Poser has it's own distinctive room based interface as per the image below. This the Pose Room where you setup, add props and pose your characters.
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The animation controls along the bottom and the content library on the right hand side can both be collapsed by clicking on the collapse handle like this one here.
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Handle to show or hide controls |
I'll look at specific tools, some of the rooms that make up Poser 7 in more detail during the review. The interface of Poser 7 is designed to be user friendly and intuitive for people with little or no 3D experience. Generally I think it is and it's quite easy to get the hang of. Certainly a lot easier to use than many 3D programs.
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Navigation / Camera controls |
The camera controls on the left hand side are very similar to those found in Bryce 3D. Hardly surprising as both were originally owned by MetaCreations. My first 3D application was Bryce 2 then 4 so these controls are familiar to me. They may appear strange compared to the viewport navigation controls in CINEMA 4D but in practice they work very well. If you want to work on the face you click the head icon which changes your view to the face camera. In addition to the large navigation controls the window / workspace has its own small controls for pan, rotate and zoom. If you have several view windows open then the navigation controls work on the selected window which is shown by a thin red rectangle around the window (similar to the red rectangle around the viewport in C4D when in autokeying mode.
Here is a short video of me using the camera / navigation controls. 12mb Flash format video. 4min 29sec. Click here to view or click here to download a zipped version for offline / repeat viewing (12mb).
Not mentioned in the video, the Key icon in the camera controls toggles camera keyframing on or off. By default camera keyframing is on but you'll often want to toggle this off otherwise if you rotate your view while working on your animation then the camera will end up being animated.
Like CINEMA 4D, Poser has keyboard short cuts to change views. Cameras can be made to Point At (target) objects rather than the default centre of the workspace. You can make cameras a child of any object so for example you can make the main camera a child of the body so that as the body walks around the scene then the camera stays in the same position relative to the body. So many navigation methods are similar to C4D it's just a matter of learning the terminology and where commands etc are.
Tracking modes change how your characters are displayed as you navigate, pose, play back animations / walk cycles or move things around. On lower powered computers this is a huge help. I loaded Poser 7 on to my Desktop PC which has an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU running at 2.4Ghz with an nVidia 7900GS graphics card. Poser 7 ran quite well on it and navigation was quick however on my Laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU running at 1.86Ghz with an nVidia 7400Go graphics card navigation was a bit sluggish when for example rotating around your character or playing back a walk cycle. This is where the 3 different tracking modes come into play. First is full mode (default), then there is fast mode where as soon as you start doing something your character changes to being displayed as boxes. Once you stop, your figure is displayed in full detail again. Third is box mode where your character is displayed as boxes the entire time. The Fast mode worked really well on my laptop. By the way Poser 7 has 2 display modes, OpenGL (Hardware display mode) and Sree3D (Software display mode). Here's what the fast tracking / box mode look like play an animation.
Box mode / Fast tracking mode |
The equivalent thing in C4D is the Redraw Limit option in the preferences where your objects will be displayed as wireframe if C4D can't refresh the window within whatever time is defined in the preferences. I have to say I found the way Poser did things with the fast mode really nice to work with, however Poser 7 seems much more CPU hungry than CINEMA 4D and a powerful computer seems essential to work with it.
Like CINEMA 4D, Poser 7 has a range of display modes or Display Styles as Poser 7 calls them. e.g. wireframe, solid shaded etc. These can be applied to the entire scene, individual figures or specific parts of figures. These display modes can be selected either directly in the interface as per the image or from the menu. As you hover the mouse over each display style a tool tip is displayed telling what the style is and the short cut keys.
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Display styles |
The selected style is the one on the right hand side. As you can see the buttons are a bit hard to make out. I couldn't find anywhere to change the interface colours. What's interesting with the display styles is that if your tracking mode is on Fast or you're in Box mode then the boxes in the display will be displayed in whatever style you have selected e.g. cartoon.
Lights can be created and adjusted interactively with the light controls. Here's a diagram showing what the controls are. There are 3 lights in the scene and to reposition you click on them and drag them around the trackball. I found this pretty straight forward to use but the new Lighting tool in CINEMA 4D 10.5 is better. Poser 7 is crying out for a lighting tool like this.
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Light controls |
Depth cueing when enabled makes objects in the distance fade away and helps to add a visual reference / depth to objects in the workspace.
The shadow icon on the workspace window isn't to turn shadows on and off. Although it does toggle a shadow, the shadow isn't generated by the lights. This shadow is there just to help give some visual depth and reference to the floor.
Both of these options are only visible in the workspace and are not shown when rendered.
Poser 7 allows you to change the interface around a bit. Like C4D, Poser has a full screen toggle mode so that you can make the workspace with the character occupy the entire screen. The tools, light controls etc can all be dragged around the screen. You have the option in the preferences to save your layout or to reset it to the factory default. Like CINEMA 4D you can have multiple view windows open and there are a range of presets as per the image below.
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Selecting view layouts |
I found Poser 7 a quantum leap behind CINEMA 4D when it comes to customizing the interface. You can't change the short cut keys for example although I gather it's possible to tinker with some of the resource files to change the menu short cuts. I would have liked to have changed the short cut keys for the cameras to use the Function keys which are unused as far as I can tell in Poser. This then would allow one key changing of cameras rather than Ctrl plus another key. Try pressing Ctrl + M for the main camera one handed, it's not that easy. I couldn't believe that there isn't an undo button on the interface. It's a pain having to go to the edit menu to select the undo command or pressing Ctrl + Z. One thing you'll need to do a lot in Poser and that's use the undo command.
One thing I always liked about Bryce was Memory Dots for cameras. In Poser 7 these dots allow you to save Camera, Pose or UI (User Interface) positions / views. Say you like a particular camera view then just click a memory dot. This stores that camera view in a memory dot. To delete the dot just Alt + click on the dot. To change the mode you just click on the small down facing triangle. When you save your scene the memory dots are saved with the scene file.
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Memory dots |
I'll cover other things like tools and parameter dials later.