- Poser 8 is an affordable, powerful, yet easy to use 3D character animation solution
- Includes 3D character tools and over 2.5GB of ready to use scene content and figures; no need to model 3D characters from scratch
- Includes 8 brand new, ready-to-pose, fully textured human figures with over 400 morphs and body controls to fully customize each character
- Renders photorealistic or stylized images and videos for print, web or animation projects
- With included Wardrobe Wizard, fit your Poser clothing assets to the new Poser 8 figures
Product Description
Easily Create 3D Character Art and Animation.Amazon.com Product Description
Poser 8 is the world’s most complete solution for creating art and animation with 3D characters. With Poser, it’s easy to make 3D art. Poser includes over 2.5 gigabytes of ready-to-pose human and animal figures, textures, props and 3D scene elements. Generate new characters from your facial photographs. Add hair and clothing. Dress Poser’s virtual stage with props, lights and camer… More >>
#1 by Penmouse on May 22, 2010 - 2:57 am
Poser is a program that takes a bit of technical expertise and has a long learning curve. Overall, the program seems to have lots of potential once all the applications are figured out.
Will update this review after working with Poser a bit more. For now I am still in learning mode.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Computerdude1032 on May 22, 2010 - 5:28 am
I’ve never personally used animation software before, but have seen some professional animation 3D animation done before, and have a huge interest in the field, so I was excited to see what the software had to offer. At the high price tag, I assumed this would be “professional” grade software, allowing me to do at least “semi-professional work.” Unfortunately that’s just not the case. Sure the software is easy to use compared to the “real deal,” but don’t think that you’ll be animating the next Toy Story, or even making any halfway decent looking movie. The customization options are near endless, but when it comes down to it, the human renderings are not very lifelike- I’ve seen better looking stuff come from my less powerful Xbox 360 games. If you want to spend a lot of money and get some professional software I’d recommend getting Apple’s Motion 4 (included in Final Cut Studio). Sure it’s SLIGHTLY more expensive, but with that software you can make professional grade animations.
I will still give Poser 8 3 stars because it is in itself decent software, but should be advertised as “personal” grade software that it is and at a lower price. But when it comes down to it, unless you enjoy making amateurish looking movies and animations I can’t really think of a use for this software. The “new” lip-syncing feature sure sounds cool, but again, lip syncing is (at least at at the present time) is something that needs to be fine tuned by hand, and isn’t going to look great when done by some algorithm.
Again, I can’t recommend this software at this price point, but if there is ever a (very large) sale this may be a halfway decent introductory software piece.
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Leebo on May 22, 2010 - 8:13 am
I don’t have much to add that the other reviewer’s haven’t already stated. I give it four stars because I didn’t have as many problems as the 3 star reviewers did. I will say that I would also recommend that you save often too. I like the new interface and tools in the version. You can produce a finished work faster than before. Uses more computing power and takes a little longer to load but otherwise I do like this version better than the last.
Rating: 4 / 5
#4 by M. Cheung on May 22, 2010 - 8:43 am
I’ve been using Poser 8 for about a month now and so far have zero negatives.
I’ve been dabbling in custom avatar creation and found this app to be:
1. Easy to use
2. Easy to understand
3. Not so high-tech as to be “too” powerful
4. Fun, with lots of precreated motions and expressions
The ability to use real people as a base to start is terrific. I had been tracing photos in Photoshop and Illustrator which was taking forever. Poser 8 has decreased the production time 100-fold. Seriously. I can’t believe I was using anything else for these projects!
I was pleasantly surprised with the easy-to-understand interface. It’s much more intuitive than I thought it would be. Really seems geared toward even the novice user. Worth the price, highly recommended!
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by bunnyrabbit4 on May 22, 2010 - 10:27 am
I have been a Poser user since the first version and it was a long term love affair. While I’ve graduated to more powerful programs, I still like to compose scenes in Poser. I haven’t had time to put this program through all of its bells and whistles, but so far I don’t see a great need to upgrade to this if you have Poser 7. Most of the Pros I list are for people who have never used Poser as they are included in Poser 7 as well as 8.
If you are a first time buyer and just want to have some fun, the product is very worth the price.
