Consider the first 30 seconds of this short:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQQ1iyf9DVc

That is from Dreamworks (specifically, from DreamworksTV, a cable series in Canada distributing shorts from - you got it - Dreamworks). Now, I understand Dreamworks does have a lot of special software in there, but this short is (probably deceptively) simple - no photorealism, no complicated textures, no cloth or liquid simulation (that I could notice), no crowd simulations, and only one short metaball effect (from the pie fillings, could be done from normal spheres too I think). Yet, I fell in love with it on the first 5 seconds - it's incredibly charming, has effortless movements, endearing expressions and an easy fluidity that you can clearly feel - that's the work of a master animation group! The beautiful song helps too, but let's keep the song aside.

Now, Dreamworks probably has several millions (or tens of millions) of dollars invested in special software, and that certainly adds something to the animation. So that's the question - what do you think are the most important things the Dreamworks software probably has that makes it easier for the animators to make such beautiful work?

My guesses: (a) Allowing a team to work on parts of the animation (like: one does movement, one walking, one the talking, one the cameras, one the camera) (b) Automation of walking, grabbing and holding (c) Easiness to create expressions (d) Easiness to rig different clothes to your character

These are my guesses.. what do you think? And then comes the fatidical question - why can't Poser offer the same?

You might need

THIS

OR

THAT

You are asking a bit for $250 software.

Poser can do that, but it's not going to be easy and a lot of work. You would need to animate frame by frame to get it done. Houdini? Overkill. What you're looking for is something like Muvizu It's pretty easy to use and gets you great results. I once did a full animated story with it about10 minutes. Took me a while to create,but only because my computer at that time was slow in rendering and didn't have enough RAM. It was really fun to do though and Muvizu made it a lot easier then doing it in Poser or Vue.

In theory you can import Poser items into Muvizu. I've did some static ones, but never animated Poser stuff in Muvizu or imported animated stuff. Static items weren't a problem for me.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

ssgbryan posted at 8:35PM Sun, 15 December 2019 - #4373461

You are asking a bit for $250 software.

Yeah, but where's the gap? What is it in the million-dollars software at Dreamworks that allows them to do these simple, but wonderful things? What's the gap?

People tend to say: "oh, Poser needs photo-realism, a tzitong of effects on rendering nodes, hyper-jibby-jibby materials, real-time cloth, hair, water, fire, smoke, particles and whatnots"... but that animation doesn't have any of that.

Poser has much more capability than the ones displayed at that movie, and yet trying to replicate the first 30 seconds of the movie in Poser would be a like herculean task, taking hundreds of hours or more. I just can't get my head on what's missing for that -- it has to be something related to teamwork and productivity.

Poser was originally a figure-focused tool to aid real-world painting projects. It evolved into today's version because of market conditions, technology developments, and consumer expectations. It has animation functions which primarily support dynamic hair and cloth simulations. It is not a full-blown animating software. It works best in near-range and not panoramic scenes. It is still mainly figure-focused. It does not do cel-shaded animations all that efficiently, if you take Japanese animation as the gold standard.

As for alternatives in price range, it may be arguable that the free Blender3D version 2.81 and forthcoming versions, are certainly more bang for the buck, including animating of large panoramas, celshaded scenes, and general whizz-bang.

So, for figure rendering - an optimised software is - ta-daaaa - Poser (and a couple of other figure-centric software, mentioning no names).

Eternal Hobbyist

 

The difference is that companies like DreamWorks and Pixar have enormous render farms. And a large team of professionals working on them. And let's not forget, Pixar used to take almost 5 years to do a film because they would take several hours to days to render one frame.

If I had a nickle for ever time a woman told me to get lost, I could buy Manhattan.

Poser could do that. It just takes some planning on how you want the scenes to be and to assembly the final product in a proper movie program, an not try to have Poser make it in a single file. I have made several movies in Poser just that it is broken into 100 of scenes and each scene is 3-6 seconds long. The biggest problem is that you have to do all the thinking, either about each movement or setting up each prop to have the movement programmed in. As an example when the bale of hay is picked up the straps stretch a bit. Either the animator puts in the stretch or it is programmed into the prop either way someone has to decide what they want the movement to look like and then take the time to put it into the movie.

ETA go look at the first two seasons of RWBY as they were made directly in Poser.

Poser 5, 6, 7, 8, Poser Pro 9 (2012), 10 (2014), 11, 12, 13

here some Clips I made with Poser7 at the time was Fairly fast

Cherry Lady

or

Rock n Roll

Love that dancing skeleton!

Yes, definitely, the skeleton is excellent

gate posted at 7:11AM Mon, 16 December 2019 - #4373486

here some Clips I made with Poser7 at the time was Fairly fast

Cherry Lady

or

Rock n Roll

Very impressive!

rokket posted at 7:12AM Mon, 16 December 2019 - #4373467

The difference is that companies like DreamWorks and Pixar have enormous render farms. And a large team of professionals working on them. And let's not forget, Pixar used to take almost 5 years to do a film because they would take several hours to days to render one frame.

True, that's why I referred to the first 30 seconds. It takes dozens of people to make a movie, but one animator should be able to make the first 30 seconds of that movie within a reasonable time. And then consider this frame

Poser can very very easily make that one frame, exactly as it is (given the rig, that is). Even the eyebrows and eyelashes are solid color, and the shadowing is static! 30 seconds @24 fps = 720 frames, and Poser can render those within a few minutes on that quality. So Poser should meet the rendering requirements to make the first 30 seconds of that movie efficiently.

