One of the more important reasons Posette became so popular with cg hobbyists in the Poser 3 and Poser 4 eras was the wide and easy availability of freeware variant characters. That was a different time, when goodwill prevailed in internet culture. Artists were eager to freely share their modifications of Poser 4 characters with others, and the companies which then owned the program (first Metacreations and later Curious Labs) understood that all this free hobbyist trading was quite good for their business by stimulating and amplifying consumer interest in their software.

Twenty five years later, most of the hobbyist characters made in the Poser 4 era are nearly forgotten, which seems sad, as many of them were quite good, at least for their own time and tech level. Certainly, there were in those days many low effort and low quality offerings, which probably are best forgotten. Here I?ll focus instead on some of the more notable free P4NW characters of bygone days-- some notable in aesthetics or novelty, others in technical innovation or craftsmanship for their time.

Apart from posing the models and applying good studio lighting, I won?t change the models presented here in any way from their original form and presentation. Or if I occasionally do make an alteration, I?ll say precisely what I changed and why-- often freebies were released in those days missing critical parts or with other serious flaws, which made them simply unusable unless a knowledgeable end-user did some Poser-Fu. Either way, given the historical purpose of this discussion, an accurate depiction of the figures as they originally appeared at their time of release will be my main concern. But readers should easily see that with only a little polish of modern props and techniques, many of these characters could easily be updated and adapted for modern artistic purposes.

Please don?t ask where to find these characters today-- the answer will in all cases be: I don?t know   . Most of the small websites once hosting these characters are gone, and the large hobbyist sites which still remain purged most of their Poser 4 content long ago. As hardly anyone still uses P4NW these days, this discussion is mostly intended for historical interest of virtual doll collectors rather than practical artistic value. If any of the once-free models here are still available at all, then using the Internet Archive?s Wayback Machine to study websites of the past will almost certainly be the only way to obtain them. Broadly speaking, in Poser 4 days I probably obtained most of these models from Renderosity, Renderotica, the 3D Comic Collective, or ShareCG. At least some old models are still available from the old 3d-cc using the Wayback Machine, though most were apparently never archived, and thus are lost forever. Likewise with ShareCG. The others are now mostly flea markets for hawking $$ wares, so I doubt any figures I once upon a time got from either 'R' are still available.

As a further lesson to our wider community, most of these figures that included any documentation at all specify no redistribution allowed (otherwise I?d put them up in PF?s archive). I understand and appreciate the important reasons for adding such a clause to a free model-- one wouldn?t want greedy $$ corporations shamelessly plundering one?s freebie. On the other hand, however, all these years later when no one cares much anymore about Poser 4 era models except those of us who truly    Posette and Dork, the unfortunate and ultimate result is that those who might still be interested in these once widely-available models have no means whatever to obtain them, or use them for their intended hobbyist/non-commercial/personal entertainment purposes. It?s a sad state of affairs, but as the old song says ?We didn?t start the fire, it?s been always burning since the world was turning.?  

The first Posette I?ll consider is a rare bird indeed, the only one of her particular kind so far as I know. Black Canary was a superheroine model made by a fellow called Mr X. She was a unique fusion of the standard P4NW and Evolution Eve, a P4NW variant usually attributed to a modeller called Torino.

In Poser 4 days, the Eve model was quite popular with the Renderotica crowd. Her primary claim to fame was her exaggerated genitalia (basically a giant gash between her legs), useful (compared to standard Posette) in making sexually explicit imagery. At the time the Eve geometry was considered the height of ?realism,? though compared to modern genitalia props for Poser/Daz characters, how anyone ever thought Eve and Eve-alikes looked good aesthetically in the matter of feminine genitalia seems rather silly.

I never cared much for Eve or her subsequent iterations, largely because she was much more time-consuming to pose compared to a standard Posette; Eve used a different figure/limb architecture much more similar in complexity to modern models like the Michael and Victoria series. As well, most of the conforming clothing items available in those days for Posette were not conformable to Eve, though in fairness we should note that most Eve users did not consider that a problem, as the types of images Eve was designed to star in usually didn?t make much use of clothing.

