Poser 3 and Poser 4 were similar programs sharing models and using those models in similar ways. What I've been calling the 'Poser 4 era' covers the time when both Poser 3 and Poser 4 were in widespread hobbyist use. Likewise, the name 'Posette' applies to any P3NW or P4NW, as the models were visually indistinguishable in aesthetics, and technically (geometrically) so similar they could share morph targets on many areas of the body.

All the Notable Posettes discussed in previous entries date from the actual Poser 4 era, which was a few years on either side of the turn of the 21st century. These figures exhibited both the aesthetics and the technical characteristics of those times. As free characters, all of the above Posettes were delivered to end-users in the forms of either a PZ3 or a CR2 file, with morphs and props directly attached to the figure, and ready to render without further ado.

The Poser 4 era concluded in 2003 with the release of the Poser 5 software, which included an entirely new rendering engine. Unlike Poser 3 and Poser 4, the new technology in Poser 5's renderer was designed for outputting imagery with an emphasis on realism, rather than for making cartoons (as with prior versions). As most cg hobbyists are obsessed not merely with cg realism but with cg hyper realism, naively confusing a single narrow style with general aesthetic and artistic quality, the typical Poser user rushed to upgrade to this new software. Poser 5 was plagued by numerous commercial and technical problems, all of which were poorly managed by the program's parent company. Despite those troubles, we can say that the general Poser community had nonetheless moved on from P4 by the time Poser 6 was released two years later, in 2005.

Apart from a few stubborn or enthusiast holdouts, the days of our beloved Posette as a popular cg model had passed. When Poser 5 arrived in 2003, most hobbyists had already moved on from Posette and Dork. The Zygote figures Michael and Victoria (M3 and V3 at the time) then predominated in internet Poser galleries. The free and open exchange of hobbyist materials had been a vital stimulus to audience engagement with Posette, but by the time Poser 6 arrived most of the niche websites where that work was shared were disappearing from the internet. Many noncommercial Poser hobbyists had already abandoned excessively commercial Renderosity (once a nexus of the community) for a new freeware venue at ShareCG, and most of the already sparse P4 content remaining at Renderosity was further scrubbed, perhaps to make room for even more ambitious $$ peddling.

By the year 2007, the Poser software was up to version 7. Though rarely seen in major hobbyist galleries, Posette was not entirely forgotten. In that year, Plus3D released a Notable free P4NW character called 'Ana.' Ana was of remarkably high aesthetic quality compared to most shared characters dating from the actual Poser 4 era. Similar to the previously discussed Molly Mostly by Rad, as a female model Plus3D's Ana generally falls into the 'nice gals next door' category-- referring to a woman pretty and approachable, rather than a woman of elite classical beauty, who must be aloof and distant precisely because of her rarity.

Ana's mode of delivery to end-users was also radically different from the way free characters were distributed years earlier. Rather than packaging Ana as a CR2, Plus3D distributed her as pose files in the form of 2 MORs (morph setting poses) and 6 MATs (material setting poses). MAT and MOR poses were a technical innovation invented by hobbyists relatively late in the Poser 4 era, and in practice the methods were nearly unheard of in those times. By 2007, however, these minimal and easy-to-use methods were commonly used by hobbists to exchange modifications (especially for complex models like Mike and Vickie). After one loads a default Posette into one's Poser studio, one applies these tools as poses in the same way one would apply any other pre-made pose, such as to make Posette sit in a chair or stand on one leg. Ana also came with 4 high-resolution texture maps-- one for her general figure, and 3 hue variants for her eyes.

 

Both of the models shown in the example image display the Ana morphs by Plus3D. Their only difference is in their material settings. The model on the right uses the materials provided by Plus3D exactly as prescribed, while for purposes of this article I've modified the Posette on the left to use some materials and a texture alteration I hastily cooked up myself. As no actual figure was included in Ana's free download package, the end-user had to provide Ana with a coif. I don't have any idea what fancy hair model she wears in her preview image by Plus3D, so I put the mundane P4 Female Hair 1 on her for the example image above.

As is evident in the example image, Ana's face structure offers a remarkably realistic appearance for a P4NW. Due to the scientific precision associated with MOR poses, her author was able to form that face entirely from the mere handful of standard face dials borne by all default Posettes, which is an impressive artistic achievement. Below the neck, her figure offers a youthful appearance mainly in depiction of a humble yet realistic bosom, and otherwise her physique is that of a standard Posette.

