Integrate Review: Poser ProPack

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Poser 4 performs well in still-frame applications, and its userbase offers an astonishing range of add-ons.

Poser 4 was used to create Cybelle Awakens, an image by artist SyydRaven. Poser’s army of dedicated users has started an open-sourcephenomenon.

The concept of the digital studio — the virtual sound stagewith stored props and sets modeled on Hollywood's factory system— has not really come to pass. Extraordinary digital effects havebecome routine in the past 10 years and software development is stillbrisk and at times startling, but the idea that a database of digitalassets could provide a permanent library of ready-made cars, cities,humans, and props is still a dream.

Viewpoint, TurboSquid, and others continue to try to make a businessof stock models, but because of a lack of a standards the idea hasfailed to produce anything but a disparate collection of models thatrequire considerable customization.

Enter innovation — one of those unpredictable culturalsubcurrents is spreading — a movement/cult/market segment basedon Poser, the little software package that could. Poser's legions ofdedicated users are in the process of establishing an open-sourcephenomenon that is the closest thing to a digital studio. Thisself-referencing movement may have little effect on professional 3Deffects and animation today, but points the way to inevitable trends inmotion graphics software.

Poser's original concept was an artist's virtual mannequin, but ittook a while for the software to become really useful. It wasn't untilPoser 3 that the software really fired artists' imaginations. By thenthe figure models had become sufficiently realistic to be a usefulsource of reference for illustrators and animators. That's when thePoser audience began to grow, with thousands of users creating artwork,models, and costumes on sci-fi, erotic, and fantasy themes. All this ispossible because of the affordability of the program, its ease of use,and a workflow that is essentially a digital studio.

Poser offers a family of high-quality models with a set of slidersfor positioning each limb and scaling the size and muscularity of eachbody part. There are also ethnicity sliders and multiple facialexpressions and parts, such as noses, lips, brows, phonemes for lipsync and other customizing features. All are displayed rapidly in theviewport. To the right of the viewport are libraries such as Figures,Poses, Hair, Props, and Lights. When a library item is selected, it isimmediately added to the main model (character), for example a hat. Thehat appears in the viewport properly scaled and ready to go once it'slinked to the figure. The same is true of poses.

Because the figure models and their clothes are built to rigidspecifications (one size literally fits all), any user who makes a newcostume, figure, or facial morph is able to share it with any otheruser because Poser is a plug-and-play system. Many users have hundredsof megabytes of figures, morphs, clothes, and props because thousandsof free downloads are available online.

All this has given rise to a marketplace of users who trade and sellparts for a wide range of characters and fantasy worlds. A modestcottage industry is emerging, consisting of sites and productsdedicated to the very loyal — and one might say obsessive —Poser fan base. No other graphics software application has inspiredthis type of following or cooperative mechanism to share assets. Inthis respect, you would have to compare Poser to Linux, though thefollowing is considerably smaller.

Only a small number of Poser artists are animators. Most use theprogram to create illustration with emphasis on fantasy and girl art.As with any broad user base, a handful of artists emerge that areonline stars. They have pushed and strained to squeeze every ounce ofquality out of Poser. This includes using scripts, plug-ins, andworkarounds to trick the application into faking radiosity,expressions, and other features associated with higher-level 3Dapps.

Users of power tools like Maya or 3ds Max may look down on Poser'splug-and-play system, but the final output, the illustrations by thebest Poser users, are comparable to that of the best illustrationoutput of Maya. Illustrators who do not want to set up kinematicschains and build models from scratch still have access to sophisticatedmodels, textures, and hundreds of morphs and props in Poser.

Poser's application to professional production lies in the area ofart direction and storyboarding for directors and art directors whohave not mastered more time demanding programs like Max or Lightwave.Make no mistake. When combined with sets and environments, Poser stillrepresents a commitment of time that goes way beyond sketching roughstoryboard frames that can be cleaned up later by a storyboard artist.However, the learning curve becomes easier every year, along with thespeed and range of 3D products. But as all software products becomeeasier to use, 3D storyboarding will become widespread.

The original purpose of Poser was to provide illustrators with aposeable, digital model. The program has evolved to the point that itsfigures and costumes can produce results comparable to Final Fantasy— but in still frames not animation. Poser's animation, whileusable, is simply not the right tool for serious work. Artists who usePoser appreciate the quick results and that there is no way to makeanimation that easy.

Just when we thought it was safe to print this review, Poser 5appeared. We will be getting to this latest version shortly. Now,before getting to a review of Poser 4, here's an overview of Poser forreaders not familiar with the product.

The interface is composed of a viewport in the center of the screenwith camera and navigational tools to the left. Above the viewport aretools for positioning the character interactively in the viewport byclicking and dragging individual limbs or the torso. When a body partis selected, you can also access a vertical series of thumbwheels thatnumerically change the position and rotation of body parts. In additionto basic positioning of the figure, you can also control facialexpressions, body weight (fatness, muscularity), ethnicity, and facialtypes. Hand positioning includes a Grasp and Thumb Grasp control, aswell as controls for each digit in a finger. Poser provides its ownvery fast graphic engine to preview figure changes in realtime in awide range of rendering styles.

To the far right of the positioning parameters is the Librarysection, divided into categories such as Figures, Poses, Faces, Props,Hair, Lights, and Cameras. This is one of the program's most powerfulfeatures because you can save any settings you've made to a figure,Camera, or Light in the appropriate library. Hair, clothing, facialexpressions, and props also snap into place when recalled from thelibrary so you can quickly set up a new figure.

