Also note that Unreal, like other game engines, generally have the AO and Specular baked into the textures. They also use, compared to typical Poser Content, very low poly content, and very simplified rigging. Poser Content and Game Content have exactly opposite goals. 

Has Unreal been used in any actual movies?

...excluding Sci-Fi originals LOL

"Also note that Unreal, like other game engines, generally have the AO and Specular baked into the textures. They also use, compared to typical Poser Content, very low poly content, and very simplified rigging. Poser Content and Game Content have exactly opposite goals."

Quite correct sir

the optimization of assets is something people often

never hear or bother to read  about when they get all excited by 

those real time game engines.

Many poser users, IMHO, are NOT quite ready to part with their 65,000 polygon Figure models and hi-res texture maps  but want"realtime" performance in the view port.

I use Unreal Engine, you can have all that in realtime :-)

They're always updating it, and while it's true that some things can still be baked, the point is, it's no hardship because it's still there in the same engine, you click one button and it's done.  The engine is good enough to get a damn good idea of what the finished look would be.  It's no big deal to hit a bake button at the end of your project to bake something critical.  But what I'm getting at here, mainly, is that the future of 3D graphics and animation is obviously realtime rendering.  I think spending development time creating bridges to other non-realtime engines is a waste for the most part, because at the end of the day, the renderer that is being bridged to is still not realtime.

As it stands right now, neither DS or Poser have a realtime renderer, and I can tell you this without a shadow of a doubt, whichever one of these competing programs manages to implement Unreal Engine first, is going to draw the customers at an alarming rate, I'm 100% confident about that.  But at the moment, I think both DAZ and SM are making a big mistake by wasting development time on connecting to things that do what the product can already do - non-realtime raytracing - it's nothing new.

Built-in Realtime viewports are the buzz now (and for good reason).

Put it this way, if DAZ had announced that Unreal Engine was running in it's viewport, I think Poser would be just about dead and buried.  Unreal Engine or it's like will eventually end up in the viewport of one of these programs (because Unreal Engine is the best of it's type).  But the question is, who will be first, and who will suffer for not being aware of the consequences of ignoring it.

Is the future realtime rendering?
Yes - that's obvious!

Have DAZ chosen wisely with IRay?
No - cause it's not realtime!

Will SM chose wisely with Unreal Engine?
Let's hope so, otherwise they might find DAZ will beat them to it, and that would be disastrous for Poser.

There's not a person using either DS or Poser that would prefer IRay in their viewport over Unreal Engine.  I've played with both, and I know for a fact which is best for feedback, best for visualisation, and best for productivity.  Best on all counts is the physically based, realtime engine called "Unreal Engine", so let's hope SM start making some good business decisions for Poser.

Can you imagine how amazing it would be to use the Poser you already know, but the render is live and stutter-free in the viewport?
That would be one incredibly desirable program.

AO and Specular are no longer being baked into the diffuse/albedo of game content as games move to real time Physically Based Rendering, separate maps are used for AO, Specular, Metallicity, Gloss, etc.  That said, the majority of content for Poser has baked in shadows and specular - skin being the most obvious in this case. Moving to PBR will require people taking a bit more care in their texturing to get optimal results or face situations where lighting in the scene doesn't agree with the results on the surface of models. 

Poser, with Unreal Engine in the viewport and iClone style animation tools, would be a dream program that would sell in epic amounts ;-)
Sorry Teyon, crossposted :-P

Realtime Physically Based Global Illumination and Reflections etc.
Imagine being able to do that live in the Poser viewport :-D

And just think, this could be your Poser content you could be rendering and walking around without waiting for a render:

Oh, and the node experts around here would likely get a techno-stiffy if they saw the node system for Unreal Engine :-D
Of course we can trust SM to make it all easy and perfectly integrated though!

Anyway, here's a few cinematic quality visualisations done without the need for a render button :

Realtime Physically Based Global Illumination and Reflections etc.
Imagine being able to do that live in the Poser viewport :-D

That wasn't realtime. I think you missed at least two compilation dialogs during that speed run in the first video. What you're getting is an approximation preview, the final result is from the compilation. The lighting isn't even the same as when the scene is being built. It takes a lot of gpu horsepower to do realtime rendering, as in at least $12,000 in video hardware. Compiling the low poly assets with the lighting gets you that result shown in the other videos.

I use the thing, I know how it works!

Are you saying you'd turn your nose up to a release of Poser that had Unreal Engine in the viewport?
If you did I'm pretty sure you'd be in a less than 1% minority.

It's one thing seeing this stuff done in the Unreal Editor, but it would be quite another to actually have it functioning directly in the Poser viewport.  You really need to check out the stuff they add to it on a constant basis, I get all this stuff in realtime in my Unreal Editor viewport (even on my old GTX460 cards).  It all depends on what method you use and what the materials themselves have been set up to do (the materials themselves are physically based and don't need baking).  I get the feeling some of you think this is a pre-baking trick.  It isn't, but if you want to bake for some extra quality, then you can, and all it takes is a single button click - no messing around with maps or multiple programs.

