Curious Labs Inc. has announced the release of Poser 5 for mac OS X, its 3D character design application. The new version of Poser can be purchased through the company’s Web site.
The news follows Curious Lab’s Macworld CreativePro Conference & Expo announcement that it would ship Poser 5 before September.
Poser 5 enables artists and designers to model human figures in 3D with fully articulated hands and feet, applying photorealistic texture maps and facial morphs.
Features of the software include a new rendering engine called FireFly; strand-based hair; dynamic cloth that responds to physics; support for facial photo importing and mapping; a new “Material Room” that lets you create materials using node-based shaders, and more.
Poser 5 is initially being offered for electronic download; Curious Labs expects to announce details about a boxed version of the software at a later date. For now, however, Poser 5 can be purchased from the site for US$199. Upgrades from previous versions are available, as is a crossgrade from the Windows version.