Poser Pro [OLD VERSION]

by Smith Micro Software Inc.

Product Features

• Network rendering and render queue capabilities, including background rendering, built on a 64-Bit render engine for incredible speed and quality
• Create even more realistic images with High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) support for Image-Based-Lighting and textures
• Add high resolution 3D detail to any mesh through the use of normal mapping, producing better images even with low to medium poly models
• Use Poser Pro's pre-rigged characters inside of host applications such as Autodesk's 3ds Max and Maya, and Maxon's CINEMA 4D
• Create lifelike animations by combining multiple strands of action into one fluid animation using layers and keyframes

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.5 x 7.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0017U7TQ0
• Item model number: PSRPROHBXW
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 15, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,297 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #36 in Software > Graphics > Image Capture

Product Description

Amazon.com

Geared toward a multitude of production environments, Poser Pro offers professional level application integration as well as a 64 bit render engine and network rendering support. The Poser Pro Bottom line - reduce design and production time and access hundreds of thousands of rigged and textured 3D models.

The 3D character animation and content solution for professional artists and production environments.

Render photo-realistic content with image based lighting, ambient occlusion, raytraced and depth mapped shadows, displacement maps, reflections and refractions.

Poser Pro includes a number of tools to help you customize the base characters or create new figures.

Grow and style strand based dynamic hair to render natural looking / dynamically flowing hair, fur, and beards.

Professional 3D Figure Design & Animation
Poser Pro, the 3D character animation and content solution for professional artists and production environments, offers fully animated Poser scene integration into 3ds Max, Maya and CINEMA 4D, plus Collada import/export, 64-bit render engine and the Network Rendering Queue. Poser Pro helps save design time and production resources by providing access to a market of hundreds of ready to use, studio quality, pre-rigged and textured characters, plus thousands of diverse props for any production project.

3D Character Design
Generating 3D character content is easy with Poser Pro. Use pre-rigged characters or create your own from imported geometries. Poser Pro's list of standard features include inverse kinematics, morph targets, morphing brushes, deformers, facial expressions, face room photo-matching technology, automatic lip-syncing, dynamic cloth and hair, layered animation with multiple interpolation methods, production environment character rigging system and bending technology, normal mapping, and a hybrid REYES rendering engine with real-time OpenGL interactive previews.

• 3D Character Design
  Poser Pro includes a number of tools to help you customize the base characters or create new figures. Import geometry and rig it with bones and blend zones to transform any 3D model into a posable character. Apply textures, generate morphs and your character is ready for the stage. Customize the included 3D figures with morphs, bring them into the face room to photo-match, and add clothing and hair to build characters that are as unique as you can dream up.
  
  
• Normal Mapping
  Poser Pro's Normal Mapping is a great technique to add the appearance of complexity and surface detail to 3D objects. Make object surfaces appear more intricate than they actually are, without the added overhead of high polygon counts. This allows increased creativity and faster render times with higher quality results
  
  
• Animation
  Poser Pro is a full featured character animation system enabling keyframe creation for every scene asset and parameter. Animation layers, keyframe editing with linear, non-linear and constant interpolation, quarternion interpolation, automatic lip syncing and a Walk Designer that blends walk cycles round out the suite of animation features. BVH import/export lets Poser Pro users animate characters with industry standard motion capture data.
  
  
• Rendering
  Poser Pro's advanced lighting tools and powerful hybrid REYES rendering engine deliver production ready images and animation. Render photo-realistic content with image based lighting, ambient occlusion, raytraced and depth mapped shadows, displacement maps, reflections and refractions. Poser Pro supports HDRI image map import for lighting and HDR optimized renders, as well as gamma correction for linear rendering. In addition, quickly create stylized line art renders with the Sketch Designer.
  
  
• Dynamic Hair and Cloth
  Create dynamic cloth props with user defined real world parameters to produce naturally flowing and deforming cloth simulations. Grow and style strand based dynamic hair to render natural looking / dynamically flowing hair, fur, and beards.
  
  
• PoserPython
  PoserPython provides a simple graphical user interface that allows you to execute Python scripts to control virtually every aspect of the application, by clicking a button. You can author custom PoserPython Scripts to enhance the integration of Poser Pro into your production environment, or to add functionality to Poser Pro.
  
  

Integrating Poser Scenes
Poser Pro is a character animation solution for 3ds Max, Maya and Cinema 4D or any 3D application with COLLADA support. COLLADA I/O and included PoserFusion plug-ins allow you to open and host Poser scene files and 3D content within production environment applications. Integrate static or animated Poser Pro scenes with these powerful 3D tools for increased productivity and instant access to the vast libraries and marketplace of pre-built, pre-rigged, and textured Poser character content.

• PoserFusion Plug-ins
  PoserFusion plug-ins supplied with Poser Pro provide a character animation solution for 3ds Max on Windows, and Maya and CINEMA 4D on both Mac and Windows. Open and host both static and animated Poser Pro scene files within these production environment applications for increased productivity and instant access to the vast libraries of ready-to-go Poser character content.
  
