Poser for Beginners

by Susan Justice (aka Sveva)

Had someone told me years ago when I first opened Poser 4 that I would someday be writing a
tutorial with Poser Pro 2012 I would have laughed. There is no way I would have believed them
as I clumsily twisted up a figure's arm and quickly shut down the program for half a year.

...but I came back to it...at the time it mystified me and I was determined!

Having said that I have been in the Digital Arts field for around 10 years now I get a lot of
questions about how I create my work. Well my quickest answer would be “Any means possible
that is available to me!” Meaning I use several different programs, two I use daily, Photoshop
CS5, and Poser Pro 2012. I use many others actually, but more on an “as needed” basis. I would
be lost without my two main programs as I rely on them for almost everything from clothing
textures, to post work, and much much more. Both programs can be tricky at first and take a
while to learn and get used to, and still I learn new things almost every time I work, its an
ongoing process, I do not claim to know everything, and I am always searching for new ways to
do something.

Keep in mind as you read this that most of what I have learned I have figured out
myself, picked up tidbits from here or there, and in some cases its been trial and error.
There may be several different ways to do things, but this is how I do them, and it works for me,
so I am passing that onto you, use this as a reference manual, refer to it if you need to or follow it
to a T its up to you.

Having said that, I am confident in the fact that I can pass on this basic information to
get you started in one of my favorite programs, in no time you yourself will be
rendering images and on your way to creating fabulous 3D art within Poser. Time,
patience, and practice will only improve your knowledge and skills so you can bring
your ideas to life within this fun 3D application! Remember, the best thing you can do is
open the program and play around in it, decide what you want to do and try to do it, you
will be surprised how much you can learn by just playing with your new program.

If you have any questions after completing this tutorial please feel free to
contact me through site mail at Renderosity, or through my email address
cosmosue@hotmail.com

Thanks, Good Luck, and most of all...Have fun!

Chapter Listing:
1. Introduction, Install, Setup - Poser
2. Introduction, Install, Setup - Content
3. Runtimes & Libraries
4. Load Figure, Inject Characters
5. Clothes, Hair, Props, Dials, Pose
6. Lighting Basics
7. Material Room Basics
8. Rendering
9. Quick Tips & Reference
10. The End
 Chapter 1
Introduction, Install, Setup – Poser

Before you begin lets make sure you have what you need. To complete this tutorial and
learn Poser you will need just that – Poser. You can complete this learning tutorial with
almost any version of Poser 5+ but I will be using Poser Pro 2012, if you are using an older
version my screen shots may not match exactly but usually the same basic principles will apply,
though you might have to do some searching within your version to find what I am referring to.
The initial setup is for Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012 – your version may not have docking panels to
set up your tools/work space.

If you do not currently own Poser you can purchase it through the Smith Micro
website, if you are not ready to purchase but still want to try it you can download a fully
operational copy of Poser 9 and use it for 30 days – plenty of time to complete the tutorial
and decide if you really want to continue using the program for your art and/or work. Below is
the link to download the trial version:

http://poser.smithmicro.com/trial.html

But what if you can't decide to use Poser Pro 2012 or Poser 9? Poser Pro 2012 is
geared more towards the content creator (someone who creates 3D/2D content to be used by
other artists), and Poser 9 contains almost all the features that the Pro version has, with the
exception of a few tools, bells, and whistles! Poser 9 is half the price of Poser Pro 2012 ($249 vs.
$499) and Poser 9 does not support 64 bit operating systems, and contains only the 32 bit
program. This may or may not be important to you, you can save yourself a few bucks here by
going with Poser 9 if you intend to use it more as a hobby, if you are a serious artist and wish to
get into content creation I would suggest the Pro version. But before you decide take a good look
at the comparison chart below – and decide which version will suit your needs and your wallet
best!

http://poser.smithmicro.com/poser9-poserpro2012/index.html?/#compare

Once you have a version of Poser you want to use you are almost ready to begin.
Remember – you don't have to purchase anything right now if you don't want to, and
you can even use an older version if you have one, you do not have to have Poser Pro
2012 or 9!

OK, but what IS Poser?

Remember I use Poser as a content creator/artist, while there are many many
other things that Poser Pro is capable of, I only access what I need to create my
artwork & products, characters, textures for clothing or hair, etc. There are many people
who use Poser to create “tubes” for digital scrap booking, backgrounds for their artwork or to sell,
textures for 3D figures and clothes, the possibilities are endless. I use Poser for all of the above
and more. Poser opens up a 3D art world where you can pose figures, fit them with clothing,
adjust lights, textures, materials, and when all is said and done hit the “render” button, sit back,
and wait. Your computer will produce the image in its final state with lights applied, depending on
your system and what you have loaded into your “scene” this could take anywhere from just a few
brief moments or many many hours. You put the image together, it is your creative vision, but it
is the computer that puts the finishing touches on it by “rendering” it in 3D.

All that being said, what is a render? A render is a final image after you have done all the
adjusting to your scene, added lights, added figures, props, etc., you would set up your render
settings and click the render button, your final image is your render (unless of course it is just a
draft render, but here I am referring to your final artwork, your final render.) It may take you
several tries to get it where you like it. Am I losing you yet? I am getting ahead of myself, I love
this program and I love talking about it, and even though it can be frustrating at times it is well
worth it. Even if you are just wanting a new fun hobby, even if you don't think you have one
artistic bone in your entire body – its OK – you can still learn to do this, we are all creative in our
own ways and this is an outlet we can all benefit from.

So what are we waiting for, lets make sure you are all properly installed and
ready to go!

When installing Poser Pro 2012 or 9 it is just like installing any other program or
application with one exception, Runtimes. Now there is an entire chapter dedicated to Runtimes
so I won't really get into it here, but I will say that your Runtime(s) is where ALL of your content
that you will use inside Poser is stored, and you can keep multiples if you like. When installing
Poser you will eventually get a pop up box that looks something like this:

Now call me a traditional girl if you like, but I much prefer to use the Traditional installation
option because as it says it does provide maximum backward compatibility, and honestly I have
never had a runtime in any other location other than in that traditional location which would be
something like the file path here: (Local Disk (C:) > Program Files > Smith Micro > Poser
Pro 2012. I actually still have Poser 7 installed and so all of my content is located within the C >
Program Files > efrontier > Poser 7 (but the same principle applies here, my content is stored on
my C drive with in the folder that the program itself resides in, so all of my files are together in
one place.
 I highly suggest installing your content in the Runtime folder here as your “Main Runtime” -
you can always create others, but this should be home base so to speak. If you install to another
location you could possibly run into file issues, depending on the permission settings of your PC.

Also I recommend buying an external drive (or 2) and ALWAYS keep a backup of
your runtime on the external, hard drives die, it happens, you do not want to reinstall
all your files again trust me. We can talk more about that later. If you do not have an
external right now, don't worry, you don't have that much content right now so if you
had to reinstall it it wouldn't take but a few minutes, I have about 200gbs worth of
content, I never want to instal that again – ever!

So after Poser is all installed and you are ready to go we can move on to the next little
section in this chapter...

Launch the program from the icon on your desktop or in your start menu -

Open Poser and take a quick look around so you know what you are dealing with
when it comes to this program and your workspace.

See the next page!

 Once launched (opened), you will probably see something a lot like the below screen shot.
I do not normally use Poser Pro in its “out of the box”, factory default setting/workspace, but I
have restored my program back to its original layout so you don't look at my set up and go “whoa,
hold up, that looks nothing like my workspace here!” because no – it probably doesn't, but its
great because you are free to set it up how you like it, as all the windows can be “docked” into
positions and set up around your scene to exactly how you want it, and we will get into that but
for now lets just take a look here and see what we got!

By default your “Library” will be floating, you can see the Library to the right here it has its'
own window. Andy2 loads as the default figure, for a quick laugh you can click on one of his
arms, legs, or head and drag him around – this is probably the first thing almost every
Poser user does, I know I did it. Drag his head around and then ask yourself – now what?!

You will notice you have several tools/panels set up around your work space, you have the
Editing Tools at the top left, under that we have Camera Controls, Light Controls, Document
Display Settings, and across the bottom we have UI Dots, and Frames for animation. On the right
on the other side of the floating Library we have two tabs, Parameters & Properties, this box
is extremely important and probably one of the most used tools in Poser, notice that
there are many dials here, this is how you will control almost every aspect of the figures
and props that are loaded into your scenes. These dials are used for sizing, movement,
morphs, styling hair, adjusting poses or making your own, scaling, twisting, rotation,
etc., it will all be in these dials. These two tabs are vital to your creation within Poser.

Before we go further, I will point out that your workspace, in factory default, leaves out
something that can be very handy and that is Recent Renders. Lets get that part of our interface
up and running and then we can move some stuff around. To bring up the Recent Renders panel
go to the top of Poser and go to Window > Recent Renders.
 You will notice that anything with a check mark by it is a part of your UI (user interface)
that is showing. Anything that does not have a check mark is not currently part of your
workspace. If you click on Recent Renders this panel will “dock” itself into your workspace. So
keep in mind, if you lose one of your windows you now know exactly where to go to get it
back!

Docking your Library & Moving Your Panels -

If you are using an older version of Poser you may not have these options, and
may not be able to move panels around, and your library should already be
embedded/docked on the right side of your workspace.

Poser 7 users should note that you can move all your workspace panels around in
P7 but it does not work quite like “docking,” you can drag them all over your work
space and just leave them where you like them.

Many people prefer their libraries to be docked just like the rest of our tools. This is
personal preference so if you don't mind clicking your library in your windows task bar at the
bottom of your screen every time you want to load something into your scene then well that is
fine, but for anyone who wishes to dock their library you can follow a few basic steps to set this
up. Go to Edit > General Preferences. See the next page.
 The preference box will pop up and here you will have several tabs to choose from. Lets
choose the Library tab. You are looking for where it says Launch Behavior. By default there will
be a check mark in “External” you want to change that to put a check mark into “Embedded”

Poser will tell you this will not take effect until you restart the program. Hit OK, close down
Poser and re-open it. When you get back into Poser your library will now be docked on the right
hand side probably above your dials. Now lets set up the rest of our workspace. You do not have
to set yours up exactly like mine, you may decide you like it best another way, and that's fine, I
am going to show you how mine is set up (minus my plug-ins which you don't really need at this
time, perhaps another tutorial at some point), we are going to close down panels we will not be
using and maximize our space.
 Here you can see I have removed some panels I will not be using in my work
flow. Remember to do this you can go to Window > and then select the items you want within
your workspace. If you want to remove one you can do the same thing and it will remove it. The
tools you have removed are still available but you will need to show them again if you wish to use
them.

Here you can see I have removed the Animation Controls Panel, the Preview
Styles Panel, and the Memory (UI) Dots Panel, I have also added the Recent Render
Panel, and you can see my library is docked, not floating above everything else.

Now we will work on moving our panels around and setting up our workspace and
preferences. You will notice in the corner of every panel is a tiny little square. If you click this
little square you get a small menu, (you can't see the square here its under the menu.)
 Notice that the Camera Controls Panel is currently “docked” it has a check mark next to the
word docked, you can chose “floating” and move it to another area of your work space and it will
dock someplace else. Try it and see how you can move around your tool panels. You can also re-
size the panels, notice if you put your cursor over an edge of one of the panels and it gives you an
arrow letting you know you can expand the panel by dragging – you can change their size to
better customize your workspace.

Above you can see I have moved some panels around and this is good for me for now.
Lets make sure our settings stay the way we like them and stop Poser from opening to
factory defaults every time we close it down and open it back up – otherwise we will have
to keep moving things around every time we use the program!

Once you are happy with your set up go to Edit > General Preferences again.
 There are the five tabs to configure your preferences. Document, Interface, Library,
Render, Misc. Lets look at each one.

Make sure you are set to Launch to a Preferred Scene, and for now you can set
the scene you have open to your preferred scene, you can always change it later. If you like
you can click on Andy2 (anywhere will do, on his body) and hit the delete key on your keyboard,
this will remove Andy2, we don't need him, and I don't know anyone who uses him, now you can
set your preferred state without Andy in your scene.

Later on if you prefer to load Poser with your favorite figure already in your scene you can
change the preferred launch scene as much as you like. I personally have Poser launch with
nothing in my scene.

On the next page we visit the Interface tab.

