Value
If you’re a filmmaker who doesn’t want to make animated films, you might wonder: Where will I find a value for Poser 7 in a low budget film? Well, there are a number of ways Poser 7 could be a great value to you. First, if you need to do a dangerous stunt, creating a model in Poser of your main actor or actress (especially now that Photoshop CS3 Extended supports the painting of mattes with full viewing of the 3D model inside Photoshop) is now a fully realizable reality. You can animate them and then composite them against the live-action backdrop plate you’ve shot. Another option is in creating 3D extras to populate a city or a backdrop. With a little creativity, there is a lot a low budget filmmaker could create with this program! (For further ideas, check out our article on Add-Ons for Poser!)
Considering that this has become a professional level 3D program in its own right, $250 is not much to spend, especially when you look at the cost of things like Maya and 3D Studio Max. Even the much more economical Lightwave is going to run you $900. As such, you should definitely at least consider purchasing a copy of Poser 7 for use in your next film.
Final Comments
Working with past versions of poser, I have found that this product has come a long way since the first version. While it’s still got a ways to go, each version gets more user friendly, adding more features that makes 3D animation fun. As e-Frontier brings forth each new version they get better and better each time.
While I don’t have as much experience with Poser as Ralph does, I am inclined to believe that he is correct just from my own use of the program. Although I expressed greater desire to see a number of performance and stability improvements introduced in Poser 8, these issues aren’t problematic enough to make me stop wanting to use, learn , or experiment with Poser. As such, Poser 7 is definitely a success, especially for filmmakers who embrace it with a proper understanding of the learning curve.
If you want to see how quickly you can pick up the Poser working dynamic before you shell out the $250 to purchase Poser 7, you can try out a trial version of Poser 6 here. (I’m not sure why you can’t download a trial of Poser 7 yet, but hopefully that will come out shortly.)
 |  |  |
 |
|
| |
| Ease
of Use |
7.3 |
| Depth
of Options |
9.4 |
| Performance |
7.3 |
| Value |
10.0 |
| Overall
Score |
8.5 |
|  |
 |  |  |
