Customer Reviews

Practical Poser 7 (Graphics Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm about a quarter of the way through this book. So far, it has all the detail I'm looking for.
The biggest knock I have against it is, on the back of the book, it says the CD has "all the files for the tutorials, including necessary Poser content, textures, and images". THAT IS A LIE.
I had to write to the publisher to find out that you do, indeed, have to purchase content, if you want to use the same content that is used in the tutorials.

Authors should use Adobe Tutorials as a model. Practical Poser 7 is a text for reading, not a tutorial for doing. It is not self contained with all materials needed to do the tutorials. It is also obviously keyed to stimulate purchases from Content Paradise. Needs considerable improvement. Not intuitive.

This book is listed as a beginning to intermediate level book. I think it's actually a little higher than that. It presumes that you have at least reviewed the Reference Manual, and hopefully worked through the Tutorial Manual. This is a tutorial style book. It takes you through a series of steps that will teach you more about the design of a person than you imagined.

After going through this book, I'm not going to say that the people making the next Harry Potter movie will jump at the chance to hire you, but I will say that you'll know a hell of a lot more about the computer creation of characters than you did when you started.

The key is to make characters look real. And here the authors point out little things like what do the fingers do in the hand that isn't reaching for something. And how do you make the torso bend with the body so that it looks real.

All in all, quite an exceptional book that I highly recommend. These people know what they are doing and know how to write about it.

The CD supplied with the book has a wealth of material including:

All the files used in the book and all of the images
Numerous Poser figures from a variety of sources
UV Mapper Software (Classic version)
Additional material from previous versions of this book

This book's value is based on the tutorials included in it (because the theoretical information is presented much worse than in the Poser manual that ships with the software.)

The tutorials are based on the files that are declared to be on the CD sold with the book.

That CD in reality DOES NOT include any of the files necessary for the tutorials. Instead, you are prompted to PURCHASE additional files from Content Paradize website. Even that would be okay (or may be not) - but unfortunately some of the vendors that sell the material for the tutorials no longer exist, and the files are just plain unavailable.

As a result, this expensive book is practically useless. And I can't return it to the store because I already broke the seal on the damn CD.

Please save your money.

I bought this book thinking it would be as good as Practical Poser 6. It isn't. At best this is an intro to Poser possibilities. It doesn't completely walk you through anything. It hints and suggests you might be able to do some things with Poser 7 but then directs you to free websites to actually learn how to do them. If you can use Google, then you don't need this book.

If you have the basics down with Poser and want to move to the next level, PRACTICAL POSER 7 is for you: the computer user who already has some grounding and wants to move up. It's an updated edition of a best-seller and covers all of Poser 7's capabilities, from saving custom faces in the Face Room and using the Hair Room to add hair to clothing to texturing, creating custom morphs, UV mapping and more. With black and white screen shot examples throughout, you can't go wrong - and many a graphics teacher will want to use PRACTICAL POSER 7 as a classroom text. Computer libraries won't want to miss this.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

My last experience with POSER was ver.4 and I found it hard to understand and was less than satisfed with the results... I recently saw an advertisement for version 7 and was amazed at how much the program had advanced, now incorporating many features used in high-end CGI productions. My problem was, although I had ideas I wanted to realize I still didn't really know how to drive Poser... The supplied reference manual was poorly constructed and too technical for a semi-luddite like me!

I searched Amazon for any "how to" books and saw 'Practical Poser 7" unfortunately the book reviews accompianing it did not give a really good idea of what it was about, so ordering it was a bit of a gamble...
As it was, I hit the jackpot! This is the book I needed to make sense of Poser. The examples are laid out in an understandable fashion and although they nescessarily deal with "technobabble" they approach it by assuming the reader does not nescessarily understand the terms or concepts and explains them in a simple manner. I could rapidly see how I could apply these tutorials to things I wanted to achieve, but had no idea of how to make Poser do them! Apart from a transposed illustration (fig 11.12) and one that appears wrong (Fig 11.16)the information all seems correct and I love the page layout with wide margins that leave plenty of room for notes. (and have already be covered with my scribblings and visual ideas sparked by the text!)

In conclusion, I would say this is the ideal book for those intimidated by Poser's supplied information and I would wholeheartedly reccommend it for anyone at my beginning level!

If the authors of Practical Poser 7 & Poser 7 Revealed had bothered to write their books with beginners in mind. It would have been a tremendous help. I took a computer class where the instructor stressed the KISS! (Keep It Simple, STUPID!) approach to teaching. The authors of these books seem to want to overwhelm the reader with their 'brilliance' when it comes to how to use Poser. The authors are so busy 'showing off' how smart they are, they forget all about the students they're 'supposed' to be teaching!

Neither of these books saw fit to provide a simple illustrated set of 'step-by-step' instruction that would teach a completely new user of Poser 7 how to do anything. Just why is it that beginner users of Poser 7 and computer programs in general are treated with such derision and scorn by the people who buy their products?

This is a better introduction to Poser 7 than the tutorial that comes with the product. The only gripe I have is that the physical version of the book comes with a CDROM, but there is no comparable material for the Kindle version. I asked the publisher if there is a place on the publisher's website to download the CDROM material, and they said "No" that I'd have to buy the book/CDROM combination.

Well, that really defeats the purpose of the Kindle version, doesn't it? How tough would it be for the publisher to put this material on their website? If I knew how to contact the author, I would.

Amazon, you should require publishers to supply downloadable material for a situation like this!

This is more of an advanced book unless you already have 3d modeling experience. If you are a beginner you should get this and another book (or use Posers built-in documentation). This book is well written and organized. Everything is covered pretty evenly--from designing clothing to animating figures. It even digs into raw editing of some of CR2 and OBJ files.