If I were faced with the choice of two figure programs, one that has Ureal Engine and one that doesn't, I'd go for the one with Unreal Engine over those GPU raytracers anyday, and I'm guessing everyone else would too.  GPU raytracers are nice, but they're not as fun and productive to work with as having Unreal Engine in a viewport, nothing can beat realtime interactivity and visualisation.  Whoever does this first is going to attract customers like they never did before.  Proof of that, will come when either DAZ or SM pull their finger out.  And due to me preferring the Poser interface, I personally hope it will be SM who do this first.

Unreal Engine in the Poser viewport would be incredible beyond words!

I use the thing, I know how it works!

Are you saying you'd turn your nose up to a release of Poser that had Unreal Engine in the viewport?
If you did I'm pretty sure you'd be in a less than 1% minority.

I think you have your terminology mixed up, because going through the video tutorials what is being presented is not realtime. Sorry you're aren't going to convince me otherwise when I'm looking directly at it. Those portions of the scenery has to be compiled, then you can work from that, but it's definitely not realtime. That's why the build and play buttons are there. But honestly, as many features are in the Unreal editor itself, it makes more sense to just use the Unreal tools themselves and import your content there. And I'm not sure what you mean by realtime doesn't exist in DS when I can set the iray preview on drop my content and as i move the cursor or change settings it re-renders the scene. I can also do this from the IPR Aux window as well.

I have the UT4 engine and it is fantastic. However, due to its complicated structures, it would be easier to create some sort of exporter to the engine via a player that only displays the compiled data or scene, rather than bring it into apps like Daz or Poser.

@Male_M3dia
Can you explain that IRay thing a bit better cause I'm curious if what you mean is what I was trying to get it to do.  I followed your advice and got it going, I got a render out of it pretty damn quick.  Unfortunately though, I've not touched it since because the interactivity isn't there.  IRay feels a bit like Luxrender in use, so you move a scene and there's a pause before it'll show something.  Octane works much nicer, because it shows a low-pixel approximation while you rotate the camera, there is always a render on the screen no matter what quality it is.

That's why I can live with Octane but not Luxrender, and, it seems IRay is the same as Luxrender in that respect.

If what you're saying is that I can have that Octane-style feedback in IRay while I move the camera, please explain it, because that would make IRay a heck of a lot more desirable to me than it is right now.  Right now, I'm bored of it already because it's not interactive enough.  It's annoying to have that pause before showing a render, I'd rather see the remder being built-up than wait for it to reach a certain quality before it shows itself.  In Octane this is done in realtime as you move the camera, and in Unreal Engine there is no need to render at all.

If you can explain how to get IRay working at least the way Octane does, that would be fantastic!

@Zev0
But that's the problem, Unreal Engine isn't as easy to use as Poser, and if it were then I doubt I'd be using Poser or DS at all.  Poser has a great interface, but it lacks in quality hands-on animation tools and a realtime renderer.  None of these companies are best at everything.  Epic have the best renderer with Unreal Engine, DAZ has better animation tools than Poser with their puppeteer and aniMate system, and iClone blows even DAZ out of the water for animation tools.  But Poser has the best interface and it's that interface that is the only reason SM are still able to sell Poser when faced with competition like the free DS from DAZ.  Poser needs better animation tools though (desperately), so if that were mixed with the Unreal Engine all running inside the Poser interface, like I said, people would be swarming to Poser because it would be best at everything.

If SM don't do this stuff with Poser, DAZ will with DS, or indeed, someone might show-up out of the blue that allows you to load-in and render rigged Poser characters in the Unreal Engine environment.  It's going to be interesting to see what the major new features are in the next version of Poser, especially for me, cause what they announce will be pretty much a game-changer in that it will either scare me away from Poser altogether, or it will show that they're going along the right path.

The right path for Poser is a Realtime Renderer and desperately needed iClone-style animation tools.  We don't need more figure technology adding to complicate things even further.  We don't need another bunch of tweaks for that shitty Walk Designer from prehistoric times, we don't need interface improvements.  What we need is what the other programs have and are tempting people away from Poser, because if Poser doesn't catch up there, people will simply stop buying it.

One thing I will say in SM's favour is that maybe they are listening to customers now.  I was surprised to see an SR4 for Poser, nevermind an SR5 as well, so a big thumbs-up to them for that.  Fixing the bugs that are already there will make for more stable additions to the program, so from that point of view at least, SM are going down the right path.

I just hope they follow-up with wise decision making when it comes to the features Poser needs in the next version, if it is to keep pace with the competition.

