Applications used - Poser 4
In 20th December 2001 update I showed you pretty much the limits of some areas of my knowledge of Poser 4. Now I'm going to show you the basics to everything. The first thing you need is a copy of Poser 4 by Metacreations. This can be purchased from most good retailers and from the metacreations website. I have the first edition and not the pro-pack (which I am aiming at getting eventualy) but if you have the pro-pack the tutorial should be about the same so don't worry! Start your copy of Poser. Once it's loaded you will see something like this.

It might look confusing right now but it isn't once you get to know it. Let's start from the left and work out way across. The ball with the three dots around it under the heading "Light Controls" is just that. You can control the lights with it. Try clicking one of the little circles around the ball. You should see a menu like this one.

Right. You should have noticed that the bar on the far right of the screen has changed to show lighting properties. Don't worry about that just yet. The Lighting Controls menu should have changed. You can click and drag the small ball around the sphere to alter the lighting in your virtual studio. You can change th lights properties by clicking the image of a lgiht bulb. If you do this you should see a 'Name' text field. You can change the lights name in there. You can switch the light on and off, you can have it flicker on and off using the animating radio button and you can stop it from casting a shadow by unchecking the box. You can turn it into a spot light or an infinate light. A spot is just that. There is only a small spot of light cast by it but an infinate light is like the sun. It's light hits just about everything.
You can get rid of a light by clicking the trash can icon next ot the light bulb. That's easy enough.
You can create a new light by clicking the other button. You will be presented with some options, none of which I really need to go into here because I went over them two paragraphs ago.
Look at the slider below the sphere. You can see that it gets lighter the further to the right that it goes. Click the yellow dot and shift it to the right. Then to the left. Then to the right. You can see that the lighting got stroner, weaker and then stronger again.
You can change just about all these options (and a few more) by using the 'deformer bar' on the far right side of the screen.

Check out the thing below Light Controls. Looks weird doesn't it? It's the Camera Contols menu. You can use it to do some good in this world of ours by pressing the buttons. If you start at the top and work your way down on this menu things will make much more sense. You should see somthing like this...
The dark head at the top of the menu is there to cut directly to 'Face Cam'. You can get a good solid close up on the models face by clicking it. Give it a try! Now if you click that odd hand on the left of the darkened head you go to 'Right Hand Cam' as I like to call it. Now click the other one to go to 'Left Hand Cam'.
Don't ask me what that red key does. I don't know. The hand to the left of the red key however lets you cycle through the camera angles. Click it until you see the person crouching holding his knees. This is your main posing camera. Now click arrow to the right of the man holding his knees. You should now see 'fly around cam'. The Camera pans around the model again and again until you feel ill. To make yourself feel really ill wiggle your mouse around to change the orbit of the camera.
Now that you've had your fun it's time to get back to work. You can see the two hands below and beside the man holding his knees. Click them and move your mouse up and down to move the camera along the Y axis.
Look below it to the modern art-ish hand thing. Click and drag it and pull your mouse towards your self. Now move it away from yourself. Now move the mouse to the left and to the right. You move the camera on the X and Z axis with this menu item.
The Three dots below the arm thingus are basic camera controls. Lens scale, roll and focal length.
Below that is the best damn thing in this section. The Rotation trackball! Click and drag it to rotate the camera around the model. Do it to your hearts content!
The DDS menu is quite cool. Heres a shot of it.
Mouse over it and look at the text that says "Document Display Style". It'll change to show you the names of the styles. Press them to see what happens. Select the wireframe model to make everything you do in Poser seem dead techie. Good for when parents come into your room and you want to make what you are doing seem very scientific!

Right. Next comes the meat of Poser 4.

Starting from left to right lets work through these buttons. First on the left is the 'Rotate' tool. Use it to rotate the model. Click the tool button, then the model and drag a part of the model to twist rotate it. Now try the next one along. It's the twist tool. I don't think that I have to go into that one because it twists it. The next one is 'Translate/Pull' and you can use this to move different model parts or the enitre model. Next is 'Translate in/out' tool which is used to move a body part along the X axis. Next is the Scale tool. You can resize all the body parts as you see fit. Next is taper. You can point pobjects or make them flare out. Don't know about the next one so don't ask. The next is re-colour. This is a very useful little feature. Click it no click the model in the screen. A colour pallet will show up. Click one of the colours to change the figures colour. QUICK TIP! You can click other things appart from the model and the studio with it! Try the workspace and change it's colour. I have it set to default brown but you can personalise it any way you see fit! The next tool is the grouping tool. That's all I know about it.

That was long wasn't it? Nearly over. Now lets go onto the Studio. The studio is the small box in the middle of your screen. It's the main posing window and you can select different body parts inside it and do things like that. It's a viewer of all your work thus far.

To the right of that you should see something like this:

These are the deformers. There are different deformers for different characters and different body parts. Click the models chest with any tool other than the colour tool, grouping tool and the chain tool. Now click the 'Scale' deformer and drag it to the right. He should now have a chest which would put the Terminator to shame.

One last thing! The picture in the background of the woman on the circus thinger... click and drag it! I just found out about this!

This is the end of this tutorial.