Poser 8 [OLD VERSION]

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Easily Create 3D Character Art and Animation

Poser 8 is better than ever
Along with 8 brand new 3D humans, Poser 8 includes an improved user interface to maximize your workspace while providing better workflow, a new search-enabled library so you can find, organize and use your content easier, a dependant parameter tool that lets you teach objects in the scene to interact with each other, cross body morph brushes to smoothly sculpt a figure across every body part, new photorealistic rendering features that more accurately reproduce light and shadows, and improved character rigging for even better character bending. To save time, Poser 8 has been performance optimized so you can pose your characters and render them faster on today's multiple processor systems.

Poser 8 includes:

All Poser's included figures and 3D content are fully textured using our powerful node-based shader system. Click to enlarge.

Turn your 3D scene into an artistic sketch using Poser 8's sketch designer. Click to enlarge.

Automatically generate animated figures that can walk or run through your 3D scene. Click to enlarge.

Poser 8's powerful cloth engine lets you transform any object or clothing prop into dynamic cloth that stretches, drapes and flows naturally, even over an animated figure. Click to enlarge.

With Poser you can produce photorealistic images and animations, or render in styles including cartoon tones, sketch renderings, silhouettes, wireframes and even Flash. Click to enlarge.

Import a spoken word sound file, and with the included Talk Designer, your Poser 8 figures will speak in sync with the sound. Click to enlarge.

8 new figures
The new set of eight 3D humans included with Poser 8 are the most advanced figures ever included with the application, and are a showcase for new Poser 8 features. Built from scratch, the figures are performance optimized for the polygon count and have custom photorealistic textures. Rigged using Poser 8's new multiple sphere and capsule fall off zone technology, problematic joints such as hips and shoulders now bend with more realism than any figure on the market. By using the new Dependent Parameter tool to link deformers to specific joint positions, areas such as knees, elbows, chest and collar joints have smoother folds, less stretching and more realism. The new Poser 8 figures are offered in four pairs of male/female couples with European features, African features, Asian features and Hispanic features. The Poser 8 new figures are fully compliant with the Face Room, the Walk Designer and Talk Designer, and via the use of Wardrobe Wizard, much of the included legacy clothing content has been converted to work directly on the figures.

~1.5GB of new Poser 8 Content
In addition to the new set of figures, Poser 8 includes an array of new content supplied by third party partners as well content created by the Smith Micro team of 3D artists. A new art-school inspired default manikin opens each new scene, and will serve as a remarkable reference figure for artists. Fully articulated human skeletons that match the male and female figures body topology are included. Various new poses, animations, light sets, props, and accessories to help new users get started are included in the Poser 8 content installer. Poser 8 also includes an additional 1.5GB of legacy Poser 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 content.

New User Interface
Poser 8 offers a new evolved user interface, preserving the elements that Poser users are accustomed to, while presenting them in a more concise layout that takes better advantage of various screen resolutions. The new layout produces a cleaner work environment so artists can focus on the project. All controls are presented in floating palettes that can be docked for consistency, session to session, or floated to free up space.

Dependent Parameters
Poser 8 unlocks an advanced user secret with the new Dependent Parameter palette. Poser 8 lets the artist create new Master Parameters or turn any existing Parameter into a Master Parameter that can drive any other editable parameters in the scene. Complex interactions can be created such as Full Body Morphs, Partial Body Morphs, Advanced Body Controls, Joint Controlled Morph Targets, Joint Controlled Deformers and Parameter Controlled Scene Assets.

Indirect Lighting
By bouncing light and color from object to adjacent object in a scene, Poser 8's Global Illumination system can render images that appear so realistic they can fool the untrained eye into thinking the images are photos rather than 3D renderings.

OpenGL Preview Improvements
Preview now displays up to 8 lights and their accumulated values, sorted by intensity. The light properties controller allows you to select each light you wish to illuminate in the scene preview.

Content Management System / Library
The new library presents content by category, but with a tighter list view with expanding previews and additional data for each content item. Content items can be loaded into the scene using the traditional Poser UI controls or can now be dragged directly from the Library into the scene. The Poser 8 Library also supports keyword search. Type in a keyword to find exactly what you looking for. Add any selected items to your favorites.

Cross Body Part Morph Creation
With Poser 8 comes a significant improvement to the current Morphing Tool. Now you can dial in a Morph Brush and paint morphs across body parts. Easily create effects such as muscle bulges, scales, bumps, horns, veins or wounds; it's only limited by your imagination.

Improved Rigging System
Poser 8 has improved upon the existing joint Falloff Zone rigging system by adding any number of new zones to a joint, while adding a new capsule shape to the existing sphere, and allowing the rigger to either multiply or add the Falloff Zone values. This system will permit figure creators to rig challenging areas such as hips and shoulders with more precision, yielding better bending figures.

Tone Mapping and Exposure
Tone Mapping helps control very bright and dark areas in an image to produce better, less blown out final renderings with deeper contrast. The feature is very useful, helping to bring the brightest areas back into a reproducible range. Two modes of Tone Mapping are available for differing effects: Exponential Tone Mapping and HSV Tone Mapping. Exposure values are editable when either Exponential or HSV Tone Mapping is selected.

Physically Correct Light Falloff
For Spot and Point lights, Poser 8 lets users attenuate (control) falloff to more closely reproduce real-world light behaviors. Constant falloff replicates the previous Poser behavior, and Inverse Linear and Inverse Square add two new methods for getting light to appear more realistic.

Normal Mapping
Normal Mapping is a resource-efficient technique to add the appearance of complexity and surface detail to 3D objects. It can transform object surfaces, making them appear more intricate than they actually are, without the added overhead of polygonal detail. This saves designers valuable time and offers increased creative flexibility by allowing faster and more light-weight computation of rendered results.

Performance Optimizations

Figure/Actor pre-lighting and picking
Bending on multi-core/multi-processor hardware
Improved multi-processor support for better scalability when rendering
Cloth simulation multithreaded/optimized
Increased performance for opening/handling complex scenes

Poser 8 Uses:

Professional 3D graphics professionals
3D Hobby/Enthusiast Market
Comic book / graphic novel creators
General Purpose 3D Users
Upgrade Poser Users
Art Students
Traditional Artists/Sculptors

Poser provides a number of professional users with a fast, easy to access resource for 3D humans, animals, and other scene assets. Professional users include: Architectural illustrators, industrial designers, medical illustrators, graphic designers, editorial illustrators, book illustrators, informational graphics, advertising illustration, web illustration, interactive content, story boarding, lighting and theatrical set designers, film/video production

3D hobbyists and enthusiasts who dabble in 3D for personal satisfaction, experiment with Poser to gain 3D experience, and may use Poser to expand into new careers, or create a graphic novel, sci-fi art, fantasy art, or develop a screen play.

Comic book creators and graphic novelists use Poser render images and animations to create their own titles. Single images, multiple page comics and graphic novels delivered via print and digital media are a great use of Poser.

If you work with other 3D applications such as Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Modo, Lightwave, Truespace, Bruce, or Vue; Poser is a perfect way to include 3D character content you're your projects.

Art students looking to gain practical 3D animation experience hone their skills working with Poser characters as part of course work, in art school classes or for extra-curricular experience.

Customer Reviews:

Not as easy to use as it could be, September 26, 2009 By Personne (Rocky Mountain West)

After spending every free hour for the last week with this program, I have mixed feelings about it. I don't make my living from making films, but I have made a few industrial videos with compositing, green-screen live action and various special effects. I'm a serious amateur photographer and musician. So I'm pretty familiar with complex software. My regular 'kit' includes titles like Photoshop, Logic, Final Cut, Digital Performer and so on. But I'm a novice when it comes to 3D and animation in general. I approached Poser 8 with eagerness, and looked forward to learning new things. Poser 8 is cross-platform. I tested it on my Mac: 8-cores, dual monitors, Wacom tablet. The installation was long but uneventful. I found an update on the website and applied it with no difficulty. Normally, I'm a plunge-in and get going type, but I decided to follow the tutorials. This is where the first problems arose. It doesn't look like anyone did any serious proofreading. Many of the tutorials appear to have been written for earlier versions of the program, and have not been fully updated. There are frequent references to objects in the user interface that have changed--often significantly. There are also references to tools and palettes that have not been described. This is a cardinal sin for writers of tutorials: never use a term you haven't described. I found the tutorials helpful and frustrating in equal measure. My first experiments with posing the stock figures were done with no one looking over my shoulder. That's a good thing. The controls are very sensitive and first efforts tended to look like accident victims. Ouch! But after a little practice, I began to get the hang of it. There are various amounts of articulation in the provided figures, with the Poser8 figures the most capable. The user can basically operate every joint in the human body. Not every position looks natural, but that's why real animation professionals are different from the rest of us. Poser is centered around building 'scenes', with user control over nearly every facet: camera position, lighting, characters and props. Dolly shots that would break the budget in a real film shoot are available in Poser with only a little effort. As in regular animation, the user can create keyframes, with Poser filling in the intermediate moves. If there are problems in those intermediate frames, you can dive in a little deeper and fix things. It's important to note that there are a number of features in modern animation that are not present in Poser. There is no gravity and there is no wind. Hair stays in place like a TV weatherman's. Fat doesn't bob up and down as a character moves. Poser characters--although well-articulated--are still obviously mannequins. One of the features I looked forward to was the so-called Face Room. In this window, the user can import photographs and apply them to characters. The principle is to take an image and apply it to an existing form, reshaping the form to match the imported face. I took a couple of head shots (front and side) of myself and set to work. This was a disaster. The user interface is virtually incomprehensible. I've used both morphing and panorama software in which points must be matched between two shots. Generally, this is simple to use: you set a point on a feature in one shot and then set a matching point on the other shot. You set as many points as you need. In Poser 8, you have only limited points (3 for the nose, 4 for each eye, 4 for the mouth), with none for hairline, earhole, nostrils, bridge of nose or other important features. I spend a few hours with this, following instructions carefully, and never came up with anything better than horrible. My first effort looked like the monster from 'Predator'. My second looked like Gollum. I have my good days and my bad days, but I look better than that! I've been aware of Poser for a long time. It's been available for well over a decade. But I get the feeling that the developers have spent that decade in a cave, never glancing at other software. To call the user interface 'challenging' would be too kind. There are many types of common controls (like pan and zoom) that you find in all sorts of software. Usually you can figure them out immediately, since there's a real advantage in software behaving similarly. Not in Poser. In the aforementioned Face Room you pan around a picture by dragging on the Pan tool. In every other program, you pan by dragging the image. Poser abounds with peculiarities like this. Features that should be easy to use become arcane. Another feature that demonstrates how to do a good thing badly is the ability to undock windows and tools. Most programs of any complexity allow you to work in an integrated window with the ability to undock sub-windows for use on another monitor. This is generally a good thing. But in Poser, you find that an errant mouse click is all you need to undock a window. After that, it's almost impossible to put it back. And some features like window close buttons are so small as to be nearly impossible to click. There are also some instabilities in the program. There is a tablet mode for devices such as my Wacom pad. Unfortunately it's buggy in multiple-monitor systems. Perhaps some of my other complaints are simple bugs waiting to be fixed. I emailed customer support to report the tablet problem. I sent the email early on Saturday morning and received a reply within a couple of hours. This was impressive. I believe that there are many useful things I can do with Poser, but I find the program puts too much unnecessary struggle in the way. There's much hidden potential that is likely to remain hidden. 106 of 110 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Amazing results, September 25, 2009 By ~ Z ~ (New York)

