Thanks for the responses.
I see looking at the picture freshly today that even though as Posettes go this gal is a tall long-legged type, the car is about 10 percent too small.
@leahman:
I'm still with
Poser 4 mainly because the old computer I use only meets the minimum, but not the recommended, requirements for
Poser 5, and although I never tried it I'm concerned it would run too slow to be useable particularly when trying to make complex images. I can barely run
Poser 4 if I do a scene with more than about four Poserfolk, particularly if there are props, clothes, and multiple lights involved. I could get a cheap used computer to run
Poser 7 even, but I guess in the end it's a question of how I want to spend my time, which doesn't include countless hours spent configuring and tweaking a new(er) computer to my (demanding) specifications. None of the other things I do with my computer would be helped or made better by an upgrade (I enjoy a lot of games, but none commercially-made in the past ten years interest me), so until this one is a charred husk on my desk I'm going to keep using it. I also am a hardcore cheapskate, skinflint, spendthrift, whatever you want to call it.
I would like to think (could be wrong, that's why I post here to learn) that the lack of tools in the
Poser 4 toolbox forces me to more seriously focus on the fundamental things. I hope to master these basic areas so that in the future if I do move up to better software, I can really do some nice work that reflects the images I see in my mind.
Most at PF already know this stuff but since we're discussing, the main things I focus on in making my
Poser 4 images is not much different from any other CG work:
1) Textures--I think high-quality textures are
the most important thing in 3D artwork, whether it's focused on pseudo-realism (like this pic) or on comic-style like so many of your own works (I'm betting you agree, since the first thing I usually notice about your own images are the excellent textures). I normally make most of my own textures in order to learn what this area is all about. For example with skin textures, a very large number of downloadable
Poser skin textures have inappropriate highlights painted onto the texture. I think highlighting is the job of the lighting used and the render engine, and that the texture is something to
be highlighted rather than itself a highlight. Making my own textures helps me to understand the problems involved in such things regardless of whether I overcome them or not. For clothes, whether I'm using basic swatches from free texture sites (usually) or my own scans (sometimes), it's still necessary to compile them onto a
Poser-model texture map and determine what size, resolution, hue/saturation adjustment, etc of the samples are needed for a texture map that will give good results.
2) Lighting--After textures I think the most important thing is lighting. I always make my own lighting set-up for each image and never use prefab light sets; this forces me to learn the details about this important area. This outdoor image for example had five lights. Four were global lights (one at 150 percent intensity, one at 35 percent intensity, and two at a measly 5 percent intensity) and one was a highly focused spotlight (on
Posette's face, angle end only 20 degrees, distance start to distance end range a mere .2 units). Only two of the lights cast shadows, and all of them used subtly colored rather than white light. Many of my recent images in the gallery only use just 2 or even 1 solitary light.
3) Composition--Outside the scope of these techniques since it has less to do with
Poser than with art in general. What is the center of attention in this image, where will I place the models, what colors should I use, what camera settings and location, etc? While this process takes place prior to working on textures and lighting, it's number 3 instead of number 1 because it's often possible to make decent
Poser images that are badly composed if the other elements are done well enough; certainly nothing to be proud of but possible nonetheless.
4) Posing--Unnatural posing is often the giveaway that the viewer is looking at CG media in even the best and most detailed stuff made on supercomputer farms (e.g. those 'Final Fantasy' movies). I always make my own poses instead of relying on prefab stuff, and constantly study photographs to see how real people pose. This helps me learn more about this important area, plus avoids a lot of frustration since most 'pose sets' for download always have annoying extra characteristics (like a 'sitting pose' that also changes the facial expression, or a 'face pose' that has bodyshape morph targets set, etc) that will quickly mess up a scene and are way too aggravating to bother fixing.
5) Customizing the Posettes--Good models are of course pretty important to 3D artwork, but this is at the bottom of my top 5 elements of an image. Much of the work done on my Posettes to make them look like distinctive individuals has been done incrementally over the years, so this is something I'm always working on in the background but don't spend much time on at any one session. Hopefully the lack of models available for
Poser 4 has helped me to focus on getting a few models mostly right rather than constantly moving on from one new model to the next and therefore not getting a handle on what is needed to have a good model, or spending time learning how a new model behaves rather than anticipating and compensating for well-known issues of a familiar model.
6) Postwork. There are two separate areas of postwork I do on each image. The first is trying to find and get rid of all the tiny render errors (for example, one black pixel in the middle of a light area, pixels at the edges of objects that were not antialiased the right way) that can be distracting to the viewer. I also always try to improve glaring flaw areas in models (for example, the way P4 woman's shoulder meets her torso too high making her shoulder unnaturally tiny). Sometimes I miss areas and sometimes see problems but decide they're not worth the effort to fix (if it takes more than ten or fifteen minutes I usually skip it), but this helps me focus on what the image looks like. The second area is applying a few filter layers to bring up the overall contrast and color saturation, since all
Poser 4 renders always look too flat and washed-out to me regardless of whether they were properly lit. I have done this so often it's a routine process for me, so this second step only takes five or less minutes. Doing some minor (normally fifteen minutes, in extreme cases an hour) postwork on every image has helped me understand better how to improve the original renders from within
Poser, has helped me to learn how to use image-editing software at what I consider a trained professional skill level, and forces me to spend more time thinking about what my images actually look like, since when actually using
Poser I'm often too preoccupied with placing models, lighting, adjusting dials, etc to really see the big picture.
As I've spent more time focused on using
Poser 4 over the last year than I did in the previous maybe seven years added together, I'm generally happy with the progress that I've made in my skills although I'm very certain I can still do much better with the program. I think I'm at the point now where although every image still has some important flaws in some areas, at least I can comprehend why they're a problem even though I don't know how to fix them; whereas in the past I woud make images that were very badly flawed in every single aspect and wasn't even aware of it. I don't want to slow down until I can look at something I made and say 'There now--that's the kind of work I always dreamed about doing.' Plus, there's still a lot of general stuff about
Poser 4 (joint blend zone? what's that?) I don't even understand, so there's bound to be something in there that will significantly improve my techniques.
Thanks for the kind words and suggestions. By the way, I did a quick Google check but didn't see any non-warez
Poser 5 currently available free anywhere, do you have a link on that?
In the area of constructive comments...
