Every once in a while I run across something so beyond the normal that it puts me in shock. That happened this weekend when I went to see Tom Knight, the head modeler for Imagination Works. I was expecting to see updates on a new female character. Instead, what he showed me was this:

PROJECT MAGELLAN

Not simply a model. Now your Poser characters have there own spaceship! Its a total Poser environment. Completely to Poser scale. Everything works: doorways open and close, chairs swivel, elevators go up and down, etc. Its modular with a command, section, a habitat section a cargo section, and a power section. The command section also features a detachable shuttle. Each section can be loaded independently to make it easier to work with. Within each section, portions not visible can be hidden for faster rendering and movement. Everything is fully and professionally textured. Morph dials to activate functions such as opening doors have preset limits. (to keep a door from, say, flying off into space)

You might think that a project this size would be impossible for the average Poser system to handle. You know what? If the average Poser system is a 200 MHz Pentium One, with 64 megs of ram, then youre right! This project will kill a system like that, so its not for everyone. However, on my 1GHz Pentium III (hardly state of the art) with 512 megs of ram, theres no problem what so ever loading, moving and rendering the entire project.

Its not finished yet. Some of the interior detail needs to be added, and everything needs to be checked out to make sure it works. Imagination Works plans to sell it with pre-done lighting, a camera library that will move you quickly from one section to another, and pose files that will do things such as open and close all the doors in a single section.

Theres no price for it yet. Quite frankly, theyre stumped on what they should charge for it, because theres never been anything like it for Poser.

The Magellan is just one of a number of different Poser based projects Imagination Works has planned for this coming year. Other projects include plans, trains & automobiles, dinosaurs, weapons (for dinosaur hunting, of course) fantasy creatures (dragons, centaurs and the like) and of course, a new line of specially created human characters (including clothing) with totally new ideas in texture mapping and meshes designed from the ground up for Poser.

Ill be posting images of these new projects all this week.

-SMT

I'd rather stay in my lane than lay in my stain!