Wow this software is incredible. I have never owned an animated software program before so I cannot compare this to the previous version. With that being said, I am hooked with animated software now. Imagine being able to digitally create humans, animals or even background scenes in 3D. Being able to replicate bodily moves and even facial expressions smoothly. Create animated look so realistic that you almost feel like you reach out and touch it. Poser 8 allows you to do that and more. Figures that are included can be easily morphed to meet your needs. For example, you can increase muscle mass, add texture or even remove an eyeball if you wanted to. There are 4 female and 4 male figures to choose from with Poser 8. You can also obtain other figures from third-party suppliers. The more effort you put into making your figure realistic the more realistic they become. You can even modify your creation to have ethnic traits. Facial expressions can easily be applied, and there are so many to choose from, even the hair is very realistic. We even experimented and made come creations that I will have nightmares about! :-) I am hooked on the Face Room. You able to upload your own personal images of a front and side view. Those images will then be applied after clicking on certain parts of the image to line it up with the avatar. Simply click "apply to figure" and you will instantly see the face image via 3D animation. There some tweaking you will have to do to line everything up correctly, but after some practice you will get the hang of it. This is a great feature to share and email your friends and family animated avatars of themselves to use. I really enjoy using the search feature. Just type in the item you watch and choose from the list of results. The library includes a variety of motions, expressions clothing and other applications for the novice (like me) to the expert. You can just drag and drop the items. There are hundreds of ready to use features that can quickly and easily be tweaked and individualized, you can even download more than 1GB of content. The respond time can take a bit, but I guess with a program that can do so much I understand why. In order to use this program to its fullest capacity you must have an abundant amount of RAM. Working with individual figures seems to have better processing time than trying to work with more than 2 figures, which can cause issues. I installed with software on a Windows XP Operating System. There will be several options on where and how you want your content to be installed. Word of advice, make sure you do not have anything else running in the background such anti-virus, firewall or programs. My anti-virus was doing a scan during the installation of Poser 8 and when I tried opening the program it gave me an error message and to reinstall. Once I reinstalled the software with nothing running in the background, things went smoothly and the program is up and running with no issues. One very cool feature is the Indirect Lighting (IDL). Your images will look like a real photo. The IDL allows for correct lighting and illumination giving you more of a natural result. This feature works the best on outdoor images since you can make the shadows and sunlight/moonlight look more natural without actually darkening the image. The audio lip-syncing tool is pretty easy to use but I can see where it can be improved. The mouth does not move as the words are actually spoken. This program is amazing. My daughter and I have enjoyed trying new things out and experimenting with pictures and figures. Animate and represent your images into photo-realistic 3D art for web videos, print or movies. Export 3D figures to add characters to other 3D applications. All you need is just a little imagination. Since this software can be used for medical presentations as well as "x-rated" purposes, be aware that this software includes EVERYTHING to make your own figure creations. That includes breasts and a variety of genital areas. You may want to be careful when small children are watching or playing around with the software. Besides finding tons of information on the internet to help you, here is a list recommended books you can find on Amazon: How'd You Do That?: Poser Character Creation For Beginners The Art of Poser and Photoshop: The Official e-frontier Guide Secrets of Poser Experts: Tips, Techniques, and Insights for Users of All Abilities: The e-frontier Official Guide 31 of 39 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Amazing results, September 25, 2009 By ~Z~

Wow this software is incredible. I have never owned an animated software program before so I cannot compare this to the previous version. With that being said, I am hooked with animated software now. Imagine being able to digitally create humans, animals or even background scenes in 3D. Being able to replicate bodily moves and even facial expressions smoothly. Create animated look so realistic that you almost feel like you reach out and touch it. Poser 8 allows you to do that and more. Figures that are included can be easily morphed to meet your needs. For example, you can increase muscle mass, add texture or even remove an eyeball if you wanted to. There are 4 female and 4 male figures to choose from with Poser 8. You can also obtain other figures from third-party suppliers. The more effort you put into making your figure realistic the more realistic they become. You can even modify your creation to have ethnic traits. Facial expressions can easily be applied, and there are so many to choose from, even the hair is very realistic. We even experimented and made come creations that I will have nightmares about! :-) I am hooked on the Face Room. You able to upload your own personal images of a front and side view. Those images will then be applied after clicking on certain parts of the image to line it up with the avatar. Simply click "apply to figure" and you will instantly see the face image via 3D animation. There some tweaking you will have to do to line everything up correctly, but after some practice you will get the hang of it. This is a great feature to share and email your friends and family animated avatars of themselves to use. I really enjoy using the search feature. Just type in the item you watch and choose from the list of results. The library includes a variety of motions, expressions clothing and other applications for the novice (like me) to the expert. You can just drag and drop the items. There are hundreds of ready to use features that can quickly and easily be tweaked and individualized, you can even download more than 1GB of content. The respond time can take a bit, but I guess with a program that can do so much I understand why. In order to use this program to its fullest capacity you must have an abundant amount of RAM. Working with individual figures seems to have better processing time than trying to work with more than 2 figures, which can cause issues. I installed with software on a Windows XP Operating System. There will be several options on where and how you want your content to be installed. Word of advice, make sure you do not have anything else running in the background such anti-virus, firewall or programs. My anti-virus was doing a scan during the installation of Poser 8 and when I tried opening the program it gave me an error message and to reinstall. Once I reinstalled the software with nothing running in the background, things went smoothly and the program is up and running with no issues. One very cool feature is the Indirect Lighting (IDL). Your images will look like a real photo. The IDL allows for correct lighting and illumination giving you more of a natural result. This feature works the best on outdoor images since you can make the shadows and sunlight/moonlight look more natural without actually darkening the image. The audio lip-syncing tool is pretty easy to use but I can see where it can be improved. The mouth does not move as the words are actually spoken. This program is amazing. My daughter and I have enjoyed trying new things out and experimenting with pictures and figures. Animate and represent your images into photo-realistic 3D art for web videos, print or movies. Export 3D figures to add characters to other 3D applications. All you need is just a little imagination. Since this software can be used for medical presentations as well as "x-rated" purposes, be aware that this software includes EVERYTHING to make your own figure creations. That includes breasts and a variety of genital areas. You may want to be careful when small children are watching or playing around with the software. Besides finding tons of information on the internet to help you, here is a list recommended books you can find on Amazon: How'd You Do That?: Poser Character Creation For Beginners The Art of Poser and Photoshop: The Official e-frontier Guide Secrets of Poser Experts: Tips, Techniques, and Insights for Users of All Abilities: The e-frontier Official Guide 29 of 36 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Wait a bit until the first service pack release, September 15, 2009 By me="R1ISWPVA6KB8BW"> 22 of 25 people found the following review helpful

I updated to Poser 8 from Poser 7 and all I can say is that I have mixed reactions. I like Poser 8 a LOT more than 7, but the Library is a personal disappointment, and the fact that the program is extremely unstable in its current condition, makes it very frustrating to use right now. I currently have this product rated as 3-stars, but it could easily jump up to a 4.5 if stability problems are successfully correctly within the next 2 months or so. Compared to Poser 7, Poser 8 has better rendering abilities and a much better workspace that allows you to easily access all your windows without any problems. However, I personally find the new Library, which now uses a tree menu rather than a folder-based system, to be quite difficult to navigate through; especially if you have hundreds of content to navigate through. You can live with it, but I hope that future updates will add the option to revert to the Poser 7 Library system. The Library does include a new search feature which makes things nice when you want to locate a particular piece of clothing, figure, or pose that you seem to have misplaced or just too lazy to navigate to it manually. The biggest problem with Poser 8 is that it is VERY unstable right now and likes to randomly crash on you (A LOT!!!!!), causing you to lose all the work you had done since your last save! I have some programming experience myself, and it seems to me that Smith Micro almost completely rebuilt Poser 8 from scratch, which would cause there to be many bugs in the programming. The good news is that Smith Micro WILL be releasing patches, fixes, and service packs to correct issues, so all these stability problems should be fixed soon. My recommendation to anyone who is looking at buying Poser 8 is that if you absolutely MUST have a Poser program NOW, then get Poser 7, but if you can wait a little while, then purchase Poser 8 once first service pack is released, which should correct many of the major problems that has. Or, you could just buy Poser 8 now, but be prepared for some serious frustration with the user interface crashing... also save frequently. 22 of 25 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


vs Poser Pro, September 23, 2009 By Geekasaurus Rex (Rochester, New York)

For school I bought Poser Pro at the end of July. I was unaware that a new version was coming out at that time. As soon as I purchased Poser Pro I was very disappointed with it. I tried for over 3 hours following the tutorials to get the one person to render like the box cover. No matter what I did the clothing was plastic looking and I was just frustrated. When offered Poser 8 I thought, this has a whole new engine it must be better, and in a word, it is! The interface has totally been redone to work faster. The same "feel" for the interface is there but the speed at which things move and other aspects are quicker. It appears as if it is done in Flash now which may explain its smoother tools. As far as the models, it comes with several of each sex. The skin maps look fantastic! The nuances of each skin type be it either Hispanic or Caucasian are shown in very good detail. When I rendered a few images it still uses Firefly but renders faster (I am using a MBP with 4GB RAM). The first thing I did was try to render the box cover and I did! It was not difficult at all. With the ability to download more content (Pro did this too) you can build quite a collection. I am in art school so I am mostly using poser for nudes but I tried rendering with clothing and it moves more realistically, and doesn't appear plastic. I am not a cinematographer but I bet this could be used in limited productions such as crime scene reenactments and other lower end graphics, (this is not going to make movies like Pixar). I am very happy with Poser 8 and recommend it to everyone needing to pose lifelike characters. For art students think of it as a virtual posing mannequin. Thank you for reading my review. 11 of 13 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


For 2D artists Poser is one of the best tools ever made, November 8, 2010 By Eric (PROVIDENCE, UT, United States)

I use Poser as a reference for illustration and graphic design when I need models of tight anatomy or cool camera angles or just about anything that has people. Poser is gold for 2D artists. I can't tell you how powerful Poser is when laying out a digital painting composition or for comic book reference. But it's not for dummies. You do have to actually learn how to use it and if you aren't willing to do so, it's your loss. I've read too many foolish reviews by people who obviously have never tried any other 3D program (none of them are a walk in the park) where people thought they could just pop it out of the box and the program would just do it all for them, so they played with it for an hour and they were pissed. Well these guys are morons. This is software folks and if you want the power you have to put in the time, just like any game, any software or any art project. But if you do learn to use it, Poser pays off massively. When learning I recommend watching video tutorials if possible, either on youtube or lynda (lynda has great tutorials). All written manuals pretty much suck as they are the slowest way to learn anything, but if you see somebody use it who knows what they are doing you can learn VERY quickly and be on your way. 10 of 10 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


vs Poser Pro, September 23, 2009 By Geekasaurus Rex (Rochester, New York)

For school I bought Poser Pro at the end of July. I was unaware that a new version was coming out at that time. As soon as I purchased Poser Pro I was very disappointed with it. I tried for over 3 hours following the tutorials to get the one person to render like the box cover. No matter what I did the clothing was plastic looking and I was just frustrated. When offered Poser 8 I thought, this has a whole new engine it must be better, and in a word, it is! The interface has totally been redone to work faster. The same "feel" for the interface is there but the speed at which things move and other aspects are quicker. It appears as if it is done in Flash now which may explain its smoother tools. As far as the models, it comes with several of each sex. The skin maps look fantastic! The nuances of each skin type be it either Hispanic or Caucasian are shown in very good detail. When I rendered a few images it still uses Firefly but renders faster (I am using a MBP with 4GB RAM). The first thing I did was try to render the box cover and I did! It was not difficult at all. With the ability to download more content (Pro did this too) you can build quite a collection. I am in art school so I am mostly using poser for nudes but I tried rendering with clothing and it moves more realistically, and doesn't appear plastic. I am not a cinematographer but I bet this could be used in limited productions such as crime scene reenactments and other lower end graphics, (this is not going to make movies like Pixar). I am very happy with Poser 8 and recommend it to everyone needing to pose lifelike characters. For art students think of it as a virtual posing mannequin. Thank you for reading my review. 9 of 11 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Stay away from this version, November 13, 2009 By Jos Manuel Prez Arriaza (Barcelona, Spain)

Step backward on Poser software. The program crashes and crashes and crashes for no reason on Windows Vista 64 bits systems, no matter what service release you use. You can loose your several hours work in just a second for no reason. I upgraded and added every patch, but reverted to Poser 7 Pro, 100.000 times more stable. 8 of 9 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


For 2D artists Poser is one of the best tools ever made, November 8, 2010 By xiombarg (Dead Sea)

I use Poser as a reference for illustration and graphic design when I need models of tight anatomy or cool camera angles or just about anything that has people. Poser is gold for 2D artists. I can't tell you how powerful Poser is when laying out a digital painting composition or for comic book reference. But it's not for dummies. You do have to actually learn how to use it and if you aren't willing to do so, it's your loss. I've read too many foolish reviews by people who obviously have never tried any other 3D program (none of them are a walk in the park) where people thought they could just pop it out of the box and the program would just do it all for them, so they played with it for an hour and they were pissed. Well these guys are morons. This is software folks and if you want the power you have to put in the time, just like any game, any software or any art project. But if you do learn to use it, Poser pays off massively. When learning I recommend watching video tutorials if possible, either on youtube or lynda (lynda has great tutorials). All written manuals pretty much suck as they are the slowest way to learn anything, but if you see somebody use it who knows what they are doing you can learn VERY quickly and be on your way. 7 of 7 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Great program, but it ain't easy folks., October 3, 2009 By Bookenator

This is a very powerful and cool program. The results of a well lit render at the best resolution settings is truly stunning, verging on the photorealistic if you have a hi resolution skin on your model. But the manual is horrid, and the tutorial not much better. The good people at Poser either think everyone was born doing 3d modeling or they assume you're going to buy a "Poser for Dummies" type book. Personally, I did a lot of banging my head against the monitor and searching the internet for tutorials I could wrap my brain around. That said, the program is fantastic. Within about a week of mucking about I finally started to "get it". I'm able to imagine something, and then create more or less what I want on the screen after much work and tweaking. In summary, don't buy this thinking it's like playing with paper dolls. It's not. It takes a lot of time and patience. If you're short on either, it's going to be a huge frustration. But if you're willing to put in the work, you will get professional looking results that you're very happy with. 7 of 7 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Poser 8.0: Neat tool with too many bugs and a clunky interface, November 19, 2009 By Texas Swede (Texas)

