How to Save a Poser Character & Create a Thumbnail Picture

So you've created your first Poser character, and you want to be able to use it later without having to try and recreate the same character over and over when you want to use him or her. This tutorial will show you how to save your Poser character so that you can use him or her in future artwork However it will also show you how to make a thumbnail picture so that if you decide you want to package it up as a freebie, or even as a product for sale with one of the many online stores, you will know how to do so.

So, you've created your character, and he or she has all the morphs you want, and you are happy with how the character turned out. Then what?

Step 1: You need to create a folder for your character in the Poses Folder of Poser. This is actually quite easy. Open Poser and then open your library. Go to your Poses folder and look at the top, you will notice a small downward facing triangle indicating a drop down menu. Click on this with you mouse and then click on Add New Category. This will allow you to create a folder for your character, just name the folder whatever your character's name is, and then for which 3D human model he or she is for. Example: Rhiannon for A3.

Step 2: Once you have created the folder for your character then you need to save the character. You do this by opening the folder you just created and then going to the bottom and clicking on the plus sign. This will bring up a new window that says New Set Name, so type in the name of your character and who he or she is for just as you did for the new folder. Click okay. It will then ask you if want to include morph channels in pose set in the next window, say yes. Then the next window will ask you if you want to save a single frame entry. Again the answer is yes. You will not immediately see a picture of your unrendered character in the folder. You have to click on the folder with the up arrow and go out of the folder. When you go back into your character's folder you will see an unrendered picture of your character.

Step 3: Now you want to create a thumbnail picture that is of the actual picture of your character. Go into the Render drop down menu, and then Render Options. Select the Poser 4 Renderer under Render Settings. Then go down to the Image Output Settings section and select Render to a New Window. Once you have done this, deselect Constrain Aspect Ratio. Then change the width and height to 91 pixels. Now you are ready to render the thumbnail picture, so select Render Now at the bottom left hand corner.

Step 4: Now you will see a small box labeled Render 1. Go ahead and click on the x to close it. This will bring up a box asking you if you want to save changes to Render 1 before closing. Select Save. Now comes the tricky part, you will notice that a Save As box with the name of your character folder comes up, but it appears to be empty. This is probably because the file type is wrong. I tend to save my final images as bitmaps, if you normally save yours as PNG then it will be the right file type. In my case it is not, and I have to change the file type to a PNG. Thumbnails are always pings in Poser. Once you've selected the right file type or if you already had the right file type you'll see that there is a PNG file with your character's name in the folder. Double click on this and when it asks you if you want to replace the file, say yes. You can then close the Render 1 picture again because you have already saved it to your character folder. Like before in order to see the new thumbnail picture you will have to back out of the folder and then go back in to see it. You should now see a fully rendered version of your character.

As you can see this is a relatively simple process and in following these steps you not only have saved your character for yourself but you have made your character very easy to package in order to sell it or give it away as a freebie! To properly package your character as a product to be sold or given away see my article How To Package Your Poser Freebie Using Winzip.