Poser
From Poserpedia
Poser is a 3D rendering and animation software program optimized for models that depict the human figure in three-dimensional form.
Overview
Poser is a 3D rendering software package for the posing, animating and rendering of 3D polymesh human and animal figures. Akin to a virtual photography studio, Poser allows the user to load actors, props, lighting and cameras for still and animated renderings.
Natively using a subset of the Alias object (OBJ) file format and a text-based markup for content files, Poser comes with a basic library of human, animal, robotic, and cartoon figures.
Poser also includes poses, hair pieces, props, textures, hand gestures and facial expressions. As Poser does not allow for original modeling of objects, a large community market of merchants and artists creating, selling and marketing third-party Poser content emerged.
Poser is available in English, Japanese, German and French for both Windows and Macintosh platforms.
The current version, 8.0, was released on August 3, 2009.
Poser 8.0 NEW
Easily Create 3D Character Art and Animation
Poser 8 is the world's most complete solution for creating art and animation using 3D characters. With Poser, it's easy to make 3D art, whether you're an experienced artist or you're dabbling in graphics for the very first time. Poser includes over 2.5 gigabyte of ready-to-pose, fully textured, human and animal figures, basic accessories such as hair, clothing, pose sets, real world props and 3D scene elements so you can start creating 3D character art and animation in minutes.
- Generate new characters from your facial photographs.
- Add hair and clothing.
- Dress Poser's virtual stage with props, lights and cameras to construct 3D scenes.
- Automatically generate walking or running animations and talking characters.
- Import motion capture files for even more animated realism.
- Animate lights and cameras, and then render your scene into photorealistic images and video for web, print, and film projects.
- Export 3D figures to add characters to other 3D applications.
Along with 8 brand new 3D humans, Poser 8 includes an improved user interface to maximize your workspace while providing better workflow, a new search-enabled library so you can find, organize and use your content easier, a dependant parameter tool that lets you teach objects in the scene to interact with each other, cross body morph brushes to smoothly sculpt a figure across every body part, new photorealistic rendering features that more accurately reproduce light and shadows, and improved character rigging for even better character bending. To save time, Poser 8 has been performance optimized so you can pose your characters and render them faster on today's multiple processor systems.
If you're a serious artist, illustrator or animator or simply dream of playing with 3D characters, you'll love getting creative with Poser 8!
Poser 8 Features
8 New Figures
The new set of eight 3D humans included with Poser 8 are the most advanced figures ever included with the application, and are a showcase for new Poser 8 features. Built from scratch, the low res and high res figure variations are performance optimized for the polygon count and have photorealistic textures. Rigged using Poser 8’s new multiple sphere and capsule fall off zone technology, problematic joints such as hips and shoulders now bend with more realism. By using the new Dependent Parameter tool to link deformers to specific joint positions, areas such as knees, elbows, chest and collar joints have smoother folds, less stretching and more realism. The new Poser 8 figures are offered in four pairs of male/female couples with European features, African features, Asian features and Hispanic features. The Poser 8 new figures are fully compliant with the Face Room, the Walk Designer and Talk Designer, and via the use of Wardrobe Wizard, existing clothing content can be converted to work directly on the figures.
1.5 GB of New Poser 8 Content
In addition to the new set of figures, Poser 8 includes an array of new content supplied by third party partners as well content created by the Smith Micro team of 3D artists. A new art-school inspired default manikin opens each new scene, and will serve as a remarkable reference figure for artists. Fully articulated human skeletons that match the male and female figures body topology are included. Various new poses, animations, light sets, props, and accessories to help new users get started are included in the Poser 8 content installer. Poser 8 also includes 1.8GB of legacy Poser content. And as a registration incentive, a collection of useful additional content will be offered for download following registration of Poser 8.
New User Interface
Poser 8 offers a new user interface, preserving the elements that Poser users are accustomed to, while presenting them in a more concise layout that takes better advantage of various screen resolutions. The new layout produces a cleaner work environment so artists can focus on the project. All controls are presented in floating palettes that can be docked for consistency, session to session, or floated to free up space.
Dependant Parameters
Poser 8 unlocks an advanced user technique with the new Dependent Parameter tool. Poser 8 lets you interactively create new Master Parameters or turn any existing Parameter into a Master Parameter that can drive any other editable parameters in the scene. Complex interactions can be created such as Full Body Morphs, Partial Body Morphs, Advanced Body Controls, Joint Controlled Morph Targets, Joint Controlled Deformers and Parameter Controlled Scene Assets. When a Master Parameter has been created, its Dependent Parameters can be edited or added to, and all Dependent Parameters are displayed with both their Natural Value and their Master Parameter Driven Value. A mouse click on either Dependent or Master Parameter Options will reveal the Master or allow Dependent Parameter editing.
Content Management System/Library
Addressing user requests, Poser’s library has been updated to provide easier access to collections of content. The new library presents content by category, but with a display list view, with pop-up previews and additional data for each content item. The list is persistent by category, and can be scrolled through with cursor keys for convenience. Content items can be loaded into the scene using the traditional Poser UI controls or can now be dragged directly from the Library into the scene.
