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Willowisp
Adventurous
The problem with 'standard' material presets is that they are mostly useless. The result of a cloth sim depends mostly on the density of the mesh. Settings that may behave like leather on one skirt, might behave like silk on a different mesh. So asking for 'standard' material preset is pointless.
That's true, but there usually isn't such a big difference in mesh density. Too low-res won't drape well, too high-res gets unmanageable. So, while there certainly is variation in mesh density, this variation usually happens within limits, which means that for many cases the suggested settings will work fine.
That's true - cloth sims depend on the mesh topology. Areas with more vertexes will be "heavier" in simulations than others. The same parameters may yield different results on different models. This is even more critical with softbody dynamics with the Bullet engine in Poser. Like Esha said, we can only hope the next clothing will have a similar mesh density, but you never know.
Semicharm
Eager
Yeah, crashing in earlier versions is another reason I shied away from using it. Between version and system upgrades that's rarely an issue anymore.I'll admit when I first poked my head in there, it was a bit intimidating. I think it's all the dials and settings. It has a bit of an overwhelming feel at first. It's easy for me to work in there now, but I do remember having a lot of trouble getting used to it at the beginning. I ended up crashing my program a LOT, trying to use it at first. Yes, even after reading the manual. I had to figure out what my computer at the time could and could NOT handle.
It's not hard now, but it definitely was a bit tricky at the start. Fortunately, the learning curve is not very long with it.
While doing testing back in the day at RDNA, your cloth room tutorials were considered the standard.*hugs Satira*
I enjoyed making that tutorial, it was a labor of love. So glad to know that you found it useful, and that you're even recommending it
Helped all of us a lot, even some of the veterans on the team.
Hornet3d
Wise
I purchased that tutorial and it is certainly well worth the money but without that some of the settings were definitely obscure, to me at least. With that tutorial, and a lot of help and suggestions in this forum, I am relatively comfortable in the cloth room these days. For skirts and dresses it is a must particularly for any movement or you want the garment to interact with furniture like a bed or a seat. A lot of my renders are sci fi related with figures in tight fitting uniforms so the cloth room is of little use for the figure but still great for draping cloth if it is required for the scene.
Hornet3d
Wise
Thank you for posting that, it was very interesting. I particularly liked the comment 'Our dev team is working to re-design the license management system to a more flexible architecture while still honoring previously sold licenses' that was in the other document that has a link on the page you posted.
Here's another article, this time from Larry Weinberg. Cool stuff!
A brief history of Poser with Larry Weinberg
Looking forward to what's to come.
A brief history of Poser with Larry Weinberg
Looking forward to what's to come.
Oh, love that history graphic. Nice story, and I'm looking forward to hearing more.
I agree - that Poser timeline was very cool. In so many occasions I was asking myself in what version feature X or Y was added to Poser, but I couldn't remember. I am keeping a copy of that timeline! ^____^
Beat you to it!
Someone should add Daz Studio to that timeline so people can see them side by side.
DS was first released exactly 10 years after Poser, which makes it easy for me to remember. Poser was released in 1995, and DS in 2005, which coincides (more or less) with the released of Poser 6.
Yah but I was thinking what was added when like in the Poser graphic.
That seems about right, because I didn't join DAZ until the Fall of 2004, and I didn't start using DS until it had reached version 2.0. I didn't like any of the earlier versions at all. I was still pretty much a Brycer, because I couldn't get Poser 5 working on the Desktop I had back then.
ibr_remote
Adventurous
May I chip in here:
I've exchanged communication with Ken over the years and am also his customer. I think he is specifically calling Poser unsuited for professional animation productions intended for commercial distribution. There are many artists who render professional quality still images using Poser, and it would be an outright insult to call their work non-professional. Also, many merchants create commercial products which must pass a certain quality bar, oftentimes equivalent to professional grade work. It would be an insult to imply that theirs is anything but professional quality output. Hence, to summarise, Ken Watanabe was only making the point for animation productions intended for commercial licensing and distribution.
In a sense, people sometimes commission me to make Poser renders, and, by definition, anything people pay you to make can be considered "professional" work. I know of online book stores that hire Poser artists to make covers of commercially sold books, so that could fit the bill as well. I think this might have been where Poser renders have been used commercially the most - book covers. Digital Art has promoted some of that in their webinars, and I have seen book covers where I kind of recognize a Poser render. There were also digital comics sold commercially with Poser renders, though some of these have been heavily painted over for the final art. Content creators sell their products at online stores like HW, Rendo and DAZ, so these people could be called "professionals". Even Rooster Teeth has advertised about Poser in the closing credits of every episode of RWBY's first commercial season.
Having that said, people could say they have used Poser commercially for years, to include myself, but I guess my point was that Poser does not come to mind when commercial companies think about creating a professional animated series. This is where SMS has advertised Poser being "the ultimate professional animation tool", because Rooster Teeth was using it on RWBY's first season. But the fact remains that Rooster Teeth has switched to Maya for the second season on because of Poser's technical limitations in features and performance. It was just not up to the task, where anyone who has tried to animate in Poser will realize.
