The Far Reaches Webcomic

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m horrible at drawing the female figure…and hands, I’m horrible at hands. I need good references and that’s not always easy to come by. So, I’ll often use Poser 5 for a lot of the references, especially difficult poses or camera angles. Now I don’t have the latest versions 6 or 7, and I can’t comment on the character models in those versions. But the models in Poser 5 are rather ugly and don’t deform properly in many places (it doesn’t look natural or good when you bend an arm up a certain way, for example. Some poses just look wrong.) Granted that’s a problem with any 3d character, but it was worse with Poser 5.

However, their are 3rd party model makers that have some cool stuff. I’ve shared this before but I can’t remember if it was in the blog or the old rant system, so I’ll share it again. The models I’m currently using are from Daz3d. Their Victoria and Michael models are free downloads and very good looking. They work well in Poser and deform better than the Poser 5 models. Of course, while the base models are free all the cool stuff is extra. What makes these models so cool are the morph packs. You can buy the body and head morph pack and then add sliders in Poser that allow you to turn the guy from ultra skinny to ultra buff, or really fat. You can completely change the look of the face into another character. It’s very flexible. They also have morph packs pre-done that come with hi-res textures. So you can change one model into a dozen new ones. It’s all very cool. Daz3d has all sorts of cool goodies including anime-inspired models, great-looking hair styles, armor and cloths. One that I think is cool is the Dystopia city models. They have ten sets of futuristic city blocks that you can put together to form one big city in Poser or Lightwave. It’s just fun-looking. (Yay, toys!) Unless you join their Platinum club, all those toys could add up to be pretty expensive. But they look so cool.

Another cool thing is Daz Studio. If you can’t afford Poser you can download Daz Studio for free. It’s not as nicely designed as Poser or as full of features, but if you’re just looking for pose references (getting back to that) then it works well enough. (It’s free, so I mean, you know. Can’t complain about free ) Add to that the free Mike and Victoria models and you’ve got a good reference tool. It’s not perfect, though. I mean, drawing from life or at least from photo references is always better. 3d models, as I mentioned earlier, don’t always bend realistically. But the real thing isn’t always available, and besides, 3d is fun to play with.