Michael 3

In Poser’s early days, the default figure models were rather elementary, prompting DAZ Productions to release a series of more realistic human figures, collectively dubbed ‘The Millennium Family’. Head and shoulders above anything else available, these models have now spawned an entire industry of morphs, add-on clothes, textures and so on. The most well-known is Victoria, who is closely followed by Michael in the popularity stakes – his third iteration now joins Victoria 3, released earlier this year.

By far the best improvement v3 is the subtlety of facial morphs. There’s a vast range of expression dials; some control small individual facial elements, such as the eyelids, while others tweak characteristics simultaneously – when he smiles, for instance. But what makes this figure stand out is the way everything fits together so precisely: eyelids shut properly, lips meet neatly, expressions look natural and he sports a full set of teeth, each with its own textures.

When you go to load Michael, you may notice that his genitals are a separate object, listed before his body in the parts hierarchy. His privates have more morphs than his predecessor’s, but more importantly, Michael is based on what DAZ calls a Unimesh. This is the base mesh for Victoria 3, who, of course, requires no such ‘additions’. This means you can use Victoria 3 male textures on Michael 3.

Because Michael 3 is based on a much higher resolution mesh than v2, virtually no morphs have been added to the base figure as standard (as with Victoria 3). Instead, you can add or remove all the morphs individually or in groups using Injection technology. While this hinders the creative process, especially on the face, where you need to plan in advance what you’re doing, it ensures Michael remains usable on lowly computers. We tend to use the Inject All button, then subtract any morphs we don’t need at the end.

None of Michael 2’s conforming clothing fits Michael 3, which is why DAZ has included a version that places the new head on the old Michael 2 body. You get all the old body morphs and the new face material, and you can still use your v1 and 2 clothes. You do need to resize hats, though. Tragedy.

Joint bending is much improved, too, with skin folding more realistically. His inner elbows bend a little strangely, though, and his hands still don’t properly mimic realistic movement, but overall, he’s a significant advance on either Michael 2 or Don (the high-res model included in Poser 5), especially if you do a lot of expression or lip-sync work.