Ana's texture maps are high-resolution and of quality construction. The primary texture map is a heavy modification of one of Staale Loseth's maps, probably P4NG3 or P4NG43t3k.

From a wider materials perspective, Ana resembles the approach of the old Yamato Posettes rather than a default P4NW, in that her texture is designed to incorporate ambient object lighting. One of the primary modifications of the Staale texture made by Plus3d was to reduce brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation, all of which is to say: to adapt the original texture to a model (example C) requiring ambient object lighting in her presentation. She would look horribly dark and grey unless her model is internally emitting light like a light-bulb, and Ana would still be visible (looking much the same) in a darkened studio without any lights at all, as she is literally glowing.

This is a standard, indeed favored, technique of current Poser hobbyists, far more so today than in Poser 4 times. Consequences of this technique are visible in my example image. The light emitted by Ana washes out the saturation (and even some hue) of her texture map, and minimizes the effect of studio lighting on her figure by lowering her general contrast, diminishing her highlighting, and reducing the effect of shadows cast onto her skin.

In fairness toward the now very popular technique, the problematic effects of ambient object lighting on Poser figures is far more pronounced in Poser 4 (which I used to make the example image), as the P4 rendering engine differs considerably from later versions of Poser software. Among other important matters, the P4 engine has no capacity to produce authentic light specularity, which is an important complement to ambient object lighting techniques. As well in fairness, Ana was released in the days of Poser 7 rather than Poser 4, and it was natural for her as a character to make use of then-prevailing techniques and presume end-users would render her in a current, rather than an old, version of the Poser software.

For purposes of comparison (particularly as I used Poser 4 to make the example image), I significantly altered Ana's texture map by dramatically increasing its brightness, changing its hues, and reducing its resolution. As a point of curiousity, five of the texture maps used by Ana in my own rendition (example A) would be required to paste over the pixel dimensions of Plus3D's bona-fide Ana shown in example C. I also changed the model's material settings to eliminate her ambient object lighting; thus the Ana in example A represents the package by Plus3D adapted to standard techniques (Yamato's LinLin line aside) of the actual Poser 4 era. As a result of the retexturing, the rosacea on Ana's face was washed out, but adding it back would have been easy with one or two more saturation layers in the static image editor.

We can see in her close-ups that both approahes to Ana look quite nice. If example C's texture is dull in the distance shot, due the high-resolution of her map the texture still depicts considerable hue detail and characterization on her face in the close-up. The most significant difference in result is that example C's use of ambient object lighting dramatically decreases her realistic depiction of brightness and contrast interaction with her surroundings (compared to example A). Yet we should note that with only a bit of postwork, the photorealism of both Ana variations in the example could be increased dramatically. With sufficient post-render editing, the variants begin to look identical in all texturing respects.

In any case, Ana is a quality character for Posette, a lovely and youthful face with a pronounced degree of realism in facial features. That this face was created by Plus3D by subtle manipulation only of a standard Posette's face dials, with no custom morph work at all, is a commendable achievement. While her texturing and materials usage is not well-suited to Posette's original rendering environment in Poser 4, that can hardly be judged a defect. Anyone still using Posette or Poser 4 today would almost certainly be the sort of experienced hobbyist with the technical knowledge and skills to revise her material settings in any way desired.

REMC was a prolific Poser 4 era free character maker whose work was mostly concerned with the science fiction and superhero genres. His characters were often eccentic in appearance, exhibiting a unique visual style which was perhaps too distinct for general use by general audiences. I don't recall often seeing his characters utilized by others in popular on-line galleries of those days. However, REMC's work was usually top-notch from a technical perspective. His Poser figures were well-made, despite their innovative design and quirky complexity as models.

I don't know anything about REMC personally except that he was apparently from France, as many of his models had components labelled with French-language words. He sometimes wrote his nickname as REMC, other times as remc, but never as Remc, so for this article I'll just stick with the first version.

As I noted earlier when discussing the John Malis characters, in Poser 4 days most characterization of Poser figures was accomplished almost entirely by use of costuming, static props, and texturing. REMC's figures were somewhat unique for their depictions of characterization instead based on radical morphing work and the replacement of major body sections by custom poseable props. By the standards of their own day, these ambitious figures were remarkable in their quality of construction.

