I was just wondering, how did everyone here discover Poser in the first place? I thought we needed something to divert our attention from other things, so let's do something a bit more lighthearted. I stumbled onto Poser 2 at Egghead (back when they still had actual stores). It was on their bargain table. It had been returned by a customer who wanted something less detailed (can you imagine?). They had taken 5% off of the price, so I bought it at $159. A short time later, I found that Comp USA was selling it at $139 full price and it wasn't a dissatisfied customer's returned copy. I wanted something to help me visualize story characters better, but I realized that Poser 2 needed heavy post render work to make these people look like human beings. You can imagine how excited I was when I upgraded to Poser 3 and the people actually had posable faces!!! I've been addicted to it ever since, and the rest is history. Melanie

I first noticed Poser in an add in Computer Arts magazine. It looked cool and I got it. And yes, I too am now addicted and seeing the world in a whole new way.

I tracked it down when I started seeing early P2 work by Staale, and then Paul Hafeli, in the newsgroups. It was the series, I think by Paul, of the female warrior fighting the skeletons, that hooked me. Just had to find out how he did that one. Then I found, I think incarnation 2, of PFO (the green-on-black virtualave one) and the race was on. ...I'm sure the guys at CuriousL might find this info useful as well. Give'em a helping hand with a little marketing research here folks!

Bless you melanie

I bought Poser 2 at Computer City. I thought it looked like it could be fun, and it had a $50 rebate on it, too. It ended up costing about $100. I played with it a little, but never really did anything with it. I upgraded to P3, and still played a little, then P4. That was when I made the miraculous discovery of the web links in the help menu. I found a forum full of people doing amazing things with Poser. I still just play a little with Poser, but now I have people to show my occasional picture to. I have also met some pretty good people here, too.

Great idea, Nance, I hadn't even thought of it as a marketing research project, but this might be a good thing. I just got curious about how people discovered it when I was thinking one day about how I stumbled onto it. Let's see responses from more folks. This could be fun. Melanie

I found Poser 1 add in a Byte Magazine add, I believe or it might have PC computing. Either way I was interested in creating characters for the stories that I write. I thought by using Poser I would finally be able to actually add pictures of my characters and maybe even create the comic that I had been wanted to do. Does anyone remember Poser 1. That didn't work at all. Poser 2 was a vast improve over 1. I missed Poser 3 and Poser 4 today. My problem with is that I distracted by all the neat stuff in the free stuff area and never get around to actually finishing any the projects that I have going. It is too much fun to play with. One thing I would like to see in the next Poser version is the figures already have the morphs targets loaded. I spent one whole day just add morphs to a figure. But it was worth it.

I was looking through a macWarehouse one day and say the add for Poser .. The original, no number one. Being an illustrator and someone that got really tired of hopping up and down in a mirror trying to draw something I thought it would be useful. At that stage that was about all it was useful for, no expressions, no features really and no hair. It gre and changed and then morphs and things were introduced. I have gotten each version and each has grown in leaps and bounds. Bryce hasn't really changed that much in most respects but Poser has completely altered and become something really cool.

That's what I was doing all day yesterday also Butch! I'd also be curious to know how many people came to the fourms before they bought the product. Did all of us goof-balls in the the forums help convince you to buy?

I got poser1 and Bryce 2 free with computer arts magazine then started seeing all the stunning work everyone was doing so upgraded both programs....totally hooked now LOL.....Steve

I was out combing the stores for a user freindly cad program, something to make humanistic type figures with and just stumbled on it. It seemed like it might do the trick so I shelled out the bucks for P4, best investment I ever made, hours & hours,days,weeks,months of fun. Jeff

I responded to some advertisement somewhere asking for a beta tester for some new software that would allow you to place people in various poses. Because of my line of work and research (or perhaps because I was a warm body!) I was allowed to beta Poser 1!