And now SR5.2 is available in the download manager.

does unreal give me any advantages ?? already decided NOT to get DS!! again ;-)  the renders/times I've seen for Iray don't match up with cycles for me

I don't play games so highly unlikely I'd ever make one  ;-).. but the idea of a walk down EClarks long and winding road could be fun or a "walk round" a building etc. Guess unreal would be better for that

mmmmmmmmm confused might have to think about this over a beer or two  

"  the renders/times I've seen for Iray don't match up with cycles for me"

I have reached this conclusion as well

the free Exporter That I am using to send DAZ scenes to blender

 from DS 4.7 are getting me better looking and faster renders than

what I am getting with the DS 4.8 beta & Iray  at this point.

But I attribute this to blender having a lighter resource "footprint" than Daz Studio in General.

Still I will grab the General release of  DS 4.8 when it Appears in My DAZ account.

DIfferent options are always nice.

" Poser has a great interface,......But Poser has the best interface and it's that interface that is the only reason SM are still able to sell Poser when faced with competition"

LOL!!!!I must Disagree :-)

Poser pro's Scene Management tools are garbage!!

so is its Camera& lighting system....Garbage!!

and the Flash based Library is ridiculous!!

it is fine for Single figures sitting in one location waiting

for their portrait render to start

But just try to load a complicated Set and animate a walk through

and you see how this early 1990's "Kia Krause" Interface belongs in the ash bin of history.

We have No ability to truly customize the interface skin or font colors.

I like that SM has bundled in  that third party Light manager panel however its very limiting with No Option( that I can find) to give lights or cameras Custom names

and what about a layer system to assign scene elements to their own color coded layer which would allow us to "solo" any scene element with one click and make adjustments to while the big huge stonemason set is hidden.

I could go on and on.. But anybody who has ever used 

a professional CG application to work on large, Dense scenes

already knows that posers is way sub par for anything complicated. 

You're very wrong about the interface, it's that type of interface that helped make Bryce and Poser in to popular products.
I agree about Flash though, nothing should depend on that crap, so thankfully there is a way around it!

When I talk about Poser having a better interface, I'm talking about usability.  I'd rather grab the dedicated designed tools in Poser and spin them around than go searching through masses and masses of sliders in DAZ Studio.  The people responsible for the original Bryce and Poser interface were years ahead of what we have even now.  For the most part the designers of programs lately, shouldn't be let anywhere near a design job.

Considering Poser is crap at at animation etc, what do you think is causing people to pay hundreds of dollars for Poser when they can have DS for free?

It's the interface, and it could do with some improvement, but nevertheless, it's the Poser interface than makes it a nicer program to use over DS, and as with anything in life, you can't beart a design purpose made for the job.  Programs like Bryce for example, have a 100% purpose-made design, whereas DS is more like a skinned OS interface.  Poser has been getting like that lately, but even so, those few remaining elements make all the difference.

If SM ever removed the trackball and lighting globes for example, users would take massive issue with that because they're aspects that make Poser, Poser.  Having heads and hands and globes with arrows are much more instantly representative of a function than a bunch of similar-looking buttons on an OS interface like DS has.  The designers of Bryce and Poser understood this, and that's why their products were the most pleasurable to use back in the day, and still are today.

@Heddheld
Imagine picking up the chair you're sat on and moving it to another part of your room.  Every movement you made was already rendered, and that's exactly the same sort of thing you'd get from having Unreal Engine in the viewport, move a chair and the render was done even as you were moving it.

No need for a "Render" button ;-)

@Vilters
Is that SR the one with the mirror fix or is it newer than that?

has paste got broken again ??

Kia Krause is a blast from the past ;-) .....loved his photosoap and KPT with its funky interface, didn't mind Bryce too much mainly 'cos I was from an autocad B/G so pumping in the numbers was normal for me never ever used them "balls" on the side , poser showed me how to use them  lol then it was blender and I hate all other gui's now ..........blender makes life soooooooo easy

@pumeco will have a peep at unreal AFTER I run true image so I can get it off again rofl , have a look over my G'kids shoulder now an then and never seen a game that looks good let alone realistic  

"have a look over my G'kids shoulder now an then and never seen a game that looks good let alone realistic"

Yes, because in terms of art "good" and "realistic" are synonymous. I'm nearing 50, love gaming, and have seen countless fantastic, beautiful things and environments therein... all of which I could enjoy with immersive freedom. Hopefully I can be around for another 50 to see where all of this is going. Sorry, of course you're entitled to your own perception, but comments like the above raise my hackles... especially on a presupposed ART forum.

don't get your hackles up mate (it can mess with your blood pressure)

game art is good (some is great) so maybe I could have worded that better but games look like games

as for age I stopped games at around 50 was wasting so much time sat playing ........unreal tournament  lol

Have DAZ chosen wisely with IRay?

No - cause it's not realtime!

IMHO Daz has chosen wisely to giver users of their FREE program an industry standard internal PBR.

This move makes the necessity of $$buying alternatives$$  to "3Delight" like Octane or even the Reality for LUX plugin Moot.

