Out of curiosity, to what level do you think CL should take the next installments of this application (P6 and beyond)? P5 was buggy at first, and even though they fixed the biggest problems with the initial release, I see the community is still split on their opinions of it.

Aside from the universally requested improvement in stability, I've noticed many people's wishlists for P6 to include things like global illumination, open GL, a faster rendering engine, etc... all things you find in more expensive, high end applications. Meanwhile, I've noticed people still complaining about P5's "ease of use" or lack thereof, seemingly contradicting the desire for more complex feature enhancements.

The people most satisfied with P5 are those who seem interested in animation (myself included), or at least curious about it. At the other end are those who will not budge from P4, and at first glance, those seem to be people intersted in still image production only. P5 was a step in the right direction for animation... but given the community's split reaction to it, will Curious Labs continue to develop this progression in future releases, or will they abandon their progressive endeavors, or will they see it as too risky, and concentrate more on keeping their base users satisfied?

I'd be curious to hear your opinions about where you believe Poser is heading... Or at least where you'd like to see it go (stability issues aside).

Message edited on: 05/22/2004 04:01

Message edited on: 05/22/2004 04:02

Message edited on: 05/22/2004 04:02

I like P5 and I'm doing still images. If Poser 6 would handle lights in a much better way and render faster, I'd be happy. It doesn't makes things that complicated : Vue is quite good and quite simple.

I'm with Compiler: I would never go back from P5 now, but I don't animate. I use the cloth room, for more realistic looking clothing/fabrics. I've played with the hair room, but in general I prefer modelled hair or to paint my own. I've already posted to a number of P6 wishlists, but my real hopes are to make it more stable, preferably quicker, Open GL support and better handling of lights. If P6 is geared primarily towards features for animators, I'll probably stick with 5.

Ya - lights are a biggie for me too, especially want point lights! I guess one the the things that gets a lot of ppl is changing the names ect of various functions- like 'nodes', to the older users it's like 'what the f***' Simplicity does count, especially in a field where over complexity is the norm.

My opinion on the problems with Poser 5's release is that CL didn't have a very good grasp on their "voice of the customer". They didn't understand what we wanted in many cases, and they didn't properly respond to what we wanted in others. For instance, it seems they didn't realize that most people wanted a real-time preview (OpenGL or something similar), or they didn't realize how MUCH of a killer that would be if they didn't put it in. Myself, and I imagine many others, just assumed before release that would be included, because it's standard in most comparable aps. It didn't occur to me that they WOULDN'T include it until the release. I assumed point lights would be included; they apparently didn't realize people had this assumption.

Then there's the places where they did know what we wanted, but had poor implementation. They knew we wanted a better render engine. This would have been a good place to license from a third party, but instead they reinvented the wheel, and the initial release was buggy and flawed. (Personally, with SR4, I like Firefly now, but I just upgraded to P5, so what do I know?) They knew we wanted a better way to do skirts and loose clothing. The cloth room is a great tool. The problem there is that, by the very natural of the calculations, it's very resource and time intensive. Many of the things we want could have been handled by adding support for multiple parents or siblings.

And again with "voice of the customer" there's the places where CL thought it would be cool, and their customers didn't find it to be value added. Face Room, for instance. My reaction, and that of many others, was "what's that about?" If they had included DAZ figure compatibility, it might have been useful, but without that, it's just a toy; not something I'm going to pay extra for. Same with content paradise. I know where all those sites and then some are.

Of course, there's some places where they very clearly had the voice of the customer, and chose to ignore it. Remember the registering/unlocking thing in the first release? They knew from previous software releases that their audience had almost NO tolerance for that, and they put it in anyway.

IMHO, the "ease of use" and lack thereof issue is less to do with the basic program, and more to do with the GUI. I'm sick of the cutesy unique interface, the rooms, the library system that was intuitive to someone who wasn't me. Go to something standard. A normal explorer-style interface for the library that allows me to put things anywhere, and move them around inside the program. At least give an option to replace the tabs with a menu item somewhere; screen real estate is at a premium in any graphics ap, and that's a hundred pixels at the top of my screen I could put to better use. There are better controls interfaces out there; base off one of those.

And, I would like to see backwards compatibility be kept without being chained to antiquated ways of handling figures. Each Poser file writes the version number at the top; use it. For instance, hypothetically, use a more modern boning and weighting method for new figures, but if a figure you load up says "version 4.0", revert to the old joint parameter and blend zone method. You've got that code anyway. Then those who are technically minded could rebone in the setup room and save back as a new figure using the new method, and those who aren't or who (like most of us) have oodles of older files and don't want to abandon their investment can do so.

On Open GL : I read here and there that it is a must have for any 3D application. My experience with openGL is not all that great I have it for 2 app : Vue d'Esprit 4 : the open GL makes the program unstable. There is a preview window, but it is tiny and doesn't refresh too often. Cinema 4D : the openGL works all right, but doesn't show as much as Poser does (just untextured preview). I have read that DAZ studio's openGL doesn't show a full textured/transmapped perview yet. So could anyone tell me about an openGL app that shows a preview with textures and transmaps, and doesn't bogs or slows down too much my medium range computer ?

