Poser is for animators?
drzap
Posts: 795
I've been checking out the Poser forum lately. Poser has bullet and ragdoll physics, dynamic hair, and mocap doesn't seem to be broken. It even has motion blur! Why aren't more DAZ animators recommending Poser? Am I missing something?
Post edited by drzap on
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I believe why more daz animators are not using poser with daz products. is because Poser and g3 & g8 do not play well with each other . After genesis2 Daz broke Dson importer for poser, which is really needed to make genesis characters to work with poser. so after that it was a matter of which software was is easier for you to use benefits thingy . I have and do use poser. but I prefer to use daz studio for a number of reasons, for one,f the models & HDRi are much better IMO , I can build much large expansive scenes in Daz Studio where in poser not so much. One thing i do like about poser though is the ability to add .MOV and .AVI to make background scene files, which is great if you got a real-life film or movie you want to add 3d characters too. I do wish daz had that feature. But over all the main reason is because daz and Smith micro have drifted apart in compatibility .. that is why animators complain so much about g3 &v8 and compatibility issues. But that would be just a guess or speculation.
and walk designer and a graph editor etc
yes it is quite useful but so is Carrara I use and iClone too, I giess there are not terribly msny animators, I do know a fair few use Poser but probably do not post on this forum, I watch their videos on Youtube.
My understanding is that, despite the seemingly better features, there are things about Poser's animation capabilites that are actually well behind what people want to use.
Daz is free.
Poser is not.
Even when using Genesis & Genesis 2 DSON is a resource hog. You cant load enough people props & clothing to do what you want to do.
DAZ didn't "break DSON Importer", Poser simply does not have support for the type of rigging G3 and G8 use so they can't work in Poser even with the importer.
I never liked Poser. I had it long ago, I disliked the renderer (results looked terrible, IMO), I had too many problems with simple installation that I couldn't get resolved, software updates didn't provide any real useful functionality for what I needed, and a bunch of other reasons that escape me now. I had it on my machine for years and never used it. I also felt like the company that produced it (Smith Micro) wasn't really into the 3D business and had a bunch of other things going on. Would I start to use it today? Nope. One reason is that Smith Micro stock has been flat at around $1-2 for many years. I want to be confident my software investment will be good for the long haul. I much prefer DAZ with all content available and regular updates and focus on the 3D market.
Hi there are many reasons
why many animators are not using poser
First the poser IK solver is actually worse than the
primitive IK"pins" in Daz studio,
This is because posers IK is All or nothing
in that if you use IK at the begining of your animtion to
pin the characters feet for a stoop or squat motion,
later down the timeline when you turn off IK it will ruin
any lower body animation by trying to repin the
figures feet later in the animation.
This fatal malfunction still exists in poser "pro" 11
The real issue here is development costs and ultimately the cost
vs feature set for the aspiring animator.
Daz studio: -$0 USD
Keymate (Dopesheet):-$20 USD
Graphmate:-$20 USD
aniMate 2 (Full version)-$60 USD
and assuming a person insists on using Genesis 3/8
lets throw in Dragonstorms G2 to G3 retargeting
script for experienced users who have invested in Graph& keymate
as you will need them to fix those frames where G3 inevitably refuses
to obey the Dragonstorm script:-$25 USD
Also lets now add 'Dforce"
for usable ,Cloth dynamics -$0
DAZ studio has basic lipsinc for
speaking characters but its
32 bit version only and no
phoneme editing options
so lets add Mimic live for -$50 USD
So with free daz studio +$185 USD total
we have basic Character animation with decent
motion creation and nonlinear
motion mixing,key frame editing,
a spline graph with auto clamping,
basic cloth dynamics and export to major industry
standard formats such as MDD+.obj and FBX.
But alas you have no actual character physics options or
dynamic hair and the foot pinning Ik system in Daz studio is "tricky for animation purposes
Caveat!
ALL of the above mentioned THIRD PARTY additions
can easily be made USELESS by updating your Free Daz studio
Core application or even moving to the next generation figure just
as the aniMate2 is not usable for genesis 3/8
Still ,consider that you do not have to model or rig anything by hand
and could theoreticly get started on your animated visual story
telling with the included "starter essentials" and whatever
freebies you harvest from "ShareCG" and other sources.
Also if you do own a "high end" Program like C4D, Lightwave 2015
you can treat that $185 USD outlay as an investment in a pretty
decent& versatile premade Character/creature/android resource
addon for C4D or Lightwave etc.with animated figure content
imported from Daz with relative ease.
**********************************************
Poser 11: $500 USD(non sale price)
Spline graph editor included but not updated since 1996 has
no Clamping function requiring manual solutions to correct
splinegraph "over shoot"
Keyframe pallet or "dopesheet" included but again not updated since
1996 and very poorly designed for access to mutiple animation
channels.
Animation "layering" system very primitive for adding motion on
top of existing motion but not useful for true nonlinear motion clip creation and
reordering.
Includes a rigid body bullet physics engine for destruction& object
collapse types of animation.
Includes a soft body Simulation solver for "jiggly part"
animations
Includes a Cloth dynamic engine with Constraints for
pinning parts of clothing and can Do hybrid Dynamic/conformed
clothing items.
Includes Dynamic hair but IMHO not very realistic when animated.