I will add to this review as I work more with the features.
Pros:
Good basic program for posing figures and setting up scenes, especially if you just want to have fun fairly quickly. It is great for creating realistic comic book scenes.
Has some sketch features that will turn your picture into a drawing, however none is as good as what you can do with Photoshop plug-ins. It can be used for doing simple cartoon animations with voice.
Great for artists who would like to have a free model at their disposal.
Most of the features work well and so do the most popular third party figures that owners usually purchase, like Daz3D’s Victoria and Michael.
It comes with more models than Poser 7, but it’s an odd assortment, mostly freebie stuff from a variety of vendors. Poser has never been stand alone in this respect. Expect to purchase lots of models to create you scenes.
This program offers the ability to put your own face or that of friends on a character, quickly and easily.
Lots of complexity if you want to create characters and hairstyles yourself. However, you don’t have to engage its more complex features to have a good time.
Cons:
The new interface has a very small slide bar on the content area. It is difficult both to see and use. As someone else noted, if you have a lot of models it can be hard to navigate.
So far I’ve found that the morphs on the new Poser 8 characters can create unexpected deformities. This isn’t a big problem because you will probably prefer the Poser 6 ones anyway.
While minor changes to the program have been made, the artistry of the stock characters has gone downhill since Poser 6, which predate Smith Micro’s ownership.
They now own Content Paradise and encourage you to use a link to that site which has very few models worth your time. Again the artistry is lacking. They may also own anything you produce with this program. See note under “compamy” below. While Smith Micro has maintained the program, they don’t appear to be creative when it comes to content. Check out other vendors like Daz3D, Renderosity and RuntimeDNA. All of them offer high quality models for Poser that include a user friendly license. Daz also has a competing program called Daz Studio but I don’t find it rivals this program yet. As things stand you should not use any of the models provided in renders that you want to sell in a comic book or animation. Use the companies mentioned above to purchase models with a reasonable user license.
While Victoria and Michael work well, Daz’s David is invisible to the “Conform to figure” command. This means you have to manually align hair and other items to the figure. I have not tested out other third party characters and animals to see if this is a major problem.
The Company:
Perhaps the worst thing about this program is Smith Micro itself. It has included a new license with Poser 8 that suggests it owns all the content you create unless you upgrade to Poser Pro. I say suggests because like everything about Smith Micro, including its “support page” you are confronted with rules and definitions…the absolute opposite of what a creative artists wants to deal with when deciding on a product.
Normally models that you purchase or build in 3d programs can be used in 2d renderings and animations with few limitations. The only thing that is forbidden is displaying someone’s figures and the textures applied to them in such a way as to allow them to be copied and used by others in 3D form. Limiting your use of the product by not giving clear ownership to the images and animations created shows a very poor understanding of the market they are servicing and the artists themselves.
It is easy to fall in love with Poser if you create a few cool projects with it that inspire visions of perhaps a short film. The way to sell POSER PRO is not by limiting POSER it is by making people so invested in Poser through the projects they have created that they want to moving up to a more powerful version. This licensing scheme is a dream killer especially when industry standard programs are available to full time students for less than Poser Pro costs.
Right now, full time students can buy a limited copy of AUTODESK’S ENTERTAINMENT CREATION SUITE, (which is the industry standard) for $349. Mastering this program can land you a job. Why spend time learning a program that only upgrades to another program that is still not a major player in the animation market?
Smith Micro also has its own system of communication that users are forced to abide by. It requires an incident report (they define exactly what an incident is and you only get one per contact). They also tell you their system is better than email. I disagree. Their online system never accepted my registered serial number for Poser 7. Apparently it is either not in their data base or was imported with an error when they bought the program from EFrontier. Since my serial number won’t work, I can’t file an incident report. Since they won’t accept an email…I can’t tell them about my problem unless I pay $20 to call them. It is sad that this fun little program has landed in arms of such a cold, distant company.
BTW It took a few days before they would accept my serial number on this version. In retrospect I am glad that I didn’t get the update to Poser 7. I still have the original Efrontier install which allows me to own the content I create.
Rating: 3 / 5