Has anyone heard any info about what Poser 7 has to offer as far as new features and what they are planning for it? I would like to see the following items: -Lock morphs with a checkbox next to the dial so they are not affected by poses(I know there is a work-around, but this would be easier) -One button click that turns IK off and on and for all Poser figures to start as IK off in default. -I would love if Poser figures came with preseparated groups when you want to use the group editor. It makes for easier morph-work -I would love to see some alternate primitive shapes for Poser Magnet Zones. A plane, a cylinder, a cube, etc would all be nice to use when a figure interacts with something like a railing or run face-first into a wall. It would nice if I didn't have to work with just a ball/ellipsoid shape. I can get some of the effects I want now but I think it would be easier with a wider array of shapes to choose from. -I would like to be able to change the behavior of certain vertices as they relate to magnets. Similar to how BlackSmith studio works in that you can hieghten how much a particular vertice reacts to a magnet type brush. This would be helpful when we want to pull only certain vertices in a certain way. It would be even better if it were a "painting" type interface to allow us to work like BlackSmith does with textures as well. (Yes, I do plan on buying that program but I think it would be so much more helpful as a native tool in Poser itself. -I would like the ability to make, modify, and delete my own library headings. Frankly I want a separate library for my hand props, set props and sets as well as a new library just for poses, one for materials and one for "switches" which is what I call those poses that change morph settings or material options on various characters. -I would like to have some options as far as the interface as well. I want to be able to put my library on the left instead of the right side always and have it minimize there. (if there is a way to do this, I humbly apologize. I only experimneted once and got discouraged and quit. -I would like an explorer like bar that would be at the top of the library and would never scroll off that offered me the opportunity to go back, forward, and up -I would like for the library to offer me the option of "minimized" headings that would be only words BUT I could click on and see the item or character pic as it normally appears. I would like it so that I could minimize all at once, maximize for full pic to browze the thumbnails all at once or selectively minimize and maximize certain ones. -I would like to be able to rearrange, delete and recover Poser buttons to tidy up my workspace as I never use the twist button anymore (I use dials now or the newer Direct Manipulation tool. My question is, what would some of you more avid users like to see?

gawd..too many things to suggest..I'll just settle for 16 bit displacement & displacement that works with reflection Cheers Stefan

I'll settle for a render engine that doesn't choke when an unspecified number of figures/polys/aliens are in the scene. Give me an error message instead, or better yet, a better render engine that can handle more.

For about the 10th time: I'll settle for intelligently planned keyboard shortcuts. Each camera should have a single letter. The parameter panel should be a single letter, not confusible with Ctrl-N. Ctrl-A should be Aux Camera, not Destroy The Scene.

How about a P6 SR2 before P7. How about fixing the figures in P6 before we have to put up with poorly done P7 figures.

These are some of the things that have run through my mind on occasion ... Add an "Apply to Selected" option in the material room. Perhaps when you go to add a material to an object, have a dialog pop up so that you can check the material zones that will use the currently selected material. The Group Editor has an "Auto Group" button that creates groups based on polygons that cover the bones in the setup room. It would also be nice to have it the other way around ... have an "Auto Bone" feature in the Setup Room that creates bones based on the groups in a figure or object, without having to create a PHI file. The top level of the Library window now shows buttons named Figures, Faces, Hands, etc. It would be nice, instead, to show a thumbnail of the currently selected Figure, Face, Hands, etc so that you don't have to backtrack into another library to select a camera or a light set. To select another library item, click the Figure icon to open a separate window or flyout menu to select a new item and have it replace the previous item in the "current items" list. Cameras and lights that are more along the line of those that you use in 3D Studio Max. To create a camera or light, you first draw the origin point, and then click in the direction you want it to point. You can then move the origin point or the target point to edit the placement. Zoom Extents, Zoom to Selected, Zoom In, and Zoom Out features. It would make it SO much easier to find lights or cameras in orthographic views! In addition to a "Drop to Floor" feature, have a "Drop to Surface" feature that allows you to drop the currently selected object or body part to the next lowest surface (such as a floor, or a bed, or a chair). (been said before) ... Multiple undo's. Hey, someone will say it eventually! ;-) A method of creating morphs that is easier than magnets. Something like ZBrush would be awesome. Add the ability to make symmetrical selections in the group editor. Oh, that would be SO nice!!!

