Two of the most popular 3D figure design tools are getting even more powerful!
That's right!—Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012 are now available for purchase. We can’t wait to show off the incredibly powerful new features that further establish Poser as the world's easiest tool for creating art and animation using 3D characters.
The simple-to-learn tools and included characters let you focus on making art, whether you're a professional artist or dabbling in graphics for the first time. Each product includes over three gigabytes of ready-to-pose, fully textured, human and animal figures, basic accessories such as hair, clothing, pose sets, real world props and 3D scene elements. In the Face Room, customize Poser characters from facial photographs. Add dynamic hair and clothing. Dress Poser's virtual stage with props, lights and cameras to build 3D scenes. Animate and render scenes into photorealistic images and video for web, print, and film projects. Graphic artists, illustrators and animators can all get creative with Poser!
Poser Pro 2012: For the professional artist and production team. It's the fastest way to add pre-rigged and fully textured 3D characters to their projects. Included plug-ins transport pre-rigged, fully textured and animated 3D characters into 3ds Max, Maya, LightWave 3D and CINEMA 4D projects.
Poser 9: For the serious artist, illustrator or animator—or someone who simply dreams of playing with 3D characters. Includes all the tools and content you need to start creating 3D character art and animation in minutes.
Reviews
To me this is the biggest jump that Poser has made in one version. I really don't know where to begin - between the sub surface scattering, weight mapping, the additions to the joint system, the user interface tweaks, and the speed improvements I am in Poser euphoria. What is my favorite feature? I have two: My absolute favorite would be the SSS and material additions. My "Guilty Pleasure" is the drag and drop conforming.
—Traveler
The weight mapping is better than [3D Studio] Max. Awesome! I had begun to dread rigging with spheres, like trying to paint a masterpiece with a broom. But with the weight mapping, move out the way Leonardo, I'm commin’ through.
—Phantom3D
This is one of the largest leaps forward I have seen Poser make. The response time of Poser has improved in many areas. The new features are outstanding and so easy to use. It's like plug and play rendering. I have to say that Poser's new SSS node is my new addiction.
—RedSpark
Poser 9 or Poser Pro 2012 may be the answer to your design challenges!
The Poser family of products is used in a wide variety of industries and in many types of projects, but the core benefits of the software are essentially the same in all cases. Poser and Poser Pro answer many of the challenges that face illustrators, artists, industrial designers, animators, and game designers alike.
Challenge: Creating 3D illustrations that include people or digital characters is time-consuming and hard.
Poser is the answer!
Designers and artists want to create art and animations with 3D characters, without having to create those 3D characters from scratch. We don’t blame you! That’s why Poser and Poser Pro come with everything you need to quickly add life to your project.
- Over 3GB of ready-to-pose and easy-to-customize human figures
- A variety of clothing items and hair styles, animals, toys, robots, manikins and cartoon people
- Well-designed tools make it easy to pose and animate 3D characters
Poser and Poser Pro let you focus on the story you want to tell by freeing you from having to build the actors and props in your story. Quickly customize and pose your characters on the stage, set up the scene with props, backgrounds and architectural elements to support that story and then create your final 3D art and animations.
Advanced projects
Poser 9 includes advanced vertex Weight Map Rig support to generate better performing 3D characters that can be more easily posed with natural joints across the body. Hybrid Rigging supports both traditional Poser Sphere and Capsule zones to be used in combination. Poser 9 also supports both traditional grouped body part figures and single mesh figures.
Weight Map Rigging, available in Poser Pro 2012, offers several benefits including smoother bending folds and bulges with vertex by vertex control over every bend or bulge. Weight Maps can be added to any joint to control bends, twists, scales and bulges.
Put any clothing item on any figure with Vertex Weight Map Auto Transfer
This powerful new feature in Poser Pro 2012 makes it incredibly easy to transform any existing clothing item into a full vertex Weight Map Rigged conforming clothing item. Simply open the object you want to transform in the Set-Up room, click on the figure you want the item to match in the Poser Library, and let Poser Pro do the rest. Once transformed, the new figure will inherit the source figure’s vertex Weight Maps and even body part groups. It literally takes seconds to transform any imported or older figure or geometry into a fully Weight Mapped Poser Figure.
Challenge: Getting the right lighting effects on figures and objects is difficult.
Poser is the answer!
