I have poser artist and am totally LOST it's based on poser 4....although it shows up on my comp as poser 4 which it isn't and I can't get anything to load. I've tried tutorials for p4 since I have Yet to find one for artist.... and the download files you are supposed to use don't work. I've tried saving them to desktop and opening but that doesn't work either. Can anyone Please help me

Yes, Poser Artist IS Poser 4 so the tutorial are applicable. What exactly do you mean nothing will load? You can't get a character into your scene? Select one from the Character library palette on the right of your screen and click the double check marks at the bottom of the palette.

I haven't used Poser Artist, so I do not know if there are any differences. Hopwever, most versions of poser are very picky as to where files are. Make sure you place all the files in the correct places in the Poser folder. The downloads should have Readme files with instructions.

Do you mean downloaded figures and props, or tutorials? If it's items for use in Poser then as Lyrra says they have to go in the right places. If you look at the zip file containing the items there will be some things set to go in a folder in the Geometries folder in the Runtime folder in the Poser 4 folder, some things in a folder in a folder called Props, Characters, Hair, Cameras, Lights, Poses, Faces or Hands in the Libraries folder, and some things in a folder somewhere in the Textures folder. Anything in Geometries has to go EXACTLY where specified, or Poser will say it is running out of memory (you can edit things later, but the geometry is always least forgiving of mistakes). Anything in Textures should go where spcified, but Poser will either guess or ask if it can't find one of these items in the right place. The things in the Libraries folder are flexible (unless there is a geometry file, something .OBJ, in there which sometimes happens with stuff created with ProPack) in that you can put them in a different folder from that specified, but they must be in a subfolder of the library folder (Props, Characters etc.) specified. Not every pack will have every one of these - for example, props and hair often lack an OBJ file in the Geometries folder, and things often come untextured - but if the components are present you must follow the placemnt rules. Also, many downloads are add-ons that require something else - a texture to change the appearance of a piece of clothing requires that you have the clothing to start with, and most characters are for Victoria or Michael which are bought from DAZ3D.

Did you get any kind of manual with it? if so... read it.

CL said Artist is just a new box, so you have P4. Do a search for Geep, he has great tutorials for everyone at all levels. The manuals help but do chase you around in circles and don't explain things well for beginners. Sounds like you haven't placed the files where they need to be. I found it helped to go into the poser program and see how it is set up. C driveprogramsCuriousLabsP4Runtime. Once you learn the file folders, P4 will make more sence.

No manual...just a card on how to install. So that's not helped. A lot of the downloads haven't had a readme so I think that was messing me up too. I didn't want to invest in michael or victoria just in case they wouldn't work with this poser but if artist Is poser 4 then it's all good. Everyone thanks for the help and hopefully now I Can make sense of all this mess =)

Don't ask me what the heck is going on but the view window where the models pop up in is gone. I can't see any way to get it back although it keeps asking me if I want to save when I close out... HELP

Very confusing :0 Maybe you should unistall and try reinstalling the whole program, might help? I'm not to sure what else to tell you....

If Poser Artist came in the redesigned box with installation card, it should still have had the official thick manual and the handy folded card with quick information on all the features. The card has a long list of keyboard shortcuts and other goodies, just like the cards for Bryce and PhotoShop, so I tend to keep them at hand, even if the manuals are packed away. The Poser 4 manual has a decent first tutorial where you load, dress, accessorize, and walk a clown along a curving path with lights and camera and rendering. It is basic but gets you acquainted with the main tools and provides an anchor for later questions... like when to parent and when to conform. If you are on a Mac, get MacInstaller and Macconverter from MartinC's site. They will do much of this loading in the right places activity automatically. If you are on a PC, you should read the readmes before trying to install something, and hope they tell you where all the parts ought to go. Later on, you can rearrange some of the libraries more to your liking. As mentioned above... don't fiddle with the geometries unless you are pretty confident about what goes where. Dr Geep also made a nice screen of the extensions for the file types as an aide to placement: .fc2 in Faces, .cm2 in Cameras... that sort of thing... but it gets tricky if you misread .pz2 and .pp2! Carolly

I suppose if it's aimed at the "educashun market" Artist may skip the manual and expect the teacher to do the work, especially since some of the illustrations suffer from the same "problem" as the original box art. Ladyduece, have you looked to see if there is a PDF version of the manual on the CD, or on the CuriousLabs website, labelled Poser Artist or Poser 4?

