Poser Figure Artist is a virtual studio providing highly realistic human models to help artists create human figure art for canvas, sculpture or digital artwork. Poser Figure Artist is perfect for artists who want to use the human form in their artwork or studies, and would prefer an option to wooden mannequins and costly, live models.

Poser Figure Artist takes Poser’s diverse feature set and focuses it for the generation of images featuring human models.

Easily Design and Pose 3D Figures

Poser Figure Artist is the premier 3D virtual model tool for artists. Create 3D models using a diverse collection of ready-to-use 3D human figures, props and accessories. Place those models into any scene using Poser Figure Artist's powerful and intuitive posing tools. Poser Figure Artist's innovative interface makes figure design and posing fast and easy.

• Select from included Content as a great starting point for unique figure design.
• OpenGL hardware accelerated preview offers improved performance with figure Posing and Preview renders.
• AutoBalancing helps to realistically pose figures.
• Interactive Click and Drag figure posing makes figure design completely intuitive--artists can focus on the scene, rather than the dials and numbers.
• The Direct Manipulation tool allows you to interactively rotate, translate and scale objects directly in the Document window.
• Inverse Kinematics (IK) delivers natural character motion by modeling the hierarchical interactions of bones and joints, so that when you move a hand, the arm naturally follows.
• Multiple Document Display Styles, including the configurable Cartoon Shading preview style, allow you to approximate the final render results as you work.
• The Editing Tools, with functions such as Twist and Rotate, facilitate figure posing by putting common tasks at your fingertips.
• Deformers, including Magnets and Waves, deform your object’s geometry to create different effects.

Interactive Click and Drag figure posing makes figure design completely intuitive.

Poser Figure Artist ships with an extensive Content Library, with eight categories including a wide variety of figures in various preset poses, as well as props, lights, cameras, and accessories. All of this content is easily accessed via the Library room, which offers a hierarchical organization and thumbnail previews to help you find and select content quickly and easily.

• With Clothing designed specifically for each included figure, Poser Figure Artist enhances your artistic endeavors by providing yet more options for customizing your figures.
• Prop-based Hair designs make the creation of diverse characters even easier.
• Accessories enable you to supplement your figures with distinctive extras to make them truly individual.
• Props include anything from balls to furniture to walls. Whatever you need to complete your Poser scene!
• Low-resolution Figures are available for populating simple to complex scenes while conserving resources.

The Quick Start guide is an onscreen step-by-step interactive guide that takes users through the necessary steps to quickly create scenes within Poser Figure Artist. The Quick Start guide includes five separate Projects: Get Started, Pose Figure, Add Props, Lighting, and Rendering Styles. Each of these Projects walks you through a different aspect of building a scene within Poser Figure Artist.

• Page by page guide layout allows users to work at their own pace, skip forward or go back. You are in complete control!
• Follow along with the Quick Start guide, or use it as a starting point for your own individual creations.
• The easily accessible Quick Start dialog makes it simple to return to a previous project, or switch to a new one.

The Content Paradise is your gateway to leading marketplaces that provide both free and for-sale Poser content. Poser Figure Artist includes an embedded link to the Content Paradise, with its extensive offerings of content designed by e frontier's partners including Zygote, Jolly, Renderosity, Cubed, Sixus1Media, RuntimeDNA, Shader's Cafe, and The Forge. For Windows users, Poser's Download Manager can auto-install most downloaded content and add it to the Library room.

Follow along with the Quick Start guide, or use it as a starting point for your own individual creations.

Realistic Lighting, Shadows and Ambient Occlusion

Lighting is an essential component of any 3D image. Lights add colors, cast shadows, create specific effects, and set the tone for your scene. Poser Figure Artist’s Light controls allow you to add and individually configure different types of light sources in your Poser scene. When these light configuration options are combined with Poser Figure Artist’s powerful rendering tools, the lighting possibilities are unlimited!

• Unlimited light sources provide all-important shadowing and light effects, to make your characters and scenes look like the real world.
• Image Based Lighting (IBL) allows you to use any image map as a comprehensive 360 degree light source, providing realistic lighting based on complete light data for a given space.
• Point Lights add omnidirectional lighting effects to your scenes, enabling you to place your light source directly into your scene to cast shadows and generate other lighting effects from a specific source point.
• Infinite and Spotlights provide powerful options for illuminating your outdoor and indoor scenes, whether you want general ambient lighting for all objects, or select lighting effects focused on specific parts of your scene.
• Point At control enables you to aim directional lights automatically by targeting them towards specific figures or objects.

