Poser 6

by Curious Labs, Inc.

Product Features

• New Animation palette and Keyframe controls animate figures, props, cameras, lights, and even materials
• Render out for any medium of your choice - many styles available - Photorealism, cartoon, sketch, Flash, wireframe, silhouette and more
• Add dynamic hair and cloth to your figure - they're dynamic and will move with your figure, even reacting to wind in animations
• High-resolution, fully rigged Male, Female, Boy and Girl figures in preset poses -- along with props, lights, cameras, accessories and materials
• Also features new OpenGL previews, enhanced cartoon imagery rendering and improved Flash support

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00083SCCM
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 23, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,149 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #77 in Software > Graphics > Animation

Product Description

Amazon.com

Poser 6 brings the art of figure design and posing right to your desktop, with an innovative UI to make working with the human form easily accessible. Included human and animal models come ready for you to start designing and posing immediately. You can click-and-drag to interactively sculpt faces, pose body parts, or create various ethnic varieties. For those who require finer control, full body morphs, facial expression morphs, and bone rigging are easily accessible for any figure. All features and models are provided in a natural 3D environment for realistic depth, lighting and shadowing on any figure in any pose. You can pose any figure by clicking and dragging a body part. With Document Display Styles you can view and design your figure in silhouette, outline, wireframe, textured, and more. The program lets you manipulate individual body parts, including the full body, facial expressions and fully articulated hands, and interactively sculpt and design figures in real time, including the body and facial expressions. Object-level Collision Detection helps with posing and avoids collisions when animating.

What's New in Poser 6?

New Figures Poser 6 introduces James and Jessi, new figures with amazing realism to bring a new level of photorealstic content to your artwork. Both figures accurately depict the human form, have lifelike skin textures, and full morph target sets to design your own custom figures with facial expressions. Also included are new boy and girl children figures, Ben and Kate, who complete the new Poser family. The new Poser figures come with photorealistic texture maps, full body morphs, facial expression morphs, and are fully rigged for posing. More Content Poser's Content Paradise now includes a host of top content providers, to bring you a diverse range of Poser 6 models, textures, poses, character packs, utilities and free stuff. A redesigned interface makes finding Poser content faster and easier than ever before. Enhanced UI Poser's innovative UI is centered on a productive room-based environment. Individual Pose, Setup, Materials, Hair and Cloth rooms provide easy feature access for each step in the creative process. In addition to rooms, Poser uses floating palettes and windows. You can customize your Poser workspace by hiding/displaying and relocating controls anywhere you like. You can even save up to nine different screen configurations for the entire Poser workspace. Shadow Catching Poser 6 introduces several new features to support artists in rendering more true to life shadow effects. For example the NEW Shadow Catcher feature enables you to separate shadows from their underlying surface, and put them virtually anywhere. These new features make image composition and integrating 3D figures into graphic design easier. New Toon Outlines The New Toon Outline feature uses post-processing during rendering to draw an outline around the edges of cartoon images. Poser 6 offers customizable outline styles, enabling you to further personalize your cartoon shading look. Add a distinctive style to any cartoon imagery for comics. Now you have the choice to add outlines to any cartoon imagery you create with Poser. This feature's effect is most dramatic when combined with a cartoon shader node. Configurable Cartoon Shading preview styles allow you to approximate the final render results as you work. OpenGL OpenGL delivers accelerated performance when previewing anything from cartoon to photorealistic 3D figures. Now you can display vivid textures and lighting in real-time when designing figures. You can even render high resolution images using the OpenGL Preview renderer. There are accelerated previews for your 3D scenes, so you can see vivid textures and lighting in real-time. This feature works with all Document Display Styles, including wireframe, cartoon, and more. You can render out your 3D scene display with the OpenGL Preview renderer, and easily switch between SreeD Software and OpenGL Hardware for scene previews--which means you can maximize your system’s resources and spend your time creating rather than waiting. New Ambient Occlusion Ambient Occlusion makes figures seem as though they are in the natural lighting environment of the real world. Ambient Occlusion is available on every light to create accurate soft shadow effects, thus giving scenes a new degree of realism. The new Ambient Occlusion shader node makes figures and objects appear as though they are in a natural lighting environment. Ambient Occlusion darkens surfaces within a scene whose exposure to light is blocked by other objects. This effect uses raytracing to calculate the degree to which other objects within a scene occlude the ambient light of a surface at a given point. Surfaces with more occlusion will be rendered as darker than surfaces with little or no occlusion. You can set Ambient Occlusion lighting for all objects, or select lighting effects focused on specific parts of your scene.	Meet James and Jessi
	Expand your cartoon universe with Toon Outline
	Ambient occlusion brings your figures to life