 Here is where you will make sure there is a blip next to Launch to Previous State. This will
save your workspace the way you set it up, this way you won't have to set it back up every time
you open the program. Below is the Library tab...
 The Render tab an important tab because here you should set up your Render Process
“number of threads” and as a general rule of thumb you set your thread count to the
number of processors your computer has, for instance, I have a quad core so I have set my
thread count to 4. You can try it with and without setting this up once you get to the final render
and see if you notice a difference when rendering.

The final tab is the Misc. tab and I pretty much leave everything in the default here. You
can see the screen shot on the next page...
 If you do not want Poser to check for updates to your program you can uncheck the box
here and manually do it, though I leave mine checked, I like to know when there is a software
update so I can install it – sometimes Smith Micro releases whats known as a Service Release,
which will fix common issues and bugs and make your over all work experience within Poser
easier and give you less frustration, so I suggest checking for new updates on a regular basis.

Now that we have our program and workspace all set up its about time to take a
look at some content you are probably going to need/want right away. There are some
base figures and a small amount of content that comes with Poser but if you are wanting to go the
direction I have gone, and so many other vendors and artists you are going to need to purchase a
few more things before you are well on your way. Think of it this way, if you were just starting
out as an acrylic painter you would need your canvas/paper, brushes, paints, etc. this is just like
that, just like any hobby in fact, you are going to have to put in a little up front – but its
rewarding, even if you do not make any money from your art you are are doing something you
enjoy, something fun and relaxing. A creative mind is a healthy mind, so its OK to put in a bit at
the start and add to your collection of content to create your art as you go along.

I hope by this point you are feeling more comfortable with your new program. I know it
can seem like a lot at first but really I think once you get the hang of it you will be rendering in no
time!

Lets take a look at some great content to get you started!

 Chapter 2
Introduction, Install, Setup – Content

Now that we have everything set up its time to get some quality content into your Runtime
so you can really get started! So what IS content exactly? Lets see, your content is everything
you have at your disposal to create your artwork/final renders. You cannot create without at least
some amount of content. Now as mentioned earlier, there is a small amount of content that
comes with Poser by default. However, you will find that the most widely used figure at this time
is Victoria 4. In almost all cases in order to use all the pretty characters and clothing you
see available in the Renderosity Marketplace you will need to have the below figure
installed before you can use the characters with all the makeups and the cute clothing!
You need the figures that the characters, clothes, and hairs are created for before you
can use them!

First you will need Victoria 4 and her morphs. This is the base woman figure that is
currently in use and the one that is most supported by the Poser community and its content
creators. She is available at DAZ3D for around $20 (morphs not included), see the link below...

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/victoria-4-2-base/

There are also bundles you can purchase that come with her and other content that goes
with her, these are not necessary, though you will need her “morphs” and you can get a
bundle with her morphs and a few other things below...

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/victoria-4-2-pro-bundle/

If you only wish to have the base (the first link) and her morphs you can purchase the
morphs separate (without a bundle) for around the same price as the base, $20 at the below
link...

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/victoria-4-2-morphs/

So you either need the bundle, or the first and third links which will get you Victoria 4 (we
will refer to her from here on out as V4) and her morphs.

You may also look into purchasing another female figure – Aiko 4 (or A4 for short) she is a
figure that goes alongside V4 and you must have V4 installed before installing A4.
Many character creators use some of A4's morphs to create their V4 characters and so it
is almost a necessity that you also have A4 in order to use the characters. Below is a link
for A4, she does not come with a separate morph pack...

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/aiko-4-base/

Additionally you may also consider buying The Girl 4, and Stephanie 4 but you may find
there is not a lot of items available just for these girls, the majority of the Poser world uses V4+
morphs and A4. I highly recommend starting with those. I do have Stephanie and The Girl but I
rarely use them.

But what about the GUYS? Maybe you are more into creating art with men?
Maybe you want scenes with both guys and girls?
 If that is the case you can also purchase Michael 4 and his counterpart Hiro 4.

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/michael-4-base-male-3d-model/

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/michael-4-morphs/

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/hiro-4-base/

These are the most commonly used figures at this time, and there is a wide variety of hair,
clothes, props, textures etc. available for these figures. You may also consider a few other very
popular figures that are available exclusively through Renderosity. Check out the below links for
some very adorable characters, many geared towards fantasy art.

Mavka by Smay - http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/mavka/80108

Several adorable characters by Nursoda -

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=335459&category=allitems

With Poser 9/Pro 2012 also comes free Alyson 2 – and the talented Blackhearted
has created a beautiful set/custom morph for her “GND: Anastasia” here -
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/gnd-anastasia/90528

Just for a quick review lets go over that again from the beginning, you have purchased or
downloaded the free trial of Poser, or you already have an older version, you are installed and
your workspace is set up. You can visit the links provided and purchase a base figure to get you
started, now you need to install the base figure(s), remember all those pretty characters in the
Renderosity Market, you can't use those or any of the clothing unless you have the corresponding
base/figures use them on! Its like playing dress up and dolls for adults, only the final image is
your creation to share in your gallery, your creative mind gets to shine and help you relax after a
hard day of work, just having some “play time” can mean all the difference in our busy lives – so
indulge! Art feeds the soul!

Lets get your figure installed, I will assume you have V4, but the same would apply if you
purchased M4 or one of the other figures. Remember you have to have either V4 or M4
installed before using A4 or H4...lot of 4's in there, which is because these figures are
referred to as the Gen 4 figures. Previously we had V3 and A3, these are just the newer more
improved versions which quickly replaced the Gen 3 figures a few years ago.

Before you install your figure you will need to download it from the DAZ site after
purchase. This can be slightly confusing. Even after doing this for many years I still
sometimes get confused about which files I am supposed to download and which files I don't
need. Pretty much it goes something like this, once you make your purchase and go to your
available downloads on the DAZ site you will usually see several files listed (depending on how
many things your bought) there will be PC and MAC files listed, so if you are on a PC, you can
automatically ignore anything that says MAC, for PC you will have executable files (.exe) to install
your content. Now having gotten this far you have probably heard of another program that is
very similar to Poser and that is DAZ Studio, or DS. Files that have the letters DS or ds in them
you probably do not need to download. These are for DAZ Studio only and unless you are also
running DS and want to install to your DS content then you can just leave these files be and not
waste time by downloading them.

On the next page I have taken a screen shot of what your available downloads may look
like in your DAZ Account.
 (Here I have reset my downloads to be able to show you what it may look like having just
purchased it as I purchased V4 when she first came out several years ago) When I reset my
downloads for just V4 there are this many files to choose from to download. I know I do not need
the power loader as I have never used it in the past and I know it is optional, I have always just
downloaded the regular installer for PC, I have highlighted it in yellow. Now obviously if you are
on a MAC you would download the MAC file underneath it, but since I am on a PC I will download
the PC file. You will also have more downloads than I am showing because you should have also
purchased the morphs and perhaps even A4, so you will have to sort through the files and figure
out which ones you need by process of elimination, like I said, it can be confusing. You know you
do not need MAC files (for PC) and you know you do not need the DS files, the Power Loader is
really not needed, which leaves you 1 file out of 6 that you actually need! See its not so
scary after all!

Once your files are downloaded we can install. I might be going too slow, and if you
already know how to do all of this you can skip ahead, but there are some folks out there that
may not know how to get V4 or Gen 4 figures installed and working so I want to make sure no
one is left behind.

Because I work fast and do not like to go searching for my downloads I have them go
straight to my desktop. If you have them go to a folder that is fine, so long as you know where
they went after you downloaded them. Before we install our first bit of content I want to say that
there are many ways to go about doing this, keep in mind that you are about to set the stage for
disaster if you do not come up with a good system to keep track of your files. Remember we
briefly discussed Runtimes earlier? Your Runtime is your file cabinet – every single bit of
content you own will be in these folders. Right now you have 2 Runtimes and they are both
located in the Smith Micro folder inside your C drive (C > Program Files (x86) > Smith Micro) – if
you have a 64 bit operating system then you will have two Program File folders one that is (x86) –
the one with the (x86) is for 32 bit programs, 64 bit programs will reside in just the Program Files
folder. You can install your content to the version you have chosen to use (if you have a choice),
if not, great, less decisions to make. I suggest using the 64 bit version if you have it.

I keep a folder on my desktop called “Unpack” before I actually install the files
into my runtime I will first install it to this folder. *Note that DAZ is currently the only store
that has .exe files, and any other content you buy from Renderosity.com will be in .ZIP format)
you can install .exe files anywhere, you do not have to install them to a certain program/file, you
can choose to install the files right to this little folder called Unpack (when installing .exe files
simply plug in the path of your folder and where it resides, some .exe files will require you to
choose custom installation, also note that when prompted to make an uninstall file I never do, I
find it is something I just do not need to keep, this is personal preference), if I have zip files I
also unzip them all here to the Unpack folder. You can choose to install right to your
runtime, however, remember this is your new shiny file cabinet, and content creators name their
products by many different names, they could use their vendor name and the product name, or
just the product name, etc. so if you want to be able to always find your content you should come
up with a system first that allows you to install without making a complete mess. This is why I
choose to install to a folder outside of my working runtime prior to moving the files
over. So I install everything to this folder on my desktop. Then I would go into this folder and
sort through it. Read over the product read me's to make sure you are following vendor's TOU
(terms of use) with their products and to get any quick tips and help using their products.

Once you have installed your files to some sort of unpack folder on your desktop you will
notice that now you have a runtime folder in this sorting folder you created called Unpack (or
whatever you named it, installation works too, just something so you know that that folder is
always used to install your Poser content.) Now the runtime folder inside the unpack folder
corresponds to the folders inside your main working runtime which is inside your Program Files >
Smith Micro folder. You can now open both side by side and move your new files over. You will
need to keep the folder structure, you cannot put Geometries inside the textures folder or Poses
inside the Character folder, the structure must remain intact or your library will not function
properly and your content will not show within Poser.

On the left is my Smith Micro Folder inside the Program Files folder, on the right is the
contents of my Unpack folder that lives on my desktop. All you do now is move the content from
the Unpack folder Runtime to the corresponding folders in the Poser Runtime. See the next page
for the next screen shot.
 You can see above that the left side has a lot more folders than the right, simply because
the products we are installing do not call for any files to be within some of those folders and so
they are not included. We need to move the contents of the Geometries folder, Libraries,
textures, as far as the weblinks go we really do not need them, and personally I delete them, you
can keep them if you like. Open the Geometries folder on the right and drag the contents
exactly how it is into the Geometries folder on the left. Do the same for the textures
folder. The libraries folder is more complex, so hold up here we will get to that next, first, a very
very important note when installing...

**Your Geometries and textures will ALWAYS go into these folders – they will
NEVER EVER go anywhere else. Copy or drag them over exactly how they are within
their respectable folder structure, failure to do so will result in file calls within Poser,
crashes, missing files, and more, you may not be able to load some objects and you will
need to reinstall. You must follow folder structure. Files are written to “call” on other
files within Poser and those files must be in the exact place the file calls them from, if
not they will not load and you will have error after error.**

Now for the Libraries folder. Go ahead and open them both the one on the right and the
one on the left. Again we have more folders, much more on the left than on the right, again we
must follow the folder structure here. See the next page...
 So here we are inside the libraries folder, for the most part what you see here on the left
corresponds to what you see in your library inside Poser (not all of it some are files that rely on
other files and do not show in the Library inside of Poser), on the right is that same unpack folder
we are installing everything from. You will notice on the right we have an odd ball folder called
!DAZ – this folder does not correspond to anything on the left, which is fine, on occasion you will
run into this while installing, there are some folders/files that are required to be inside the root of
the folder and not within any other folders, so you can drag and drop that !DAZ folder inside this
Library folder, but make sure it does not get installed into any other folders, it should show at the
very top of the folder above Camera on the left. Do not change the names of any of these
folders.

Now we are left with two folders, Character and Pose. May as well start with Character, go
ahead open the Character folder on the right and on the left. Once you open those you will see
that by default Poser has several folders already installed, in the character folder on the right you
will have the new content you want to install. In this case its V4 and she is in a folder called DAZ
People. You can drag over the DAZ People folder into the Character folder and leave it as it is,
however, here is where you can start to organize and customize your runtimes. We will talk more
on this in the next chapter, if you are installing multiple Gen 4 figures such as V4, M4, A4 etc.
then inside this folder may be all of them, and you can choose to keep it this way or rename the
folder to Gen 4 Figures, or make new folders and name them according to which figure resides in
which folder. It sounds a bit confusing but its really not once you get into it.
 What you need to remember, and this is the most important part of installing
your content is that you must leave all folder structure that was in the zip or .exe
installer intact, which is why zip files and .exe files when opened have everything
packed already in a runtime folder. This is so it installs properly and you know where
the files go. You cannot rename any folders until you get inside the individual folders
inside the library. The Characters, Pose, Camera, all those folders inside the libraries
folder must stay named exactly how Poser has named them, do not change these
names. Once you are inside those folders – now you can change things around.

