's where crappy renders and questionable/objectionable content comes from.  If you're a big fan and can upload a crappy render on a whim, and you are sincerely impressed with it, then you'll do it.  As far as Poser is concerned.. they want you to do that.  If you feel good about having it on their site, they're happy because you're more inclined to keep spending money on your hobby.  If you were constantly bombarded with 3D artwork rendered by professionals which made your 3 minute wonder look like garbage after you "worked" at it all day, you'd be somewhat less inclined to be enthusiastic about your hobby.  If someone had to critque every Poser hobbyist's work, there wouldn't be very much content and a lack of content is "bad" for anything online.

I understand your frustration, somewhat.  But, it's a hobbyist's site.  Anyone who represents it as otherwise isn't really being honest with themselves IF, and only IF, they are trying to compare it to a professional, working class, 3D artist's site.  There are wizards that can force Poser to do some really wonderful things.  They do deserve respect for what they can do with that tool.  The are "professionals" regarding its use in many ways.  But, in the end, it's in its own class of 3D software and they're just astronomically talented with it in order to produce some of what they do.

I expect to see garbage renders.  I am also pleasantly surprised by some pretty amazing ones from time to time.  It takes a heck of a lot of skill using Poser to get a decent quality render out of it. (life still shots, etc.)  But, no matter how much they develop it, it won't be replacing ZBrush, 3ds, etc.. and it won't be on render-farms at ILM.

Quote - > Quote - Oh, c'mon, folks - get over yerselves. You got your chain yanked by an amateur writer who managed (most likely by accident) to pull off a bon mot for once in his (to now) obscure career. I mean, think about this... even the cheesy pun-based 'nym (y'all know what Mental Ray is, right?) should've given that away.

Uh yeah, duh....

Didn't direct it @ you, but if you desire to take offense? Okay, be my guest. ;)

Quote - I thought the conversation had been pretty civil and had moved beyond the comments made in the article.

Sure, once you weed out all the drama, the recycled arguments, the rehydrated allusions and analogies... comes to what, two posts? And someone bring me another Swiffer, please - this one couldn't possibly hold another ounce of dust.

Quote - I know some people think we are beating a dead horse...

"And this year's Oscar for 'Most Jaw-Droppingly Obvious Observation of This Geologic Era' Goes to..."

Nah - just yankin' your chain.

All goofing aside?

I don't know what's more hilarious - the original article (c'mon, you gotta admit, the imagery alone is worth the price of admission), or the passionate drama that attends it here...

...it's just art, folks.

/P

Poser is just a hobby for me I could care less what someone who get's paid to do  3D Professionally thinks about my skill levels. It's just something I do to pass time.

hmm, if all poser art were moderated for quality my gallery would be tiny .

And the world would miss out on an award winning artwork

I just like to make pictures...;) See things I'd like to see, but sometimes don't. Heck, we all start somewhere, so we're gonna make crappy models and bad textures at first, but it's all part of the learning process...

..and anyone who thinks artists are mellow should have seen the OT forums back in '04...;)

Thanks for those posts arcebus and pakled...   that's basically the truth of it I think. 

I have taken art courses in college and one thing I learned from all of those hours of listening to the professors' lecture and the images of the "classics" up on the overhead was that some images touched me and some didn't.  That doesn't mean the ones that didn't weren't good, they just didn't do anything for me...

So what does that mean exactly???  that art is all in the eye of the beholder, and nothing more.  It's as simple as that, there is no good or bad art, there is only the image one is viewing at the time, and how it appears to that viewer, because the same image will be interpreted differently depending on who's looking at it.

lol,  I know my images aren't anything to write home about, but so what, the fact is I love 3D art of all kinds and "play" with poser and other 3D apps because that's what I enjoy doing (all the artists on this site, it's all your fault!!!  it wasn't until I started browsing the galleries here that I got so hooked on this stuff!!   lol)

I have to agree with a few of the posts that I just can't understand why someone would waste their time knocking other forms of 3D art, websites or apps.  All I can say is they must have too much time on their hands...  lol

I've seen images in the galleries that made me think; what was the artist thinking when they created that ?!?!?!?   But who am I to say that the image doesn't mean something or is not important to the person who created it?   You'll never catch me giving bad reviews or mean or unkind comments to any artist on this or any other art site, because what's the point?  

anyways, had to put my thoughts in on this one 'cause it's a good thread.  I really admire some of the people who create some of the images I've seen in the galleries here, and wish I could do as good work.   Some of the images I've seen are amazing.

As far as the reference to the "ghetto" -
hey, I grew up in the ghetto,
have lived my life in the ghetto,
I love the ghetto,
it's all I've ever known, so what's the big deal???

cheers,

M

Quote -

I don't know what's more hilarious - the original article (c'mon, you gotta admit, the imagery alone is worth the price of admission), or the passionate drama that attends it here...