We changed the face of rendering in Poser when we introduced Indirect Lighting (IDL). And it became obvious when Poser users discovered that IDL enabled objects with high ambient values to cast light that with a few tweaks we could open up a huge array of lighting effects. Now you can create Light Emitters; toggle off visibility in rendering for objects, yet still enable them to cast light. Build light domes, environment domes and large area lights to cast ambient light without being rendered in the scene. Combined with our new Poser Scene Library category, this feature will be a great way to deliver a fully lit IDL environment.
Poser 9’s improved Firefly render engine now supports Indirect Lighting with Irradiance Caching for Global Illumination effects and even supports rendering with Ambient Occlusion. New Shader nodes enable Subsurface Scattering for luminescent skin tones and Custom Scattering for bioluminescent effects. Poser’s physically correct light fall-off produces more photo-real final renderings.
Subsurface Scattering helps enhance lighting on translucent materials
Skin, wax, and marble are just some of the materials that are translucent when struck by light. To recreate this subtle yet crucial effect when rendering these materials in Poser, we’ve incorporated a set of easy to configure Subsurface Scattering Material Nodes. New Nodes include Subsurface Skin, Custom Scatter, and basic Scatter. The Scatter Node includes a number of optimized pre-sets for Skin, Marble, Milk, Fruit and Vegetables. With Poser’s new Subsurface Material nodes, you’ll transform your scenes into rendered masterpieces with lifelike translucent surfaces.
Challenge: Putting actual people into dangerous, inaccessible or imaginary places to serve as a model for digital image or video creation isn’t possible or practical.
Poser is the answer! Take crime scene recreation for example: you need an imaginary 3D world where you can place all the suspects, victims, weapons, explosions, and more and play out their interactions without anyone getting hurt. In fact, Poser Pro is a critical tool used by the production crew for the television drama Bones. They use it weekly to pose and animate their re-enactments—check out this video straight from one of their episodes.
Industrial and architectural designers, medical illustrators, product engineers and graphic artists often need virtual humans to interact with a design, to convey a sense of scale or draw attention to a feature in a designed product. Poser lets you work with 3D actors in scenes that would be impossible to duplicate in the real world. Historic scenes, imaginary or fantasy scenes, sci-fi and superhero scenes are easy to create in Poser, so you can let your imagination run wild and build exactly the world you want, and populate that world with 3D characters.
At your fingers tips is a huge library of included ready-to-pose and easy-to-customize characters with clothing and props that will fit into almost any scene you can imagine. Customize those figures with poses, expressions and face room morphs and set-up cameras and lights to support any perspective, point of view or lighting condition.
Constraint Channels and Constraint Objects make Animating easier and faster
For our animators, we’ve introduced Constraint Channels and Objects. Basically, the Constraint Object is an animatable handle for an object that will allow you to parent it to a figure’s hand as it winds up for the throw, and then have the object leave the hand and fly through the air as if it’s being thrown. Constraints are a simple to use feature that will permit all kinds of cool animation effects.
New features in Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012
Real-time OpenGL Scene Preview
With Poser Pro’s OpenGL improvements, you’ll see accurate, real-time previews of Spot, Point, Infinite and IBL (Image Based Lights) Lights, Shadows, with Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Normal Maps and Back Facing Polygons in a Gamma Corrected scene. The Light Properties control allows the user to toggle specific lights to preview in the scene, with accumulated brightness for each selected light. MIP Map support improves performance when previewing large textures. Our OpenGL hardware improvements preview textures more efficiently, with reliable onscreen display of lights, shadows, and color, for smarter, quicker interactive scene creation.
Subsurface Scattering
Skin, wax, and marble are just some of the materials that are translucent when struck by light. To recreate this subtle yet crucial effect when rendering these materials in Poser, we’ve incorporated a set of easy to configure Subsurface Scattering Material Nodes. New Nodes include Subsurface Skin, Custom Scatter, and basic Scatter. The Scatter Node includes a number of optimized pre-sets for Skin, Marble, Milk, Fruit and Vegetables. With Poser’s new Subsurface Material nodes, you’ll transform your scenes into rendered masterpieces with lifelike translucent surfaces.