You can see above that I have added a new folder inside the Character folder called !DAZ
Figures. Adding the ! in front of the name will keep this folder on top. I also changed the name
of the folder on the right from DAZ People to V4 since I am only installing V4 she is the only figure
in that folder, I will move that folder over and drop it into the !DAZ Figures folder. This folder will
be home to any and all DAZ Gen 4 figures I have such as Hiro, Aiko, etc. and they will each reside
within their own folder inside that !DAZ Figures folder. Easy enough to remember where they are
now!

Now we need to install the content that goes into the pose folder, so back out of the
Character folder into the main library folder again. Same with your unpack folder.
 The Pose folder can be completely customized to your liking just like the
Characters folder. You can rename everything until your heart is content. You can add a million
more folders for a million more items if you want and name them over and over and over – you
will not hurt anything. The more organized you are here the BETTER! If you stick with
Poser you will end up with a LOT of content. The more you play the more you realize your
girls and guys need more hairs, makeups, clothes, shoes, etc. so start your organizing now, and
you will never have much of a problem finding what your scene calls for.

Open the Pose folder on both the right and left sides

Depending on what you are installing, whether it be just V4 or other things you have
already picked up, you should see something like this, on the left is where we are installing to, on
the right are the things we need to install, which for this tutorial is only V4. If you just drag over
this DAZ's Victoria 4 folder you would be fine – all her options would show up in your runtime
library within your Poser application, no problem, but here is where you will really start to
organize so lets do some of that before moving on. I am going to open the V4 folder and show
you what she comes with:

Inside the Victoria 4 folder I find several more folders. Now this part is up to you, but I
strongly recommend something similar. I am going to create several new folders inside the Pose
folder of my runtime folder. Within these folders I will make more folders, and more folders, so
that all of my files and content are organized within my runtime, thus making it very easy to go
between folders when using Poser so that I can find things when I need them. Especially as a
content creator you need to be able to move around within Poser relatively quickly and you need
to know where all your V4 clothes are, where your hairs are, where the poses are and so forth.
You don't want to be in the middle of setting up a scene only to realize you have a hair
somewhere but can't find it, so you end up tearing out your own hair while looking for it!
 Below is a screen shot from my actual Poser runtime that I have installed into C >
Program Files > Smith Micro > Poser Pro 2012 > Runtime > libraries > Pose

Now really I could be much more organized, and if I had the time I would be, unfortunately
for me it was too late in the game by the time I figured all this out about organizing and runtimes
I had installed so much stuff that I am still cleaning it out and putting it back together, but the
good news is if you are reading this then you can start off on the right foot and not have
a mess to clean up a year or two from now! If you start organizing in the beginning you
lesson your headaches in the long run.

So you can see from above that I keep all my animal figures together, inside that folder its
broken down further into types of animals, butterflies etc. I have a folder for Dragons because I
have a LOT of the DAZ dragons and I love them all. I forgot to mention earlier that there are also
the Kids 4 (just like V4, A4 and the others), I don't use them often but I do have them, then I
have all of my V4 stuff together, M4, and some other misc. figures. I do not keep V4 clothes with
V4 because I have a lot of clothes that are NOT for V4, so inside the clothes folder it is broken up
even further by figure. Same thing with the poses folder, inside it is broken up by figure.
Remember this is just the Pose library, so all of these folders contain files to load colors and
textures to the actual models (you load the models/figures from the character library.) Everything
is broken up by figure and type. There are many ways you can do this, and really its personal
preference, whatever works for you is great.

But always remember, when you buy a product and download the zip file from
Renderosity be it poses, lights, etc. the file structure within the zip file will match the
file structure of your runtime, all you need to do is put the files in the corresponding
folders in your runtime. So if you unzip the file to some kind of “unpack” folder you
can then easily move the files to your runtime, keeping the folder structure, and you
can rename some files easily before moving them (so long as they are the files
contained within the Pose folder, Character folder, Hair folder, etc. you cannot rename
the root folders. (the root folders being the folders inside the folder named Libraries >
Pose, Light, Character these are your ROOT folders and you CANNOT change the names
of these, only the files IN those folders can you change until your heart is content.)

This brings us right into a quick little chapter about our wonderful Runtimes...
 Chapter 3
Runtimes & Libraries

As we have already talked a good deal about installing your Poser content into your
Runtimes I just want to go over a few more things so you know that your possibilities here are
endless – and getting off on the right foot with your organization can really make all the difference
in your work flow.

I know I must sound like I am repeating myself a bit in this tutorial, but I cannot stress
enough on some of these points.

As I mentioned in the previous chapter I keep 3 runtimes but only ONE main
runtime. Some vendors/artists keep over 100. This is all based on how you as a person and
artist function and what makes sense to you. There is no right or wrong way to set up your
runtimes so long as you follow the general folder structure that Poser requires, you can
set up your Pose/character/light/props etc. folders any way you like. If you want to go so far as
to separate it by color of clothes, or by types of clothes, dresses, skirts, pants, etc. I keep an
accessories folder inside my clothing folder and inside that accessories folder is jewelry separated
by bracelets, earrings, rings, necklaces, tiaras, etc. I also keep a shoe folder in the accessories
folder.

Lets break it down...

You buy an outfit for V4 that comes with jewelry. Well you don't have to use that jewelry
with just that outfit, you can use it with any outfit you want you can mix and match outfit pieces
until your heart is content and you get just the look you want, so some of us have gone so far as
to remove the jewelry or shoes from an outfit's folder, and put it in its own jewelry folder, lets say
you have earrings from an outfit called V4 Retro Babe (cute outfit by the way, Mytilus made it
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/retro-babe-for-v4-a4-g4-pbiv/79037) well you might want
to use those earrings with another outfit or scene, lets say the earrings come inside the outfit
folder which goes into the Character folder, I would remove those earrings, rename them
RetroBabeEarrings and put them in the jewelry folder instead, leaving the rest of the outfit in the
Retro Babe outfit folder and put that in the clothing folder. Confusing? A little, but that is why
you need to find something that works for you. This way when I am doing a promotional image
for a hair texture add on I can go right to my jewelry folder and look through all my earrings, I
can credit the vendor who made the earrings because I have changed the name to the name of
the outfit RetroBabeEarrings, I know Mytilus made this outfit, so when I upload my image to the
gallery or my product pages I can put in the credits Earrings from Retro Babe by Mytilus.

That is the easiest way I have found to work – so far. I like one main runtime because you
can organize within that runtime, you can technically have a runtime for everything, clothes, hair
etc. but that can add up to a LOT of runtimes, I prefer my organization to be contained within one
file cabinet (runtime.) I only have default Poser content in my 2nd runtime and the 3rd is for
products I am currently working on or testing, when those files are done and packed away for the
store I install them into the main runtime.

I keep all my geometries in one runtime, I do not use multiple geometries folders. Same
with my texture folder. Remember to never change any of these names in these folders, this will
result in what the Poser World refers to as “file calls” - Poser will “hang up” and not respond while
it tries to locate the texture that the file is calling for, when it can't find it a window will pop up
asking you to locate it, if you know where and what it is great, if not, now you are on a wild goose
chase for this missing file. It can also cause Poser to crash and stop responding all together, you
will lose what work you had not saved yet and you will need to restart the program. Yes this can
happen regardless, but you can minimize crashes by making sure you do not rename
things you are not supposed to rename, hands off the texture folder and geometries!
Install them just the way they come and you should be file call free, for the most part!

After a while you become very familiar with the works of many vendors/content creators,
you may be able to recognize hairs by Propschick, SWAM, 3Dream & Mairy straight away, if you
feel you might forget you can always change your folders names, lets say you are installing
Rahnya Hair (by Propschick) well I keep a folder in the Character folder called Hair. Inside the
Hair folder is all my Character hairs (Poser also has a Hair library but not all hair installs to
this location, there are several types of files that hairs come in, they could install to the
Character folder, the Hair folder, or even the Props folder, this is why it is important to
honor the folder structure, not all Props go into the Props folder, some are Character
files and so forth.) If I think I might forget that Propschick made this hair I could always
rename the folder that the hair is in to Rahnya Hair (Propschick) or something similar. I like to
remember who made what so I can credit the creators when able, this helps those vendors and
crediting when you are able to do so in the gallery or on your products is always a great thing to
do, its very appreciated by other vendors, and it helps customers to find the products you used in
your images. Everyone is happy this way!

We have already talked a great deal about Runtimes in the previous chapter so just a few
more things I will go over quickly, and the most important thing aside from keeping your folder
structure in tact is backing it all up. Once I install a product I delete the installer or the zip. If I
should need it again I can usually download it again from the store, and so I see no need to keep
the zip around taking up extra space on my hard drives, but sometimes I get products from
vendors who give out a gift or I am working on a product with someone and they give me the
product for free, if I lose it I have to ask them for it again, and it can turn into a hassle, so yes I
delete the zips and installers only because I keep my runtimes backed up on external hard drives.
If my computer were to crash and my files were not recoverable not only would I have to go
asking all the vendors who have given me something for their products again but I would have to
download every single file from several stores (mostly Renderosity!) that I have ever purchased
and reinstall every one of them! That would take me...a long time. This is not something I want
to do nor do I have time for it, nor do I want to bother the other creators for their products once
again. I strongly recommend purchasing at least 1 extra external hard drive, if not 2
identical drives. This way you can have your runtimes on your computer that you use to create,
and keep your runtimes backed up on the external drives, and should your computer crash all you
need to do once you have reinstalled your programs and operating system is to copy the files back
over to your computer and back into your Poser folder. If you back up these files about once a
week your chances of having a complete loss and starting over from scratch are very small. I
keep 2 identical 1tb external hard drives which are home to all of my files, runtimes, program
installers, artworks, psd files, my own products, etc. If one should fail, I still have the other.

Please, save yourself the hassle and time sink, back up your runtimes!
Computers die, hard drives die, technology isn't all its cracked up to be sometimes –
things happen, back it all up! Save your work often, and back up those precious files!

I used to keep 1 external drive, and then that drive crashed. I sent the drive off to a
company who had to open the hard drive in a dust free room, this process cost me over $1500 to
recover what was on my drive, in the end I did get a lot of it back, mostly photos of my son, my
runtimes, and my artwork, what I did end up losing was every single one of my PSD layer files I
had saved from artworks, some which had taken me over 40 hours to complete, the layers were
ruined, the files useless. Now I keep two identical drives, lesson learned the hard way.

Finally I will stress again that what is installed to your runtime folder on your C drive (or
other drive you choose to install on, some people do have externals just to run Poser from) should
be available inside Poser from the Poser Library panel. If you have installed it all correctly you
should be able to open Poser and access your Library and all of your files will be there. If you
have other runtimes not in the root of the Poser folder, meaning they are located someplace else
on your computer or on your external hard drives you will need to open Poser and add the
runtime to your library. Lets go through that to make sure you know how to add a new runtime to
your Poser Library. If you don't already have Poser open, now is the time to do so.

Below you can see my Library.

You can see that I have my default Poser Pro runtime that I don't really use, the Poser Pro
downloads runtime which I don't use either so I don't count these two, I still work out of my main
runtime which is located in my Poser 7 folder, and the downloads runtime which is also located in
the P7 folder as well (both of which I plan to move over, but I haven't had the time yet!) and then
you see my desktop runtime, which is actually my working runtime for products not yet released
or things I am testing for others. So that is my total 3 runtimes with the extras that just kinda sit
there. One of these days....it will all be in just 1 or 2. So you can see from the above screen shot
I have a red box around a folder icon. This folder icon is used to add a runtime. Lets say you
have some runtimes you created that you want to use on an external drive, or you want to run all
of your runtimes from other drives or what have you, no worries here, click this icon and you get
a box that pops up, now you have to browse to the folder where your runtime is. I left that
runtime in my unpack folder that I was using to install some stuff for this tutorial, if I browse to it
using the icon to add a runtime it will show up and I could actually just add that as a working
runtime as well. All your runtimes will show here in the Library panel, if its not there, you can
simply add it.