I saw an ad in a computer magazine and because I have never spent time learning to draw the human form (I spent time learning animals) I thought it would be a good way to learn computer graphics and to learn more about drawing human form. When I got it I could make some pretty awkward things happen like the head fold back, arms to twist around, I was pretty frustrated with how slow the render time was on my computer and how hard it was to get the dang people to move. I went back and spent time on the manual, but did upgrade to 3 with much more success. Then I found the forums and saw what everyone else was able to do so I began to try to learn all the techniques.

One day InfiNet asks: There are new newgroups, do you wish to see them? One was alt.binaries.3D.poser. Looked at it, saw the pitches, investigated the program. Got a deal for P3/B3/RDS5.0/P3D for $400. Never have used or upgraded B3, but at that price it was like - free. Blame Mosca.

I purchased Bryce a year and a half ago and I guess I was on someones mailing and they sent me a special offer ( I can't remember the price) and I thought "that looks fun", not realizing that it would become my beloved obsession. ct

I needed people, and found Poser 1, and was vastly disappointed because they barely looked human. But back in those days, CG was in its infancy, so it was state of the art then. Now, although Poser is good, and I couldn't do without it, it's way behind in technological options. Poser could do so much more than it does, let's hope the new owners realize that and put in some modern options. A hair/shag/fur plug in would be very nice. Poser hair is crap, and it's about time someone developed a plug in especially for poser that would give better results.

I bought Poser2 before I had a computer capable of running it. I knew it would be a great help with my Painting, so I bought a new computer so I could try it out ;-) Suddenly the soon to be released Poser3 promo appeared in my mail box..I had to have it - made my first morph target on July 6th 1998 and never looked back. -Jeff H.

Back in 1995 I was trying to create a walking female charactor as part of a game development system my company was working on. First I got a CD called "Women in motion" a collection of some of Edward Muybridge's animations. They were interesting but I could not directly use any of the plates. I then hired 3 different art school models from the University and filmed them walking from all the angles I needed. But video does not produce good frames either to digitize, but I was still able to complete the project. Right after that was done Poser1 for the PC came out. I thought it was great, because for games you don't need a whole lot of detail but being able to create frames from different angles was what I wanted. It also kept the proportions consistent. I was hooked at that point. Poser is just a hobby for me now, but I still like creating more and more detailed animated walking charactors.

I found Poser in a roundabout way, thru Bryce. I heard about Bryce ages ago, on a now defunct program on CNBC called "The Site", I really miss that program,I wish they'd reactivate it. Back to the point. Naturally, when I finally got a PC, I'm an ex-Amigaite(I wish they'd bring that back,too). One of the first programs I got was Bryce. I found info on Poser on Metacreations site(I guess that's about defunct, too). When I first tried the demo, I knew I must have the full Poser for my own. That's kinda how I made the final decision on Bryce,too. Demo's DO count, but they have to be very good.

I got the Poser 1.0, and a week later upgraded to 2.0, but never messed with it. Meta kept sending me update letters, but I skipped 3.0 because I never had time to use the program. As soon as I heard they were going to sell their programs I bought most of them, by upgrade. Got Carrara for $99 because I owned their other programs. Then I stumbled onto these forums and I am seriously addicted. Most everyone here is so patient with newbies, it's great being here. I think a great addition to these programs would be a clothing creation module. I know there is one out there but I looked into it and it's not that great, seen peeps do better here just mugging around in RDS and Carrara. Ahhh well, I'll keep on chugging. Marque =)

Dang, I want carrara soooooooooo bad, but I just can't afford it.

i forgot what form of poser my roomie had(befor him & his wife became my roomies). i got hooked on it thinking about what i could do with it. then came bryce. that was the one i really needed, both in learning and using. since i tend to lean towards landscapes for painting

I first found Poser 3. I had just gotten back into computers 2 years ago (before that was the C64) and really wanted to get back into my art. Suddenly 3D came to mind. I did a search for "3d" and came up this site (then the Poser Forum I believe. I couldn't believe how cool Poser was and bought it! Since then I've gotten into 3D Studio MAX, Lightwave (can't do sheet in it yet), and some Rhino (can't go wrong with demo). Thanks to finding this place, believe it or not, I have found what I am truly interested in (but haven't got tons of time for at present). Thanks guys!!! BubbaScuba