/lurk mode

Firstly, hello ,

Secondly, it was one of the funniest things I've read for a long time. The accompanying picture still makes me smile. The writer obviously knows the sites, the software and the galleries. Maybe they are or have been a Poser user...
I read it as affectionate satire but then I'm just a weird old foreign person with a strange hobby.

Personally, I love these threads for the satirical entertainment value of watching the underlying drama of those who regularly participate in such threads -- and then who decry the 'drama' that one finds in them.

[Edited to add:] Lurkers have the best deal of all going for them.  Free entertainment without having to pay cable-company rates for it.  Unless if someone happens to have high-speed internet fees which they pay in order to have the privilege of reading through these types of overly-melodramatic threads.  Which they have no use for, of course.

Quote - *The primary market for poser and associated content has always been people who like to render beautiful CG people in various stages of undress.

• That's no true at all, the primary market was completely different then what it is now. Poser had a completely different focus when it was first released. The major shift did occur years later and the main figure to blame for this is V3. After V3 was released things started to change and suddenly everyone had to undress the poser figures.

...

The galleries looked quite differently also. When I came here first they were pretty cool and quite decent, the majority of images were very innovative, inspiring and some even stunning. Now it's the same thing over and over again

Your registration date here implies you've been here almost as long as me, and yet you don't remember when renderosity's galleries had explicity sex scenes as a very common feature?

I do.

It was before V1. In the possette days. Renderotica and renderosity used to be the same website, lets not forget that.

The work here today is much cleaner than it used to be, maybe too much so in some regard, censoring out a lot of innocent work as well, but at the same time allowing in a lot of 'trash' if it doesn't trigger certain buttons.

The work today does have a certain recycled look to it, a lot of people post nothing but simple renders of canned content, not even using that canned material in innovative ways...

But that has always been true. What differs now is that there are a few hundred times more people total, and the ones doing something innovative with even the canned models get buried in the pile.

Quote - Personally, I love these threads for the satirical entertainment value of watching the underlying drama of those who regularly participate in such threads -- and then who decry the 'drama' that one finds in them.

[Edited to add:] Lurkers have the best deal of all going for them.  Free entertainment without having to pay cable-company rates for it.  Unless if someone happens to have high-speed internet fees which they pay in order to have the privilege of reading through these types of overly-melodramatic threads.  Which they have no use for, of course.

The irony of this statement being made by a member with nearly fifteen thousand posts is too much to overlook.

Quote - The irony of this statement being made by a member with nearly fifteen thousand posts is too much to overlook.

:biggrin:

The majority of which are in non-public fora, and are purely business related.    In any case -- I see no irony.  I didn't dispute the fact of my own participation -- now if I had, then that would have been ironic.  Which was the irony of the situation that I was hinting at in the first place..........so, coming full circle: you find the irony.

Now that's ironic.

Irony for the masses.

The real irony is that that magazine gets a regular sales boost from including some random popular female poser figure or clothing item from Daz or a vendor here every few issues and then tries to boost its cred by slapping the hand that feeds it.

Err.... so what?

If you can't poke fun at something once in awhile, then you've reached the stage where you should, for your own sanity's sake, walk away from it.

Read the kernel.org mailing lists sometime... the flamewars in there are hellish, and yet funny as hell at times (esp. those where Linus Torvalds gets involved... how many other top-end computer industry architects will actually --and literally- say that someone or something is "full of shit"?) These guys write the actual Linux kernel, yet sometimes they attack their own baby with a ferocity that would make Steve Ballmer (the guy who runs Microsoft) blush and avert his gaze in shame.

I spent a bit of time in the bowels of DAZ|Studio's codebase. OTOH, I (at least nowadays) can happily tell you its shortcomings, and freely describe the thing for what it is (at least as I see it). It's a sign of a healthy skepticism. If one can make those observations funny as well, then more power to 'em.

The old phrase 'That which does not kill me...' applies to software packages and communities as well as people. ;)

We now return you to the impassioned defense of near-naked cross-eyed bimbos waving heavy medieval weaponry in alleged sacred spaces...

/P

Quote - Err.... so what?

That states my opinion on the dot! I have over 60+ issues of 3d World and it seems  mental case roy  writer(s) flip flops all the time.  One month (s)he will state something then a few months or even weeks later state the opposite.

SO WHAT?

Just one opinion against many

Quote - I spent a bit of time in the bowels

Ah, that explains why you can be such a turd. I kid! :P

ok so every poser user ISN't going to render a G rated scene. who cares. Calling V4 dressed up in some vamp outfit barely covering her "highlights" Ghetto, is , IMO is the equivelant of calling The Birth of Venus by Botticelli , porno.