Yet, animating those 30 seconds with the same grace and fluidity, that's where the "pig twisted its tail", as we say in my native country. It should be possible, but yet it's incredibly difficult to do that efficiently in Poser. For some reason, as you carry the animation through its stages in Poser it doesn't gain grace. Why is that? Is it mainly the artistry of the animators at Dreamworks? Or is there something in the software that helps (or hinders)?

For myself, I feel that as you add elements and complexity to the animation the timeline very very fast becomes unmanageable in Poser, and when you see 300 little boxes on the animation pane it gets very very difficult to remember what is what - I always find it much easier to animate the first keyframes, as everything is clear, than refining and improving existing segments, as everything is crowded. For me, that's a yuge problem, bordering in impassable - it fast becomes extremely expensive to refine and improve segments.

Animation is just intrinsically time-consuming. I use Poser to make animations for courseware. A 30-frame loop of neurotransmitter molecules jumping a synapse is SIMPLE compared to Pixar movies. No humans, no clothing, no scenery. The loop takes 5 seconds to run, and takes 2 full days to produce.

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Actually it works , rather then add new frames for a clip into your time line make a short one just as you said the first ones are working well . To prolong the sequence save your first frames ... save the last pose and cam position then start the next little sequence . so even if your sequence on one cam view is 30 sec splitt it off into smaller Portions . when gathered all parts for your 30 sec put them together but keep in mind to just keep the actual cam view . these steps will also help you to find corrections you need to make on the parts . so name each Part with the frame numbers to find it easy same with the cam and last figure pose. Work with different cameras this can shorten the work of your clip to make it longer with the same action from another perspective.... from a different angle you would think it is another sequence.

Think a little the way they were making animations on Paper then you will find a good way to make it with Poser

also Note : do not move the light to much else it will look like the sun is turning around your Actor this can be very disturbing so keep a good eye on shadow and Light

Also to avoid a huuge collection of saved Parts Put it once in a while together , check it , save it , delete the Parts . this trick will also help you to have the Actor's Feet on the ground without to much of a hassle .

This discussion is kind of like wanting to use Photoshop to make vector art. You can, but it wasn't made for that and it'll be much harder and take much longer to achieve what you could have done with, say, Adobe Illustrator.

Poser was made as a pose aid for classic figure drawing, and then evolved into a hobby character rendering program. You want it to make things that other programs are created specifically to do. You might be able to, but it will be on you to make the extra effort - you can't just go asking why the program can't do that easily. It can't because it's not made with that in mind.

- - - - - - 

Feel free to call me Ohki!

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LOL Poser Does this shit all day long if you know how to texture and light a scene. Just gotta mute that cliched music before I barf.

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Let's also remember that that clip is really low-end for Dreamworks. But Poser could do that. You just have to plan it out and storyboard before you start. It's not something that lends itself to improvisation.

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Afrodite-Ohki posted at 3:18PM Mon, 16 December 2019 - #4373524

This discussion is kind of like wanting to use Photoshop to make vector art. You can, but it wasn't made for that and it'll be much harder and take much longer to achieve what you could have done with, say, Adobe Illustrator.

That's right, but then I can easily point what Illustrator or CorelDraw has for vector graphics that Photoshop doesn't have. Like, Illustrator you can create polylines and polygons, then they exist forever, and you can change them, and so forth. So if I want a software where I initially draw a rectangle and then I want to change to an hexagon, then I can say that "Oh, in Illustrator I can add vertices to polygons, and therefore change a rectangle to an hexagon, while Photoshop doesn't have vertices, therefore can't do that.

So one can easily determine that he can't do a flying man on fire on Poser because Poser doesn't have fire, much less flying fire, so, if you want fire, use something else.

But the animation in question doesn't have any special effects, and every time I saw a "how it's made" clip about commercial movies, I always see the starting point as a bunch of guys moving skeletons and handlers in a timeframe, exactly like in Poser, followed by a very lengthy pipeline to add effects, pre-rendering, color correction, rendering, compositing, more effects, voice over, etc-etc-etc...

Of course Poser doesn't have (and isn't part) of that production pipeline, and that's not really what I'm looking for in it. I want the basic animation, with simple colors, no special effects, but with emotivity and grace. I fail to get that from Poser, and I tend to blame the darn timeline window for becoming unmanageable, but maybe Poser can do it, and maybe it's just lack of artistry in me. After all, you can give the same pencil to Rembrandt and me, and I have no doubt which one would create beauty in 5 minutes with a few simple strokes, and which one would spend all night and end up with a lot of junk.

Sometimes, artists just like a bizarre challenge. I remember years ago, before even Poser 5 debuted, when Poser 4 could only generate "shadow maps", no actual raytracing that could be applied to reflections. Little Dragon staged an animated sequence depicting Eric Schwartz's Sabrina (from "Sabrina*Online) in a dance studio with two wall sized "mirrors" perpendicular to each other. Because of the angle, one would, in theory, see three reflections of the anthro' skunkette and the far walls of the room. He assembled an environment that was effectively 4 times the floor area of the implied room. He divided it in the center with "frames" suggesting those of the two "mirrors" and their "reflections". He positioned four copies of his Sabrina figurine, the "real" figure, two "reflections" with reversed poses and a fourth figure that was a "reflection" of a "reflection" (meaning the pose was the same as the "original"). Then he animated all four to perform a few ballet steps including a peroette...as the camera slowly panned!

