Mojo's Top 10 Tips for Rendering Scenes in Poser

I have created a new page in the Scenes section of the Galleries area for a Jam Session. This scene is action shots of a virtual jam session with Mojo and the other members of the "band". I created all the characters from Poser base characters and all the muusical instruments are originals that I made in various 3D modeling packages including Blender and Hexagon. Go take a look at http://www.mojodallas.com/jamscene.htm

I learned quite a bit during this first scene in Poser. The first thing I learned is that it takes a long time to Render scenes and because of that there are a number of steps I have learned as a result of trial and error. So here are the Mojo Top 10 Tips to Rendering Scenes in Poser:

1. Start by creating the building. It is best to make the building without a roof and then have roof as a prop you can add. In this way you are not as constrained with camera angles because you can go above the roof line if needed.

2. Load all the props to get a feel for balance and overall look. Save this scene as it is the base for all others.

3. Because rendering time is dependent on the number of 3D objects in a scene, set up sub-scenes of only parts of the building. For example, I set up a sub-scenes based on the wall in the Studio. Then I further divided it into areas where I was going to take shots. For example, the piano area. I deleted all the props that were not needed for each of these sub-scenes. In the case of the piano area I deleted everything but the piano, bench and boom microphone. Again the reason for doing this is that renedering is influenced by the number of objects in the scene.

4. Pose your character outside of the scene. This was an important fact that I came upon after frustrating myself by trying to pose them in the scene. Because of all the objects in the scene the Poser software has problems being responsive to posing a character when the scene is complex.

5. Use the parameter dials for fine tuning your character's pose. This is very important to get that exact look to the pose and Inverse Kinematics (IK) approach to posing by moving the arms and legs by selecting them and positioning them by moving your mouse does not provide enough control.

6. While you are posing your character be sure to add the props you want while you are posing them outside of the main scene. Again, this is due primarily to performance, but, as an added bonus if you "parent" the prop as a smart prop to the character then it will move naturally with them. For example, the guitar that Mojo is holding will follow him when you move his arms. Also, when this is as saved as a figure you can move the character along with the smart props attached into other scenes. Mojo will soon be appearing in a Coffee House Scene I will begin creating in a couple of weeks.

7. When you pose characters that are wearing clothes the skin often pokes out of the skin. You can spend a bunch of time trying to adjust the clothing so that it is covering the skin. But, I found that it is much better to just make the portion of the skin being covered by the clothes transparent. This is done in the material room. Below is a shot of what this looks like for a body in the Material Room.



8. Lighting makes all the difference. You will spend more time messing with lighting and being really, really frustrated that with anything else. In Poser, you see the scene with basically no lighting in the preview window and then you position the lights and camera and then you render. The render can take a few minutes to work as it is calculating many things including how light would bounce off all the objects, creation of shadows, recalculating colors, etc. Even with my high end game machine it can take over 10 minutes to render a single frame. Only after you have spent that time rendering will you see that the lights are not right. Frustration taken too a new level. Professionals use things called Render Farms that link together very, very powerful computers with lots of RAM that create the kinds of things you see from Pixar and Dreamworks. I use my PC and end up playing a lot of Free Cell as the scene renders :)

9. Camera angles need to be thought through in much the same way as traditional photographers and movie directors do. After doing a couple of scenes, I started noticing how lifeless they were. I had read a number of books on shooting movies when I was doing machinima last year and I went back to them to start thinking through my shots and they started to look a lot better. I now usually put at least two characters and have them interact in some manner to make it more interesting. Also, I put more thought into what the characters are looking at and spend time focusing their eyes on that object or character.

10. Lastly, I have found that this is extremely addictive. You can spend untold hours posing, relighting, changing camera positions, etc. Since it is just a hobby for me there is nothing wrong with that, although explaining to coworkers that you spent your whole weekend doing this can be met with some head shaking. At least my wife has more time to read books on the weekend now that I am spending all this time with my computer. I have started to preplan what exactly I am going to shoot much like a director would in order to keep things moving along. You can always come back to some of the shots later on if you are inspired by something. Knowing when to say that's enough, will become important if I am going to learn more about how this all works.

Well, there is the Top 10. If you got this far, I congratulate you. Hoped you enjoyed the insight into what I have learned in the last couple of months.