My friend got me into Bryce 2 (he barely does any 3D stuff, but he found them first) and I played with it, then got discouraged because I wanted to do people. He mentioned a program called Poser 2, I played with his copy, was completely put off by it (ugly people, plus I couldn't find hair..) Later on, I saw some Bryce images on the web with human-looking people, I kept my eyes open and I found Poser 3. That hooked me for a little while, till I got tired of having cheesy or no clothing to work with. Then I found Renderosity, saw what everyone here was doing with Poser, got some help with my Bryce skills while I was at it.. Then Poser 4 was my dream-come-true. =) It's got its problems, but it's so much better than 3 IMO. I can't wait for 5. =) Rosh

I got Poser 1 because I needed figures in different poses as reference for drawing comics, specifically a strip about ballroom dancing ("Footlights"). After years of dancing, I have tons of tapes and photos from the web as reference, but I really dislike "copying" photographs for publication, so I got Poser 1 (subsequently 2-4) to "copy" poses from various resources, THEN move the camera to different angles and other settings to use as reference for drawing poses. Prior to Poser I had been using various other meshes (e.g., "Humanoid from Crestline) in Imagine. One thing I had difficulty with was posing two figures in a closed dance embrace (waltz, foxtrot, etc.) because of all the necessary adjustments but it has certainly been worth its weight, as my wife had gotten really tired of holding poses while I taped her from differnt angles.

I first saw Poser (I think Poser 1 for Mac) on a computer I shared with another instructor, I got version 2 pretty cheap, I think it was $99 if you had other Fractal products (I think this was before Metacreations got it). I used it for awhile, made objects for it in RDS 4, but it was pretty limited, I sort of faded out of it - Then one day surfing the Web I ran into some stuff done in Poser 3, it knocked me off my seat, I was very impressed. I got Poser 4 then, it had just came out.

hey... you guys actually remember??? er... my brain has other stuff to do. :) (come to think of it, i can't quite remember how in the heck i ever ended up here in the first place.....) i guess i was heavy into computer graphics and always looking in catalogues and drooling at the new progs. i probably thought poser was my magical solution to creating my images with human figures in them. :)

gee, you know, I never thought about using poser to make comic books. That could be interesting. (Makes note to myself heh heh heh)

I got turned onto Poser after it was referred by someone on a graphics mailing list I was subbed to. She saw some of the stuff I posted that I'd done in POV-Ray & told me... "You gotta check this proggy out". With my usual impeccable timing I bought Poser 3 a week before version 4 came out but fortunately didn't get a chance to install it immediately & the store manager was very understanding & let me exchange it. :-)

Ok, I had been doing a lot of interior designs and wanted people to put in my images to make the rooms I was designing look more "real." I had checked out lifeforce and characterz but neither one of those was what I was looking for and then I found Metacreations and Poser 3 looked like it would fit the bill. So, I talked to a friend of mine who let me "borrow" his P3 to try out. It was exactly what I wanted but Poser 4 was in Pre-Order so I just went ahead and ordered that one instead of buying Poser 3. Which will explain to y'all why I do not have any Poser 3 models that didn't come with P4 (like those stupid sneakers I need) cuz I dumped the borrowed copy as soon as the legal one arrived. Kate (who believes that EVERY program on the market should have a free downloadable WORKING DEMO)

I had no intensions of messing around with Poser. I was perfectly happy making and Posting my RD models to my web site. Until Metacreations and the rest of you folks kept E-mailing me asking me to join this, that, and the other lists and forums. ;-) Actually. I've been very lucky and feel very honored to be invited everywhere by you Poser folks. You really are the nicest people on the web. ScottA

I've saw the Poser1 at the Comdex fair about 5 years ago, find it interesting, but back then I have zero time to play with 3D. A few months ago I started to look for new tools to enhace my work, and new kinds of work too (I've been doing 2D graphics for over 10 years now). So, I've seen Poser1 and purchased Poser4, what a difference! Bryce too. I've seen Bryce2 a few years ago at an workshop, and now purchased Bryce4.