Yes, another program (whatever was affordably available in the early 2000s) could have done it with a single figure mesh and true raytracing, but for Little Dragon, the goal was the technical challenge. Could this be done in Poser 4 with a basic "scan-line" render engine? And he did! I have that clip stored upon a CD.

Sincerely,

Bill

Tempt the Hand of Fate and it'll give you the "finger"!

So you mentioned the 30 first seconds and I believe that Poser could manage such a sequence with not much trouble ... Your 30 sec Clip has about 13 individual sequences " Count them " this would give an average of 2.5 sec for each " Seems longer " but the brain fills the missing parts. this would give you for each sequence about 75 frames . that Clip you show has 5 of 13 full view complex acts the rest is just symbolic. So Poser with the right models would be able to handle such a clip with ease.

All this works a little like a Comic Book just that the sequence is not 1 Frame but 75 , make a comic of your short story then make a little scene of each image that you have in the comic , Put it together and voila

Heh. Little Dragon did some wild things, didn't he?

The problem with Poser is that while dynamics, shaders, and other nifty things have been added, the animation controls are almost completely unchanged since Poser 4. The IK system is multiple generations behind what if considered current tech. Dreamworks also has custom coded bone and muscle systems that can emulate actual body behavior; that is something we still lack, even in a primitive format. They also have an armature system for the less than photorealistic figures. Not having to manipulate 5 or 6 dials to get accurate shoulder motion is a big plus. The muscle system also emulates flexion and contraction elasticity, as opposed to the simple quaternion interpolation that is Poser's most advanced interpolation algorithm. Which can also really screw up your animating, as it only accepts -180 to +180 degrees, at which point it will flip at least a full 360 degrees to reach a value it accepts again and we have no way to clamp that bugger down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDMa6zv8Gtk

Here is a video I helped my son make for his movie making class ~7 years ago. At about the 28 second point is James drinking a cup of tea. That clip is less then 3 seconds long (90 frames) and took about an hour to get the movement down. Several takes were made the one in the final movie and some with 2 or 3 blinks. Real world movie making is done in very small clips and those clips are pated together to form the final movie. The movie is 4:34 minutes long and was made with 122 PZ3 files. Several are repeated during the refrain.

Given that we made this in 12 days from start to finish and that included feedback on the in progress portions, I don't think it is too bad given it was only worked on a couple of hours a day. Like I said before you have to have a plan and follow it and not try and make a movie in a single take. Creepy Doll is 274 seconds long and was made with 122 Scenes making each scene about 2.5 seconds long (75 frames). By being so short it is easy to get just the action you want and not have to worry about what all those green dots mean.

Poser 5, 6, 7, 8, Poser Pro 9 (2012), 10 (2014), 11, 12, 13

fbastos posted at 7:21AM Tue, 17 December 2019 - #4373465

Poser has much more capability than the ones displayed at that movie, and yet trying to replicate the first 30 seconds of the movie in Poser would be a like herculean task, taking hundreds of hours or more.

That's because 30 seconds of animation do take hundreds of hours, even in a professional studio.

Main issue with doing this sort of thing in Poser is that it doesn't have the rigs to do it. This is what a student level (but fully capable) rig looks like in Maya, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3YKuj6qjAM&feature=emb_logo

Now try doing some of that in Poser with the rigs you have in various figures. The issues will become self evident to you.

ghonma posted at 12:07PM Tue, 17 December 2019 - #4373612

Main issue with doing this sort of thing in Poser is that it doesn't have the rigs to do it. This is what a student level (but fully capable) rig looks like in Maya, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3YKuj6qjAM&feature=emb_logo

Now try doing some of that in Poser with the rigs you have in various figures. The issues will become self evident to you.

Wow, that video is astounding!!!! So that's what a professional rig looks like!!! I'm truly impressed.

It is incredible that for example bending the foot it will automatically touch the toes or the back of the foot on the ground, depending on the angle. Every time I do that I have to bend the foot, then adjust the Z position so that the proper part of the foot touches the ground, and as I get tired of bending and moving the foot up and down all the time I end up simplifying the position. By simplification to simplification the little robotic things get in the way, and gone is the natural movement.

I am flabbergasted, and NOW I get the difference between a simpler tool like Blender, DAZ or Poser and a professional rigging tool, that thinks of all details like whether the foot should be touching the front or back in the ground, and handles that for you.

Tools matter That is why I dumped poser For Iclone years ago

Modern animation tools!! see link:

https://youtu.be/4JibX_5Oyb0

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wolf359 posted at 6:19PM Tue, 17 December 2019 - #4373673

Tools matter That is why I dumped poser For Iclone years ago

And yet, you still hang around this forum.

wolf359 posted at 6:44PM Tue, 17 December 2019 - #4373673

Tools matter That is why I dumped poser For Iclone years ago

Modern animation tools!! see link:

https://youtu.be/4JibX_5Oyb0

Can you use Poser rigs in iClone? One huge plus that Poser has for me is that I love the old rigs, specially Terai Yuki 2, while iClone always gave me the impression that I would be boxed in a pre-set number of characters, and adding new ones get expensive fast. TY2 ftw!!

ghonma posted at 1:05AM Wed, 18 December 2019 - #4373612

Main issue with doing this sort of thing in Poser is that it doesn't have the rigs to do it. This is what a student level (but fully capable) rig looks like in Maya, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3YKuj6qjAM&feature=emb_logo

Now try doing some of that in Poser with the rigs you have in various figures. The issues will become self evident to you.

