Get ready to explore all that Poser has to offer! Giving you a firm foundation, "Poser 6 Revealed_ The Official Guide" allows you to master concepts on both a technical and artistic level. Begin by examining the concept behind each task?the goal and the necessary features that are involved. Then go in-depth with the objective of your task as you study examples and learn the steps necessary to complete it. Working your way through comprehensive, step-by-step lessons, you?ll develop the confidence you need to create amazing graphics using Poser.

Get ready to explore all that Poser has to offer! Giving you a firm foundation, "Poser 6 Revealed: The Official Guide" allows you to master concepts on both a technical and artistic level. Begin by examining the concept behind each task?the goal and the necessary features that are involved. Then go in-depth with the objective of your task as you study examples and learn the steps necessary to complete it. Working your way through comprehensive, step-by-step lessons, you?ll develop the confidence you need to create amazing graphics using Poser.

An excellent basic instruction manuel

There are some folks who like to piddle around in a program to figure out how it works and have a good foundation for doing so from other programs they’ve used. But I bought this book on the recommendation of those reviewers who praised the "basic approach" that it takes. I don’t have a manual for Poser 6. I don’t even have Poser 6. But spending $17.24 for this book and downloading a demo of Poser 6 is far less expensive than buying the full program for $250 and finding out it isn’t what I thought it was or it’s far more intricate than what I need. Even if I opt to buy Poser 7, the fundamental structure of the program is not likely to change that much. But there is another advantage to this book. Even in programs I’ve used for years, by reading books which focus on the fundamentals I often find keystrokes, menus or features I had no idea were there. If you already know Poser 6, you might be disappointed. But if you’re new to the program and want to know what hoops you’ll have to jump through to produce those fabulous looking images you see in ads and high end "show and tell" books, you might consider this book and dowloading the demo from [...]. It will go a long way toward giving you some idea what you’re in for.

Save your money and buy Practical Poser

Just a rehash of the manual. Practical Poser is a MUCH better book that really takes you through the intricacies of Poser 6.

Poser 6 Revealed basically teaches you the same the the tutorial manual does.

Save your money.

Just read the software documentation and save your money. Hardly any difference.

Just a repackaging of the manual

If you bought Poser 6 as a download, rather than a retail box with the manual, then "The Official Guide" is a servicable replacement for the user guide. But if you already have the manual, then the only reason to buy this book is if you want a complete description of all the rooms, menus, and settings in a more user-friendly format. "Poser 6 Revealed" reveals very little except what’s already in the manual or the help menus. It’s complete and it’s useful as a quick reference when you want to thumb through pages to find out what a particular dial does, but it contains nothing in the way of tutorials or useful advice on how to create or render Poser figures. This is NOT a book about how to use Poser to create digital art -- it’s a book about how to use Poser, period. In its favor, it is better-written and more visually oriented than the manual, but if you’re already familiar with Poser, or you learn better by just playing around with settings, then there isn’t much reason to own this book.

Just a repackaging of the manual

If you bought Poser 6 as a download, rather than a retail box with the manual, then "The Official Guide" is a servicable replacement for the user guide. But if you already have the manual, then the only reason to buy this book is if you want a complete description of all the rooms, menus, and settings in a more user-friendly format. "Poser 6 Revealed" reveals very little except what’s already in the manual or the help menus. It’s complete and it’s useful as a quick reference when you want to thumb through pages to find out what a particular dial does, but it contains nothing in the way of tutorials or useful advice on how to create or render Poser figures. This is NOT a book about how to use Poser to create digital art -- it’s a book about how to use Poser, period. In its favor, it is better-written and more visually oriented than the manual, but if you’re already familiar with Poser, or you learn better by just playing around with settings, then there isn’t much reason to own this book.

I liked it...

Got Poser 6 for a birthday gift and I ordered this book. Sorry to go against all the 1 star customers who were expecting an "Answer all my questions now" book. I think the book is great, it steps you through all the basic moves and shows you how to do things the manuel doesn’t. I recommend the book to all who haven’t a clue about Poser, but, for those who have worked with it, there is nothing new for you to learn from this book.

I liked it...

Got Poser 6 for a birthday gift and I ordered this book. Sorry to go against all the 1 star customers who were expecting an "Answer all my questions now" book. I think the book is great, it steps you through all the basic moves and shows you how to do things the manuel doesn’t. I recommend the book to all who haven’t a clue about Poser, but, for those who have worked with it, there is nothing new for you to learn from this book.

How can anyone find this book useful?

If you know how pull-down menus, tabs, and buttons work, and you can figure out all on your own that clicking on the tabs marked "Face", "Hair", "Material", etc. will lead you to the places where you can edit the character’s face, hair, and materials/textures, you are far smarter that the person this author had in mind when he wrote this book.