Eventually a quality compromise model emerged called P4WWG, which combined the standard upper body of Posette with the lower body of Eve. The model never really caught on, for various reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that by that point in time most Posette users had moved on to Victoria, and dedicated quality props for simulating female genitalia were also becoming widely available. Though independently modelled, Black Canary was quite similar to P4WWG. Perhaps if there had never been a Victoria, the underlying base model of Black Canary might have become popular as more practical alternative to the eccentric Eve figure, but as matters turned out Canary?s geometry only ever appeared in this single character release, and she was apparently never heard from again.

I don?t know anything about the character Black Canary depicts, except that she was some sort of comic book heroine. Thus I can?t comment on whether Mr X?s adaptation is visually or aesthetically faithful to any source material.

 

As a Posette, Black Canary was an interesting figure for several reasons (though her gaping genitalia is not amongst those in my opinion). There is the technical modelling achievement to consider, as merging two characters (Posette and Eve) with different poseable geometries is no small matter. She also came with some relatively well-made conforming clothing items and other props, such as a bustier/girdle and a jacket that opens and closes.

In Poser 4 days, the freebie jacket alone would have made Black Canary a worthwhile download. Though I don?t know who made it, this particular jacket was somewhat popular at the time; for example, it was also used by the ?Cover Girl? GI Joe Posette. But as far as I know, Mr X?s Black Canary was the only one to thoughtfully include the actual obj file for the jacket, without which the model simply doesn?t work. I?ll add, however, that great care must be taken in initially handling this item. If one didn?t know any better, unzipping Mr X?s Black Canary file into one?s Poser 4 directory would overwrite the original Female Dress Shirt obj that comes with Poser 4. In fairness, this kind of careless incompetence was common in Poser 4 freebies years ago-- as noted, several other Posette characters of the same time included the jacket, but not its obj, which is an even more ridiculous problem for the end-user. In any case, I had to text edit the Black Canary CR2 before opening it in Poser for the first time, in order to avoid these issues.

Barring actual interest in the literary character of Black Canary, the usefulness of this model was probably limited for most users to pillaging her props (as noted, the jacket is quite nice). The Eve people in those days were committed to Eve, and given her lower body Eve-style geometry, most of the Posette people would have been frustrated by Black Canary?s inability (same as Eve) to wear standard P4 clothing items below the waist. If Mr X made Black Canary as an experiment or test of skill that?s fine and lovely, but I doubt the figure?s purpose ranged much beyond that, apart of course from depicting Black Canary herself in Poserspace.

Props aside, the figure has a dizzying number of material zones, and simply overwriting her texture map would probably be much easier than attempting to apply a new (better) one. Unless one had a keen interest in the Black Canary comic character, one would almost certainly want to do that, as the figure has some clothing items simulated through direct painting onto her texture-- examples include her fishnet stockings and choker necklace. In fairness, that was a very common approach in those primitive days, and at the time I suppose Black Canary would have been a superior model for using a texture map at all, as many models of the era used direct object coloring only. Black Canary?s hair is a model called ?New Five? by JeffH, which adds some morphs to the standard Poser 4 Female Hair 5, and was a somewhat popular hairstyle for Posette in those days. Today, I think anyone looking to render Black Canary would almost certainly want to replace her hair at once with some more modern transmapped coif.

Black Canary came with an Anton Kisiel texture that was popular in those days, called Paulina, modified for use with Ms Canary?s custom geometry. The unmodified portion of the texture by Kisiel was considered quite good for that era, but the portion modified by Mr X looks rather strange, as the genitalia has a strange and unnatural hue, which seems unfortunate for a model whose primary purpose was probably repeated gynecological inspections by end-users. The model does include a bump map, but its primary purpose is to highlight the mesh stockings painted onto her legs, and does not otherwise accomplish much to enhance the appearance of her skin.

To use the model, Maz?s OBJaction Mover must be utilised to modify the original P4NW obj file. As this process adds the lower geometry, the Evolution Eve figure is not required. In any case and as noted, though Black Canary is similar to Eve below the waist, the two are not identical, so one might say it?s more the ideas and principles of Eve which informed Black Canary?s design, rather than Eve?s actual geometry (at least as far as I could determine).