• Ambient Occlusion makes figures seem as though they are in the natural lighting environment of the real world. (See below for more information.)
• Soft Raytraced Shadows gives you the power of raytraced rendering, plus the realism of soft shadow edges. (See the Rendering section for more information.)

Use the Camera to Enhance Your Vision

The Camera represents your window into the Poser Workspace. You can use the Camera as a director would, to set up your ideal camera shots for each individual image. Or, you can take advantage of the benefit that comes with 3D work, of being able to render a scene from multiple angles.

• Interactive Camera controls allow you to quickly navigate around your scene, without having to interrupt your creative flow to change your point of view.
• Configurable Camera parameters allow you to rotate, zoom, or orbit the camera along any of the three 3D axes independently.
• The Cameras Library allows you to used saved camera positions to quickly jump between viewpoints, such as for doing detailed posing work and then checking the results from the final perspective.

Create and Render Powerful Images with FireFly

Create both photoreasitic and non-photorealistic images with the FireFly render engine. FireFly contains many controls that let you define exactly how you want your rendered images to appear. FireFly is a hybrid micro-polygon and Raytrace renderer that uses subdivision surface polygon rendering to generate truly breathtaking results. Poser Figure Artist includes many powerful options for the FireFly renderer, giving artists the ability to create incredibly lifelike and stunningly beautiful renders.

• New Image Based Lighting (IBL) allows you to use any image map as a comprehensive 360 degree light source, providing realistic lighting based on complete light data for a given space.
• Ambient Occlusion is available on every light to create accurate soft shadow effects, giving scenes a true sense of naturally realistic lighting.
• Cartoon Outlines for cartoon renderings add definition to cartoon characters.
• Configurable Smooth Shading through crease angle support renders crease edges between polygons as smooth, continuous surfaces rather than hard edges.
• Simple and fast access to Render Presets, from draft to high-end production options, allow you to save and reuse your preferred render settings, thus saving your time for other creative endeavors.
• Render-time Polygon Smoothing (Surface Subdivision) smoothes visible rough edges resulting from sparse polygon mesh division, resulting in truly continuous smooth shading effects.

Use the Sketch Designer for Non-PhotoRealistic Renders

The Sketch Designer render engine provides support for non-photorealistic (NPR) stylized renders, such as pencil drawings or watercolors. Sketch Designer provides customizable simulation of black-and-white or colored brush strokes, allowing you to create images that look like they were done using fine art tools rather than the computer. And Sketch Designer’s straightforward interface and preview render window make it simple to experiment and create beautiful artwork, even if you’ve never had a single art class!

• Create Artisitic Images using customizable brush settings, to simulate pen, pencil, pastel, and charcoal drawing styles, as well as watercolors and paintings.
• Works on objects, backgrounds and edges, so you can transform your entire 3D scene into a work of fine art.
• Many controls, such as line length and angle, allow you to customize the appearance of your sketch render for truly unique results.

Poser Figure Artist includes the following documentation:

• Figure Drawing with Virtual Models: Les Pardew’s book, Figure Drawing with Virtual Models, is included with this version of Poser Figure Artist. This book can be accessed directly from the Tutorial room within Poser Figure Artist.
• Reference Picture Library: The Reference Picture Library is a collection of eleven classic paintings by Rubens, da Vinci, Michelangelo, and van Eyck, all depicting human figures in various scenes. The Reference Picture Library can be accessed directly from the Tutorial room within Poser Figure Artist.
• Poser Figure Artist Reference Manual: This Reference Manual is included in both hard copy and in electronic PDF format on the Poser Figure Artist CD. The Poser Figure Artist Reference Manual can also be accessed directly from the Tutorial room within Poser Figure Artist.
• Poser Figure Artist Tutorial Manual: The Poser Figure Artist Tutorial Manual provides step-by-step tutorials to assist you in mastering different aspects of Poser Figure Artist, including figure posing, adding props, rendering tips, and more. This manual is available in PDF format on the Poser Figure Artist CD. The Poser Figure Artist Tutorial Manual can also be accessed directly from the Tutorial room within Poser Figure Artist.