That is not to say that Poser cannot animate characters - I have posted DOZENS of Poser animations at DA. I just think it would require a more "serious" tool set to allow for professional grade results. If I had to make suggestions, I would start with better IK, and adding foot and hand ground contact. For example, Reallusion iClone uses Autodesk Human IK and supports feet and hands ground contact in real time. Those things alone could make iClone more "professional" than Poser for commercial animation. Even Disney has created a real-time animation division that does all the work using the Unity3D game engine to create episodic series. Poser is much older than Unity3D, so why didn't Disney pick it instead? Because it's not up to the task.
Most of the Poser code is now 20 years old, and it's showing its age. iClone and Unity3D are constantly being upgraded and improved, while Poser is stuck in the past. Even the Cycles rendering engine in Poser is stuck in the past, while Cycles in Blender3D has evolved and improved in many areas since then. It's now up to Renderosity to bring Poser out of the shadows and to the present day. Maybe then Poser could be considered for professional work, but until then, like DS, it remains a low budget hobbyist tool.
@Ken1171 - when you say "the fact remains that Rooster Teeth has switched to Maya ... because of Poser's technical limitations in features and performance", then I've got to reply - you're not wrong, but it's a bit more complicated than that ...
Rooster Teeth hired an animator called Monty Oum to make RWBY of the back of his work on Red vs Blue. Oum used Poser in preference to other apps as he knew it well and could work extremely quickly in it. He died quite suddenly after two seasons of RWBY were complete and the third in production (my source for that is Wikipedia); the switch to Maya was made because no-one else could use Poser the way he could. Some of that is due to software limitations - Maya is an expensive high-end app and can do a lot more than Poser after all - but it is also due to the limitations of those using it. Monty Oum had a personally developed workflow that conventionally trained animators could not emulate.
Or to put it another way - Monty Oum was an artist. Sometimes choosing deliberate restrictions can drive creativity - in my experience having too much choice can often cause crippling indecision that takes away focus.
Anyway, I'm very happy about Renderosity buying Poser. The decision by SM to ditch the dev team (obviously a high-level corporate decision for cost reasons) a few years back meant development flatlined and I knew that a new version would not be a realistic prospect. You could say my enthusiasm waned a bit - I felt pretty much the same way when RuntimeDNA folded; that was my Poser home, and it got me through a very dark time in my life.
Now there is a chance that Poser may see some serious development, I'm learning to rig my own figures, and finally enjoying 3D again. Proud to be a low budget hobbyist - an aspirational one
Rooster Teeth hired an animator called Monty Oum to make RWBY of the back of his work on Red vs Blue. Oum used Poser in preference to other apps as he knew it well and could work extremely quickly in it. He died quite suddenly after two seasons of RWBY were complete and the third in production (my source for that is Wikipedia); the switch to Maya was made because no-one else could use Poser the way he could. Some of that is due to software limitations - Maya is an expensive high-end app and can do a lot more than Poser after all - but it is also due to the limitations of those using it. Monty Oum had a personally developed workflow that conventionally trained animators could not emulate.
Or to put it another way - Monty Oum was an artist. Sometimes choosing deliberate restrictions can drive creativity - in my experience having too much choice can often cause crippling indecision that takes away focus.
Anyway, I'm very happy about Renderosity buying Poser. The decision by SM to ditch the dev team (obviously a high-level corporate decision for cost reasons) a few years back meant development flatlined and I knew that a new version would not be a realistic prospect. You could say my enthusiasm waned a bit - I felt pretty much the same way when RuntimeDNA folded; that was my Poser home, and it got me through a very dark time in my life.
Now there is a chance that Poser may see some serious development, I'm learning to rig my own figures, and finally enjoying 3D again. Proud to be a low budget hobbyist - an aspirational one
@caisson Thank you so much for the input on Rooster Teeth switching to Maya. Most of what I know about it was based on the little we know from outside. Some of it came from Netherworks feedback, where he said he had worked with them on rigging the characters for about a year. He also said they had to remake the characters when switching to Maya because of the different requirements. He was one who claimed Poser wasn't up to the task in some areas. Then we have Nerd3D showing us some of the tricks they used on RWBY character rigging in one of the SMS webinars - very creative stuff I had never imagined doing in Poser, but that could make up for the lack of better features. So I knew they had to be very creative to get over the limitations.
I am also happy about Rendo taking over Poser development. Maybe now it has a better chance to go back to what it was supposed to be, and get the features it needs. Rendo claims to listen to the community, and that alone could be a game changer for Poser, since SMS was not very good with communication.
I am also happy about Rendo taking over Poser development. Maybe now it has a better chance to go back to what it was supposed to be, and get the features it needs. Rendo claims to listen to the community, and that alone could be a game changer for Poser, since SMS was not very good with communication.