They understand that their content buyers do not  all have the $12,000 worth of graphics hardware one would likely need to get

this "Real time performance" that has you so excited

Will SM chose wisely with Unreal Engine?

I predict that SM will Not implement the unreal Engine 

Not soon...not ever..

Consider that  they cant seem to afford to hire a skilled

organic humanoid model maker to build native poser figures

that are not laughable.

They cant implement a Decent,Functional IK solver after nearly 20 years!

 and according to Steve coopers final Webinar they are planning to take poser into "the CAD Market"...... Wha.....the CAD market!!!!!

I could be wrong of course

But I have difficulty imagining SM Suddenly Figuring out a way to Shoehorn the unreal Engine into that Cruft Ridden, Vestigial "kai kraus" throwback UI from a 

bygone century

But time will tell 

@Wolf
You're being arrogant beyond belief.  Krause is highly respected for the interfaces he designed (and rightly so because they have stood the test of time).
And SM do have a very talented humanoid capable of creating extremely good meshes, he's called Teyon.

I suppose you're a better interface designer than Krause and a better sculptor than Teyon, man, you got some skills then.

As for IRay and DAZ's decision to use it, of course it's good that it has it, but my point is that it's an engine that is not optimized for realtime performance, so it will never be better in that respect than one that is.  My point was actually quite a simple one; that "Realtime Rendering" is the future, so it's best that SM start dipping their toes into that one instead of wasting time with stuff that is not optimised for realtime.

Developing plugins for, and integrating into, non-realtime products is a waste of development in the long run, because every effort spent on it is effort that would have been better spent integrating a "realtime" engine.  If they waste time taking the non-realtime route, it will eventually bite them when they find the competition have been investing in realtime.

Like I said, waiting for renders is rapidly becoming history, whereas "Realtime" is the future.

An interesting situation is with Reallusion right now, I mean talk about bad decision making.

Awesome program, awesome animation tools, designed from the ground-up for being "realtime".  Problem is, it has the shittiest DX-based renderer I've ever seen, and how did they try to get around that?  In my opinion, it was creating a bridge to "Indigo" no less, something that is anything but realtime.  Due to the idiotic decision making, I've stopped purchasing iClone and kinda regret supporting them early on.  I bought into iClone BECAUSE it was a realtime environment.  It cannot get more idiotic than to concentrate on a bridge to "Indigo" when it's own realtime engine is so ourageously poor, even though iClone is designed for realtime.  Freaking hillarious decision making that was.

"Backward" really isn't sufficient enough to describe that one :-D

So you see, don't assume that these companies always know what they're doing, because they don't.  Some of the business decisions I've seen made by DAZ, Reallusion and SM, show sub-zero understanding of their userbases a lot of the time.  Reallusion's behaviour especially of late, has alienated quite a few people and I'm not in the least bit surprised, they have made some utterly backward decisions just lately.

The only good thing about that is it will give SM time to hang on to some customers, and gain more, by bringing Poser's animation tools up to speed.

From what little I read, it does work realtime in OpenGL 3

I'm sure I'll download it when available, but I doubt I'll use it. However, I do have to admit to being touched by all the concern from the daz guys that us poser users are falling behind the times. :) It's nice to know that someone cares.

An interesting situation is with Reallusion right now, I mean talk about bad decision making.

Awesome program, awesome animation tools, designed from the ground-up for being "realtime".  Problem is, it has the shittiest DX-based renderer I've ever seen, and how did they try to get around that?  In my opinion, it was creating a bridge to "Indigo" no less, something that is anything but realtime.  Due to the idiotic decision making, I've stopped purchasing iClone and kinda regret supporting them early on.  I bought into iClone BECAUSE it was a realtime environment.  It cannot get more idiotic than to concentrate on a bridge to "Indigo" when it's own realtime engine is so ourageously poor, even though iClone is designed for realtime.  Freaking hillarious decision making that was.

"Backward" really isn't sufficient enough to describe that one :-D

True...It's like role reversal, from "realtime" to single frame rendering lol. If the new engine was a game engine like UT4, then definately a step up. I would have just upgraded the actual realtime engine, and forget about indigo, unless that engine can work as fast and in realtime as the default engine, I do not see the point lol. We already have Daz and Studio for stills:) Iclone is supposed to have focus on animation, and this new indigo engine from what I can see, totally goes against what the core of the program offers or is designed to do.

Exactly, Zev, sounds like we think very much alike.

That's nothing though, the Indigo thing.  What's even more backward is that they spent time adding in DX9 compatibility for those who thibnk using 15 year old graphics cards is going to do them any favours with modern software.  You have to laugh at that one, they finally reachjed DX11 and it still looks like DX9 on a bad day.  To add insult to injury, catering for dinosaurs was obviously higher on their priorities than making their new DX11 renderer look worthy of the DX11 tag.

