https://www.posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=4165&p=45988#p45988 ----------------------------------- Endosphere Wednesday, 17 December 2025, 01:18 AM Re: Notable Posettes Of Yesteryear ----------------------------------- Posette Athleticism A long-standing and legitmate criticism of our beloved model Posette, regularly made throughout the Poser 3/4 era, claimed her figure was too athletic or muscular for a general purpose model. Such a critique might spring from a wide range of motives both aesthetic and practical-- perhaps one supposes the look isn't realistic, or isn't suitably feminine, or is too distinctive for generic simulation, or is contrary to classical standards. Poser 3 and Poser 4 times saw an explosion of freebie superheroine characters, mostly based on comic books or films. Most of the superherione Posettes did not bear any frame-shaping morphs at all affecting their physiques below the neck. The default P4NW (example A in the image below) already looks sufficiently fit to pass as a comic herione without further modification. If not, her built-in 'Superherione' morphs (example B, at a morph setting of 1.25) can push her even further in that direction. Jim Burton once made a free morph set called 'Thigh Lumps' that I highly recommend for any mundane or general purpose Posette not intended as a physical fitness depiction. The morphs remove the simulated muscularity from Posette's default thighs. I use them regularly but I have no idea, unfortunately, where that morph set could be found today. I like the hale aesthetic of physical fitness embodied in a standard Posette, which explains at least some of my continuing appreciation of the model all these years later. I always collected any freebie character I could find related to the fitness topic. As matters turned out, apparently my fondness for fit Posettes was a typical preference of Posette fans. There were more options available to increase Posette's fitness and muscularity in Poser 4 days than were ways to modify her figure in softer or more plump aesthetic directions. The many tools to increase Posette's resemblance to a fitness model or bodybuilder model were of varying quality, both in technical construction and in resulting appearance/aesthetic. In my opinion the three most notable Posettes of the feminine muscularity genre were Builder by John Paul Moore, Sera 2 by Sphere Design, and She-Hulk by our Posette Forever friend Marv aka Marvel1. [img]https://www.posetteforever.com/files/posted_images/5475/posette_fitness.jpg[/img] Having worked with the Marv's model extensively (mostly by moving its morphs onto other Posettes), my opinion is that She-Hulk is the very best muscular Posette ever released by anyone in the Poser 4 era. However, a Posette does not have to be a [i]perfect[/i] example of her type to be notable or historically important. If the other two models I've selected for consideration here suffer from some serious problems, that does not decrease their importance as models or their contributions to the topic of Posettes depicting physical fitness and muscularity. There were other fitness Posettes with more practical and aesthetically pleasing figures than either Builder or Sera 2. A previously considered notable Posette, the 'Circe' figure by meegja, also had an athletic figure. As further examples, both of which can be found right here in the Posette Forever downloads section, friend Marv also created a P4NW fitness figure called Heroine RP (her moniker suits her well), and a set of quality morph targets by our friend JanReinar called 'P4F Muscle Pak' has some nice features, particularly in the abdomen and hips. Yet at the end of the era, these alternatives all turned out not quite as notable in enduring value as the other genre figures we'll now consider. Builder by JP Moore is depicted from front and back views in the examples labelled C in the image above. At first glance, the character looks rather silly from an aesthetic perspective, and I think only an artist with rare interests would use this freebie character as-is, without modifications. To make matters worse, the character came bald-headed (I put P4 Female Hair 4 on her for the example image) and with default P4NW material settings-- some direct object coloring combined with a low-res texture, and no bump map. Each of Builder's gargantuan breasts is bigger than her head, which must be either juvenalia or some kind of fetish. She looks much better with her breast dials turned waaayyyy down, but I left them as-is to give an accurate historical depiction of the figure. Perhaps the most significant problem with Builder is that her body parts all make use of xyz scalings at disparate settings. Generally speaking, P4NW as a poseable model does not react well to scaling her individual body parts at different ratios. The most common (almost inevitable) result is broken joints and strange mesh bulges in even the simplest and least ambitious poses. Xyz scaling of individual body parts decreases the flexibility and usefulness of P4NW as a model, creating headaches for the artist. Generally speaking, if one wants to scale up or down Posette's size, one should only use the scale dials affecting the whole body at once. Though Builder does scale adjacent body parts at different sizes, the settings are nonetheless relatively low, and thus the problem is fortunately minimized in her case. Given her general bulk, she's fated to be a difficult figure to pose regardless. The best value of Builder was in her numerous morphs on every