Curious
Labs Poser Pro Pack
Advanced
3D character animation expansion module for Poser 4 with Flash
export
by
David Nagel
Executive
Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com
You're
probably familiar with Poser, the 3D character animation suite
formerly owned by the company formerly known as MetaCreations.
When MetaCreations killed off its software division to focus
on Web technologies, Poser went on the auction block (along
with Painter, Carrara, Canoma, Bryce and a host of other well
respected titles). It was snatched up by the team that originally
created the software and others involved with its development
and marketing. Thus was born Curious Labs.
Poser had
always been a bit of a cult item, extremely popular with hobbyists.
It was geared heavily toward preset characters and provided
users with the ability to move these characters around in various
poses—sort of like playing with 3D paper dolls. But it
never really attracted a large customer base in the higher-end
professional 3D market.
Now, however,
comes the Poser Pro Pack, an expansion module for Poser 4 that
promises to find a professional niche for Poser—namely
designers who create animations in the Flash format.
The Poser
4 interface. Click image for 1,024 x 768 view.
What
it does
The Pro Pack for Poser expands Poser in two very significant
areas and also offers a number of important enhancements to
the core program. The most significant enhancement for many
is the ability to output to the Flash (.SWF) format. As I've
said previously, 3D is becoming a critical tool for designers
specifically because of the advent of Flash. Whether you're
spinning a company logo, adding a little animation to a Web
page or creating a full-blown animated presentation, 3D is virtually
a prerequisite.
These days,
everybody is offering Flash output. But your choices for 3D
applications are mostly limited to very expensive 3D suites
or applications that aren't terribly powerful or easy to use.
The Poser Pro Pack, which is both affordable and easy to use,
is a great solution for creating character animation in Flash.
Don't get me wrong here. Poser is not a modeler. It comes with
a ton of preset characters, ranging from people and props (such
as clothing) to animals and robots. But, if you want to build
your own models, you'll still need a 3D modeling application,
such as Amorphium Pro, which is also targeted toward Flash designers
(and also happens to come highly recommended by me).
The two
small Flash animations below use two of the characters that
come with Poser, along with some preset animations. Applying
animations to models can be as simple as clicking on a preset
library animation. You can also manually move around body parts
(and cameras and lights) to create your own animations rather
easily. (For the sake of file size, I've limited the colors
in these animations to four. The first animation came out at
56 KB; the second is 92 KB. You can change color settings in
the output options when you create your own animations.)
This brings
us to the second significant feature of the Pro Pack—the
ability to import models and give them a bone structure for
posing and animation.
