Reviews - Richard Schrand's Poser 4 Pro Pack: Something for Everyone

Richard Schrand's Poser 4 Pro Pack: Something for Everyone

It is such a pleasure to use a book that is accurate, informative, and well-written.

Richard Schrand's Poser 4 Pro Pack f/x & Design is everything a third-party software book should be. It supplements rather than duplicating the Poser 4 and P4 Pro Pack manuals. It focuses on those aspects of the program that require explanation and examples (no ten-page section on how to use the Open File menus, say). It is the sort of book that the software user can grow with. I'm on my second pass through it, experienced enough to be ready to learn more about them mysteries of lighting and joint editing.

Poser 4 Pro Pack
The Pro Pack itself, an add-on to Poser 4, offers some essential new features to Poser that make it almost an upgrade.

For me, the ability to see multiple cameras almost paid for the product, along with an undocumented feature, the ability to see one camera in another's viewport. Other refinements are easy to get used to, like color coding that makes parameter dials easier to read.

It also includes motion blur and materials animation, compression of pz3 files (a dressed Victoria can create a 30 meg file without breaking a nail), plug-ins for LightWave and 3D Studio Max, Flash support, Python scripting, and a new feature for advanced users called "The Setup Room."

You can buy the Poser Pro Pack, and Poser itself, at Amazon.com.

I was hesitant to buy it at first, because I expected it would be focused on the Pro Pack, and what I really needed was a good Poser handbook (as in, not by Shamms Mortier...). Well, this isn't what I was looking for—a Poser equivalent of, say, Real World Bryce—but Schrand spends a good portion of the book discussing Poser itself. The book might best be described as "How to use Poser 4.0 with the Pro Pack included."

Schrand's description of texturing, which includes a detailed tutorial, is thoughtful, easy to understand, and immediately useful to even the beginner. When you are done, you will be able to create your own realistic looks for Poser clothing. To follow along, all you need is Poser and a 2D graphics package like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop.

A section on lighting techniques provides detail down to the exact settings to create the equivalent of a photographic studio portrait. Similarly, he describes cameras in terms of "Emulating Real-World Photography" to give the reader some familiar territory to start from. Shrand gives you both the photographer's and the modeler's vocabulary when they differ, and he adds lay terms when that could help. For example, he points out that what Poser correctly calls "focal length" of a camera is what the average person calls a "lens."

His treatment of "The Setup Room," an advanced Pro Pack feature, is clear and coherent, and I'm confident that when I'm ready to try building my own characters, it will provide the information and guidance I need. In fact, I went back to the book precisely to address that question, in regard to a model I've been trying to make work.

This is a book to come back to again and again, not as a reference like the Poser manuals, but as a learning device. Highly recommended.