I am not very familiar with video composing or animation, however, I have used many other 3D graphics simulation tools and I have also created (using Open Inventor / Open GL) 3D graphics simulation tools myself. What I have worked with is robots, conveyor belts and machines. Creating mechanical 3D simulations is different from creating figures and people in 3D. However, I have an idea of how 3D graphics tools work and how an interface should look like. My verdict is that Poser 8.0 has an interface that is harder to use than necessary. I found several bugs, and the tutorial is horrible. If you offer a tool like this to the public the tutorial must be proofread and it must be perfect. The typical home user does not expect to have to take classes to learn how to use this tool. Overall I think this is a really neat tool. You use this tool to create 3D images of humans, animals, and other characters. Poser includes a lot of pre existing characters (created by artists), textures, a Wardrobe Wizard, designer tools, a face room, and special effects features, and you can down load more. You can create your own faces using photographs that you have. There is a lot there to help you create 3D characters and to turn them into animations/movies. I should say that to make neat 3D animations you should really use Poser in conjunction with tools that are better for creating scenery and backgrounds like Vue and Lightwave. I should also point out that Poser is in general not good enough for the movie industry (contrary to what is claimed). Lightwave is more commonly used by the movie industry. The first thing I noticed was the unusual way you control the scene. I mean what is wrong with the standard thumb wheels from Open Inventor/Open GL or panning/moving the figure with the mouse. The next thing I did was to go through the tutorial. So I launched the tutorial but nothing came up. In fact three of the Help Menu items were missing including the tutorial. Eventually I found the tutorial on my disk. Unfortunately it was a struggle for me to go through the tutorial because: 1. There were several actions which could not be completed because the tutorial referred to non-existing or redesigned items. For example, it tells you to click "Tracking Mode icons", however, there are no such icons. There is a small menu with no popup box that controls the tracking mode. At another point in the tutorial it tells you to save features by following steps that cannot be followed, because the interface you use for this is different from the interface in the tutorial. 2. A decent tutorial needs to provide a number of screen shots in which the different palettes, menus and tools are pointed out to you so that you know where they are located. This is not the case with this tutorial. They repeatedly ask you to use tools they have not explained or told you where they are located, so you have to guess. 3. At one point in the tutorial you had to set everything back to the settings at the end of the previous chapter before you could continue, but they did not tell you that. OK I am going on about the tutorial because; unless you take a class, or have used previous versions, the tutorial is basically all you have if you want to learn how to use it. Other complaints I have is, I also found it exceedingly difficult to find and select the invisible circle that turns white/red when you find it and to select the correct body parts. I clicked and dragged, clicked and dragged, and nothing happened or the wrong part moved. OK I am not particularly good at this but the other 3D tools I've used were easy to use in this regard. I also could not find anywhere, where the current parent of an object is indicated. That is pretty important to know. When I created new libraries I always got this error message about a runtime folder. I guess I am a little frustrated, but the tools I've used (or created) for creating 3D simulations of conveyor belts, robots, and shop floors were a lot more intuitive and easy to use, and I don't even have a good tutorial to help me. 7 of 8 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Excellent Professional Software, September 22, 2009 By Dr. Stuart Gitlow (Providence, RI United States)

This software was reviewed with a Mac 2x2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors running System 10.6.1. Poser software came about in 1995 as a simple method for replacing artist mannequins within a software environment. Over the years, and through a variety of owners, the software has grown in capability and complexity to the point that it can now be used for extensive 3D rendering and animation. And here I make no claim to extensive knowledge or skills; rather, Poser and I first met with this iteration, Poser 8. After a rather long-lasting installation process, Poser ran with no difficulties and it runs easily within my processors' capabilities. Animation, rendering, and output all took place without delay on the computer's part allowing for a good real-time experience. That said, this is not a program which quickly allows user development. This is a substantial application - think of Photoshop as equivalent in complexity - which takes time to learn. Naturally, there are books available for assistance, and extensive libraries of 3D models that are available from third parties. The availability of advanced human forms with clothing, hair, and so on allows you to get around a lack of innate artistic skills, should that represent one of your personal descriptors. But there is still much that one has to do within the program to make an animation appear natural. One has only to look at YouTube for sample user output to see that it's all too easy to put together an animation sequence that looks unnatural. The user interface is excellent - and I'd highly recommend the largest screen size available for your work. The interactivity possible with other illustrating and rendering programs is extensive and well described in the user materials. Included in the installation is a 565 page pdf manual. It's nicely written, but it's somewhat difficult to go back and forth between the program, which takes over the entire screen, and the software-based manual. You may ultimately decide to print this out, or perhaps view it on a second monitor while you learn the program. Note that the manual uses PC-version illustrations; while they're largely similar to their Mac equivalents, it would be nice to have illustrations that precisely match what you'll see on your Mac. Ultimately, this program can do all they say it can do, but the skills to make that happen won't come overnight. You'll need to work at it, learn the application, and read the manual. Combining that work with a native sense of design, flow, and perspective will be critical in your developing work product that is as useful as it is entertaining. One final note: a service upgrade for version 8 is already avaiable at Smith Micro's website, so after installation, go immediately there to download the upgraded software. 7 of 8 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Takes some getting used to but a nice, if specific, "fun" tool, October 12, 2009 By Grieger (Los Angeles, CA USA)

Full disclosure: I'm not a professional 3D artist though I have used 3D tools before, albeit more than a decade ago. I consider myself a pure amateur here and part of the appeal for trying this out was to actually help out on a project I'm working on that focuses on character models and animations. So, you could say this was a nice (potential) fit. I used an early version of Poser (I think it might have even been the first one ages ago...Fractal Design so it was almost 15 years ago). The controls back then were okay but nothing special but then Bryce (yes, KPTBryce was the original I worked with) came along and the interface was overhauled. A lot of that overhaul is still in place to some extent which is nice but is also a bit of a problem. Before we dive into that, a quick overview (and to keep things clear): Poser is a character manipulation and animation tool. There are tools for manipulating character models, adjusting hair, textures, and cloth, and creating/applying animations. It's not a 3D modeling tool (i.e. you're not really creating character models from scratch here) and it's not really about building elaborate scenes and the like. You'll use other tools like Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, etc. to build your models. Then, you can use Poser to take those models, light them, cloth them, manipulate them and animate them before exporting the finished product to the next stage in your art pipeline. Despite where it belongs in your pipeline, Smith Micro includes a handful of content to get you going right away. So, even if you don't have a 3D tool to work with or any models you pulled off the net, you can get started playing around with Poser immediately. NOTE: As I understand it, the models included in Poser 8 are not licensed for you to just use in commercial work. I believe Poser Pro (another $250 more than this) includes licenses for some or all of the models included in the package. Check this yourself before you decide to rely on what they included in the package for your own projects. Digging into the main pose tool will take a little getting used to. The app likes to use a variety of cameras that you can switch between (though the keyboard shortcuts are ridiculously non-intuitive in places like command-= being the face camera shortcut) rather than just giving you a free form camera that you can manipulate (or drag controls to move your camera around the model). There's a Dolly camera that you can move but using the controls moves the camera, not the perspective. So, let's say you drag right. Instead of you locking on the model you're working on and wrapping around the model, you're turning the camera to the right into empty space. I'd understand this idea if I was working in a 3D modeling app and was adjusting the camera for the view. But, this is a program dedicated to a subject (or two) in front of you. It's like telling an artist working on a small statue to pick up his chair and move it rather than simply turning the model so he can work on the other side. This combined with overly sensitive controls (you need to click-and-drag in short bursts or you'll end up with a camera looking who-knows-where...this goes for light controls as well). And forget about using the view magnifier tool. It only magnifies (which I guess fits the description of the tool) but there's no way to back up and widen the field of view. At one point, I didn't realize I had the tool still active and clicked and dragged to rotate a part of the model. I ended up zooming int to a foot so that all I saw was the simple shaded "skin". It took a little looking around (about 10 minutes) before I found the Restore Camera keyboard short cut (there is no menu item or button in the UI to do this). It seems strange after all these iterations (version 8!) to have a UI that just seems clunky. There are plenty of good things in the UI, don't get me wrong, but this is a fundamental task--moving around your model's camera--that just seems like something that should be hammered out by now. The camera issues become more of a problem because there are so many but only one view port to look from. If you've used a traditional 3D package, you'll usually end up with one or more view ports/windows with one or more perspectives of the "target" area you're working on. So, you can look at the top and left view at the same time without having to do a think...just move your eyes. Here, you've got to right-click (I used a two-button mouse on a Mac so I was lucky), learn the short cuts (again, not intuitively assigned), or cycle through them every time with the UI controls (one click moves to the next view). Other things like the steps required to delete a figure are stupid. You have to select the figure via a small drop-down on the Preview tab's pane then go to the Figure menu and select Delete Figure. Why can't I just highlight the figure in the hierarchy (that's right there already) and just hit the delete button or click an interface button that let's me delete it? Better yet, how about a right-click menu with a delete option? Nope. Right-click edits the name of the object (with the editing field way on the other side of the screen). The delete key does nothing. It's really frustrating. It's almost like the intuitive part of the UI is about creating and when it comes time to delete/remove or otherwise do something other than create or manipulate, everything falls apart. Of course, to make things silly, you CAN click on individual body parts or clothing and hit the delete button to remove them just fine. Go figure. The rest of the UI and the app generally work well together. You've got a library and a hierarchy on the right that you can use to quickly (PhotoShop-style) hide, show or highlight a model or body part. There are also a number of included poses (as you'd expect) to quickly take your model and pose it like it's running or jumping, hair styles to quickly coif your model, and even cloth them. The consistency between the various tools (they appear as tabs in the main interface window) is great from a learning curve perspective. Poser supports all the major 3D software packages so import/export will generally be without incident (I did not test this against a 3D package, I tested the imports against a game engine that supported those packages for imports). One thing to note for aspiring game artists: poser's included models are very high poly count models. You'll have to pass them through something to scale them down. Despite the UI issues, it's still a really interesting tool that does a lot to make SOME aspects of animation and character modeling easier. And, technically, you could use this tool exclusively if all you needed was a way to essentially animate a mannequin for a short vid or some other project. Still...I said "Despite". You have to get past those UI issues to use this package so you'll spend some time getting used to odd controls and working past that hurdle. With that in mind, if you're an aspiring 3D artist and you want to get a reasonably priced (compared to most professional 3D packages out there) tool to work with human models and figures, this is probably the thing for you (assuming you've got $200 to spare). If you're looking for a 3D character animation solution to work into a 3D pipeline for a game or for some sort of commercial project, I suggest starting with your 3D modeling environment first and finding the best animation tool for that environment. There are usually solid picks that work best for each package. This is more of a "fun" tool than a "pro" tool even though you CAN get some decent mileage out of it. And, if you're going the indie route and trying to save money, you're likely better off just downloading Blender ([...]) for free. It includes animation tools (though I can't vouch for them as I haven't used them yet). 6 of 8 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Grief now outweighs the fun...due to very poor support., November 5, 2009 By bunnyrabbit4 (New Orleans, LA USA)