More About Poser

• Photorealism
  Poser 6 allows you to quickly design and pose pre-rigged figures, or create original figures to suit your needs. With professional lighting effects and shading materials, a large library of content and photorealistic textures, you can create professional-quality imagery and movies. You can also integrate with other 3D applications, or composite photorealistic imagery into your favorite image editing or motion graphics programs. Just some of the features in Poser 6 include: accurate human male, female and children 3D models; large libraries of content included; quick design/pose pre-rigged figures with full morph target sets; realistic perspective in 3D space; and professional lighting effects and procedural shader material trees
• Camera Controls
  Cameras represent your window into the Poser workspace. You can use them as a director would, to set up your ideal camera shots for each image or animation frame. Or, you can take advantage of the benefit that comes with 3D work, of being able to render a scene from multiple angles. In either case, Poser 6 offers multiple configurable cameras to facilitate your creative workflow. Poser includes a variety of independent cameras for viewing your scene, and a four-pane camera view. All are easily controlled with an innovative Trackball control for intuitive scene setup.
• Realistic Lighting
  Lighting is an essential component of any 3D image. Lights add colors, cast shadows, create specific effects, and set the tone for your scene. Poser 6's light controls allow you to add and individually configure different types of light sources in your Poser scene. When these light configuration options are combined with Poser 6's powerful rendering tools, the lighting possibilities are unlimited.
• Bone Rigging
  Create new, fully poseable Poser figures from any 3D object in a few easy steps. Import 3D geometry, break it into body parts and generate new Poser figures. You can even create Inverse Kinematics (IK) chains. Inverse Kinematics (IK) delivers natural character motion by modeling the hierarchical interactions of bones and joints, so that when you move a hand, the arm naturally follows.
• OpenGL Preview
  New OpenGL hardware acceleration offers improved performance with figure Posing and Preview renders. Easily switch between SreeD Software and OpenGL. Hardware rendering for scene previews means you can maximize your system's resources and spend your time creating rather than waiting.
• Photo-based Facial Mapping
  Want to create a virtual you? Friend? Import facial photos to easily model new characters and create texture maps. Poser's Face Room allows you to create lifelike results by mapping any face onto a 3D head. You can also generate new faces with a button click, or create caricatures for wild characters. Ethnicity, age, and gender parameter controls round out this powerful set of facial tools.

Product Description

Poser 6 delivers the power of interactive 3D figure design, offering infinite opportunities to portray human diversity, form and expression. Whether you create for print, animation or the web, there's always a need to integrate the human form -- with this powerful tool you can design any figure you can imagine. An intuitive 3D toolset allows you to scale and manipulate individual body parts, design facial expressions, and pose figures. Design with the human form for art, illustration, animation, comics, web, print, education, medical visualization, games, storyboarding and more!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poser 6, Ready for Prime Time., April 19, 2005

By 

Nerd3D (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Poser 6 (CD-ROM)

OK, I'm prejudiced. I love Poser and have been using it since Version 3. I still think I can be fair. There are some things that I wish Poser 6 had and some things I'll never use. I think this version is 99% there.

Poser 6 only has 1 level of "Undo". Most users long for more undo power. It does have a "Revert" feature that allows you to jump back to the last saved version. That's pretty handy.