Actually, if you really look at what's going on in that video, you could modify the existing Poser rigging to make it this particular. Most of the hair pieces these days may not have this kind of rigging, but the good ones come with plenty of morphs built in that do the more-or-less same thing.

But considering you're comparing something in Maya to something in Poser, the latter stands up pretty well over all. Like anything, you just have to approach it with an understanding that animation is a slow, tedious process — just as it is in Maya, I might add — but done right, it's pretty amazing.

docandraider.com -- the collected cartoons of Doc and Raider

@fbastos Hi iclone pro pipeline can import nearly any Biped Character rig skeleton and remap it to accept Imotion including older legacy poser figures as well as the Daz genesis figures.

You can export any iclone created motion for your poser figure as custom BVH to use in Poser or Daz Studio.

@Eclarke Unlike you, I never announced any melodramatic self imposed "exile" from any forum....yet here you are :-)

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wolf359 posted at 4:43AM Wed, 18 December 2019 - #4373712

@fbastos Hi iclone pro pipeline can import nearly any Biped Character rig skeleton and remap it to accept Imotion including older legacy poser figures as well as the Daz genesis figures.

You can export any iclone created motion for your poser figure as custom BVH to use in Poser or Daz Studio.

@Eclarke Unlike you, I never announced any melodramatic self imposed "exile" from any forum....yet here you are :-)

True enough, and it's actually not a criticism, but one I've noticed for quite some time. All you seem to do though is post about Poser's short comings, why you don't like it. Your posts actually seem to be becoming more like promos for Iclone, and yet, as you say, here you are. :-)

fbastos posted at 5:44AM Wed, 18 December 2019 - #4373643

I am flabbergasted, and NOW I get the difference between a simpler tool like Blender, DAZ or Poser and a professional rigging tool, that thinks of all details like whether the foot should be touching the front or back in the ground, and handles that for you.

Maya doesn't do this for you. A rig like that is built by hand by a human rigger. There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube on how to rig foot roll in Blender.

EClark1894 posted at 7:36AM Wed, 18 December 2019 - #4373713

wolf359 posted at 4:43AM Wed, 18 December 2019 - #4373712

@fbastos Hi iclone pro pipeline can import nearly any Biped Character rig skeleton and remap it to accept Imotion including older legacy poser figures as well as the Daz genesis figures.

You can export any iclone created motion for your poser figure as custom BVH to use in Poser or Daz Studio.

@Eclarke Unlike you, I never announced any melodramatic self imposed "exile" from any forum....yet here you are :-)

True enough, and it's actually not a criticism, but one I've noticed for quite some time. All you seem to do though is post about Poser's short comings, why you don't like it. Your posts actually seem to be becoming more like promos for Iclone, and yet, as you say, here you are. :-)

Reallusion is a brokered partner with a store in the RMP.

To promote them is to promote $$sales $$ for this commercial site. Is that so bad??

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Something no one is pointing out is that Dreamworks is a huge team of people all working together. Most Poser productions are one maybe two people. Poser can do animation. Can it do it as well as Maya? I can't say because I've never used Maya, but I'll guess it can't. Can it be used to make something like that video? I'll bet it can if they had a large team of people animation can look as good as what we saw. I watch videos like this and think people don't give poser enough credit. Yes, it takes time and again, I can't say how that time would compare to doing it in Maya. I'm sure the render would be longer since there are no render farm possibilities. Given time, though, you can do quality animation in poser.

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I use Poser 13 and win 10

Poser's Character animation tools should not be compared to Autodesk Maya, as poser is not in the same price class or target demographic as Autodesk Maya.

The only fair comparisions would be to programs within posers price range and target Demographic.

Although Daz studio 4.12 is in the same target demographic and has far ..far superior Character animation , motion editing and lipsynching options than poser 11.x
lets exclude Daz studio, being, a freeware application,

That leaves the $290 USD iclone pro/Character creator 3 ( base package price without import /export options)

I still have poser pro 2014 installed over on my older win 7 PC.

Most of the things ,in the first 30 seconds of the Dreamworks video, could theoreticly be painstakingly animated manually in poser by an experienced veteran animator in some bizzare scenario where he was forced ,or paid ALOT of money, to use only poser for the task.

However given a $300 USD Character animation software budget and the choice between poser and Iclone to attempt that dreamworks opening....no one but a true masochist would willingly opt for poser ,given the abysmal state of posers spline graph editor, Dope sheet, "motion layer" system and eternally broken IK system.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDp-hysbChc

Just sayin'.

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For me it is nice to read Proposals for other applications like Wolf is mentioning , it can offer new options so we can grow and not just stand still. sometimes there is the need for solutions if a Program reaches it's limits. sot the best is if People that used others can share there experiences .... Poser alone is actually nothing it is just a posing Program with some basic rigging features , so without all the other high end programs Poser and even Ds would not have any chance as there would not be any Models for them.

So for sure it is great to see and hear what people like wolf have to say even if it would be about Daz studio as we can learn from one another. Just discriminating others that use different way's sure is not very helpful to grow.

If we are honest with our selves then we could say that Ds or Poser are just Programs to start getting into 3D as they would have a long way to reach the quality of really Professional Programs .... like a kid that starts with a toy Car and one day builds the real ones

Yes but this is a poser forum. There are other forums where people can post about other programs, so why post on a poser forum? If people want t know about other programs they can look on these, for example if you are interested in animation in general go to the animation forum. If you are interested in animating in poser you don't want to come to the poser forum and find it clogged with posts saying use iClone instead.

