I've ummed and arred about posting something about Poser Pro's release here and decided that while it's a bit tangential to the usual Vue news its probably of interest to at least some Vue users so I'll carry the press release. Your usual Vue service will be resumed just as soon as I have some Vue related news...
Smith Micro Software's Consumer Group Releases New Poser Pro For Professional 3D Artists
Poser Pro Provides Character Content for 2D and 3D Applications to Save Time and Development Resources for Studio and Production EnvironmentsApril 29, 2008
ALISO VIEJO, CA – Smith Micro Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMSI) Consumer Group today announced the immediate availability of Poser® Pro. Building on the global success of Poser® 7, long used by digital artists and hobbyists to create 3D images and animations, Smith Micro developed Poser Pro with a feature set and functionality geared for professional content creators within studio and production environments. To save users time, resources and development costs, Poser Pro offers advanced features that include scene-hosting plug-ins for popular 3D environments, as well as a 64-bit render engine, COLLADA™ support and advanced network rendering.
Poser Pro delivers a powerful, yet easy-to-use 3D character design and animation tools that help artists integrate custom and pre-built characters into professional projects and production pipelines. Poser Pro lets artists fine tune light, shadow, color and detail on figures, and ships with distributable 3D characters that are specially designed to provide a starting point for scene development, thereby saving production time. For comprehensive content and creation, Poser Pro offers the sophisticated character functionality and features of many higher priced products on the market.
"When planning the feature set for Poser Pro, we noticed professionals using Poser 7 were looking for better ways to integrate Poser content into their production pipelines," said Steve Yatson, Senior Director of Graphics Solutions for Smith Micro Software. "As a result, Poser Pro is a significant step forward for professional 3D designers looking to add character content in a cost-effective way. With the new rendering features and image controls, we're confident that Poser Pro will be well received by production artists across various industries including advertising, architecture, entertainment and education, who use 3D imagery to bring their ideas to life."
Poser Pro includes PoserFusion™ plug-ins, which enables hosting of both animated and static Poser scenes in Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk® Maya® and Maxon's CINEMA 4D. Poser Pro supports COLLADA data interchange, which permits the import of 3D data and the export of Poser scenes with character rigging and blend zones, morph targets, texture information, lighting, cameras and other scene details.
To save production resources and time, Poser Pro includes a distributed Network Render Queue and Queue Manager, which allows users to set up and manage a cross-platform rendering network. Background rendering enables users to continue working on Poser Pro scenes while rendering, and the updated 64-bit Firefly Render Engine permits full system memory to be utilized for the rendering of large scene files.
For extreme realism in rendered images, Poser Pro provides both high dynamic range (HDR) image import for textures and image-based light (IBL) maps plus optimized export of those rendered HDR images. Gamma Correction permits users to accurately match rendered image output to the final output or display device by setting gamma values on a material-by-material basis.
Poser Pro offers new content specific features, including Normal Mapping support to increase surface detail without increasing polygon count. Also unique to Poser Pro is a collection of four medium-resolution, face room compliant, rigged human characters that can be modified and freely redistributed as new content, serving as an excellent starting point for the development of new characters for games, movies and other real-time 3D projects.
Pricing and Availability
The MSRP for Poser Pro is $499.99. The application is available at the Smith Micro web store at www.smithmicro.com/poserpro, and at select resellers and distribution partners worldwide.
Registered users of Poser 6 and Poser 7 can side-grade to Poser Pro for $199.99 until July 31, 2008. Please visit: www.smithmicro.com/poserpro/upgrade for more information.
To learn more about Poser Pro and our complete line of software, visit: www.smithmicro.com.
