Poser Pro

Since taking over Poser, SmithMicro have not been sitting back and milking the cash cow, instead they appear to have been beavering away to produce PoserPro. The new product is aimed at professional 3d artists.

This new version introduces 64bit rendering and network rendering providing a bit of grunt for the more demanding users. Early reports have indicated halving in render time and the change should also allow for larger images to be rendered utilising the larger memory space available.

There is also support for COLLADA but it can import less than it exports which might prove limiting for some people. This partial support for COLLADA seems to be missing the point to me but I suppose it looks good on the marketting material. The package also includes add-ins for 3ds Max, Maya and CINEMA 4D which again shows the limits of their COLLADA support.

Support for HDRI and Normal maps should help people generate more realistic results.

The price of the upgrade and from new cost will be restrictive to some but should not be an issue for professionals.


On a completely separate note, there is a alpha version of an Collada Plugin for Carrara this again provides limited imports and exports to the Collada format.