It probably depends what it is all about you sometimes just need something in addition to Poser to make things work so , just like one says to edit a CR2 take the Notepad++ it is just great to write scripts instead of doing it in Poser , but then if you say " Hey that is not the Forum for Notepad++ then there would be a problem to find out how and what could be used. and well even if it is to say " use iClone to make BHV action files that you can use in Poser then all should be just fine "

I agree, that talking about software to help poser users do what they want in poser is helpful. It is when someone is interested in how to do something in poser that a discussion of program X to use instead isn't helpful, just as threads talking about new features in program Y not directly related to poser imho don't really belong in the poser forum. But I'm not trying to censor anyone, as how people use poser is clearly very varied so what I find totally irrelevant others may find to be just what they always wanted to know.

gate posted at 7:37PM Thu, 19 December 2019 - #4373767

It probably depends what it is all about you sometimes just need something in addition to Poser to make things work so , just like one says to edit a CR2 take the Notepad++ it is just great to write scripts instead of doing it in Poser , but then if you say " Hey that is not the Forum for Notepad++ then there would be a problem to find out how and what could be used. and well even if it is to say " use iClone to make BHV action files that you can use in Poser then all should be just fine "

Heh. It would be if it were that simple. You can only import/export content out of Iclone if you also have the 3DXchange program. That is the one that translates the Iclone specific file formats to other standards and vice versa. It also requires you to at the least map out your characters movement path in the Poser scene and replicate it in Iclone. Then you have to mark off specific things you have to do in Poser, like facial expressions and visemes, tongue, finger and toe motions which don't have matching channels outside of Poser.

No matter how you slice it, animation is a time consuming, multi program process. And the more you want out of it, the more complex it gets.

Dale B posted at 1:26PM Fri, 20 December 2019 - #4373875

No matter how you slice it, animation is a time consuming, multi program process. And the more you want out of it, the more complex it gets.

That's very true! As much as I'm impressed by the demo of that rig in Maya, I'll never use it, if only both Maya and the rig have a ton of odd controls with strange names, and I'm just too old to learn all that jibby-jibby - same problem I have with Blender.

But also consider this - if Poser is really oriented towards entry level animation (not as "the premier rendering and animation system" that Smith Micro used to use in their ads), then probably there are simple things that Poser can do to simplify the life of an entry level animator.

My first (and only) animation tool was Poser, and I never had any training with animation. What the manual said was "move to frame 30, then move the arm, then click play - see, the arms moves, hooray!!". Then after many years using it as hobby, I recently realized I accumulated a lot of bad habits. I realized that when I saw a movie in Youtube about the 12 principles of animation, and while the whole thing is oriented towards comics, not realism, I mentally played back, in my mind, the best animation sequences I could remember from Disney, Hayao Miyazaki (my hero) and quality anime, and found that they follow these principles (just under tight control to not look like donald duck)!

So while I'm trying to achieve realism to improve the quality of my animations, I think I have been really missing the point of creating charming animations, which is - follow the 12 principles, plus 3 typically japanese principles (negative times, economy and sakuga).

Therefore, I'm now a believer that an animation program can help newbie animators by making it easier to follow the 12 (or in my case 12+3) principles.

Consider for example the matter of preparation, extremes and breakdown keys - that's one of the principles, to have these particular keys under control. But then in Poser every key is a key, and there's no help to distinguish them - a small accidental key looks exactly the same as an extreme. So, when looking at at timeline there's no way to identify your animation structure, unless you walk through the animation step by step - very time-consuming!

It would be very very very simple to add a color (or some effect) to the keys in the timeline, to indicate preps and extremes. Also, to indicate when a key is a partial key or a full body key. These don't change anything in the actual playback, but help the animator to keep track of what's what in the timeline. That's a kind of thing that a professional tool will probably laugh at, because they have other resources, but in Poser there's no such thing.

It's like a teaching violin and a professional violin - the teaching violin comes with the 5 cents paper overlay to indicate the hand positions, while the professional would laugh at that. But if you have a teaching violin with no 5 cents paper overlay, then it will be as difficult (or more) as the professional violin, and will be extremely frustrating.

So if Poser is really an entry-level tool, then adding these cheap helpers would help us poor newbie programmers to deliver some charming animations in 15 minutes instead of 15 hours.

Dale B is quite correct. I only use iclone to create"baser layer" body movement/locomotion with a naked, realtime base male or female avatars. and export the motion out as BVH.

You can use iclone primitives as "stand ins" for prop interaction that has to match in your other program.

All of my lipsynch,facial expressions and secondary motions like eyeblinking etc are created over in Daz studio with its animation tools.

Any Character ragdoll physics are done in Endorphin and have to be merged into the mix where desired.

The fully morphed /dressed & animated genesis figure is then exported via.obj/MDD to C4D ( soon being supplanted by lightwave3D) for lighting and rendering .

A multi application pipeline is not for most single operators as it requires more than a casual users knowledge of multiple programs.

That is why complex animation projects are typically created by teams

The Dreamworks animation ,posted by the OP, was NOT all done in one program

Asking if poser alone or even Daz studio or iclone can do that is not even a logical question.

sort of like asking why your single engine cessna airplane cannot fly you to the planet Jupiter

This link showcases the dreamwork pipeline.

https://youtu.be/ru0tQRJ4qKs

It is a 16 minute video but worth the watch for explaining a team oriented 3D character animation pipeline for visual story telling.