Animated figures can be exported to FBX but no viable option for
dynamic cloth and hair exportnot sure if Bullet or soft body
simulation can be baked for export
to other programs.( citation needed)
Includes "talk designer" lipsinc program for speaking poser
native Characters
There was an optional Ragdoll physics plugin for poser
( p6-p2012 era) it is quite good and I still use it for my work
today- $50 USD.
Advantage; ALL of the above features of poser
(excluding the ragdoll physics plugin )
will never become nonfunctional by updating poser, as
they are part of the poser core application.
Consider that you do not have to model or rig anything manually
and could theoreticly get started on your animated visual story
telling with the included poser content and whatever freebies you
harvest from "ShareCG" and other sources.
I would say that Unity 3D is the best suited for animators,
and it is free if your income is under $100000.
Unity 3D can handle Genesis 8 and all the previous generations.
You can even create your animations in real time
and if you need better quality, there is Octane renderer available for free, too.
You all have made some good points .
You have to start with - what kind of animation do I want to do - then go from there .
I have been doing animation for over 30 years - used all the programs out there .
But for the money it is hard to beat iClone - you can use all your Poser and Daz models .
If I was starting out again - I would get Lumion - you can use all your Poser and Daz model and all that Lumion comes with .
I know you are going to say look at the price - it is worth every penny .
Thanks, wolf for that detailed explanation. I thank everyone for their input. I guess, as always, the path to where we want to go isn't easy. We have to use each software for what its worth for our projects. I like Unity, but only because of its great camera system. I wouldn't try to animate in Unity or Unreal unless I was making a game. iClone is almost there for me, but I'm not into realtime rendering. Until they get a decent production raytraced renderer, it would be just another step in my workflow (which is the last thing I need).
There are some very impressive animations on YouTube which have been made in Poser. I don't have a link offhand but some of the best I saw were by someone called GhidGhid (I think that's the spelling).
Then there is Aurora Trek which was mentioned before in another thread you were in. A new animation in Poser which is still a WIP can be seen here: https://forum.smithmicro.com/topic/2325/eros-psyche-the-movie.
I'm trying to figure out the workflow of the WIP in that link. I think the creator has animated the scenes so far based on the voice recordings but is only making 6fps animatics with basic lighting and textures and proxy clothing which will be animated later. He (she??) seems to be intent on completing the story at that level before going back over it with all the high-quality embellishments added.
I like making very short pose-to-pose animations in Poser but agree with Wolf359 that switching IK on and off ruins things. I find that some limb adjustments throw the whole motion off. The kind of thing I mean is where I might decide to lower a raised arm near the end of a two second animation and I find that now the arm swings horizontally through the body near the beginning (that's the kind of thing I think happens - I'd need to show an example of how fine adjustments get things in a muddle).
I am drawn to Poser for animations, based on the great stuff that has been done but in my latest attempt I moved my saved Poser scenes into Carrara where I'm much more familiar with handling things.
It's a coincidence that I'm already discussing that animation attempt in another thread and this evening some features of Poser and its usefulness as a companion to Carrara are being discussed.with Dartanbeck, who is a great champion of Carrara. The thread is actually about creating very simple clothes and I wouldn't ask you to waste your time with my amateurish tutorial unless you have ten minutes to lose. But I link to a couple of very short clips of my animation a few posts down. Then there is some discussion of Poser and Carrara for animating.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/198736/making-a-simple-clothing-item#latest
I'm very happy :)
Actually, the DSON Importer never worked all that well to begin with; at least, not for me. It was ponderously slow loading a figure, and I could never get clothing to fit properly after the figure was loaded. Especially if the figure was morphed to even the slightest degree. And you could only install it into a single instance/version. (I have three-and-a-half versions of Poser installed: 9, 10, Pro 2012 (which is essentially Poser 9, with a few extra features), and 11 Pro. When I installed the DSON Importer into my Poser 11 Pro instance, it clobbered the installation in my Poser Pro 2012 instance; which, when I installed it there, clobbered the installation in my Poser 10 instance. Apparently, the DSON Importer files are installed local to the Poser directory, but the registry keys are global in scope, and only allow one reference.)
I still use Poser, but not with any figures beyond Generation 4. The irony is that, in my experience, Poser handles Generation-4 figures better than DAZ Studio! (Loading Victoria 4 into DS results in a seemingly-endless sequence of 'circular-reference' warnings.)
Even so, Poser has many features that I wish DAZ Studio had: dynamic cloth and hair (although dForce might change that; I say 'might' because I haven't had great success using dForce so far), and camera support in Poser is much better (Face camera, Right- and Left-Hand cameras, Posing camera, Main and Aux cameras -- DAZ Studio has nothing like them). Poser's Materials Room is easier for me to use than DAZ Studio's Surfaces tab; I can animate texture transitions in Poser (think Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk), that I have yet to figure out how to do in Studio, nor have I found anyone who could explain the process coherently. And that is one more "feature" where Poser stands head-and-shoulders above DAZ Studio: Poser is far better documented, both official, and third-party.
Actually it doesn't. There is a bunch of scaling controls in Gen4 for things such as height that are non-functional in poser because at the time Poser's figure scaling was broken. I don't think it got fixed until maybe Poser 2014
You forgot to mention Iclone
I think he was discussing software he's got experience with, rather than something he doesn't know anything about.