General FAQs
Q. What are all those figure names Where do I find them?
A. There are a lot of Poser figures out
there now. Here's a list of the more well-known/more popular figures.
Posette - the default Poser 4 female.
Dork - the default Poser 4 male.
Judy - the default Poser 5 female.
Don - the default Poser 5 male.
Will - the default Poser 5 boy.
Penny - the default Poser 5 girl.
Victoria 1 & 2. (V2 is V1 with additional morphs.)
Michael 1 & 2. (M2 is M1 with additional morphs.)
Stephanie 1. (Shares textures with M1 and M2.)
Aiko. (Shares textures with M1 and M2.)
Millenium Girls. (Shares textures with V1/V2.)
Millenium Boys. (Shares textures with V1/V2.)
Victoria 3. (V3 is not very backward compatible with V1&2 although there is a separate figure included that can use V1/2 textures and clothing.)*
Michael 3. (M3 is not very backward compatible with M1&2 although there is a separate figure included that can use M1/2 textures and clothing.)*
Stephanie Petite/S3.*
David 3.*
Freak.*
Aiko 3* (The complete version includes a separate figure that can wear S3 clothing.)
NEW: V3, M3 and Aiko 3 base figures are FREE! The figures include expression morphs, but not head or body shaping morphs.
Lady Littlefox (figures sold at RuntimeDNA.)
Koshini.
Koshini 2. (Somewhat compatible with Koshini 1.)
Ichiro.
Krystal.
The Girl.
* indicates a Mil 3 figure. Mil 3 figures can share texture maps. Some figures do not have a version 1 or 2 - they were based off the version 3 line,. They're so advanced that they skipped a few grades. ;-)
Elle
Neftoon Gal
Neftoon Pal
Anime Doll (a personal favorite of mine!)
Maya Doll (free!)
Q. What file formats does Poser accept?
A. Poser will import Wavefront Object models
(.obj) and 3D Studio Max models (.3ds). If you have a model in another
format, you will need to convert it before Poser can read it. There are
several utilities out there that can translate from one format to another.
Please understand - just because Poser accepts the model that does not
mean the object can be posed. It can be placed - rotated, scaled, and
positioned within the scene, but without creating a .cr2 file, the object
can not be Posed. (E.g. a car would not have the doors able to open, the
windows rolled down, etc.)
There are tutorials for making objects Poseable available. Check out Renderosity's and 3D Commune's tutorial lists.
Q. Poser won't load an .obj file that I
bought/downloaded! What am I doing wrong?
A. Poser takes .obj files and creates a
"cheat" file called an .rsr file. Sometimes, the .rsr isn't
created properly, or gets corrupted. Just delete the .rsr file (it will
be in the same directory as your .obj file) and try to reload the object
again. If that doesn't help, delete the .rsr and redownload/reinstall
the .obj file. This works about 99% of the time. If it doesn't work, chances
are the .obj file itself is bad and you'll need to contact the creator
of the file. (Very rare.)
Q. Okay, I downloaded/bought something
and haven't a clue where to save it to. Now what?
A. Read the readme file. No readme? Time
to go spelunking! Go to wherever you installed Poser. Open up the Runtime
folder. From here:
Camera sets (.cm2 + .rsr) --> Libraries\camera\(whatever folder you want)
Characters (.cr2 + .rsr) --> Libraries\character\(whatever folder you want)
Face Expressions (.fc2 + rsr) --> Libraries\face\(whatever folder you want)
Hair (.hr2 + .rsr) --> Libraries\hair\(whatever folder you want)
Hand Poses Only (.hd2 + rsr) --> Libraries\hand\(whatever folder you want)
Lights (.lt2 + .rsr) --> Libraries\light\(whatever folder you want)
Pose files and MAT files (.pz2) --> Libraries\Pose\(whatever folder you want)
Props (.pp2 + .rsr) --> Libraries\Props\(whatever folder you want)
New: James Bell was kind enough to donate a graphical version of this list. Please go to the File Location page for more information.
Note: If you have Poser Pro Pack, you will end up with .png files as well as .rsr files after you open the item for the first time. Any items you create and save will be .png instead of .rsr. If you want to share your creations with others, you might want to convert the .png files to .rsr files. (Available at Renderosity in the Free Stuff area by harper.)
Q. What is a MAT file?
A. A MAT file is short for MATerial file.
It was a neat trick that someone discovered which can apply all the textures
and colors to a figure without changing anything else. Commonly it is
created with a .pz2 extension and is saved in the Poses directory. Some
people save it with .cm2 and save it in the camera section. (There's usually
a lot more poses than camera settings.) I have some tutorials about making
MAT files.
Q. What is the difference between Poser
and Poser Pro Pack (PPP) and Poser 5?
A. The short answer is: click
here. The long answer is: listed there. ;-)
Q. "Out of memory error"
A. This is another "Don't blame me,
I just render here" answers. Oftentimes if Poser can't find a file,
it will report that it's out of memory, especially if it can't find the
mesh. Another possibility is that the texture maps are too big for your
computer to handle. You can always reduce the size of the images in something
like Photoshop and see if that helps.
Q. Why do my renders look so bad when I save them to disk?
A. Yet another "Don't blame me, I just render here" answers. By default, Poser exports images as .jpg at 25% quality. Ick! If you must save the image as a .jpg, move the slider to 100%. Personally, I suggest saving as .tif so you will have an image that won't lose compression every time you make changes to it. I'll take my .tif files and open them in Photoshop and do whatever editing I need, then save the file as .psd. Only the final image is saved as .jpg. (Why not save the image as .psd from Poser? Because this way I have the original image in case I truly hose up the .psd file after accidentally saving it.) .tif saves the alpha channel - this means that it's easy to render just a character and cut it out of the blank background in an image editing program. This is a very happy thing!