What happened with Poser 5, in my mind, is that they tried to do too much and answer too many of the community demands. Instead of focusing on a few things that Poser 5 would do really well (the dynamic clothing, for example, and material room), they tried to make it do everything. Listening to the community is all very well and fine but no two of us want the same thing and it is the road to madness to try to meet everyone's needs. I like Poser 5. I rarely use Poser 4 now. I don't use all the features (never could get the hang of dynamic hair), but I think it has a lot of advantages. When Poser 6 comes out, I'll probably give it a chance. I don't expect it to make me into an artist nor do I think the cure for cancer will be hidden within its program, but I am hoping for some refinements and additions that will keep me happily busy. I've set my expectations much lower than the pre-Poser 5 nonsense.

I'm afraid I'm one of the die-hard Poser 4 users. I never bought P5 and never plan to.

CL made one drastic mistake in that they never had a public beta for it. It appears they hand-picked a small group of privileged people to test it, so there wasn't enough input on where the quirks and bugs were. It seemed elitist to me.

I move much of my rendering to Vue, so the render engine isn't that important to me.

I agree with FyreSpiryt that CL didn't pay much attention to what their public was saying.

Also, one of their biggest problems was that they released it long before it was finished. It was still beta quality, yet people had to pay full price for it. I just didn't want the frustration that I saw so many having with it.

If there is a P6, I hope they give it the reliability and stability of P4. For me, all the bells and whistles P5 offered weren't worth the frustration. I'm still seeing threads in the forum asking for help with those things. Not to mention that there shouldn't have to be dozens of service releases to fix the problems that should have been fixed before it hit the market in the first place.

Melanie

Message edited on: 05/22/2004 09:47

Message edited on: 05/22/2004 09:48

"The people most satisfied with P5 are those who seem interested in animation (myself included), or at least curious about it" What do you find better in P5 concerning animation? I'm under the impression that nothing there was changed at all. I still use P4 pro pack only because of the Max plugin. Give me a free P5 plugin and I'll switch.

AFAIK, there's no difference in animation between P4, Propack, and 5.

My opinion on what happened to P5 is that CL wasn't concerned about its customers at all. I believe their main concern was, "How can we make a Poser 5 without doing much work?" or "without having to change Poser 4/PP?" My reasoning is they hardly changed P4/PP at all. All the old bugs were still there, some got worse. Many things that could easily have been fixed were left alone. The only major change was the library system and it wasn't really that big of a change. We're still stuck with that silly "runtime" structure. That small improvement should have been in ProPack.

For the most part, all CL did was pay other companies to allow them to use their programs in Poser 5. Including the Pace Interlock protection scheme...which, at the time, was widely known to cause problems for legitimate users.
All the above took place under the original CL crew. I hope with this new crew and new company, they actually take the customer into consideration and improve the program; not just add to it.

Message edited on: 05/22/2004 12:27

The file system is a mess for a newbie. The silly images to the right are so confusing when you unzip a new file like the instructions states you end up with dozens of runtime files scattered all over the Program. It would be a lot easier to make files that are portable in and out of Poser so you could just access the files you want directly without messing around with all the different runtime folders. Please remember I am new to Poser and I really like how you can move PSP files in and out of the program. There may be a way to do it in Poser but I am still trying to figure out how to get this accomplished so that I do not disable the files or there access. Frustrating for a new user!

FyreSpiryt mentions dual parenting, and using version numbers to control forward and backward compatibility. Both excellent ideas. Before I ever heard of Poser, I built a primitive little animation app, which included dual (stretch-between) parenting. With no previous knowledge of any animation program, I could see the need for this, and it was easy to program. "Pick-up and put-down" parenting is also easy. When I started using Poser, I was puzzled and disappointed that it had neither of those features, which are so obviously critical for animating ordinary actions, and so easy to accomplish. Is there a "competing app" that does have more flexible parenting?

About the only prediction that I can reasonably make concerning the future of Poser -- is that it will stay on my hard drive, and that I will keep using it.

Beyond that, who knows?

I am about 80% happy with P5. And most of my gripes have to do with stability issues.

One should consider assigning the task of rendering over to some other app - like Vue Professional. Less grief.

will im sticking to pro pack, i used P5 twice and hated it, yes ok the hair room was fab and the face room was ok, and reflections where outstanding, but othe rthen that, my machine came to a halt, firefly or whatever was so slow, even though i had more ram whatever in my system! im hoping the P6 isant as bad as P5, if it is, im sticking to pro pack! saying that i know a few peeps, that still use P3, and there happyw ith that, all to there own, really all to there own!

