Terragen And Poser

[Nukeman]

Hi all, 

Terragen looks quite interesting.  My main focus currently is animating Poser characters.  Can I bring those animated characters in to Terragen scenes?  If yes, could you perhaps point me to someone who is doing that?

Many thanks!

[Nukeman]

Next newbie question:

I'm on a nine year old iMac, 16gb RAM.   Animation is working fine with Poser. I render on the preview setting, looks good to me.   What should I expect with Terragen in regards to animation and rendering?

[Dune]

Welcome to the forum. Yes, you can bring strings of objects (of animated poses) into TG, but I have not done that myself. I now some did and they will undoubtedly answer your question indepth. Unless you intend to bring too many heavy objects in, I'd say 16 gigs will do fine.

Maybe use the search function above and search for 'animated objects' and you'll find threads like this: https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,23734.msg240010.html#msg240010

[digitalguru]

You are limited in your options for animated characters.

You can only bring in geometry via the .obj format and I think you can export a sequence of .objs from Poser (though I haven't tried it myself)

Here's a test I did importimg an animated .obj sequence from Maya:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdoJr2W1W1A

Terragen will only motion blur camera moves and not object animation, so if you have the resources it might be a better idea to render your character in another app and composite into Terragen.

[Nukeman]

Here's a test I did importimg an animated .obj sequence from Maya:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdoJr2W1W1A

Ah, thank you, very helpful.  That's what I want to do.   I don't know Maya but I'm guessing the same result will be possible using Poser.  I haven't exported an animation out of Poser yet, but I'll now proceed to learn how.  Thanks again, encouraging.

[JerryB]

Whether you can import Poser models into Terragen or not is a moot point since rendering any animations longer than a few seconds inside Terragen is impractical.  I have played around with both Poser and Daz Studio with Terragen and found the best combination is using the Terragen still as a background and rendering in Daz Studio using Iray. You can cast shadows on the ground by matching the lighting in Daz Studio. Each frame only takes a few minutes compared to an hour or more in Terragen. Here's an example

[Nukeman]

Hmm...

Ok, so maybe I should skip Terragen, and just stick to Poser scenes?  

There are many different scenes available for Poser at a reasonable price.  As example, see this artist.   https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/vendor/2nd_World

Best I can tell from using the scenes built-in to Poser I can animate characters moving around these scenes and then render the animation without difficulty.   So far I'm using the preview renderer and it looks pretty good to me.  

I'm all about animation.  Not that interested in using any 3D app to create stills.  If rendering animated scenes in Terragen is not practical on old machines, maybe I'm in the wrong place?

Thanks for your thoughts.

[JerryB]

I'm afraid you will be very disappointed in the Poser outdoor scenes compared to Terragen. Even the "morphable" landscapes systems cannot measure up since Poser doesn't have the realistic outdoor lighting and atmosphere that Terragen has. For outdoor scenes you can import the static Poser models as OBJ files into Terragen and save rendering time in Poser. In the movie I am working on, which will have a lot of outdoor scenes, I will use Daz Studio for the main renderer and Poser for the character animation, since it is what I'm more familiar with. Terragen will be used for the background stills and a few fly through/travel scenes. The latest 10 sec one took 4 days to render so I'm trying to limit these. If you're doing only indoor scenes, Poser is fine but any outdoor scenes will be much more realistic with Terragen backgrounds.

[Nukeman]

So, practically speaking, I should think of Terragen as a tool for developing landscape stills?

I'm on a 9 year old iMac.  Should I basically forget about animation in Terragen?  

Thanks.

[JerryB]

Yes, I think that's the best approach if all you're doing is character animation. Once you have your set composed in Terragen you now have a 350 degree stage in which you can pose your characters. No, you cannot pan, zoom, or travel the scene but you can shoot at different angles once you have the Terragen background stills rendered. Attached is a still from an animation of Michael 4 rendered in Daz Studio (which is free). It took 26 seconds to render so at 30 frames per second, a 10 sec render would take 2.2 hrs.

[Nukeman]

Ok. I guess Terragen isn't really for me then.  Thanks for helping me reach this understanding in an efficient manner, and good luck with your projects.