They wouldn't do that, would they? "Classroom in a Book" type manual for all versions of Poser would be a good substitution: it would be laid out step-by-step for the teachers, but the exercises at the end of each chapter would let the user know they were doing it right, and give them the confidence to use this program. (The hand-holding I've done has mostly been to help people gain confidence... they've already had the ability.) Carolly

Unfortunately, tutorials in manuals seem to be deeply unfashionable. Painter 5 came with a substantial "how to" booklet, and both Photoshop 5/5.5 and Illustrator 8 included short walkthroughs in their manuals, while Freehand 8 had a series of mini-tutorials on different tools. I don't have PS or Painter 7, or any pre-MX FH, but all the other recent versions have had nothing to help the first-timer (and the latest versions of Amapi and Freehand had no manuals, though Amapi did include a booklet with retreads of some of the tutorials from previous versions). When third-party publishers can make a profit selling books for less than the software cost, to a sub-set of the user base, you would think that developers could run to some sort of guide, at least in the non-upgrade packages.

I have the PhotoShop manual, the Classroom in a Book for PS7 and the PhotoShop 6 WOW! Book. They all tackle the problems and tools differently. If I hit a snag and have to look something up, I first think "is this how to do something" or "is this how to use a tool" and then I know which book to reach for first. :) I don't think that it is possible for one book to be able to reach all students, since we humans have different means of learning information, however, I do think that SOME attempt at a tutorial or walk-through needs to be made. This is just like some adventure games: you can either jump right into the game and get slaughtered, or you can walk through a simple series of steps where you learn how to handle a weapon, pick up inventory and talk to others. Years ago I paid $3000 for 3dStudio Version 2, and hated the unusable piece of trash. It had major bugs including kicking me back to DOS every time I tried to use it (the dongle arguued with my printer or something). No tech support... aside from being told that they knew of that problem and that there'd be an upgrade in 6 months, which I'd have to pay for. Bullshit. I sold my copy and transferred the licence. I spent a couple hundred for RayDream Studio 4, which was still sitting in the box unopened when I got a call from a producer saying that he needed a 3d dungeon scene by Friday noon for a presentation to TSR.... could I do it? I looked at the box, thought about the advertising copy, and said "yes". After 4 hours walking through the first tutorial (building a castle in a fishbowl), I had everything I needed to learn to start building my dungeon walls and staircases and setting up the lights. I uploaded on Friday with minutes to spare. Not great art, but it got him the project, which was all that mattered. Four hours is a real short learning curve, but basically it gave me the confidence to start work on the scene... and I could always research the finer points later. Confidence is the critical point. Carolly

Amen to that. What I especially hate are the manuals which tell you how to use the infinistrigulation tool, but give no idea why you'd want to or when it will have any effect: in the past I've spent hours following the steps to use a tool only to find later that nothing was happening because I was on the wrong kind of layer/had the wrong blending mode/wrong colour selected. How is the PS6 Wow book? I bought the 5.5 version and was disappointed - the Painter and Illustrator volumes use "real" work in their walk-throughs, so you see the techniques in context, and have lots of other art work in the galleries, but the PS version used mostly artificial situations showing off one-trick special effects and little third-party art.

The book is useful if you are doing a project which is similar. I've done CD and cassette covers for instance, so the projects merging type and image helped give me some ideas. The most value was actually in picking apart the materials on the CD. The layer effects got a lot richer in PS6 and by taking their's apart I've managed to make quite a few of my own for frames and such. Please note that I dislike PS5 (it was worse than 4!), but 6 and 7 were definate improvements. That may be reflected in the books. Carolly

Thanks - I'm probably upgrading to the new PS 8/CS (having skipped 7 there are enough new things) so I'll have a look when the next Wow Book is issued.