An Overview of the Poser Libraries

The Poser Libraries are where Poser gives you easy access to all your content, both that which comes with the program, as well as any you might have purchased or made yourself and added. But before you can use these Libraries effectively, you need to understand what goes where, and what they all do. You will want to reference image one as this tutorial proceeds.

The Figures Library is where Poser stores all Figures. Figures are usually objects in Poser that have moving parts (such as a person or an animal) that have been grouped and rigged inside the Poser Setup Room. Figures can also be things like cabinets that have doors that open and close, though these effects can also be achieved using Morphs, and are then found in Props. Figures can also be conforming clothing items. When you want to load a figure into Poser, simply select it in the Library, and click on either the single-check icon at the bottom of the library panel (which replaces the current figure with the new one) or click on the double-check icon (which places the new figure in the scene, while keeping the other one as well.

The Poses Library is one of the more disappointing aspects of Poser. Here you will find not only what you would expect, which is poses for characters, but also morphs and material textures (MATs) as well. While the presence, in the current versions of Poser, of the Material Room makes things a bit easier, the fact is that this cobbled together category is in dire need of rethinking.

The Expression Library at least lives up to its name, and is a simple list of available expressions for your figures, though even in this case, you will sometimes need to load morphs in the pose room for these to work, unless the vendor you got the expression from handled that for you. And keep in mind that unless your figures are all based on the same mesh (as with the Daz3d Unimesh) the expressions for one may not work for another.

The Hair Library is in part a collection of mesh based hair pieces for you figures. They each come with their own sets of morphs and MATs. However, they do not have to be conformed to the figure, as the hair pieces are already parented to the figure when loaded into the scene. In addition to these mesh hair pieces, the more recent versions of Poser also come with dynamic hair pieces that can be used in the Hair Room to create (in theory at least) realistic looking hair that will also move like the real thing. Let's just say that they need to work the kinks (no pun intended) out of this one. Stick to the mesh hair, for now at least.

The Hands Library is a pose library for just hands. Again, one has to wonder about the utility of this separate library for hands, when everything else but the kitchen sink has been thrown into Pose. Why not this too?

The Props Library is where all the objects you might use in you scene are stored (those that that are not figures, that is). In many ways, this is one of the most important Libraries, since the reality of a scene is often decided by how much junk there is in it. Barren scenes just cry out "fake". So you will want a full Props Library, and will want to you it extensively (to the extent your computer can handle it)

The last two Libraries, Lights and Cameras, give you presets for both the functions. And of course you can create you own presets and save them to the Library.