limb and body part, as most of her ambitious muscularity was accomplished by morph rather than scaling. I cannot recall any Poser 4 figure, male or female, which offered such detailed anatomical simulation as Builder. If we suppose anyone would be unlikely to use Builder in her default state, nonetheless when viewed as a highly customizable tool or morph library with which to build a fitness Posette to any particular artist's own tastes and purposes, this unique and unprecedented P4NW was invaluable. Her abdomen has seven separate morphs devoted to differing aspects of muscularity. Her thighs, for example, each hold the following muscle morphs: Femoris, Glutes1, Glutes2, Medialis, Lateralis, and Tensor. Likewise with the rest of the body. This is a model made by and for a person with serious knowledge of human anatomy. Some of Builder's unique morphs have tremendous value which extends even to mundane Posettes not associated with physical fitness. For example, every one of my Posettes since the historical P4 era has harboured Buider's chest and collar morphs called 'Lats,' which when dialed inversely are very helpful in addressing the way the sides of any Posette's chest will be stuck in her arms when posed with her shoulders close at her side. For a demonstration of precisely the issue just mentioned, observe in example B of the image how the standard Posette shown is inadvertently merging her chest and arms under her armpits. For whatever reasons, Builder also comes with an extensive collection of original nose shape morphs on her face, if one is looking to do some serious Posette nose-scultpuring. Example D in the image above depicts Sera 2. Anyone familiar with that obscure old freebie might think her an unlikely candidate for consideration as anything but a waste of download time, as her default appearance and form upon initally loading her in Poser is frankly bizarre. For whatever reason, intention or error, the Sera 2 figure looks surreal, even disturbing, as a gangly giantess with a tiny head, to the extent one must even wonder if her files somehow got corrupted in transit! But the problem (or was it meant to be some cryptic artistic statement?) is actually caused by unusual and disproportionate scaling of all her body parts. A few minutes spent restoring Sera's limbs to a more typical Posette size and shape-- as I've done in this example image-- reveals that Sera 2 has what may be the most aesthetically pleasing morph of shapely Posette fitness legs ever made. Whatever aesthetic and technical problems we may find in the remainder of Sera's figure, those thigh and shin morphs are most excellent, even better than She-Hulk's-- and I've already stated I consider the physique of Marv's She-Hulk as the overall best fitness Posette morphs ever made. In addition to her other deficiencies, Sera 2 does not come with any hair, so I put the P4 Female Hair 4 on her here. The ghoulish pallor on Sera's face seems to come from a desaturating effect (including grey lips) applied to Sera's texture map by her author. If the skin was meant to utilize ambient object lighting (which would improve the death pall), then the author forgot to make the settings. Underneath that modified base, her texture map is 'Realistic' by Happyworldland, and many of those old textures already had separate problems of their own with strange facial discolorations. If one wanted to render Sera 2 for some nontrivial purpose, changing the texture map is advised. Adding a bump map, even if only the weak defaut one which came with Poser 4, would also be a good idea. The good news is that Sera's figure is constructed by individual limb morphs. Culling her excellent thigh and shin morphs (just a single morph each) using MorphManager and swapping them to other fitness Posette of one's choosing is a simple matter, after which quirky Sera 2 is probably best returned to the archives. Considered both as a general collection of physique morphs and a poseable figure, I think one will not find a better fitness Posette than Marv's She-Hulk character. Though I've never used the She-Hulk character for any scene, I nonetheless keep her morphs on constant standby for transfer to other Posettes anytime I need some Posette exhibiting physical fitness. These morphs are my first choice in such a situation, and usually get the job done without help from other morph sets. Equally important, She-Hulk's versatile morphs rarely interfere or object with distortions even in ambitious posing. By all means check her out-- She-Hulk is still available right here at Posette Forever in the Superheroes file section. In direct comparison with Marv's other P4NW fitness figure, Heroine RP, the general shape of She-Hulk's thighs and abdomen are much improved. Heroine RP is both less detailed and less realistic in shape in these and several other areas, and thus She-Hulk was Marv's finest contribution on this muscularity topic. As a depiction of She-Hulk rather than a general fitness Posette, I don't know enough about the comic book character to comment on Marv's depiction. The face of this model is an anime-character/LinLin style visage, which I don't think is typically associated with that character, but perhaps that is not correct, or there were different official versions of She-Hulk over time. The character's Fantastic Four outfit is painted onto her texture map, rather than clothing items. But Marv did a nice job on the texture, and the result looks fine at render time. By default, the character also wears the fluffy P4 Conforming Hair model.