"Poser People" and scale in DS. What are the differences?

AnotherUserName

Hi everyone.

I see alot of references to "poser people" in relation to the scale of many poser models. Does anyone know what the difference is in scale to DAZ models? I would like to know so that I can resize a few models so that they will look right in DS.

Mattymanx

I am not sure what you are refereing to?  When a poser figure like Victoria 4 is loaded in to Daz Studio, DS will automatically translate the scale so that it loads at the correct size in DS.  So if you load V4 and then load G3F, the two will be in proper scale to each other for real world scale.  Daz Studio uses the metric system.  If you move or rotate something my one unit, its one centemeter.  The square grid on the DS floor in in meters (100cm = 1m)

AnotherUserName

Mattymanx said:

I am not sure what you are refereing to?  When a poser figure like Victoria 4 is loaded in to Daz Studio, DS will automatically translate the scale so that it loads at the correct size in DS.  So if you load V4 and then load G3F, the two will be in proper scale to each other for real world scale.  Daz Studio uses the metric system.  If you move or rotate something my one unit, its one centemeter.  The square grid on the DS floor in in meters (100cm = 1m)

Well, ive seen the description of poser people scale in some stores in reference to things like vehicles and buildings. Also, ive had this model that I bought here at DAZ some time ago, the UH60 Blackhawk Helicopter (which must have been discontinued because I cant find it in the store anymore) which is much larger in scale than v4, ive attached a comparison shot. Ive always assumed that it was because it was made originally for poser and therefore loaded in this poser people scale.

fixmypcmike

No, I don't think that's the issue.  In Poser 6, the "Poser Native Unit", which had previously been set at 8 feet, was changed to 8.6 feet, but nearly everything made for Poser still uses 8 feet as the PNU

AnotherUserName

Fixmypcmike said:

No, I don't think that's the issue.  In Poser 6, the "Poser Native Unit", which had previously been set at 8 feet, was changed to 8.6 feet, but nearly everything made for Poser still uses 8 feet as the PNU

Hmmm, ok. Well I guess I know a little bit more about it now.

So basically, I should just deal with it as it seems that there is no easy conversion? I can do that.

mjc1016

mcasual has a sizer script...

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjsizer

AnotherUserName

mjc1016 said:

mcasual has a sizer script...

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjsizer

Thanks! Ill check this out.

DavidGB

AnotherUserName said:

Fixmypcmike said:

No, I don't think that's the issue.  In Poser 6, the "Poser Native Unit", which had previously been set at 8 feet, was changed to 8.6 feet, but nearly everything made for Poser still uses 8 feet as the PNU

Hmmm, ok. Well I guess I know a little bit more about it now.

So basically, I should just deal with it as it seems that there is no easy conversion? I can do that.

It's actually not correct that the Poser Native Unit was set at 8 feet before Poser 6. It's far more complicated than that.

Before Poser 6 there was no definite Poser scale. In poser there were no settings for real world measurements, just the 'Poser Native Unit' with no official definition or universal agreement to what it translated at.

One school of thought noted that in the Poser (before Poser 6) manuals there was one - and only one - clue, The manuals said that the Poser 4 Nude Male figure waas "about 6 feet tall". Now, it was also noted that the Poser 4 Nude male was almost exactly .75 of a Poser Native Unit tall. So if you took it that he was EXACTLY 6 feet tall (rather than the 'about' which was all the manual said), that made one Poser native Unit 8 feet. This was quite a popular theory, and a number of significant content makers - including DAZ who were primarily Poser content makers back then - sized their models accordingly.

A number - by no means all.

There were other theories and other scales. Another quite popular one that a number of other content makers used was the 'Geep scale', named for a user called Doctor Geep, who wrote a lot of influential tutorials etc back then, Can't remember, now ... I think that one might have been 1 PNU  equals 100 inches. Or maybe that was another scale ... there were a whole bunch of different proposed scales, with different content makers following different ones. Plus there were quite a few content makers who just sized their content by eye to what looked right to them.

There was no set scale, just a bunch of different scales different people used, with the 1PNU=8ft the most common but still only used by the makers of ... maybe a half of the content I bought back then. It was a real mess. And then it got worse with Poser 6, which introduced an official scale to Poser for the first time. But they did NOT pick the 1 PNU scale equals 8 feet scale that DAZ and the majority of content makers (who actually used a fixed scale). Of course Poser still loaded existing content as the same size in PNU, but if you switched Poser 6 and later to display in feet or metres following the new official scale, it showed everything as being bigger. Specifically it made Poser show V4 - intended by DAZ and shown in DS to be 5ft 10.5in tall, already way above the average height for US and UK women of 5ft 4in - to now be 6ft 2in, and made M4 - intended and displayed in DS to be 6ft 1in, already over the US/UK average 5 ft 10in - to be 6ft 6in tall in Poser (and showed the Poser native female and male figures to be about the same). Which was ridiculous.

