I Love the VUE (Esprit)!

No 3-D Application can do everything. Some specialize in figures, others in sculpting. Some excel at producing realistic surfaces others at creating scenery. At a price of $229 US, Vue Esprit is one of the best programs for creating environments, does an excellent job of producing realistic surfaces and it integrates well with Poser, the primary figure creation software in the 3-D marketplace. Higher end versions can cost upwards of $895 US or more. For anyone starting out in 3-D, this is the ideal application to get.

Key Features of Vue Esprit.

  1. Support for Poser figures including the use of the Poser Shader Tree. There is no need to import figures as Wavefront Objects then re-apply textures for multiple figures.
  2. Support for Ambient Occlusion, Translucency, and Sub-Surface Scattering. All these lighting features add realism to a scene. For advanced Poser users these features are similar in function to Poser’s Material Room.
  3. Crash recovery. If Vue suspects that it might crash, it will warn you ahead of time and attempt to save your work. This is a vast improvement over other programs that just crash and tell you nothing.
  4. Realistic environments including plants, trees, grasses, mountains and water
Continue Reading...

10 Tips for Making Poser Clothes

…Or 10 Things I wish I knew before wasting many hours doing the wrong things modeling Poser Clothes!

  1. Back-up Everything you create.
  2. There is an easy way to make MAT Poses.
  3. Remove IK (Inverse Kinematics) Chains from your clothes.
  4. Use Morph Manager.
  5. The Hierarchy Editor is your friend.
  6. Don’t fear the Set-Up Room.
  7. Joint Parameters are important.
  8. Make your model at actual size.
  9. UV maps will save you time.
  10. Learn to use Python.

Follow these tips and you will save yourself a great deal of time. Below is a more detailed breakdown of what each of these things mean.

Continue Reading...

Q -run Windows on a Mac

Q

Q is based on the CPU emulator QEMU. Q allows Mac-users to run Windows and Linux on a Mac. Unlike VMWare and Parallels, Q supports PowerPC Macs (G4, G5) in addition to Intel Macs. For anyone building 3-D models, this is a useful program to have. Many 3-D modeling utilities and programs (Morph Manager, CR2Editor, and ZBrush to name a few) only run on Windows. Q is FREE and is available under the GPL (GNU Public License).

Continue Reading...

What is Art?

Rembrandt's 'Belshazzar's Feast' (1635)The writing’s on the wall for old views…

…Or more precisely, what is Visual Art? My definition has changed considerably since high school. I once thought that only realistic painting was “true art”. Having studied graphic design, I now realize that the same principles of design that make paintings memorable are also what graphic designers, photographers, cinematographers, and digital sculptors use to make their work memorable. I have since expanded my definition of art to include many mediums and many forms (e.g. Abstract Expressionist paintings). This definition may be too broad for some critics but I will attempt to justify it.

Continue Reading...

The Sticking Point

Sesame Street
picture from WQPT TV, a PBS Affiliate

Communication requires retention. When presenting new ideas to students, how much information is retained can often influence the success or failure of the idea. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point – How Little Things Can make a Big Difference, he points to 3 things that make for effective communications: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor (Retention), and the Power of Context. In both visual communication and education, the Stickiness Factor is probably the most important.

Continue Reading...