Yup, a lot of backward decision making from them lately, but at least they're not wasting my money on it.  I knew there was something wrong when they announced it, banging on about Indigo and not a bloody thing about what actually matters to iClone users, the built-in realtime renderer which still looks like crap for a DX11 renderer.  Hell, it looks like crap even by DX9 standards, nevermind DX11.  The only positive thing is that they say they're adding PBR materials to it soon.  Unfortunately though, no mention of improvements to the environment and post-processing effects to go with it.

Can't see me parting with any money for version 6, but who knows, they might surprise everyone.  Personally, I think Reallusion are clueless when it comes to realtime engines.  They are easily the best at implementing realtime animation abilities, stuff like that, but I reckon they need to bring-in an expert in DX11 programming to sort their realtime renderer out :-D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mLPBAFPAvc&list=TL1Pf1IDdFI00

Reality ten times faster in Reality 4.1.
I would pay for that upgrade. Thanks for posting that RorrKonn.

:)

Sounds promising, nice lengthy video as well, I'll check it out over tea tonight.
I suppose if it's 10X faster it might be a lot more bearable for me to use, which would be great because I love the output from Luxrender.

"I suppose you're a better interface designer than Krause and a better sculptor than Teyon, man, you got some skills then."

No I am Not either.

My opinion of the Kraus inspired poser,Bryce& carrara  interface

designs are based on my experience using those apps since the mid 1990's and later moving on to other

more functional interface designs to create complex animations/Simulations in professional apps.

Peoples program experience will vary as will their opinions

.

neither of these aformentioned apps have proper tools for mangaging large scenes with multiple elements and cameras for animation& visual effects production.

Until some one can show me otherwise ,my opinion remains unchanged regarding this matter.

On the Matter of the default poser figures since pose 7 .

Well the Community & market has spoken clearly regarding their

asthetics,desirability  &technical functionality.

feel free to browse the history of this very forum and read for oneself, if so inclined .

"

An interesting situation is with Reallusion right now, I mean talk about bad decision making.

Awesome program, awesome animation tools, designed from the ground-up for being "realtime".  Problem is, it has the shittiest DX-based renderer I've ever seen, and how did they try to get around that?  In my opinion, it was creating a bridge to "Indigo" no less, something that is anything but realtime.  Due to the idiotic decision making, I've stopped purchasing iClone and kinda regret supporting them early on.  I bought into iClone BECAUSE it was a realtime environment.  It cannot get more idiotic than to concentrate on a bridge to "Indigo" when it's own realtime engine is so ourageously poor, even though iClone is designed for realtime.  Freaking hillarious decision making that was."

I Actually agree in part with the above.

First, I never cared  about the Iclones rendering or display

any more so than I cared about Endorphins primitive display.

I got those apps ,when I partially migrated to Windows,

for one reason only.

Their POWERFUL motion creation &RE-TARGETING tools.

I am an animator/VFX enthusiast.

who has no problem using apps dedicated only to Character animation in realtime like IClone & Endorphin.

as long as I can export to poser compatible BVH to be ultimately rendered in Maxon Cinema4D where I have professional scene management & camera tools.

and Plugins to bring in Fluid Simulations from Realflow

,Load poser content directly from poser runtimes with full poser figure format functionality natively INSIDE Cinema4D.

To say nothing of a direct,camera & 3D Data compositing bridge to After Effects and other finishing tools.

RealIllusions Decision to Create a bridge to Indigo was IMHO

....Stupid!!

Why??

Well those  low poly Game characters ,that we use in Iclone,

to create this Amazing Character Motion will look like crap in any render engine including Indigo.

but who cares ???

we dont buy Iclone to use its figures in final deliverables 

As for importing characters from other apps via the 3D Exchange
 (Maya,Max,Daz studio genesis),

Well Most people do that only to retarget motion to the rig

but ultimately send it back to their Main application for environment set up and final rendering.

RealIllusion has introduced no new animation tools in Iclone 6

(Not that Iclone Needs any). 

So I will be skipping this version and continue to use 5.5 along with 3D exchange of course.

The term real time is pretty broad, and I think most of us would be happy with seconds per frame vs. minutes or hours.  Something that I was just thinking is that the main difference between real time and even GPU renderers is that real time engines only show their output differently.  No matter how fast computers get, Poser's Firefly can never be real time because it calculates buckets to the screen rather than a framebuffer.  Unless the buckets were filled and moved to the buffer in less that your frame rate, it's a process you'll always be likely to see.

Unreal and Unity are both rather complex platforms to learn, and wouldn't be very cost-effective for Poser devs to implement at this point, considering the majority of Poser's users are hobbyists with low-end off-the-shelf walmart machines. 