Renderosity is a site for people to experiment and develop their skills. Members here use a variety of tools , I myself use Poser , Bryce and 3D Studio Max. Just because I have Max doesn't mean I have to put down the lower end tools, each has their purpose as well as their learning curves. I have seen crap made in Max and masterpieces made in Poser. What tools get you there are irrelevant , if the outcome looks good. then its art.

Quote - Trivia (most of you should know this!): What is the "hello world" mesh of 3D CG programming?

 
The teapot

I don't recal its actual name but thats it

Quote - We now return you to the impassioned defense of near-naked cross-eyed bimbos waving heavy medieval weaponry in alleged sacred spaces...

/P

No, no, no.......now we return to defending the high-concept Art of a high-end-CG-generated version of a completely naked Angelina Jolie strutting around in a dark cave.  That's FAR less trite than V4's in temples with swords -- because only rank amateurs would produce trite stuff like that.

BTW - I heard a report that Angelina Jolie (the real version, not her CG counterpart) was real-world upset & angry over her 3D avatar's constant state of nudity in that movie.  Apparently, she wasn't informed that her CG-self would be naked all of the time.  Jolie obviously understands that people only go & cough up their filthy money to see such movies (with her in them) so that they can properly appreciate a famous work of primitive early European literature.  High culture, and all of that jazz.........

V4 in a temple is hackneyed because she's done in Poser; naked cave-dwelling Angelina Jolie is High Concept Art because she was done up in some high-end program or other.

But admittedly -- it is true that one of them has probably been animated with better lighting.  So I'll give you that.

Well, here's a thought... maybe it's just irritatingly impossible to get 'normal' clothes to look convincing on these figures, and it's just a heck of a lot easier to get some measure of realism with skimpy little bits pasted on here and there? This especially if you haven't had much practice with the program. Continuing to think backwards, you have an itsy outfit that's functioning well, and you come up with a scene it works in, like an abandoned temple, and a reason to be there, like defending it with an unweildy sword? There you go. A logical explanation! ... or not. ;)

naked cave-dwelling Angelina Jolie is High Concept Art because she was done up in some high-end program or other. Who claimed that, I wonder?

Quote - BTW - I heard a report that Angelina Jolie (the real version, not her CG counterpart) was real-world upset & angry over her 3D avatar's constant state of nudity in that movie.  Apparently, she wasn't informed that her CG-self would be naked all of the time.

She was angry because she usually likes to do that sort of thing in person :P

Quote - No, no, no.......now we return to defending the high-concept Art of a high-end-CG-generated version of a completely naked Angelina Jolie strutting around in a dark cave.  That's FAR less trite than V4's in temples with swords -- because only rank amateurs would produce trite stuff like that.

I don't buy this. I'v never seen any of those people doing 'high-end-CG-generated versions' of NVIATWAS claim that their work is anything more then an example of skill and craftsmanship. At most they take credit for the exceptional talent and hard work it takes to produce one of these high quality works, which they are of course entitled to. And all those wonderful ZBrush modellers that breathe life into dead grey polygons are as amazing as any master sculptor that ever lived. Just because they moved to a more modern medium then clay or marble doesnt diminish their work in the least.

How many of the renders in our galleries can make that kind of claim, NVIATWAS or otherwise ?

Quote - ok so every poser user ISN't going to render a G rated scene. who cares. Calling V4 dressed up in some vamp outfit barely covering her "highlights" Ghetto, is , IMO is the equivelant of calling The Birth of Venus by Botticelli , porno.

Heh - not really. 'ghetto' is a description of quality, whereas 'porno' is a description of subject matter.

--

Quote - Well, here's a thought... maybe it's just irritatingly impossible to get 'normal' clothes to look convincing on these figures, and it's just a heck of a lot easier to get some measure of realism with skimpy little bits pasted on here and there? This especially if you haven't had much practice with the program.

It is easier to just not deal with clothing, but in Poserdom's earlier days, a huge chunk of folks simply painted those on in Photoshop. Clothing is struggling along - most 3d pros will simply model the clothing on the figure as part of the figure itself, since most of the time they don't expect the mesh to be re-usable beyond whatever project the mesh is being used for.

DAZ is still (allegedly still) working on some sort of clothing system for D|S, but it's not easy to do. You're talking about (at base) collision detection. This is a pain in the ass to code for under good conditions (special low/no poly 'cloth' draping over low/no-poly primitives), let alone conditions where you have a multi-thousand-poly clothing item that has to fit over a ~100k-poly-figure. Poser's current solution is pretty impractical, unless you have a metric ton of patience and/or already know up-front what the final composition is going to look like (though props to them for coming up with something...)

As for nudity? Oftentimes it is the perfect state for a figure to be in. OTOH, there has to be a 'reason' for it.

--

Quote - > Quote - Trivia (most of you should know this!): What is the "hello world" mesh of 3D CG programming?

 
The teapot

The Utah Teapot - done up by a gent at the University of Utah to test some very early concepts.

/P