Cage made a post that mentioned looking through his old PZ3 files. I'd love to see examples of people's favorute work that they did in Poser 4 or earlier versions. Say stuff rendered pre-Y2K? Or maybe a side-by-side of thier favorite earliest work and favorite latest work?

Never had poser 4. Started with Poser 6. No longer have that. Didn't do anything great worth sharing.

I'd love to see a reworked image. Something someone did in an old version of poser and rerendered in one of the new versions using all the great new features.

Yep, that would be cool.

Wow, well that would be here in my gallery

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=315776&user_id=2787&np&np

 

I used Poser 4 for a long time, even after I had purchased Poser 5, 6 and 7, needed to use for developement of older models.

I found this one while digging through my files.  Far, far too many of the other renders left over from that era would be more suitable for the *other* "Render-" site, where many of them were originally posted.  The place used to get far more traffic from the mainstream Rosity crowd, in the first year or so after it spun off from this site.

I'll see if I can find any other "nice" renders from the era.  :unsure:  This one is dated from August of 2002, not long before I got P5.

Okay.  Exceeded the file size limit, with the original .jpg.  Trying a re-compressed one.

Made this one for my nephew in January, 2002.  He was 4, at the time.

Silly one for the old "Batgirl Bat-Trap Homepage!" website.

I'm not sure I could say any of these is my favorite from the era.  I seem to recall more renders, and better renders, but little seems to have survived.  :unsure:

September, 1999, only a couple of weeks into using Poser 4.  I like to say, "We set the bar low, in those days," but I'm not sure that was true.  I think it was just me.  :lol:

Okay, I'm-a stop talking now. 

Oh, darn.  Now I found my favorite, so I have to post.  In March of 2000, the then-hip hangout of Render-(the other place) had a thread in which participants were challenged to depict the presumed appearance of our very own Dr. Geep.  This one made Traveler go "ROFLMAO", IIRC.  :unsure:

Thanks, Cage. Your old stuff had that more illustrative look old Poser 4 stuff had. Less photo-real and more like old pulp magazine cover paintings in gouache. I think I liked that old stuff more than most of the new stuff... it was more Folk Art and less Hollywood. I feel like the old stuff as I remember it had more emphasis on weird imagery and narratives. It was less about the virtual surfaces given the inevitable "plastic-looking" quality of the renders. I try to keep hold of that in my work by blasting stuff with IBL or plugging diffuse texture maps into the ambient channels but I have not found my way back to that weird plastic quality in renders. My computer was so lousy back in the late nineties that I often just anti-aliased my previews rather than actually rendered. I loved painting in the hair and clothes etc. in Photoshop. There was something about the crudeness of the models and render engine that drove personal vision more in a lot of people's work I kind of think and often that made it pretty evocative. There is an unrealness to pre-firefly renders that I still find fascinating. 

 

One of my very first Wings3D models: A toy Lunar Module I had as a child.

 

Another Wings model: A Lego semi truck. I think this is the only render I used the Poser 4 boy in.

 

This was really hard to get right: A Kenner SSP gyro-car.

 

Daz' PreSchool girl having fun with a kite made in Wings.

Aren't those P4 pigtails adorable ?  :-)

 

Trying to do same space girls. Lots and lots and lots of magnets. Because that's all we had...

That bottom face likness is so spot on!

Thanks ! :-)

 

But honestly, I hated those "good ol' times". Everything was so hard to do.

Joints looked like cr*p, no proper scaling, no MorphBrush. Poser would croak at too many polygons.

Only magnets to sculpt. Not even a python script to mirror a magnet. I had to literally write down a dozend settings per magnet just so I could mirror the morph. No fun if you have to do it a hundred times or more.

What I can now do in minutes took me days back then.

Of course artistically it can be interresting to restrict yourself. Like using a Brownie or a Polaroid camera instead of a full on SRL.

But I think I could have done so much more if I only had the tools I have now.

 

I haven't looked at all that many of other people's Poser renders over the years (never really spend much time browsing galleries), but when I've ended up doing so I sort of see a bit of what you're saying, momodot.  A lot of the more current Poser images I've seen seem to get lost in a fascination with the more advanced methods and techniques, and end up being showcases for a shader technique or lighting method or figure-build concept.  Seemingly.  I dunno.  :unsure:  Whereas the... call them "more primitive" efforts are often more visually inventive or adventurous.  Even from the same artists.  Mind you, I'm mainly thinking of superheroine galleries at DeviantArt or someplace.  :unsure:

So I can see what you're saying, and I think I've said things like that before, myself.  But Joe is right!  Everything was so hard to do!  Those old renders were often a frustration, because the available software couldn't begin to help you approach what you actually wanted to express.  In those really early days, we didn't have Blender or Wings3D, any of the free graphics utilities that make things accessible now.  I started out with Amorphium, and... man.  That's another one that steered like a cow.  :lol:  Later had RDS, couldn't do a thing with it.  Nendo was a huge breakthrough, for me, and then Wings came along and things started to get better.

