Curious Labs Poser 5 Review

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(More customer reviews)Poser does one thing very well: it renders stock poses of stock characters with amazing realism. Here is the rub: the library of stock poses and stock characters is so tiny that you will quickly outgrow them. You will soon want to do more: add hair to a figure; change the color of clothing, or even add new and different clothes. But any change beyond the stock inventory will lead to innumerable headaches: a user interface designed to thwart your every effort; system crashes; poses that look unnatural; even body parts that poke through the clothing. Forget the undo: at best it will take you back one step; often you can't even undo the last action you took. Don't bother with the user manual: as others have noted, it does little more than identify the controls mysteriously placed around the user interface. Don't even bother with books such as "Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5" or "The Poser 5 Handbook." You may find a helpful clue in a tutorial somewhere on the web, but then again, it may not apply to the version of the program that you have.
So why does anyone bother with Poser? Under the proper circumstances, Poser can do amazing things. Unlike most 3-D software applications, Poser is designed to work with human and animal forms. Within a narrow window, it works very well. Poser has even spawned a cottage industry of people who make additional figures, clothing, and props for Poser. Without organizations like the Digital Art Zone and Renderosity, Poser would not be worth the money.
Yet even these organizations, which often provide very high quality materials for Poser, can't prevent its flaws from showing through. Digital Art Zone (DAZ) has created characters like Michael that are stunning in Poser. Clothing for normal Poser characters cannot easily be used on Michael, and vice versa. Even when Michael is "morphed" to a different form, his clothing will no longer fit. Once again you will be struggling with all those joint parameter dials, trying to get things right.
Having used versions 2, 3, 4, and 5 of Poser, it is clear that Poser 5 is the best of the lot, especially if you are working with multiple characters in a scene. Poser 5 also has the best support for hair of any version of the software. But it's still not very good. Some simple advice for anyone using Poser:
1) Create and clothe your character before attempting to pose him/her/it.
2) Plan out your animation carefully. If you make a mistake, you probably can't go back.
3) Save your work often
4) After everything else is done, then add hair. Once a realistic amount of hair has been added, even simple things like moving the camera will bring your system to its knees.
5) Plan to spend quite a bit extra on new figures and clothing. These will easily double the cost of owning Poser in no time at all.
Or, you could spend your money buying a Barbie and Ken doll, a digital camera, and a bunch of outfits. You would save time, money, and quite a few headaches this way...

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Poser 5 is an ideal 3-D character design and animation tool for artists and animators. Create 3-D figures using a diverse collection of ready-to-use 3-D human and animal models. Poser's innovative interface makes figure design, posing, and animating fast and easy. Map facial photos, grow and style dynamic hair, and create dynamic cloth to add extraordinary realism to your figure.
Quickly output movies and images from your posed figures for content in Web, print, and video projects. Add life to your 3-D worlds using exported, posed figures. For those new to 3-D, digital artists, and hobbyists alike, Poser 5 is easy to learn and quickly generates fast and dynamic results.
Poser 5 delivers a stunning host of new tools including Facial Photo-mapping, Dynamic Strand-based Hair, Dynamic Cloth, new Figures, and FireFly, Poser 5's powerful new renderer. Use Morph Putty to directly manipulate facial expressions. Create realistic dynamic cloth and make it flow and drape around any object in your scene. Build powerful node-based material shaders to create any material texture you can imagine. The Poser 5 Content CD contains a host of extras, including props and textures.

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Poser 6 Review

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(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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HGTV Home Design & Remodeling Suite Review

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(More customer reviews)The reviews for this HGTV home design software are quite mixed. But the consistent thing about them is that the people that don't like the program never took the time to learn how to use it.
Don't fool yourself - this is a complex program. Despite all of the advertisements that it is "easy," it is basically a dumbed-down CAD (computer-aided design) program. It is easier than using most architect-quality programs, but it is much harder than learning Word. This is not jump-in-and-design-a-house kind of program.
If you have used CAD programs before, you will probably not have too much trouble adapting to this software. Some of the mappings are odd (it took me a while to find where to access positioned cameras, for example), but they're there. If you haven't used CAD programs before, I'd guess you will need at least 2 or 3 hours simply to learn how to navigate the program (and even have an idea as to what kinds of things you can do with it) before even trying to create your own house. If you don't take the 2 or 3 hours to run through online tutorials and at least skim through the 698-page user manual, you will get lost, and you will be frustrated. You have been warned.
So if all you are interested in is creating a basic nearly-to-scale representation of your home and see what different colors would look like on the wall, expect to put 5+ hours to get to that point. If you want it to be accurate down to the inch with picture-perfect furniture, it will take you much, much longer. As an example, I have used CAD programs before, so I jumped straight in, and it took me about 4 hours to put together the structure of the house alone (although wall placement is accurate to the inch). So that's not including any floor coverings, walls, paint, appliances, cabinets, etc, which I imagine will take at least as long, if not more.
Overall, it's a fairly high quality product marketed to people accustomed to the ease of use of an iPod, and I think that's its only real flaw. If you're willing to put in the hours to learn the software, you can get exactly what you're dreaming of: a working 3D virtual model of your home, from carpet to ceiling fans, that you can redecorate at will to see how that new arrangement of furniture in your bedroom will look without having to scuff the floors.

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Take a fresh approach to the way you live with HGTV Home Design & Remodeling Suite, from the #1 home improvement television network.It's perfect for creating a new living space, adding a fireplace, making your home energy efficient with new appliances, replacing countertops, cabinetry and fixtures, enhancing any room to your house with a brand new look.

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