I have been a Poser user since the first version and it was a long term love affair. While I've graduated to more powerful programs, I still like to compose scenes in Poser. I haven't had time to put this program through all of its bells and whistles, but so far I don't see a great need to upgrade to this if you have Poser 7. Most of the Pros I list are for people who have never used Poser as they are included in Poser 7 as well as 8. If you are a first time buyer get Poser 7 and don't accept any service packs from Smith Micro if you can help it. Pros: Good basic program for posing figures and setting up scenes, especially if you just want to have fun fairly quickly. It is great for creating realistic comic book scenes. Has some sketch features that will turn your picture into a drawing, however none is as good as what you can do with Photoshop plug-ins. It can be used for doing simple cartoon animations with voice. Great for artists who would like to have a free model at their disposal. Most of the features work well and so do the most popular third party figures that owners usually purchase, like Daz3D's Victoria and Michael. It comes with more models than Poser 7, but it's an odd assortment, mostly freebie stuff from a variety of vendors. Poser has never been stand alone in this respect. Expect to purchase lots of models to create you scenes. This program offers the ability to put your own face or that of friends on a character, quickly and easily. Lots of complexity if you want to create characters and hairstyles yourself. However, you don't have to engage its more complex features to have a good time. Cons: The new interface has a very small slide bar on the content area. It is difficult both to see and use. As someone else noted, if you have a lot of models it can be hard to navigate. So far I've found that the morphs on the new Poser 8 characters can create unexpected deformities. This isn't a big problem because you will probably prefer the Poser 6 ones anyway. While minor changes to the program have been made, the artistry of the stock characters has gone downhill since Poser 6, which predate Smith Micro's ownership. Smith Micro owned Content Paradise is the least useful place to buy models, try Daz3d, RuntimeDNA and Renderosity. You may also run into licensing issue with Content Paradise. Make sure you read all licenses carefully. If you are going to public work done with this program, have a lawyer examine them. While Victoria and Michael work well, Daz's David is invisible to the "Conform to figure" command in this version so again the original Poser 7 was better. This means you have to manually align hair and other items to the figure. I have not tested out other third party characters and animals to see if this is a major problem. The Company: Perhaps the worst thing about this program is Smith Micro itself. It has included a new license with Poser 8 that suggests it owns all the content you create unless you upgrade to Poser Pro. I say suggests because like everything about Smith Micro, including its "support page" you are confronted with rules and definitions...the absolute opposite of what a creative artists wants to deal with when deciding on a product. Normally models that you purchase or build in 3d programs can be used in 2d renderings and animations with few limitations. The only thing that is forbidden is displaying someone's figures and the textures applied to them in such a way as to allow them to be copied and used by others in 3D form. Right now, full time students can buy a limited copy of AUTODESK'S ENTERTAINMENT CREATION SUITE, (which is the industry standard) for $349. Mastering this program can land you a job. Why spend time learning a program that only upgrades to another program that is still not a major player in the animation market? Smith Micro also has its own system of communication that users are forced to abide by. It requires an incident report (they define exactly what an incident is and you only get one per contact). They also tell you their system is better than email. I disagree. Their online system never accepted my registered serial number for Poser 7. Apparently it is either not in their data base or was imported with an error when they bought the program from EFrontier. Since my serial number won't work, I can't file an incident report. Since they won't accept an email...I can't tell them about my problem unless I pay $20 to call them. It is sad that this fun little program has landed in arms of such a cold, distant company. UPDATE: I want to reinterate what I said about this company needing to change its ways. I never did manage to register Poser 7 and I'm glad I didn't. Recently 9/2010, I had yet another issue... A little over a year ago I ordered a copy of GROBOTO from Smith Micro and was forced to pay $9 to preserve the right to download it again if I needed to!!! I have NEVER had to pay to preserve the right to download software I bought. Today I went back to download my copy and my password wouldn't work. I wrote to tech support and told them I needed my password. They gave me a really smart a@@ resjponse!!! "I'm sure you do. Now if you'll tell me what password you're looking for, maybe I can help with that. Cheers, Now I have a very good sense of humor but what password did he think I was talking about??? I explained that I wanted to download my copy of Groboto. The response was shocking. They told me there was NO RECORD of my EVER having bought anything from their site!! Not only had I registered Groboto but I had an account on the site as little as a few months ago. He suggested I give him my order number. Luckily I still had it with the SMITH MICRO name in big letters at the top!! He responded with a form letter telling me to go to a storage site to retrieve my program. 10/2010 -UPDATE UPDATE: After spending hours loading my models into Poser on my new computer I made the MISTAKE OF DOWNLOADING update SR3 for POSER 8. Now OPEN GL doesn't work and the animation palate is greyed out. What does Smith Micro say about this...."You need to upgrade your video card driver to handle OPEN GL. I have a high end graphics card with the latest drivers that worked just fine before the upgrade...aparently he ignored the fact that I gave him a full description of my brand new openGL graphics card!! BTW all ATI cards have supported it since 2007 according to them. Another worthless answer from Smith Micro Tech support! When I wrote back to remind him that nothing was wrong with my card and it had worked fine before...no answer. The update was supposed to better support Windows 7 64 bit....It does not...Windows 7 doesn't show the update in "system restore" so you have to uninstall Poser to rid yourself of the upgrade. DON"T DO IT in the first place. I almost suspect that they are trying to cripple Poser 8 in order to convince people to upgrade to Poser Pro. As stated above its not worth it. 6 of 10 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


reinstalled twice, December 1, 2009 By bald poser (az)

When it crashes it wont recover. There is no repair option so now im reinstalling a third time and this takes a while. 5 of 6 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Poser 8 is for Hard-core illustrators with serious computing power., August 7, 2011 By Brainstorming, PR, Media .. (RichContent,com)

I've been working with Poser since v2. Great program - IF you save often. And have incredible processing power (not Supercomputer level, but really good, multiprocessors). The results can be stunning. And well worth it. It's clear Poser is the industry standard. That said, there is plenty of cleanup that could be done (code wise). In the interim, I am working with the book Create 3D Like a Super Hero - which goes deep into how to maximize ANY 3D application. Chipp Walters takes the viewpoint of anyone working in 3D space needs to approach it from the viewer, not the illustrators POV. Yes, Poser can get better. But the publisher has proven they will. Software doesn't come about overnight. And you and I are the best beta testers ever. 5 of 5 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Don't bother!, September 9, 2010 By C. MacTavish

I was excited for Poser 8, but it's been NOTHING except a nightmare. I'm only giving it two stars because it does render things, albeit very slowly. The program hogs system resources, dragging my MBP down to a crawl (4GB RAM, i7 -- though it did it on my 4GB MBP Core 2 Duo as well) and crashing 40% of the time. The interfaces don't work half the time, or they don't respond, or the program will decide that by selecting a body part, what you REALLY mean is "rotate [x body part] 87 degrees around and bend the abdomen over." There is no way to fix this, and it's not due to the program having Tablet Mode enabled, or not having Tablet Mode enabled and trying to use one--it does it with a regular mouse and a trackpad as well, and the only way to get it to work properly again is to quit and restart Poser 8. Poser 8 is buggy and unstable, cumbersome, and has a tendency to delete morphs you've made--meaning that when you reload a saved character, all that hard work you put into him or her is GONE. Poof. Vanished. You have to rebuild it. The program also ignores a lot of input, such as moving the toes from side to side. The SR3 pack only made things WORSE, not better; for example it increased the frequency of the "LOL jerk your parts around" bug. Going back to Poser 7, thanks. And not particularly excited for Poser 9, whenever it arrives, if this is what they consider an "upgrade!" Hey, Smith Micro! Why don't you wait and release the FINAL version of your products? This is obviously just a test copy that you all were passing back and forth for further development. God, I wish that were the case. EDIT: Have Poser 7 running again with my Poser 8 runtime set as the default, and WOW! What a difference! It's rare that downgrading to an older version of software is beneficial to the user, but this is definitely one of those cases for me. There are a few downsides, such as having to move multiple interface pieces to check photo refs, and the inability to refresh folders (one of the things I liked about Poser 8 save that they refreshed so slowly), but it's all worth it to be able to have an actual workflow again. I'm sure that Poser 8 has certain advantages that make it a worthwhile transition for some people, such as greater animation flexibility, better lighting systems, and so on, but for most it's probably going to cause more problems than it will solve. If you have 7, stick with it! There's no content that comes with 8 that's really worth having, since Poser 7 handles all of the fourth generation DAZ figures just fine. 5 of 7 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


A step up, tho still your typical 'Poser', June 14, 2010 By E. Avila

I have experience with both Poser 4 and 7, so I know the typical ways Poser is treated and supported by it's creators. Rather than give a "It's great/ it sucks" review, I'll show you what I feel are the pros and cons compared to my experience in past versions. The short version: Works just as well as past Poser programs. If you're new and willing to learn, buy a 'how to' book and you will love it. If you're an old pro, this iteration will treat you just as well as it's predecessors, plus new shiny things to play with. Pros: --Updated UI allows for better freedom with new functionality to windows by 'floating them'. Floated windows overlap so you can devote more real estate on screen to what you need. --Newer content and along with the older 'freebies' that have come with Poser through the ages. --Faster renders --Handles ERC/Easypose enabled figures better than 7. I will state right now that I have not come anywhere near using the full capabilities of Poser 8 yet, but the aforementioned Pros stand out the best to me. And now, the... Cons: --MASSIVE resource hog results in slower performance the longer the program runs/more the program renders. Cache clearing does not seem to do much to remedy this problem. Clearing the undo cache helps a bit and closing/restarting Poser helps a bit more. Restarting your PC works best. --Simply dragging items/folders from my old library into the new seems to have corrupted several files. While Poser 8 continues to recognize and attempt to use them, I have had to reinstall several DAZ 3D products in order to get proper functionality. Most common corruption has been geometries responding strangely to morph injections... either auto-scaling during application or deactivating all other morphs on injection while keeping morph values active. --UI does take some getting used to. Small personality quirks in the system can sometimes cause frustration (after zooming, attempting to pan the camera causes it to zoom. you actually need to double click the pan to get Poser 8 to recognize that you now want to pan instead of zoom.) --They STILL cannot, for some reason, give a PROPER up-to-date help file! This is, what, the 3rd company to produce a version of Poser now and they are STILL just adding new features to the Poser 4 help file without updating the info on updated features. Get a 'How to' book if you're wanting to actually learn the program. --STABILITY. You're doing it wrong. Even after updating to SR3, the program still crashes on me at least once or twice during a complex character build. And I'm not even using the higher functions like dynamic hair or cloth. Doesn't crash in the same spots as 7 did, but still crashes. Save and save often. 4 of 4 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


SAVE OFTEN!, November 9, 2009 By Joe B

When I read a review like this, I can only wonder if we're using the same program? I'll offer one piece of advice for the interim between when you realize that the reviewer is wrong and I'm right: SAVE OFTEN! Ok, Poser 8 DOES have some neat new features, however, given the choice, I'd much prefer a well-crafted, stable product to lots of wiz-bang features on a brittle platform. Without exaggeration, I'd say that it crashes about once every 30 minutes under heavy use -- nothing exotic, either - no animation, no questionable components, just run-of the mill modeling - add a figure, apply a mat, etc. Be prepared for lots of ctr-alt-del, also, as you invoke the Task Manager to kill the Poser32 process every time the thing gets into one of its endless loops asking you to find missing files. Don't bother clicking on 'no' when it asks if you want to continue looking for missing files, either -- it will ignore you. Ditto for a myriad of other common errors that will defy any less extreme recovery methods. Just kill the process and start over. You DID save, right? (FWIW, I'm running on a quad-core system, with 8-gig Ram, and LOTS of disk space, so hardware should not be an issue, and STILL, I get an occasional 'insufficient memory', and frequent sluggish performance.) Of course, there are LOTS of minor annoyances carried over from earlier versions. For example, when loading a .ZIP file into the library, if you mistakenly choose one that's already installed, be prepared for endless clicking as it asks you about EVERY object - obviously the designers never heard of: "no to all," or "yes to all." Makes you wonder: did the people who designed this ever actually USE a computer? Maybe I'm too critical. For some, it might be akin to that old adage that if you find a talking dog, don't critize its vocabulary, but, call me old fashioned, but I'm just offended by shoddy workmanship, wherever it turns up. If you can't do it right, leave the job to someone with the skills to do so. Having worked as a software engineer for many decades, I KNOW the routine: developers WANT to make a solid product, but greedy marketeers know that new features sell, and once they have your money, who cares if it works? Typical American business ethic. 4 of 6 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Challenging but functional., September 16, 2010 By Mad Kulle T. Edwards (Stankonia)

I've battled with this product and review for quite some time. Looking back I probably had little reason to be picking up this software but over the years I've dabbled in many forms of art so I wanted to challenge myself with a new media. Having a respectable background in computers, software, and art I made the fool's leap and got right in to it. The installation was straight forward which I followed with an update by the recommendation of others. This went fine and in terms of function and performance I can't say that I've had any problems, reading reviews I suppose I find myself in the minority on that. My computer is pretty dated at this juncture (2.6ghz dual core, 4g RAM, 9800gt) but it manages to muscle through this program with plenty of juice to spare. Outside of that I have no crashes or lock ups to report, it's a seemingly stable program when patched. Firing it up for the first time was the most daunting. There are lots of buttons, menus, new jargon, and features that are simply overwhelming to tackle all at once. I poked around the program a bit blindly and decided to start off with manipulating facial presets to replicate myself. This feature jumped out as the least foreign to me because if you've ever play a PC styled RPG in the past decade you can probably picture exactly what I was looking at. There were a series of sliders to adjust various facial features (depth, height, width, aging...) and they worked precisely as one would expect. In picking this software up I think I had envisioned that it would be rendering super detailed models so I was a little disappointed to find that graphically what I was coming up with appeared dated. This could very well be my lack of experience ringing clear, but it's probably worth noting that it may not be a cake walk to yield the desired results depending on the individual in question. With my face completed I put some skin (and the face) on my blank wire mannequin. It took some fishing around to figure this out, a few days of casual use in my case, but I eventually got naked dude ready to go. This is probably as good a time as any to state that there is a wealth of help out there for the software but it isn't always easy, organized, up to date, or there when you 'need' it. If you were serious about making full use out of this software it would probably behoove you to invest in a comprehensive manual or put in some time at one of several forum based communities. The package itself comes with a manual providing a quick overview and a shortcut card but it's really only going to get your foot in the door at best. From here I manipulated the mannequin a bit which can be childishly hilarious in itself with beer-in-hand, but it loses its raw appeal relatively quickly. Being that I didn't really want to get caught with a twisted naked e-me sitting on my desktop my next natural priority was to get some pants on the poor dude. Again I was slow on the uptake, and meandered around the intertubes for my answer, but lo and behold I eventually ended up with a fully clothed attempt at recreating myself. So finally I come to the animation, which was surprisingly painless. I didn't bother with objects or background but I did have a lot of fun playing around with my mannequin after I finally got it pieced together. All things considered I'm not sure that this is software I'd recommend but it's pretty cool. In my opinion I'd say it's probably a bit too much for a hobbiest like myself but even I feel like it's probably lacking in certain areas that a professional would probably be more demanding of. It's hard to say since I have no basis for comparison, and a tool is only as good as the skill of the user, but I feel like many of my 'problems' in getting what I did cropped up from basic issues of functionality such as tweaking anchor points and fine adjustments. This to me doesn't write it off as bad software though. At the end of the day I was able to do what the program was intended for. Perhaps not to my utmost satisfaction, and certainly a far cry from anything professional, but with pretty limited guidance I was able to do it. Pros: Some familiar/easy features. Various aspects are simple fun. Animation wasn't all that difficult. Easy to use bare mannequin for artists and such. Cons: No particularly great or comprehensive tutorial for free. I did a lot of forum surfing. For every 'easy' feature there seems to be several which are difficult to figure out, some basic, others obscure but a mixed bag no less. Some of the basic controls are cumbersome. 4 of 4 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Challenging but functional., September 16, 2010 By Dorothy Mantooth is a Saint! (Stankonia)