  
• COLLADA
  Poser Pro offers Data Exchange with the industry-standard COLLADA». Transport Poser content to any application that supports the COLLADA format, such as Softimage XSi Foundation. COLLADA provides two way 3D data interchange, enabling the export of Poser Pro scenes and the import of geometry and data to create new characters.

Rendering Enhancements
Poser Pro introduces the Network Render Queue and Queue Manager, with time saving background rendering. The hybrid Firefly Render Engine is a multi-thread 64-Bit REYES renderer with raytracing for production quality photorealism with image based lighting and ambient occlusion. The material editing system allows users to automatically create complicated node-based Materials with one touch wacros, or manually connect math, lighting, variable, 2D texture and 3D texture nodes for limitless potential.

Directly host Poser scenes including geometry, textures, animation data, and more in other applications.

Poser Pro is a full featured character animation system enabling keyframe creation for every scene asset and parameter.

Use the Walk Designer to easily blend and create walk cycles.

• Network Rendering
  Save time and cut production costs with the Network Render Queue. Set up a cross platform rendering network, distribute rendering jobs across that network, and manage those rendering jobs to suit your schedule. With the Queue Manager, distributed renderings can be paused and resumed, or fully rendered on slave machines so you can keep working in Poser Pro on your master machine. The Network Render Queue distributes rendering jobs across as many networked machines as permitted by your license.
  
  
• Background Rendering
  Increase personal productivity with background rendering in Poser Pro. Work on Poser scenes in the foreground, while rendering time consuming still frame images with the Firefly render engine in the background. Background rendering allows you to open and close other scene files, save your project, and continue working to maximize your production time. As well, with the Queue Manager, render Poser Pro files in the background or overnight.
  
  
• 64-Bit Render Engine
  Poser Pro takes advantage of high performance 64-Bit multi-processor systems with the new 64-Bit Firefly Render Engine. Firefly efficiently uses all available system memory to render even the most complex scene files in the shortest possible time. Distribute 64-Bit rendering jobs via the Network Render Queue for even greater time savings. The Firefly Render Engine also supports multiple processors on 32-Bit systems.

Included Content
Poser Pro unveils an innovative concept providing four new human characters that can be modified and re-distributed. In addition, content libraries are also stocked with over 2500 items, all ready to drop into your scene, including the legacy content from both Poser 6 and Poser 7.

• New Distributable Content
  Poser Pro comes with a set of re-distributable 3D characters to help users save production time. As a starting point for creating real-time 3D or game characters, modify these fully-rigged humans in the face room, deform them and create morphs, build animations, then plug them into your development project.
  
  
• Legacy Content
  Poser Pro includes content shipped from previous versions of Poser including Poser 7. That's a library offering over 2500 fully textured high resolution male and female figures, children, animals, cartoons, robots, and more. Hundreds of poses, facial expressions, full body morphs, hair, clothing, light sets, props, and new sound and motion files are also included. In all that's over 2 GB of content.

Enhanced Image Control
Gamma Correction lets you specify gamma and apply those values to textures and exported images for linear rendering with increased luminance accuracy. This means, what you see on-screen is what you'll get in your final output. For vivid, life-like images with the full range of brightness detail and shadow depth Poser Pro optimizes renders for High Dynamic Range (HDR) output. HDR images can be exported in Radiance (.hdr) or OpenEXR (.exr) format for full control over the luminosity, opacity and reflectance range of your work. HDR output supports precision and flexibility in post production.

• Gamma Correction/Linear Rendering
  Poser Pro Gamma Correction let users specify gamma values for each individual texture, as well as specifying the gamma values that will be applied to rendered images. This allows you to perform linear rendering for increased luminance accuracy. Poser Pro Gamma Correction gives you the confidence that what you see is what you'll get because input and output data will comply with your selected gamma values.
  
  
• HDRI export
  Create vivid, life-like images with HDRI output. High Dynamic Range images accurately represent a full range of intensity levels as found in real world scenes, ranging from the brightest sunlight to deepest shadows. Poser Pro rendered images can be exported in Radiance (.hdr) or OpenEXR (.exr) format giving you greater control over the luminosity, opacity and reflectance range of your work. With HDRI optimized output, you can take advantage of the extra precision, and flexibility in post production that standard image formats don't support.

Uses
Poser has always been a powerful asset in production environments; Poser Pro takes that functionality to the next level with more ways to integrate 3D character content, and a collection of productivity enhancements that speed up rendering, increase rendering accuracy, and improve large file handling. Poser Pro is the ideal 3D character animation application for:

• 3D Production
• Pre-visualization
• Story boarding
• Industrial Design
• Architectural Design
• Game Development
• Illustration / Design
• Research
• Real time 3D development

Product Description

Smith Micro Software Micro Poser Pro PSRPROHBXW 3D Animation & Design

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Now Poser shares the home page of Aquarium Screen Saver, September 30, 2008

By 

bunnyrabbit4 (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Poser Pro [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

When I heard that a company with a techie name like Smith Micro was buying Poser, I hoped that what had been a fun, but fragmented program might at last be in good hands. No such luck. As noted in the title, Smith Micro does not bring much technology to the Poser table. It basically adds network rendering, which was needed, but at a hefty price, especially for those of us in the Art community who never intended to use Poser with a high end program like Maya. As noted in another review, they haven't done much for those guys either.