Poser is not just for human characters. In addition to bipeds likeelves, monsters, and robots, Poser has a fairly good selection ofdinosaurs, animals, and fantasy creatures.

Because users are constrained to Poser's file format, the props,parts, etc., conform to the plug-and play-system. As you might expect,there is a small number of top users producing the better workavailable online, but overall the quality of free Poser accessories isgood. In addition to the user base, third-party companies like Daz3d (adivision of Zygote, the modeling folks) specialize in high-qualityPoser figures and props.

Poser has no internal modeler and is not really optimized forsophisticated landscapes or sets, though simple environments arepossible. As a result, Poser has made a concerted effort to allow Poserfigures to be exported to Lightwave, Max, Cinema 4D, Vue d'Esprit, andBryce. Animation and textures are supported by these various packages,but once you've added a figure to a Lightwave or Max scene,repositioning body parts with Poser's parameter setup is not possible.One workaround is to set up lots of positions as keyframes of animationwhen you export. That way you can scrub the sequence to changepositions in the host program.

Poser Pro Pack is an addition to version 4 (released in early 2000)and is clearly an attempt to service the more sophisticated users. Morerecently, Curious Labs, the maker of Poser, released Avatar Lab forweb-specific characters. Here's what's new:

Simultaneous multiple camera views. This is a huge help forpositioning characters. There are eight pre-defined windowconfigurations alongside the main default window.

Poser’s interface includes a viewport, at center, andcharacter positioning tools, at top. To the right is the Library, whichhas categories for choosing Faces, Props, and Hair. (Photo courtesyCurious Labs)

File compression. Because of the free downloads and Poser's library-driven workflow, Poser tends to eat up hard drive space. This is not abig deal with today's dirt cheap 60GB drives, but Poser can easily growto 1GB or two in size. File compression cuts this problem down to size,but is not backward compatible with old files unless you want to reloadlibraries.

Flash output in ProPack. Poser's animation tools are not suitablefor sophisticated animation projects, but may be about right for theWeb. This is the case whenever a web designer integrates movingcharacters in a graphic. Users are able to set the color depth anddetail of an SWF file in the Make Movie dialog, which outputs Flash'scompact, vector-based image sequences. But there's a catch. There is aninherent problem with creating Flash from 3D insofar as the vectorsegments are equal to the polygonal segments. Because of this, theefficiency of Flash curves is lost and file sizes from 3D can be quitelarge. Poser offers seven Flash-optimized characters and these, alongwith Avatar Lab, offer some ready-made solutions that do a good job ofkeeping the file size down. Overall, Poser's web solution is quick andeffective, but your libraries of cool characters will have to besimplified to work properly.

The ability to set up your own models. This means importing a modeland aligning and scaling bones to the appropriate limbs in the Set UpRoom. Inverse kinematics and blending zones can be defined, as well asconstraints and joint limits. This is a bit of work for novice users,but a relatively straightforward process for anyone with Max or Mayaexperience. Simply imitating the Poser-supplied models will get youmost of the way there.

Python scripting. This professional feature will probably not beused by most hobbyists. However, Python is quite accessible and thereare several online resources that teach Python scripting to beginners.My experience has been that certain artists won't even give scripting atest drive. This is too bad because it's a very powerful tool.

Python is good for making global changes to scenes, such asincreasing the brightness of lights by 10% or imposing a set ofproportions on a character. This can reduce the number of steps in acomplex scene from 50 to 1. But there's hope for the anti-scripters,because even if you can't write Python scripts you only have to knowhow to load existing scripts to use them. Fortunately, like all theother assets for Poser, scripts that solve common problems areavailable as free downloads. One criticism here is that while Pythonworks well for the PC version of Poser, it is not as dependable withthe Mac version.

I take a bit of heat from my friends for using Poser when my studiouses Softimage, Max, and Maya. My view is not that of a 3D animator butof a director. Live action film design is moving beyond traditionalstoryboarding, and Poser is the most efficient character tool forartists who are not trained in CGI. Poser would be in wider use inmovie pre-production if it were not for a few issues.

First is its inability to create complex environments. Exporting amodel to Max or Lightwave is helpful, but is a time-consuming solutionfor visualizing on a short deadline. Secondly, while the Poser workflowis great, the newer models from DAZ load and save very slowly. Qualitycomes at a price. Multiple characters can easily overload the system.The workarounds are acceptable for the hobbyist, but not a professionalart director or production designer. And lastly, not all Python scriptswork in the Mac version.

Here is what to expect in Poser 5:

A new node-based rendering engine that supports micro-polygons,displacement mapping, and subdivision surfaces.

Morph putty that allows direct manipulation of facial meshes.

Dynamic hair and dynamic cloth (including collision detection).

A photo-based modeling system for facial models.

Poser 5 is available now for the PC, with the Mac version to followshortly.

Given the sameness of 3D animation products today, Poser offers aunique approach. Its value has been extended through the hard work ofits users and the Curious Labs development team. With faster processingand some new features, Poser could revolutionize film design.

Company: Curious Labs Santa Cruz, Calif.; (831)462-8901
www.curiouslabs.com

Product: Poser 4, Poser ProPack

Assets: Plug-and-play system with thousands of free downloadsavailable online; sophisticated models, textures, and hundreds ofmorphs and props

Demographic: Character artists not trained in CGI,still-frame artists

Price: $279

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