SIGGRAPH: POSER 8 PACKED WITH ASSETS
Poser 8 allows artists to work with avatars and all types of 3D characters. The application acts as a virtual stage, offering eight new, ready-to-pose, fully-textured humans of different ethnicities and body types. More than 2.5GBs of human and animal figures are included - 1GB of which is entirely new - along with a wide range of accessories such as hair, clothing, sets, props and elements such as lights and cameras.
A new, streamlined interface maximizes screen real estate and provides an intuitive workflow. A new search-enabled library helps artists easily browse and organize content. A dependent parameter editor now lets users "teach" objects in a scene to interact with each other, simplifying complex body movement. Other features include cross-body morph brushes that permit a user to smoothly sculpt a figure across every body part, new photorealistic rendering to more accurately reproduce light and shadows, and improved character rigging for better character bending.
New Normal Mapping features allow users to transform object surfaces, making them appear more intricate without the added computational overhead from additional polygonal detail. The Wardrobe Wizard allows artists to re-use existing clothing assets by fitting them to the new Poser 8 character set. And wxPython support enables third-party developers to create more advanced plug-in functionality that can be fully-integrated directly within Poser's user interface.
Pricing is $249.99, with upgrades from previous versions priced at $129.99.