When considering relics from a far more primitive cg era, we shouldn?t be unrealistically critical by applying modern standards to old models made with different technology. For her own time, Black Canary was a quality Posette figure, with a notable variety of helpful and user-friendly features that distinguished her from many other freebie characters at the time. In the end, I think she was probably an unnecessary solution in search of an unusual type of end-user, given the stubbornness of the Posette-Eve schism in those days amongst Poser hobbyists. Today, she remains of interest mostly for her technical innovations, even if her general aesthetics as a Poser model probably no longer appeal to modern sensibilities.

For all who would like to try and reconstruct black canary by Mr. X, she is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/2001120...pages/DL27.html
second row third down. She is in the DC universe.
Here is Objaction Mover https://www.Renderosity.com/mod/fre...-mover-1-01/158

Thanks for the source link, Dolly13. Black Canary really was a very nice Posette for her own time, and I think any Posette fan will want to take a look at her just out of curiosity.

***

As this is about history, I want to clarify something I wrote in discussing the Black Canary model. Some people (mostly two guys named Torino and Hellborn) unsatisfied with Posette's intimate anatomy came up with a figure called Evolution Eve. Eve superficially looked like Posette but used a radically different geometry and limb/posing structure (later adopted by Zygote figures such as Mike and Victoria). The figure was popularized by Traveler, who had a famous and popular website for P4 people morphs and modifications. Some people (mostly those making erotica imagery) embraced Eve immediately, but others remained loyal to Posette, mostly for the reasons I mentioned (difficulty in posing Eve, lack of clothing fits for Eve). In the end a guy called NdYVO4 made a compromise figure called P4WWG, which kept the Eve hip (including the genitalia) but otherwise restored all of Posette's original geometry. Like the original Eve, this third model was also popularized by Traveler at his famous website. Later, a guy called Arduino advanced further modifications to P4WWG, and most people who still use P4WWG today probably use the Arduino version (one famous variant toward the end of P4 days was named 'Sophia').

So Black Canary was an intermediate figure on the Eve tree between Eve and P4WWG, restoring the original Posette's upper body (abandoned by Eve), but keeping Eve's lower half. When P4WWG came later came along, Posette's original legs were also restored, so only the hip of Eve remained. As that addressed the problem of clothing Eve (for those still on the fence about Posette vs Eve), the Black Canary approach became obsolete, and that's probably why she was never seen again.

At least I think that's how it all went down in those days. I never much used Eve or P4WWG, as I was always satisfied with regular Posette. So the main guides I have in these matters are just fading memories, as many old files in my P4 archives don't include any documentation or authorship info.

***

By all means if anyone has additional info or fond memories of any models discussed in this thread, join in and tell us all about it.  

Molly Mostly was a famous pinup and comic heroine Posette around the turn of the century, created by an artist called Rad. Though I don't recall, I suppose the old-time Renderotica (which the modern bazaar version apparently doesn't resemble much) was her main venue, as none of the images I have of Molly appear on Renderosity.

Unfortunately I only have a few saved images of Molly Mostly, who in her own day was generally considered as one of the prettiest Posettes ever to appear in on-line galleries. She occasionally appeared in stand-alone pinup images, but her main claim to fame was her very own freebie digital comic book, called 'The Erotic Adventures of Molly Mostly and Company.'

Consisting of about 130 'pages' (ie separate frames), Molly's sci-fi comic also featured many popular Poser 4 characters of the day such as Nurse Ratchett (I think made by PhilC) and Troll (a mischievous little monster, author unknown), as well as Zygote's Bigfoot, Cyclops, and Brainstem (a robot). The zany plot was all in good fun, and it was far more cheesy/teasy naughtiness than any explicit stuff-- one might called it merely 'Rated R' as opposed to 'Rated X.' If anyone recalls the old print comic called 'Little Annie Fannie' that appeared in Playboy magazine throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Molly Mostly's comic was far more like the innocuous versions of Annie from the 1960s, rather than the raunchy versions from the 1970s.

I have the Molly Mostly comic, but unfortunately those were the ancient days of dial-up (phone line) internet and small files, so the page images are only diminutive and blurry jpegs of quality that would not be considered acceptable today in terms of visual acuity. It's sad, because the comic was not only entertaining, but historically important due to its wide popularity in the on-line Poser community of the time. I tried searching on multiple search engines, but I couldn't turn up even a single image or description of Molly Mostly, much less her entire comic book, so apparently it's all lost forever. In the image below, the upper portion includes a few samples of original Molly Mostly by Rad.

