I’ve been using Poser for over a year now, and as I’ve continued to learn I’ve discovered a number of secondary programs, all of which are freeware that can be used to enhance the artwork I create in Poser. Those just starting out in Poser may be unaware of these, and or may be interested in doing such things as creating their own clothing, and skin textures, creating their own props, and other such possibilities. While there are several expensive software programs available to do these things, there really is no reason you should have to spend the money as there are freeware programs available that do the job every bit as well as the expensive programs. So before you shell out your hard earned cash on extra expensive programs see this list of freeware programs first and save your money!
This is my personal list of freeware programs that I have found useful to enhance my renders, and to create props, and texture items as well.
1. UV Mapper Classic: This is one of the best programs I have come across that you can use for both texturing models and creating simple props. This program can create a UV map from any wavefront object. These files will have .obj after them, and you can find them in your Geometries file in Poser. So let’s say you have a dress you want to add a texture to, but you don’t have a texture map for it, well all you have to do is go to your Geometries file, and find the file that holds the dress you want to texture and open its .obj file in UV Mapper Classic. This will provide you with a texture map that you can then save and open in the paint program of your choice to color and design as you see fit. The other wonderful thing you can do with UV Mapper Classic is design simple props. If you’d like to learn more about creating a prop using UV Mapper Classic read my tutorial How to Create a Hedge Prop Using UV Mapper Classic and Poser. Here is where to download your copy of UV Mapper Classic.
2. Paint.net and GIMP: These are two freeware paint and photo editing programs that I use to enhance my renders, and create textures for my clothing and characters. I especially like them for enhancing my fantasy renders. You can create some really incredible effects using either of these programs. I’ve used both programs to make fairies appear as though they are glowing for example. I’ve also given characters clear and yet and glowing skin as well. Paint.net has a few less bells and whistles than GIMP but I still like to use it for some things over GIMP. However, GIMP has all the same things that Photoshop does and it’s free, plus GIMP can read photoshop files, so if there are special photoshop brushes you want to use for example, you can! Also GIMP is great for texturing clothing and skin. Be sure to download your copy of GIMP or Paint.net.
3. Mat Pose Edit: I seriously fell in love with this program once I began trying to create mat poses. I spent hours in Poser before I found this program trying to figure out how to get Poser to save just the coloring and textures and it was not until I began doing research that I realized I needed this nifty little program. If you’re like me you don’t want to try and open your Poser file in an text editing program and then have to try and figure out what parts to cut out in the code and what to leave. What a headache! For me the idea of it even was a nightmare. But then I found the freeware, Mat Pose Edit and my problem was solved. This is a very versatile program that can open any character, prop or hair file and edit their textures, as well as modify regular pose files and make poses. Needless to say I have found it a very useful program to have, particularly since I plan on packaging my textures at some point to give away as freebies. You can pick up your copy of Mat Pose Edit here.
4. Pozers Little Helper: This little piece of freeware is a godsend for those trying to save space on their hard drive because instead of just saving an entire pose, this nifty piece of freeware will generate inj and rem files for you. Basically what this means is that instead of just saving the entire character pose which you can do, this program takes only the parts of the body that you changed and saves them as “injections” which you can then apply to the 3D human model they were created for. The program will also save a rem file for you, this is to “remove” the morph if you decide for some reason that you don’t care for it, and restore the 3D human model to its original look. In addition the injection file will place a dial on your parameters window that you can then use to alter the appearance of the model even more if you like. Pozers Little Helper was created to be used with Daz’s Victoria 3 but it can be used to create injection and remove files for any of the 3rd generation Millenium figures from Daz. So if like me the thought of trying to open up one of these files in a text editor and figure out what to cut out gives you nightmares, then this is definitely one piece of freeware you’ll want! You can download a copy here. Oh, and there are a few programs on this page, you have to scroll down a bit until you find this one.
There are of course lots of programs out there that you can purchase that do the same things as these ones, but I for one prefer to use freeware. Also I can attest that none of these comes with any spyware or malware that will be added to your computer. They are just from nice folks who are also interested in 3D art and wanted to create programs that could provide some solutions for themselves and for the 3D art community. Enjoy!
