Learning Poser takes time. Even if you've used it since the beginning, there are things hiding in the manual that can make creating with Poser easier.

Did you know you can drag and drop assets into the Poser window from Windows Explorer or Mac's Finder? Or that you can render in the background and work on different projects at the same time?

There are many things hiding in the 1,000+ pages of the Poser Pro Reference Manual. Here are just a few things to get you started.

1. You can drag and drop assets into the Poser window.

You can search for files in your runtime through Windows Explorer or Mac's Finder. Once you find what you're looking for, you can drag and drop the asset into the Poser Window. It even works if you've set up your runtime as an external library.

If you drag and drop a piece of clothing onto a figure, say a shirt on La Femme, it will auto-conform. 

2. You can turn off the ground.

When you export a rendered image, the ground maybe presented as a gray area that you have to erase. But you can make the ground invisible under "Ground Properties." By unselecting, "Visible in Raytracing" and "Visible in Camera," the ground will become invisible in the final render and your models will render over a black background.

Turning the background black, it gets rid of the outline shadow on hair when rendering if you’ve ever seen that in images. It looks like the hair glows or has white strands around the edge. Rendering over a black background fixes that.

3. If you can't find a file for your newly installed content, check the readme.

Sometimes vendors use the product name, sometimes they use their name, sometimes they use something else entirely. If you can't find what you're looking for, check the readme to see if they explained their naming conventions so you can find the props you're looking for.

Bonus, some vendors use exclamation points at the beginning of file names. They do this to bump the file to the top when alphabetized.

4. You can change the Default Figure.

When you launch Poser, La Femme appears as the default figure.

If you want Andy, Andrea or another figure altogether, go to Figure in your Poser Content runtime and select Andy. You can even "Delete Figure" and launch with no figure. Once you've got your preferred figure in place, go to Edit > General Preferences > Document tab > Launch to Preferred State radio button > Set Preferred Scene. Then the next time you open Poser, Andy will appear.

You can also include other options in your Preferred State, like camera positions, render settings and more.

5. You can Render in the Background

With the FireFly render engine, you can render and work on other projects at the same time using Poser Pro’s background rendering capabilities.

To Render in the Background, from the Main Menu select Render > Render in Background. Alternatively from the Render Settings dialog, and from the FireFly Tab, you can also click on the Send Render To button and chose Background on the menu, to render a single image of the current state of the scene in the background.

After the Background Rendering has started, a Progress Bar will appear on the Document Window that shows your as you continue to work. If you click on the Preview Tab, you can continue to work on your current project while it’s rendering.