Whispers of R’lyeh

After everything I said against Poser before, I took one look at the screenshots of the new Poser 8 UI and was sold.  Obviously if it turned out to be another clunky mess I would take advantage of the 30-day money back guarantee.

But as it turns out, I shall not need to.

Poser 8 is a dream to work with.  Granted, I still prefer DAZ Studio’s content database and rendering engine, but I’m happy I now have a usable version of Poser for creating clothing and things in.

I get a bit annoyed when I read posts explaining why people shouldn’t bother with the “toy” DAZ Studio and use “grown-up” Poser instead, such as one I read in the Platinum Club forums today.

Yes, DAZ Studio is lacking in a few features Poser has still, such as the ability to create dynamic clothing, and a few tools necessary for tweaking new created figures, but when you compare it to the position, say, a year ago – Studio is catching up fast.

DAZ Studio now has dynamic clothing, although you can’t create your own yet.  Studio also has about 90% of the tools to create new figures from scratch, with the remaining 10% you can work around in 3D modelling software or may not even need at all in some cases.

DAZ Studio is actively supported by a company interested in pushing it out free to as many people as possible in order to sell content.  Poser is … uh.. well, I heard rumours about a version eight coming out soon (after a couple of years of languishing at a nearly-compatible with Windows XP level), but Smith Micro don’t exactly scream about the product from the rooftops.

DAZ Studio has a nifty, fast-ish UI built on Qt.  Poser has a clunky heap of crap that uses so much of your PC’s horsepower drawing unnecessarily graphic UI controls that theres barely anything left to do the actual 3D work with.

DAZ Studio comes as a free base package with additional tools available to purchase as plugins as and when you need them.  Poser comes as an expensive, but complete, package.  The majority of users just looking to throw scenes together and render probably will never touch half the menu options in Poser.

Studio has a lot of support on the DAZ site, including product info pages, tutorials in the wiki, and active forums.  As far as I can find, Poser has a couple of pages on the Smith Micro online store.

DAZ  Studio lets me throw a quick scene together in minutes and render it quickly.  In that time with Poser, I’ll probably still be waiting for the screen to update after I clicked to open a panel in the UI after the third crash in a row.

And if anyone really wants to get into a rendering argument with me: Poser uses a custom rendering engine.  DAZ Studio uses an industry-standard Pixar Renderman-compliant engine used in Hollywood – 3Delight.

I tend to frown at Poser the same way I used to frown at WordPerfect – a piece of software people have gotten used to because there wasn’t any real alternative at the time, and are scared of letting go now there is.

On a side-note, I’m considering doing a weekly review of DAZ model releases.  Something to think about…

Alelsa (my Warlock)

Opening the gallery section of the site, this is probably the first real render I’ve done since returning to digital art.

This is actually the cover image for “The Chronicles of Anarah Runetwister”, which I’m writing at the moment.  It’s also my WoW warlock, Alelsa.  The two are very closely linked, as will become clearer once I get the book finished

Everything done in DAZ Studio 2.3, Poser is ftl.

3D Artist Issue 1

I’ll be honest. The only reason I went and got a back issue of issue one of 3D Artist was for the free copy of Carrara 6.2 Pro. Yes, full version. Yes, they still have copies at time of writing. Go get one!

I’ve been a big Carrara fan since I first looked at it, after trying out DAZ Studio and wanting something to make models in, so being able to get my hands on this for £7.50 (after postage) was too good a chance to turn down.  But hey, back to the magazine because this isn’t the time to talk about why DAZ software is better than everything else – I’ll save that for another post

You know, I have a habit of getting hooked on stuff like this, especially when I saw the Three issues for £1 subscription offer (note, this link is probably only active while the offer is open).

Honestly, its worth it for the free software and models on the cover discs alone.  After that, the price rises to about £3.60 an issue, which is still a nice saving from the £6 cover price…

Anyways, I’ll report more on the mag once I finish reading issue one, and when the others arrive.