Question about poser

[ibrown]

I'm a developer who is tinkering with 3d modelling programs. I have been spending some time looking into blender and think I can reasonably well master putting together a scene for a game level (walls, floors etc).

When it comes to dealing with the characters though, it is a different matter altogether. I can get a reasonable humanoid figure together (thanks to the makehuman script that blender has) - I can even add armatures, but animation is something that is missing. My hero shuffles along like the hunchback of Notradame

I have been looking at poser as a possible method to create the animation for my figures (and maybe even the figures themselves). Has anyone used this program, and will it do what I want? There's no free demo and so whilst 200 Euro is not a huge amount of cash ... it's a lot if I buy the software and then find it is not what I am after.

If I make a rigged model in poser, can I export it in a format that can be read into blender? I would like my model formats to be 'open' so that people can use a 100% free toolchain if they want to - whilst I can afford the 200Euro for poser, not everone can.

Final question is whether I should get the 100 Euro Poser Artist or the 200 Euro full poser 5. It seems that the artist edition does everything I need (?)

Ian

[RyanN]

i've used poser4 and 5 in the past, but would never use them for real-time models since they are extremely hi-poly. However you can grap the lower poly models and cut down the polys even further. Thats how i work now, i cut down one of there low polys characte models which i now use as abase for all character modelling. Poser does generate a walk cycle for you which needs tweaking but still very useful, but now with Ogre, i do everything in 3dsmax including animation.

[ErikC]

i've used poser4 and 5 in the past, but would never use them for real-time models since they are extremely hi-poly. However you can grap the lower poly models and cut down the polys even further. Thats how i work now, i cut down one of there low polys characte models which i now use as abase for all character modelling. Poser does generate a walk cycle for you which needs tweaking but still very useful, but now with Ogre, i do everything in 3dsmax including animation.

Is there a simple way of getting animated figures into Ogre? 3Ds max character animation is IMHO far more difficult for a beginner than Poser. Or are you using Character Studio in 3D Studio Max?
Is there a simple workflow or any other character animation package that can be exported into Ogre? I have heard softimage is good for character animation but I don't imagine it is as quick and easy as Poser.
Perhaps one can import via VRML? http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/ica/
This is interesting as it is 3DS and Milkshape3D friendly
http://cal3d.sourceforge.net/docs/api/h ... 3dfaq.html
Not sure what happened to Kaydara but I bet it is expensive
http://www.alias.com/eng/products-servi ... ndex.shtml

[RyanN]

poser is very quick when it comes to animation, i rig and animate using Character studio and at the moment only a few programs have a specific made exporter ie: 3dsmax, blender, ummm ahhh, checkout the downloads page for the others. but no, there is no poser exporter for ogre, you could export the mesh out of poser then import it into 3dsmax, rig it up, animate then export to ogre that way.

[Chris_with_a_Gun]

What about the posertools? I thought it could export from poser to ogre?