hello all,hope everyone is doing well.I have been away from my PC etc for about half a year.My last Poser5 update was the #2 patch.Should I load the # 3 patch?Also,any news on Daz's program?Thanks for the input.

Hey...welcome back :) Nothing on DAZ Studio... Mimic2.0 is out at DAZ.... P5 SR3 seems to correct some problems, some were neglected, and perhaps being worked on, and a couple of weird things have popped up :) Typical patch scenario ;) And as the proverbial statement: "your mileage may vary"...and probably will I installed SR3...seems ok to me.... For your convenience: Enhancements and bug Fixes in SR3 ------------------------------------------ General Application Speed ------------------------- - Poser start-up times noticeable reduced. When launching Poser for the very first time, some system files are loaded and cached by the system, and hence are not loaded on consecutive starts. Some details on start-up times on selected test systems follow: first start : P4 1.600 Mhz : PIII 650 Mhz ----------------------------------------------- SR 2.1 : 42.0 secs : 65.0 secs SR 3 : 31.0 secs : 45.0 secs second start : P4 1.600 Mhz : PIII 650 Mhz ----------------------------------------------- SR 2.1 : 28.1 secs : 45.0 secs SR 3 : 16.5 secs : 28.0 secs - File loading time is reduced. Loading time in general, (both compressed and uncompressed), has been cut in half for large files when the app is running. E.g., loading Don Casual from the library yields: load Don : P4 1.600 Mhz : PIII 650 Mhz ----------------------------------------------- SR 2.1 : 20.0 secs : 32.0 secs SR 3 : 9.0 secs : 15.0 secs The improvement tends to be between a speed-up factor of 1.2 and 2.2 on current hardware. These results may differ with various hard disks and CPU configurations. Walk Designer ------------- - Walk Designer has been adapted to the Poser 5 figure proportions. The walk styles now work better on the P5 figures. The number of frames will be set based on the frames necessary to walk along the path with natural speed. You can change this number to change the speed. For example, if the calculated frame number is 160, and the user types in 320, then the generated walk will be half the normal speed; typing in 80 doubles the speed. - Blend Style settings are now working again after changing the figure type. FireFly Render Engine --------------------- - It is now possible to enable smoothing on a per object basis. - Ray trace shadows now work when using one infinite light in FireFly Draft and Production modes. - Some render bugs for global 3D textures have been fixed. Material Room ------------- - Import background image: Fixed a crash bug when the loaded image was too wide (>=4096). - The Global setting on shader nodes now works. - Loading AVIs to the Background Movie shader node now previews and renders correctly. - When reloading a saved pz3 file, AVI movies used as texture or BG Movie are not discarded any more. - Fixed material node parameter dial bug (was resetting to the default value when dragging the dial on non US English locales). Face Room --------- - High quality texture support. When exporting or applying a texture to a figure, it's now possible to choose between using the maximum resolution of the inputted image or photo(s) instead of the current default resolution (512x512). If there are no input texture(s), the resolution is read from "Poser.ini". Poser.ini is a preferences file located in Runtime/Prefs. The texture parameters are FACE_ROOM_HQ_TEXTURE_WIDTH and FACE_ROOM_HQ_TEXTURE_HEIGHT. - "Apply Shape" button replaced by "Apply Shape" check box. Allows photo matching (feature point dragging, rotation, translation, scaling) with interactive geometry change. - Higher visible resolution when zooming into the input photo image. - Improved memory handling when loading textures from file. - Ability to adapt the face color to figure color when applying a face to a figure. If the face and the body color differ, Poser now lets the user choose to have an automatic color update of the face color to match the body color. - Fixed rotation point for eye morph targets (spawn morph target bug, origin of eyes wasn't adapted correctly) Hair Room --------- - Improved hair collision algorithm for more exact and faster collision detection - Added a Set Parent button in the Properties palette for hair groups - Solved problems with hair playback and highlighting. Cloth Room ---------- - Enabled changing the ignore collisions settings after a simulation was created. - Now recalculating all cloth simulations on Animation -> Recalculate Dynamics -> All Cloth, not only the currently selected. - Fixed deleting dynamic vertex group bug Python ------ - New functions exposed to configure FireFly render options on actors: * RayTraceShadows() - Query whether this light is using raytracing for shadows. * SetRayTraceShadows() - Set whether this light is using raytracing for shadows. * SmoothPolys() - Query whether polygon smoothing is enabled for this actor. * SetSmoothPolys() - Set whether polygons smoothing is enabled for this actor. * BackfaceCull() - Query the actor's backface culling flag. * SetBackfaceCull() - Set the actor's backface culling flag. * VisibleInReflections() - Query whether this actor is visible in reflections. * SetVisibleInReflections() - Set whether this actor is visible in reflections. * VisibleInRender() - Query whether this actor is visible in renders. * SetVisibleInRender() - Set whether this actor is visible in renders. * DisplacementBounds() - Get the actor's displacement bounds. * SetDisplacementBounds() - Set the actor's displacement bounds. * ShadingRate() - Get the actor's shading rate. * SetShadingRate() - Set the actor's shading rate. * ShadowBiasMin() - Get if this light uses ray tracing for shadows. * SetShadowBiasMin() - Set the max shadow bias for depth map shadows on this light. * ShadowBiasMax() - Get the min shadow bias for depth map shadows on this light. * SetShadowBiasMax() - Set the min shadow bias for depth map shadows on this light. * ShadowBlurRadius() - Get the shadow map blur radius for this light. * SetShadowBlurRadius() - Set the shadow map blur radius for this light. * AtmosphereStrength() - Get the atmosphere strength of this light. * SetAtmosphereStrength() - Set the atmosphere strength for this light. Misc ---- - Morph Putty: Clear pins now removes the red dots on figure. - The comma (',') on a keyboard's numeric block now works for numeric input. - Disabled parenting body parts with IK switched off to props. - When an .obj file which is referenced by a .pz3 is moved, the user has to locate the missing geometry file. The new path the user specified is now saved to the .pz3, removing the need for locating the file on every subsequent loading of the .pz3.

I can't seem to load animated GIFs into the Movie shader node any more. Not really a big loss, as I can convert GIFs to .avi format easily, but still somewhat annoying after one has gotten used to the feature.