Do most Poser users by-pass the supplied figures in favour of DAZ's ?
Hermit Crab
Posts: 841
Hi all,
This is a kind of vague question but...
I'm gradually using Poser 10 more these days and enjoying a lot of its features.
Apart from the few supplied clothes I don't have anything for the figures which come with Poser. From DAZ I have M4 and V4 (but again few garments for them).
What I'm wondering - would most Poser users forget about Smith-Micro's figures and just use DAZ's?
Is there any compelling argument for buying things for figures such as Jessi, Alyson (and whatever the male counterparts are :) ).
When I use Poser, I like these figures (even the very early ones) but is the general opinion that they are better avoided in favour of DAZ's?
(So far, I haven't tried using M4 or V4 in Poser - I imagine they handle the same as the native figures?).
Thanks for any advice.
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Comments
Past tense, most Poser user's have skipped Poser content for DAZ Poser content .
Since DAZ stopped supporting Poser with figures instead supplying the DSON script there has been a
resurgence of interest in native Poser content check out Wardrobe Wizard (PhilC)
for those clothing shortages.
From what I've seen, it comes and goes. Sometimes a few content creators will grab on to one figure or another while others get ignored.
Posette got a lot of use because she was all there was.
Poser 5 Judy caught the eye of several freebie creators
Poser 6 Jessi wasn't used much as far as I saw
Poser 7 Sydney had some support
Poser 8 Alyson had little support
Poser 9 Alyson2 had a very good character in GND Anastasia that got some good clothing, though it was on the sexy side.
Poser 10 Roxie has some support
The men got pretty much ignored as is always the case.
As far as the Daz characters in poser, some of the more peripheral things were never supported. I'm talking about things like the Figure Height Menu & the face room.
Daz used to make the Poser figures. Poser 4's figures were all made by Daz.
Vicky 1 was made with the purpose of giving people an 'advanced figure' - and then Poser changed companies a number of times and the new owner and daz went their separate ways.
BUT that is kind of why the Poser figures don'e get much love. The user base had already moved on to Michael and Vicky, and I think even M2 and V2, before Poser got its own figures... and each version of Poser seems to throw out the last version's figures for new ones...
- that can make it hard for people to want to support them.
For some reason even though Daz has done the same thing, people are more willing to move from one Daz figure to the next one...
- Which might just be the inertia of brand loyalty since Vicky 1...
Even Alyson/Alyson II were very different
I am a Poser Pro 2014 Game dev version user, and I have to say that I use the on-board Poser human figures equally as I do the DAZ3D and independant human figures.
Updated to qualify - I use the Generation 4 DAZ3D figures, but seldom use the higher versions.
Many thanks for all these helpful replies.
James S: Thanks for the pointer to a store and for explaining the situation.
Pwiecek: That list of figures and the versions they first appeared in is just what I needed to understand the evolution of the Poser figures. I suppose the Figure Height for DAZ figures would be catered for to some extent by Aiko/ S3/ S4 in place of V4. (Strange I only mention the females - I hope to create scenes with both sexes).
As I said, I enjoy using all the figures and I find even Posette good to use because the poses I achieve are either feasibly realistic or altogether distorted - no middle ground.
And the Toon characters look good to me. Also, on one of the very few occasions I looked outside the DAZ store (which I haven't bought all that much from yet) I saw a toon-style 'Ice Witch' which looked great - she wouldn't have been out of place in a commercial film.
Arcady: You've rounded out the answer to me when you say the user base moved on to the DAZ characters. (Another way I thought of asking my question was: if your friend just bought Poser to start out in 3D, would you advise him to just go with the DAZ figures and the new Poser ones?)
ibr_remote: Thanks for your input - it supports the view that DAZ's G4 figures are still good to use.
My top two programs that I use as a hobbyist are Carrara and Iclone.
When I bought Poser (9) I wanted to see if I could export BVH animations with moving clothing into Carrara settings. Instead I spent more time moving Genesis figures to animate in Iclone but I'm now going back to pursue my original plan.
Recently I've bought a few DAZ environments and have tried putting figures into them in Poser, Carrara and Iclone. My experience is that Carrara is the best of the three for staging such scenes (my hardware is 32 bit and low-spec).
Unfortunately, my computer can't cope well with Genesis in Carrara so I'm looking to make the most of the Poser/Carrara possibilities. And I love the things that Poser does well.
MS "My experience is that Carrara is the best of the three for staging such scenes (my hardware is 32 bit and low-spec)."
Dude stop buying Content and up you cost benefit ratio with a blazing used 1366 socket MB a xeon X5680 and 1 4GB ram stick
In my early Poser days, the supplied characters were all that I had. They are, in my experience, poorly designed for rendering purposes, more like caricatures than figures with realistic body proportions. Poor topology along with, let's be honest here, ugly figures doesn't exactly make for an attractive offering when compared to the supermodel Vicky. While recent figures have fared considerably better, they're still not widely supported enough for many people to invest in.
