Curious Labs Poser 5

by Curious Labs, Inc.

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006IXA4
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 16, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,971 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #43 in Software > Graphics > 3-D
  • #52 in Software > Graphics > Animation

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Whether you're a 3-D novice or an experienced digital artist, Poser 5 makes it extraordinarily easy to create complete 3-D character stills and animations. Yet while this new edition definitely has advantages over previous versions, it is not without its glitches.

Pay attention to the system requirements on install. This program needs room and power. With more than the recommended 256 MB of RAM, rendering seems a bit sluggish in spite of the new FireFly micropolygon-based rendering engine. Though considering all Poser 5 does, immediate rendering of complex 3-D objects might be asking a bit much.

Working in Poser 5 is remarkably simple considering the capabilities of the software. The workspace is clean and easily customizable, with a majority of the tools accessible from floating palettes and windows. A collapsible library palette gives you fast access to all available content such as figures, poses, faces, and expressions. Plus, there is an entire CD of additional content including sound files, props, textures, templates, samples, and demos.

The interface is broken down into different rooms: Pose, Material, Face, Hair, Cloth, Setup, and Content. The new Face Room lets you map any face onto a 3-D head using just front and side photos of someone's face. Use the Hair Room to grow actual 3-D hair for figures in just a few steps. Go to the Cloth Room and convert objects into fully dynamic cloth with complete control of behavior. A full, revised reference manual is included.

So many things are under your control, it's hard not to want to tweak every little detail. However, on more than one occasion making an adjustment caused the software to lock up and quit. At other times, it would complete the changes, but the document window would be blank, making it necessary to close and reopen the program to continue work.

Instability issues aside, Poser 5 is loaded with fun tools, content, and utilities, making an upgrade worthwhile for serious users. Ease of use makes it a good choice for beginners and hobbyists as well. --Joshua Goldman

Amazon.com Product Description

Poser 5 is an ideal 3-D character design and animation tool for artists and animators. Create 3-D figures using a diverse collection of ready-to-use 3-D human and animal models. Poser's innovative interface makes figure design, posing, and animating fast and easy. Map facial photos, grow and style dynamic hair, and create dynamic cloth to add extraordinary realism to your figure.

Quickly output movies and images from your posed figures for content in Web, print, and video projects. Add life to your 3-D worlds using exported, posed figures. For those new to 3-D, digital artists, and hobbyists alike, Poser 5 is easy to learn and quickly generates fast and dynamic results.

Poser 5 delivers a stunning host of new tools including Facial Photo-mapping, Dynamic Strand-based Hair, Dynamic Cloth, new Figures, and FireFly, Poser 5's powerful new renderer. Use Morph Putty to directly manipulate facial expressions. Create realistic dynamic cloth and make it flow and drape around any object in your scene. Build powerful node-based material shaders to create any material texture you can imagine. The Poser 5 Content CD contains a host of extras, including props and textures.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poser or Poseur?, March 19, 2004

By 

Gary Bradshaw (Mississippi State, MS United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Curious Labs Poser 5 (CD-ROM)

Poser does one thing very well: it renders stock poses of stock characters with amazing realism. Here is the rub: the library of stock poses and stock characters is so tiny that you will quickly outgrow them. You will soon want to do more: add hair to a figure; change the color of clothing, or even add new and different clothes. But any change beyond the stock inventory will lead to innumerable headaches: a user interface designed to thwart your every effort; system crashes; poses that look unnatural; even body parts that poke through the clothing. Forget the undo: at best it will take you back one step; often you can't even undo the last action you took. Don't bother with the user manual: as others have noted, it does little more than identify the controls mysteriously placed around the user interface. Don't even bother with books such as "Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5" or "The Poser 5 Handbook." You may find a helpful clue in a tutorial somewhere on the web, but then again, it may not apply to the version of the program that you have.

