OT: Poser sale

LReavis wrote on 12/11/2009, 8:05 AM
best prices I've ever seen. I can't say that Poser is an animation package that you'll love - Antics was a lot easier to learn and a lot easier to use, and in some ways more powerful (it would import Google Sketchup creations). Unfortunately, Smith Micro, now the owner of Poser and several other animation packages, bought Antics and killed it. Soooooo sorry. But Poser is a useful replacement.

Get poser here:
http://news.contentparadise.com/?utm_source=MailingList&utm_medium=email&utm_content=larrydreavis%40gmail.com&utm_campaign=091210+Poser+Family+Sale+on+CP

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/13/2009, 9:23 AM
If you are interested in this kind of software you should probably take a look at DAZ Studio 3. It is free and does a lot of what Poser does. There is also a pro version you can buy but the free version is a good place to start.

I found Poser to be one of the worst organized pieces of software I've ever had the displeasure to have used. Their library management system is a convoluted mess of patches and workarounds that content suppliers have come up with over the years to try and make up for it's inadequacies. I don't use it anymore. I find that Carrara 3D handles Poser characters much easier along with everything else it can do.

I guess the message here is, test these packages out before you buy any of them. I consider my purchase of Poser a big waste of money considering the alternatives that are available today.

~jr
TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/13/2009, 1:58 PM
well, except daz studio doesn't REALLY do what poser does, it's just a 3d animation/editing program. You could do the same thing with Maya, Blender, etc. I find it more confusing then Poser myself, but I've been using Poser for years now (since the late 90's).

MakeHuman is a free person making program but not as many features as poser, and you still need a 3d app to work with the model. Daz might do, but I'm not seeing the point to learning Daz when you can learn Blender, which is free, and had much more uses.
LReavis wrote on 12/14/2009, 10:49 AM
Agreed, Poser is the pits. It's been around for a long time and no doubt has accumulated so many patches that it may never work right again without a total (expensive) re-write.

However, it can do some pretty realistic human figures with lip-sync voices, and the ability to morph face & figure provides an endless supply of figures from tall and skinny to short and fat, from Asian to Caucasian to African faces, etc. Pretty impressive - all done from a single base figure (of which there are several). It also has an active community to create clothes, hair, and other props that are ready-made (for a price).

I'm tempted by Carrara, but is seems to offer little that Poser plus the free Google SketchUp, with its free ProperAnimation and SketchyPhysics plugins, all rendered into near-photo realistic animations by the $100 Twilight rendering engine (it even makes remarkably realistic glass, such as the glass on a blender cup).

Not only is money saved, but Sketchup seems to my taste to be very intuitive, the ProperAnimation especially seems extremely easy on the nerves when learning and using it (I learned to use it in 10 min.), and a hyper-active community has put thousands, perhaps millions, of their free public domain creations on Google's 3d Warehouse. I really love SketchUp and use it regularly to create quite realistic animations in just minutes (not counting the rendering time with Twilight, which - like all realistic rendering programs - can labor for hours on even a short animation).

Later edit: Incidentally, I've had a bit of a problem with DAZ 3 crashing on my Win7-64bit system . . .