Rating: 
Summary: Thorough coverage of Poser 4, includes use of other software
Review: This book is a great complement to Poser 4, one of the most powerful and affordable graphic animation packages. It is ideal for the new user & essential for one who has upgraded to version 4 to utilize all the new features.Basic concepts & controls are presented first. Details of posing hands and faces in stationary figures are explained and applied to animal figures as well. Hair & clothing options, greatly expanded in version 4, are covered. Moving on to animation, the power of Poser 4 is revealed. Animation controls are introduced, again emphasizing hands, faces & animal movements. Creative morphing and distortion, great for sci-fi applications, are described. Advanced topics include using Poser in conjunction with a wide variety of other software packages, backgrounds & props, and customization. Several impressive step-by-step projects will help you master Poser's power. The CD-ROM will add hours of exploration and value to your Poser work. It includes many objects ready to include in Poser scenes. A list of Poser-related web sites is a great bonus.
Rating:
Summary: Thorough coverage of Poser 4, includes use of other software
Review: This book is a great complement to Poser 4, one of the most powerful and affordable graphic animation packages. It is ideal for the new user & essential for one who has upgraded to version 4 to utilize all the new features. Basic concepts & controls are presented first. Details of posing hands and faces in stationary figures are explained and applied to animal figures as well. Hair & clothing options, greatly expanded in version 4, are covered. Moving on to animation, the power of Poser 4 is revealed. Animation controls are introduced, again emphasizing hands, faces & animal movements. Creative morphing and distortion, great for sci-fi applications, are described. Advanced topics include using Poser in conjunction with a wide variety of other software packages, backgrounds & props, and customization. Several impressive step-by-step projects will help you master Poser's power. The CD-ROM will add hours of exploration and value to your Poser work. It includes many objects ready to include in Poser scenes. A list of Poser-related web sites is a great bonus.
Rating: 
Summary: WHY?
Review: This book is filled with the childish scribblings of a total poser novice whose idea of testing the program was twiddling the knobs. Why anyone would buy a book that tells them to do something they probably already did before they bought the book is totally beyond me. My advice : go buy Richard Schrand's far superior book (Poser 4 Pro Pack f/x & Design) at least with that book you'll learn something, I did.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible! Awful! Awk!
Review: This is the first computer book I regret buying. It is the most useless use of paper I have ever seen. The author has no teaching ability and no skills at Poser. I had some prior experience using poser, and was hoping this book would fill-in the holes for me. Unfortunately, this "guide" creates far more questions than it answers. Mortimer merely instructs the user to play with the knobs until something utterly useless, and ugly has been created. Anyone with a moderate amount of computer experience doesn't need this, and anyone new to computers is far more likely to be scared by Mortimer's art than learn anything from it. I burnt my copy of this book camping, and no it isn't even very good at starting a camp fire. Crumpled newspaper works much better. And reading random bits of crumpled newspaper is far more likely to improve your Poser skills than this pile of garbage.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: What is so amazing, well it's obviously not the book according to the one star I gave it. What is amazing is that Shamms is able to write one low quality book after another and still get publishers and people to buy his books. Some how he has been able to get away with writing over 20 different books with only the most basic knowledge and very brief experience of the programs. I would like to know how he pulls it off, I mean if he can write a book on Poser then I should easily be able to write a book on well, anything I know nothing about and still make money off it.
Rating: 
Summary: A real disappointment, too much advertising
Review: While I'm not necessarily sorry I bought this book, it is disappointing in many ways. It is poorly organized, carries a lot of hash from previous editions that's poorly integrated with the new material, and worst of all the tutorials require you to buy models from a third party vendor, rather than being supplied on the CD as the promotional copy leads one to believe. By the time I finished it, I felt like model supplier Zygote should have subsidized the healthy price tag, given the books total reliance on their expensive models. To make matters even worse, the included CD is poorly matched with the book, and doesn't contain what the books says it does. There aren't many alternatives to this book for the poser student, but ... I expected better.
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