Poser 8 allows artists to work with avatars and all types of 3D characters, such as giant ogres and talking chipmunks that proliferate in advertising, video games, television and full-length feature films. Poser 8 acts as a virtual stage, offering eight new, ready-to-pose, fully-textured humans of different ethnicities and body types to give artists a starting point in designing their characters. The new Poser content library provides more than 2.5 gigabytes of human and animal figures accompanied by a wide range of accessories including hair, clothing, sets and real-world props and elements such as lights and cameras to produce complete scenes.

For many years, creating 3D characters was beyond the budget and ability of novice users. Many amateur 3D artists inspired by the stunning images shown in computer-generated films could not afford the expensive and complex software needed to create animations. With Poser 8, new users and hobbyists can create entire, professional-quality scenes in minutes that utilize automatically-generated walking, running or dancing sequences and lifelike speaking capabilities. Once created, users can post their animations to YouTube or any of their favorite social networking sites.

"Poser is about access. It provides artists access to everything needed to create virtually any scene imaginable, including access to 3D figures, powerful tools such as a dependent parameter feature that makes working with characters easy, and an entire world of scene assets to build upon," said Steve Cooper, Senior Product Manager of Graphics Solutions for Smith Micro Software, Inc. "We have built upon the key elements behind Poser's accessibility and transformed the application into a faster, more efficient product, while preserving the user experience so familiar to existing customers."

The new, streamlined interface of Poser 8 maximizes screen real estate and provides an intuitive workflow, plus a new search-enabled library that helps artists easily browse and organize their content. New professional-quality tools and features are included in Poser 8 such as a dependent parameter editor that lets users "teach" objects in a scene to interact with each other, simplifying complex body movement.