Poser is a great tool for creating artwork, but it cannot make a person a better artist. Poser can create a professional looking render, but if the basic image lacks artistic merit, the software can only create a better looking piece of bad artwork. Scanning through the galleries here will bear that out since images range from mediocre to magnificent. Even the mediocre efforts are worthy of praise because at least a person is trying to create something and that sets them apart from the majority of the population. Everybody has to start somewhere.

Practice is certainly one way to improve. Another is to take art courses. Instructional books can provide the lessons learned from other artists that will help speed up the learning curve for fledgling Poser artists. I'll share some of the books that I've found helpful and would like to know what other books are being used by other Poser artists. For the most part, these books will not be Poser books because Poser books rightly focus on how to use the program--they don't pretend to be books teaching Poser users how to be better artists. These books can be books for other 3D programs to paint programs to traditional drawing books. The techniques to becoming a better artist do not revolve around Poser. Poser is just a tool for creating that art.

I'll start with some of the more recent books I've bought and dig through the house for older books that helped me draw better before Poser even existed. [Note: I've only included the Amazon price because somebody seeing a $70 book will pass on it no matter how good it is--I'm not endorsing Amazon--and I'd like to avoid this being seen as a commercial post. This is a post trying to find art books that help Poser users create better art.]

The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics - Freddie E Williams II $15.52
http://www.amazon.com/DC-Comics-Guide-Digitally-Drawing/dp/0823099237/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312386853&sr=1-1
A lot of Poser users create comics with the program and this is a great book for teaching techniques for digital comics. It barely touches on using 3D tools as part of the arsenal of tricks to create comics since the author is coming into digital comics totally from a 2D perspective. There is a wealth of useful workflow and digital techniques in this book from creating page layouts to inking the comic that are invaluable.

Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction Dan Margulis $37.62
http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Photoshop-Classic-Guide-Correction/dp/032144017X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312400931&sr=8-1
This is the book that helped me understand the different options for improving an image in Photoshop. It's very narrow in focus and will not teach anybody how to create art in Photoshop. It doesn't explore the wide variety of tools in Photoshop. What this book does do is delve into a wide variety of techniques to enhance photos in Photoshop. It took a lot of reading and re-reading to fully understand some of the techniques. Once I learned them, I learned how to vastly improve my Poser renders. I know there are Poser purists that abhor the thought of using other graphics programs to improve upon their image. To me, Poser is just the first step. I'll go back and forth playing with lighting and rendering till I'm satisfied with what I can accomplish in Poser. Then, it's time to use Photoshop (or another graphics program) to make the image even better. It makes more sense to improve the color, saturation, and contrast in images with a graphics program that is designed for that work than to ever imagine that it can be done in Poser. Photoshop allows making adjustments to images in real time, so there's a point in Poser where changing a light and rendering again simply isn't worth the trouble. Get the placement of shadows and overall colors right in Poser and then use Photoshop to really bring them out. I was surprised to find that the latest edition of this book has been largely rewritten and tempted to buy this one.

The Human Machine George B. Bridgman $8.95
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Machine-George-B-Bridgman/dp/0486227073/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312402695&sr=1-2
When I first started looking for artistic anatomy books nearly 40 years ago, most of the ones I found were overly focused on an almost medical approach to the subject, showing every single bone and muscle individually. This is great for a doctor, but nearly useless for an art student. This book provided what I needed--a reference that showed how the muscles and bones looked when they were being moved as groups. That's what I was looking for. If an inner muscle is covered up by other muscles, I only need to understand how the outer layer looks. Poser provides all the muscles in place, but many a beginning Poser artist lacks the experience to see when they've posed a figure outside of the range of what a human figure can do. Some of Bridgman's anatomy books can be downloaded at Google Books, but not this one yet.

Pose books $40+
http://www.akadot.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=pose&page=1
These are primarily Japanese books that take a single pose with a model and photograph that pose from various angles to help artists visualize the full dimensionality of the pose. I didn't select a specific book because they have a variety of subjects ranging from household chores to gunfights. A lot of Poser artists have not developed the visual understanding of how people move and bad Poser art usually has badly posed figures. It might help a beginning Poser artist to pose their figures better if they have a photo similar to the one that they're creating. These books are hard to come by and are usually priced at $60-$90 through sellers at Amazon. I bought most of my pose books through Barnes & Noble and Amazon twenty years ago and am glad I got them.

