[Note from the Editor: Over the last year, we’ve had an increasing number of filmmakers approach us about enlarging the amount of focus we do on 3D applications that can enable them to either create 3D Animated films or composite 3D elements into live action films. As such, we’ve taken those requests to heart and this issue marks the first of a number of issues that will be largely devoted to economical 3D programs and how they can fit into the microfilmmaker’s toolkit. While I have 3D experience that goes back to the old 3D Studio days, I still look at 3D software more from the perspective of a filmmaker than a 3D animator. As such, for a program with as massive a following in both animation and traditional 3D realms, I enlisted the help of 3D Animator Ralph Caldwell who’s history with Poser is much longer than mine. Although Ralph and I have discussed many of the elements of this review together, the majority of this review will be told from my perspective—the perspective of a filmmaker. However, from time to time, I will include direct comments from Ralph, which will be colored blue to differentiate.]
As many of you know, between when I first became a filmmaker and when I started this magazine, I used to be one of the editors of a nationally publicized video game and DVD website called Gamerz Edge. The game series that always impressed me by how it used long sections of 3D animation and filmmaking was the Square Enix classic series: Final Fantasy. I remember gasping at trailers for Final Fantasy X that showed nearly photrealistic actors with streaming hair blowing in the wind. In the recent Final Fantasy XII those animation techniques have gotten even more amazing. Of course, to my knowledge, Square Enix (and most 3D game makers) still predominantly use a combination of the $2,000 Maya and the $4,000 3D Studio Max to achieve their nearly photoreal results with blowing hair and clothing. As such, you can imagine how impressed I was when I loaded up Poser 7 and, within a few sessions, was rendering even better photoreal models and experimenting with similar-looking dynamic hair and clothing.
For experienced Poser users, Poser 7 is one of the best versions to roll out yet. There is not much difference in the interface than with previous versions. Poser 7 has just a few additional features that has made 3D figure animating slightly easier to use. If this is your first time using Poser, you will find that there is a broad selection of human and animal models when creating 3D scenes. In this program these models are provided with animation skeletons that have already been setup for use. Poser 7 offers a larger selection of poses, featuring the face, hair, and clothes to give your model a more realistic look.
Ease of Use
The truth about Poser 7 is that it is a huge program that can do a huge amount of very powerful stuff. To give you an idea, the popular book LightWave 3D
8 Revealedby Kelly Murdock, which shows you how to use the complex 3D rendering program Lightwave (which was used for many of the rendered effects in Sin City and The 300) is 410 pages long, including indexes. Poser 7
Revealed, which is written by the same author, is 566 pages long. That ought to give you an idea.
I would agree. All of the Poser programs have had a major learning curve, and Poser 7 is no exception. Some of this is due to how it does things in its own unique way, and some of this is due to the fact that you have to learn how to work around things that don’t work right. I would firmly agree with Jeremy and recommend checking out Poser 7 Revealed, as it really does make it easier to pick up the nuances of Poser 7.
From my perspective, the problem is that Poser appears to be much easier to use than it in fact is, which could easily be a stumbling block for users who are not specifically familiar with Poserspecifically.
When you first load it up, the program opens up very similar to DAZ|Studio, an exceptionally easy-to-use 3D viewing and rendering program which is made by DAZ 3D, a 3D model-making company that used to be a part of CuriousLabs/E-Frontier’s Poser department. Unfortunately, while DAZ|Studio is very intuitive and easy to use, even for complete novices, Poser only appears to be so easy to use. Many of the things that make DAZ|Studio a breeze to use are placed in counter-intuitively bizarre places in Poser.
For an example of this an exceptionally common task for most animators (at least those who will not be making porn) is to clothe their Poser models with some sort of outfit. This requires you to conform a clothing outfit to the model, so that the clothing fits the models pose and will move with the model. This is a task that is so common that DAZ|Studio provides this option in your right-click menu as soon as you load a piece of clothing. Poser, on the other hand, hides it in the top ‘Figure’ pull-down list with no keyboard shortcut.
by Kelly Murdock, which shows you how to use the complex 3D rendering program Lightwave (which was used for many of the rendered effects in Sin City and The 300) is 410 pages long, including indexes. 
, which is written by the same author, is 566 pages long. That ought to give you an idea. 