Most of REMC's numerous characters were modifications of P4NM (Dork), and thus range beyond the scope of this article. In addition to imparting his own eccentric visual style to popular comic-book characters such as Superman and X-Man Cyclops, REMC made nearly a whole squadron of heavily armored sci-fi soldiers associated with the Warhammer 40K genre. He also made several interesting alien characters. Perhaps the most charming of these was called 'Double,' a bug-eyed and egg-headed fellow in a leather trench coat, blue jeans, and sneakers. Another excellent alien hero by REMC was 'Extra Man,' a blue-skinned guy in a yellow jumpsuit who could easily be made the star or sidekick of some sci-fi series.

REMC also did fine work on more mundane types of Dorks. As discussed elsewhere, his 'Athletic' and 'Mega-Massive' P4NMs were amongst the very best morph characters made by anyone to depict athleticism and muscularity in male physiques. He also had a relatively unique character called 'Fat Dude,' an obese fellow who came with his own wardrobe of customized conforming clothing. Fat Dude was a rare example of P4NM flabbiness in the historical P4 era, when depictions of high physical fitness were a universal constant for P4NM.

REMC created far fewer female characters, but for the most part they were as innovative and visually intriguing as his male figures. One of the few exceptions was the only mundane Posette character ever offered by REMC, a figure called Providence. Apart from an enormous bustline and an oddly useless set of face morphs (leaving her custom visage useable only in two fixed coquettish facial expressions), the character was a default P4NW in all other respects. One might wonder if REMC intended her as some sort of ironic artistic statement, though I think more likely she was simply intended as a character ready for quickly composed pin-up renders. In any case, from a historical perspective, Providence was not a Notable Posette, and I've only mentioned her here because of this article's general examination of REMC's work.

As an example of a character too specific or unique to ever be of general interest, REMC also made a Posette called 'Chun Li,' who was apparently based on an npc from an old video game called Street Fighter. Chun Li was a top-quality Posette from a technical perspective, and charming in appearance. However, she wears a full suit of eccentric clothing, including a skirt straight out a 1970s kung-fu movie, all of which is unalterable because the whole outfit is formed from static props which have replaced her various body parts. Thus Chun-Li could never change outfits (or appear without any outfit), and was not a versatile character barring some end-user with rare niche interests. One could of course move Chun Li's cute face morph and custom hair prop onto a standard Posette to create a more useful general purpose character, but a character less useful in original state than in derivative forms should probably not be considered inherently Notable.

 

In the example image here I selected four REMC characters as especially interesting both for their unique visual style and their technical constructions. On the left is Catwoman. The couple in the middle are Exode Male and Exode Female. Though we are concerned here with Notable Posettes rather than Notable Dorks, the Exodes are a couple, and to consider one without the other would be negligent. On the right is Silencia, one of two variants of the same character made by REMC.

Catwoman is a good example of the general visual style apparently favored by REMC. The character makes no use at all of texture maps or bump maps, and all her coloration is a result of direct object coloring of her body parts. She even features many custom material zones to facilitate that approach, and the design of these material zones is sufficiently haphazard that attempting to apply a texture map to the character would be an onerous chore. Her blue-grey color scheme generally corresponds to golden age comic book Batman characters, though I think REMC's Catwoman was intended as an original character rather than a reference to any 'Catwoman' comic characters (who usually wore black catsuits fringed with gold, as well as high-heeled boots).

Catwoman features the body of a P4NW, whose head and feet have been replaced by static props. The lack of a face poseable in varying expressions and the replacement of feet by oversized sneaker props were both distinctive artistic points of REMC, and many of his P4 characters had at least one of these unusual characteristics.

The only rough spot on the Catwoman figure is her neck, which was relegated to a stiff and uncanny appearance by the morph used to increase its diameter. The character also wears a prop belt and a prop chest harness; the latter is somewhat poseable, featuring a morph to snugly fit Posette bustlines of varying sizes.

Exode Male and Exode Female are apparently some sort of mutant half-snake people. Both figures are technically impressive as a P4NM and P4NW whose dramatic body-shape alterations were accomplished entirely with morph work, which was another general hallmark of REMC's style.

Both figures use texture maps and bump maps in conjunction to depict their mutant skin, and these are generally well-made. However, Exode Female oddly has scales on her feet in the bump map, but not on the texture map (as is visible in the example). Whether that was an oversight or intentional must forever be a mystery, one supposes.

Unlike her male counterpart, Exode Female can project many spiky or thorny points from her body. These are all morphs controlled by dial, and they can be decreased or eliminated entirely if undesired. As a minor point of critique, I think anyone looking at the example image will agree that altering the texture map to add scaly green skin to the giant spikes projecting upward from her knees would add much needed visual contrast and clarification about the otherwise strange shapes appearing to blend into her thighs.

