The user simply sculpts a number of facial poses and then connects the poses to a neutral head, which creates a series of dials onscreen. The morphing works in a manner similar to that of multi-target morphers found in most other 3D packages such as Alias|Wavefront's Maya, Discreet's 3ds max, and NewTek's LightWave. You can use the software's morphing feature to produce facial animation. Those using Poser's Pro Pack can also create their own skeletons for use in deforming a mesh, which allows for the import of custom models. Poser also comes with a number of preset body poses, which is a timesaving addition. Models can be posed easily because the characters come with complete skeletons that can be manipulated using either forward or inverse kinematics. It can then be manipulated through controls that allow you to scale and move individual body parts. You select the character type from a pulldown menu, and the character shows up in the viewport. Poser 4's graphical interface will look familiar to anyone who has used other former MetaCreations products, such as Bryce.Ĭreating a character in Poser is a straightforward procedure. It's particularly troublesome when you're posing the head, where eye position is very important. This process speeds up interaction, but also forces you to guess what the final mesh will look like. A pull-out box contains models and props that you can use in your scenes.Ī minor interface problem is that while you're navigating or moving a body part, the mesh of the character disappears, leaving only the box-shaped skeleton as a reference. An animation slider appears at the bottom of the screen, and manipulation controls are along the righthand side. To the left are the aforementioned navigational controls. In the center of the screen is the main viewport for manipulating the models. Navigational controls are identified by a set of nicely rendered pointing hands, for example. Its graphical interface is reminiscent of many of the old MetaCreations packages (such as Bryce).
Poser runs on both PC and Macintosh platforms. It was owned first by Fractal Design and then by MetaCreations, but has now been bought by Curious Labs, which is continuing to enhance the package. Poser was originally developed by Curious Labs CEO Larry Weinberg. Curious Labs addresses this situation with Poser, an application designed to streamline the creation and animation of 3D characters. Character creation requires a lot of talent and skill. Having said that, once upgraded, the plug-in worked very smoothly both with the officially supported Cinema 4D version 10 release and with the more recent version 11.Modeling, rigging, and posing 3D characters are not easy tasks. For example, the provided Cinema 4D plug-in simply wasn’t recognised until we installed the latest Poser Pro service pack. Clearly trying to work hand-in-hand with third-party applications raises questions over compatibility. This is exactly what Poser Pro attempts to deliver through its PoserFusion hosting plug-ins for 3ds max, Maya and Cinema 4D. What’s really needed is a way to access Poser’s dedicated figure handling from within a dedicated modeller. The reason is simple: Poser offers virtually no scene creation capabilities and a character without context is generally less use than a scene without figures.
More importantly, the whole focus on Poser Pro’s own output is largely misplaced. The new background rendering is a major advance but few existing Poser users are likely to be working on 64-bit systems or have their own render farms. And, using the new Network Render Queue, users can tee up multiple files for processing and use spare capacity across the network. In addition, Poser Pro offers a new 64-bit background rendering engine offering better memory management. Poser Pro also sees a complete overhaul of rendering starting with the new ability to render in the background without interrupting your work. And when it comes to output, you can now export high dynamic range images to enable maximum control over exposure during post production. You can also now manage gamma correction for textures – control which is particularly important in the context of displacement. As such, Poser Pro introduces support for normal mapping which allows the surface of models to be displaced based on imported texture maps.
The first key to this repositioning is a new focus on high-end output quality. With this latest release, however, Smith Micro, Poser’s new developer has made what looks to be the obvious next step and moved upmarket. That’s a lot of advanced 3D power, but up until now Poser’s audience has always been the enthusiastic hobbyist rather than the full-time professional.