hi all,

After say 10 years of fiddling around (and gathering about 30Gb of content), I just restarted my serious Poser interest, so I can share my route. I will turn my experiences into a tutorial series or alike, but I'm not there yet.

At first, please note that Poser is just a tool (it cannot make good final results on its own), and it's a Virtual Portraying Studio. So I first dived into a bunch of professional guides on portrait and product  photography, studio lighting, posing and makeup (for fashion models), and so on. Just study photo's and images that stand out, from 20th century Playboy to recent 3D contests and gallery high-scores. What makes images end up high while others don't? And I started to organize my content using P3dO, recommended especially when you like to use the same library structures for Poser, DAZ Studio, Carrara and so on. 

Then I started with just creating my studio, finding out about Camera (DoF, focal settings) and Rendering, including render passes (RDNA Advanced Render Settings are very recommended) and all the tricks of Postwork.. 

Then I dived into lighting, the photographers way. So now I know how to do softboxes, ringflashes and Rembrandt lighting in Poser, and when and how to apply IBL, IDL and especially: when not to. Recently I sorted out Materials and Nodes, including making proper metals, velvets and skins, and using Photoshop for skin complexions and refined clothing details. Next thing is to figure out how those materials behave when transferring stuff to DAZ Studio, Carrara, Bryce and Vue.

In the meantime I did Poses and Animation, worried about conforming and dynamic cloth, and took care of Hands and Expressions.  

To my experience, What to do is more complicated than How to do it in Poser. And IMHO it does not make real sense to understand lighting from a Poser point of view without having an idea about the photographers vision on this. Getting a good workflow up is another thing. I still see people trying to make a 5 min animation in one long shot, from one Poser file. Very clever but not good, if you know what I mean.

Regards

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Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though