Cyberdene's Blog

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8:26 pm

 Creators journal 1: In the name of animation
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Poser has been a fun program to invest time into. The interface itself is very basic and simple to use, but there are still portions of the software I don't understand, such as fully animating a scene. The majority of poser/Daz users are artist beyond the levels of simply sketching or drawing by hand. However, it is unlikely that you will see many poser users creating fluid animations with the software, in fact its rare to find a piece of any animation done with 3D software on the internet because the process is so time consuming there aren't enough people willing to step up to the challenge. Ever since I found out about Poser I've always wanted to go beyond still imagery, whenever I run into artwork on the internet and if it looks good then I'm often finding myself asking questions such as "why won't the artist animate this?" or "if their this good, how come they wont challenge themselves further by animating the art into something that actually moves".

Whenever I talk about my major project or at least one of the few projects I've been working on the thought that comes to my mind is "how will I animate this?" Because I would like to see the work come to life. I don't want to see my characters just standing around, I want them to move and interact with each other. The problem with getting things like this done is figuring out how to actually animate. Poser 7 comes with several animations but their not nowhere near good enough or even close to realistic enough to use in a short or full length movie. Animations in Poser look awfully poor, robotic, and unbalanced. Have you ever seen someone try to create an action scene with Poser before? Trust me, you can find a lot of videos on youtube and their not that great, but you can't blame the person for at least trying. Poser was never made for creating animations, but considering the fact that the software from Poser 4 up to Poser 9 all have decent rendering engines (especially Poser 9 and Poser 2012 which have the ability to create photo-realistic models). When I am shopping around or simply just adding items into my wishlist and I see something I really want but can't afford it. I'm thinking to myself "that would be great if I actually had that for my scene and could make it somehow move like this or like that".

So now that Poser has improved with 2012 and still the program is geared toward artist interested in creating still imagery art I'm thinking. Someone needs to get a pertition going for Smith Micro to make the next poser all about animations and voice over and I'm not talking about creating more of the same programs so people have to waist money when it could have been fixed the first time. Its like Poser 8 didn't even last for too long and already Smith Micro breaks out with Poser 9 and from there they've gone into Poser 2012 if you give it a couple of months there will be a Poser 2013 or 2014 with a few slight features and yes a better rendering engine than the last but it will most likely still lack the ability to create fluid animations that will allow us to go beyond still imagery.

I figured since aniMate exist people who are familiar with Daz can take advantage of that and start creating more animations where character figures can interact with objects or environments. Such as being able to open doors, eating where food actually gets eaten by the character, you know the type of animations you see in cartoons, movies, or any other animation resource (Video games included).  If the next Poser focuses less on still image and model posing and more on animating characters and objects it would give artists more ways to use the program. Iv'e seen a lot of good art on this website, and when I think about the possibilities of seeing that art in the form of animation, the first thing I'm thinking is "wow, that looks amazing, I want to watch it to see what happens next".

There is so much you can do with still imagery that when it come down to animating, there is a lot more work but the thrill of getting to see your work in action is where the joy of it all comes from. If Smith Micro doesn't make the next Poser animation friendly, well it should drop the term "Animation" to avoid being misleading. For instance if Poser was made for simply posing models then why use "Animation" which is basically a sequence of movement? Maya, Softimage, and Studio Max are all animation programs, if they weren't I doubt people would be paying $4000 or more for either of the programs. Of course price has dropped but some of the bigger packs are still quite expensive. Poser is a cheap product that almost anyone can afford. It also does all the hard work for you to help save time which is something Maya and all those proffessional programs don't have.

 Poser coudl easily compete with the expensive juggarnaughts if the creators of the program try something new with the software for a change aside from adding several new features and improving the rendering engine. But don't get me wrong here, I like using Poser because its basic but there is still a steep learning curve so its not all easy. My only gripe with the program is the lack of animation possibilities and the lack of male clothing..Another good reason for me to learn how to create my own products.. Victoria is beautiful in all but I get tired of seeing her all over the place. I'd like to see Michael and Hiro 4 in action with cool badass hairstyles and outfits.

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