The Poser 5 Handbook (Graphics Series)

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Dreadful
Review: Absolutely Dreadful

Sometimes ya gotta wonder how someone gets picked for a job. The author of this book is a horrible CG artist (click on the book cover photo for proof) and not a particularly good writer. He spends 4 sentences saying something that could be said in one, and then, in the following step-by-step example, he will leave out a crucial step or two. If you do manage to figure out the steps he forgot to tell you about and thereby finish the exercise, what you are left with is an image that looks like one of his - i.e. horrible. Wow, now that's bad.

I only bought this book because, after six months, I got tired of waiting for the Peachpit Press's Poser 5 Visual Quick Start book to come out. The Visual Quick Start series is a wonderful series. I have a least half a dozen of those books, and they've all been good. As for Charles River Media, the publisher of this book, all the books of theirs that I've seen or purchased have been highly doubtful.

The only reason that I don't give this book one star is that if you do fill in the missing steps yourself, and if you come up with your own parameter settings, you can make some pretty cool stuff. Poser 5 is an exciting, powerful "new" program, and this book will give you just enough information to just barely make it over that "newness" hump. Which is more than I can say about the manual that came with the program. It is even worse than this book (how's that possible?).

Bottom line - if Peachpit Press's Poser 5 Visual Quick Start book is available (now due October 21, 2003, but don't bet on it) - buy that instead. If not, and you really want some info now - buy this book and live to regret it. What a choice!

Rating:
Summary: GOOD PRICE
Review: Course Materials - Fairleigh Dickinson University | Digital 3D Animation and Gaming Program

Rating:
Summary: Aim Higher
Review: Do not waste your $$$ on this book. The other reviews here are accurate when they say it is amateurishly written and the visual examples are even worse than the writing. You can gain greater inspiration and learn far more FOR FREE by perusing online resources such as renderosity.com, poserworld.com or any of the other poser community links at Curious Labs' website. There you will find complete tutorials and beautifully done CG artwork to feed your mind and imagination.

Rating:
Summary: Better than the rest...
Review: Don't let the author's previous work dissuade you from getting this book. Its worth it for the few hundred pages written by people from the online Poser community. I have seen Mr Mortier's work slammed all over the place, and that prevented me from buying it online. I picked up a copy of The Poser 4 handbook at a real-world store and put it back without buying. A lot of the criticism I had read was valid. One can take the render on the cover as a valid example of Mr. Mortier's work... the female character is posed like a store-front mannequin and her "guardians" have their own swords slicing their left pectoralis muscle.
Don't judge the other valuable content that way, however. There are excellent sections on texturing, posing, prop and figure creation by talented Poser users. Those sections are worth the price.

Rating:
Summary: Better than the rest...
Review: Don't let the author's previous work dissuade you from getting this book. Its worth it for the few hundred pages written by people from the online Poser community. I have seen Mr Mortier's work slammed all over the place, and that prevented me from buying it online. I picked up a copy of The Poser 4 handbook at a real-world store and put it back without buying. A lot of the criticism I had read was valid. One can take the render on the cover as a valid example of Mr. Mortier's work... the female character is posed like a store-front mannequin and her "guardians" have their own swords slicing their left pectoralis muscle.
Don't judge the other valuable content that way, however. There are excellent sections on texturing, posing, prop and figure creation by talented Poser users. Those sections are worth the price.

Rating:
Summary: Average at best
Review: I found myself lost several times in this book, as the author left out key points in the walkthrough that I had to look on the web to find out what he was asking (how to save a material/cloth for example, he just says "now save the material" - ok how?). Not for a beginner, in my opinion, and more painful than anything. The book does help you get an understanding of the fundamentals, and I especially like the fact that instead of just giving you a bunch of settings, he gives you the settings then explains what they each mean. However, dont expect to walk away an expert, some of the exercises are a struggle and will leave you backtracking steps to find out where you went wrong. The end-product examples weren't all that impressive either, they looked very amateurish and crude.

Rating:
Summary: Average at best
Review: I have the Poser 4 Handbook which is largely cut and pasted word for word from the Poser 3 Handbook. I can only hope that Mr. Mortier has done a better job with this one. I have read the previous reviews but bought it anyways and am now disappointed. He uses examples and software not included on the CD. So when I went to the bookstore and saw that there is new Poser 5 Handbook I looked at the examples and the software necessary to complete them and once again that are not on the CD! How do you expect someone to complete tutorials with programs they don't have, figures they don't have. If you want to really invest your time and money into Poser then this is the book for you. You can buy all the programs and extra figures necessary to complete Mr. Mortier's tutorials. A good book to get is the Poser 4 fx and design or wait till Secrets of Figure Creation in Poser 5 is released.

Rating:
Summary: Files not on CD again!
Review: I have the Poser 4 Handbook which is largely cut and pasted word for word from the Poser 3 Handbook. I can only hope that Mr. Mortier has done a better job with this one. I have read the previous reviews but bought it anyways and am now disappointed. He uses examples and software not included on the CD. So when I went to the bookstore and saw that there is new Poser 5 Handbook I looked at the examples and the software necessary to complete them and once again that are not on the CD! How do you expect someone to complete tutorials with programs they don't have, figures they don't have. If you want to really invest your time and money into Poser then this is the book for you. You can buy all the programs and extra figures necessary to complete Mr. Mortier's tutorials. A good book to get is the Poser 4 fx and design or wait till Secrets of Figure Creation in Poser 5 is released.

Rating:
Summary: A decent basic tutorial, will not turn you into a Poser guru
Review: The first part of the book is by Shamms Mortier, who gives an overview of Poser's features. The second half is a collection of articles and tutorials by other artists who seem to be much more accomplished than Mr. Mortier. (The difference in quality between Mortier's work in the interior color plates and those of other artists is rather glaring.)

The "overview" portion is not bad. For the most part it simply rehashes information found in the Poser manual, but does so in more detail and in a more readable form, offering several tutorials to give you some hands-on practice. It will not be helpful to anyone who already has some familiarity with Poser or other 3D programs, but if you are a complete novice like me, it's a good introduction to Poser's rooms and basic features.

The tutorials written by other people cover more advanced topics, and while by themselves they will not turn you into an expert, they do give you some idea of what it takes to create your own models, textures, and characters. Some of the topics are fairly advanced, far beyond the level of anyone who is working their way through the first part of the book.

So, I would recommend this book for a Poser newbie who wants help getting started, and to dip his toe into more advanced techniques. If you already kind of know how to use Poser and want to learn more advanced techniques, this book may give you a few useful tidbits, but you will probably be better off searching sites like Renderosity and RuntimeDNA and PoserPros for the numerous tutorials offered there for free.

Rating:
Summary: Very bad Tutorials
Review: While this book does a fair job of describing how to use Poser, when it comes to showing you step by step examples of how to do a particular task it becomes incredibly bad. The author completely leaves out certain crucial steps leaving you to flounder around. At times he can't even get the steps in the right order. From what I have been able to ascertain the author does not appear to have any ability to write to a beginner audience nor does it appear like he wrote this book with Poser on his computer. If you are a beginner then this book is NOT for you at all. If you know Poser 4 well then you might be able to figure out what the author is trying to tell you.