Poser
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| Poser | |
 User interface of Poser 6 |
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| Developer: | e frontier |
|---|---|
| Latest release: | 7 / Autumn 2006 |
| OS: | Mac OS X, Windows |
| Use: | 3D computer graphics |
| License: | Proprietary |
| Website: | http://www.e-frontier.com |
Poser is a 3D rendering and animation software program optimized for models that depict the human figure in three-dimensional form.
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[edit] Overview
Poser is a 3D rendering software package for the posing, animating, and rendering of 3D polymesh human and animal figures. Akin to a virtual photography studio, the user can load actors, props, lighting, and cameras for still and animated renderings. Natively using a subset of the Alias object (OBJ) file format and a text-based markup for content-files, Poser comes with a basic library of human, animal, and robotic and cartoon figures. Poser also includes poses, hair pieces, props, textures, hand gestures and facial expressions. As Poser does not allow for original modelling of objects, a large community market of merchants and artists creating, selling, and marketing third-party Poser content has flourished.[citation needed]
Poser is available in English, Japanese, German, and French for both Windows and Macintosh platforms.
The current version is 7.0. Which was released on December 11th, 2006 [1].
[edit] Features
Poser 6.0 comes with a host of features such as the inclusion of "Primitive" zygotes; spheres, cubes and other shapes at both low and high resolution. As with Poser 5.0, it is compatible with 3ds Max, LightWave and Maya, which enables Poser 6.0 to render more than simply people. Indeed, Poser has become almost limitless in the characters it can render as a result of its huge 3rd Party Community many models are available such as spaceships, aliens, weapons and other such instruments.
[edit] Community
Poser has a large and avid following at a high number of online sites, and due to the inability to perform 3D model creation inside the application, an ecostructure has grown up around the trade and sales of ready-made Poser content. As a subculture in its own right, the Poser market has spawned a number of individuals known by their works. Notable third-party high-resolution human figures created for use in Poser include Apollo Maximus, Koshini, Miki, Victoria, Michael, Freak and many others. Also there is now a vast catalog of various props and scenes, both historical and fantasy in nature, as well as various real world animals, dragons, and various creatures., See Poser at the Open Directory Project for an extensive list of community and individual sites.
Most Poser artwork is created by hobbyist artists. Nearly every site supporting Poser features a gallery system for the community members to show their pictures, contributing significantly to the growth of Poser's popularity. Because Poser can be installed with several nude human figures, including optional genitals, a large part of the Poser community is committed to creating erotic and pornographic artwork. Poser's use in court cases, as an aide for timelines and juries, is increasing. There is a developing market for educational tools as well. Poser primarily serves the purpose it was originally created for, that of artists' reference tool.
[edit] Library
The Poser 6 package comes with many allready-installed features that do not have to be purchased at an online store. These are stored in the "Library." The Library includes:
- Figures, which contains animal, human, cartoon, and many other figures that have a multitude of animation tools to work with.
- Poses. There are poses for almost every figure, and there's every human pose from sleeping to picking something up to fighting.
- Expressions, which contains any expression imaginable, or close to it.
- Hair, which has many types of hairstyles to place on the characters.
- Props,which contains objects like clothes and chairs.
- Lights, which contains many ways to light your scene.
- Cameras, which contains many camera angles.
[edit] Names for Poser human characters
Up to year 1999 the Poser man and woman characters were officially called merely the "Poser x (wo)man" and suchlike, but in Poser 3 and 4 times the unofficial names Dork for the Poser 3/4 man and Posette for the Poser 3/4 woman developed in colloquial usage on WWW forums and email groups. Curious Labs, now e frontier started to officially issue names for its characters starting with Poser 5 taking names of the " Lost in Space" family. With the release of Poser 6 the now e frontier branded Poser characters were named "Jessi", "James", "Kate", and "Ben", continuing with "Sydney" and "Simon" in Poser 7. Additional add-on characters have also been created by e frontier such as Japanese-style characters "Miki" and "Koji" and African-American characters "Kelvin," and the as of yet unreleased "Olivia."
[edit] Program History
Poser was created by artist and programmer Larry Weinberg, as a software replacement for artist's mannequins. Poser has changed hands several times since first being published by Fractal Design. Fractal Design merged with MetaTools to form MetaCreations, which later sold Poser to egi.sys AG.
egi.sys AG formed a wholly owned subsidiary, Curious Labs, from former MetaCreations personnel to develop and publish Poser, but then sold the subsidiary and software to the current owner e frontier in 2003.
| Version | Release date | Publisher | Improvements / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 1995 | Fractal Design |
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| 2.0 | 1996 | Fractal Design |
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| 3.0 | 1998 | MetaCreations |
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| 4.0 | 1999 | MetaCreations |
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| 4.0.3 | September 1999 | Curious Labs |
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| Pro Pack | February 2000 | Curious Labs |
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| 5.0 | 2003 | Curious Labs |
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| 6.0 | March 2005 | Curious Labs/e frontier |
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| 7.0 | December 2006 | e frontier |
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[edit] Trivia
In September 2006 e frontier made a time limited offer for a free-of-charge download version of Poser 5. According to German news source heise.de, the number of requests for this offer crashed the servers despite throttling attempts by e frontier. The initial 4-day-offer was extended, and users were advised to download the software at a later time once they obtained their registration number. According to Steve Yatson V.P. of e frontier America Inc., over 67000 new Poser 5 applications were requested.
[edit] References
==See also==¶
[edit] External links
- e Frontier America
- Poser History Page by Larry Weinberg, along with vintage Poser artwork
- Larry Weinberg interview: Interview with the Poser Creator at Poser's 10th anniversary
- Training: Teach Yourself Filmmaking a new section in the Movie Making Manual about learning the skills of filmmaking on your personal computer. (see Digital Puppets)
- Poser at the Open Directory Project