As a point of curiosity, if one turns off all her inhuman morphs and puts a regular P4NW texture + coif on Exode Female, she actually makes for a prettier Posette than REMC's previously discussed Providence, even though the latter was probably specifically designed for that same purpose.

One notable morph on Exode Female's head is of wider significance for any Posette. REMC's 'maxilaire' morph provides a comic book style squared jaw of which any rugged superheroine would be proud, accomplishing this in a precision way which does not also fatten or widen the entire face (as is unfortunately the case with the standard P4NW dials for similar purpose).

As for Exode Male, his herculean physique is accomplished entirely by dialing up the standard P4NM 'Superhero' morph. Perhaps he was made before REMC developed his excellent P4NM muscularity characters. In any case, Exode Male's wavy-shaped snake head harbors many other interesting custom morphs by REMC.

By default, Exode Female's bustline is gargantuan to the degree of the ridiculous; for the example image I dialed that down significantly. Otherwise both figures are unaltered from their original default appearance, and were rendered in their default poses (made by REMC).

On the right of the example is sci-fi Silencia, of whom REMC offered two versions. The variant shown here is a standard P4NW whose material zones have been reworked (in a Rube Goldberg manner, unfortunately) to simulate her outfit of bodysuit and skullcap. Her feet have also been replaced by props simulating socks and oversized sneakers. The face uses a texture map, but by default the remainder of the character makes use only of direct object coloring to depict her overall coloration.

For the example image, I altered the character slightly by adding a generic and low-resolution silvery reflection map to her catsuit and skull-cap, as I believe the appearance in my example image is nearer what was originally intended by REMC for the character. Even for an otherwise technically expert Poser artist such as REMC, reflectivity in Poser 4 was an abstruse and poorly understood topic in Poser 4 days, with even leading tutorials typically giving blatantly incorrect information.

Essentially, the Poser 4 engine was not a raytracer, and was literally incapable of resolving or rendering reflective surfaces in an authentic manner. The program instead made use of static reflection maps to simulate reflectivity as a special effect. Perhaps more confusingly, the Poser 4 materials laboratory prominently offered a reflective color adjustment and other variables, but most hobbyists in actual Poser 4 days (apparently including REMC) never understood the proper use of those parameters, which only worked in direct conjunction with an applied reflection map (but otherwise had no effect at all upon render output).

In any case, if one wanted to spend a bit more time on the matter, Silencia's metallic-silver appearance could be further improved (even in a Poser 4 render) with the application of a higher quality reflection map and greater care taken in adjusting the related material parameters. Without any reflection map at all (as she arrived to end-users in P4 days), the character's body and skullcap had a pale bluish-grey direct object coloration, which is what typically passed in actual Poser 4 times for a simulated metallic silvery appearance.

The other variant of Silencia (not shown) features the same head attached to a different body, which is a bulky suit of cybernetic or sci-fi powered mechanical armor (similar to REMC's male Warhammer 40K figures). Apart from the head, all parts of the body have been replaced by poseable props to depict this armored suit. As a result, armored Silencia cannot be strictly considered as a P4NW figure, and thus she ranges beyond our concern here with Notable Posettes.

Another reason I didn't include the armored character in the example image is that she frankly looks weird. She's a figure with a tiny head poking out of an enormously oversized and mismatched body, with uncanny limb proportions which are neither realistic nor aesthetically pleasant. Certainly the various body parts of armored Silencia can be rescaled to more satisfying ratios if desired, but the character also offers many hassles related to her materials usage. Like Catwoman, the figure has an abundance of eccentric custom material zones, and like regular Silencia none of these are textured but could all benefit greatly from application of reflection mapping.

Generally speaking, I highly recommend any and all REMC figures to those interested in Poser 4-era characters. REMC had a distinctive and interesting visual style which was consistently expressed across a wide range of figures, and all of his freebies were notably well-made from a quality perspective. If many of the character depictions are too narrow or specific to be of general interest for incorporation in the artwork of most end-users, one can nonetheless learn a great deal about the mechanics and construction of custom P4 figures from studying REMC's work.

Combing through the old REMC figures is also an opportunity to obtain many useful and rare morphs for P4NM and P4NW. The two most prolific morph artists of the historical Poser 4 era were Traveler and Confusius. When their work was added together, these two offered such an abundance of free morphs for Dork and Posette that most other artists didn't have any motivation to ever consider tinkering with morphing. Thus the custom morph library offered by the REMC figures can be considered a valuable alternative resource to prevailing popular morph trends in Poser 4 days.