Your runtimes and library is where you will go to add anything to your scene (unless you
are importing an OBJ file, which we won't really go into because that is rare, 99.9% of items you
use will load from the Character, Prop, or Hair library.

On the next page we are going to take a look at each of the buttons above your library so
you know what each one corresponds to. This will help you load your content from your library
that we previously installed in the above earlier chapter. I am going to a new page for this so all
the information is in one page for easier reference.
 The screen shot above shows the top of your library panel. There are 10 buttons, each
button corresponds to part of your library. The buttons are as follows from left to right:

Figures – the first button on the left is where you would go to load a figure into your scene, a
figure can be V4, A4, and so forth, or a hair file, a building, a pair of wings, an outfit, any object
you add to your scene may come from the Figures library, remember, some objects also come
from the props library, but for the most part all your figures will be here, many of your
hairs, and some of your props, so if you are looking for something here and you can't
find it make sure to also check the other libraries, you may have forgotten where
something installed to!

Pose – The next button is the Pose library. The pose library contains all the characters skins,
within the pose library you will be able to load clothing textures for an outfit, textures for hair, you
may go to the pose library to inject morphs for a character, these are not objects but files that
alter the objects you have already added to your scene. Poses for your characters will
also be found in this library.

Expressions – The expressions library is where you go to load an expression for your character,
there are many products available in the Renderosity Marketplace for expressions for V4 and other
characters, you would go here to access any expressions you have installed.

Hair – The Hair library is home to hair, as I have stated a couple times before some of your hairs
are going to be in the Figures library, and everyone once in a while you may buy a hair that
installs to the pose library, but a good part of your hairs will also reside here in the hair library.
Hair from this library will behave more like a Prop than a figure.

Hands – There are many sets, especially sets by prop creators like Danie and Marforno that may
come with hand poses, these can almost always be found in the Hands library.

Props – Almost all your props will be found here. Almost all the sets by Danie and Marforno,
many sets from other stores, things like grass, flowers, etc. almost all will load from the Props
library, some will load from the figures library and can be found there, but most vendors/creators
have props load from the props library. Things like jewelry sets and such usually install to props,
and so when you open Poser and look in your props library they should be there.

Lights – Pretty self explanatory here, all light sets will be found in the lights library.

Camera – all camera settings will be found here.

Materials – The materials are used inside the material room (there is a tab at the top of Poser for
the Material room) you can set it up much like you can the Pose room (which is the one you will
do most of your work in when setting up your scene) sometimes an outfit will come with Material
files, these will install to the material folder inside the runtime and be accessible through the
Material library. There is a vendor named ParrotDolphin who makes a lot of material sets you will
find are very useful to change the appearance and colors/textures of outfits you buy. Her
materials are highly recommended.

Scene – Some vendors include pre-made scenes with their products, you can load those through
this button.
Two final things I want to mention about the Poser Library. Lets say you have Poser open
and you want to install some new content you just bought, don't worry, you can install it with
Poser being open, not a problem. However, it usually will not show up in your library unless you
refresh. I use this a LOT because I am always installing new stuff or while creating my own
products I need to see how the files look inside the Poser Library. Below is a screen shot you can
see of how to refresh the Poser Library, if you click on a runtime folder in your library or any folder
in your library for that matter, you will see over to the right an arrow in the shape of a circle, click
it, and that folders contents will be refreshed, open the folder back up and your new stuff will
have appeared.

In this screen shot I have also put a red rectangle around the search tab. This will come in
very handy, click on the tab and lets say you are searching for a chair you know you have but
can't find type in chair, anything with the name chair will show up and you can locate exactly
where it is.

You will also notice the favorites tab above, with this you can add some of your most used
items to your “favorites” and they will be easily accessible any time you need them.

I encourage you to also take a look at the bottom of the library, it is expandable

Play around with some of these options and mouse over the buttons to get to know your
library even more. You will find some useful tools here to customize your library even further.
Just click the expandable area at the bottom of your library to access the extra features.

Now...we are ready to really get our hands dirty. I think you are stock piled full of
information, and if you need to come back and review, you can do just that at any time!
 Chapter 4
Load Figure, Inject Characters

Assuming you are all installed with your base figures and you have taken a good look at
your runtime, you have V4 or another figure you want to use we are ready to actually start in the
program! I know I haven't really had you look for hair or poses yet, but we will soon. We are
going to start by just loading V4 into our scene. Open up Poser if you don't have it open already.

I am going to show you how I would load V4 if I were starting fresh like you may be doing.
I actually do not load V4 this way every time I use her, it is a bit of a time sink, she loads without
her morphs and we have to manually inject all her morphs before she will take on an injection
pose for a character. So lets load her up and inject all her morphs. (after we do this we are
actually going to save her back down to our library so we never have to do it again!)

V4 should be installed to your main runtime or if you installed her to another runtime
(though I do recommend always installing V4 and the other Gen4 characters to your main
runtime/default runtime) and added that runtime to your library we can go to the Figures button
on our library and go to her folder and add her to our scene.
 Because I used to work in P7 and like I said earlier I have not moved over my runtimes to
my PP2012 folder yet, V4 still resides in my P7 runtime, when I uninstall P7 and move the
runtimes over she will reside in my PP2012 runtime. I keep these main figures in the default
runtimes as I rarely use them in this form. Double click her icon to load her into the scene.
Sometimes this may take a few seconds or even a minute depending on 1) where your runtimes
are located and 2) how fast your computer is.

...and there she is in all her purple bikini glory! Not much to look at in her current state,
great as a base though and that is why she is so very very popular. We need to get her morphs
injected and save her back down into our library, the next time we use her we can just double
click her file in the figures library with all her morphs pre-injected, much much less work for us!

Hit the Pose button above your library and lets go find her morphs.

See the next page.

 With V4 selected you should inject all the available morphs that you purchased from DAZ.
You can be sure to have V4's body selected by checking the left hand corner of your preview
window, see the below screen shot:

Here you can see I have V4 selected in my scene, and the body part of her that I have
selected is her entire Body. You can use these two drop downs to navigate to other parts of your
scene once you have added clothes & hair they will also show up in this menu (if they are props
they will show up in the right drop down along with V4's body parts, if they are figures from the
figure library they will show up in the left drop down underneath V4.)

Now in the Pose Library (second button over, right next to figures) we are going
to navigate to where you installed V4's morphs. Really this is one of the trickiest parts,
remembering where everything is. Hopefully you have already begun to organize your runtime(s)
so you can easily go to the folder in your library that you named for all of V4's stuff, like I
mentioned before I keep my base figures in their own runtime, a Poser default runtime actually,
and everything else like my clothes and hairs are in my main runtime that I work from. So your
location may be different then mine, if you can't find your V4 morphs don't forget you have the
search tab and you can locate it that way.

Once you have them, with V4 selected, we are going to double click her morphs and wait
while they are “injected” - this will give V4 the ability to change shape, you are giving her the
ability to be many many different girls, with the morphs you can virtually change almost
everything about her body shape and size, her face, hands, belly, is she a fitness buff or is she
curvy? Flat chested or implants? How far apart are her eyes? Is she smiling? These are just
some of things possible by injecting V4s morphs.

Lets take a look at the next page for a screen shot.

 Depending on if you purchased Aiko 4 and The Girl 4, you may or may not have these
morphs to inj. There is also V4 elite morphs that are available on DAZ. I am going to inject the
“INJ Base V4”, “INJ Morphs++ V4”, and the A4 morphs. My A4 morphs are located in a different
folder under A4 in the same Pose Library. Go down the list double clicking each morph to add it to
your figure. You can check if the morphs have been loaded by selecting either the head or the
body of V4 in that drop down menu (from page 30), and then check the parameter dials (mine are
to the left of my workspace)

Once your morphs are injected they will show up here, the dial will be set to 0.000, you will
notice there are + and – symbols next to the categories such as Breast and Arm-Hand you can
expand and minimize these are you need to, to save space under the Parameters tab. Continue
adding any and all morphs you wish to add for the Gen4 figures, the more you add the more
versatile V4 becomes.

You will also notice that she is not changing shape at all. This is because you are
only adding the morph OPTION you are not actually making use of it – yet. Not all characters will
use ALL the morphs, but if you have them injected into V4 and you choose to inject a character
that uses some or all of her morphs you will be all set to go, you won't have to worry that your
figure is missing a morph. Many content creators use a bit of A4 in their characters, so it is highly
recommended that you inject A4, if you don't the character may still work, but the morphs that
call for A4 will not, so her face or body shape may not be exactly like the character injection files
that your purchased. You must have all the morphs applied in order to use a character
that makes use of them.
 Continue to add the morphs and double check in the parameter dials that the morph has
been added. If you are adding a head morph, click on the head, if you are adding a body morph
have the body selected, this will ensure all morphs are injected properly the first time.

If you inject a head morph yet have the body selected and you double check the
parameter dials the morph may not show up – make sure you have the head selected if
you are checking the dials to make sure a head morph was indeed injected!

If you are done injecting all the morphs and double checking the dials to make sure they
took hold then we are ready to go to the next step. I know, it can be tedious.

Click the button on the top to go back to the figure library, first button on the right. Make
sure you are in your main runtime, we want to save V4 with all her morphs down to our main
runtime so the next time we want to load her we do not have to go through adding all those
morphs. We are going to save her down to our library.

Here I have V4's Body selected from the drop down (not visible in the screen shot), I am in
my MAIN runtime which is currently living inside a folder called Downloads – again it will be
moved into Poser Pro 2012 folder eventually, but for right now its irrelevant, so whatever you
main runtime is, select it, you will see again my categories (yes I have a lot of wings and they get
their own folder!) just select that main folder – in my case Downloads, now look to the bottom of
your library. You should see a + sign.
 You should have a plus sign similar to this. If you mouse over it you will see it says Add to
Library. What we want to do is – click it! You will get a pop up – name your new V4 whatever you
want. Since mine is a combination of V4 and A4 I have named mine V4A4. You can save as many
V4's that you want, maybe you want to add just one for all the V4 morphs, and one with both, or
one with The Girl 4 morphs, its entirely up to you. After you name her and click OK it will take a
couple seconds or so and she will be added to your library. By default she gets stuck at the
bottom, but you can put her wherever you wish. I will just leave mine here that way I can easily
load her without going through a bunch of folders every time I want to use her (which is just
about daily these days!)

Above you can see she has now been added to my library, never again do I need to bother
with the morphs! Now the next time I need to load V4 with morphs, here she is, just double click
her and she will be added to your scene ready to take a character inject from the pose library.
Which brings us to our next section of this chapter and that would be injecting characters.
 Injecting purchased (or free) Characters:

If you have spent any time at all in the Renderosity Marketplace you may have noticed
these beautiful girls for sale with lots of makeup options, pretty eyes and faces, gorgeous skins,
custom head morphs and body morphs, there are so many to choose from! The possibilities are
really endless here, and the awesome part is you don't have to use the skin on the character, you
can inject one character morph and use the skin/makeups/lips from another character. Plus there
are lots of other products in the marketplace to enhance your characters such as the Eyes FX by
Sabby & Seven http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/sabby-eyesfx3/91239 – these allow you to
customize your girls even more!

Now before we choose a character to inject I will say that it is up to you whether or not you
inject a custom morph first or add clothing first, but because we are already on the chapter about
V4 and her morphs I thought it would be easier to go right to injecting a character, as far as I
know there is no right or wrong way for those two steps you can either add clothes before the
character or after, really it is personal preference. We will be adding clothes after our character.

For this next step you will actually need a character to inject. I recommend
characters by Sabby, Seven, Fabiana, 3DSublimeProductions, Adiene, Freja, P3Design, and many
many others, you can browse all of the Character Texture sets for sale at Renderosity by going to
Marketplace Home page, http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php then click on the Poser
Category above the Featured Section, when the next page opens you would click on Victoria 4,
from there you would choose Character Texture sets or Character Sets. This will bring you to a
page full of just V4 characters you can browse and choose from. Here is the direct link:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?TopID=11219.102553.102560.

If the budget is tight and you want to try a free character you can browse the free section
of Renderosity. http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php there are options to search
so you can try to find a character you like.

I will be using Izzy by Seven and Sabby, she is one of my favorite characters, I adore her
face morph. Make sure you install your character to the proper folders as described in
Chapter 2.

