During the planning stages of this book, we asked the members of the online Poser community which questions were most frequently asked by those who were new to Poser. The responses helped us formulate the areas that we should address in this book.

This book assumes that you have reviewed the Poser 6 Reference Manual and Poser 6 Tutorial Manual that ship with Poser 6 before you attempt some of the tutorials in this book. We have tried to go light on theory and heavy on practical use of the most requested features of Poser.

Practical Poser 6 begins with the basics of the Poser 6 interface, and teaches you in a logical order how to build scenes. Youll also learn how to use lights and cameras, and how to save your own light and cameras sets to the Poser library.

Section II of the book covers some of the features that youll find in the other Poser rooms. Youll learn how to prepare photographs so that you can create Face Room textures with the best results, and how to create and save custom faces in the Face Room. Youll learn how to apply hair to Poser clothing and have it pick up colors from the underlying textures. Youll also learn how to work with the various types of Poser clothing, and the differences between conforming clothing and dynamic clothing. Finally, youll learn how to decipher materials in the advanced Material Room view.

Some of the most frequently asked questions involve creating and customizing Poser figures. In Section III of the book, weve tried to address many of the questions raised in that regard. First, youll learn how to create morphs in Poser, along with the steps involved to export and import morphs to and from an external program. Youll also learn, in several chapters, how to model a simple piece of clothing (using LightWave), how to create UV maps for common clothing pieces (using UV Mapper Pro, a demo version is included on the CD), how to break clothing into materials and group them correctly, and how to save different types of Poser content into the Poser libraries so that they work. We also suggest sources for further learning in regards to creating your own Poser clothing.

Finally, in Section IV, youll learn what makes the Poser rendering engine work, and how you can enhance your Poser renders so that they look their best. The techniques that you learn in this book will help you get up to speed very quickly with the questions that Poser users ask most. We are also open to suggestions and additional questions that can be covered in future editions of this book, and will watch the various forums in the online Poser communities for questions or comments from our readers.

Message edited on: 01/23/2006 21:19