Poser/Bryce do we hate it or love it?

# 1 06-06-2003 , 04:53 AM

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We spend hours upon hours learning Maya but Anyone who can right click a mouse can make a fairly decent image with bryce and poser. Is this a good thing? does it enhance creativity or is it just a more sophisticated/custom form of clipart?

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# 2 06-06-2003 , 05:03 AM

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I would say I have mixed feeling on this..

Bryce helped me get familiar with 3D and some of the rules...I played with lighting, textures, rendering and I saw I liked it...

but like you said, it does seem like more sophisticated way of clipart because you are not making your own people in Poser, you are using pre-made ones....

-Emo

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# 3 06-06-2003 , 06:32 AM

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Yeh.. i got into it with a little program called amorphium Pro and only moved on because it was amasingly ristricted, i have never used bryce.. but it uses boolean to much for my liking =(, but i think programs like these (except poser) are great for learning the basics about 3D without getting fantastically confused. I dont like poser though for the same reason.. you dont have the tool to make any geometry.

-Laurie

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# 4 06-06-2003 , 07:40 AM

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I spend a lot of time on most of my images and it is rather frustrating to see all of the attention going to the trendwhore images made in Bryce and Poser. I know that like 75+% of the 3d users on www.deviantart.com unfortunately use Poser and/or Bryce and they are the ones who get all the page views. On the plus side, in the 3d field there is little need for crap programs like Bryce or Poser since they are only powerful enough to make spheres, tori, and displacement maps.

"The nutmeg is the epitome of nuts"

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# 5 06-06-2003 , 02:10 PM

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Originally posted by Aerlinger
On the plus side, in the 3d field there is little need for crap programs like Bryce or Poser since they are only powerful enough to make spheres, tori, and displacement maps.

Originally Posted by

1) First of all, as much as you think that Bryce/Poser are limited, I dont appreciate you saying they are crap and are good for "making spheres, tori, and disp. maps"... user added image

2) Secondly, if it wasn't for these "crap" programs, I would not be here right now.. (and I'm sure a lot of others) so the next time, please think about what these crap programs can do....

and by the way, I suppose the Sphere making programs made this too?

-Emo

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# 6 06-06-2003 , 02:14 PM

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lol! so true.. ive seen some good stuff made in them, but ... litteraly one or two.. and too many communities are crouded with Poser users.. another one is renderosity.com.. ever so crap but they give infinite gallery uploads.... but then i found simply maya =D. There are quite a few programs that people havnt heard of before that have loads of potential, i saw a demo CD of one called animanium by saga if you guys have heard of it. It look very cool, they dont distribute the video cd but ill try and upload the movie some time soon!
www.animanium.com

Was that done in poser.. rendering wise its fine, but... none of that was modeld in poser at all. im not saying there totally shit .... there not at all, i started off on them, but they are just very restrictive

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Last edited by LauriePriest; 06-06-2003 at 02:52 PM.

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# 7 06-06-2003 , 03:36 PM

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Well, I REALLY don't wanna piss-off anyone so I'll TRY to keep my opinions to myself....but it is REALLY HARD in this case user added image

hehe..

I learned 3d with Max r2, then, while doing that, I also played around with Bryce and eventualy poser, kinda like in Emo's first post.

I started to get a LOT of flack for using poser and Bryce because as I was told, AND as I soon realized, I really wasn't legitimatelymodeling my scenes.

I soon realized that with bryce and poser, all I was doing was using and slightly altering something that someone ELSE has already made.

So, I thought to myself, well, I could suck it up and try actually modeling my own models, mapping uv's on them, texturing them, lighting them, and rendering them.

I soon found that I started respecting myself a LOT more for my work because it was truly MY work that I made from scratch from an image in my head.

NOW, with all that being said, lets look at what bryce really is:

It creates terrains (sea, air, land) automaticly and renders them with it's built in raytrace engine.
(Only recently, has it come with rudimentary modeling ability out of the box.)

Think about that for a second...

For the podrace sequences in SWEP1, ILM wrote their own automatic terrain generator that took a list of variables like: air thickness, haze, elevation, foliage, various geometry features, etc., and wrote functionality for it to accept camera data from Maya/Softimage/Cari so it could AUTOMATICLY generate a somewhat controllable, VERY realistic terrain based on the variable list, and read-ahead camera translation/direction of movement.

So basicly, ILM wrote thier own proprietary "Bryce-like" terrain generator on steriods.

So, IMHO, if Bryce could export geometry to Maya as quads, COMPLETE with clean and undisturbed uvs, I would buy it in a SECOND.

Also, concerning automatic character generation tools, just look at the tools that WETA wrote to create the armies of orcs.
I believe it was called OrcBuilder or something like that.

Same idea as poser, but on a MASSIVELY larger, more robust scale. ( sry 4 the pun user added image

)

So, if poser could export CLEAN, uvs and quadrangulated geometry to Maya (and obviously all the top 3d apps), YOU KNOW people would JUMP to buy it, AND cut the users some slack, because then, TRULY people would be able to say that they at least modeled parts and details of a given character.

So, to end my bit here, I guess personally, I look at the folks using ONLY Bryce and Poser, as folks that are just learning the rules, and we shouldn't bash them outright, but just alert them to the fact that, while they may be creating pretty, still imagery, when it comes to industry employment, and HIGH quality character/environmantal modeling, animation, texturing, lighting and rendering, they should be SERIOUSLY considering trying the same work in an industry standard highend 3D app.