To make it easier to find items in your library, the Poser 8 Library now supports keyword search. Type in a keyword or multiple keywords to find exactly what you looking for. Add any selected items to your Favorites to access popular items.
Cross Body Part Morph Tool
With Poser 8 comes a significant improvement in the current Morphing Tool. Users can dial in a Morph Brush and paint morphs across body parts, then save a set of individual body part morphs as a single Full Body Morph channel in the figure’s “Body” Parameters. Easily create effects such as muscle bulges, scales, bumps, horns, veins or wounds.
Indirect Lighting
Combining Indirect Diffuse Illumination with improved Irradiance Caching and Path Tracing, Poser 8 renders images with Global Illumination. By bouncing light and color from object to adjacent object in a scene, Poser 8’s Global Illumination settings can render images that appear so realistic they can fool the untrained eye into thinking the images are photos rather than 3D renderings.
Improved Rigging System
Poser 8 has improved upon the existing joint Falloff Zone rigging system by adding any number of new zones to a joint, and adding a new capsule shape to the existing sphere, The new system also allows the rigger to either multiply or add the falloff zone values. This system will permit figure creators to rig problem areas such as hips and shoulders with more precision, yielding better bending figures.
OpenGL Preview Improvements
Real-time preview engine improvements in Poser 8 now display lights and their accumulated values more realistically, sorted by intensity. The light properties control allows the user to select each light they wish to illuminate the scene preview. Mip Map support has been enabled for enhanced performance when previewing large textures. Together, these real-time preview engine enhancements let the user view larger textures and offer more complete scene previewing when setting up lights.
Physically correct light falloff
For Spot and Point lights, Poser 8 lets users attenuate (control) fall off to more closely reproduce real-world light behaviors. Constant, Inverse Linear and Inverse Square replicate the current Poser settings, and add two new methods for controlling light attenuation.
Tone Mapping and Exposure
Tone Mapping helps control overly bright areas in an image to produce better, less blown out final renderings with deeper contrast. The feature is very useful in HDR images, helping to bring the brightest areas back into a reproducible range. Two modes of tone mapping are available with differing effects: Exponential Tone Mapping and HSV Tone Mapping. Exposure values are editable when either Exponential or HSV Tone Mapping is selected.
Normal Mapping
Poser Pro’s Normal Mapping is a resource-efficient technique to add the appearance of complexity and surface detail to 3D objects. It can transform object surfaces, making them appear more intricate than they actually are, without the added overhead of polygonal detail. This saves designers valuable time and offers increased creative flexibility by allowing faster and more light-weight computation of rendered results.
Wardrobe Wizard
Wardrobe Wizard lets users to modify their existing clothing items to fit the new Poser 8 figures.
wxPython Support
wxPython in Poser 8 will help third party developers create more advanced plug-in functionality, offering more control through an enhanced Python scripting interface. wxPython sample applications are included with Poser 8.
New Poser 8 Feature Benefits
Eight New Photorealistic Characters
Poser 8 includes professional quality characters that are only a mouse click away, so you can start posing and animating in minutes.
1.5 GB new content
Poser 8 comes with a library full of real-world accessories, poses, props, hair sets, lights, and cameras so you can dive right into 3D scene building.
New User Interface
Poser 8’s interface maximizes screen real estate to present all your tools in a cleaner layout. The dockable interface lets you customize your workspace to meet your project needs. The cleaner graphic approach of the Poser 8 UI lets you focus on your project, not the interface.
Dependent Parameters
The powerful new dependent parameter tool lets you build interaction links between objects, making it easy to create Advanced Body Controls such as a muscle bulge morph that moves when a limb bends.
New Content Management System
in the Poser 8 Library
- Use keyword search in the library to find just the items you are looking for.
- A hierarchical list view of assets by category makes it easy to sort through gigabytes of 3D assets.
- Expanding preview displays let you view more detailed previews and content information.
- Quickly load content with drag and drop directly from the Library into the scene.
- Improved pop-up navigation menu lets you jump to categories, folders and load individual content items.
Cross Body Part Morph Tool
Improved Morphing Tool allows creation of morphs across body parts and creates Master Parameter controlled full body morph targets.
Indirect Lighting
for Global Illumination effects With Indirect Lighting, Poser scenes can be lit by reflected light and color from adjacent surfaces, producing vivid, more photorealistic lighting in rendered images.
Improved Figure Rigging
To produce more precise, better bending figure joints, Poser 8 introduces a new falloff zone capsule shape and permits the use of multiple falloff zones.
Improved OpenGL
real-time scene preview offers improved light display User selectable light previews permit more control over the real‐time scene preview. By default, Poser 8 selects the most intense lights in the scene.
Physically correct light falloff
With Poser 8’s new light falloff/attenuation controls, users can create scenes with point and spot lights brightness that decreases over distance, like real-world lights.
Tone Mapping and Exposure Control
Permits more control for brightness, saturation and post render processing to produce better images.
