Poser 4

Rating:
Summary: A Useful Part of a Graphics Toolkit
Review: Animal forms are difficult to draw. To someone not well versed in figure drawing (and I think that applies to most people) Poser is an extremely useful and powerful tool with a wide range of applications. It does human and animal figures and just about anything else you can imagine. As has been said before, the rendering quality is mediocre, but I would be hard pressed to fnd a situation where the render from Poser was not going to be taken a step further: given further treatment in a paint program or integrated into a scene rendered elsewhere.

I use Poser regularly as a part of the following suite of tools: Pandromeda's incredible landscape generator MojoWorld, Adobe Photoshop and Lightwave 7.5. Since I am a creative director with a huge background and exposure to different graphics tools, trust me on this! Lightwave and Photoshop are a little pricey, but the MojoWorld is [priced inexpensive] and really takes figures rendered in Poser to the next level. Too bad they don't bundle!

Rating:
Summary: Ah c'mon.
Review: Get youself 3D Smax 4 if you really wana do some serious rendering. No play toys there.

Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: I use this program at school and I love it! I love playing with the animal and skeleton characters!

Rating:
Summary: I Love 3D Animation !
Review: I've always wanted to get something to create 3D movies and stuff. I've finally found it I'm adding it to my wish list !

Rating:
Summary: Order now! ...
Review: If you can afford to spend thirty-five hundred for 3DS Max, consider yourself fortunate; If you're not a spoiled cowboy from Dallas, you can save yourself over three grand and pick up Poser 4!
For beginners, the software is superb in its' user-friendliness. Fulfill your 3D character and animation fantasies on a budget. The User Guide is very clearly written. Characters can be exported to other 3D applications like Bryce 5, World Builder, Terragen, forester . . . and yes, Hopalong Ferrari in Texas - even the 3DStudio Max daddy bought for ya!
If you doubt the truly professional images Poser is capable of, check out some user galleries on the WWW, and marvel at the near-photorealistic results experienced artists have achieved.
Easy enough for beginners, advanced enough for artists. And just think of all the cool cowboy outfits you can buy with the money you save! What a deal!

Rating:
Summary: The best thing that ever happened to 3d software
Review: Poser 4 is an amazing program that pretty much does it all when it comes to 3d character animation and design. There is no other program that offers so much control over a human model with such ease. Poser comes with a stockpile of premade human and animal models which you can customize and animate, and you can get additional models for free or for relatively low prices by going to any search engine and searching for "Poser models". Poser is not only for making humans and animals; you can import 3d models in a variety of formats and put them into your scene. In fact, I've made a 3d interface for a multimedia project entirely, school yearbook covers, and a special effects scene for a school movie almost entirely in Poser.
Poser's main advantage lies in its uncomparable ease of use and small learning curve. There are some down sides, however: the animation tools are rather hard to use and somewhat tedious. Its rendering engine is slow and does not allow for motion blur, real ambience, reflectivity, and refractivity, and the bump mapping system (a texture that creates shadows and highlights on a surface to give the appearance of bumpiness) cannot used with compressed (JPEG) images unless you also have Pro Pack, thus greatly restricting texture resolution. Luckily, all or most of these shortcomings will be fixed in Poser 5, coming out at the end of Summer 2002.
If you haven't already bought Poser 4, I would recommend waiting for the 5th version, although it will cost about twice as much.

Rating:
Summary: Nice
Review: Simple on it's own, great when used with Corel's Bryce 5. Create models for export and add textures with Bryce. Cheap 3ds max alternative.

Rating:
Summary: A good 3D program
Review: This is a good 3D program. But ,I think my version has some features missing. I bought it at a local university so I think I have the student version. I have learned a lot on my own by using this program. Much of the animation is painstating work. Sometimes you need to go frame by frame. I finally figured out how the magnets work. I wish they had a better means of sculpting these figures. I hope to purchase the full version of poser 5.

I finally realized that you can down load free figures and props off of the internet. I spent the last few days down loading many props. Now I can make more realistic images, I hope to purchase the Millenium Girls (Boys) figure. These charaters enable the user to create a wide variety of children characters. The children figures that come with Poser are very limited in what can be done to manipulate them. I plan to buy some adult figures that can be manipulated.

It is kind of frustrating that I have to buy extra figures instead of having them with the program (Of course You can download many figures and morphs and textures for free) But for the price Poser is relatively inexpensive and easy to use(The student version is even cheaper. I have made great progress in the past six months since I bought the program. I have not had any official instruction in 3D Modeling and animation except for a brief course in AutoCAD. I hope to take a 3D course next semester. I would love to have formal instruction on Poser.

You can create your own morph targets for you figures as well as make your own props , but these take advance skill and without formal instruction it can be difficult and frustrating. Props can be created in other programs such as Bryce and Lightwave (The class I will be taking uses Lightwave). The Poser Pro Pack is supose to enable the user to use Poser with these other programs. I was told that many computer artists use many different software programs using the stong points of each in combination.

Rating:
Summary: Great and affordable
Review: This is a really fun and affordable software package for getting into character animation and modelling. The user base is HUGE, as is the list of available 3rd party add-ons.

The weakness of this package is the render engine, which I hear will be much improved in version 5.0.

Of course, if you really "wana do serious rendering" (not my words, see the other reviews) you should have another software available. But that's not Poser's fault, it's good at doing what it's meant to do and for its price it's incredible.