 

Along with free comic book download, author Rad also included a P4NW face morph for his Molly Mostly character, which as far as I know was the only component ever released for her.

In the lower portion of the image above, I was therefore able to have a current Posette do a simple cosplay session as Molly, with Rad's face morph applied. Unfortunately the morph alone does not result in the face of Molly as she regularly appeared in online galleries of the day. As my few reference images of her are small, blurry, and variously distorted by differing camera focal lengths to fit into comic frames, I did the best I could (without in truth really spending very much time on it) to do some further shaping to better resemble the original Molly. For this cosplay sample I also quickly touched up an old generic skin texture called 'Etosha' by Nod to add some lipstick, eyeliner, sapphire-hued eyes, and bushy eyebrows of the sorts the original Molly seems to have usually had.

The original Molly character appears to make use of a chunky hairstyle called 'Hair with Bangs' that came with the old freebie Xena the Warrior Princess character for Poser 4 (that one made by renapd). Since I have that character as well, I was fortunately able to add what I believe is the original hair to this modern Posette cosplay example. The original Molly appears to have a rather nice texture applied to her hair (though not transmapped), but here I only used direct object coloring and a generic bump map on it, as the hair model itself is a mess as an example of geometry, and I didn't feel like fooling around with a proper texture for it.

Molly wore several outfits in her comic, but in this cosplay I simply transmapped the standard P4 Catsuit to replicate an exercise outfit the original Molly wore on the sample image for her face morph. A simple hue texture (matching the original character color) and generic bump map were also applied to the suit. In the reference image I consulted, Molly also wears the standard P4 Tennis Shoes, colored as I've depicted here.

Molly's other primary outfit in her comic book appeared to consist of the standard P4 Halter Dress (the top turqouise, the skirt black), along with some black stockings and high heeled-black shoes. Props often used by the character were a costume-party style face mask (colored to match her mauve hair), and what appears to be a Desert Eagle pistol from the old Lara Croft character (by Phil Hokusai).

In terms of Posette aesthetics, the original Molly Mostly model was notable in appearance for her thick pouty lips, large doe eyes, bushy eyebrows, and habitually sultry facial expressions, rather than her physique/figure. These details made her somewhat unique as a popular P4NW pinup model in the Poser 4 era. Most of the other renown P4 pinups in those days were Evolution Eve or Eve-alike models burdened with ludicrously oversized bosoms, in contrast to Molly, who appears to have been a standard P4NW with a relatively mundane figure. Molly was slender, yet at the same time her physique did not alternately exhibit any waifish sort of anime or cartoon-style exagerration.

I can only speculate, but it's entirely possible that Rad only ever released a face morph for Molly Mostly because the face was the only geometry of standard P4NW he ever modified to make his character. We should therefore greatly credit the general artistic skill of Rad in turning an almost totally average and default Posette into charming depictions that became one of the top and most memorable original characters of the Poser 4 era.

     


**** Added Later ****

I've been looking at many, many Posettes in preparing materials for discussion here. Serendipitously, I found an unrelated P4NW morph in the Morphette figure by Sekroid that is very useful in any modern attempt to recreate Molly Mostly. The morph is called 'skullshape,' and should be applied inversely (at a negative value).

The main problem Rad's own Molly face morph is that it horriblly distorts the shape of Posette's skull-- which wasn't necessarily a problem for Molly Mostly herself, given the nature of the unusually large 'Hair with Bangs' hairstyle she wore, which hid the problem in the bulk of the hair itself. However, the problem is addressed almost entirely by use of Morphette's skullshape morph in conjunction with the Molly Face.

When verifying this further refinement of the Molly Mostly recreation depicted above, I also found that a closer faithfulness to Molly's original look can be obtained by making further x scale and y scale reductions to her Hair with Bangs (which is a massive hair model).