The reason the Generation 4 figures are so popular amongst Poser users is because they actually look human. They're native Poser format (albeit old Poser format), so don't require any DSON importing which seems to cause hang-ups for people wanting to use the newer Genesis figures. But crucially, because they're cross-compatible between Daz Studio and Poser they have a huge amount of support from PA's who create tons of content for them. V4's wardrobe alone dwarfs everything out for the Genesis 1&2 figures combined (autofit notwithstanding).
Take a look around for characters for the various figures. You'll find a small handful, at best, for the Poser figures and a wealth of options for Vicky and her ilk. If nothing else, it's that reason alone why they continue to go from strength to strength. That, and not looking like a potato :)
Look human as opposed to the figures in Poser itself or as opposed to Genesis 1 and 2, or both?
In coming back to 3D a month ago, I decided to forgo Vicky and Michael 4 because they were the old line, and have just jumped straight into Genesis 2 on the assumption that it would be all around an improvement. Wrong thinking there? Or are you aiming that mostly at the Poser figures?
I did notice that the current 'GND' morph is for a Poser 9 figure - but that is an exception to the norm on these things.
With not much support for them, even if one wanted to use the official Poser figures, it is kind of hard unless you model all your own morphs and textures, and use only dynamic cloth clothing.
***
Prior to "Zygote" making Possete, Poser was not seen as a render-art tool. It was intended for posing a figure so you could sit next to your computer or a printout with your pencil and paintbrush in hand.
Poser was meant to replace those little wooden figures you get in art supply shops. It evolved in a different direction - starting with Possette (the default female in Poser 4. The default male was also an improvement - but the male figures never get the same notice), and then Vicky 1 seems to have been made solely with 'making digital art' in mind. I remember threads at the time with people posting wireframes and breaking down why this was a radical moment - along with counter threads arguing that possette was better shaped (vicky has always had a crowd that did not find her look attractive - in part because she lacked exaggerated curves and/or rail-thinness, but she also has a bit of a 'strong jawed' face, or did back then. Its been so long since I even loaded a possette up I can't mentally visualize the difference anymore).
Thanks for the recent comments in the thread.
James S - your post made me laugh - direct and to the point!
Actually, I've been using 3d the wrong way round - I went in at the deep end and tried making all my own stuff for animation and played endlessly with exporting from one software to another and doing amateurish renders.
Then very recently I decided just to buy some ready-made items and - you're right James - my computer hardly copes.
I understand your point of view Herald of Fire - the Poser figures are somewhat inferior to DAZs but I don't mind that too much. But that's what made me ask in the first place. I guess that, when I've seen fantastic Poser renders and animations, they have been achieved using DAZ figures rather than Poser's own.
I am going to steer clear of using Genesis in Poser - I get the impression it is a bit of a struggle. It would be a struggle on my PC for sure.
Lastly, thanks to all your replies, I understand the Poser 'scene' a whole lot more.
Well ... not if you have Poser Pro 2014, which has a robust fitting room.
I use Poser's G2 Simon, all the time... he is delightfully terrible... he reminds me of a Bendy Popeye figure I had when I was three... its like he has no bones, only semi-flexible wire inside him.
Unlike my Popeye toy, I hate Simon so much, I love using him for many of my promos... he is so frickn' cheesy, and since most of my props are so cheesy, it works for me.
Actually one of the biggest reasons I first started using Simon, was that none of DAZ's male figures seemed to have an outfit with a tee shirt that tucked into the pants (none that I found)... I hated that look that all the shirts had and even though Simon's was very low rez, I already had him sitting there in the runtime.
Hi lordvicore,
Those are excellent and fun images you posted. They show that, in the right hands, even the older figures can be used to great effect. And it's nice that you get a lot of enjoyment from what you do.
I guess Poser would have died the death a long time ago if people hadn't been pleased with it - although I now see that DAZ figures helped a great deal.
Last night I spent a little while using the Rex and Roxie figures which came free when I bought Poser 10. They are quite impressive and I'd be willing to build my own basic clothing for them once I delve into what's involved.
Maybe they are the newer figures I heard about and would need the Pro Fitting Room which believable3d referred to?
I only chose Poser 10 because sometimes I prefer less complexity at least to begin with. In the end, 3d for me is a pastime but when I look back it has mostly consisted of learning, trying out, experimenting.....
How do those whose art works appear in galleries ever manage!
Hi ssgbryan,
Thanks for all that additional information.
It led me to take a look at the Wardrobe Wizard section of the manual - I'll try to use that soon - I didn't know about it so its all good news for me.
Over the past the weekend I had a couple of long sessions with Poser and I'm liking it a lot. The sessions confirmed my preference for the Rex and Roxie figures - but I haven't worked too much with others.
A new scene I bought for Poser, however, was easier to work with in Carrara - as said above, my hardware is low-spec.
But it leads me to add a further general question: is there any way to show all props as being textured on two sides?
The scene I bought isn't from DAZ but is of an Abyss. In Poser it was difficult to find camera viewpoints because the walls from behind were 'see-through'.
It is the same with DAZ hair. I guess it's to do with normals but can textures be made to be displayed as two-sided?
I showed some (Carrara) renders of the scene in the Carrara forum but I hope no-one objects to seeing one of them here. It uses Stephanie 3.