So why does anyone bother with Poser? Under the proper circumstances, Poser can do amazing things. Unlike most 3-D software applications, Poser is designed to work with human and animal forms. Within a narrow window, it works very well. Poser has even spawned a cottage industry of people who make additional figures, clothing, and props for Poser. Without organizations like the Digital Art Zone and Renderosity, Poser would not be worth the money.

Yet even these organizations, which often provide very high quality materials for Poser, can't prevent its flaws from showing through. Digital Art Zone (DAZ) has created characters like Michael that are stunning in Poser. Clothing for normal Poser characters cannot easily be used on Michael, and vice versa. Even when Michael is "morphed" to a different form, his clothing will no longer fit. Once again you will be struggling with all those joint parameter dials, trying to get things right.

Having used versions 2, 3, 4, and 5 of Poser, it is clear that Poser 5 is the best of the lot, especially if you are working with multiple characters in a scene. Poser 5 also has the best support for hair of any version of the software. But it's still not very good. Some simple advice for anyone using Poser:

1) Create and clothe your character before attempting to pose him/her/it.
2) Plan out your animation carefully. If you make a mistake, you probably can't go back.
3) Save your work often
4) After everything else is done, then add hair. Once a realistic amount of hair has been added, even simple things like moving the camera will bring your system to its knees.
5) Plan to spend quite a bit extra on new figures and clothing. These will easily double the cost of owning Poser in no time at all.

Or, you could spend your money buying a Barbie and Ken doll, a digital camera, and a bunch of outfits. You would save time, money, and quite a few headaches this way...

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars People maker Poser, February 27, 2003

By 

Gina Miller (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Curious Labs Poser 5 (CD-ROM)

Poser 5 really is better than version 4. There are new features such as cloth, face and hair editing windows. You can now import photographs straight into the program to apply to faces. The only problem with moving up to version 5 is that everything you had downloaded into your older version does not move into the five program and in fact this is not a seamless upgrade, you will have a Poser 4 and 5 on your computer after the install, this is the major reason I give it a 4 stars as opposed to a 5. However if I were rating the rendering time of this program alone, I would give it a 5 Stars. Poser renders super fast at 1200 res as opposed to Bryce which takes all day to do the same. If you want a character model that you don't have to build from scratch this is what you need. You can save your models as different files to import them into other programs. If you need a quick and easy person in your landscapes this is a nice way to get it. I still haven't figured out all of the functions of this program, the textures and materials applications that really manipulate the standard models they provide, but I look forward to learning more when I find the time. Works fine with XP operating system.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some bugs in the program, but still an amazing upgrade!, December 13, 2002

By 

Helen H. Madden "Heat Flash podcaster" (Yorktown, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Curious Labs Poser 5 (CD-ROM)

I've worked with Poser ever since Poser 2 came out. Initially, all you could do with the program was pose 3D dummies for use as references in traditional art. It's amazing to see how far Poser has come today. The latest version of the program has a lot of incredible features, including strand based dynamic hair, dynamic cloth, even the ability to create a character with your own face or anybody else's. If you've been using Poser 4, you'll be amazed at how much the program has been upgraded. Tasks that artists used to have to do using work arounds and other 3D programs (like creating morph targets) have now become become regular features of Poser 5. One of the best changes is the addition of a node-based materials editor. You can finally create realistic materials for all kinds of objects and characters without having to paint a texture map in some other program like Photoshop or Photopaint (but if you want, you can still use the traditional texture maps for your characters). My only complaint is this. The program is so new and powerful, and has so many additional features, it's still a bit buggy. It's not unusual for Poser 5 to lock up my computer (other 3D programs don't cause me nearly as many problems). As soon as you get this program, make sure you check Curious Labs' website for the latest service releases. They improve the performance of the program by a hundred-fold. Even then, though, save your work often. You can and will crash the program. One final note, if you've never worked with Poser or any other 3D program before, make sure you get a good book on how to use the program. The manual for this program isn't bad, but it isn't written for beginners. Also check the internet for tutorials on Poser 5 ...There's a lot of info out there, and you won't have to go far to find it.