The new OpenGL preview is fantastic. The improved display isn't just about speed. The quality of the preview is much better as well. A feature cartoon artists will love is Poser's toon style preview. There are 5 toon preview styles. For some applications they may be of a quality that a full render is not needed.

Some users have had trouble with their graphics cards. Curious Labs included legacy support, a Software preview called SreeD. If your card does not support OpenGL you can still use Poser 6. Usually updating the software driver for the graphics card solves the problems.

Several new features have been added to the render engine in Poser 6. The biggest is probably IBL and AO (Image Based Lighting and Ambient Occlusion) These new light sources allow you to create very accurate real world lighting. Several real world "Light Probes" are included. Setting up IBL can be tricky so a Wizard/Macro (They call it a Wacro) is included to help you.

Another new render feature is toon outline. Poser 5 introduced toon style renders, but they were tricky to setup and the "ink" was not quite right. Poser 6 has a "Toon Outline" option in the renderer. One thing I would like to have seen was a way to control the color for the "ink" used on the toon outline. Henry Ford said, "You can have any color you want as long as it's black." Those are your color choices for the toon outline. Black. You can control line weight and style. Setting up the toon outline can be tedious as each material will need to have a toon ID assigned to get the lines right.

Poser's procedural materials can be hard for beginners to setup. Poser 6 has a simplified version of the Material room that makes it easy for users upgrading from Poser 4 the get into the new version. Once you know how to use the material room you can switch to the advanced view and dive into the powers hidden in the "shader nodes".

Poser 6 includes a new family of Characters. James, Jessi and the kids Ben and Kate. The new figures use a type of character rigging (Joints) that was used in Poser 4. Some people think it's a step backward. There are some advantages to this rigging technique. The newer (Evolution) rigging frequently didn't work well with Poser's drag to pose system. With the old style rigging works more reliably with drag to pose. Just click a arm or leg and drag it to where you want it. Poser 6 work fine with the evolution rigging if you use direct joint manipulation. The figures included on the original distribution CD have problems. Curious Labs has already released a content update to fix these problems. Be sure to download the update.

Animation in Poser is easy. Poser automatically calculates "In between" frames. You pose the key frames and Poser figures out what to do in between. There are several ways to edit animations. Key frame manipulation and graph tools give you complete control over your animation. A Walk Designer will create walking animations with just a few clicks. Some of the animation tools will take some practice to learn. There are 4 ways Poser can calculate the "In betweens". Linear, Spline, Constant and Spline Break. Learning when and how to use each will take some practice.

When Poser 5 was launched it was nearly a disaster. The program was very unstable. Lots of users swore off Poser then. Poser 6 is different. Curious Labs learned from the mistakes made then and have been careful not to make the same mistakes again. It was thoroughly beta tested prior to release and while some bugs did survive 4 months of testing the program is very stable.

I have to come clean. I was one of the beta testers. I got to watch as the engineers shaped the new program. I must admit I was scared up until about half way through beta. Then every thing started to come together. I could see it was going to be great. I wanted this release to launch perfect. But, that never seems to happens. Sure enough bugs made it through, fortunately none of seem to be deal busters. Curious Labs will (and by the time you read this may already have) release patches for the problems.

Poser 6 is great program. Beginners and experts will find it easy to use and powerful. It comes with a large library of pre made content, but it's power isn't really unlocked until you start adding content. There are hundreds of artists that create add on items for Poser. Many of them offer free goodies, I'm one of them.

Happy Rendering

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poser 6, it's about time, April 9, 2005

By 

Douglas Sturk "3d Illustrator" (Kentucky, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Poser 6 (CD-ROM)

Finally, I can step up from Poser 4 ProPack without the constant fear of crashing. Poser 6, compared to Poser 5, has run consistantly stable without a crash. (I did have to update my graphics card drivers, but that's usually expected with new software)

Now that I can start enjoying many of the options introduced in Poser 5, my artwork can start to be more vibrant. Granted I'm behind the masses that updated to Poser 5 (to which I was a contributing artist on the content cd), but I always had problems with program crashing.