Hi Folks! I picked up a copy of Poser1 from the Fractal Design booth at Macworld Expo, Boston. After about an hour of orienting myself to the interface I began trying to render a scene of the male and female figure copulating! LOL!! Who could have imagined then what it (and the figures) can do now!!??!! Poser has so impressed me that now I use it as one of the core software applications in a course I teach on 3D Design and Animation. With all the objects, morphs, and props being generated through Forums such as this, it has become one of my favorite creative tools. Peter (Dr Zik)

I purchased Poser 3 as a drawing reference and upgraded to 4 when it came out. I still enjoy drawing and painting from life but Poser is a great help for action scenes, crowd scenes, lighting, and fantasy gaming card assignments with tight deadlines.

I used to model things using AutoCad and other small programs for video and avi use, I saw poser 1 when it was released and thought WOW that's cool, but I never bought it. Then Poser2 came out and and I jumped on it and became a citizen of the online Poser community, after Poser two I bought most of Meta's other creations and eventually upgraded to P4.

I must admit that my first experience of Poser was from Warez. I d/l'ed poser 1 and found it to be annoying and useless. Deleted it and moved on. I read the Poser 4 box ages later at Best Buy and thought that maybe the time had come to check into it again. So, back to warez. I d/l'ed poser four and fell in love, and most of that love came from the work I found posted here. "Why, I can do that too!" was my naive reaction! When I knew I loved it, I bought it and bryce. Who says warez aren't useful and hurt the software community? There is nothing more convincing than a fully functioning, non-gun-pointed-to-the-head demo. Darth, not a thief, just a man who likes to know what 180 dollars is going to before giving it away, Logice

I saw an ad for Poser 1 in a computer magazine in 1995. Before that I made my own artist mannequins with plaster molds, foam rubber, and aluminum wire. I could draw people since I was 13, but I can't always find a good model when I need one. I went on to Poser 2, by the time I could finally afford Poser 3, Poser 4 came out a month later! That was funny. :-( The online Poser community was something I couldn't concieve back in '95 playing with Poser 1 all by myself. Didn't have internet access until July 96, and it was a year before it occured to me to use it to find Poser fans. Duh!

I gotta agree with Darth, anyone who's serious about their work would far rather use the full, legit program with all the extras than the warez version. But you have to admit, the poser demo is pitiful.

I bought a graphics package suite that included Poser. I didn't touch it for months because I thought it was useless and pointless. Was I wrong or what? Poser is one of the coolest programs I have ever seen - and definitely the most addictive! As a 2-dimensional artist, it helps me envision what I want to put on paper. I am terrible at figure drawing, so this is the logical conclusion to learning how. Did I mention it's cool and addictive?

I first say Poser @ work. We had a copy of Poser 3 in the media design department (I still can't figure out where it came from since nobody there ever used it for anything) anyhow I started playing with it and thought it would be fun to take the textures and modify them. My first couple attempts were really sad. Then I started surfing the web thinking.. there have got to be other people out there who use poser and would create things that they would want to share with the rest of the world. Just about the first thing that I ran across was a site that had a bunch of mobius textures for the p3 female. It just blew me away, and inspired me to make more of my own textures.

Hey, look, it's tlaubach! Glad to see you're still around! got anything in the works? Vickie? How's life? I seem to remember you sort of retired due to a new schedule or something? -Darth_Logice

yeah... I moved from PA to CA and got a new job and stuff.. I decided to jump into a little poser today though, which was cool.. (new image in the gallery is what I came up with)

Response from one more of the folks, Melanie. I first saw Poser in Computer Arts, too. Having a bit of traditional drawing/painting practice, I passed on P1 and 2, since even I could do better figures "by hand". P3, however, not only put my brushes into an early retirement, it also made me buy and learn Truespace and Bryce, for props and worlds for my figures. P4 happily made most of this "supporting work" unnecessary, so it was - almost - a dream come true. To me, the essential attraction of Poser is the openness of it: everyone can pitch in with the things (morphs, tex, props, figs) they like to do, and therefore do well, and the COMBINED use of all these "stock elements" can nevertheless produce quite personallized and unique works. I very much hope that the P5 team will make this strength even greater (i.e. better import/export and customization tools rather than modelling/rendering tools - why reinvent the wheel?).