Rendering Performance Improvements
Poser’s FireFly Rendering Engine keeps getting better with numerous improvements in reflections, transparencies, depth of field and 3D motion blur quality, netting visibly smoother results without significantly impacting render times. We’ve invested time in Indirect Lighting (IDL) which now can be combined with Ambient Occlusion (AO), and is faster when rendering transparency. We’ve also enabled Light Emitting Objects which are invisible in final renderings yet contribute indirect illumination to the scene. In addition to our new Subsurface Scattering Nodes, we’ve included a new Custom Scatter Node to support effects such as bioluminescent skin.
Weight Map Rigging
High-end professional 3D applications like 3ds Max and Maya have set the standard for vertex Weight Map Rigging, and now both Poser and Poser Pro provide the most open vertex Weight Mapping support available to Poser users today. Weight Map Rigging offers several benefits including smoother bending folds and bulges with vertex by vertex control over every bend or bulge. Weight Maps can be added to any joint bend, to twist and scaling channels and can be used to control bulges. Plus Poser takes the standard of Weight Map Rigging several steps further with support for Hybrid Joint Rigging (combining traditional Poser Sphere/Capsule Zones with Weight Maps), using either single mesh geometry or traditionally grouped geometry, and enables Weight Maps or zones to affect any number of body parts beyond the current joint. Poser’s new Weight Map Rigging provides a platform that will support third party figures that use Weight Mapping, by expanding the open, well documented and easily editable Poser PZ3 file format, to encourage creativity and user driven enhancements to Poser figures.
Finally we can now combine advanced weight-mapping techniques with traditional rigging methods! Now I'll be able to do the projects I've been holding back because the old rigging system hasn't been up to it, without being forced to use weight maps where they aren't needed. I really feel that a lot of careful thought went into this release.
—Esha
Vertex Weight Map Auto Transfer– Poser Pro 2012 Only
For easy character content creation using Poser Pro, we’ve developed the new vertex Weight Map Auto Transfer feature. This powerful new feature makes it incredibly easy to transform any existing clothing item into a full vertex Weight Map Rigged conforming clothing item. Simply open the object you want to transform in the Set-Up room, click on the figure you want the item to match in the Poser Library, and let Poser Pro do the rest. Once transformed, the new figure will inherit the source figure’s vertex Weight Maps and even body part groups. It literally takes seconds to transform any imported or older figure or geometry into a fully Weight Mapped Poser Figure. Putting on finishing touches is a breeze with Pro 2012’s vertex Weight Map Painting tools. Combined with Poser’s included Wardrobe Wizard, you can even transfer the full set of morphs from the source figure to your newly created figure.
Weight Map Creation Tools – Poser Pro 2012 Only
Poser Pro delivers the most complete suite of vertex Weight Map Creation tools in the world of Poser. Creating and fine-tuning Weight Maps is easy using Pro 2012’s updated Joint Editor features. Select any joint and simply add a new Weight Map. Click on the Paint Mode to interactively paint vertex weights, with full pressure sensitive tablet support for optimal rig fine tuning. Apply Symmetry to transfer bend and bulge Weight Maps from side to side. And if you want to convert existing Poser figures to the powerful new Weight Map Rigging system, simply convert the figure’s traditional Poser Sphere and Capsule Zones into a Weight Map that is fully editable. Combine Weight Maps with Zones of Influence for Hybrid Joint Rigging, providing the best of both rigging systems. And of course, with Pro 2012’s new Weight Map Auto Transfer, you’ll be able to transfer any existing Weight Map Rig onto any new figure. This state of the art suite of Weight Map Creation Tools is going to change the face of content development for Poser.
The weight map creation tools in [Poser Pro] 2012 are fluid and precise, making the whole experience feel like you are carefully hand-sculpting the weight map's influence. It is a joy to work with and once you see the results and imagine the possibilities, you won't want to look back!
—Netherworks
Grouping Objects
Need a way to move, scale or hide a bunch of objects in a Poser scene, at the same time? Now you can simply add any number of scene elements, from figures and props to lights, into a Grouping Object. They can be moved, rotated, scaled and animated or even hidden and revealed. Create multiple Grouping Objects to hold different areas of a scene, or related props and figures. Adding selected scene elements into any Grouping Object is easy using our powerful new Context Menu controls. This significant new feature will change how you manage your scenes, providing you plenty of control over whole groups of objects in that scene.