In its last release Poser 7 seemed like a mish-mash of modules each designed by a different person. The cloth room required a very different approach from the materials area and the hair and face modules had nothing in common with the rest. This made the Poser learning curve rather large. The program needed a more intuitive interface in these areas. As far as I can see, nothing much has changed. Poser Pro is essentially the same program as Poser 7. If you had issues with Poser 7, chances are the new bells and whistles presented here will not address any of them. Go the website, read the enhancements and check to see if any are really useful to you. BTW I have also had trouble updating my POSER 7 program using the SMITH MICRO webpage. They don't appear to recognize my serial number. Bad start in my book!!

UPDATE: I went back to the Smith Micro site today after getting an email with a nice discount on a program called GROBOTO. When I tried to order the program the website told me that it would not accept my order because US addresses only have 3 zip code numbers!!! This is the worst company I have ever TRIED and FAILED to do business with.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good by itself, poor integration with 3D programs, July 9, 2008

By 

Philo Calhoun (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Poser Pro [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Poser Pro is fairly stable by itself (a bit better than Poser 7) but still slow in rendering and without any significant change in its dated user interface. The collada export, which was widely advertised for its integration with XSI etc. is buggy and crippled. The tutorial on collada export to XSI, for instance, works for non animated models, but if one selects to export the skeleton (bones), it will not import correctly in XSI 6 or 6.5. It also won't work with Maya 2008. The native plugins work for C4D (but unlike the InterPoser Pro plugin available elsewhwere, are not editable in C4D) but are almost unusable with Maya 2008 (see contentparadise forums for details). The tech support with SmithMicro is very bad, and generally one doesn't get any response. It is a slightly more stable upgrade to Poser 7, but was released prematurely. Perhaps this has to do with changing parent companies from e-frontier to SmithMicro.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Quality OK for Freeware, but not for a $500 Product!, July 8, 2009

By 

Joseph Befumo "Joe B" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Poser Pro [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Review of Smith Micro's Poser Pro

Well, at this juncture I've been working almost daily with this product, and thought it was high time I shared some of my impressions with other prospective customers/victims.

First of all, as a long-time software professional, I am quite aware of the complexities associated with 3D rendering, and the high demand on processing resources -- both memory and CPU. Even though I'm running a fairly capable machine (quad-core, 64-bit, 8Gig of ram, 2 - 1-terrabyte drives, Win XP-64, etc.), I am prepared to accept that complex 3D scene rendering will take some time. That said, what I DO NOT accept is the necessity for the program to outright refuse to render, or even LOAD some scenes, reporting "not enough memory to load texture map'! In software engineering terminology, this just indicates sloppy memory management. Even after researching the issues, tweaking the render settings, running a 3rd-party memory management utility -- the problem persists.

Perhaps even harder to excuse is the generally brittle nature of the package. It regularly becomes necessary to resort to ctl-alt-del, bring up the program manager, find the process, and use the "kill process tree" command to get rid of the hung application, and then start the whole process over from the start, often losing work in the process.

Then, of course, there are the incessant "An unexpected exception occurred: -50" messages. Once again, ctrl-alt-del, etc., is the only way to proceed.

Don't even bother looking in the event manager, or searching for a log that might explain the source of the problem. The Poser "engineers" apparently considered such niceties as superfluous.

Interestingly, it's often possible (and necessary) to load a scene that Poser Pro refuses to accept by using Poser 7! I can then eliminate some elements, save the file, and reload back into Poser Pro. Did someone decide it was necessary to introduce some additional bugs into the flagship package.?

I also have a strong suspicion that the program suffers from some severe memory leaks. If you monitor memory usage, you'll see that, regardless of the nature of the scene, memory usage just keeps on increasing, until, inevitably -- that's right: ctrl-alt-del.

The thing that amazes me most, is the proliferation of gushing reviews of this shoddy piece of . . . programming. Are the reviewers on Smith Micro's payroll? Have they done any more with it than render a quick naked woman, gawk over it, and then write: "WOW, what a GREAT product!"?

There are, of course, so many other annoying quirks as to defy enumeration here. Suffice it to say, that this is an extremely irritating program with which to work.

Smith Micro touts this as a "professional package," an utterly absurd assertion. It's quality is such that I might overlook the bugs in a freeware package, but certainly not in something costing nearly five-hundred bucks. Oh well, there's a sucker born every minute.

Now, as someone who has watched my own company's profits eroded by software piracy, I am generally opposed to such abuses, however, in cases like this, my advice is to acquire the product from someplace like Emule, or Vuse, or other torrent servers, use it for a while, and if you still think it's worth the asking price, then by all means, write that check. Otherwise, just use it at a cost that's precisely what it's worth: $0.