Maybe I can explain best using an example. For each "room" - hair, face, material - he uses a similar structure. In the Material Room chapter, he spends pages 122 to 126 describing what you see when you open the Materials room interface. This is one of MANY lessons on "using the interface", which takes up all of chapter one (45 pages on how the interface works) but is ALSO repeated throughout the book.

In this case, what you see - what he will describe - is the Shader window, which has some pretty obvious stuff: a help button, two pull-down menus labelled Object and Material, and two tabs labelled Simple and Advanced. Then there’s some less obvious stuff: a texture map, a variety of controls with names like "diffuse color", "ambient", "reflection" across the top and "add subsurface scattering", "set ambient occlusion", "IBL", etc. down one side.

The author completely ignores all that stuff about ambient occlusion and diffuse color. He spends page after page explaining what the "object list" (a pull-down by which you can select which object is being edited), "material list", etc., and how the "simple" tab and the "advanced" tab offer the user a selection between simplified controls vs. more advanced ones.

Then, when you do finally graduate to a real tutorial, it turns out to be pretty simple stuff. Lesson Two in my above example (the materials room chapter) is how to load and save textures. There are two sidebars on pages 129-130 that summarize the entire process of loading (p. 129) and saving (130). Really they aren’t all that advanced: loading involves opening a library and double-clicking, while saving involves pressing the save button. However, he still has to spend an entire lesson on this, because he’s got to talk about all the things you’ll find along the way - for instance, he mentions in the text (but not the sidebar) that when you press the Save To Library button, you’ll get a dialog box allowing you to name your new texture. (Because we all know how overwhelming it is to be confronted with a box demanding that you name something.)

In this - and all - lessons, it’s at a VERY basic level.

How can anyone find this book useful?

If you know how pull-down menus, tabs, and buttons work, and you can figure out all on your own that clicking on the tabs marked "Face", "Hair", "Material", etc. will lead you to the places where you can edit the character’s face, hair, and materials/textures, you are far smarter that the person this author had in mind when he wrote this book.

Maybe I can explain best using an example. For each "room" - hair, face, material - he uses a similar structure. In the Material Room chapter, he spends pages 122 to 126 describing what you see when you open the Materials room interface. This is one of MANY lessons on "using the interface", which takes up all of chapter one (45 pages on how the interface works) but is ALSO repeated throughout the book.

In this case, what you see - what he will describe - is the Shader window, which has some pretty obvious stuff: a help button, two pull-down menus labelled Object and Material, and two tabs labelled Simple and Advanced. Then there’s some less obvious stuff: a texture map, a variety of controls with names like "diffuse color", "ambient", "reflection" across the top and "add subsurface scattering", "set ambient occlusion", "IBL", etc. down one side.

The author completely ignores all that stuff about ambient occlusion and diffuse color. He spends page after page explaining what the "object list" (a pull-down by which you can select which object is being edited), "material list", etc., and how the "simple" tab and the "advanced" tab offer the user a selection between simplified controls vs. more advanced ones.

Then, when you do finally graduate to a real tutorial, it turns out to be pretty simple stuff. Lesson Two in my above example (the materials room chapter) is how to load and save textures. There are two sidebars on pages 129-130 that summarize the entire process of loading (p. 129) and saving (130). Really they aren’t all that advanced: loading involves opening a library and double-clicking, while saving involves pressing the save button. However, he still has to spend an entire lesson on this, because he’s got to talk about all the things you’ll find along the way - for instance, he mentions in the text (but not the sidebar) that when you press the Save To Library button, you’ll get a dialog box allowing you to name your new texture. (Because we all know how overwhelming it is to be confronted with a box demanding that you name something.)

In this - and all - lessons, it’s at a VERY basic level.

not a very good book

To sum it up, this book wasn’t much helpful. I’m new to Poser and would like to get started on Poser. The author *plods* through Poser at a snail’s pace! I gave it up and am waiting for a better Poser book to come out.

Reference manual rehash.

I bought this book just after buying Poser 6. I am a new user of Poser, and I still found it quite useless. This book is just a rehash of almost exactly what is in the reference manual that comes with the software. In fact I think there are sections where some of the information is practically "verbatim" from the reference manual. That said, it actually covers the material from the reference manual in "less" detail rather than more. :(

This book is largely a waste of money, it’s only redeeming qualities are a few "somewhat" useful sidebars that have some specific instructions to ’test’ certain functionality out. This is not enough to justify the cost of this book in my mind.

I’m very disappointed, and very surprised there are such "glowing" reviews for this book. I expect these glowing reviews are from people who either: expect way too little, are friends of the author or publishers, are the author or publishers themselves, or are people who are completely uninformed of what a good book is.

The only reason to purchase this book is if you don’t have a copy of the reference manual because you downloaded the software or bought it second hand.

P.S. This is the first review I’ve ever posted on Amazon.com. Typically I don’t post my opinion anywhere but I was so disappointed with this book I felt it necessary to inform people so they hopefully don’t make the same mistake I did in purchasing it.