Because I hate to say it folks, poser and bryce are built for SPECIFIC purposes.

Maya, and the rest, are built for most ANY purpose user added image

I REALLY do hope someday that some of these poser/bryce users can show us some quality work that doesn't make me point and say:
"Oh, you did that in Poser and/or Bryce right?"

Because sadly... we can tell user added image

Again, I do NOT wanna piss off anyone here, as it's just my crappy opinion, and to each his own...

...thoughts???

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

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# 8 06-06-2003 , 04:15 PM

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I do see your point entirely.....

I think it depends where you are coming from - whether you need to do things professionally, or develop yourself as an artist.

If you're doing something professionally, then a lot of it is down to how much time something would take for the best possible results. Bryce give the landscape you want? Use that. Don't need wonderful looking people for pre-vis work? Use Poser.

However, if you're looking to develop as an artist, and time isn't as important, then I think you should be willing to do the work yourself, but, at the same time, be aware of the areas that you are trying to improve and use 'shortcuts' for the other areas....

If you're trying to improve as a modeller, then you wouldn't want to use Poser or Bryce.
If you're looking to become a Particle TD, then you would work with the standard particles, and work on getting great results from them, rather than using a pre-built particles plugin.
If you're interested in Character Rigging, then you'd create your rigs yourself rather than using a rigging script.
If you're wanting to animate, you'd keyframe your own animations, rather than using mo-cap data.

All of the things I've said you "shouldn't" do are perfectly valid things to use in a professional environment, as long as they give the desired results - but it all depends on where you are coming into it from.

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# 9 06-06-2003 , 06:53 PM

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Good points Hugh!

Israel "Izzy" Long
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izzylong.com

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# 10 06-06-2003 , 08:40 PM

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I started with bryce. used poser some but not to a huge extent.

I disagree on some level. True some people can click a few times and make okay images, that most peopel would think was fine. But i used bryce for a long time before moving to something else. and i still use it.

Making scenery in bryce is simple... making an object is a lot harder, ive made everything from simple docks, piers, and stuff to complex robots and mechas, guns, everything.

Making something is easy. making something unique and stretching all of its abilities ou should still get credit for. It takes a lot of thought out, careful planning, placement, texturing, and time to get it just right.

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# 11 06-06-2003 , 09:20 PM

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I agree totally twistedD user added image

..but I personally hate the people who just slap a few textures on a ready-made "hot-chick-model #2", and then try to pass themselves off as a character modeler.

That's where I start to cringe.

I mean, yes, it may have taken them a week or two to texture the model, position the limbs, tweak some morph/blend shapes, plop some lights in there, and it may look smashing user added image

..but it just makes me wonder what happens when they bs thier way into a character modeler position based off of "thier" work, only for the employer to find out that they did it in Poser, and they know NOTHING about actually modeling a character.

...hmmm, I don't know....
I guess it's bound to happen though, if you think about it...

you know... the imfamous "make dinosaur button", or the "make shrek button".

...maybe I'm just jealous I guess user added image

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

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# 12 06-06-2003 , 10:01 PM

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I agree entirely with your point Izzy.
F*ck "one button" applets.

adldesigner
Caracas, Venezuela
Hell .. not gone perse, but with a certainly lower post count per day.

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# 13 07-06-2003 , 01:48 AM

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This is my problem too. I also feel the same way about layer styles & filters in P-Shop. I think the problem arises when the use of them becomes noticable... thats when i say to my self, "man that is one lazy b@st@rd!" But like Izzy, perhaps I am just jealous too.

Screw the Hot-Chick-generator-button in Poser! user added image

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# 14 07-06-2003 , 02:05 AM

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I have no problem with Bryce. It was the first program I ever used, so I have a soft spot for it. Of course, I wouldn't use it anymore. user added image

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The Maya Toolbelt

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# 15 07-06-2003 , 03:59 AM

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Originally posted by mtmckinley
I have no problem with Bryce. It was the first program I ever used, so I have a soft spot for it. Of course, I wouldn't use it anymore.

Originally Posted by

Yes, Bryce brought me to 3D... and I've also used poser as well. I quickly came to the opinion that Poser sucks. I used to love Bryce buy as Izzy mentioned I didn't like using all the presets in it because they weren't really my own work. I would usually try to make my own materials or objects. I used to spend ages making objects out of boolean operations, making my own materials for them and keyframing animations.

I always HATED it when I saw someone sit down at Bryce for 30 minutes, click "create terrain", slap a preset material on it, put some balls hovering in the sky, make a square with that crappy leo texture that everybody uses, render it and then come to me saying "check out the cool picture that I made by myself."

Once when I was in year 8 (i think), I had made an object out of booleans in Bryce, that I wanted to print off for an assignment. At my school they had the demo of Bryce on some computers and people used to play with it every now and then. Anyway, I had added this object I made on Bryce at home to the preset list at school and didn't remove it afterwards. A few months later I saw someone with my object on their screen, with a different texture on one part of it and they said to me "hey look what <<I forget their name>> made in bryce".

Anyway, as you can tell I hate seeing people using presets or something made by someone else and passing it off as being all their own work.

Once I discovered 3DS MAX and Maya I quickly left Bryce, but I still remember it as the foundation for my interest in 3D.

Take a glance at my <a href="https://forums.simplymaya.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9428"><b>Porsche 959</b></a> WIP

Last edited by -<{ JB }>-; 07-06-2003 at 10:36 AM.

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