Izzie has a small amount of A4 in her morph! If you bought A4 – great! If not
you may get different results when injecting her morphs!

Once you are installed and ready its time to navigate back to the Pose Library (second
button on the left at the top of your library panel) and you will need to find where you installed
your character. Mine are all in my V4 folder, I have many of my characters separated by creator,
so in this case I would find my Sabby, Vex, Seven (sabby has done some characters with Vex as
well) folder to find the character Izzie. If you would like to purchase this character you can do so
here http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/sv7-izzie/89640

Make sure you have V4's body selected – remember the drop down at the top of the
preview window. On the next page is a screen shot of where this Character folder is located inside
my Pose Library.
 You can open the folder by clicking the little arrow next to it, this will open it up to show
you all of her options. All characters are different. Some will come with lots and lots of makeup,
many lip options, fantasy makeups, different skins, different shader types, etc. If you are using
Poser Pro 2012 you are welcome to try the SSS shaders if they came included with the character
you have. Its personal preference whether or not you like the results from these shaders, I tend
to use them sometimes and sometimes not.

Your character should have come with inject options for head/body and remove options for
the same. Sometimes they will come with extras like longer finger nails, elf ears, expressions,
pretty much anything. It is your choice what you want to inject. For this tutorial we are going to
inject both the head morph and the body morph. With the body selected we are going to double
click on the body morph injection. Notice the body shape change. Now we are going to select the
head, and although I have already explained how to use the drop down menu to select different
body parts on the next page you will find a screen shot of how I have selected the head for V4.
Alternatively you could just click on her head, but sometimes you may get an eye instead or if she
is wearing clothes or earrings you may get the wrong piece so its a good habit to get into using
the drop down menu to select different parts of your figure or scene.
 Here I have selected the head from the drop down menu to the right of the first drop down
menu so select V4 in the first drop down menu then, Body Parts > Head.

Now double click the head inj in your Pose library to inj the head morph.

Notice here that her head shape has changed, you have now fully injected a character into
V4. If you don't like her you can use the REM options to remove her body and head. Now we
need to apply her MATs. MATs change the textures of your V4 character. The default V4 textures
that she loads with are OK but not very pleasing overall besides who really wears a purple bikini
undergarment like that?! There are much much better textures out there with lots of options,
including our little Izzie here, isn't she a doll! Jump to the next page and lets take a look at our
MAT options for Izzie.
 Here are some of Izzie's MAT options. First we would need to load the full MAT which I
have selected above. Sometimes creators will put morphs in one folder and mats in another or
separate eyes from makeups – so just navigate to the proper folder if this is the case for the
character you have chosen to use.
 Here you can see I have applied the MAT for Izzie's skin (simply make sure you have V4
selected and double click the MAT in the folder.) Clearly a huge difference from the basic default
V4 skin! Now we are getting somewhere! You may notice I am still using default Poser Pro 2012
lights, we will change those later, for now we can leave them.

Just for fun, since we are no where near finished yet, lets hit the render button (without
even changing render settings) and see where we stand with our girl. You can find the render
button above your preview window. It looks a lot like a camera!

Its the first one on the left, the one next to it is the area render button but we can talk
more about rendering later, if you just give the render button a click your girl will render a basic
quickie render for you, still with default settings here.
 Here is what she looks like without changing render settings, lights, makeup! Just a quick
basic render. We can see what we are working with here. We can either add her other options
now or wait until we have clothes. Since I am not entirely certain which color I will end up going
with on her outfit, I would probably leave her like this for now and jump over to the figures library
to pick out her clothes. You can either follow me, or go ahead and play with the makeup and eye
options of your chosen character, either way you add the makeups and other options exactly like
you applied the skin MAT. Select your girl, (or guy!) and double click the option. Now like I
mentioned earlier you can use another character's skin on a morph but you won't be
able to use Izzie's makeup on another character's skin because almost all characters
have different skins, and the tones will not match and look awkward so be sure to use
the makeups that go with a matching skin! Onto the clothes!
 Chapter 5
Clothes, Hair, Props, Dials, Pose

This chapter should be a lot of fun and learning. In this chapter we are going to add an
outfit to our character so she has some clothes on! We are going to add a hair, a simple prop, and
apply a pose. Your options here are limitless, literally, limitless. Now I have a very large
runtime with many options, and if you are just starting out fear not, in time your runtime will
grow. I will link you to the products I will be using, but remember the choice is all yours, you can
go right along with me and buy the same outfit, or you can pick something completely different.
The same general principles will apply. I am going to use something pretty easy for the tutorial
and this should be good enough to get you well on your way to dressing your characters.

Below is a list of content and links that I will be using for this part of the tutorial,
remember, you can also choose to browse the free section if you are not ready to make a few
more purchases.

Hot South III by 3D-Age: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/hot-south-iii/93590

Trendz for Hot South III by Sveva: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/trendz-for-hot-

south-iii/93816

Ametrine Hair by Propschick: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/ametrine-hair/90888

Candy Ametrine Hair by Sveva & Zzyzzx: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/candy-

ametrine/90906

Bettine's Sekrets for V4.2 by Fabiana: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/bettines-sekrets-

for-v4-2/71719

DM's Spice (poses) by Danie & Marforno: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/dms-

spice/90228

You may also want to grab a set of lights, we won't be adding them until the next chapter
but the lights I will be using are below:

Mild Boreal Lights by Fabiana: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/mildboreal-lights/88680

Another thing to remember is often times when you load a figure or prop it may go
right through the floor. Not always, but sometimes, depending on what figure you have loaded,
and it is especially common when importing an .obj file (File > Import > Wavefront OBJ) being
able to import these files allows for an even larger range of objects you can use to create. If you
load a figure and it goes through the floor you can go to Figure > Drop to Floor and this should
set your figure on the floor, not through it.

You may also want to double check that your figures' “inverse kinematics” is turned off,
sometimes this can lead to problems when posing a character. To check if it is on go to Figure >
Use Inverse Kinematics > make sure there are no check marks here, if there is select them to
disable.

Make sure everything is installed properly. When you are ready to begin we are going to
first make our way back to the Figures library to load our outfit. I keep all my clothes figures in
one folder named !Clothes, inside that folder are many more folders by figure type, and inside the
A4, G4, V4 clothing folder all the outfits have their own folders with their names and its
alphabetical, so if I am looking for the Hot South III outfit I need only to scroll down to the H and
look for the outfit folder. See the next page.
 Here is my clothing folder for A4, G4, V4, inside that are all the outfits by alpha. I would
open that to find the Hot South III.

Here is the Hot South III outfit in the Figures library. Select your figure, V4 in my case,
and double click the skirt icon/image. The skirt will load into your scene around the same area as
your figure, it should look almost as if its on her perfectly depending on the morph of your
character. It may look as though its on her – but its actually not – it is actually really
just floating around her waist – not attached to her YET!
 The next step is vital. It is extremely important. When you load a clothing figure
you must conform it. Sometimes there may be other instructions, however, that is rare and in
this case and most cases we will conform our clothes.

Below is a screen shot after I have loaded the skirt onto my V4 character:

Now if you go to the drop down at the top of your preview window you will notice the skirt
is listed.

Make sure you have selected the skirt from the drop down.
 Now go to the top of Poser, go to Figure > Conform to

You will get a pop up on your screen with a drop down menu. You want to select Victoria
(or your figure you want your clothes conformed to if you are using a different figure) and hit OK.

In this case our skirt has conformed very nicely, it now looks as though its right on her
waist and not floating. This will not always be the case.

Lets take a closer look. To do this we can utilize our Camera Controls.

We will talk a little bit more about Camera Controls in the next chapter but for now all you
need to know is how to pull V4 a bit closer to you. You see the X in the middle? Put your mouse
right over that X with the hands, click once, hold, and pull towards you. V4 will appear bigger on
your screen, you can zoom right in to her skirt.
 Now lets look around a bit, if you put your mouse over the ball in the camera controls you
can swing your camera around and have a look see around around your figure. Just click and hold
and move your mouse around. This skirt has conformed perfectly to our figure!

Easily reset your camera by going to Edit > Restore > Camera.

You should repeat the same steps to load and conform your top. Now – not all clothes are
made the same and at some point you are going to need to adjust, the outfit I am using, and if
you are using it too looks to be super conforming, and thus needs little adjustment to get the fit
right. I am going to load a top that needs some minor adjustments so I can explain to you how to
make your clothing fit better. After we adjust my top we are going to add a hair.

I have added the top from the Sugar Doll outfit by Propschick & Sarsa which is available
here: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/sugar-doll-outfit/89885

On the next page you will see a screen shot, now I have added the figure, and conformed
it already, and the sides seem a bit too large for our girl.
 Looking at it again I can see that some adjustments on the sides under the arm would also
be good. Many creators put in adjustment morphs for their clothing, but first check to see if the
morphs from the character have affected the clothing, you can do this by selecting V4's body and
looking at the dials in the Parameters box, see what morphs are used on her, any dial that isn't
set to 0.000 is a morph that is part of that character, for instance her fitness might be set to .300
or in Izzie's case it is set to .712. Then cross check the clothing item by selecting the clothing and
checking if the morph has been also applied to the clothes once you have conformed the piece of
clothing. If not, you can dial the parameter yourself and this will help to fit your clothes better on
your character.

In this case here I see the morphs have already been added, but Propschick has included
some adjustment dials to the outfit that will help you fit this top to her. First I will select the
Sugar Top > Body from the drop down menu at the top of our preview window like I have
previously done with V4. I will look through the adjustment morphs and dials and see if I see
anything that might tighten this top around V4's waist, I see a couple tighten morphs but I before
I use those I am going to select just the Abdomen part of the Sugar Top.

Now I will take another look at the dials.

 Oh look here what I found! A PBMAdjustWaist morph. PBM stands for Partial Body Morph
and you may notice there are some FBMs there too which stand for Full Body Morph. You can use
all of these dials on the outfit top/bottom/skirt whatever it is to adjust your clothing to fit. It is
difficult to tell you which dials to use, and which dials will be there because the morphs that are in
the clothing are dependent on the creator who made the clothes and the morphs they included
with the outfit. They will not always all be there. If some are not included you may use other
similar morphs to try to adjust the outfit. Here Propschick included this awesome adjust waist
morph so with the abdomen selected on our Sugar Top we can use this PBMAdjustWaist and dial it
down to fit the waist more securely to our girl.
 The key here is to use the morph dials to adjust your outfit or clothing piece just enough to
where it fits as close to the skin as you can get it – without causing the skin to poke through. I
have dialed the adjust waist morph down to -.600 then I use the camera controls (more
specifically the ball) to swing around my character again and double check that I do not have any
“poke through” - poke through is the name the poser world has given to item in your scene that
“pokes through” another item. It can at times be a bit tedious adjusting your jewelry or props to
ensure that none of your objects are poking through something else like a hand, face, leg, etc.

We want our clothing to fit naturally, not too big, baggy and awkward but close enough so
it really looks like its on her – just like in real life. So go ahead, go through the dials, spin them
up and down and you will notice which parts of the outfit move. Many are self explanatory, like
breast size for instance, and others may take you a little while to learn. Knowing some anatomy
here can really prove useful!

There are a few other adjustment morphs that Propschick has included with this top that
will be quite useful in fitting this to Izzie, she has included a tighten waist, and tighten armpit
L&R morphs, also the tighten chest morph works well too in this case. Below I have used a few of
these morphs to adjust the top further.

Its nice and snug fitting! I adore this outfit, and it comes highly recommended from two
very talented vendors!

Now I will go ahead and delete the top and add the Hot South III Top into the scene. I
wanted to make sure I showed and explained how to use the morphs in clothing to adjust your
pieces to fit your figures. Some outfits will be more difficult then others, keep at it, you'll
get it!
 So I go back to the Figures Library, Clothes folder, A4/V4 clothes, scroll down to Hot South
III, open that folder and double click the tank top. Don't forget to conform! (At the top – Figure
> Conform to > opens the drop down menu, select V4.) Use the camera controls again to swing
around your figure and check that the top is fit snugly to V4. Reset the camera by going to Edit >
Restore > Camera. I would then use the camera control again to pull V4 closer to the front so I
can view her better, especially if I were working on a new texture for this outfit.