I've battled with this product and review for quite some time. Looking back I probably had little reason to be picking up this software but over the years I've dabbled in many forms of art so I wanted to challenge myself with a new media. Having a respectable background in computers, software, and art I made the fool's leap and got right in to it. The installation was straight forward which I followed with an update by the recommendation of others. This went fine and in terms of function and performance I can't say that I've had any problems, reading reviews I suppose I find myself in the minority on that. My computer is pretty dated at this juncture (2.6ghz dual core, 4g RAM, 9800gt) but it manages to muscle through this program with plenty of juice to spare. Outside of that I have no crashes or lock ups to report, it's a seemingly stable program when patched. Firing it up for the first time was the most daunting. There are lots of buttons, menus, new jargon, and features that are simply overwhelming to tackle all at once. I poked around the program a bit blindly and decided to start off with manipulating facial presets to replicate myself. This feature jumped out as the least foreign to me because if you've ever play a PC styled RPG in the past decade you can probably picture exactly what I was looking at. There were a series of sliders to adjust various facial features (depth, height, width, aging...) and they worked precisely as one would expect. In picking this software up I think I had envisioned that it would be rendering super detailed models so I was a little disappointed to find that graphically what I was coming up with appeared dated. This could very well be my lack of experience ringing clear, but it's probably worth noting that it may not be a cake walk to yield the desired results depending on the individual in question. With my face completed I put some skin (and the face) on my blank wire mannequin. It took some fishing around to figure this out, a few days of casual use in my case, but I eventually got naked dude ready to go. This is probably as good a time as any to state that there is a wealth of help out there for the software but it isn't always easy, organized, up to date, or there when you 'need' it. If you were serious about making full use out of this software it would probably behoove you to invest in a comprehensive manual or put in some time at one of several forum based communities. The package itself comes with a manual providing a quick overview and a shortcut card but it's really only going to get your foot in the door at best. From here I manipulated the mannequin a bit which can be childishly hilarious in itself with beer-in-hand, but it loses its raw appeal relatively quickly. Being that I didn't really want to get caught with a twisted naked e-me sitting on my desktop my next natural priority was to get some pants on the poor dude. Again I was slow on the uptake, and meandered around the intertubes for my answer, but lo and behold I eventually ended up with a fully clothed attempt at recreating myself. So finally I come to the animation, which was surprisingly painless. I didn't bother with objects or background but I did have a lot of fun playing around with my mannequin after I finally got it pieced together. All things considered I'm not sure that this is software I'd recommend but it's pretty cool. In my opinion I'd say it's probably a bit too much for a hobbiest like myself but even I feel like it's probably lacking in certain areas that a professional would probably be more demanding of. It's hard to say since I have no basis for comparison, and a tool is only as good as the skill of the user, but I feel like many of my 'problems' in getting what I did cropped up from basic issues of functionality such as tweaking anchor points and fine adjustments. This to me doesn't write it off as bad software though. At the end of the day I was able to do what the program was intended for. Perhaps not to my utmost satisfaction, and certainly a far cry from anything professional, but with pretty limited guidance I was able to do it. Pros: Some familiar/easy features. Various aspects are simple fun. Animation wasn't all that difficult. Easy to use bare mannequin for artists and such. Cons: No particularly great or comprehensive tutorial for free. I did a lot of forum surfing. For every 'easy' feature there seems to be several which are difficult to figure out, some basic, others obscure but a mixed bag no less. Some of the basic controls are cumbersome. 3 of 3 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


VERY full-featured - learning curve is related to how unique you want your models to look, October 15, 2009 By Douglas Figueredo (New York, NY USA)

Poser 8 is extremely, almost dizzyingly full-featured and very library driven. I'm a video/tech guy and, although I was able to figure out how to do things and was able maneuver around in a decent amount of time, I would say that there is a very steep learning curve to the program. You should not expect to be creating anything useful at first. However, once you do understand the design metaphor involved, then you can get quite quick at creating your 'avatars' or 'actors' and they will look surprisingly good. Just keep in mind that it will take the average person a bit of time and work to 'get there'. Installed on my Mac Pro - took a bit of time (about 15-20 minutes), but no more than other programs of this type - FCP, Logic studio - anything that requires libraries of data to be unpacked, built and installed will load in a similar time frame. Went fine; no issues. Had to set my Wacom table to be a bit less sensitive - no issue with that, I often have to fine tune it to whatever program I'm using. I like the gray UI - looks like Apple's Aperture and helps to make the UI recede into the background and frames the active window very well. The layout makes sense which keeps hunting for a feature to a minimum. There's a 'look' to the Poser world and I think it's hard (maybe impossible) to make something look like it's not from the poser world. I'm guessing this is why the program is able to animate lights, character, shading, etc., so well and so quickly. There's virtually no lag in moving things around or in designing faces and such. As a designer, you'll want to look at the 'world' you place your subjects in and try to make that unique - you'll need to take your animation out to another program to successfully achieve that, though. I found the camera view a bit annoying - sort of like the previous versions of AE - I wish it were more like the current version of Motion, where you can see several views at the same time. I couldn't find a way to get the camera to snap to the model and kept having to fiddle with getting my view right. That may just be me, so take it for what it's worth. I give the program 5 stars because even though it IS complex, they do make it possible to do some very complex things on a home system - that is no small thing! If you have a need for this or are an enthusiast, then get it and get immersed in the poser world. If it's a passing fancy, then realize that you'll easily sink hours into learning the program (not so fun, but not so hard), hours in designing your models (fun, if you're into it), and then decide if you're really going to take the time to make something you'll use. 3 of 4 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Some early release issues but overall a fun program, September 24, 2009 By Emi (Atlanta, GA United States)

Overall I believe Poser 8 has great potential for the graphic artist looking for a good 3D program. The Smith Micro website includes a lot of additional graphics, some of which require a small fee. The issues I've encountered are primarily related to running the program on Windows Vista on an Intel Core2Quad processor. First, I had to get some additional patches off the web before even being able to run the program (the process is fairly simple and needs to be done only once). Second, and this is more important, the program crashes a lot and sometimes for no apparent reason (It could be because of Vista). Hopefully an additional patch to fix stability issues will be available soon. 3 of 4 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Amazing potential but not for the uninitiated, April 25, 2010 By Patrick Oden (Pasadena, CA United States)

I do multimedia design for literacy curriculum and thought this might be a very interesting way of personalizing the content significantly more than I've done before. I don't, however, do this work as my full time job, so I wasn't able to spend a significant amount of time with learning software, nor do I have a background in using previous versions of Poser or similar programs. I do know video software and have used the Adobe and old Micromedia, now Adobe, software fairly regularly, so I thought I would have a good instinct going into this. I was mistaken, but still think Poser 8 is worth it. First off, my nicer XPS desktop died on me before I had a chance to install this software, and I assumed that I would not get a chance to even try it out. My three year old laptop was purchased for battery life and weight, not processing or video power. I gave it a go and was very pleasantly surprised to see not only Poser 8 work, but run quite well. Certainly not as quick as if I had a nicer computer, but even still this was a sign that the software itself didn't suffer from the terrible Adobe bloat and was something I could begin to play around with even on less than ideal circumstances. And play around I did. But it was very frustrating, because the controls are not entirely intuitive. Fortunately, there is good help and tutorials are all over the web. Because I got it early, there were not yet books out that would help, but I think this has changed. Overall, Poser 8 really is astounding, but it is also time consuming. There is a very steep learning curve so this is not for the faint of heart or the pressed for time. But it is, I think, worth the effort if you are developing multimedia in a variety of contexts, and would like some, literal, personalization. I'm still far from being an expert, indeed far from being even a beginner, but each step brings with it a lot of excitement over the possibilities and so I'm definitely pleased. 2 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Great Alternative For a Traditional Painter, November 1, 2009 By Grimoire Author (New England)

Poser 8 is great fun! I've been a traditional painter for a number of years and swore (for many of those years) I'd never adopt digital art or animation. I'm also an author, writing primarily genre fiction. Despite that my cover art has normally considered a bit too "artsy" for my novels--and for the works of of other authors (even though it's been embraced some of the time). I began to study techniques and styles by some of the most talented genre artists and then I began to experiment with software. With all that said--programs such as Poser 8 has inspired some interesting new work. It doesn't replace the feel of real paint and canvas, but it's a nice alternative. Poser is a great addition to an artist's bag of tricks no matter what format one prefers. I may use it in a more eccentric way than most, but it's a wonderful tool and I'm glad I've discovered it. 2 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Hard to Learn, but it's Lots of Fun, October 22, 2009 By Vesta Irene (the Pacific Northwest)

I have never used a 3D or an animation program before and I have to say the learning curve with Poser is very steep indeed. It took me a couple hours a day for a couple weeks before I was able to master any of the tutorials on You Tube. That being said, those hours were not work for me, they were fun. I made a girl and I made her sneeze. Then I made here turn around and wave her arms in the air. I know, I'm never going to be creating for Disney or Dreamworks, but heck, now I kind of see how they do it. I think if someone were to put in the time, someone younger than me and with a brain that isn't as mushy as mine, she'd actually learn a profession, could one day work with the big boys, could actually become an animator. 2 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Perfect. No stability issues whatsover., September 23, 2009 By Erich Maria Remarque (USA)

I see that the other review and comments in it mention stability issues. As of today, there is already an update for Poser 8 over at Smith Micro's website for both Mac and Windows. Make sure you download and install that (called "Poser 8 Service Release 1 v8.0.1") as it fixes A LOT of issues. Personally, I had a very good experience, even before the update. It ran very well on my system. No stability or performance issues whatsoever. For your reference my system specs are: - AMD Athlon 7850 Black Edition @ 3.2GHz (which is practically a Phenom X2) - 4Gb DDR2 800 RAM - AMD Radeon HD4850 512Mb Video Card - Windows 7 Professional RTM These are really mid-range specs, as any serious 3D animator will have at least 8Gbs of RAM and a quad core CPU. But for what it's worth Poser 8 flies on that system. I never experienced any crashes, and rendered several scenes with ease. I never really used Poser 7, but this is a huge improvement over Poser 5 (the last version of Poser I played with). There is a huge library included on the DVD, and huge improvements on the interface. I just love the amazing detail Poser 8 offers. You can tweak just about anything, right down to the size of one's genitalia. This is perfect for everyone from professional 3D game designers to aspiring 3D artists. And it's relatively affordable too. The packaging is really nice (and if you buy this before January 2010, you will also get a cool shirt for free. I already wore it a couple of times to work. hah ) Inside the box you will find 2 DVDs, one for Windows and the other for Mac OS X[...] for owners of previous versions of poser, a very handy reference card, a 40-page quick start manual, and a bunch of promotional materials. Installation was lengthy, but that's to be expected (around 10 minutes). There is no DRM, and that gets two thumbs up from me (I disabled my NIC when inserting the license key to make sure). Simply install, update, and run. Overall, this piece of software is highly recommended. 2 of 3 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Fun Software, September 29, 2009 By The Reading Room (New York)

This is incredibly FUN software. I'm a newbie to animation, so this is the first software I used and I am extremely pleased. I can create things I never even dreamed possible, but now it within my grasp. The animation is very realistic and it is easy to learn to use this software. One feature of this software that hooked me was the ability to upload your own personal images to animate...so cool! It also has an extensive library of motions, expressions, clothing, etc. as a resource. I'm totally impressed with the ease of this software as well as the quality. 2 of 3 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Overall Pretty Good Update to a Great Software Line, November 19, 2009 By MM (USA)

I don't have much to add that the other reviewer's haven't already stated. I give it four stars because I didn't have as many problems as the 3 star reviewers did. I will say that I would also recommend that you save often too. I like the new interface and tools in the version. You can produce a finished work faster than before. Uses more computing power and takes a little longer to load but otherwise I do like this version better than the last. 2 of 5 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