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http://auroratrek.com/

Above is a link to a site where a single person made 2 movies using Poser as the main render system. You can read his adventure about what it took. In Poser 11.1 they added the ability to TAG key frames with a color and a pop up Tool Tip when you hover over the TAGGED keys. See image below

And if you really need to see what is going on in a channel open the Graph Editor where you can see the Wave Form of the movement.

I use to say to put an identical Key Frame side by side to prevent the dreaded overshoot problem in Poser, but I have a better method in that where you want the movement to end place a Constant Key Frame. The channel will then stay at that value until you place another Key Frame. Normally I place another Spline Key Frame to get the nice curved movement and then end with a Constant. This gets rid of the feet sliding issue if you use IK then turn it off.

The reason placing a Constant Key is best is because it prevents Poser from seeing past that Constant Key to values before the Constant so Poser has to use the same value in whatever calculation it does to make the Spline Curve, which results in a CAPPED Spline that won't Over/Under shoot the Key you just placed.

I would REALLY Like it if the Poser Programmers would make a NEW KEY type that had a Constant on the Lower Side and a Spline on the Upper Side. The code to do it is already in Poser they would just need to make it call the graph functions with Constant on one side and Spline on the other.

Poser 5, 6, 7, 8, Poser Pro 9 (2012), 10 (2014), 11, 12, 13

Tim Vining the creator of Aurora Trek used his optical Human mocap suite and the interposer pro plugin for Maxon C4D where he renders his films.

He uses the legacy Millenuim 3& 4 figures none of his finals were rendered in poser

I know this because My feature length film "Galactus Rising" was made using ( partially) the same pipeline except that I do not have a human mocap system but use Iclone instead for motion development and retarget Iclone motion to genesis figures. that are then rendered in maxon C4D

Tim recently dropped poser from his pipeline entirely and replaced it with Iclone pro and Daz studio 4.12 (at my suggestion)

He has a thread at the daz forums. I wont link to it here but if you google the term:

The "Animators Assemble!" thread for Daz animation WIP's,clips and tips

,, You can read his comments on why he dumped poser for Iclone & Daz studio for his current film "the Quest for the key"

One of his main reasons was the very things you mentioned that being having access to a MODERN graph editor in Daz studio ( pictured below)

The DS graph can display multiple channels with COLOR CODING and the interpolation type is indicated on each key in DS by the letters T,C, or L ( tcb ,contstant ,linear).

Being a user of legacy M4/V4 Tim also uses the venerable Mimic pro3 for his lipsynch as posers "talk designer" only supports the vestigial smith micro natives figure in their default face shapes .

just FYI.

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Richard60 posted at 3:03PM Sat, 21 December 2019 - #4374023

http://auroratrek.com/

Above is a link to a site where a single person made 2 movies using Poser as the main render system. You can read his adventure about what it took. In Poser 11.1 they added the ability to TAG key frames with a color and a pop up Tool Tip when you hover over the TAGGED keys. See image below

Hmm.. good point!!

It's probably time to revisit my complaints about this. When I first saw the Category colors, I didn't think much of them, because then only show when the timeline is expanded to show the actual controls - and figures may have hundreds of controls, so it's usually impossible to see everything at once in the timeline. Meanwhile, the markers for the figure and for groups remain in whatever color they had before, ie yellow or green or gray. And then the tooltips don't show when hovering over group markers or for figure markers. Therefore the thing didn't seem useful to me to have control over the animation, because the figure markers just become a sea or yellow or green, and I basically ignored and never used the thing.

But, now that you talked about it, I think it's quite feasible to create a dummy figure with say 2 or 3 dummy controls, and then paint the category colors in that dummy figure (instead of your own). As it only has a few controls, you can leave that dummy figure always open to help choreograph and coordinate the rest of the animation.

So I take it back - starting with 11.1 it's now possible to have some kind of coloring and texting in the timeline!

I'd love to be in a position to snag the basic Optitrack system myself. Is there any specific reason you're shifting from Cinema to Lightwave, Wolf? I know that all in one move they made stopped a lot of people from getting into Cinema (myself included), but inquiring minds are curious.

That graph editor is what Poser needs, particularly since moving one axis will afffect the other two axis. I haven't opened Poser 11, so I didn't know about the new addition to the dope sheet. Have to play around with it and see if it is useful.

One thing you should always do is multi back up, particularly if you animate. That habit just saved me. Collecting all the DAZ exe's and zip files to begin rebuilding my runtime that was lost due to the (^^(^()&(&%^$^&*%^ Win 10 update, I found a backup from 2006. Only 19.2 gitgs, but its a good starting point.

BTW Wolf, what do you composite in?

Hi DaleB , Maxon is going subscription Like Autodesk & Adobe MY seat of C4D is ancient( R11.5) As I opted out of thier yearly service agreemment scheme as soon as it started over a decade ago..

I could come back" new"customer on the monthy sub but here is why I wont.:

Maxon has made it clear that their target demographic will remain arch /product vis and mograph artists.

thier single threaded cloth system still cannot resolve dynamic cloth on a moving figure Like poser/Daz / Iclone/Blender.

there are no native option in C4D audio generated lip synch like poser/Daz / Iclone.

I need the versatility of the genesis figures and a reliable method to get them into a full 3DCC package for lighting & rendering.

