Hello all,

I am a little lost in all the options available to us Poser users for human figures from Renderosity, Daz3d and HiveWire. Can someone direct me to the BEST most versatile figures out there that are good for posing? Am I right in saying that the Genesis figures from Daz3d are better for using in Daz Studio than in Poser?

La Femme and Pauline were created especially for Poser 11.
The Hivewire figures are more modern than V4 & M4, so tend to bend better.
The Genesis figures up to Victoria 7 work in Poser via DSON Every thing except La Femme & Pauline work fine in DS.

Oh, wow, thank you, donnena. Following up on our thread, when you say "The Hivewire figures are more modern than V4 and m4" what do you mean by V4 and M4?

Is that some other figure? I appreciate your clarification:)

V4 is Victoria 4, M4 is Michael 4, both DAZ figures. Vicky 4 is about 10 years old, and Mike is somewhat younger. The Lass is always released before the Lad. The Current Victoria from DAZ is Vicky 8, so you can imagine the growth that has taken place in this time!

Thank you, Andy. I appreciate the insight.

Oops. I spoke too soon, Andy. You said "La Femme and Pauline were created especially for Poser 11" but who's product are they? Renderosity's? HiveWire's? Daz3d's?

Thank you.

Pauline is a legacy model that comes with Poser. La Femme is a Renderosity release but now is standard with the Poser update.

Thank you, hborre. That is very helpful. What do you mean, though, by a "legacy model"? Please forgive me. I'm very new:(

Legacy simply means they are an older model (as in 'inherited'). La Femme is the latest female model created especially for Poser 11. It is now packaged with the 11.2 version, with added content created for her.

In this case, legacy means figures, props, and models that come bundled with the application or program. Now the Hivewire figures (Dawn, Dusk, Baby Luna and the horse) are proprietory base figures which are included with Poser as a collaboration between vendors, you may elect to not install those packages if you have already purchased them from the other vendor. But it is nice to have additional figures to choose from at a convenient complimentary price.

Thank you, guys. I really appreciate it. As you can imagine, it is a little bewildering out there:)

I'd suggest to first use the figures that come with the program to learn basic operations, then decide if/when you want to branch out into others. It usually depends on what your goals are with the program. I used the basic figures for at least two years when I first got Poser before ever thought about getting others. YMMV. There is now a truly wide variety, so it's really up to individual preference.

I am set designer and use Poser to generate 3d models (in obj) for use on my sets. I don't do animation, so I just need the figure to assume one pose -- but the clothes and hair are important.

Bonsoir, cela fait peu de temps que je reviens vers la 3D. J'utilise POSER 11 PRO avec LA FEMME et Victoria 4 et je trouve les réalisations surprenantes. Je pensais pouvoir intégrer des animations facilement dans 3DS MAX ou VUE mais il y a des pertes au niveau des textures donc je fais actuellement des réalisations statiques.

Bonne réalisations

Right, so you're making theatre-production art to show concepts and stagings, and you need lots of clothes and hair available at relatively low cost. It sounds like you're too new to be diving into clothing/hair conversion across different types of figures. I'd thus suggest you start your learning with DAZ's Victoria 4, which works fine in Poser, and has the required wide range of clothes and hair at modest prices. You should also investigate Poser's "Sketch Designer" module, for making renders of poses that look "hand drawn" (sketched etc). Once you've learned the absolute basic of Poser with a familiar and tutorial-abundant figure like Victoria 4, then move on to take a look at La Femme - especially if you need close-ups to show stage actors exactly how they should should turn their foot or neck etc.

Victoria costs money. All her clothes cost money. La Femme is included, along with clothes, as are several other models. I suggest the OP goes ahead and sees that's already included and whether that fits their need before they spend extra money on another figure and all of its morphs and accessories and clothes. And I'm saying this as an active V4 user. The included figures have enough clothes already included to be used as stage prop standins, if I understand what the OP wants to use this for.

"The... most versatile," eh?

Okay, this is strictly my opinion, but La Femme is just too new to the marketplace. There are almost no clothes, expressions or poses available for her. If you choose to use her (or Pauline, for that matter) you are going to have to do almost everything by hand. This will doubtlessly change over the next year, but for now I have determined that, for my own comics projects, she's not ready for prime time because of the amount of time it takes to do everything by hand.

Victoria 4 and Michael 4 can be had dirt-cheap over at Daz: just wait for a sale and pick up the base or pro bundles. You will then find a lot of content available for them, including hair, clothing, expressions and poses. You can also purchase many Elite and Morphs++ that will enable you to change ethnicity and body types far more easily than you can with La Femme. There are also a LOT of free clothes and pose sets out there for Victoria 4 and Michael 4.

Look, if you're on a tight budget, then sticking with the figures that ship with Poser is a smart bet. If you have a little money, you cannot go wrong by investing in Victoria 4 and Michael 4. Yes, those figures are more than 10 years old, but there's a reason that people like me still use them. They have ENORMOUS back catalogs of characters, skins, hair, ethnicities, body types, clothes, weapons, and scenes available for them.

Good luck!

Oh, and a quick note about Genesis and DSON. Yes, you can use Genesis and Genesis 2 figures in Poser, but there are limitations. The biggest one is that most of the poses and expressions that were sold for those figures do NOT have Poser versions available. At least not based on my experience. This means that, even though you have the figure, you'll need to do a lot of time-consuming work posing the body, limb by limb, and working on the expression and hoping you get it right.

In my workflow, I find it much faster to start with a pose or expression that is kind of close to what I want and then fine-tuning it.