Normal Camera position when restored:

I touched on this earlier, but I think it would be good to repeat as this is a rather large
tutorial and it is good to have the information thrown in where it is relevant to prevent you from
searching all through it wondering where you saw me mention the camera controls before!
 You can use the below controls to move your figure backwards, forwards, side to side, up
down etc.:

Also you can use the drop down arrow located next to the words Camera Controls to show
another menu that will allow you to quickly jump to other camera veiws:

On the next page I show you what the camera control drop down menu has to offer, and
from there you can go to the face camera, bottom, left, right, etc. The aux camera is very useful
and you can use that camera to get a really good look all around your figure, while your main
camera will remain exactly where you left it.
 The face camera is highlighted, I moused over it to point it out, it is another camera view I
use quite a lot in my work. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the various camera views
and controls. Take a few minutes to play around with them, remember you can always reset your
cameras with Edit > Restore > Camera. If you like a particular view on a specific camera you can
“memorize it” and when you choose to restore it it will go back to the view you memorized.
 OK so enough about the basics of the cameras, I think we know enough where we can
continue. So I have loaded the skirt and the top and I have conformed them both. The outfit is
pretty good as far as conforming goes, although when we apply a pose to our figure we may need
to make additional adjustments. There is one thing I want to fix here, and this is personal
preference really, I don't want that much nipple standing out, I want to tone that down.

It must be extremely cold in Poser for her to be so, um, pronounced here, so I want to go
ahead and tone that down.

With V4 selected and her Body selected I will check my parameters dials and I know I am
looking for the nipples, so I keep scrolling and I can find it under Morphs & Shapes > Morphs >
Breast, scroll until I find the dial that is controlling our figures nipples and turn it to 0.000 – you
don't have to manually turn these dials, but you can if you want, just click right on the number, in
this case .656 and it should open a box so you can type it in:

Replace the .656 (or whatever number for whatever dial you are changing) to 0.000, this
will put the nipples back to the zero position. Now here I am showing you this with the nipples,
however, this goes for ANY of the morphs or dials, for instance, butt too small or too big? We
need the glute dials, want bigger or smaller breasts, the breast dials, you do not have to stick
with the character's morph that you injected, you can change it as much or as little as you like,
same with the character's head, select V4 and Head, then use the parameter dials to adjust it to a
different shape, you can change the eyes, the lips, the chin, jaw, nose, and much more. This is all
up to you, its your creation.

Keep in mind there may be more than one dial to change in order to get your
desired results, in the case above I turned the Nipples and NipplesDepth dials to 0.000
and they flattened out completely.
 I think I am pretty happy with what I have now, and if you like you can do a quick draft
renders as you go along, for now just hit that small render button at the top of your preview
window and see how its looking, keep in mind we have not added lights yet, so you are doing a
draft render with default Poser lighting, your end results should be much different, but at least
you can get a feel for it and see how it is starting to look.

Lets move to hair, our character is still bald after all, and hey, bald is cool, but for this
tutorial we need to cover adding hair, its much the same as adding clothes. Now remember, I did
say earlier that when you install your hairs some will install to the Figure Library and some will
install to the Hair library. This is one reason why following the folder structure is so very
important, if you installed a hair figure to the Hair Library you won't be able to use it, so pay
attention when installing anything, but especially note where your hairs go when installing them.

In this case we are going to load a hair from the Hair Library. I am using the Ametrine hair
which I linked at the beginning of this chapter.

The Hair Library can be accessed as the fourth button in from the left, looks like a head of
hair. Inside here I have all my hairs in their own folders with the name of the hair, so it is
automatically sorted alphabetically. I select V4 > Head, then I scroll to Ametrine Hair and double
click the one not labeled with an A2 (this is for another figure.) This will load our hair. You would
load a hair the exact same way if it was a hair that installed to the Figure's library.

You do not conform hairs that load from the Hair Library, only hairs that load
from the Figure Library will need to be conformed. Hair from the Hair Library should
load right on your character's head, and will likely need to be adjusted to fit if you are
using A4 with V4 and her head is slightly bigger and more round.

If you are using Izzie with V4 as I am, you will notice that the hair is just a little bit too
small for her head. Great news, almost all hair you buy from the Renderosity Market will come
with dials to adjust for A4 and G4, sometimes they will also come with dials to adjust for the Kids
4, Stephanie 4, Michael 4, and others. It is pretty standard that hair at least come with a dial to
adjust for A4 and G4.

Since we loaded this hair from the Hair Library and not the Figure Library it will not show
up in the drop down above the preview window where V4 and her clothes are located, you should
have V4 selected from that drop down then you can select the hair. Below is a picture of where
that drop down menu is located in case you need a refresher:
 So to select the hair you can either just click on it, which can be tricky sometimes, or to
make sure you have it selected you can make sure V4 is selected then in the drop down next to
her (in the screen shot above it says Body) you can click that drop down and go to Props:

Hairs loaded from the Hair Library will show up under your Figure > Props.

Clicking on Ametrine Hair will now select it. Again – you don't have to use these drop
down menus, and at times it will be much easier to just click on whatever it is you want to adjust,
but knowing where they are and how to use them is essential because there will be times that you
need to adjust something that your mouse simply will not click on, it wants to click on everything
else around that one little prop or item but not that item, knowing where else you can select it
from will save you some headaches and searching. But don't forget, hair loaded from the Figure
Library will show up in the drop down menu that V4 and your clothing items are located in (the
one on the left you can see above where it says Victoria 4.)

With our hair selected I am now going to adjust it to fit better on our Izzie character.

I spot the dial straight away in our Parameter Dials panel, FitA4. It is usually set to 0.000
by default. Almost always clothes and hair will load to fit the basic default shape of V4's body,
hence the need for clothing morphs and hair morphs to fit the other characters and figures. It is
rare that you would use V4 in her default state when there are so many other characters and body
shapes you can inject!

Check the next page for screen shots after having loaded the Ametrine Hair.
 I selected the face camera, but then zoomed out a little bit for the full picture, I have not
adjusted the hair at all yet, this is right after loading Ametrine Hair to V4/Izzie. It actually fits
pretty good but I can see right away we need some adjustments because of the shape of her
head. You can see on her left side, our right, that part of her head is showing. All I need to do
here to adjust this is add a bit of the A4 fit to the hair.

I am going to select that dial I showed you on the above page “FitA4” and I am going to
actually turn the dial to the right and as I do that I am going to watch the hair on the head of our
figure, once the hair has come through completely I will stop. Having used Izzie before many
times I know the dial will not have to be turned much, especially not all the way to 1.0, which
would be default A4 and since Izzie is a mix of V4 and A4 she does not use either the default V4
or A4 head shape but a combination of the two. Keep dialing slowly until all the hair has come
through, see the next page.
 Here the dial is at .100, we can see I still have a bit of a bald spot there so the hair is not
quite fit perfectly yet, I am going to turn it to the right some more.

I keep going until her head is covered you can watch the cap/scalp of the hair come
through the top of her head, if you dial too far to the right you will end up with hair that is sitting
too far off her head, so you want to be sure you dial it just enough so that the hair is sitting right
on her head with none of her skin poking through or her head coming through the hair. I ended
up dialing to .140, over dialed just a bit to check and make sure and then dialed back down again
to .140.

On the next page you can see how the hair is sitting perfectly around her head, not floating
above it nor into her head. Its good for now, when we render we might find we need to make a
few adjustments, but we can leave it be at this point, we won't know for sure until we do a nice
render in a little while if anything else could use some tweaking. Be sure to always check out the
actual hair morphs for styling a hair that come included with them. Some vendors like to include
all sorts of morphs to make hair longer or shorter, big pony tails or small, wavy or straight, it
really just depends on the hair and what the creator has added for styling.
 Ametrine hair, fit for our Izzie...

I used the below morph that Propschick has included with this hair to change the pony tails
and make them smaller...

On the next page you can see the result...

 I think it is adorable! But again, its up to you! That is the best part about this program,
its all up to you what you create and what your style is. Let that creative person out!

OK, so we have loaded our figure (V4) we have injected a character (Izzie), we have
loaded a skirt and top (Hot South III), and we have loaded our hair (Ametrine.)

Doing pretty good I think! Once you do this a few times, it will come to you easy, and you
will be scooting around that program in no time!

Next we load a necklace, because what girl would be complete without her jewelry? We
will also be loading up a few poses to find one we like, and lastly in this chapter I will use my
texture set Trendz for Hot South III to change the way our outfit looks.

The necklace I am going to use is Bettine's Sekrets by Fabiana, its a beautifully crafted
necklace and set of charms for your girls. I actually use it all the time, its a staple in my runtime,
a “go to” piece that looks good with just about everything. The necklace base loads from the
Figure Library. With V4 selected I will make my way to the Figure Library, Clothes folder, A4/V4
Clothes, then I have a folder called Accessories, within that folder I have a Jewelry folder, and
within that folder I have a folder titled Bettine's Sekrets. I will find the necklace inside that folder.
It loads just like clothing, double click the icon to load the necklace.
 With V4 selected, double click the necklace icon from the Figure Library and it will load to
V4's neck, now remember we are loading a Figure for V4, and it will need to be conformed,
without conforming her accessories or clothing when we pose her they will remain behind in her
default position, and they won't fit her as nice as they could. So make sure you go to Figure >
Conform from the menu at the top of Poser.

So now our character has a necklace, though we only loaded the main part, now we need
to venture into the Props Library.

The Props Library button looks like a ring, in between the Hand Library and the Light
Library. I use my Props a LOT. In fact this is probably my biggest Library, I think I have a ton
more scene props than anything else, but that would make sense as I love to make background
images and incorporate them into my designs. So you can safely assume that eventually you too
will have a large prop collection, and everyone needs some nice trees, grass, flowers, planters,
benches, swings, buildings, gothic architecture, and who can resist any prop set by Danie &
Marforno (DM)? Gorgeous prop sets, but I digress, right now we are looking for a charm to sit on
our character's necklace. The Bettine's Sekrets set by Fabiana comes with many to choose from
for any type of render.

I keep my jewelry props under !!Character Props (only because I have so much scenery I
have had to really work on organization in this library, and separate my V4/A4 figure props from
the large scenes and misc. props I have.) So it goes like this, I open the Props Library, and find
my way to !!Character Props > Jewelry > Necklaces > FK-Bettine, I have the cords selected from
the drop down over the preview window, and I double click the charm I want to add, in this case,
one of my favorites the kitty. The charm loads right in the spot you need it to on the necklace,
perfect! But you may need to adjust for the clothes. See the next page for some screen shots to
load the charm.
 Double click the icon for the charm of your choice, it will load onto the necklace.

Here you can see the kitty charm has loaded right where it should be. However, you can
also see that the tank top is going right through the body of the charm. But what is this odd
looking shape here under the kitty charm? It is often referred to as a handle. If you were to
render this you would not see that handle, it is used for adjustments only and will not be visible in
your render. If you click on it you will notice in the parameters panel you have some options to
adjust your charm.

See the next page.

 You can also select this handle in the drop down for the cords, it is listed as a body part
named “jewel.”

Many many times on outfits, especially dresses and skirts the creators will put in
place these handles, they are very useful for posing the skirt/dress.

Clicking this handle will give you these transform parameter dials:

By default it was set to -1 already. I had to adjust it to -2 in order to fix my poke through
issue with the tank top. Make sure you always swing your camera around to the sides to
see how far your object has been adjusted away from your figure, or in which direction,
it is very difficult to rely only on front camera, you must get used to swinging them
around and turning your figures either with camera controls or rotating their bodies so
you can get a good look at how objects are looking from the sides, this will help you to
make the proper adjustments.

I am pretty happy with my minor adjustment to the charm, I feel this is a good time to
discuss the dials a bit further before we post our character and continue to the next chapter.
 Parameter Dials -

In this small reference section I just want to point out a few things regarding the dials that
you will find in the parameter panel. Each item in your scene will have something here, be
it just the transform dials or a full set of morphs there should be something.

Most outfits or clothing items will come with at least some amount of morph dials for
adjusting and fitting the outfit, plus some come with special dials to give your skirt or dress some
flare, twist, spin, etc. These dials are often used for morphs that will mimic realistic dress
movement, they can be used to tighten sides, adjust collars, under arms, waist...pretty much
almost anything.

In many cases the Transform Dials will be at the top for any selected item, of course that
does not always stand true, but...most of the time.