As I recall, the Morphette figure by Sekroid was somewhat controversial in olden days, because it was an extensive morph-library type of figure which did not attribute credit to any of the morphs wholly redistributed with her, most of which were made by others. Therefore the 'skullshape' morph available in Morphette may have been made by someone else, and known by another name, but I don't know what that may have been nor do I have any other info on the topic. If anyone familiar with Morphette's 'skullshape' morph has more info, by all means tell us all about it so people still interested today have a better chance of finding an ancient morph on the Wayback Machine. On a similar tack, if I've accidently confused Morphette's reputation with some other controversial Posette of the past, anyone who knows otherwise should speak up, so we can have an accurate historical record here.

 

Yamatoverse Crossover: Circe by meegja

There were three basic categories of female figures used by Poser hobbyists in the Poser 4 days. We've earlier considered two of those, P4NW (Posette) and Evolution Eve/P4WWG. The third major category of female figures using or related to P4NW geometry was the branch of Posettes developed by Japanese artists Yamato and Kozaburo (he of very most excellent Posette hairstyling fame). There was a whole series of these figures, including Nene, Mimi, RanRan, CanCan, and LinLin. Yamato was an intrepid Posette engineer; each figure in the series built on previous advances and added even more. For convenience here I'll call them the LinLin line, because LinLin was the last of the Yamato P4NWs built in the Poser 4 era, and therefore LinLin represented the apex of that whole series in relation to P4 and Posette.

Unlike Evolution Eve, the Yamato models were true P4NWs. Most of Yamato's developments were concerned with morph work and fine-tuning of joint parameters, in order to improve the way polygons warp smoothly into shape when one poses Posette's major limbs. Evolution Eve sought to address that issue by throwing Posette's whole anatomy out the window and coming up with an entirely new limb arrangement. On the other hand Yamato's system retained the original P4NW poseable model but made improvements by adjusting blend zones and developing developing what we now call Joint Controlled Morphs (JCMs).

I don't feel particularly comfortable discussing the Yamato line of Posettes, because I never used them. I don't want to give wrong details or idly speculate on unfamiliar topics, even though that's one of the main purposes of the internet. If anyone else has experienced perspectives on working with the Yamato models, by all means tell us more about them.

Yet I have occasionally perused most of the LinLin line (they were all free downloads), and thus I have formed a few cursory opinions about them. In general, I'll say that I respect the engineering which went into the Yamato Posettes. But I have never found the joint problems they were designed to address to be sufficiently serious to need any therapy other than careful posing techniques of the standard P4NW (and perhaps an occasional bit of quick postwork). I also didn't care for the general aesthetics of the Yamato models. That's a highly subjective point, and I'm not claiming there is anything wrong with the appearance of the models. I just prefer the way a standard Posette's figure looks and works, and didn't care for the outcomes of Yamato's favored morphs. Broadly speaking and perhaps more importantly, I also don't care for anime-style characters and aesthetics of any sort, and the Posettes in the LinLin line inexorably drove in that aesthetic direction. Finally, I objected to the texturing philosophy of all the Yamato models. They were all textured by default in a way that incorporated (required) aggressive use of ambient object lighting in their bodies, and I don't care for the way that style renders and detracts from realism. As well, none of them by default made any use of bump mapping, likely as a consequence of their anime-style appearance (which emphasizes smooth surfaces).

The LinLin line of Posettes were all Notable Posettes of Yesteryear, widely used with fondness by Poser artists. But I never used any of them beyond a few glances, and thus despite their relevance to the topic of the moment, I simply don't have much more to say about them.

An exception was a character called Circe, made in the late 1990s by an artist named meegja. Way back when in Poser 4 days, I recall there was a period when I regularly used Circe in more than a few renders. Nor was I the only one who enjoyed Circe-- though we shouldn't call her 'popular' in same way superstar Posettes like Lara Croft and Druuna were featured in every third or fourth render at hobbyist galleries, Circe did sometimes appear in on-line Poser venues toward the end of the Poser 3/4 era.

Circe was a sort of cousin to the Yamato Posettes. She was based on Mimi-- the Yamato Posette after Nene, but before the dramatic turn toward anime aesthetics the Yamato line took with RanRan, CanCan, and LinLin. For a freebie derivative character, Circe was a quite well crafted Posette, and lovely to look at as well (of course the last is a subjective conclusion).