The third party plugin that I am using for my .obj MDD import to C4D is no longer in development and that is par of the course for C4D users.

too much dependency on third party plugin to fill long ignored gaps in the feature set that all eventually dissapear or are made useless by an update to C4D that breaks all old plugins.

Lightwave has a native MDD importer that has far better features than the old plugin I am using with C4D.

Lightwave has a near realtime preview view port renderer that is as good as blender cycles for look dev while scene building. C4D viewport is crappy openGL. the list goes on and on.

Also Use Adobe After Effects CS for my VFX compositing which is well supported by lightwave3D's rendering options

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Siiiiigh. The subscription stuff is really a pita, IMHO. And eep, their cloth sim hasn't advanced that badly? Brrr. Even if they are just going arch vis, curtain sims would still be a must.

I seem to have lucked out and managed to reactivate my CS4 of After Effects. However, I found a nifty NLVE called HitFilm Express that is freeware. It has a pay version with most features for 249 pounds. The free version is upgradeable through plugins that run from $10 to $50 (the top end is a particle system. Some of them should be included, but for $0.00, I can't really complain). It combines the basic functions of Premiere and AE, so you can edit and composite in the same program (and unlike a lot of 'movie editors that only accept actual video files, it imports stills perfectly). Once I get my rendergarden upgraded, I'll be running tests to see how well the composting compares. But there are several non linear video editors out there now that are free. You just have to read all the text to see what the gotcha's are.

Actually Curtains bedsheets and table cloths are the only things C4D cloth system can handle well.

I have heard good things about Hitfilm.

I just recently migrated the delivery edit of my animated film from Apple Final Cut over to Davinci Resolve 16 on my new win10 PC as part of my .eventual complete migration over to windows that began with Iclone 5.5 years ago.

Even The free version of Davinci has a node based compositor called fusion but I have yet to explore its features.

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I can heartily recommend HitFilm, even the free version, though I cannot say how it compares to Fusion, cause while Fusion looks more openly sophisticated, HitFilm looks deceptively simple despite being extremely powerful. I keep reminding myself to try Fusion, and no doubt will do that eventually, but it will have to be seriously good and offer a perpetual licence to sway me away from HitFilm, put it that way.

Have to say, I share Wolf's sentiment regards the animation situation. It's not that Poser cannot be used for animation, it's just that it really needs updating in that department. The animation editing in Poser is far too clunky compared to iClone or even DAZ Studio, and it really need not be like that if only they would take clues from iClone regards the sort of animation features that allow people to generate and edit animation quickly and efficiently.

Poser, like DAZ Studio, appears to be throwing the majority of its eggs into the stills basket, which sadly leaves the animation side of things looking a bit worn and dated. Reallusion on the other hand, have realised that the key to everything in 3D, is immediacy, which is no doubt why it does both animation and stills in realtime.

If I were manager for Poser, this would be my plans for her:

• Replace Poser's viewport with the realtime EEVEE viewport used in Blender.
• Upgrade Poser's animation editors and add some form of procedural motion and walk designer.
• Commission Shane to do a realtime-friendly lower-poly version of his figures and include them.

The difference these three key elements would make to Poser across the board, are quite significant. The reason being that everything you do in Poser will all of a sudden, happen in realtime due to having EEVEE. With this in place, along with specialised lower-poly animation-figures to work with, and a more productive animation system in place, Poser would blast through three hurdles:

• The holy grail of working in realtime would be present for both stills and animation.
• The lost animation market would be catered for and attracted back to Poser.
• The performance would be the biggest draw for selling an upgrade, that Poser ever had.

Well designed, animation-friendly figures that were truly designed with the future in mind, along with a realtime EEVEE viewport and upgraded animation tools, would have Poser truly strutting her stuff again, and would genuinely deserve the slogan ...

POSER IS BACK - BIG TIME!

Just wanted to add something very important following my post above.

Poser has far too much 'legacy' getting in the way of things, and providing the scenario I mentioned above was actually realised, here is how Renderosity could 'shake' the legacy, increase their profits, be left with a clean slate, and all while still catering to the legacy crowd for those who want it.

• Remove all current content from Poser's default program download, all of it.
• Remove the old walk designer, it would no longer be needed in view of the procedural animation generator.
• Supply only one default animation-friendly male and female by default.
• Package all legacy content into separate legacy downloads for those who want it.
• Increase Renderosity's profits by encouraging new content using PBR textures for the new EEVEE viewport.
• Increase Renderosity's profits by encouraging animation block sales for use in Poser's new animation tools.

Shake the waste, new slate, bang up-to-date!

I was just looking at the topology on Shane's figures again. They're so efficiently designed and well topologised that I doubt they would even need a reduction in poly to become animation friendly. What a shame they are not the default figures, especially if the scenario I described above could be realised.

Only thing I don't like about them are the names given to them. Personally I have always thought the names "Alpha" for the male and "Delta" for the female would make sense, especially as they're software figures. The name "Alpha" is also used as a way to describe a dominant male, and "Delta" is genuinely also a female name (Delta Goodrem for example).

The names "Alpha" and "Delta" also have a very nice ring to them, so just in case these ideas ever see the light of day, I hereby claim the names "Alpha" and "Delta" for my own figures. I have no wish to create such figures, but I'm protecting the names in case Renderosity every do this, in which case, they are most welcome to use them.

So anyway, I reckon Shane's meshes with the names Alpha and Delta are the only human figures that should be included in Poser 12's default download. Because those figures, when used in the sort of Poser I described in my previous post, create a sensible, completely viable framework, in which Poser would expand with great success.