A great update, not just a bug fix, April 20, 2010 By mkeefe (Boston, MA USA)

Having used Poser in the past I am thrilled with this latest release. Poser 8 gives the user a bunch of new characters, better lighting control and most of all a completely new user interface on both Mac and PC. However I still find the complexity of Poser to be a turn off for most users. That shouldn't stop you though, just make sure you get a good book to learn all of the basics. Once you have a good foundation you will be able to use the bunch of new features and updates made available in Poser 8. Personally I use Poser to model basic characters that I then import into Flash for complex animations. I would love to see the ability to more cleanly work with other tools such as Flash but overall I am still pleased. I recommend you download the trial to make sure the app is right for you, but if it is, buy Poser 8. As a bonus for Mac OS X users it now is native Intel, no more Rosetta. 1 of 1 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Poser, January 9, 2010 By A. Lynley (Houston)

Superior program using a fairly easy graphic interface. The results are wonderful, YOU become the artist and animator. I would recommend including two books which were released to make the program more user friendly viz.,"Poser secrets revealed" and " How did they do that". 1 of 1 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Complex Character Modeling Simplified, November 4, 2009 By John P. Sullivan (Roseville, CA)

I've always liked Poser, and this new version is no exception. Everything you could possibly want to do in a human figure modeler, you can do here. The figures are wonderfully articulated and manipulation is as simple as selecting a body part group and adjusting its sliders. The improved articulation and ethnic variations are a welcome new addition to Poser 8. You can get the most from this latest version by loading the legacy content upon installation in addition to the standard content. There is a remarkably vast amount of items to utilize in your scenes - the "All That" bag of chips, for example. From character clothing to props and primitives, you'll find an extensive variety to choose from. Additional free and premium content can be found through various links. The functionality is incredible with an exhaustive set of menu options, sliders and specialty-workflow rooms available which maximize Poser's flexibility. For users of previous versions there are plenty of new things to discover. For users new to the series, you should go through the manual in its entirety to make the most Poser 8, though the software is intuitive enough, once you know what the main buttons presented on screen are, that you can create scenes, pose and render with impressive results shortly after you've got it installed. Poser 8 is a lot of fun to play with, and it can be very useful as a serious, time-saving tool for illustrative purposes in many professional fields. The rendering speed is fantastic thanks to the multi-processor support, which for me is one of the more noticeable improvements from previous versions. 1 of 1 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Poser 8, October 1, 2009 By Alan D. Mcculler

I went from Poser 5 to Poser 8. Poser 8 rendering is much improved. The area rendering is a big help. It still has the confusing interface for the face and hair rooms, and the conforming clothing are still difficult to fit, but an over all improvement over my previous version. The expressions are not as complete as the previous versions and maybe I just need to work with it more. Both versions tend to overreact to my graphics tablet and I have to resort to the mouse even with the tablet settings. Worth the upgrade though. 1 of 1 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Purpose Driven 3D Animation, October 1, 2009 By Nerd Alert (USA)

Animation is hard. Regardless of the type (hand, 2D digital, 3D digital), a lot of technical expertise is required. Add in the complexity of the human form and things become even more difficult. Poser software has been around for a while, trying to resolve this issue. While professional teams generally use the standard software, along with their homemade routines, to animate and render movies, this is incredibly time consuming. With poser, the whole system is based around humans, making human design and animation much faster and more practical. The results actually look quite good, too, with the ability to do some basic "high end" effects, such as standard types of mapping. Common animations like walking and speech also have tools for quick and relatively intuitive design. In my case, as an eye movement researcher, I wanted to animate eye and eyelid movements from real traces I collected in the lab, as well as make the eyelid translucent to reveal what is happening during blinks. Because this program is targeted at novices, doing more technical things like this is not quite as intuitive, but the power is there. Additionally, a large library of people and textures are available, though I will probably need to eventually design better animals. Creating good custom lights to highlight certain areas is very simple and fun. Really, this is an amazing tool for medical illustrations. I should also mention that you aren't limited to humans and creatures. Full scenes can be created. For example, a crime scene might be created for a court animation. However, if you are serious about making it all look like a Hollywood movie, this is probably not the software for you. In a sense, this is like a dollhouse for grown-ups. Along those lines, the default women tend to be a bit... full figured. Of course, this can be altered, but it is a bit embarrassing to be manipulating busty women at work as people walk by. If you have read this far and are still interested, I think you would do well to try out Poser 8. The interface makes things intuitive, a full tutorial in included, and there is plenty of content to get you started. While it isn't cheap, compared to other 3D animation programs, it is quite affordable and I don't know of any better alternative. 1 of 1 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Casual User Review, October 1, 2009 By V. Hutson (Duluth, MN)

I'm only a casual user of Poser, so my review is limited to the few things I know how to do. This is my experience with Poser 8 so far. 1. Installing the product took forever! The first two times I tried I thought my computer had frozen and I turned it off only to discover that when I restarted the computer the Poser 8 icon was on the desktop. When I clicked on the icon the program would start but there was nothing in the Library. I then tried installing it on my son's computer which took a long time--but not as long as mine. Everything worked on his. I uninstalled it and then installed it one last time on my computer this time letting it run overnight. The next morning it was installed and everything seems to work. 2. I like the new interface and I find the library much easier to use than Poser 7. It was much quicker to change figures and poses. 3. I like the medical illustration features. 4. The Lip Syncing and Face room seem like interesting and fun features, but I haven't had time to play with them yet. 1 of 1 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Incredibly awesome for 3D animations, September 29, 2009 By Freelenser (Albany, NY United States)

Incredible, unbelievable, awesome..are a few words I can say about Poser. After using 3D modeling software for engineering, I truly believed that 3D animations are a tough task. But after using Poser, which is my first experience with animations for fun purpsoe, I can say that it is easy to learn and use. With dedication, one can master this art very soon using such an easy-to-use software. The settings and menu options are very conveniently located on the main work screen and the small reference card with the CD, is of immense help to kick off your animation experience. There is plenty of help available online and through the pdf help document which installs along with the software. Being my first experience with such a software I can't comment on it how good it stands against other options available in market in terms of its cost & features. there are plenty of 3D images, figures, objects, and backgrounds to demonstrate your creativity in the Pose Room i.e. the software workspace. I am nor searching for some video tutorials to create animations using the inbuilt walking, and lip-sync feature, which is amazingly easy to apply. Overll, I highly recommed this software if you are looking to venture in the world of animations. P.S.: The software comes with 2 CDs, one for PC and 1 for Mac. It is a big size software, but gives option to install in an external hard drive etc. A high performance computer will definitely enhance the software's performance. 1 of 1 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Don't bother!, September 9, 2010 By Dances with Jellyfish

I was excited for Poser 8, but it's been NOTHING except a nightmare. I'm only giving it two stars because it does render things, albeit very slowly. The program hogs system resources, dragging my MBP down to a crawl (4GB RAM, i7 -- though it did it on my 4GB MBP Core 2 Duo as well) and crashing 40% of the time. The interfaces don't work half the time, or they don't respond, or the program will decide that by selecting a body part, what you REALLY mean is "rotate [x body part] 87 degrees around and bend the abdomen over." There is no way to fix this, and it's not due to the program having Tablet Mode enabled, or not having Tablet Mode enabled and trying to use one--it does it with a regular mouse and a trackpad as well, and the only way to get it to work properly again is to quit and restart Poser 8. Poser 8 is buggy and unstable, cumbersome, and has a tendency to delete morphs you've made--meaning that when you reload a saved character, all that hard work you put into him or her is GONE. Poof. Vanished. You have to rebuild it. The program also ignores a lot of input, such as moving the toes from side to side. The SR3 pack only made things WORSE, not better; for example it increased the frequency of the "LOL jerk your parts around" bug. Going back to Poser 7, thanks. And not particularly excited for Poser 9, whenever it arrives, if this is what they consider an "upgrade!" Hey, Smith Micro! Why don't you wait and release the FINAL version of your products? This is obviously just a test copy that you all were passing back and forth for further development. God, I wish that were the case. EDIT: Have Poser 7 running again with my Poser 8 runtime set as the default, and WOW! What a difference! It's rare that downgrading to an older version of software is beneficial to the user, but this is definitely one of those cases for me. There are a few downsides, such as having to move multiple interface pieces to check photo refs, and the inability to refresh folders (one of the things I liked about Poser 8 save that they refreshed so slowly), but it's all worth it to be able to have an actual workflow again. I'm sure that Poser 8 has certain advantages that make it a worthwhile transition for some people, such as greater animation flexibility, better lighting systems, and so on, but for most it's probably going to cause more problems than it will solve. If you have 7, stick with it! There's no content that comes with 8 that's really worth having, since Poser 7 handles all of the fourth generation DAZ figures just fine. 1 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Robust software which is not for the faint of heart, May 17, 2010 By Sparky Jones (Seattle, WA)

I've been in the IT profession for many, many years. I have not done professional video production, but I have edited many home and small business videos, and consider myself fairly tech savvy having used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator with ease. I figured I would try my hand at some rudimentary video animation. Not so fast. I found this program EXTREMELY difficult to use and, judging from the other reviews, I am not alone in this opinion. If you have little to no previous experience with animation software, I would suggest you start with something else or take a class for this, if you can find one. For those of you more daring, good luck to you. Considering the option sets I've seen, and parts of the tutorials I've read, it is a very versatile piece of software. Unfortunately, I could not give it all the credit it probably deserves. It's just too difficult to use. 1 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


A Welcome Major Overhaul of This Animation Standard, October 15, 2009 By Wildness (Colorado Plateau)

With Poser 8, Smith Micro has done a major overhaul on this standard of 3-D animation modeling. Since its first release in 1996, Poser has become a trusted application for 3-D (and 2-D) artists and animators for the creation of animated characters from humans to animals to objects; even paleontologists use Poser to recreate how dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures may may have looked. This new version ships with over 1GB of new content including hair, expressions, and poses. Poser 8 will help you realize an entire 3-D scene with characters, objects, and background. Poser 8's new interface is a welcome upgrade as it maximizes screen real estate and simplifies the tool layout eliminating oversized icons and unnecessary clutter. The new library view is likely to irritate some as it traded large icon views for a streamlined list, but I did not find that a problem. Overall, the new interface design fits with current trends to turn over the screen area to the art not the tools. Poser 8 includes some great new tools: Dependent Parameters Tool (DPT) - this tool, though not yet as powerful as the interaction tools of Maya and Lightwave, greatly increases the linking of independent objects so that they will interact better than previous versions of Poser. Physically Correct Light Falloff - a much improved control of light angle and direction for more realistically rendered scenes Wardrobe Wizard - a tool that helps you reuse clothing designs between projects. wxPython Scripting language support - This will allow for more advanced third party plug-in development. Though Poser will not be the end all application for advanced animation studios, it is the perfect single tool for those getting started with 3-D animation as well as designers who want to create 3-D elements for their illustrations and design work. For more advanced users, Poser is a key component of a larger of set of tools, and Poser 8 is a welcome upgrade that will greatly enhance any 3-D animation workflow! 1 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Works Great On both Mac and PC, October 13, 2009 By J. White

I tested this software on two systems: One was running Windows Vista SP2 and the other Mac OS 10.6.1. The software worked well on both systems. Prior to using this make sure you go to the website and download the latest software update. The company that produces the product seems to be very proactive at squashing bugs. The software has a learning curve as one would expect but is not so difficult that most people would object to. All in all I think that for the price of this product this is a fine piece of software. 1 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Fun Software, September 29, 2009 By www.bookbargains.. (New York)

This is incredibly FUN software. I'm a newbie to animation, so this is the first software I used and I am extremely pleased. I can create things I never even dreamed possible, but now it within my grasp. The animation is very realistic and it is easy to learn to use this software. One feature of this software that hooked me was the ability to upload your own personal images to animate...so cool! It also has an extensive library of motions, expressions, clothing, etc. as a resource. I'm totally impressed with the ease of this software as well as the quality. 1 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Great: But only after updates are downloaded., September 26, 2009 By JLLaser (South Florida)

I'm just now beginning with the program, it's a new experience for me in general. Problems at start up: The program needed a patch to be installed in-order for it to even be able to run on my WinXP Service pack 3 computer (all updates installed). It crashed once during a render so I searched and found SERVICE PACK 1 was released (many updates/upgrades) Activation of all windows available will help you! Update Notification: It's auto enabled on install. It only tells you that there are updates and takes you to the link for the download. It should download and install... not just take you to a link. At first I couldn't figure out why I couldn't pull up any of the characters that they describe until I activated all the windows (library being the key window). You must utilize this function to pull up the vast amount of characters that are ready to use and make videos/movies with. Window activation: Select "Window" int he tool bar and start activating all options until you find everything you want to use. Docking the windows is easily done, just drag to the sides of the screen or over any area really and they will highlight to where they will doc to. Much like Adobe Photoshop CS4 does. Simplicity: most all tools are simple to use by nature, you just have to experiment with them to figure out what they do so you can use them when needed. Also the search/help function is rather detailed and of good use with this software (more than I expected it to be). There are just tons of settings but everything is kind of self explanatory when you come across it and the way it's all designed is just great. If it wasn't for the hassles of getting started with the software I would have given it a 5 start rating. I hope that Poser takes note of not releasing products that aren't stable and function fully at start up. This simple problem that is now resolved will hurt this products ratings horribly! They should probably release Poser 8.1 and have the critical updates that were needed for 8 in the installer so that they can get the rating that they should for the software instead of their mistakes in early release of an unstable product. 1 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Very Good, September 23, 2009 By The Joe Show (New York, New York United States)