A lot of the basic Transform Dials are self explanatory, Scale is for size, you can scale your
object/prop etc. up or down, make it smaller make it larger. Below that we have the x, y, z scale
which scale your item on the x, y, or z axis. It is a bit difficult to explain this so let me just say
that if you use the xScale and move the dial either way your item should get larger or smaller
outwards on the sides, with yScale it will scale your item upwards or downwards, and with the
zScale it will be forwards/backwards, remember we are thinking and working in 3D. The best
way to see exactly what I mean is to select an item in your scene, the hair works well,
and now try out all of these dials.

The rotate dials will do just that, rotate your item! Give them a go and get a bit more
comfortable with them. The Tran dials are used for moving your item around your scene, move it
back, forward, side to side, down, etc. These dials are very valuable and important to you, even if
you don't realize it yet – you will! Its best to grab some of the pieces in your scene and play with
these dials, just remember to save before hand. You can always go to File > Revert to your
last saved point when you are done playing around!
Before we venture any further lets take a look at what we have now...

Two things left to do in this chapter before moving onto the lighting basics!
 First lets look at her outfit, these are the base textures that load with the Hot South III by
3D-Age, there is nothing wrong with these textures, in fact the skirt textures are just fine, but the
white top is a little boring, a lot of times the base textures that come with an outfit are just that, a
bit boring, this leaves a lot of options for the content creators who create the “add ons” for the
outfits to expand the outfit and create new more detailed textures. Whether you wish to change
these base textures out for something else is entirely up to you. I am going to be using
Trendz for Hot South III, 12 skirt textures and 12 top textures that can be mixed and
matched to create a lot of different looks, these are high quality detailed textures that
will give this outfit a lot more options, and its available in my shop:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/trendz-for-hot-south-iii/93816

First we install, if you need help with that be sure to refer back to Chapter 2, remember to
keep the folder structure in tact, when I install an add on for an outfit, say Hot South III, when it
comes to the Pose Library you should have a folder in your runtime that you named Clothes,
inside that you might have it broken up into figures A4/V4, Mavka, Kids 4, etc. (of course you
don't have to it is just what I recommend) inside the A4/V4 clothing you should have the base
folder for Hot South III, this is where I would put any add ons I buy or make for that outfit, that
way all of my textures for any given outfit are with the folder for the outfit in the Pose Library.

Above you can see I have the Trendz for Hot South III add on right inside the Hot South III
folder, and this is within the Pose Library (not the figures library, which is where following the
folder structure comes in handy!)

By keeping things in this order now I know if I load up a base outfit, and go to the Pose
Library and browse to the folder in the Pose Library for the outfit I am using if there is not an add
on inside that folder – I don't have one – and in this case I can either go buy one which I often
do, or use “materials” (I will touch on those basics later.) The point is, here I have an add on for
this outfit, so I am going to show you how easily it is to use.

Let me point out that hair will work exactly the same. I keep all my hair add ons
that I create inside the base hair folder inside the Pose Library! You will load a new
hair color the exact same way as you load new outfit textures. It will always be from
the Pose Library, in some occasions you will have material files that go along with it, or
for props you may have materials rather than what the Poser World calls “MAT files”
and these will load through the Material Room, and we will get to that soon!

Textures that apply through the Pose Library such as the add on I am about to
use are referred to as MAT Files. In Trendz for the Hot South III I have included 24
total MAT Poses for the Hot South III outfit.
 Lets continue, you need to select whichever piece of clothing or prop you are changing
from the drop down menu at the top of the preview window. Lets choose the skirt first.

With the skirt selected open the folder that contains the add on Trendz for Hot South III.

You will see you have several skirt textures to choose from, 12 to be exact, with the last 2
being a neutral gray color which will allow you to change the color yourself in the material room
(we will go over that) for now select one of the other skirt textures 1-10. I am just going with the
first one, so I have my skirt selected in my scene, double click the MAT Pose to load the textures
onto the outfit.

Now the skirt should have changed to whatever you double clicked on. Note that these
skirt MAT Poses will only work on the Hot South Skirt III, you cannot use them on other outfits,
the way the files work are dependent on the way they are written, and so MAT Poses that you
load from the Pose Library only work on the items they are intended to work on.
 So we will repeat the exact same steps to change the top. Make sure you have the top
selected and add your MAT Pose.

I am also going to change the hair color, remember it is exactly the same to load
hair MAT Poses, I keep all my hair add ons/colors etc. in my !Hair folder in my runtime,
there is a !Hair folder in the Figure Library to actually load the hair, and then in the Pose
Library my !Hair folder is home to all the MATs.
 I am using Candy Ametrine for Ametrine Hair and you can find it here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/candy-ametrine/90906

Many hairs come with options to change the base hair color and the streaks,
bangs, tails, etc. not all hairs have these options due to the material zones of the hair
(the areas where the color/texture is is divided into different “zones”) Candy Ametrine
hair comes with MAT Poses to change the color of the hair, streaks, and the hair ties.

So here is what I have so far. Once you go through these steps a few times you will be
getting to this point in just a few moments. It might seem like everything is taking a while to get
through but it's because I am explaining it, once you get proficient in Poser, you will be speeding
right through!

I am going to stop here and apply a pose for now. Later I may add earrings,
rings, etc. Its completely up to you, but I love accessories, the more the better!
 In this final section of Chapter 5 we are going to apply a pre-made Pose to our character.
There are many pose creators in the Renderosity Marketplace and as cited at the beginning of this
chapter I am going to use one of my favorites, its a pose collection called Spice by Danie and
Marforno, two very talented content creators with high quality prop collections and poses.

You will always access your poses for your characters through the Pose Library.
Poses are never stored any where else.

I keep all of my poses for all of my figures inside a folder called !Poses, as mentioned
above it's in the Pose Library. I am going to browse to the Pose Library > !Poses > !!V4 Poses
> !!DM Poses > !!DM Spice.

Make sure you have your figure selected, for example, V4. Make sure you do not have a
piece of clothing or a prop selected. You will add a pose to your figure the same way you would
change her textures or add new textures to the outfit. Just select the figure/character and
double click the pose file.

See next page...

 I have applied the pose to our girl. Sometimes you will need to make some minor
adjustments for clothing, it might require you to move a hand slightly or a finger, you can easily
do this by selecting the body part from the drop down menu and using the dials to make your
changes.

I am doing a quick render to show you how its coming along...

 You will notice when you get into rendering your final drafts/artworks that renders will take
a bit longer once you have loaded a hair onto your character, especially depending on which lights
you are using, there are other factors to consider as well and we will talk more about that in
future chapters. You will also notice that this isn't the prettiest render, base lights and default
render settings do not = great results!

At least we can see we are getting somewhere! We have already come a long way from
twisting Andy2 around!

To finish our pose I will usually pose the eyes as well, there is a very easy way to go about
this to ensure your character is always looking at the camera and her eyes are not crossed. If you
select your character's eye, left or right first it does not matter, but make sure you do both, and
go to Object > Point At and then choose Front or Main Camera you will notice that your character
will appear to be looking right at the camera, often times poser renders seem to have a “doll look”
as if they are lacking life, this will help to give your character a bit more life. Sometimes one
looks better than the other – so try both Main and Front cameras. See the next page for screen
shots.
 Select the eye...

Object > Point At...

Front of Main Camera > hit OK. Now try another render! Sometimes the difference is very
slight, or the Pose you applied may already have the eyes in the proper direction!
 Finally there are a lot of “fixes” out there. You may have noticed them in the Renderosity
Marketplace, there are fixes for feet, hands, arms, shoulders, legs, buttocks, etc. I use a fix for
the shoulders on all of my renders, by default V4's shoulders do not look as nature as they should.

This product by Corvas is a must have for your runtime:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/simpledetails-v4lite/70402

I use it on every render, you apply it just as you would a Character, you inject the
morph/fix from the Pose Library, in fact I keep it inside the V4 Character folder with the rest of my
V4/A4 characters.

See the next page for the comparison...

 Notice the difference in her shoulders between the render on the left and the render on the
right – this is before and then after the shoulder/arm fix was applied. You can see that the one on
the right is softer, more rounded, and more natural, the one on the left is awkward and bulky.

Don't forget you can add some makeup and lip color to your character's too! Be
sure to go back into the Character's folder in the Pose Library (in my case Izzie) and
load some other options to give her that pretty face!

OK, now we can finally move onto some lighting, wow, we have come a long long way from
Andy2! If you have made it here, congrats, you are doing awesome, and you will get better don't
worry, keep at it!
 Chapter 6
Lighting Basics

I am going to briefly go over some lighting basics, and by that I mean we are going to take
a look at a couple different light sets and the results. Lighting is an entire tutorial all by itself,
which is the reason I wrote SV Light Helper Tutorial and IBL Lights which is available in my
Renderosity Shop here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/sv-light-helper-tutorial-and-ibl-lights/87265

This has everything you need to know to really get the most out of your lights, it explains
AO and how to adjust your lights to suit your scene, it also comes with 40 light sets to get you
started.

For this tutorial we are going to add a couple different lights, render, and see what we like.
When I am creating the promotional images for my hair add-ons or clothing add-ons I tend to use
similar lights, but I need to take into consideration how the light is affecting the hair and character
as a whole. I don't want lights that are perfect on the skin but make the hair look too flat or way
too bright. Nor do I want lights on clothes that wash out the whites and make the blacks look flat.
We have to be conscience of how our lights are affecting our image all around. When I am
creating art I tend to use more artistic lighting depending on my scene.

Any light sets that you buy or freebies you download will always load from the
Light Library.

One of my favorite light sets (aside from my own!) are the Mild Boreal Lights by Fabiana,
available below (only $3.50 if you are in the Prime Club!)

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/mildboreal-lights/88680

The set is fantastic, but I especially like the first light set in the folder DepthShadows+AO.
I get very good results using this light.

I tend to keep my most used light sets on top of my Light Library by giving them an
exclamation point in front of their name.

On the next page is a screen shot of the Light Library and this light set.
 You double click the image to load the lights just like you would to load anything
else in Poser.

You will notice I have mentioned “AO” and you will see this light set has an “AO”
in the corner, this stands for Ambient Occlusion, which will give an extra bit of shadow
and depth under/around items in your scene, such as a necklace or parts of clothing, it
gives a bit more of a shadow effect to mimic clothes on your skin, its added for realism.
Renders will almost always take longer to finish with this effect and it can be turned on
or off on a light by selecting that light and going into the properties of the light itself.

Now lets compare the default lighting render I did earlier to the render I have done with
the new light set loaded...See the next page...
 Now its coming together more for sure! This lighting is softer, more natural, and shows our
character a bit better. Plus we have what is called a “rim light” that shines on her left shoulder
(our right) and gives her some extra illumination.

See the next page for more of my comparisons... I also went back and added some
makeup/lip color to my Izzie (find your character's folder in the Pose Library!)

Keep in mind the lighting is going to be trial and error, you won't like every light
you try, and your character will not always look good in the same lights another
character looked good in...
 6 different light sets are shown above, the first top three are from the Mild Boreal set by
Fabiana, the bottom three are from my SV Light Helper Tutorial and IBL Light set. As you can tell,
a light set can make all the difference in the world! If I had to pick a favorite here I would say the
middle two, top/bottom. Its a hard decision, and a lot of it is personal preference.

You can make some minor/basic adjustments to a light by selecting it and

altering the colors and parameters/properties.

I am only going to briefly cover this next section. See next page...
 There is a drop down menu if you click on Light Controls, this panel should be part of your
interface. If it is not showing you can show it by going to Window > Light Controls. You can now
select which light you want to alter. Lights are not always named in such a nice and neat way,
you might look at the lights in your scene and notice they are simply labeled Light 1, 2, 3, etc.
you sometimes have to guess which is which, its trial and error, select a light, change some of the
parameters, if you do not get the desired results try a different light.

You can do many things to a light and alter its effect on your subjects. In the comparison
below I have selected the IBL light and by clicking the colored circle under the light ball you can
change the color, giving a whole new look to your render.

Select the light you want to change color on, then select the little circle below the
light ball, you will get a color picker pop up, choose your color!

See the next page for my comparison having changed the IBL color from a gray to light
blue...
 As you can see you get a whole new render here, now our natural skin toned character is a
frosty fantasy/vampire white...

You can also adjust the light parameters and light properties. You can do so by again
selecting the light you wish to change, and then use the parameters/properties panel to make
your changes.

See the next page for screen shots...

