"Practical Poser X" teaches Poser artists the tasks they want and need to learn in order to get up to get the most out of Poser X for achieving professional, commercial-quality work. The book teaches how to create Poser scenes, how to add realism to Poser characters, and how to make Poser clothing. In this new edition, the many new features, particularly in the animation and rendering areas, will be covered in detail. Practical, real-world tasks are used throughout the book to teach users how to maximize Poser.

Do you want to take your Poser skills beyond the basics and put the new features of Poser 7 into practice right away? If so, you?ve come to the right place. Practical Poser 7 is an updated edition of this best-selling reference for intermediate to advanced Poser users. It teaches the tasks you want and need to know to get the most out of Poser 7 for achieving professional, commercial-quality work. This edition covers new Poser features, including new animation functionality, morphing tools, and more. Learn texturing and material techniques from a master texture artist, and explore the work of Poser pros in the beautiful color section!

At last! Some POSER information that makes sense!

My last experience with POSER was ver.4 and I found it hard to understand and was less than satisfed with the results... I recently saw an advertisement for version 7 and was amazed at how much the program had advanced, now incorporating many features used in high-end CGI productions. My problem was, although I had ideas I wanted to realize I still didn’t really know how to drive Poser... The supplied reference manual was poorly constructed and too technical for a semi-luddite like me!

I searched Amazon for any "how to" books and saw ’Practical Poser 7" unfortunately the book reviews accompianing it did not give a really good idea of what it was about, so ordering it was a bit of a gamble...
As it was, I hit the jackpot! This is the book I needed to make sense of Poser. The examples are laid out in an understandable fashion and although they nescessarily deal with "technobabble" they approach it by assuming the reader does not nescessarily understand the terms or concepts and explains them in a simple manner. I could rapidly see how I could apply these tutorials to things I wanted to achieve, but had no idea of how to make Poser do them! Apart from a transposed illustration (fig 11.12) and one that appears wrong (Fig 11.16)the information all seems correct and I love the page layout with wide margins that leave plenty of room for notes. (and have already be covered with my scribblings and visual ideas sparked by the text!)

In conclusion, I would say this is the ideal book for those intimidated by Poser’s supplied information and I would wholeheartedly reccommend it for anyone at my beginning level!

Sure wish practical meant ’simple’ to understand.

If the authors of Practical Poser 7 & Poser 7 Revealed had bothered to write their books with beginners in mind. It would have been a tremendous help. I took a computer class where the instructor stressed the KISS! (Keep It Simple, STUPID!) approach to teaching. The authors of these books seem to want to overwhelm the reader with their ’brilliance’ when it comes to how to use Poser. The authors are so busy ’showing off’ how smart they are, they forget all about the students they’re ’supposed’ to be teaching!

Neither of these books saw fit to provide a simple illustrated set of ’step-by-step’ instruction that would teach a completely new user of Poser 7 how to do anything. Just why is it that beginner users of Poser 7 and computer programs in general are treated with such derision and scorn by the people who buy their products?

Rather disappointing

Let me preface this review by stating that I’ve produced my own Poser-related tutorials for several years. I’ve earned some decent recognition from companies such as CuriousLabs and DAZ3D. My web site:

[...]


I’ve found the Poser manuals to be a huge disappointment over the years. I went to the forums, and asked many questions. All too often I found the answers were inadequate. People just didn’t seem to relate things in a way I could understand. That’s when I started teaching myself, and writing tutorials in a style that I could understand.

My tutorials are well received by newbies all around the world.

My Poser-related pursuits have been rather unsophisticated. I’d hoped to learn some of the more complex aspects of Poser. I’d read positive reviews of this author for years, and decided to take a chance with her latest book.

Unfortunately, the book appears to be a rehash of what’s covered in the manual.

Or at least, there wasn’t enough depth in the areas I wanted to learn. I won’t buy any more books in that series.

Besides I grew pretty disillusioned with Poser as of Poser 6.

I’ve been using DAZ|Studio since it was publicly released.

Practical Poser 7

I’m about a quarter of the way through this book. So far, it has all the detail I’m looking for.
The biggest knock I have against it is, on the back of the book, it says the CD has "all the files for the tutorials, including necessary Poser content, textures, and images". THAT IS A LIE.
I had to write to the publisher to find out that you do, indeed, have to purchase content, if you want to use the same content that is used in the tutorials.

Not worth buying.

I bought this book thinking it would be as good as Practical Poser 6. It isn’t. At best this is an intro to Poser possibilities. It doesn’t completely walk you through anything. It hints and suggests you might be able to do some things with Poser 7 but then directs you to free websites to actually learn how to do them. If you can use Google, then you don’t need this book.

Read the manuals first

Unlike so many books of this type, which claim to teach you how to use the software, but end up being rehashes of the material that comes with the software, this book expects you to at least know how to use the basic functions by having read the manuals. The book itself is geared to getting you to become more proficient with the software. It dispenses with the basics of installing Poser, how to load a model and how to render it. These functions have been relegated to an HTML file on the accompanying CD-ROM.

This book is aimed at the user who has experimented with Poser. It is intended as a guide for the intermediate user wishing to find a few short cuts to help them become an advanced user. Denise Tyler has drawn on the worldwide Poser community to help her structure the book to get the most commonly asked questions answered in one place. The book covers the new Poser features, new animation functions and morphing tools. Throughout the book there are practical tasks that help you understand how to make your Poser art even better.

If you are looking to improve your Poser skills, this is the book for you. If you want to learn Poser, read the manuals first.

Computer libraries won’t want to miss this.

If you have the basics down with Poser and want to move to the next level, PRACTICAL POSER 7 is for you: the computer user who already has some grounding and wants to move up. It’s an updated edition of a best-seller and covers all of Poser 7’s capabilities, from saving custom faces in the Face Room and using the Hair Room to add hair to clothing to texturing, creating custom morphs, UV mapping and more. With black and white screen shot examples throughout, you can’t go wrong - and many a graphics teacher will want to use PRACTICAL POSER 7 as a classroom text. Computer libraries won’t want to miss this.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Great for novices and intermediate users

If you want to learn to use Poser, look no further than this. It takes you from the very basics of loading your figure, adding clothing and hair, up to and including smart prop creation, material room, texturing, and even creating your own content for using in Poser. It is chock-full of tutorials, with plenty of screen captures. Highly recommended.

Practical Poser 7

Authors should use Adobe Tutorials as a model. Practical Poser 7 is a text for reading, not a tutorial for doing. It is not self contained with all materials needed to do the tutorials. It is also obviously keyed to stimulate purchases from Content Paradise. Needs considerable improvement. Not intuitive.

Intermediate to Advanced Level Book

This book is listed as a beginning to intermediate level book. I think it’s actually a little higher than that. It presumes that you have at least reviewed the Reference Manual, and hopefully worked through the Tutorial Manual. This is a tutorial style book. It takes you through a series of steps that will teach you more about the design of a person than you imagined.

After going through this book, I’m not going to say that the people making the next Harry Potter movie will jump at the chance to hire you, but I will say that you’ll know a hell of a lot more about the computer creation of characters than you did when you started.

The key is to make characters look real. And here the authors point out little things like what do the fingers do in the hand that isn’t reaching for something. And how do you make the torso bend with the body so that it looks real.

All in all, quite an exceptional book that I highly recommend. These people know what they are doing and know how to write about it.

The CD supplied with the book has a wealth of material including:

All the files used in the book and all of the images
Numerous Poser figures from a variety of sources
UV Mapper Software (Classic version)
Additional material from previous versions of this book