Posted

Jun 19th 2006

Mood

Confident

Zing finally said something ive been meaning to say for a long time now. A VERY long time.

People are generally familiar with the idea of Poser and DAZ|Studio. No? Well let me educate you.
Poser and DAZ|Studio are basiaclly the same thing. You click a button or import a premade character which with the help of a few sliders and buttons, can pump out characters on the whim. First of all, the characters are ugly, unimaginitive, deform horribly, and on top of everything else: Takes no talent or skill.
Go browse your sheezyart 3d character (human, anhro, anime, what have you) and youll see a general percentage.
80% poser
18% DAZ|Studio
2% Maya, Lightwave, 3DStudioMax, SoftImage|XSI

The problem with this picture is, the 4 listed under the 2% are professional grade modelling and animation suites.

It is absolutly insulting to see a character pumped out in nanoseconds get the front page and more notoriety than a character which took from hours to days to make, skin, and rig.

Ive purposely avoided Poser and DAZ, and so should you. It is a disease of a program. N00bs who use Poser and expect to get jobs because of it, are sadly mistaking. Even using Poser as a fun little hobby, is a bad idea, as it teaches you some interestingly bad habbits, unbeknownst to you.

When trying to giev helpful advice to numerous people using Poser or DAZ im generally given the same response "I dont care, i did this for fun" or "Im not even going to read that because this is the way i do stuff." even though they always write "Critisim welcome" or "Comments plz".

People, this is INCREDIBLY sad!

Oh oh, also, veterans may look at me in disgust "But XSI has a charcter generator" the sad truth is, yes it does, but because its in a professional suite, noone really uses it. The character generator is used to quickly mesh up a placeholder character for use in a movie or game, until the real model is completed. Veterans in the professional field of 3d art, movies and games, generally dont even look at this feature to begin with.

if your looking to get some real skills, look no further than these 3 programs:
Autodesk Alias|Wavefront Maya 7 PLE (Personal Learning Edition) [Maya was used for everything in FInal Fantasy Advant Children, and character modelling for Doom3)
Autodesk Discreet 3D Studio Max Trial (30-day) (3ds is widely known for its support for the renderware engine in games, such as Grand Theft Auto)
Autodesk Discreet GMax (free non-renderable equivilent) (mostly for older games like C&C Renegade)
NewTek Lightwave3D 9 Evaluation Edition (eval kit in the mail) [used for world entity modelling in Doom3, as well as everything in Burnout 3, in terms of film, does Hellboy and SinCity ring a bell?)
Avid SoftImage|XSI Foundation (free trial edition) (Half Life 2 and Hitman Blood Money fame)
Animation Master 2006 ($299) [Killer Bean fame]

There are also a multitude of free (or nearly) 3d modelling suites as well, such as
Milkshape 3D ($30 i think)
Wings3D (free)
Blender3D (free)
Anim8r


as you can see there are many other equivilents which can net you better results and skills in the long run, and guess what? Its fun. It may seem a tedious task but once you get used to the tools at hand, creating your own stuff and seeing it evolve from a simple cube is great fun, and eventually you can land a job in the games or film industry making BIG $$$$$$.

Poser and DAZ and Bryce however, will not. In fact they are heavily frowned upon.

If you are anywhere near serious about 3d art, in any shape or form, you own it to yourself to evaluate some of these 3d packages. All of the professional stuff have trials and eval kits availablke to tes tthem out yourself, as well as a multitude of tutorials and examples.

Consider Poser and Daz like smoking, they are bad for your health.


This emssage was brought to you by the Surgon General of Canada.