Curious Labs has begun shipping Poser Pro Pack, a US$149 set of tools and plug-ins designed to expand the functionality of Poser 4.
Poser, the 3D-character animation and design tool for digital artists and animators, was acquired from MetaCreations by Curious Labs earlier this year. You can use it to create images, movies, and posed 3D figures from a collection of fully articulated 3D and animal models. The $219 product requires a Power Mac, System 8 or later, 32 MB of application RAM, a color display, CD-ROM drive, and 240 MB of free hard disk space.
The cross platform Pro Pack adds new export options, 3D integration solutions, features, and content to Poser, according to Steve Cooper, president of Curious Labs. It also offers improved workflow for the creation of custom figures, he added.
Poser Pack lets users host Poser 4 scene files in Newtek’s LightWave and Discreet’s 3D Studio MAX including animated 3D characters with the plug-ins included. You can add animated character content created in Poser to Web sites and other interactive projects by exporting Viewpoint Experience Technology for 3D and Macromedia Flash for 2D. All new characters and animations are Web-ready, allowing users to export content immediately, Cooper said.
The pack’s Figure Set-Up Room makes it easy to create bones and build body parts from any 3D geometry data, he adds. Additional new features include 2D-Motion Blur, Multi-view Panes, Python scripting support, and compressed library files.
“Web-based 3D characters have been talked about for years; we’ve seen some great examples to date, but they’ve all been expensive to create and difficult to deploy,” Cooper said in a press announcement. “Pro Pack is affordable, and it makes it easy to deliver Viewpoint Media Player ready 3D characters and Flash-based 2D characters on the Web. The potential applications for Pro Pack content are endless.”
Sold separately, Poser Pro Pack is available to owners of versions 4 through 4.0.3 of Poser. All Pro Pack customers using versions 1, 2 and 3 of Poser will need to upgrade to version 4.0.3, priced at $99, according to Curious Labs.