Retrowave posted at 6:28AM Sun, 22 December 2019 - #4374080

I can heartily recommend HitFilm, even the free version, though I cannot say how it compares to Fusion, cause while Fusion looks more openly sophisticated, HitFilm looks deceptively simple despite being extremely powerful. I keep reminding myself to try Fusion, and no doubt will do that eventually, but it will have to be seriously good and offer a perpetual licence to sway me away from HitFilm, put it that way.

Have to say, I share Wolf's sentiment regards the animation situation. It's not that Poser cannot be used for animation, it's just that it really needs updating in that department. The animation editing in Poser is far too clunky compared to iClone or even DAZ Studio, and it really need not be like that if only they would take clues from iClone regards the sort of animation features that allow people to generate and edit animation quickly and efficiently.

Poser, like DAZ Studio, appears to be throwing the majority of its eggs into the stills basket, which sadly leaves the animation side of things looking a bit worn and dated. Reallusion on the other hand, have realised that the key to everything in 3D, is immediacy, which is no doubt why it does both animation and stills in realtime.

If I were manager for Poser, this would be my plans for her:

• Replace Poser's viewport with the realtime EEVEE viewport used in Blender.
• Upgrade Poser's animation editors and add some form of procedural motion and walk designer.
• Commission Shane to do a realtime-friendly lower-poly version of his figures and include them.

The difference these three key elements would make to Poser across the board, are quite significant. The reason being that everything you do in Poser will all of a sudden, happen in realtime due to having EEVEE. With this in place, along with specialised lower-poly animation-figures to work with, and a more productive animation system in place, Poser would blast through three hurdles:

• The holy grail of working in realtime would be present for both stills and animation.
• The lost animation market would be catered for and attracted back to Poser.
• The performance would be the biggest draw for selling an upgrade, that Poser ever had.

Well designed, animation-friendly figures that were truly designed with the future in mind, along with a realtime EEVEE viewport and upgraded animation tools, would have Poser truly strutting her stuff again, and would genuinely deserve the slogan ...

POSER IS BACK - BIG TIME!

Hi , first the Davinci software products are all perpetual as Black Magic design is a quality Cinema/TV production Hardware company primarily.

I only have poser pro 2014 on my older win 7 rig, However I am given to understand that the game dev features were folded into poser 11.x so users should be able to create thier own "game res" figures for lightweight viewport performance and save the animated .pz3 to apply to the hi res actor for the final renders ..correct??.

This brings up to the main problem in updating the poser animation toolset to competitive standards and why I am doubtful of it happening.

FIGURE COMPATIBILITY

Right now Bondware is effectively "crowd sourcing" poser figure development ( again)

With all due respect to the various,talented figure makers in contentionfor the mantle of "Flagship" poser figure. not a single one of them have shown any interest in having thier figure used for animation nor do they have a uniform standard bone rig.

Not that it would matter because the current tool set ( ie talk designer ,walk designer), was made for the vestigial P6 "Jessi & James" and "talk designer" only works with their default face morph during speech

I must assume these animation features work for Paul &Pauline however ...where are they in the current poser scene??

A single poser user trying to make a dialogue heavy short film with Lefemme or the exotic "project E" figure will have to manually hand animate every spoken syllable.

Every Character animation feature of iclone pro works with the current Iclone Avatars including their audio based lipsynch as well as their 3D camera based facial mocap system for full facial performance realtime recording

The same is now true for Daz genesis figures and the current Daz studio animation tool set.

This is easy to accomplish when the company that develops /owns the platform also develops/owns the primary figures and can enforce uniform standards & ensure constant program feature & figure compatibilty.

This also makes it possible for industrious third parties to further enhance the animation tools via the publicly available SDK.

Third parties such as the RMP merchant "lola69" who sells a simple bit of Daz script that enabled me to unlock the closed format of the optitex Dynamic cloth plugin and use MY OWN MODELED Clothing meshes for my animated cloth sims in Daz studio ( pictured below)

Until the current poser native figure Quagmire is resolved, somehow, there will be no clear direction for truly modernizing the Character animation tools IMHO.

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Sorry Wolf, looks like we crossposted. I hear you, but check the post you just missed, I think the answer is Alpha and Delta

We agree
the primary figures should be 100% under the control of whomever owns the core software .

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Renderosity should start charging for the DS advertisements in this thread alone.

Who is advertising DS?

I personally mentioned it for comparison, but I find it an absolute frustration to use, always have, which is why I don't use it.

Yeah, Hitfilm is impressing me on the tests I've been doing, enough that I'm springing for the chroma key and particle effects plugins. Just the fact it imports numbered frames instead of being limited to the video file formats like a lot of the so called 'movie editors' are is a godsend.

I'd agree with most of that on the Poser animation front. If there were some way to do it though, I'd keep the legacy if there were enough interest in past figures, and have a switching arrangement to keep the new system isolated. My approach to the figures is that they are actors to me. Content. It's what I can do with them in the pipeline that matters to me, not the experimental nature of most of them. And there are certainly enough open source systems to implement, one stage at a time, for a reinvention of the animation tools. But there does need to be consistency with the figures; that was what put V4 into such a commanding position.

Almost as important is maintaining the Poser-Vue interconnection. Which once I get the ol rendergarden upgraded to load the Cows onto, I'll be cranking out fly throughs with various figures and whatnot to get back in the swing of that end of the pipeline. Very little can compare to Vue when it comes to end stage rendering involving large outdoor environments