Poser 8 is an amazing program. It can be used (and enjoyed) by the novice as well as the serious designer. Simple, it is an out-of-the-box program (For MAC or PC) that gets you up and running in no time. Learning the fundamentals of creating 3D characters is simple but, more important, it is fun. You want to experiment. In a short time. you will be wanting to try your hand at lip synching and, my personal favorite, architecture designing. For the price (and ease of installing and using it), Poser 8 is a superb program. The library included is limited (the reason for the lack of a star) but perhaps the company will let us download more. Then it will be perfect. 1 of 2 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


No negatives., October 15, 2009 By mcmom213 (Alabama, USA)

I've been using Poser 8 for about a month now and so far have zero negatives. I've been dabbling in custom avatar creation and found this app to be: 1. Easy to use 2. Easy to understand 3. Not so high-tech as to be "too" powerful 4. Fun, with lots of precreated motions and expressions The ability to use real people as a base to start is terrific. I had been tracing photos in Photoshop and Illustrator which was taking forever. Poser 8 has decreased the production time 100-fold. Seriously. I can't believe I was using anything else for these projects! I was pleasantly surprised with the easy-to-understand interface. It's much more intuitive than I thought it would be. Really seems geared toward even the novice user. Worth the price, highly recommended! 1 of 3 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Horrible Customer service, April 12, 2011 By Jen

I had plenty of problems trying to install this program, and the customer support line chargges $20 per phone call. Also, do NOT try to buy this from the smith micro website. It charged my card multiple times and I'm still trying to get the charges revoked. 1 of 3 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Overall Pretty Good Update to a Great Software Line, November 19, 2009 By Masaki Lee (USA)

I don't have much to add that the other reviewer's haven't already stated. I give it four stars because I didn't have as many problems as the 3 star reviewers did. I will say that I would also recommend that you save often too. I like the new interface and tools in the version. You can produce a finished work faster than before. Uses more computing power and takes a little longer to load but otherwise I do like this version better than the last. 1 of 4 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Not professional grade software, but OK., September 27, 2009 By Computerdude1032 (St. Paul, MN)

I've never personally used animation software before, but have seen some professional animation 3D animation done before, and have a huge interest in the field, so I was excited to see what the software had to offer. At the high price tag, I assumed this would be "professional" grade software, allowing me to do at least "semi-professional work." Unfortunately that's just not the case. Sure the software is easy to use compared to the "real deal," but don't think that you'll be animating the next Toy Story, or even making any halfway decent looking movie. The customization options are near endless, but when it comes down to it, the human renderings are not very lifelike- I've seen better looking stuff come from my less powerful Xbox 360 games. If you want to spend a lot of money and get some professional software I'd recommend getting Apple's Motion 4 (included in Final Cut Studio). Sure it's SLIGHTLY more expensive, but with that software you can make professional grade animations. I will still give Poser 8 3 stars because it is in itself decent software, but should be advertised as "personal" grade software that it is and at a lower price. But when it comes down to it, unless you enjoy making amateurish looking movies and animations I can't really think of a use for this software. The "new" lip-syncing feature sure sounds cool, but again, lip syncing is (at least at at the present time) is something that needs to be fine tuned by hand, and isn't going to look great when done by some algorithm. Again, I can't recommend this software at this price point, but if there is ever a (very large) sale this may be a halfway decent introductory software piece. 1 of 4 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Poser 8: A Critical Review From a Newbie., October 11, 2009 By Andre Lawrence (Miami, Florida)

Criteria for reviewing Overview Practice! Practice! Practice! *Uses I am absolutely brand new to 3D animation. Not a clue! And, with the exception of watching the behind-the-scenes on my special-edition d.v.d's, I wouldn't have the foggiest idea of what was involved in creating 3D animation. With that said, I am also unable to provide any objective information as it pertains to updates for this fine product. What I can offer is a critique from the standpoint of a fine artist/ illustrationist for 30+ years and a graphic artist for the past 7. I'm currently working with Adobe CS3 on the OSX platform. Some things to be aware of before you go any further. 1. You'll need 4.5 GB of free space just for installation and you'll need at least 1 GB of memory. 2. There is a high learning curve required here. The printed material only shows pictures of what can be done. You may want to familiarize yourself with some of the tutorials that are available on line from Youtube and Google's general video search engine before buying any 3rd party material to come up to speed. 3. I downloaded several excellent and free tutorials from eHow. The only problem is that most are only 2 minutes long and that's with the 3-second header. So, I gathered all of the related videos, shaved off the 3-second headers put them into iMovie, compressed and exported them as a .mov file. This restored the original tutorial sessions. The Poser Interface. For a program that has more controls and tabs than Photoshop, the interface is remarkably uncluttered. But, as I mentioned before there is a steep learning curve. On top, you have the header which consists of the different parts of the body that can be manipulated from a full body, "Pose," to Materials, to Face, to Hair, to Cloth and a Setup bar. Going counter clockwise, there a 12-button Editing Tool section. Camera Controls (which I loved, as much as the Lighting Control below it.) Light Controls, Document display, Play and Frame Count section. Chest and the Library-Search-Favorites bar. In the center is the Camera Angle (or the viewing screen.) The default setting is a skeletal figure and each part can be adjusted to move in the exact way a normal body part moves by its joint. When one engages for example, the upper arm, a fine red line appears just over the bone segment and joint. Keeping the cursor on the highlighted area allows you to move the arm from left to right or up and down. If you wanted to move the arm either to the back of the torso, you have to engage the torso tilt it in that direction then re-engage the upper arm to the desired position. What I noticed is that the body cannot move in a "typically" unnatural position (no offense to contortionists!). Another project I found interesting was the Face department. Poser comes with a set of stock characters and clothing (and from on-line sites, there seems to be a plethora of fans who create clothes and whatnot for them.) But you may also create your own person. A process called "mapping" accomplishes this. Mapping is essentially a dual screen where one uploads a high resolution, front profile and through a process of aligning "points" to a parallel sketch the photograph is made to wrap around a modeled head giving it a animated look. The entire body can be made to be adjusted the same way. I spent the better part of two (2) hours going back and forth on the face. It is a fun and funny process, but it will take awhile until you can get the hang of it. ***I can see many uses for this program. As the company suggests, graphic and web design, fine art and illustration, storyboarding, and creative business presentations. I can also add, YouTube skits, birthday or celebratory greetings, or an educational demonstration. Once you get the hang of it, it seems that you're only limited by your creative imagination. 1 of 1 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Great: But only after updates are downloaded., September 26, 2009 By JLLaser-com (South Florida)

I'm just now beginning with the program, it's a new experience for me in general. Problems at start up: The program needed a patch to be installed in-order for it to even be able to run on my WinXP Service pack 3 computer (all updates installed). It crashed once during a render so I searched and found SERVICE PACK 1 was released (many updates/upgrades) Activation of all windows available will help you! Update Notification: It's auto enabled on install. It only tells you that there are updates and takes you to the link for the download. It should download and install... not just take you to a link. At first I couldn't figure out why I couldn't pull up any of the characters that they describe until I activated all the windows (library being the key window). You must utilize this function to pull up the vast amount of characters that are ready to use and make videos/movies with. Window activation: Select "Window" int he tool bar and start activating all options until you find everything you want to use. Docking the windows is easily done, just drag to the sides of the screen or over any area really and they will highlight to where they will doc to. Much like Adobe Photoshop CS4 does. Simplicity: most all tools are simple to use by nature, you just have to experiment with them to figure out what they do so you can use them when needed. Also the search/help function is rather detailed and of good use with this software (more than I expected it to be). There are just tons of settings but everything is kind of self explanatory when you come across it and the way it's all designed is just great. If it wasn't for the hassles of getting started with the software I would have given it a 5 start rating. I hope that Poser takes note of not releasing products that aren't stable and function fully at start up. This simple problem that is now resolved will hurt this products ratings horribly! They should probably release Poser 8.1 and have the critical updates that were needed for 8 in the installer so that they can get the rating that they should for the software instead of their mistakes in early release of an unstable product. 1 of 3 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Doesn't work at all, June 11, 2011 By TeeTed

P8 does not work on my dual-core XP Pro 4Gig RAM PC. On the very first mouse click on the interface for any function, whether it's to delete the Andy mannequin, or change any of the other figures, the program locks up. Also, the widget button is greyed out. Tech support suggested I re-install in safe mode, did so to no avail. Will stick with DAZ which runs very well on this PC. Was this review helpful to you?


Great Software..But Be Sure To Save Often!, May 11, 2011 By Jimmy in Pittsburgh

I had heard of Poser for years and, when I needed a program to create some characters and scenes for use in games, I decided to try Poser 8. The program itself is fantastic. The various features such as the hair, face and cloth rooms let you do all sorts of cool stuff such as creating cloth that can interact with the characters and props and making customized facial features for giving different looks to your characters. In addition to hair, the hair room can also be used to simulate fairly realistic grass or fur or pretty much anything that can be 'grown'. The lighting section is great, offering many types of lights, even image-based lighting that can simulate, for example, lakeside or meadow scenes by creating the lighting from actual images of the scene. The program's Firefly rendering engine is one of the best I've ever used. It can render pretty good nearly photo-realistic images and do it relatively fast. All in all this program is the perfect tool for what I wanted to do. Now for the bad news...the program is not very stable and frequently crashes, even after I downloaded and installed the latest patches from the Smith Micro website. For the most part they are 'nuisance crashes' in which the program simply shuts down. But there have been a few times when I've had to reboot the system because it froze, and in one case I even got a dreaded 'blue screen of death'...the first time I've seen one since switching to Windows 7. I am running Poser on 64-bit Windows 7, 6X AMD Phenom II CPU and ATI Radeon HD5700 graphics, which meets or exceeds all of the requirements the program suggests. Despite the drawbacks, I would still say that the program is a worthwhile tool to have if you want to create any sort of 3D content...just be sure to save frequently or you could end up losing hours of work in the blink of an eye. Hopefully the folks at Smith Micro will get these bugs ironed out soon. They detract from what would otherwise be a really excellent software tool. Was this review helpful to you?


Plenty of magic if you persevere, April 2, 2011 By Scott Neil

To begin with there is a lot to learn. The manuals that come with Poser 8 have to be read on-screen or printed out. Be warned, they stretch to 500-pages or more. The good news is that the manuals are well indexed and once you have taught yourself the basics you may jump to the relevant sections as and when you need them. It is possible to get started using animation quickly. The real magic though, comes with experience and time. Working on a daily basis I spent around six months making a short film animation. Most days my output would result in only three or four seconds of footage. That is an indication of how patient you must be if you want to achieve high quality results. The more you are prepared to learn, and experiment, the more you will get out of this software. The rendering options are great - and the highest setting is breathtaking, although it does commandeer a vast amount of computer power. There are some bugs here and there that need to be addressed, I mostly came across them when combining with third-party resources. However, even with the odd glitch there was nothing that couldn't be overcome one way or another. Overall I would say that, for the price, this is a great piece of animation software that will take you a long way if you give it a chance. Was this review helpful to you?


Interesting program, hard to use, February 11, 2011 By Book Critic (davidjmontgomery.com)

Poser 8 is, on the surface, a cool program, claiming to bring easy 3D animation to the masses. Well, they didn't make it easy enough. I'll be the first to admit that this is as much my fault as it is a limitation of the program. But I also think the user interface isn't as well designed as it could be. I didn't spend a whole lot of time with this one before I simply gave up. A lot of other people seem to like it, so you might have better results. But it wasn't for me. Was this review helpful to you?


Buy A Book. A Powerful Tool, Slightly Intimidating for Hobbyists., December 22, 2009 By AV, Computer & EnviroTech Nut (Castle Rock, CO)

As someone inexperienced in 3D animation, I was excited to try this consumer-marketed 3D animation software and was impressed by its capabilities. You start out with a human figure to "pose" a la Leonardo Da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man" where you have control over every joint of the figure from torso to wrist. The constraints of the figure help keep all the body parts together as you pose it in various ways and it's generally fun to bend it to your will. From there you can overlay the skin of the figure via a choice from the abundant content that comes with the software, or even download more (for purchase) from the Poser store via the internet! You're not just limited to human figures, however, I noticed realistic looking sea turtles and other cool models you can purchase and play with! The system is great for someone like me who is just getting started. The downside is that I found everything a little overwhelming! Granted it's difficult to have 3D animation software that someone can just plop down and start using with no training the same way they would a DVD burning utility, but you'll definitely want some sort of book to help you get started. Good software overall. Was this review helpful to you?


