Curious Labs Inc. has announced plans to ship Poser 5 for Mac OS X before September, 2003. Poser is a 3D character design application that features high-resolution 3D figures, textured models, libraries containing hundreds of poses, expressions, clothes and more.
Poser 5’s Mac OS X release will include new features like the FireFly Renderer, a hybrid micro-polygon and ray trace render engine that includes subdivision surface rendering of polygons. The new rendering technology enables render-time polygon smoothing, displacement mapping, 3D motion blur, depth of field and a slew of other capabilities.
What’s more, ray traced reflection and reflection has been added, as has dynamic hair with growth, styling and physics controls; dynamic cloth with physics and parameter-controlled attributes, photo-based facial mapping, the “Morph Putty” tool used for direct manipulation of facial expressions, and many other capabilities.
Poser 5 for Mac OS X carries a suggested retail price of US$349 and will be available initially as an electronic download directly from Curios Labs. Upgrades from previous versions of Poser and Poser Pro Pack will be available through a tiered pricing structure direct from Curious Labs, as well.