For the more advanced users there is FBX import/export included in the game dev version. FBX exists to port your scenes and animations over to unreal or unity, or whatever other game engine or software package you want to use that is FBX compatible. Back during the release of game dev, Steve Cooper stated that they had been working very closely with Unity developers when implementing FBX. Now, don't you think that if they thought that implementing a real-time game engine as their renderer would be cost-effective and worth the time investment, they would have done so then? I'm sure it's not something they haven't thought about, but for whatever reasons they've chosen not to for now. Plus, Unity, Unreal, etc, are just like Blender and D|S, with constant updates, which would require them to always be updating Poser to keep up with the changes whichever of those engines they wanted to implement were publishing that week. For the number of users that would be interested in it, the balance just isn't there. 

@Wolf
I do enjoy discussing stuff with you, but I'm not going to while you're in arrogance mode!

@Moogal
I wouldn't be so bothered about actual realtime if only the Firefly renderer would harness the power of my CUDA Cores to accelerate the rendering.  I donlt expect it to behave like octane, but it would be nice to have it use that computing power somehow.  I know Poser's Firefly gets a lot of flack, but personally I think it's very fine render engine with a very powerful node system.  I'd love to see it get a performance boost from the GPU.

@Shane
But Unreal Engine being difficult to use is irrelevant when it's running inside the Poser viewport.  It being in Poser would give us genuine realtime rendering, and at the same time, make it as easy to use as the Poser interface you're used to using right now.  It would also attract Unreal Engine users to Poser, because they'd have an easy to use environment for creating and working with figures for Unreal Engine, and due to the popularity of such things, I reckon having that inside Poser can only be good for sales, development, and promotion.

I think the move towards catering for game development was a good one, but they need to bring that environment into the familiar interface of Poser.  There can be nothing better for a game developer than being able to develiop their game content in an environment that uses the exact same renderer as the game engine they're developing for.  People might say, ah, but what if I want to develop for Unity or CryEngine.  Unfortunately, those engines arenlt on the same level for reltime rendering as unreal Engine is, so SM would be better to go for Unreal Engine if they did this.

They have to choose the right engine, because if they don't, the competition will choose it instead, they'll use that engine to pull in the customers.  So it's not just a question of getting a realtime engine into Poser's viewport, it has to be the right engine.  The right engine for a realism point of view, the one that demonstrates the best expertise, is Unreal Engine.  That's not to dismiss the competing engines, they're amazing as well, but they're just not as good as Unreal Engine in a visual sense, and if such an engine makes it's way into Poser, realism is going to be vital.

I realise this is all fantasy and wishful thinking, but seriously, having Unreal Engine running live in the Poser viewport would be seriously addictive!

 have you seen this one then ??

https://youtu.be/FbGm66DCWok

might be a bit of octane in there ;-)  since Otoy grabbed that a while back

@Moogal
I wouldn't be so bothered about actual realtime if only the Firefly renderer would harness the power of my CUDA Cores to accelerate the rendering.  I donlt expect it to behave like octane, but it would be nice to have it use that computing power somehow.  I know Poser's Firefly gets a lot of flack, but personally I think it's very fine render engine with a very powerful node system.  I'd love to see it get a performance boost from the GPU.

I wasn't complaining about Firefly at all, just noticing that the way it renders in buckets (and also the way the progressive renderers work) is very different than the game engines' method.  With a "real time" renderer you don't normally see the frames being created, rather a frame is displayed until the next one replaces it.  I was just thinking that no matter how fast computers become, Firefly would never work as a real time engine for that reason.

Yes, some kind of OpenCL optimization would be nice, but I expect to see the viewport further improved before Firefly is able to leverage GPU resources.

"RealIllusions Decision to Create a bridge to Indigo was IMHO

....Stupid!!

Why??

Well those  low poly Game characters ,that we use in Iclone,

to create this Amazing Character Motion will look like crap in any render engine including Indigo.

but who cares ???

we dont buy Iclone to use its figures in final deliverables"

I don't even...  iClone now supports Genesis2 figures, so maybe that justifies the rendering bridge?  Since you're making broad statements about why people don't buy iClone would you care to actually tell us why people do?  What are those figures for?

How are people responding with normal size text?  I was able to do it until recently but now when I quote I end up with big a bigger font. 

How are people responding with normal size text?  I was able to do it until recently but now when I quote I end up with big a bigger font. 

Notice the darker grey bar to the right of the quoted text. That signifies a quote. You need to make sure your response starts after the quote. You can hit the down arrow key to jump to the next line below the quote. If you just hit enter then type, your text will be an extension of the quote and share the larger font size. There's currently no way to separate multiple quotes in a single post that I'm aware of. 

How are people responding with normal size text?  I was able to do it until recently but now when I quote I end up with big a bigger font. 

Notice the darker grey bar to the right of the quoted text. That signifies a quote. You need to make sure your response starts after the quote. You can hit the down arrow key to jump to the next line below the quote. If you just hit enter then type, your text will be an extension of the quote and share the larger font size. There's currently no way to separate multiple quotes in a single post that I'm aware of. 

Ok, I got it to work this time, tried to use down arrow before so I don't know why it did not work.  Those bars aren't displaying right for me.  They were sort of there for a second as I scrolled down, but are gone now that I've started typing...