Expanded Context Menus
Sometimes, it’s the simple things that make the biggest difference. Poser’s expanded Context Menus will vastly improve interaction and scene creation, and change the way you work with Poser forever. Six unique Context Menus have been developed for Figures, Actors, Objects, Lights, Cameras and Backgrounds to provide quick access to the most useful menu operations including selecting, toggling IK on/off, copying symmetry in poses, pointing lights, conforming clothing, setting parenting, changing light types, and even hiding/revealing all items in a Grouping Object. Once you start using Poser’s new Context Menus, you’ll enjoy working and playing with Poser all over again.
Poser also greatly improved the usability with things like hierarchical menus, delete attached figures, default white color for light, groupings, show/hide backfacing polys in preview, access to menus with right-click, display targetname in drag and drop, improved manual and much more.
—Wimvdb
Full Scene Category in Library
In the past, if you wanted to re-use a Poser scene with that perfect environment settings, lights, cameras, props and dependencies and even render settings, you had to build it, save it, then find and import it. With the new Scene Category in the Library you simply add that full Poser scene with lights, cameras, all props and figures in place, and with all dependencies right into the Library. From there your new scenes can be dragged directly from the Library into the Poser workspace. For Poser content developers this new feature will enable you to deliver fully constructed scenes with dependencies and optimal render settings that require less user support and are far easier to use.
Multi-select Drag and Drop Library Support
When we introduced Drag and Drop support in Poser’s Library, our users found it so much easier to apply materials, or conform clothing, or drop a pose right onto a figure. With the Library’s new Multi-select feature, you’ll be able to select several items of clothing and drag them right onto a figure and auto-conform them in one step. But it gets even better when working with multiple categories of items in your Favorites; Multi-select a hairstyle, several clothing items and a pose all at once, then click and drag them right onto your target figure. Poser will automatically apply the items. It doesn’t get much easier. Within the Library, you’ll be able to drag and drop items from folder to folder making it easy to reorganize your Content
Morphing Tool Tablet Support
If you own a Wacom pressure sensitive tablet, Poser is going to make you a very happy camper. We’ve engineered Wacom tablet support into the Morph Tool so you can have much finer control when creating morphs. Vary brush strength with pressure for any brush size you’ve set. The Morph Tool is powerful, but with tablet support, it’s gotten even better. The new ‘Flatten’ option for Morphing Tool Create mode moves points toward a "best fit" plane determined by the affected vertices.
Constraint Channels and Constraint Objects
For our animators that have been looking for a way to animate a ball being throw or caught, we’ve introduced Constraint Channels and Objects. Basically, the Constraint Object is an animatable handle for an object that will allow you to parent it to a figure’s hand as it winds up for the throw, and then have the object leave the hand and fly through the air as if it’s being thrown. Constraints are a simple to use feature that will permit all kinds of cool animation effects.
Light Emitting Objects
We changed the face of rendering in Poser when we introduced Indirect Lighting (IDL). Poser users quickly discovered that, with high ambient values to cast light that with a few tweaks, they could open up a huge array of lighting effects. Now you can create Light Emitters; toggle off visibility in rendering for objects, yet still enable them to cast light. Build light domes, environment domes and large area lights to cast ambient light without being rendered in the scene. Combined with our new Poser Scene Library category, this feature will be a great way to deliver a fully lit IDL environment.
Frame Selected Object
In complex scenes it can be a little challenging to keep your camera focused on an area that you’re working on using Poser’s original camera controls. To help out, we’ve introduced the Frame Selected Object Camera. With the click of a button, your current camera will zoom in on the selected object, allowing you take a closer look at exactly where you’re working on. This makes it easier to navigate in and out of your deep scenes and saves you time when creating them.
Orbit Selected Object Mode
Poser also includes a new mode as a companion feature to the new Frame Selected Object Camera. Simply toggle on the Orbit Selected mode and your current camera will rotate around the center point of the currently selected object. This makes it easier to focus on a selected element, and view it from every direction by spinning Camera trackball controls.
Full 64-bit Mac/Win – Poser Pro 2012 Only
Building a cross platform (M/W) application with full 64 bit support is no easy task, but with this release of Poser Pro, both Mac and Windows users can now benefit from the virtually unlimited use of system memory, and full processing power of 64 bit hardware. The Poser Pro application, with its FireFly render engine and included network capable Queue Manager are 64 bit enabled so you can use your memory more efficiently, create and render larger scenes, and ultimately save time across the board.
