Poser?

[JuST]

I've got several simple questions:
What is Poser really good for?
Can I use my own characters within it?
What are the advantages of Poser? Is it worth buying it?

The demo always crashes on my PC, when I try to open one of the model-editing-rooms (e.g. "face")

[Arsenic]

If you are able to model your own characters and to the rigging part, you don't need it. Except if you need some "easy characters" tu put in your scenes in order to increase the speed of your production.

[manleystanley]

"What is Poser really good for?" sucking your wallet dry, content costs money.
"Can I use my own characters within it?" What Arsenic said.
"What are the advantages of Poser?" Depends. If you have Carrara with transposer you need Poser to use the dynamic hair and clothes.
"What are the advantages of Poser?" Depends on you CG intentions, If you have Carrara 5 with transposer, no you really don't need it.

[JuST]

Well, ok. I do have Car5pro, but I guess there is really nearly no need to buy it.
I was just thinking about it, because of the posibility to create clothes and hair... But if I'm not able to import my own characters and put the hair on them it is not what I need.
So thanks for your answers!

[mon_stdnt]

I have poser and for me is was useless.
I had to unstill it from my computer.

Cons:
The navigation of the enviroment is hard compared to Carrara's ALT+Mouse Clicks. Theirs no arrows when selecting(XYZ cortinates) parts of the figure.
Customizing clothes from a plane(for me) is very difficult.
Customizing bones for your character is hard.

Pros:
It has a good hair tool, compare to Carrara's fur plugin.*
The morphs are pretty cool, facial and the head. Set poses and facial expressions.
Can export to Carrara with transposer, if you have it.


You should only use it, if you need for a fast character set-up.

* Carrara's plugin has a bit variation on customizing the hair strands

[Couerl]

Well, I have had Poser 5 since it came out, but really don't do much with it. I like Hex and Carrara more than eithe Poser or Daz Studio, but if you like that kind of art, then try Daz Studio first and then get poser if you like that.

Maybe if its true that the French team has been hired by E-Frontiers then this could be good for Poser. Content is okay, but development is the key and as a user, I'm always wanting things to make my visions easier and better to create. I hope they get work there, I'd bet Shade or Poser could become very formidible with some heavy dev behind them.

[tonytrout]

Poser6 can do fabulous dynamic cloth and hair but requires a reasonable bit of tweaking on your part. It also animates faster than C5P and you can bring that into C5 with transposer (including cloth and hair) Thats about all I use it for. Otherwise Carrara 6 is/was rumoured to be implementing these but who knows now.

[tonytrout]

PS You can certainly import your own characters into P6 as Obj but you need to rig/animate and add hair inside P6 before bringing back to C5 for rest of scene and rendering.

[manleystanley]

If you intend to make content; as in cloths, hair, props, to sell. Poser is a must have. Anyone know where I can get P5 for free?

I once; well more then once, said I would never buy Poser

[sadot]

poser is the expensive plug-in for carrara -i use poser only like that a plug-in not a real 3d program-

[manleystanley]

[juanmanuel]

I use Poser a lot as a source for human scales for architectural renders, and its cloth room to get waving flags etc effects quickly and realisitcally.

Truth be said, Poser is not for creating new clothes (there is now virtualfashion specifically for that), but for dressing up characters with the clothes made somewhere else. For that purpose, it's quite capable.

And as to designing characters, yes, if you want a really unique character, Poser does not really do that. It tweaks characters, and it poses them.

You want a freebie character generator (sadly, without the rigging)? Go to www.makehuman.org.

Poser is designed for some pretty specific things. What it does, it does quickly and easily. But what it does not do, well, there are some turnarounds, but there are less complicated ways of doing them.

[manleystanley]

But you can do the figure design, cloths making in Carrara 5, But you will need poser for well saving as a poser file for sales. Hence Poser being an expencive plugin for Carrara.
I've thought about trying to bone/rig{?} a makehuman figure. It's a nice program with a lot of body build adjustments. But I think I will try to tackle animation first.

[medeamajic]

I think Poser is a great program for rookies who want to do figure animation but do not know anything about rigging or modeling. In a nut shell Poser must use pre made Daz models or 3rd party modeling software since Poser does not have a modeling room as of yet. I think it is easier for a rookie to do figure animation with Poser than to build a figure from scratch in Carrara and apply rigging. Carrara has very easy rigging but the Daz models are pre rigged. Like many others I used to use Poser until Carrara 4 added morphing. There is no need to get Poser if you are good at doing figure animaton with Carrara. Poser is an easier way for a rookie to get started into figure animation but the rookie will be limited by the small feature set of Poser.

Poser can do much better animation previews with Daz figures than Carrara 5 as of now. Better previews should be top priority for Carrara 6.

[steama]

Toyz. There are so may good toyz and so many options to choose from! It's all good if you can have some fun and get some work done.

[JuST]

Thank you for all the comments!
I do not think about selling any models I made... so from this point of view I do not need Poser.
I'm not really good at animating anything... but I guess Car will do the Job.
As I already said I was just thinking about it, to get real-looking clothes and hair. Because for me it seems to be nearly impossible to create hair (and clothes) which look textured well and behave (or just look) physically correct.
But... well,... I learned a lot from your posts and I guess Poser is not the right thing for me. I don't want to be limited to a few hairstyles some people did. I want to create my own styles and own clothes. So I'll have to wait until it becomes possible to create unique hairstyles/clothes in Carrara 6 or 7. Why can't Carrara have an hair-/clotheseditor like Maya has?

[medeamajic]

I think Carrara 6 may have a cloth and hair editor but I also think Poser 7 might have a modeling room. This is just a guess.

[EdW]

If you have the ability and time to model and rig your own figures, then you don't need Poser. Poser has a wealth of content and figures all premade and ready to use. The morphs alone make Poser worthwhile. Big time saver and easy to use. I do a lot of animation and also make content (clothes, props, vehicles, etc) and you do need it if you are going to make content. My weapon of choice for modeling is Cinema 4D. Without having Poser you can model the clothing, hair, etc, but won't be able to rig the model for use in Poser.

[Fanci]

I started out with Psp.. moved on to PS.. Went to poser... and now I want to try some modeling.. and texturing.
Poser is a a nice way to pass some time creating some nice digital art. I think its a nice step in the progress through digital art...

[juanmanuel]

I do my own content, and I use Poser to manipulate that content. Why? Poser is just dumbe easy for posing figures.