I never used P4, but I've used P5 and like it. I'd like Judy/etc. to be a little prettier (I don't use them), perhaps they should talk with Sixus1 about packaging Adam and Behemoth or putting them in the download section at CL. What would I like. Better tutorial books. I've bought some (and have the manual, of course). The Poser 5 Handbook is pretty shallow, now that I've gotten the hang of things. Better library control (I'd like to be able to re-arrange libaries the way I can move favorite places around on Internet Explorer. I use NN most of the time, but I hate their manage bookmarks compared to IEs). Better "cancel this" for when I have a file that's a mess that I don't discover, though cntrl alt delete works well. I'm assuming that by P6 I'll be up to buying a new motherboard that will run twice as fast as this one, which will speed things up. I'd like to be able to do multiple saves/undos without having to do it manually, but I'm learning. I'd like windows compliant context sensitive help and windows help file help rather than adobe postscript help. I hate pdf help files, I really do. I've got a 19" LCD monitor and lots of real estate, but they still stink, not to mention they don't have the active linking and searchability that is so much easier with windows helpfiles. I'm impressed at the way that P5 makes P5 aware models so much better, while letting P4 and PP still able to handle the models (you can tell I buy a lot of stuff from Sixus1.com where all the models are done that way these days). Given the price on Amazon.com, I can't complain much about the software.

One thing I would like to see in the community is an install program (kind of like Windows has an instal program that it provides). The documentation I had for Poser5 indicated that Content Paradise would handle imports, and, alas, it doesn't. That would be nice, if everyone had something like the DAZ installer available to them. I know, the WinXP extract on a properly packed file just puts everything where it needs to go once you click through the directories, but it would still be nice to see the entire thing cleaned up, perhaps including a test utility as well.

What I would like is for people to stop using .exe files for installing. Major PITA to transfer a file to my pc, extract the files to the desktop and then transfer it back to my Mac. I get what I can as a .sit, but some people just don't think about the Mac users. I would also like to see something like the Bryce rendering engine. I can render across every computer in my house that runs Mac os and Windoze. I would really like to see linux support with this, as it would give me three more computers to use. ;P

" What do you find better in P5 concerning animation? I'm under the impression that nothing there was changed at all." The addition of the dynamic cloth and hair. Although useful for still images as well, these dynamics properties are particularly useful for animators. At least that's their main intention in OTHER applications. That's why I say P5 is more attractive to animators. The actual animation CONTROLS may not have been improved, but the addition of dynamics (even though I can't seem to get the hair to react to collisions correctly) makes a world of difference in animation.

Hmm, another thing I'd like to see is a better market in used software. I.e., when someone decides to give up on M2 for M3 and wants to liquidate everything. Sure, you can get all of those for free (and more is the pity, especially for the way it hurts the little vendors), but that is immoral and illegal. On the other hand, given the U.C.C. and restraints on alienation, selling software after you decide to discard it should be easier. Anyway, my two bits, probably not enough interest, really. Who wants to risk viruses and everything else?

I am also twist-minded about the cloth room... every SIM-Figure can sit down with the skirt flapping up, why do I have to use this very powerful but also very system demanding tool to have an image of a sitting woman?

i wouldnt mind a better walk designer and better dynamics. My machine freezes sometimes while calculating dynamics and its a P4 3.2 with a gig of ram.

So could anyone tell me about an openGL app that shows a preview with >textures and transmaps, and doesn't bogs or slows down too much my >medium range computer ? There are many programs that use OpenGL previews very well, including Lightwave, Maya, XSI and Max. It's this level of live interaction, among many other things, that set these applications apart from the other 3D apps. Vue does such a horrible job with OpenGL I'm surprised they even claim to use it. Poser clearly has a user base, but it's a pretty niche market. Poser is in no shape to be used in most professional workflows, and to make it so would change it enough that it would no longer be an appealing tool to it's current users. This would be suicide for the product. I think whoever owns Poser now should focus on this current user base and it's needs, make the program easier to use, and rewrite it from scratch with solid and lean code so it functions smoother and quicker. Priority 2 would be to add highly functional tools for custom content creators. These are far more important than more half-ass attempts at new features.

ynsbm

Mandatory requirement is graphics card support without that it will be dead

"Mandatory requirement is graphics card support without that it will be dead" I agree with this totally. "Poser is in no shape to be used in most professional workflows, and to make it so would change it enough that it would no longer be an appealing tool to it's current users. This would be suicide for the product." Curious Labs seems to be in a hard way in terms of expanding marketablity. They have their core user base or "niche" to please, but can't really expand their reach to include studio workflow without alienating at least half of that base of users. They could theoretically program two versions of the software (one for core users or hobbyists, and one for "hardcore" pro users and studios), but this would most likely be too far out of their current budget and manpower.

"Poser now should focus on this current user base and it's needs, make the program easier to use, and rewrite it from scratch with solid and lean code so it functions smoother and quicker." This is what a lot of us hoped (and expected) for P5. Alas, it was clunkier and slower. I still hold out hope for the new CL and P6. "These are far more important than more half-ass attempts at new features." Amen, brother. Amen!