Faster Dynamic Hair
Our engineers spent time under the hood to speed up Dynamic Hair. Now Poser’s powerful Dynamic Hair calculates collisions faster and renders it faster as well.
Pre-render Texture Caching
We’ve heard your requests for faster pre-render texture handling and delivered two new methods that will save time the minute you press that Render Now button. Poser now preprocesses all scene textures in the background making use of your multicore processor, in prep for that first render, and can cache those textures session to session if you desire. Choose between traditional and the new Crisp' texture filtering options.
Python 2.7 Support
Poser keeps improving and so does Python. We now provide Python 2.7 support to take full advantage of improvements to the scripting language.
Improved COLLADA Support – Poser Pro 2012 Only
COLLADA is the most broadly adopted standard 3D content and figure interchange format in the industry today. The list of powerful 2D and 3D applications with COLLADA integration keeps growing and includes Adobe Photoshop, Softimage XSI, LightWave 3D, CINEMA 4D, Houdini, Modo, SketchUp, Blender, and Wings 3D. COLLADA makes it easy to export to various game engines and WebGL frameworks. Poser provides one of the most robust integrations in the market, and to ensure that our support is second to none, we are actively involved in the COLLLADA specification and conformance programs. New to Poser Pro is editing of fully rigged, single skin mesh, weight mapped figures for inclusion in projects created using other tools with COLLADA support.
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Support
Poser Pro 2012 and Poser 9 are now fully Cocoa based and supported on Apple’s latest OS X 10.7 Lion.
Advanced features only available in Poser Pro 2012
Poser Pro 2012 includes all the basic features of Poser 9 plus these additional features listed below. If you’re interested in the most complete version of Poser, Pro 2012 has everything you’ll need.
Queue Manager / Network Render Queue
Save time and cut production costs by using additional computers to queue complex scenes and render lengthy animations. The standalone Queue Manager allows you to set-up and manage a Network Render Queue, distribute rendering jobs across that network, and manage those rendering jobs to suit your schedule. With the Queue Manager, distributed renderings can be paused and resumed, or fully rendered on slave machines so you can keep working in Poser Pro on your master machine.
Background Rendering
Increase personal productivity with background rendering in Poser Pro 2012. Work on 3D scenes in the foreground, while rendering images with the Firefly render engine in the background. When rendering in the background, you can open or close other scene files, save your project, and continue working without interrupting the background render.
64-bit Application and FireFly Render Engine
Poser Pro 2012 lets you take advantage of high performance 64-bit OS X and Windows Operating Systems and hardware with the 64-bit Poser Pro application, the Queue Manager and the FireFly Render Engine. 64-bit support efficiently uses all available system memory to open and render even the most complex scene files in the shortest possible time.
High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) Export
Create vivid, life-like images with HDRI output. HDRI accurately represents a full range of intensity levels and detail in real world scenes, ranging from the brightest sunlight to the deepest shadows. High Dynamic Range images can be exported in Radiance (.hdr) or OpenEXR (.exr) format giving you greater control over the luminosity, opacity and reflectance range of your work. With HDRI optimized output, you can take advantage of the extra precision, flexibility and physically correct image operations in post-production (that standard image formats don’t support).
PoserFusion Hosting Plug-ins
PoserFusion lets you use Poser Pro 2012 as a character animation solution for 3ds Max, Maya, CINEMA 4D and LightWave. The included PoserFusion plug-ins, allow you to open and host Poser scene files and 3D content within these powerful 3D production applications. Integrate static or animated Poser scenes to add pre-built and rigged 3D Poser characters into your projects—whether you are an architect or product designer.
Gamma Correction/Linear Rendering
With Gamma Correction specify gamma values and apply those values to textures, and choose gamma values that will be applied to exported images. This allows you to perform linear rendering for increased luminance accuracy. Gamma Correction gives you the confidence that "what you see is what you’ll get" because input and output data will comply with your selected gamma values.
Gamma Correction on the Texture Manager allows you to specify gamma values per texture, giving you the ability to exclude certain textures from scene-wide gamma correction for maximum flexibility when dealing with transparency, displacement or normal maps.
pose the figures initial states using the dials and mouse. From there I work almost exclusively in the graph editor which gives a tremendous amount of control and feedback.
