Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)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
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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!
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