From the fact that this is the second release of this product, I'm guessing it's been around for a while, but it doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of high-profile use. (When deciding whether or not to buy it, I researched the galleries and found only two images crediting Environment Creator I.) Possibly this is because of the complexity of the product (though it has a very well-designed user interface, with a GUI that uses the TCL capabilities in Python), or maybe just because people aren't completely sure what it is and what it does. I wasn't until I installed it and started playing with it.

What EC is, is a complete replacement for the nearly-worthless lighting controls in Poser. And I mean complete. EC II aims to put lighting ability of the type only seen in the higher-end 3D apps into Poser. Using EC, you get amazingly fine-grained control over every aspect of light and shadow in your scene. Using its interface you configure the kind of lighting you want, and EC responds by creating and then letting you control a very large number of Poser lights simultanously in many different ways with a single movement of a slider or push of a button. You'll never have to touch the Poser "light ball" again (and you probably wouldn't want to once you get the hang of it, because EC will spoil you totally for the kind of clumsy, gross adjustments that are all you can get out of the native Poser lighting tools.)

It doesn't surprise me that PCBos, who made Enviroment Creator, is also a painter in traditional media. I think it would take someone with a deep understanding and appreciation for the fundamental role of light in painting to create a product like this for Poser. Environment Creator literally lets you paint your scene with light, adjusting down to the smallest details how light and shadows will affect your textures and objects. With practice, it's possible to achieve radiosity-type effects, soft shadows -- all the tools needed for genuine photorealism -- and, for someone like me who doesn't do much with photorealism, it also offers an amazing palette of beautiful painterly effects right in the render, rather than postworked in afterwards.

Environment Creator II is not a canned light set. Most people aren't going to be able to install it and then just start banging out renders. The little picture I've posted here was done after about ten minutes of examining the tools; it's not much because I've still got a long way to go in learning the ins and outs of EC, but it shows a global lighting setup that would have taken me an hour or two to do on my own and then adjust the way I wanted it. Environment Creator II has a definite learning curve, but if you're willing to invest some time and effort, in my opinion this is a product with an astounding amount of new tools to offer and one that can take your Poser renders to a whole new level.