Customer Reviews

Secrets of Poser Experts: Tips, Techniques, and Insights for Users of All Abilities: The e-frontier Official Guide

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't write reviews much but every once and a while, something interests me right off the bat to the point where I have to write. This book is one of them.

Poser is not well received by the "High End" 3D industry at large. To many, it is still considered a "fast food" type application because it offers pre-rigged models and props and all you do is assembly them in a pretty picture.

Heck, a friend of mine even liken use of it to assemblying "paper dolls", however she also quickly admitted that she had no idea what it took to use the program.

Let me assure you, Poser is anything but a "fast food" application and the artists in this book demonstrate that to the hilt. Talk about inspiration to learn the ends and outs of an application and having it work in concert with others! I would recommend this book to anyone interested in 3D art, especially those snooty people who only feel you can produce amazing works of art with only Max, Maya, and any of the other so-called "industry heavyweights". The section about Daniel Murphy, creator of Ghost, alone was worth the price of the book and the software. I hope my art will appear in something like this some day and I will gladly hold the Poser banner high.

Highly recommended!

I've been slowly getting into CGI through the use of Poser and Vue since Christmas '05. I have found that many websites/forums cast postwork as being a way to correct mistakes -- like you don't really know how to use the software properly if you need to do postwork. This book blows that misconception away.

This book is a showcase for sixteen artists that utilise Poser somewhere in their workflow. They are all exceptionally talented in different ways. Each artist receives a chapter of the book and each chapter is in the form of a brief artist bio, a Poser technique/tutorial, Insights into each artist's use of Poser, a Q&A covering some set questions posed by the authors, and a Gallery of the artist's work.

What's good about the book:

Each artist gives a brief summary of their Creative Process. I found it very interesting to read about how different people work and where Poser fits into their workflow. In a similar vein the Insights section wherein each artist describes the features of Poser that they find most useful was very helpful to me -- there were features I don't even use that the artists were describing as their favourite feature.

The main plus for me though is in each artist describing their workflow for a particular piece, in the form of the Techniques/Tutorials sections. Its not so much the How as the Why -- the specific tutorials may or may not be that useful to you, but why the artist does *this* in Poser and *that* in Photoshop is quite eye-opening.

What's bad about the book:

The DVD that comes with the book. The blurb on the back of the book devotes a large section to espousing the DVD's content. I found the interface to the content to be gimicky, clunky, and flawed. The content itself is unexceptional.

Some of the techniques/tutorials are a little scarce on detail if you really want to replicate a particular image. Occasionally Photoshop is a bit of a magic box -- here's the Poser image that went in to Photoshop (standard Poser image) and here's the image afterwards (fabulous CGI image).

Favourites:
The chapters on Fabrice Delage, Brian Jon Haberlin, Daniel Scott Gabriel Murray, Gabriel Sabloff, As Shanim and Siliphiel, and Thomas Weiss. Quite inspiring and definitely informative.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is familiar with Poser and Photoshop.

One of the best ways to develop a personal artistic style and to grow as an artist is to study other artists' work. This book, by Daryl Wise and Jesse DeRooy, will show you how the experts use the 3D graphic software Poser from e frontier, Inc. Each of the sixteen Poser artists featured in the book discuss their personal styles and give you a peak into the techniques that they use in Poser to develop their art. At the end of each chapter, each artist shares a gallery of their artwork and answers questions about their creative process.

One of the things I like about this book is that some of the featured artists use Poser in interesting ways. For example, Kevin Airgid uses Poser when creating Flash games and Brian Jon Haberlin has an interesting technique for including traditional gouache and oil in his Poser graphics. He also gives a nice post production tip for creating an old Hollywood style render.

Have you ever wondered who makes all that Poser content? You are introduced to a few of these content creators and they share some of the techniques they use. Phil Cooke discusses Poser's UV mapping and creating an hierarchy file for posing his characters. As Shanim and Siliphiel discuss posing characters and using the Poser Material Room.

Photo-realism is a very popular style and several artists discuss the important aspects of achieving photo-realistic Poser scenes. Catharina Harders uses image based lighting (IBL) to achieve realism and Fabrice Delage discusses creating realistic skin textures from photos.

Many of these artists use Poser along with other graphic software. For example, Tony Luke uses Adobe After Effects to create his motion graphics and Scott Thigpen turns Poser scenes into a stylized illustration in Adobe Illustrator.

The book's DVD contains a gallery of the artist's work, movies, and tutorials. It also has a demo version of Poser 6 and Poser content. Daryl Wise is an independent public relations and marketing contractor and is the author of Secrets of Award-Winning Digital Artists. Jesse DeRooy is a radio editor and independent filmmaker.

Beautiful book. A great set of masterclasses on various poser/photoshop techniques for generating digital art. With all of the gallery sections in the book it works as a coffeetable book too.

I have been trying to create some images for a while with very little success. With this book, if you TRY some of the examples, it really opens your mind to the possibilities.

I Highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to improve their creative skills!

Honestly - this book has helped me advance in Poser and Photoshop in a matter of weeks. Admittedly - I thought this book would offer extremely detailed step-by-step tutorials, giving precise instructions to each and every little technique, yet much of it is just suggestion or insight, leaving the user to figure out how to do what is suggested. Not that there are not enough details in this book for the reader to try instantly! At first I was a bit dissapointed as I realized that I would have to do some serious playing around in both programmes to figure it out, but I can honestly say that it has done me the greatest favor, as I have stumbled across countless tools and been able to develop my own techniques in a very short space of time that I simply would not have if I did not have this books insights. This book led me to the water.

The book provides beautiful pictures of artwork and artists who use poser 7 and can render works of art but also it explains what other applications that work with Poser 7 like...Photoshop. It gave me a craving to want to buy Photoshop.( I dabble in art...so Photoshop fascinates me). It also came with the book a CD-ROM for the computer to look at the art work in the book. It also gave tips on how the artist achieved these works of art...very inciteful.

I am an employee of e frontier, the creators of Poser. I would like to say that the Secrets of Poser Experts is a well written book on what users can do with Poser. There are lots of great images and personality profiles of artists that create this amazing 3D art. By the way, it's also been written by an industry insider who's been in the 3D industry for a couple decades. I recommend this book to any one that has ever wanted to know and understand what Poser is about.

This book seems to me to be more of a showcase for the artists featured than instruction for Poser 7. There are tips etc. as the title says but they are more aimed at a user already quite familiar with the program. I was looking for more of a beginners instruction manual so was disappointed. Having already bought Poser 7 I wasn't interested in the free trial of Poser 6 which is included.
There are a lot of beautiful pictures showing various styles and ways that Poser can be used, but for me the book has limited usefulness.

Secrets of Poser Experts: Tips, Techniques, and Insights for Users of All Abilities: The e-frontier Official Guide

If your Poser skills need brushing up, or you want to know what other Poser artists are doing, look no further. This book, written for Poser artists of all skill levels, shows art works from several established Poser artists.

The accompanying DVD has software you can try, and later buy if you find it suits your needs. Additionally, there are added artworks, so you can enjoy more Poser art. With this book, you're off to a flying start with Poser.