 With the light selected you will have the Parameters and Properties panels available, click
the tab of the one you wish to change. A lot of times I find myself adjusting the Intensity of the
light in the parameters tab, and also turning on and off Ambient Occlusion, shadows, and
adjusting the shadows as well. Feel free to play with these settings and get more comfortable
with your lights. Don't forget my lighting tutorial in the marketplace!

One last chapter before we hit up the Rendering Chapter! Almost done!
 Chapter 7
Material Room Basics

The Material Room is another area of Poser that is widely used especially by content
creators. It can be a bit confusing in the beginning, but knowing just a few things inside this area
of Poser will be all you need for now.

I am going to first change our skirt texture in the Pose Library from the first Trendz for Hot
South III to the Denim Any Color option.

So lets say you want to use this skirt and change the color, easy enough. You don't have
to use this skirt to do this part of the tutorial, in fact you can do to anything in your scene, but I
will say this – results will vary. Some objects will take a quick Diffuse color change better than
others, obviously the best way is to change out the textures, but when you don't have time to do
that or don't really know how, you can try this little trick first. I will also show you how to use
some beautiful materials from a vendor named ParrotDolphin in the material room.

Select the Material Room tab from the top of Poser.

Up until now we have been in the Pose tab, we are now moving to the Material Room tab.

Your Material Room will look much like your Pose Room except unless you have
already taken the liberty to set you panels and user interface up in here, it will look a
lot like Poser did when you first opened it, all the panels are back in their default
places, so you may want to take a few minutes and fix them up but its not necessary,
we are just going to be looking at a couple things here before moving on.

First lets find the Diffuse color. Remember we loaded that Denim Any Color option for our
skirt? Well this depends on the Diffuse Color value. There are two different ways to look at the
Material room, Simple and Advanced. I use the Advanced view but I am going to show you both,
the Simple tab might be easier for you just starting out. When you first go into the Material Room
tab you will most likely already be on the Simple tab and it will look much like the image on the
next page depending on which item in your scene you currently have selected, I had the skirt
selected when I took this screen shot so here you will see the skirt texture...
 This would be the Simple View of the Material Room. On the next page is the Advanced
Tab.
...and the Advanced tab...

As you can see the Advanced tab is a lot more complex than the Simple tab. Lets stick to
the Simple tab for now, we can always get into the Advanced tab another time, its a lot to go
over!
 At the top of the Material Room is a drop down menu much like the one at the top of the
Pose window. This will allow us to select which item in our scene we want to change, and the
drop down next to it will allow us to change which material of the item selected that we want to
change.

In order to change the Diffuse color value of the skirt we need to have the skirt selected
and then the BaseSkirt Material zone selected.

Once we have the material selected, we can change the diffuse color value by clicking on
the diffuse color box in either Simple or Advanced view:

Simple:

Clicking the Diffuse Color box will bring up a pop up color picker menu, just click the color
you wish to change the skirt to and poof – its that color! Easy right?!

Here is the Advanced view:

Here the box is smaller but does the exact same thing. Under the white box is the Value.
If the Value is not set to 1 then your color will not show. Also note that the Diffuse Color will
not always be white, there are some content creators that set it to other values/colors
and you can try to alter them if you like, but you may not always get the desired or
expected results, make sure you save first so you can always revert back! Of course
you can play around with the other settings too, but we won't be getting into them at
this point, saving it for a later date!
 Be sure to change any other parts of the outfit that you wish to change. In this case the
belt loops are a separate material zone and I have changed them to red.

So really you can see the possibilities are endless, at least with the Trendz Hot South III
skirt, and you can try this trick on just about anything and see what the results are!

Last thing before moving onto Rendering, there are some very talented vendors in the
Renderosity Marketplace that make and sell material files for your runtime. These come highly
recommended because you can change the look of an entire outfit with materials. One vendor,
ParrotDolphin comes to mind. Her latest set of materials is below:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/pd-dark-poser-materials/90958

In order to use any materials you have purchased or freebies you have downloaded locate
the Material Library on your Library panel.

You should select the item of clothing you wish to change. You should note that
material files can be used on virtually anything – now whether or not they will actually
look good on that item depends on the material, but they can be applied to anything!

I am using the Dark Materials by ParrotDolphin to change the Hot South III top and
demonstrate exactly how this is done.

See the next page.

 With the top selected inside the Material room from the drop down I have already showed
on page 85 you should also have the area selected you wish to change. So if you have the top
selected you should also choose Base or Edge from the drop down. Alternatively you can use
these materials in the Pose window. If you click the tab at the top of Poser and go back to
the Pose view you can apply the materials directly from Materials Library. Select the top from the
drop down menu and double click the material you wish to apply.
 If you use your material files in the Pose room/window you will get this pop up asking you
to which part/material zone you wish to apply the material/content, choose which area you want
to apply it to and click OK, notice now I have applied it to the BaseTop and my top has changed
textures. If you are working in the material room you will need to manually select the part of the
outfit you wish to apply a material too with the second drop down on the right at the top of the
material room.

Now we have successfully explored the basics of materials and the material room! Onward
to Rendering! The end is in site!
 Chapter 8
Rendering

When it comes to rendering I usually render a few “drafts” along the way. I have a draft
render setting I can load and my renders will take just a few seconds to complete, they won't be
perfect but they at least give me an idea of how my image is coming along as far as set up goes.
My final render settings are almost always the same. Lets take a look at the Render Settings.

You can find these under Render > Render Settings

Opening these settings will give you the Render Settings set up box.

On the next page you will find a screen shot of the Render Settings set to Draft.
You have two main options – one to use Auto Settings and one to use Manual Settings. Auto
settings is great for quick draft renders, you can move the slider down towards Draft and try a few
test renders. You can also save this preset so you can easily load it at a later date. You will
notice you have several options for your presets, Load Preset, Delete Preset, Save Preset, clicking
on Save Preset will allow you to name your preset whatever you like and to save it for later use. I
suggest making a Draft preset, and when you set up the render settings that you like
for your final renders I also suggest saving it to a preset and naming it something like
“Final Render” - this way you will not have to set those render settings up every time
you are ready to render.

(See the next page for the screen shot...)

 I encourage you to mouse over each option and as you do you will notice that there is a
Help box on the bottom left, and the text will change, read each one to get a better feel for what
each setting does.

The more you understand the better, as this will help you to adjust your render settings as
needed. Each computer system is different, I will show you what I use for render settings
however it may need adjusting for your system.

On the next page there is a screen shot showing you how to save your preset.
 Once you have a setting you like, simply press the Save Preset button and type in a name
for your preset and hit OK. When you are ready to use it, click Load Preset.

Below are my higher quality render settings:

 I am going to briefly go over some of the settings I use and don't use, you are welcome to
plug my settings into your render settings within Poser, I cannot stress enough how important it is
to play around and test some of the settings and change the parameters.

Lets talk about these settings, especially Indirect Light. I do not use this on all my
renders, it will slow you down considerably, try it, you will notice small red dots over your
figure as indirect light calculates. Depending on how crunched I am for time I may or may not
use this setting, so you can feel free to leave this box unchecked if you like, it will slow you down
a great deal, use it sparingly. It can give your renders a nice look, more realistic, but it can take a
lot of time to finish.

There is a box to check for Gamma Correction, I never use this. Many beginners or
people who are new to Poser end up using this setting and then wondering what is wrong with
their renders, I suggest you try a render with and without it, I have never been pleased with the
results and so I leave it off.

Smooth Polygons, most times is great, but on some props and even some clothing items
you will get some strange artifacts or warping. If you notice your props are warping and bulging
out – turn this off!

Be sure to use Displacement Maps – these maps help to define the texture of an item
when they are plugged into the proper node in the Material room – so if you are rendering a rock,
and the content creator/vendor has done the textures and included a displacement map this will
help define the rock's texture, and add realism.

Render over Black. I usually render over black to minimize render “artifacts.” These are
little bits of color left around your character after you render. If I am going to be placing my
character over a darker background after the render is complete I will normally render over black,
in some cases rendering over the basic brown/gray will work just fine.

Again, mousing over all of these settings will give you additional info in the Help:
at the bottom of the Render Settings pop up.

Render Dimensions -
 Obviously the render dimensions are up to you! Remember that the larger you render the
longer it is going to take. Normally I will always put a check mark into Render to exact
resolution then click on Match Document Window, and then change either the Width or the
height, but for drafts I will usually leave it at the default size. For my promotional renders and
artwork renders I render much larger, sometimes 2000-4000 pixels.

Saving your render, after you render you will want to save, that is if you like it!

There is a button at the top:

This is the “tear off” button, and clicking this will bring your render up in a pop up window,
if you hit the little red X in the corner of that window you can choose to save it, but that is just a
quick little trick, you can also go to File > Export Image. I normally save all my renders in
PNG format – this will preserve the transparency so you may place the render/character over a
new background of your choice. It is very rare that I will save as .jpg but you may want to do this
if you imported a background into your scene and wish to save it with the background in-tact.

When saving you will have a drop down menu, you can choose to save as any of these file
types, mainly I use PNG, but some of the others may also come in handy to you.

The next chapter is a few quick tips and reminders! I truly hope you have enjoyed this
tutorial and furthermore I hope you learned a lot! Good luck in this fun program! Keep at it!
 Chapter 9
Quick Reference & Tips

1. Right & Left – Keep in mind that your right and left are opposite your character's
right and left because in most cases your figure is looking AT you, so their right is
actually your left. When a dial has an L or an R in it it is referring to your
character's L or R.

2. Hide Floor – In most cases I hide the floor in my renders. You can easily do this
by selecting the floor from the drop down menu on the right of the drop down
where V4 would be. Select GROUND, then go into the Properties tab by the
Parameters dial tab and un-check Visible, and any others that are checked. This
will get rid of the floor.

3. Render Over what? - In your render settings you can choose to render over a
color or the background. I usually switch to render over black. This helps eliminate
the tiny white artifacts around a character, if you are going to be using a light
colored background for your render try changing the render over color setting to a
light color.

4. Save & Revert – if you are unsure if you will like the results of adding a different
light set or spinning your cameras around be sure to save first, you can then make
any changes you want, and if you don't like them, go to File > Revert, this will jump
you back to your last saved version!

5. Import a Background – I go over this in my Blending Tutorial, but I will

mention it here, you can easily import any of my backgrounds into Poser by going
to File > Import > Background image, when you get the pop up – click OK. Pose
your character over the background (hide floor), keep in mind proportions and
perspective!

6. Lights – Lights will be trial and error. Some lights will look fabulous on one
character skin, while the same lights look awful on another. This has to do with
many factors, so unless you want to edit the light to work well with the character
skin you can continue to try other lights, keep in mind editing a light is not difficult,
but requires some playing around and rendering to check your work.

7. Accessorize! – Don't forget the little things! They count! Add earrings, bracelets,
a necklace or two even, piercings, shoes, and more! Think about how you would
dress yourself, and dress your characters to their best too.

8. Clone it Out – I did not go over post-work at all in this tutorial, though I do have
several tutorials in the market that discus some post work. You can easily fix small
render mistakes without having to re-render the entire image. If you have
Photoshop or even PSP (though I am not familiar with PSP much) you can use a
small clone brush to fix little issues like poke through or a wonky shadow of sorts.
It happens, no program is perfect, but some things can be corrected outside of
Poser.
 Chapter 10
The End.

Thank you for purchasing this tutorial, and thank you for making it to the end. I
hope that it has enlightened you and that you can walk away from this with some added
knowledge for your artistic mind and tool box. I know that learning Poser can be frustrating,
learning any new program can be time consuming and requires some amount of patience. The
more you play, the more you learn, the better you become within this complex program.
Take your time and go as slow as you need to!

If you get too frustrated, put it away and come back later – honestly – this can be
a big help. Give your mind a rest, sleep on it. When you are ready to start again you
may find things come more easily to you.

It has taken me years of playing with this program, learning, testing new things, reading
other tutorials, etc. to get where I am, and I still learn new things on a regular basis. The best
you can do is get in there and start clicking around, playing around, and getting some good hands
on experience. Try everything. Try all the dials to see what they do. Remember that a lot of
this is technical but the end result is your creation – your artwork!

I would love to see any images you create using some of the information from this tutorial,
so if you credit me in the galleries, I will be sure to see it in my credits and will have a look! I am
also experienced in art critiques so if you would like an honest critique (and not TOO harsh!) then
send me a site mail at Renderosity.com with a link to your image and I would be happy to drop
you some lines to help you improve.

I hope this has been a great learning experience for you!