POSER 5 Free for the next couple of days!

[12rounds]

So. . . how do you get a model to pose? Does it just come with some hardwired-in humanoid or whatever that you position?

You can import from many different standard 3d formats like 3ds and lwo and obj to name a few. Once a model is imported, it needs to be rigged (a skeleton needs to be defined and joint-parameters that control the movements of body parts). Rigging a human model is very complex and high-end apps like 3d studio max with proper plugins are far superior in this - but then again the cost of those software suits is superior as well. Once a model is fully rigged, it's body parts can be posed within Poser by using a special set of dials.

There are dozens of "poserised" humanoid models that have the rigging done properly and constitute the base for posing. These are further modified by morph targets (used by the built-in dialing system) that are usually done outside of Poser (pretty much any decent modelling app with an obj export will do - with a bit of testing and tweaking due to importing/exporting scale differencies) by exporting the target model or part there-of. There are additional methods of tweaking within Poser - like magnets which displace polygon groups, but externally created morph targets are now the norm. A good combination morph target easily tweaks the model beyond recognition; however many models have distinct mesh-related problems that are difficult to hide. Such "problems" tend to show up to an experienced eye (like concaved forearms of the most popular female model, Victoria 3).

Popular, poserised and rigged, models have hundreds of pre-defined morph targets so one needs to dwell into morphing external morph targets only later on when the default ones are no longer adequate. Polygon count also increases and many Poser users actually only design their scene in Poser and render it another app (due to Poser's problems with memory management large scenes easily choke even high-end computers to death).