Mannequin Poser

[Twelvefield]

I'm looking for something that has some basic poseable 3D models of humans and animals: men, women, kids, dogs, cats. When I say basic, I mean basic: just mannequins, really, no hair, faces, fingers, toes. Just what you would get out of a wooden mannequin.

But, I'd like something that can have more than one mannequin at a time, make the poses easy to create yet have all the major joints reasonably realistic and have a reasonable range of motion.

Then I want an easy enough camera to use.

Why? Although I've got a background in animation and I can do my own 3D work, its been years since I've touched any of that stuff. I don't want to animate anything, just pose it.

I have a few real wooden mannequins at work, and I pose them and take pictures of them with a digital camera. Then I use a lightbox or rotoscoping software like Painter to draw over the photographs. It's a lot faster to keep humans in proportion and get dynamic poses and camera angles if I just trace over the models and then draw in the details.

My digital camera is kind of big, though, so it limits the angles I can use and I only have a few mannequins so anything more than a 2-shot is a chore. My mannequins don't have a lot of dynamic joints, either, so they don't simulate things like contrapposto or weight shifts very well. So, I am shopping for a 3D poser program that has decent basic faceless mannequin models - nothing cartoony or grotesque. Free is a great price of course, but not if I'm spending too long to learn the system.

What do you folks think? I look forward to your kind and informed replies.

[Basho]

you may find http://www.blendswap.com useful. you would be especially interested in looking at rigged models that are ready to pose, i believe there is a category for just that on the site (that is to say, "rigs").

there is also software like http://www.makehuman.org/ which i have little experience with, but it could possibly serve this purpose (and if i recall correctly you can also import the models into blender). im not sure if the models come rigged or not.

since you already stated your purpose, you should not be affected by the usual issues with using premade meshes like those.

there may be more options, hopefully other users here have more advice to give, but try checking those out and see if it suits your needs. if nothing else its a start.

[Twelvefield]

I've already run into a few applications like MakeHuman - some of them seem really dodgy. Really. Dodgy.

However, Blender with the mannequin in blendswap looks promising. I really hate rigging, and I don't want to create any meshes for myself, so if it's done by someone who knows their stuff then that's a big positive right there.

Thanks for the help!