my friend showed me this awesome (to my memory) picture of some spaceships, I thought "I've got to learn to do that!" and that's why I downloaded the warez version of bryce. I soon got bored of it and didn't touch it again. A few years later I saw another awesome bryce picture, downloaded it again, and played a bit more. This time I didn't let myself get distracted until I had some idea what was happening, but I lamented my inability to put humans in the pictures. So I asked around, downloaded a few demos, but couldn't find anything, until a friend told me to try poser4. He gave me a (warez) copy, and I loved it. Very soon I realised that I didn't need bryce, poser was enough. Yep, I'm with darth. In many cases warez creates sales, it's not totally evil. And there was a poser demo? I looked for that (before the warez) but couldn't find one. Of course, it was ages ago, I could have been looking in the wrong place. And then poser4 with conformable clothes? just brilliant =) now I've just got to save up the money to buy a legal version of 3DSMax sigh SewerRat

I purchased Poser 1 from a student catalog back when the program came on three floppy disks. I used them as base images which I took into PhotoShop and "painted" over. Also to use as statues in Bryce scenes I did. DavidH

OK. 1983, a friend introduced me to a roleplaying game called Champions. I was fascinated by the ability to create and play superheroes, and the little character outlines on the sheets were fun; I had a way, with limited artistic ability, to create superheroes. Flash forward several years. I'm roommates with two guys who are also gamers and in a Champions campaign with me. We join an Amateur Press Association called The Clobberin' Times, dedicated to Champions. About this time, I hear about Poser 1 and Fractal Design. I also get a free subscription (I have no idea how and REALLY miss it now that I AM working with graphics) to PC Video and Graphics. I consider buying Poser to create BETTER character illustrations for Champions. Two members of the APA pick it up right AFTER PCG&V runs a very lukewarm review of the product. Two of the members of the APA pick up P1; one vanishes from the APA without saying another word about it, the other is confused by the interface and unable to figure out texture maps. So I decide not to invest in it. Then P2 comes out to great reviews. I see it in MicroCenter in Chicago for $149, when the retail price was $189 - and with a $50 rebate. For $99 I can afford it. Unfortunately, the rebate expired 30 days before I found out about it (d'oh!), but I already used it and was hooked for about three months. THen I was about to discard it when I found out about P3. Upgraded, found out about the mailing list by accident, found out about the (then only one) forum from the ML, dropped the ML when P4 came out (it focused on it and I couldn't afford it!), watched the forums split, then upgraded to P4 when it was FINALLY bundled with Bryce4 and Canoma... And now you're all bored to tears, right? :-)

If you go to www.digitalimagingmag.com you can get a free sub. It's a rather dry professional magazine, but at times has some good info. 3D magazine is also free and can be found at, I believe www.3Dgate.com. Me, I'd kill for a sub to Computer Arts and their free CDs. But at 16 bucks an issue US, I can't even afford to think about it. 15 bucks can buy me almost a week's worth of food the way things are. But Computer Arts had one hell of a texturing article in the current issue that I really wanted badly. I'd also like to get 3D Artist, but again. I just can't afford anything if it ain't free.

A few years back I bought a computer magazine (I forget which one)from England. It came with a CD with a few programs and shareware. There was an additional CD with the full version of Poser 1 or 2. I've been using it ever since.

Like Steve, I got Poser 1 and Bryce (I think it was V2) on a magazine here in the UK (possibly PC Format) and there was an article in it about the super new version Poser 3. Well, I played with P1 and found it great fun, so I upgraded. Then upgraded again to Poser 4 when it was released (anyone remember me bitching about how we had to wait here in the UK for several weeks after it was available in the US?). That was pretty much it. I never really used Bryce much until I got a chance to render a Poser figure in Bryce 3D on a friend's machine. That convinced me to buy it, and upgrade it to B4 as soon as I could. Now I render mainly in B4 rather than Poser. Paul