User Reviews

1. Review Date: 2009-11-19

   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.
   
   
   
   
   User: Thomas Wikman
   Rating:
   Summary: Poser 8.0: Neat tool with too many bugs and a clunky interface
   Helpful Votes: 1
   Total Votes: 1
   

2. Review Date: 2009-11-19

   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.
   
   User: Leebo
   Rating:
   Summary: Overall Pretty Good Update to a Great Software Line
   Helpful Votes: 0
   Total Votes: 1
   

3. Review Date: 2009-11-18

   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.
   
   User: Gavin Scott
   Rating:
   Summary: Poser 8
   Helpful Votes: 0
   Total Votes: 0
   

4. Review Date: 2009-11-13

   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.
   
   User: Jos Manuel Prez Arriaza
   Rating:
   Summary: Stay away from this version
   Helpful Votes: 0
   Total Votes: 1
   

5. Review Date: 2009-11-10

   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.
   
   User: Joseph Befumo
   Rating:
   Summary: SAVE OFTEN!
   Helpful Votes: 0
   Total Votes: 1
   

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Editorial Reviews

Poser 8 is the world's most complete solution for creating art and animation with 3D characters. With Poser, it's easy to make 3D art. Poser includes over 2.5 gigabytes of ready-to-pose human and animal figures, textures, props and 3D scene elements. Generate new characters from your facial photographs. Add hair and clothing. Dress Poser's virtual stage with props, lights and cameras to build 3D scenes. Animate and render your scene into photorealistic images and video for web, print, and film projects. Export 3D figures to add characters to other 3D applications. Artists, hobbyists, illustrators and animators--get creative with Poser!

Poser 8's easy to use interface makes it easy to create 3D character images and animation. Click to enlarge.

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.

Product Details

1. Poser 8 is an affordable, powerful, yet easy to use 3D character animation solution
2. Includes 3D character tools and over 2.5GB of ready to use scene content and figures; no need to model 3D characters from scratch
3. Includes 8 brand new, ready-to-pose, fully textured human figures with over 400 morphs and body controls to fully customize each character
4. Renders photorealistic or stylized images and videos for print, web or animation projects
5. With included Wardrobe Wizard, fit your Poser clothing assets to the new Poser 8 figures