 

In matters of texturing, Circe abandoned the Yamato approach, and was far more in the direction of the way I was back then learning to best use materials. I have trouble remembering what precisely I may have been up to twenty-five years ago, but working with the Circe figure may have been an important development in what has years later become my own steady artistic style in Poser work.

In relation to most other freebie Posettes at the time, Circe was one of  the very few figures apart from the Ultramorph Woman series (by Confusius) to make prominent use of bump mapping in coordination with her texture mapping. By contrast, the Mimi figure upon which Circe was based made no use of bump mapping. I seem to recall observing details of how all that turned out at render time as really opening up my own horizons about the importance and proper use of bump mapping in Poser 4. As well unlike her cousin Mimi, Circe made no use at all of ambient object lighting; to make her look good, one must illuminate Circe with satisfactory studio lighting.

Shown on the right in the image above is LinLin by Yamato, whose appearance I've altered only by putting a P4 Bikini bottom on her and posing her. LinLin appears here both because she was the ultimate development of her kind, and as well because my old files related to Mimi somehow got corrupted, and I no longer have access to that character from my archives (not that I ever used her for anything anyway). On the left is Circe by meegja, who arrived as a download already wearing a bikini bottom (but nothing else) and standing in the pose depicted, and thus has not been modified in any way.

Circe is a solid P4NW character effort, and came packed with all sorts of quality-enhancing goodies for a freebie. She bears what was for her own day a good quality texture map, which is a slightly altered version of the old Happyworldland 'Real' texture. The skin hue has been lightened a bit in comparison with 'Real,' and some freckles have been painted onto the face around the nose and eyes. As idle speculation, I'll guess the general lightening of the texture map was necessary because Circe eschewed use of ambient object lighting, which most of the Happyworldland textures required in order to avoid an excessively dark or grey appearance. I can't be certain, but Circe's bump map also looks to have been generally derived from Happyworldland Real. Probably as a consequence of starting out as Mimi, Circe bears a full load of Yamato P4NW morphs circulating in that era, and one can never have too many morphs. The bikini bottom she wears is the standard P4 model.

Circe's hair was a somewhat popular hairstyle at the time. I don't know its proper name, but it was made by someone called Eric Westray, and was used by several free P4 characters of both sexes in the P4 era. For example, the same hair was used by John Malis for his Luke Skywalker (Star Wars) P4NM figure, and also by the 'Lady Jaye' (GI Joe) Posette. I'm not a fan of this hair model, at least for Posettes (it looks okay on Dork), and when using Circe as a model I usually replaced it with something else, but that's neither here nor there. I've never seen this hair textured (nor have I ever tried to texture it myself), but it would probably look better with some kind of map. However, it's one of clunky old style P4 hairs, a thick solid block which makes applying a transparency map tricky, so I doubt attempting to so do is worthwhile.

In additon to working on Posettes, apparently author meegja also had an interest in mythology, and in the documentation for the Circe model he included a few lines of homage to the ancient Greek origins of the name he chose for the character.

In all Circe was a fine Posette for her time. She was at least somewhat visible and embraced by artists posting in on-line galleries of that era, making occasional appearances. More importantly as a shared figure, she was easy to deploy and use despite her relative complexity (particularly in material usage) compared to the many bare-bones Posettes circulating in those years.

I think Circe's true significance was in the technicals of her crafting. At the time Circe appeared, Confusius and his Ultramorph characters were amongst the few commonly used P4NM/P4NW characters who set aside the Yamato approach to materials utilization. The Yamato approach was the standard artistic practice of the wider community in those days, and thus figures like Circe bucked a general trend of their own times. The Eve-related figures circulating at the time were a mixed bag in this regard-- some figures and popular textures needed ambient figure lighting, while others did not use it at all. Lady Vethril (a P4WWG by Vethril) was an example of the former, while Latexa by HR3D was an example of the latter. As well, very few Eve-related figures exhibited any acquaintance with bump mapping (at least not by default).

In terms of general aesthetics, by utilizing the older and more realistic Mimi figure as a base in a time when Yamato figures were increasingly exhibiting anime-style features, Circe also offered those with an interest in experimenting with Yamato-type Posettes an opportunity to so do with a Posette who otherwise remained standard in aesthetics.