Normal Mapping
Normal Mapping adds surface detail at render time without requiring extra geometry or modeling. This feature allows content created for Poser Pro with normal maps to work in Poser 8.
Performance Optimizations
By performance optimizing to take better advantage of multiple threads and processors rendering, posing and interactions, and cloth simulation in the 3D scene in Poser 8 is faster,
Wardrobe Wizard in Poser 8
Poser 8 includes Wardrobe Wizard to let users fit their existing clothing items onto the new Poser 8 figures.
wXPython support
To provide users with more robust third party and add-on python features, wXPython is supported in Poser 8. wxPython will permit the creation of scripts that can run continuously and be integrated within the application.
Community
Two different communities have developed around Poser
Artists
There is now a cottage industry of commercial artists and fine artists who create original artwork (illustrations) of human figures using Poser. Previously, drawing realistic human figures was both difficult and very time consuming. Now over 200,000 artists create everything from magazine covers, print advertising and product illustrations using Poser. (Note: While Poser has animation capability, no significant cottage industry has developed for creating motion pictures with Poser. However Poser animation can be seen in industrial applications such as the animated instructions for check out machines in Albertsons and Save-On stores.)
Developers
Poser has a large and avid following at a high number of online sites, and due to the inability to perform 3D model creation inside the application, an ecostructure has grown up around the trade and sales of ready-made Poser Content. As a subculture in its own right, the Poser market has spawned a number of individuals known by their high-resolution human figures, and photographic quality skin 'textures' that can be applied to the models within Poser. Also there is now a vast catalog of props and scenes, both historical and fantasy in nature, as well as various animals, dragons, and other creatures, along with many photorealistic buildings and other real world and fantasy objects.
Library
The Poser package comes with many already-installed features that do not have to be purchased at an online store. These are stored in the "Library." The Library includes:
- Figures, which contains human, animal, cartoon, dinosaur, insect, wildlife, and many other Poser Figures that have a multitude of animation tools to work with.
- Poses, There are poses for almost every figure, and there are many human poses from sleeping to picking something up to fighting.
- Expressions, which contains any expression imaginable, or close to it.
- Hair, which has many types of hairstyles to place on the characters.
- Props, which contains objects like clothes and chairs.
- Lights, which contains many ways to light your scene.
- Cameras, which contains many camera angles.
Updates
POSER 8
Poser 8 Service Release 2.1 (SR2.1) 8.0.2 Windows
This critical Service Release for the Windows version of Poser 8 will update any previous English version of Poser 8, including the hotfix, SR1 versions and SR2. Simply download SR2.1 and launch the installer to update to Poser 8.0.2.10911.
This update will only work on an installed copy of Poser 8.0.x.
The update is available here.
POSER 7
(Release Date: 11. July 2008) Smith Micro Software, Inc. and the Poser team are pleased to announce that the Poser 7 English Service Release 3 (SR3) is now available for both Macintosh and Windows. SR3 will update any previous version of Poser 7 English to the latest version 7.04. SR3 offers several enhancements and addresses known issues present in the following areas:
- General performance and stability updates and improvements
- FireFly and Preview Rendering
- PoserPython updates and improvements
- Material Room, Face Room, Hair Room, Cloth Room, Setup Room and Content Room updates and improvements
- Talk Designer
- Walk Designer
- Animation
- Hierarchy Editor
- File I/O
- Parameter/Properties Palette
- Includes updates found in all previous service releases
In order to download Poser 7 SR3 or receive technical support for the product, you must have registered your Poser 7 application serial number. If you have not yet done so, please register now.
With your registered your Poser 7 serial number, you can access and download SR3 for Windows or Macintosh.
Program History
Poser was created by artist and programmer Larry Weinberg, as a software replacement for artist's mannequins. Versions 1.0 and 2.0 were published by Fractal Design; in 1997, Fractal Design was acquired by MetaCreations, and Poser's interface was redesigned by MetaCreations' Phil Clevenger for release as Poser 3 in 1998. This interface has remained as the basis for all subsequent versions. In 1999, MetaCreations sold Poser to egi.sys AG, who established the subsidiary Curious Labs, with Larry Weinberg as CEO, to handle Poser development and publication. Curious Labs, and Poser, were sold to the current publisher, e-frontier, in 2003. On 15th November 2007 Smith Micro Software announced the purchase of Poser, Anime Studio and Manga Studio from e-frontier
| Version | Release date | Publisher | Improvements / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 1995 | Fractal Design |
|
| 2.0 | 1996 | Fractal Design |
|
| 3.0 | 1998 | MetaCreations |
|
| 4.0 | 1999 | MetaCreations |
|
| 4.0.3 | September 1999 | Curious Labs |
|
| Pro Pack | February 2000 | Curious Labs |
|
| 5.0 | 2003 | Curious Labs |
|
| 6.0 | March 2005 | Curious Labs / e frontier |
|
| 7.0 | December 2006 | e-frontier |
|
See also
References
None at this time.
External links
Poser is a trademark and product of Smith Micro Software Inc., formerly owned by e-Frontier, Inc.