Poser 8, November 18, 2009 By Gavin Scott (Sunnyvale, CA United States)

Poser 8 has some very nice high-quality models and numerous smaller feature improvements as well as an updated UI (for better or worse). If you're a Poser user already, you'll almost certainly want this upgrade at some point. It's a large and complex piece of software that usually manages to let you accomplish what you're attempting, but along the way it feels like there really should be an easier way to do each step. It also feels rather incomplete in that very little content is provided with the program apart from some (very nice) basic human figures. There are a few items of clothing, but it's mostly just samples from commercial libraries, and Poser's main purpose seems to be to provide a marketplace for purchasing add-on content. And so much of that available commercial add-on content seems to be oriented towards those creating virtual pornography that it can give the whole thing a bit of an unsavory feeling. But it's also the only reasonably affordable and accessible digital maquette application that I know of, so for people who want to populate their 3D artwork with a few humans and not have to model everything from scratch, it's pretty much the best option. Three stars for software quality and ease of use, plus one just for being available in the first place. G. Was this review helpful to you?


A lot for the price (updated review), October 28, 2009 By Karl (Bozeman, MT USA)

Poser 8, with the downloaded SR2 patch, offers an incredible amount of depth, power and fun for such a low-priced piece of software. The price point makes this affordable for anyone who just wants to learn about rendering, morphing and keyframe animation (and script programming), as well as anyone who might find uses for the sketch render or photo-rendering imagery that they can produce from posed models. Exported models are only of limited usefulness (for, e.g., architectural rendering) as they do not contain full texture information. (Perhaps the Pro version addresses that. The Pro version also allows for the export of characters and their animation sequences into programs such as Cinema 4D to populate more complex scenes and animations.) Three PDF manuals are included (no hard-copy) along with a printed Quick Reference Card and a 34 page color program overview guide.. The PDF manuals are: Tutorial, Reference and PoserPython Methods (for scripting). The Quick Reference Card might have been useful were it larger. Most of the text is set at about 6 points - almost unreadable without a headache - and the screenshots are too small to really make out the buttons/etc that are being described. PARENTAL CAUTION: Poser can be a great hobby or learning activity for a precocious child. But, parents should be aware that it includes full genitals, in case that might be in conflict with what they want their child to be working with. The male genitals can be deleted from the library as they are an optional part that is attached to a male figure. Female breasts obviously cannot, and several females have genitals that are part of their base figure and which appear by adjusting parameters. For younger children, I would suggest deleting all of the adult figures, leaving the children and animals. Be aware that there is such a thing as Poser Porn (see wikipedia). DETAIL: I'd heard of Poser for about ten years, primarily from architectural users who inserted Poser models into their scenes. But, I had never tried it before I received this review copy. I had heard mostly good things about it, so installed with a positive attitude. I've spent some free time over a period of four weeks trying pretty much everything and working through all documentation. I installed on both Windows and Mac, although I did most of my testing on an 8 core Mac Pro and did not take the time to see if all bugs were reproducible on Windows. Installation on my Mac was reasonably quick (given the huge amount of included content), but was insanely slow on my Windows laptop, taking 3 hours and appearing to hang the machine various times. I resolved the Windows issue by copying the media installer off the DVD and onto a thumb drive and running the installer from there. As others have mentioned, the Tutorial manual gives steps and screenshots that refer to very old versions of the product. While some steps can be followed, many have changed significantly. Further, the tutorial follows no sensible logical progression through the program. A shame. The library is less than ideal from an organizational point of view. Organizationally, it is a bit annoying IMHO that the library organizes content by versions of Poser (1-5, 6, 7 and 8, plus some others), rather than by content type (men, women, children, animals, etc). The Search function is pretty unhelpful because it does not organize the results by result type: figure, post, face, hair, etc., but by folder with no clue as to what the folder contains until you expand each and every one. Eventually, individual library items appear, but not grouped. It seems best to search for a particular content type rather than "all categories" because of this. The library content is inconsistent. You have no idea what any particular human's morph options are, for example, until you open it and explore it. Thus, you have no idea if you can apply settings from one figure to another without tedious review, or trial and error. Some figures have various bugs, such as applying right to left symmetry resulting in a grasping right hand mapping to bent-back fingers on the left hand. The library preview images do not match their effect. For example, applying some of the facial expressions for Ryan to the Ryan model (or similarly to Alyson) do not produce the illustrated result. Some figures have badly designed meshes, so that certain poses, within normal constraints, result in a tear or gap in the mesh. Most human figures have bodies that are close, but not particularly accurate, whether in terms of proportions and musculature, or in terms of specific body parts such as eyes and teeth. Poser is advertised as useful for medical illustration, but eyes which are flat rather than round, and teeth which not only are not properly shaped, but which are cockeyed in the jaw (particularly rear molars) at not that useful without work to correct the flaws. There is a bug in the Light Controls UI. Clicking the light intensity slider moves the light to the slider's arc at the same time that intensity is varied. On the Mac, there is a conflict with the standard Mac shortcut to hide an application, cmd-H. This shortcut is assigned to both Hide Application as well as Hide Figure. The first cmd-H hides the active figure in the scene; the second cmd-H hides the Poser application. Conforming clothing may follow a body's movement, but it does not conform to the body's size. If you take a figure and make it fat or very muscular, for example, the body becomes larger than the clothing. The user manual describes how to select the exposed skin and make that body part invisible to resolve this. But, of course, the result is not a fat person with clothes on, which is the intent. Utilizing the dials for parameters (and elsewhere) is somewhat frustrating, as you cannot simply start dragging a dial, but must select it first and then drag. Numeric entry is often faster, but the Tab key is not honored, so you cannot move between parameter entry fields with it, but rather must tediously select each one. Poser has no intelligent 'Check for Updates' feature as one expects in most software these days. There is a Help menu web link to the Smith Micro update page, where follow links to the proper download page, where you are expected to know if the patch you see is a new one or not. So last century. Poser Tutorial Chap 11 states: "The scenes you create in these tutorials can be dropped into most contemporary films, or can be the centerpiece of a major production." My response would be "In their dreams." Nothing from Poser tutorials is good enough for a film or major production, but is certainly good enough for amateur fun, attorneys reproducing crime scenes, etc. The meshes, textures and morphs in the supplied library are not good enough for film work either, but it appears that Poser is capable of managing a higher level of detail, so perhaps the technology could produce a result suitable for a film with better content. You just won't know it out of the box. Let me end with some good things. Poser is a clever piece of software that lets you use the content in the box, or import your own figures from another 3D program and then add bones and parameters to create a Poser figure. The nature of the posing, including limits, inverse kinematics and symmetry operations is clever and generally works well. The lighting capabilities and the quality of the photorendering and sketch engines is really quite remarkable at this price point. The ability to grow and style hair and create draping cloth is something usually not seen other than in high-end programs. Finally, the layered keyframe animation offers not only useful possibilities, but along with the other features, provides a rich breadth of technology to help someone starting out in animation or rendering to learn a great deal at a very low price. [Note that this is an update to an earlier review that was much more critical. The SR2 patch, released in November, corrected a number of shortcomings to the initial release and so I raise my rating to 4 stars for value/price.] Was this review helpful to you?


Works great on Snow Leopard, October 15, 2009 By tall-latte (Sammamish, WA USA)

I was pleased that this product installs and works great on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The learning curve is a bit steep, but the product comes with great help to get you up and running. I was hoping my 11 year old son would be able to figure this out, but he didn't have enough patience to get through the learning curve. Perhaps once he is older, he will be able to give it a shot again and become productive with this product. Was this review helpful to you?


What I can use of it looks great..., October 12, 2009 By Careful shopper (United States)

Well, I tried and tried but even though this loads up and runs, it will only work in some areas for me without crashing. I've done the SMS update to Version 8.01.10434 and tried the few solutions I've seen around the Internet but just don't have the time to devote to something I only have for the fun of it... and it really does look like fun. The last solution given to me was that I need to shut down my firewall and Internet security software to make it work... I don't want to do that so in the end, it may be my fault I don't get to use this software properly. Yes, I gave Poser 8 four stars because I don't think that just because it will not work properly on MY system it should not be brought down in it's overall rating here based on not working well for me. I see many are using this without problems and just love it, others have the same locking/crashing problem as I do and many them had the solutions work. Just be sure and read about various problems people are having before you buy it. But also see how much most like it and how well it seems to work for them. My system is an i7 920 with 6gb of Corsair Dominator DDR3 ram running at 1600, GeForce GTX 285 , Asus P6T Deluxe MB, Vista 64 OS. latest drivers for all hardware etc. Poser8 install was only about 15 mins for me, not bad for all 4.86GB of data that needs to be copied If it's any help to others, here are the areas that give me the steady crashes and locks; Quick Start project guide Setup Walk Designer Sketch Designer Although, it WILL lock in other areas without warning and by only clicking on a tab at the top to view what is in there, not just doing tough rendering work. If and when I get this to run well, I'll be sure to come back and let everyone know, but for now I have many other things to get on with. Was this review helpful to you?


Poser 8: A Critical Review From a Newbie., October 11, 2009 By Andre Lawrence (Miami, Florida)

Criteria for reviewing Overview Practice! Practice! Practice! *Uses I am absolutely brand new to 3D animation. Not a clue! And, with the exception of watching the behind-the-scenes on my special-edition d.v.d's, I wouldn't have the foggiest idea of what was involved in creating 3D animation. With that said, I am also unable to provide any objective information as it pertains to updates for this fine product. What I can offer is a critique from the standpoint of a fine artist/ illustrationist for 30+ years and a graphic artist for the past 7. I'm currently working with Adobe CS3 on the OSX platform. Some things to be aware of before you go any further. 1. You'll need 4.5 GB of free space just for installation and you'll need at least 1 GB of memory. 2. There is a high learning curve required here. The printed material only shows pictures of what can be done. You may want to familiarize yourself with some of the tutorials that are available on line from Youtube and Google's general video search engine before buying any 3rd party material to come up to speed. 3. I downloaded several excellent and free tutorials from eHow. The only problem is that most are only 2 minutes long and that's with the 3-second header. So, I gathered all of the related videos, shaved off the 3-second headers put them into iMovie, compressed and exported them as a .mov file. This restored the original tutorial sessions. The Poser Interface. For a program that has more controls and tabs than Photoshop, the interface is remarkably uncluttered. But, as I mentioned before there is a steep learning curve. On top, you have the header which consists of the different parts of the body that can be manipulated from a full body, "Pose," to Materials, to Face, to Hair, to Cloth and a Setup bar. Going counter clockwise, there a 12-button Editing Tool section. Camera Controls (which I loved, as much as the Lighting Control below it.) Light Controls, Document display, Play and Frame Count section. Chest and the Library-Search-Favorites bar. In the center is the Camera Angle (or the viewing screen.) The default setting is a skeletal figure and each part can be adjusted to move in the exact way a normal body part moves by its joint. When one engages for example, the upper arm, a fine red line appears just over the bone segment and joint. Keeping the cursor on the highlighted area allows you to move the arm from left to right or up and down. If you wanted to move the arm either to the back of the torso, you have to engage the torso tilt it in that direction then re-engage the upper arm to the desired position. What I noticed is that the body cannot move in a "typically" unnatural position (no offense to contortionists!). Another project I found interesting was the Face department. Poser comes with a set of stock characters and clothing (and from on-line sites, there seems to be a plethora of fans who create clothes and whatnot for them.) But you may also create your own person. A process called "mapping" accomplishes this. Mapping is essentially a dual screen where one uploads a high resolution, front profile and through a process of aligning "points" to a parallel sketch the photograph is made to wrap around a modeled head giving it a animated look. The entire body can be made to be adjusted the same way. I spent the better part of two (2) hours going back and forth on the face. It is a fun and funny process, but it will take awhile until you can get the hang of it. ***I can see many uses for this program. As the company suggests, graphic and web design, fine art and illustration, storyboarding, and creative business presentations. I can also add, YouTube skits, birthday or celebratory greetings, or an educational demonstration. Once you get the hang of it, it seems that you're only limited by your creative imagination. Was this review helpful to you?


Steep learning curve, October 4, 2009 By Penmouse

Poser is a program that takes a bit of technical expertise and has a long learning curve. Overall, the program seems to have lots of potential once all the applications are figured out. Will update this review after working with Poser a bit more. For now I am still in learning mode. 0 of 5 people found the above review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?


Awesome Program!, April 18, 2012 By Whitelion (The Wild Jungle)

I had always wanted to make 3D animations but could not find any animation programs that I could afford. I saw this one and it looked like what I was searching for and it is at a good low price too. I bought it and it had arrived before estimated arrival date and was well packaged. Program works wonderful and it does everything I need to make animations. Thankyou very much. Was this review helpful to you?


poser review, February 4, 2012 By hardtime19

Love the program but it is realy hard to understand all the functions. Should be made more user friendly. I am sure that after a little more use it will be better. Was this review helpful to you?