I've found Poser to be very easy to learn, and a quick fix for the artist that needs faster results then creating everything in 3d from scratch. Of course you still can adapt your original work to Poser, and Poser 6 makes it even easier with more options to do so.

Poser 6 may not be for the beginner to 3d, but there is a large poser community ready to help you along.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for the casual hobbiest, September 6, 2005

By 

amsterdamaged - See all my reviews

This review is from: Poser 6 (CD-ROM)

Poser is hard. Extremely hard. The manual that comes with the software is poorly written and virtually useless. I recommend the VHS "POSER 5 Demystified", which is relevant to Poser 6 as well. This will help get you started.

But even with this, Poser, like all 3D animation programs, is going to require quite a commitment from you. Its VERY TIME CONSUMING. There's just no way around it. Even after you've figured out how to use the software (it took me 6 months of trial and error...and I'm certainly no expert), it can easily take you 8-10 hours to produce a 5 second animation.

The problem is that no one can show you "how" to make an animation with Poser. They can only show you how the various tools work (which, as I stated before, the manual fails miserably at). You're going to have to decide what you want to see on the screen, and figure out how to use the software to make that a reality. Example: there are 3 different methods you can use to animate, which give you wildly different results. While the manual tells you what these are and identifies the controls for each, it doesn't tell you which to use and under what circumstances to use them. You're going to have to figure it out on your own. I literally thought the software was broken for the 1st 6 months, because the figures kept moving in unexpected ways. Actually, the software was behaving exactly the way it was supposed to. I understand now that its an asset rather than a liability, because once you learn what you're doing, Poser can add a level of realism that is sorely lacking from a lot of other 3d animation programs.

So what do I think of Poser 6? Its amazing. Simply amazing. I would give it 5 stars, except for the crappy manual that comes with it. Curious Labs should design a manual like "The Art of Animation Master", which was brilliantly tailored for the beginner.

The downside: content. If you plan on making a contemporary film, this is not a problem. But if you plan on making any kind of period film, or a Sci-Fi or Fantasy film, be prepared to shell out at least $200.00 for extra content. You're first stop should be to DAZ. Get version 3 of both Michael and Victoria, because 99% of the clothing and morphs on Content Paradise is geared to fit these two models. You're going to find virtually no content geared towards the models that come with the Poser software (James, Jessi, Don, Judy). Its a rip-off...pure and simple...but if you want to use Poser, there's really nothing you can do about it, unless you're a talented enough modeller to design your own clothes. Before you go spending all that money though, take the time out to learn the software. See if you're willing to make the commitment or not. I would recommend a short 3-5 minute film using the content that comes with the software. Allow yourself 6 months to a year to complete it. I'm not kidding.

Lip Synching: You're also going to need "Mimic" from Daz, if you plan for your film to contain any dialogue. That's going to cost you at least another $200.00, unless you can find a free version of the software. Check out the magazine 3d world. Every month it features free software for all sorts of 3d platforms. I was lucky enough to obtain a free version of Mimic for the price of the magazine. You can probably obtain the back issue from their website.

Other than that, study the masters (Harrihausen, etc.). Computer animation is really not that different from Claymation. Its just done in a virtual environment, and you don't have to animate each and every frame. Also, its relatively simple to check your progress and to make changes, once you know what you're doing.

If you read the review section of Poser 5, many of the reviews are extremely negative. While some of the complaints are justified, in my opinion a lot of the frustration comes from the fact that the people reviewing it haven't spent a sufficient amount of time to know what they're doing. They think the software is "broken" because its not giving them the results they expect, or their computer lacks sufficient RAM and a fast enough processor to handle it. The requirements on the side of the box is the MINIMUM required to run the software. If you want it to run smoothly, I would recommend at least a gigabyte of RAM. You'll save yourselff a lot of headaches.