@Shane
But Unreal Engine being difficult to use is irrelevant when it's running inside the Poser viewport.  It being in Poser would give us genuine realtime rendering, and at the same time, make it as easy to use as the Poser interface you're used to using right now.  It would also attract Unreal Engine users to Poser, because they'd have an easy to use environment for creating and working with figures for Unreal Engine, and due to the popularity of such things, I reckon having that inside Poser can only be good for sales, development, and promotion.

I think the move towards catering for game development was a good one, but they need to bring that environment into the familiar interface of Poser.  There can be nothing better for a game developer than being able to develiop their game content in an environment that uses the exact same renderer as the game engine they're developing for.  People might say, ah, but what if I want to develop for Unity or CryEngine.  Unfortunately, those engines arenlt on the same level for reltime rendering as unreal Engine is, so SM would be better to go for Unreal Engine if they did this.

They have to choose the right engine, because if they don't, the competition will choose it instead, they'll use that engine to pull in the customers.  So it's not just a question of getting a realtime engine into Poser's viewport, it has to be the right engine.  The right engine for a realism point of view, the one that demonstrates the best expertise, is Unreal Engine.  That's not to dismiss the competing engines, they're amazing as well, but they're just not as good as Unreal Engine in a visual sense, and if such an engine makes it's way into Poser, realism is going to be vital.

I realise this is all fantasy and wishful thinking, but seriously, having Unreal Engine running live in the Poser viewport would be seriously addictive!

Any engine they would choose would still require licensing. In this case, in order to get Unreal into Poser's viewport and bipass the Poser user's need to learn how to use Unreal, it would require Poser devs to figure out a way for Unreal to understand Poser's functionality. You're basically asking Unreal to behave like Poser in the Poser viewport, and retain its "realtime rendering". That would be combining the functionality of both programs. Unreal still has to compile all those shaders and recompile every time the slightest change is made. And as for licensing, yes the engine is free to use, and the source code is available to be modified, but that doesn't make it truly open source. Anyone that uses it, whether they modify it or keep it as-is, still owes a 5% royalty to Epic for everything over $3K quarterly. Truly open source usually means that you can take it and do whatever you want with it and generally not owe anything to the original developer, except perhaps acknowledgement in the credits. Definitely not the case with Unreal.  

Yeah, it's 5% of your revenue, too. That may sound like chicken feed to some, but when you realize the kinds of margins that smaller software companies/departments are working with, it can actually be a fairly hefty sum.

Don't get me wrong. I believe that real time preview is the future of digital animation, if in fact real time VR preview isn't even more so. But we're sort of in a transition period of computing where it still takes a relatively long time for software to be developed. At some point, not too far in the future, when humans are no longer doing most of the coding, development will speed up so dramatically that we won't know what hit us. But right now, we're still crawling around like worms in wet soil. So it takes a while for newish technology to be adapted and adopted. It won't be this way forever, though....

I'll admit, I'm no coder and I don't know the ins and outs, but I get the impression it would be quite painless to integrate Unreal Engine into Poser.

SM's job would probably be quite simple, a simple 'Mapping' job, something like this:

• Get the ready-made Unreal Engine viewport to display where the current Poser viewport is normally displayed.
• Get the ready-made Unreal Engine Material Node system to display where the current Poser nodes are normally displayed.
• Map any relevant controls to the Poser dials etc.
• Add an option in the preferences that allows either the standard Poser or Unreal Engine viewport to run on bootup.
• Take Posers navigation controls and simply map them to UInreal Engine so that it controls the viewport, just like Poser normally does.
• Do the same with objects and body parts, simply map them to the Unreal Engine equivalent.

I suppose technically, what i'm getting at is something like when you import an FBX, you get to assign bones to where you want them.  Basically, all SM need to do is a bit of hard-wired coding that maps Poser's behaviour to UE's behavior, or rather, UE's behaviour to Poser's behaviour.

Regards the licence, that should not be a problem, they could effectively make "Poser UE Edition" the Pro version of Poser, and you never have to concern yourself with the licence unless you use the Unreal Engine renderer option commercially and make more money than their threshold.  Using it for what most people use Poser for, that licence threshold isn't going to effect them anyway.

And remember, even with a threshold, it's still better that the realtime engine is there than not there, you don't have to use it, you could just set it to Firefly in preferences and it would be exactly as it is now.

In Poser's Preferences Options:

• Selecting Firefly = Poser Viewport, Firefly renderer, and the Firefly node system in the Material Room (basically, Poser as it is right now).
• Selecting Unreal Engine = Realtime Unreal Engine and Rendering in the viewport, and the Unreal Engine node system in the Material Room.

Of course I could be wrong, and probably am, but it really does seem to me like it would be case of mapping, the hard work is done by Unreal Engine.