Drawing Shortcuts: Developing Quick Drawing Skills Using Today's Technology Jim Leggitt $34.00
http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Shortcuts-Developing-Skills-Technology/dp/0470435488/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312386910&sr=1-1
I'm a little hesitant about recommending this book. In a lot of ways, this is a very limited book. It focuses strictly on architectural visualization and, even though it draws on the works of various artists, the end result is essentially one style. The one thing that this book does do is show that it doesn't matter how an artist gets to the end product. It's helped me realize that I've gotten too myopic about trying to only use 3D objects to create an image starting with Poser. This book helped remind me that artists are the only people that really care about the techniques used in creating an image. The average person has no understanding of those techniques. They either like the image or they don't. They aren't interested in how the artist made the image. This book shows how to mix Sketchup with traditional drawing, photographs, clipart, and whatever else can be used to create an architectural image in the most efficient manner possible.

What other art books are worth finding?

How about some books on Lighting:

Practical Guide to Stage Lighting, Second Edition [Paperback]
Steven Louis Shelley (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Stage-Lighting-Second/dp/0240811410/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312408174&sr=1-1
Light Fantastic: The Art and Design of Stage Lighting [Hardcover]
Max Keller (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Light-Fantastic-Design-Stage-Lighting/dp/3791343718/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312408174&sr=1-2

Yeah they're for real theatrical lighting but the concepts will translate to Poser or any other 3D Scene.

Shakespeare - The Complete Works.

Useful to pass the time while waiting for a render to finish. :) 

Quote - Shakespeare - The Complete Works.

Useful to pass the time while waiting for a render to finish. :) 

Quote - How about some books on Lighting:

 

Practical Guide to Stage Lighting, Second Edition [Paperback]
Steven Louis Shelley (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Stage-Lighting-Second/dp/0240811410/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312408174&sr=1-1
Light Fantastic: The Art and Design of Stage Lighting [Hardcover]
Max Keller (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Light-Fantastic-Design-Stage-Lighting/dp/3791343718/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312408174&sr=1-2

Yeah they're for real theatrical lighting but the concepts will translate to Poser or any other 3D Scene.

These titles will be very helpful. I was recently (ok if you count 6 months ago recent) in several book stores looking for books on stage lighting and photographic lighting but founf nothing really useful or helpful.  Of course asking a clerk was pointless as the pat response in this millenium is "Have you looked online."  I'll see if I can find these two and if they cover what I want to know.

Essential Blender. Dynamic cloth is in a constant state of flux - I'm never happy with just buying a product and using as-is, and being able to precisely create vertex groups for constrained and dynamic grouping (key word: precisely) makes learning Blender ever so worthwhile.

Is one of the lighting books better than the other? I could see where one could be helpful in lighting Poser--though Poser lights don't quite behave like actual light.

I still need to learn how to use Blender, so it's good to have a recommendation on a useful book.

The only use I've found for the Complete Works of Shakespeare is as a footrest.

http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Lighting-Rendering-Jeremy-Birn/dp/0321316312/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342363330&sr=1-2&keywords=digital+lighting+%26+rendering

There's an older edition available if you're tight on cash.  That's the one I use and have found it very helpful.

Has anybody found the Poser how-to books helpful or just a regurgitation of the reference guide that comes with the program?  I can attest to Poser 8 Revealed being the latter.  It doesn't add much to what you can read for free and the binding starting coming off after 2 days, so I returned it.

(bookmarked)

Michael Freeman: The Photographer's Eye

Attached Link: Gottfried Bammes

As a Professor at the Academy of Arts in Dresden in (former) East-Germany, he was neither influenced by the desire to idealise the human shape to sell more products nor by religious queasiness.

 You want to go beyond "pretty" and see how things really are, give his books a try.

For everthing mechanical, Google will provide everything from blueprints to real world measurments with a few mouseclicks, so there is really no excuse for "eyeballing" anything.

If you want more in-depth knowledge about certain subjects, books for scale-modelers are just as useful for cgi-modeling as they are for "actual" modeling.

Quote - Michael Freeman: The Photographer's Eye

I've had that one wishlisted for a long time... :>

Digital Art Masters (3dtotal). A lot of other books etc from 3dTotal. Their 2DArtist and 3DCreative magazines.

CGArena.com (free, 2-monthly mag).

Itsartmag.com

Tutorials and galleries on 3DTotal and CGSociety.

galleries on renderosity (76claudia2205 (Poser), Fand (nude photography), FS (Poser), ForeverNyt (Poser), Mec4D, Paul Francis, Rollmops, Tiff666, Lundqvist, Volki, Maddelirium, ...)

Playboy till mid '90

About everything on portrait / nude photography techniques and lighting.

Alessandro Baldasseroni

StoneMason

Use  my www.artbeeweb.nl website as your launching pad, pick the Magz sections and start following the links into the web.

get inspired!!