Posing with Poser 7:
Animating the Realistic & Fantastic
with 3rd Party Add-ons, Volume 2
by
Jeremy Hanke
Last month, you may recall that we started to look at some add-ons and improvements which can give both low-budget filmmakers and digital artists extra impact with E-Frontier’s Poser 7. Well, because of the enormity of this project, we broke it into two mega articles, with the goal being to show you some of the most cutting edge add-ons and improvements to give you the most options with Poser 7. If you haven’t read our first article, then I suggest you go back and read it, because we will be launching directly into the new add-ons on this one.
This month we explore E-Frontier’s PoserPhysics for Poser 7, take a quick look at two impressive offerings at the DAZ Stores, and finally conclude our tour with the amazing artists at Runtime DNA.
PoserPhysics for Poser 7
One of the most crucial elements of animation is getting the physics down properly. As our recent review of Poser 7 pointed out, its included Physics engine is a bit complicated and hard to deal with. As such, the good programmers at E-Frontier have created PoserPhysics forPoser 7. This package is designed to simplify animating people and objects in Poser by creating naturalistic physics that seamlessly interweave with your normal animation process.
When I started playing with this, I was expecting something that would allow you to adjust physics and gravity as it interacted with your model’s body parts. I was hoping for something that allowed for realistic movement of things like muscles or fat on the human body in motion. I was also hoping for something that simplified collision testing for dynamic hair and cloth. However, this is not what PoserPhysics is designed for. PoserPhysics is designed to simulate realistic collision and falls, using Python scripts to give you the ability to have your model behave like an adjustable ragdoll or a keyframable actor that goes limp only when something collides with him.
Used properly, this can be a great way to simulate actors jumping from great heights, falling off special primitive shapes, flying over the hood of a car in a car crash, and getting flung into a wall by a high powered shotgun blast. Dynamic hair and clothing flow with the motion, which is a quite a nice feature. Still, I wish that more than just the skeletons and dynamic props were animated. As it is right now, if Santa Claus falls down, only his skeleton behaves realistically in the fall, with none of his fat jiggling in response. Obviously you can keyframe flesh movement, but it would be really nice if you didn’t have to, considering that PoserPhysics is designed to be a time saving tool. Hopefully the version for Poser 8 will have this feature included.
It's currently priced at $49.99 and you can get it at: E-frontier's site.
