Gary's Poser Practice Question Thread

Gary Childress · Mar 19, 2008

My Poser 7 arrived yesterday in the mail (talk about quick). I've been fooling around with it and going over Utah's tutorial. It looks like Poser 7 may have a few differences from the version which Utahjazz was working with when he made his tutorial. Anyway I thought I'd put together a thread with my questions to the expert Poser users out there while I try to perfect my own Poser unit making skills.

Question 1: I've noticed that some props do not come as "smart" props and will not automatically go where they should. Is there an easy way to get the dumb props (for lack of a better term) to go where you want them.

For instance if a rifle is not a smart prop, is there a way to quickly get it into the spot you want, say where the figure is holding it with it's right hand. I've used the placement dials and it seems to be very "hit or miss" with them.

Also, I thought I'd attach a gif file of my first timid renderings. Here is my very second rendering of Michael 3 to 2, trying to fly in a Yankees baseball uniform. :lol:

Quinzy · Mar 19, 2008

Zoom in close and use the actual dial part rather than the numbers, so that you see the object move, or drag it with your mouse into place.

Bjornlo · Mar 19, 2008

Place PDM in the default position (or load him fresh)
place the prop exactly where you want it and parent the prop the body part that is appropriate.
save the prop back the the library, it is now a smart prop.

If you plan on using a rifle (following your example) more than once, than it pays to smart prop it. If it is a one off, then you save nothing by doing so.

You will need to view an object from several angles and zoom in a few times to get the placement just right. It is kinda a pain.

Use the dials to animate with. Also use them to position stuff. Dragging is never accurate. Though, you can use it as a "rough" and smooth it out with the dials.

Gary Childress · Mar 19, 2008

OK. I have a shooting animation all set up to go, however, I'm not sure how to create a muzzle flash or a puff of smoke or anything like that. I downloaded a muzzle flash and smoke from the downloads database, however, they don't look right. It looks like I need to do some texture or something to them. :confused:

EDIT: OK. I think I have a working muzzle flash now. I just whited all the materials out until instead of having a texture to it.

Gary Childress · Mar 20, 2008

This is a question for NavyDawg, any chance you could let me in on your secret of how to create a running pose? Did you download a running sequence off of the Internet. I found a running pose, however, it's just a one shot pose. It doesn't have motion to it.

EDIT: COOLNESS!! I figured it out using the "swap" position command!

Plotinus · Mar 20, 2008

If you're using Michael, you might want to try out the pose Zulu posted that gives him the dimensions of the Paperdoll.

Gary Childress · Mar 20, 2008

Plotinus said:
If you're using Michael, you might want to try out the pose Zulu posted that gives him the dimensions of the Paperdoll.

I took a look at the Zulu pose and I'm not sure I like the dimensions. He looks a little too short and stocky for my taste. I'd really like to try to make units along the lines of what NavyDawg is doing. I really like the way his units look.

Gary Childress · Mar 20, 2008

If only Poser would animate a little faster it would be nice! I have a 17 frame death animation and it takes over 15 minutes per direction to animate! Is there a way to speed up the process, without jeopardizing quality of animation?

Thanks.

Plotinus · Mar 20, 2008

Not as far as I know, but if you use BatchGen you can leave it to do all the rendering overnight.

Micaelus · Mar 20, 2008

Gary Childress said:
If only Poser would animate a little faster it would be nice! I have a 17 frame death animation and it takes over 15 minutes per direction to animate! Is there a way to speed up the process, without jeopardizing quality of animation?

If you're using FireFly as the render engine, change it to Poser4 for the animations...that will speed it up greatly.

Also, on the figure, uncheck the 'Visible' property for every portion of M3 (or the PDM) that is covered by clothing. This will also speed rendering.

That's all I've figured out so far

Gary Childress · Mar 20, 2008

Very cool Plotinus!!! Do you know off hand if it will enable me to do 8 different directions of the same file? In other words would I be able to load up all 8 directions in one night?

EDIT: Thanks Micaelus! I will give those a try as well. Also does the render quality take much of a hit if you use the Poser4 instead of Firefly?

EDIT2: One more question it says I need Poser Pro Pack to use the batch file thingy. What is the Poser Pro Pack? Is that something that came with my poser or do I need to download it from somewhere?

Thanks.

Plotinus · Mar 20, 2008

You can't instruct it to do different directions of the same file. But it doesn't matter, because what you do is, you have all your animations in one big Poser file, one after the other (Default;Run; Fidget; etc). You rotate the figure and resave it under a different name. Do this for each direction (UnitS, UnitSE, UnitE, etc). Then you have BatchGen render all these files overnight. The end result is as if it had rendered the same file in eight different directions.

Micaelus · Mar 20, 2008

Gary Childress said:
EDIT: Thanks Micaelus! I will give those a try as well. Also does the render quality take much of a hit if you use the Poser4 instead of Firefly?

I've not noticed any difference at all--perhaps at larger scales and with more dynamic materials, etc there is, but I compared a number of renders at both civilopedia scale and civ-scale and couldn't tell a difference.

Plotinus · Mar 20, 2008

Oh, and you don't need to worry about the Poser Pro Pack - if you have Poser 7 it incorporates all the features of that pack. The one that BatchGen uses is Python scripting, and you have that. I have only Poser 6 and it works fine.

Bjornlo · Mar 20, 2008

The Poser Pro pack was Poser version 4.5, There is nothing in it that is not built in to Poser 5 and above.
There is a new poser coming "real soon now" (meaning maybe this year) that is called Poser Pro, which is similar in name but not quite the same. The major difference to me is that it will allow 64bit rendering and 64bit memory addressing.

Gary Childress · Mar 20, 2008

Here's what I have so far for my first unit, an African colonial infantryman circa. WW II. That's a fez on his head.

Stormrage · Mar 20, 2008

Just be carefull about the sizes, Mike units tend to be to tall and slim compared to PDM and Civ units. Looks great so far

Gary Childress · Mar 20, 2008

Stormrage said:
Just be carefull about the sizes, Mike units tend to be to tall and slim compared to PDM and Civ units. Looks great so far

I tried to guage this guy after NavyDawg's French Marine. I notice his marine is a shade stockier but I think it may just be the uniform, unless he has changed his Mike figure's shape. I hope to have a whole WW2 series of figures so that they all compare to each other favorably.

So far Poser seems a little easier to work with than Bryce. I got so tired of my polygons warping out of recognition every time I rotate a piece in Bryce. :mad:

EDIT: Here's default/fortify/attack/victory/default/fortify/attack/death. Still need to make flcs and palettes.

Micaelus · Mar 21, 2008

Gary--looking good...watch the feet though. They're sliding around a lot, especially the right foot. Make sure to place them where you want them in their destination frame and in the preceding frames pick up the foot. Utahjazz's tutorial displays this well and you do it with the left foot going into the fortify/attack, but not so much going back from the attack.

Again, great work with the model. The rifle movements look good and I like the collapsing death.

Plotinus · Mar 21, 2008

Yes, it all looks good apart from the feet. Remember, each foot should stay exactly where it is unless it's actually stepping. When a character steps, his body should move in the same direction as the stepping foot, so it looks like he's putting his weight on it (always watch out for Jellyfish Syndrome, where it looks like his legs are dangling from his body rather than his body being supported by the legs). And a character never moves both feet at the same time unless he's jumping in the air.

Gary's Poser Practice Question Thread

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