Poser 8 gives you everything a newbie will need to start creating 3D Art. It comes with legacy 3D content and all new Poser 8 content. We haven't loaded our Poser 8 content but we are looking forward to checking it out. From what we hear, the Poser 8 3D content is really good. We'll let you know just as soon as we play with some of the other features in Poser 8.
Poser 8 Review
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As promised we are taking 2 weeks of working with Poser 8 to bring you some of the best features and improvements that were made with this software. So far all of us at Poser By Design have been really impressed by what we have seen so far. In the next few days we will really test Poser 8 out and try to push the software and our computer's capabilities to the limit with complex scenes and a wide range of lighting and settings. We understand that the rendering time will increase as the number of models and lighting increases but what we really want to know is can Poser 8 get the job done. On the first page we talked about 5 big improvements that surprised us right away and for page 2 you get to see the face of Poser 8. We use a 22" inch monitor so all of the screenshots that you'll see will be at 1680 x 1019. We have also provided smaller screenshot for smaller monitors. Click on the image to see a larger version of the image. |
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| A Closer Look : into Workspace Layout Improvement | ||
When we first start Poser 8 we are greeted with an improved layout area and a much larger workspace that made good use of our 22" monitor. Everything was neatly organized and easy to find. 
Letters A - E are features that are present on older versions of Poser. This is a big plus for past poser users because there is less to learn as far as learning how to use Poser 8. If you are a new Poser user then you'll be able to take advantage of Poser 8's Smart guide that shows how to use the software through video as well as text instructions. Letter F is were we are going to focus on. Letter F is Poser 8's new content management system. |
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| A Closer Look: into the Content Management System (Letter F) | ||
Poser 8's 3D content management system allows you to search for your 3D content and provides previews of your 3D models. The best part about the preview system that we didn't cover on page one is that the content that you are using stays open in the preview until you decide to collapse the folder. For example, if I'm working on a character and I'm using clothing with many pieces then I'll just leave the folder open so that when I come back to my figures, pose, hair, or props category, the pieces that I'm using are the only ones that are shown in the preview. This makes it much easier to find the content that's associated with the character. The search feature also works well provided that you put in the right term. For example if you are looking for tennis shoes, you'll have to search for the general term "shoes" unless you have content named "tennis shoes." The content search bar isn't Google, so be sure to keep that in mind. If I'm looking for a Bun hair style then the best way to find it is to go general and type the search term "hair," unless I know that I have a 3D model named Bun Hair. Below is a short video of the content management system in use. |
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| Content Managment Missing Previews for Older Content | ||
One of the things that we noticed with the content management system is that it wasn't creating any previews of the 3D models. Instead we got the "No Preview Guy." From what we know, there was a decision made to make the software run more efficiently and in order to do that Poser 8 staff had to cleanout things that slowed older versions down. It was nice to hear that Poser 8 was being optimized. |
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One of the things that made the software run less efficiently deals with the files that created the previews of some older content. Don't worry if you get a "No Preview" guy. There is no bug or problem with Poser 8's previews. In addition to that there is a software that will allow you to easily generate new previews to replace the No Preview guy. Any content made around the birth of Aiko 3, Victoria 3, and before will result in getting a No Preview Guy. We'll have a tutorial later showing you how to generate new images to replace the "No Preview" guy. |
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| Closer Look: into Better Quality Image Rendering. | ||
When we first tried Poser 8, we were very happy and very surprised at how well the rendering improved. The image was so good that we wanted to know if Poser 8 could improve our older content that we were neglecting. The good news is that Poser 8 will breathe new life into your older 3D clothing models. We wanted to give Poser 8 a really good challenge so we picked out the worst 3D clothing piece that we had. Why would you care if Poser 8 made your older 3D clothing look good? Because now your older 3D clothing models can look like the image below.
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Ignore everything that you see on this image and focus on the red one piece clothing that is covering our Aiko 3 model. The red clothing is called CanGal Suit and it was created sometime around the time when Poser 4 or 5 was the best, so right away we are dealing with a very old 3D model. The car is much newer than the CanGal Suit and serves as our comparison. As you can see the suit rendering is perfect with Poser 8. So far we haven't had any problems with Poser 8 yet, but there is a hotfix available to correct an issue that's going on in the area of the program that we haven't gotten to yet. Remember to check this site often for new reviews on Poser 8. |
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One of the big questions that we had on our mind is related to the quality of rendering that the program will be able to do. So we have decided share some of the renders that we made while using Poser 8. All of the images below were rendered with the purpose checking out the rendering capabilities of Poser 8 so you'll see Poke throughs that we didn't bother to fix. You'll still be impressed.
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