Everything was hard, and it all took a long time to do, just like it does today, but the results were so, so much dodgier.  Things are better now, overall.  Yay, progress!  :laugh:

I mainly went for animations.However I found this from Poser 4. Although it was done a bit later than 2000 it was in Poser 4. I cannot remember who made the underwater background.It was I think a freebie as was the shark and sub. Bubbles was done in Photoshop! Cheers

Quote - Thanks, Cage. Your old stuff had that more illustrative look old Poser 4 stuff had. Less photo-real and more like old pulp magazine cover paintings in gouache. 

I don't know who made this image or how old it is, but I've always loved it for that 'pulp magazine cover painting' feel. When it looks like a painting it's easier to enjoy it at face value, to overlook the drinking straw elbows and bubble-butt-type problems because painters don't always get everything perfect.

As you get closer to photorealism the uncanny valley thing kicks in and small things like staring eyes or unnatural poses really jump out at you.

 

Quote - There was something about the crudeness of the models and render engine that drove personal vision more in a lot of people's work I kind of think and often that made it pretty evocative. There is an unrealness to pre-firefly renders that I still find fascinating. 

It can be argued that the simpler the tool, the more the person wielding the tool gets into the finished work. As the tool becomes more complex some of that direct connection between artist and work can be lost in fussing with the tool.

Quote - I haven't looked at all that many of other people's Poser renders over the years (never really spend much time browsing galleries), but when I've ended up doing so I sort of see a bit of what you're saying, momodot.  A lot of the more current Poser images I've seen seem to get lost in a fascination with the more advanced methods and techniques, and end up being showcases for a shader technique or lighting method or figure-build concept.  Seemingly.  I dunno.  :unsure:  Whereas the... call them "more primitive" efforts are often more visually inventive or adventurous.  Even from the same artists.  Mind you, I'm mainly thinking of superheroine galleries at DeviantArt or someplace.  :unsure:

I agree. I've noticed when looking through older galleries that older stuff focused more on concept and visual creativity than imitating reality. I've seen alot of recent renders where the artist says they used Octane or some other high end renderer and the image is just boring. The image says nothing and there is no attentention to composition, color, or concept. It's ironic that traditional western art moved from representational, DaVinci for instance, to abstract, Picasso, whereas Poser has moved from abstraction to photorealism.

I think the average art lover would like to see a combo of the two. We'd like to see the the artists "hand", and a unique style and concept.

I'm going to say this was my favorite render from the P4 days...  Can't believe I built that mech almost 20 years ago on an Amiga 4000, and haven't built one since.  Bummer.

(And yes, it's the same mech as the one in my avatar pic which was rendered in trueSpace 4.  I could never figure out how to get it into Poser as anything more than a static prop.  Well, I could do it now probably if it were still up to my standards. :bored:)

Moogal, that's a cool render. Yeah, new tech is nice. I am just fascinated by the old super Poser 4 specific look and miss it sometimes. Wish there was an archive of that weird old stuff. Renderotica used to have some wild Poser 3/4 stuff up but I'm sure those artists are long gone from the gallery now... Definitely no uncanny valley issues with Poser 4... it had such a specific lo-fi 3D look to it though... almost toon-like to my 2014 eyes. Its not that I am against progress... I guess I just wish old and new mediums co-existed more. Silent-film and talkies etc. Not the old stuff only but new stuff in the old forms. I miss some of my old mid-nineties art-making software that won't run on modern machines, I'm glad for my new software but I still do miss my old software.

Quote - Moogal, that's a cool render. Yeah, new tech is nice. I am just fascinated by the old super Poser 4 specific look and miss it sometimes. Wish there was an archive of that weird old stuff. Renderotica used to have some wild Poser 3/4 stuff up but I'm sure those artists are long gone from the gallery now... Definitely no uncanny valley issues with Poser 4... it had such a specific lo-fi 3D look to it though... almost toon-like to my 2014 eyes.

Thanks!...

If you really like the P4 look, maybe spend more time with the preview renderer... They are very similar in terms of limitations and shading results.  P4 render can do bump maps, preview can get a similar look if bump maps are pre-converted to normal maps... P4 can use more shadow casting lights as well, but preview calculates them much faster.  Otherwise, they seem pretty similar.  My image would have looked even better with bumpmapping, but at that time I did not know how to unwrap the model (which was also a single .obj).

Here's Andy with a light casting prop rendered in preview.  Not much different from what I expect the P4 renderer would generate.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/media/folder_10/file_494965.jpg