Poser 4 with pro pack: curious labs eases character creation. (reviews).(Evaluation)

 
Stats 
 
Poser 4 
 
Price: 
$219; Pro Pack is $149 
 
Minimum System Requirements: 
Windows 95/98/NT or Mac OS 8: 
32MB of RAM; 400MB of disk space 
 
Curious Labs 
www.curiouslabs.com 
 
infoNow 92 

MODELING, rigging, and posing 3D characters are not easy tasks. Character creation requires a lot of talent and skill. Curious Labs addresses this situation with Poser, an application designed to streamline the creation and animation of 3D characters.

Poser was originally developed by Curious Labs CEO Larry Weinberg. It was owned first by Fractal Design and then by MetaCreations, but has now been bought by Curious Labs, which is continuing to enhance the package.

Poser runs on both PC and Macintosh platforms. Its graphical interface is reminiscent of many of the old MetaCreations packages (such as Bryce). Navigational controls are identified by a set of nicely rendered pointing hands, for example. In the center of the screen is the main view-port for manipulating the models. To the left are the aforementioned navigational controls. An animation slider appears at the bottom of the screen, and manipulation controls are along the right hand side. A pull-out box contains models and props that you can use in your scenes.

A minor interface problem is that while you're navigating or moving a body part, the mesh of the character disappears, leaving only the box-shaped skeleton as a reference. This process speeds up interaction, but also forces you to guess what the final mesh will look like. It's particularly troublesome when you're posing the head, where eye position is very important.

Creating a character in Poser is a straightforward procedure. You select the character type from a pulldown menu, and the character shows up in the viewport. It can then be manipulated through controls that allow you to scale and move individual body parts.

Models can be posed easily because the characters come with complete skeletons that can be manipulated using either forward or inverse kinematics. Poser also comes with a number of preset body poses, which is a timesaving addition. Those using Poser's Pro Pack can also create their own skeletons for use in deforming a mesh, which allows for the import of custom models.