 Smith Micro's Poser 8 Review
As a graphic artist, sometimes it is difficult to find a picture with a person that is positioned just the way you want. Traditionally you can use a 3D application and create it that way. However, it is a lot more time consuming. That is where Poser 8 will speed up the process.
The Poser 8 interface is much more streamlined then in previous versions. I also find Poser 8 faster then the last version. One improvement I like is the "tree-like" Library; it is easier to use. The Library contains new version 8 content and almost all figures, poses and props from all earlier versions. There are humans, animals, props, hair styles and much more. I like the preset poses, which allow you to set your figure's pose automatically (great time saver).
Using Poser "out of the box" is easy to use if you are just using basic figures with matching props. Other then that there will be some things you will have to learn and using the included help manual will really benefit you!
You adjust your views on the stage by using the colorful hands, head and navigation ball on the left. You can control the direction of your light source very easily. You have the options of how the rendering window displays in design mode and render mode. On the top of the application are tabs where you can set options for material, face, hair, clothes and bones.
To fine-tune your figure's poses, you can adjust every part of their body right down to the fingertips. You can adjust there size, location and many morph settings. You even can get more complicated by morphing just parts of a model using several methods.
One feature you may like to play with is the Face screen. You can adjust just about everything on the head. You can even customize the face by importing your own face. You can adjust the lips and eye expressions to make smiles, close eyes and raise eyebrows.
Something that you will be doing a lot is working with Conforming and Dynamic clothes. Conforming cloth automatically clings to the a figure; think of a tight shirt or socks, they move with the figure. Some clothes do not conform from figure version to version. However, there is "Wardrobe Wizard" to convert clothes so you can use older clothes on newer characters.
Dynamic cloth is pretty cool for clothes. It allows you to drape a cloth on any object, but it hangs depending on object movement. Then if you really want to be blown away... you can animate the dynamic cloth by using wind or collision dynamics!! COOL!
One of the most important features in Poser 8 is the creation and editing of Bones on your own new objects. Bones is the mechanism used to move your objects and pose them. And it is pretty easy too!!
Animating in Poser 8 is easy and straight forward. There is even a "Walking Designer" wizard that will help you animate your figure to run or walk. The animation functions use the traditional keyframes and timelines and each part of the body has it's own timeline line! There is also Lip-Sync functions using a WAV file that allows your figures to look like they are talking.
Now that you have posed everything, you need to render it and export it. The rendering is fairly fast and good if you setup the proper lighting scheme. Exporting your animation or still pose is fairly straight forward. You can export in most popular formats; AVI, PNG, SWF, 3DS, OBJ and others.
I mostly do vector projects, so exporting to SWF (Flash) is what I use a lot. However, I found that exporting to SWF could use some improvements. The quality is not what I anticipated (even following the help manual's suggestions). You may be better off exporting to 3DS and importing into Swift3D. BUT... I did find a cool consolation prize. That when I export a PNG with transparencies, I can load a beautiful PNG render into flash that can go on top of my vector flash graphics and show the graphic transparency wonderfully. That is Cool!!!
There is another cool little rendering feature where you can render, print or export to AVI your animation or still that looks like a drawing from basic black and white to color. Animators would use this to show off their work on "Paper-looking" output like animator's draw when creating cartoons.
CONS:
There was only one thing I found that needs improvement according to my needs. The SWF (flash) export isn't what I expected for Flash use.
FYI... (not a CON, but my preference): From an ethical standpoint; A lot of clothing and charcters are geared towards sexy well figured women with short skirts or hardly no clothes at all. Trying to create a Christian woman (on left) or modest business women takes some work. It is hard to find proper clothes online that can be used for business or religious purposes because most clothes for women are made with a sexy look to them.
PROS:
Poser 8 has a much improved interface that performs better then version 7. The workflow is better too. More content is provided that is easily accessible in the improved Library. Creating and animating projects is much faster then if you had to do this in a 3D application from scratch. The rendering is pretty good. Great import and export formats so you can use with other 3D applications.
CONCLUSION:
The "cons" above are not deal-breakers, there are work-arounds. I completely enjoy using it. I like it even more then Poser 7. If you are not a hard core 3D designer, you will find Poser fun and yet powerful. There is a lot of options under the hood that can produce some really nice projects. The learning curve is medium compared to complex 3D applications. Poser 8 is an awesome application. I cannot wait to really dive into this thing and produce some decent stuff. There is so much more I could say!! Go get it NOW!! |