Now, DAZ have stuck with their original scaling, and DS still imports Poser products using the 1PNU = 8ft scale (as does the Poser import preset of 2DS Max ;last time I looked). Many content creators also continued to use that scale. ignoring the one displayed in Poser. And many other Poser continued using the Geep Scale, other scales or sizing by eye. Evene Smith Micro themselves have put out some content using the 1PNU=8ft scale!, However some Smith Micro products do use the official Poser scale, and some content creators switched to it too. The PICK room creation products at RuntimeDNA (and with some parts of it given away free with later Poser versions) was one notable product line that used the new official Poser scale so imports into DS at a wrong (but at least consistently wrong) size.

I started with this stuff back in 2004, and always wanted the details right. i had characters with specific different heights, this one 5ft 2in, that one 5ft 6in, another one 6ft 2in. I wanted the figures the right size compared with each other, especially as most of my renders are of several different characters together in the image, and alsom wanted props to be scaled right too if they were of real world objects that have fixed sizes (e.g. swords don't have fixed sizes, but an M16A2 does and should look larger compared with a 5ft 2in character than a 6ft 2 in one. Having learned what the situation was and what a mess it was, I myslef picked the 1PNU=8ft (the Geep scale and then the new official Poser scale just made the main figures silly base heights), found a Poser prop for measuring things in the scene marked in feet and inches when you take its scale to be 1PNU=8Ft (which I still use, in fact, in DS and if I ever have to use Poser, which I've left set to PNUs, not its feet or metres) and got in the habit of checking anything important and scaling as necessary ot be correct at that scale.

So, in answer to your question:

Products - even older products made for Poser - in the DAZ store SHOULD be the correct size in DS according to DS's real world display units. BUT not all PAs have been rigorous about checking all objects that hve real world fixed sizes. Products (or freebies) from other places mayn be 1PNU=8 feet, Geep scale, official-since-Poser-6-Poser scale, assorted other old scales, a scale unique to that one merchant, or just scaled by eye by the creator  to be 'about right' (which depends what they are looking at it alongside, of course). If you want to be a stickler about it (like I am), I'm afraid you just have to check everything.

There are certain content creators who are at least consistent, which one gets to learn (like the gun creator at Renderosity ... can;t remember the name exactly, something like Motokami-ya/motokamishii ... who has always used the 1PNU=8ft so his guns import into DS the right size). But there are others who are all over the place. Equipping some characters for a story i'm rendering out, I loaded 3 different FoRender firearms into DS, measured them in DS then dug up the actual sizes of those particular firearms, hoping they'd been made at 1PNU=8ft and would be the right size, but at least expecting they'd all be scaled the same with respect to each other so I could just learn a ''Oh, for FoRender guns I always have to remember to scale them all by ...%; turned out they were all different scales, one massively too small, one massively too large, the other just slightly too large! So I've had to learn "For FoRender guns I always have to go through checking and working out what scaling factor to use every time I use a different one for the first time (then save it as a DS asset scaled correctly for futore use).

So - not a simple subject to to the complicated history (and especially Smith Micro finally choosing to make an official scale in Poser, but picking a stupid one that nobody had used before, and very few used after). If correct scaling matters to you, there's no choice but to start measuring things first time you use them in DS as part of your work flow.

AnotherUserName

DavidGB said:

AnotherUserName said:

Fixmypcmike said:

No, I don't think that's the issue.  In Poser 6, the "Poser Native Unit", which had previously been set at 8 feet, was changed to 8.6 feet, but nearly everything made for Poser still uses 8 feet as the PNU

Hmmm, ok. Well I guess I know a little bit more about it now.

So basically, I should just deal with it as it seems that there is no easy conversion? I can do that.

It's actually not correct that the Poser Native Unit was set at 8 feet before Poser 6. It's far more complicated than that.

Before Poser 6 there was no definite Poser scale. In poser there were no settings for real world measurements, just the 'Poser Native Unit' with no official definition or universal agreement to what it translated at.

One school of thought noted that in the Poser (before Poser 6) manuals there was one - and only one - clue, The manuals said that the Poser 4 Nude Male figure waas "about 6 feet tall". Now, it was also noted that the Poser 4 Nude male was almost exactly .75 of a Poser Native Unit tall. So if you took it that he was EXACTLY 6 feet tall (rather than the 'about' which was all the manual said), that made one Poser native Unit 8 feet. This was quite a popular theory, and a number of significant content makers - including DAZ who were primarily Poser content makers back then - sized their models accordingly.

A number - by no means all.

