I'm considering purchasing Poser 5 for the Mac and
was wondering if anyone has experience using it with
Mac POV-Ray?

There's an old version of PoseRay for the Mac
provided by Smellenbergh here:
http://users.skynet.be/smellenbergh/poseray.htm

It can convert Poser 4 files. Does this work well?
Has anyone tried it with Poser 5?

Thanks,
Mark Slone

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Renderdog wrote:

> There's an old version of PoseRay for the Mac
> provided by Smellenbergh here:
> http://users.skynet.be/smellenbergh/poseray.htm
>
> It can convert Poser 4 files. Does this work well?

It works well with Poser 4. A very useful piece of software! (Though it
would be nice with a Mac-port of a later version)
I do not know if it works with version 5.

Tom Stone

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Thanks for the info Tom. If I buy Poser 5 I'll
let you know how/if PoseRay works with it.

The reason I'm considering Poser is I have an idea
for the POVCOMP but it requires a good human in
the scene. I'm worried I'll have to spend too much
time learning Poser to get a decent figure; that
won't leave much time for the rest of the image.

Can you say how long an experience POV-er
would need to get a good human into POV-Ray?


Tom Stone <tom### [at] swipnetse> wrote:
> It works well with Poser 4. A very useful piece of software!
> (Though it would be nice with a Mac-port of a later version)
> I do not know if it works with version 5.

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news:web.411cd11694e2455bb8a63dd50@news.povray.org...

> Can you say how long an experience POV-er
> would need to get a good human into POV-Ray?

Poser is just a posing tool for pre-made models, so it's quite
straightforward. The limitations of what it can do are basically the
limitations of the models themselves. The most complicated part of the
conversion to POV-Ray is the conversion of textures because there are lots
of them for a single model and it's often necessary to tweak the results
from the converter. One unsolved problem is the skin finish, but this is a
limitation of POV-Ray, not of Poser.

Poser 5 has better default characters than the previous version and the
additional benefit of dynamic clothing (note: the dynamic hair in Poser 5
cannot be exported, so don't count on it). Of course, depending on what you
want, it may still be necessary to buy better characters, and props such as
clothes and hair.

About the Poser 5 conversion, unless Poseray for Mac works differently from
the Windows version, the conversion is made from OBJ files exported by
Poser, so it should work with any version.
If you have some questions later, just drop a message in povray.tools.poser.

Last thing about P5: it's a resources hog. It requires a fast machine and as
much RAM as you can.

G.

-- 
**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

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Thanks for the info Gilles. I have a new G5 due soon so
I should have enough power and memory for Poser 5.
I ordered the G5 many weeks ago and I'm hoping it will be
here in time to work on my POVCOMP image, but IBM is
having trouble supplying enough processors so it may
not work out.

The skin finish on many of your images look very good.
Was your Birds and Bees image done in POV-Ray? I swear I
was convinced she was a photograph! I know you've heard
that before (about many of your images) but I consider myself
to be very critical and that one had me fooled.

I was going to post to the povray.tools.poser group, but
the web-based POV-Ray newsgroups doesn't allow posting
to the tools groups for some reason. I have access to the
newsgroups on another computer but I'm rarely there.
I wonder why they don't allow posting to those groups?

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news:web.4120e5c594e2455bb8a63dd50@news.povray.org...

> The skin finish on many of your images look very good.

Well, the trick is to avoid lighting situations where the skin would look
bad... and it looks bad in most of them... It's very frustrating actually.

> Was your Birds and Bees image done in POV-Ray? I swear I
> was convinced she was a photograph!

That's pure radiosity (no light source) so there's no highlight except those
already in the image map... It looks like a photograph because it's mostly
what we see, a photograph mapped on a model with those good radiosity-based
shadows . Notice that I didn't show the face because of the lack of
highlights in the eyes (they looked dead). And I brushed off the usual mesh
artifacts too... And it's in B&W because I couldn't get proper colour tones
(flesh tones tend to turn yellow near the highlights) - many of my other
nudes are in B&W for that reason ! This pic is a big workaround.

The current problem with skin is that highlights are bad and there's no good
way to do subsurface scattering on Poser models (due to artefacts and inner
structures).

For some examples by a pro, see the figure studies by Jeremy Engleman here :
http://art.net/~jeremy/

> I was going to post to the povray.tools.poser group, but
> the web-based POV-Ray newsgroups doesn't allow posting
> to the tools groups for some reason. I have access to the
> newsgroups on another computer but I'm rarely there.
> I wonder why they don't allow posting to those groups?

Thanks for pointing this out. I see that the povray.competition group isn't
there either. I'll report that now.

Glad to have you participating in the POVCOMP, btw !

G.

-- 
**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

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