@Heddheld
Yup, saw it, pretty damn neat, and need I say it, another indication that SM need to hurry-up and get a realtime renderer into Poser!

" Since you're making broad statements about why people don't buy iClone would you care to actually tell us why people do?  What are those figures for?"

Iclone is basicly a game engine with very low poly Character rigs

that you can use in "realtime" to quickly create very realistic

Character animations.

http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/pipeline/flow_character.aspx

Yes some people use its Figures for Pre-visualization renders of scenes&concepts
( within Iclone)

However its true strength is the Optional "3D exchange"

motion retargeting Application that takes your rig from your

chosen app (MAX ,Maya Daz studio)

and retargets those amazing Character motions you created & previewed in "realtime" and sends the motion the Data back your

rig in your Full CG Application for rendering.

This is the exact pipeline offered by the $$uber expensive$$

AutoDesk motionbuilder.

Except the cost of Iclone pro with the 3D exchange option is right around $500 USD as opposed to the $3000, or whatever,

AutoDesk is charging to Motionbuilder these days.

" iClone now supports Genesis2 figures, so maybe that justifies the rendering bridge? ?"

Look...I get... it RealIllusion wants to provide a more complete

internal  rendering solution for customers who dont use MAX,Maya etc. and would like to complete their final projects within Iclone

 Indeed there is a Daz user who is making a Movie with

 IClone 6,Genesis and rendering it in Indigo and it is looking great!!

but he warns that you need hardware that would make most  highend gamers drool.

Not everyone can afford that, but bloody good for those who can.

Yes some people use its Figures for Pre-visualization renders of scenes&concepts
( within Iclone)

However its true strength is the Optional "3D exchange"

motion retargeting Application that takes your rig from your

chosen app (MAX ,Maya Daz studio)

and retargets those amazing Character motions you created & previewed in "realtime" and sends the motion the Data back your

rig in your Full CG Application for rendering.

Look...I get... it RealIllusion wants to provide a more complete

internal  rendering solution for customers who dont use MAX,Maya etc. and would like to complete their final projects within Iclone

 Indeed there is a Daz user who is making a Movie with

 IClone 6,Genesis and rendering it in Indigo and it is looking great!!

but he warns that you need hardware that would make most  highend gamers drool.

Not everyone can afford that, but bloody good for those who can.

 

Ok, thanks, that was the kind of answer I was hoping for.  I don't mess with Autodesk's stuff, so while I was aware that Reallusion had licensed Motionbuilder I really didn't know much about it.  Poser seems to have settled into the niche of making glamour shots, and beauty renders...  I say this because of comments comparing it to modern "AAA" games (GTA5, The Order 1886, etc.) and finding the games wanting.  In my opinion games are looking far superior to what most people are doing with Poser simply because of the expansive environments, extensive motion capture and modern hair/cloth sims working independently and simultaneously.  I suppose if I only looked at the figures' skin shaders, or tried discerning polygons in the silhouette I might still give the edge to Poser.  But I'd rather have the dense crowds of Assassin's Creed or the sprawling highways of GTA than two or three marginally improved characters on a soundstage with matte painted backdrop.  Yes, apples to oranges I know, but it seems to have been lost in the discussion that the game engines don't just render quickly they also handle large environments and populated scenes better.  Some say the game engines don't work well with figures of the polycounts that people use with Poser.  Is this even true?  I'm still using Poser figures from 10 years ago, and I'd venture that most modern games' lead characters are of similar detail.  Are we only counting the actual polygons of the object file?  When you figure in the real time tesselation that's become common place I could see the games actually having higher on-screen poly counts.  I know that some figure's polys counts have even gone down as Poser and D|S both have subdivision implemented to make up the difference... I bought iClone6 but I'm too involved in other things to really mess around with it (simply wanted to get it on discount and then patiently wait for the more annoying bugs to be discovered and squished).  I didn't think those low poly characters looked that bad, nor did I think they were indicative of the program's ability to push polygons around.  Honestly, seeing those characters' hair flowing and the clothing draping in real time, iClone looked to be an obvious improvement for animating.  Sure, it needs indigo to compete with Firefly and I suppose those avatars will never be a threat to Vicki or Genesis, but on the other hand how does Poser compete with iClone for outputting animation?  How far would one have to turn down FIrefly's render quality to approximate iClone's renderer and how much faster would iClone still be?  (I think enhancing the OpenGL renderer makes more sense than trying to replace Firefly with UE4, but I don't know how far they can really take it.  I'd thought by now we'd have gotten parallax mapping at least.  Preview output is useless if you use a lot of displacements.  This is another place iClone looks to have a distinct advantage.)

The Daz user using iClone to make a movie...  Is that the sci-fi one Reallusion were showing off a few months ago?  I was not aware that it was rendered in Indigo, though looking back I suppose it should have been obvious.  Both programs' differences aside, I have never known anything remotely like that to come out of Poser.  I want to think it can be done, but I haven't seen much evidence for it yet.