There were other theories and other scales. Another quite popular one that a number of other content makers used was the 'Geep scale', named for a user called Doctor Geep, who wrote a lot of influential tutorials etc back then, Can't remember, now ... I think that one might have been 1 PNU  equals 100 inches. Or maybe that was another scale ... there were a whole bunch of different proposed scales, with different content makers following different ones. Plus there were quite a few content makers who just sized their content by eye to what looked right to them.

There was no set scale, just a bunch of different scales different people used, with the 1PNU=8ft the most common but still only used by the makers of ... maybe a half of the content I bought back then. It was a real mess. And then it got worse with Poser 6, which introduced an official scale to Poser for the first time. But they did NOT pick the 1 PNU scale equals 8 feet scale that DAZ and the majority of content makers (who actually used a fixed scale). Of course Poser still loaded existing content as the same size in PNU, but if you switched Poser 6 and later to display in feet or metres following the new official scale, it showed everything as being bigger. Specifically it made Poser show V4 - intended by DAZ and shown in DS to be 5ft 10.5in tall, already way above the average height for US and UK women of 5ft 4in - to now be 6ft 2in, and made M4 - intended and displayed in DS to be 6ft 1in, already over the US/UK average 5 ft 10in - to be 6ft 6in tall in Poser (and showed the Poser native female and male figures to be about the same). Which was ridiculous.

Now, DAZ have stuck with their original scaling, and DS still imports Poser products using the 1PNU = 8ft scale (as does the Poser import preset of 2DS Max ;last time I looked). Many content creators also continued to use that scale. ignoring the one displayed in Poser. And many other Poser continued using the Geep Scale, other scales or sizing by eye. Evene Smith Micro themselves have put out some content using the 1PNU=8ft scale!, However some Smith Micro products do use the official Poser scale, and some content creators switched to it too. The PICK room creation products at RuntimeDNA (and with some parts of it given away free with later Poser versions) was one notable product line that used the new official Poser scale so imports into DS at a wrong (but at least consistently wrong) size.

I started with this stuff back in 2004, and always wanted the details right. i had characters with specific different heights, this one 5ft 2in, that one 5ft 6in, another one 6ft 2in. I wanted the figures the right size compared with each other, especially as most of my renders are of several different characters together in the image, and alsom wanted props to be scaled right too if they were of real world objects that have fixed sizes (e.g. swords don't have fixed sizes, but an M16A2 does and should look larger compared with a 5ft 2in character than a 6ft 2 in one. Having learned what the situation was and what a mess it was, I myslef picked the 1PNU=8ft (the Geep scale and then the new official Poser scale just made the main figures silly base heights), found a Poser prop for measuring things in the scene marked in feet and inches when you take its scale to be 1PNU=8Ft (which I still use, in fact, in DS and if I ever have to use Poser, which I've left set to PNUs, not its feet or metres) and got in the habit of checking anything important and scaling as necessary ot be correct at that scale.

So, in answer to your question:

Products - even older products made for Poser - in the DAZ store SHOULD be the correct size in DS according to DS's real world display units. BUT not all PAs have been rigorous about checking all objects that hve real world fixed sizes. Products (or freebies) from other places mayn be 1PNU=8 feet, Geep scale, official-since-Poser-6-Poser scale, assorted other old scales, a scale unique to that one merchant, or just scaled by eye by the creator  to be 'about right' (which depends what they are looking at it alongside, of course). If you want to be a stickler about it (like I am), I'm afraid you just have to check everything.

There are certain content creators who are at least consistent, which one gets to learn (like the gun creator at Renderosity ... can;t remember the name exactly, something like Motokami-ya/motokamishii ... who has always used the 1PNU=8ft so his guns import into DS the right size). But there are others who are all over the place. Equipping some characters for a story i'm rendering out, I loaded 3 different FoRender firearms into DS, measured them in DS then dug up the actual sizes of those particular firearms, hoping they'd been made at 1PNU=8ft and would be the right size, but at least expecting they'd all be scaled the same with respect to each other so I could just learn a ''Oh, for FoRender guns I always have to remember to scale them all by ...%; turned out they were all different scales, one massively too small, one massively too large, the other just slightly too large! So I've had to learn "For FoRender guns I always have to go through checking and working out what scaling factor to use every time I use a different one for the first time (then save it as a DS asset scaled correctly for futore use).

So - not a simple subject to to the complicated history (and especially Smith Micro finally choosing to make an official scale in Poser, but picking a stupid one that nobody had used before, and very few used after). If correct scaling matters to you, there's no choice but to start measuring things first time you use them in DS as part of your work flow.

I just got SCHOOLED!!!!

Thanks for the wealth of information David. Ill see if I cant put this to use.