My wish list (nothing new here, same as the wish list for P6): Full Python access to ALL Poser features. Right now I'm missing access to - full/partial body morphs (slaving information and setting) - setting number of frames - displayed dial settings Drop to object below Per file category history. If I want to save a scene, I certainly don't want to save it in the same folder where I last loaded a pose/texture/hand/whatever from. And when I'm loading a morph, I'll probably load the next morph from the same folder as the previous one, not from the Poser runtime root! Hierarchy windows collapsed by default Grouping figures, props and lights in layers, being able to hide, show and delete entire groups at once. Configurable collision detection (precision vs performance) Textboxes/dials/shortcuts that conform to standard OS behaviors. (Ctrl-A is SELECT ALL, not DESTROY ALL!) Dockable tool windows, more screen real estate for the previews. Get rid of that teletubbie interface! Configurable menus (I'd love to incorporate my favorite Python script in the menus!) Cloth room; - drape from zero morphs in additin to drape from zero pose - pre-stretched cloth groups (e.g. elastic waistbands) Setup room & joint parameters: - higher precision inputs, 3 digits is NOT enough - spherical falloff zones centered on the joint they belong to by default - fix that bone naming problem by FIRST asking a internal name for the bone BEFORE creating it. Cleaning up the CR2 mess is an unnecessary bear right now. Rendering: - Batched tile renders for large scenes - Render settings, animation render settings and render dimension as tabs in ONE dialog. - DISTRIBUTED RENDERING! Both stills (tiling) and animations. CR2 structure: include the keywords "thisFigure" and "conformingFigure" for FBM/PBM controls. "thisFigure" would make certain that a FBM/PBM only affects the figure it is dialed on, and always works. "conformingFigure" would make certain the dials of a conforming clothing item are slaved to the dials of the character is conformed to. Please, please turn crosstalk into a full fledged feature, don't let it remain the half-fixed bug it is now! Poses: - option to include BODY position/rotation and FBM while saving - option to save only morph setting (MOR file creation) - better gimbal lock handling when using IK Props: - option to save a prop set with a parent - option to save with external geometry OS: - A 64bit version (Mac G5/OSX is 64 bit, WinXP is available in 64bit) - 32bit Windows version compiled with the /G switch (3 GB address space instead of 2 GB) That's it for now. I'll probably think of more. Many of these wishes are easy to implement, and should be done as a service pack for P6, not as a new release. Other things (revised CR2 structure) are new and suitable for a P7.

Forgot one very important thing: a decent manual!

I want the ability to turn some of Poser's dynamic functions on/off to save on system resources. I'm tired of using P4 whenever I'm not using P6's advanced functions just to save time. I can render an animation in P4 and it might take, for example: 40 minutes to render. This same exact animation in P6 (using the P4 rendering engine): now takes nearly 90 minutes to render. Please, CL/EF, let us turn off some of the gadgets when we don't need them!!!

It might also be kind of cool to see e-frontier take the whole idea of the Poser Artist app (Which is really P4) to the next level, and offer a watered down version of Poser7.

This app might feature the basic Poser4 setup
+Maybe update the material editor a bit
+Make the updated library structures like they are in P5/P6
+Add Motion Blurr like in the Propak
+Add Python Scripting
+Add Point Lights
+Maybe add the Open GL preview since they already have the code

No extra rooms (okay, maybe for materials), no dynamic stuff (which is cool, but I don't always need it). It's a simple idea that a lot of people could really go for, and the beautiful thing is that they wouldn't really have to invent anything new...just apply some of the newer code to a previous version of the program, and make it work.

It may sound silly...but I'd actually pay good money for this, assuming it was reasonably fast.

Message edited on: 08/27/2005 00:21

Not a bad idea. Why not go for a plugin architecture? A basic Poser 7, not that much different from Poser Artist, just a few extra essentials like point lights and OpenGL preview. And basic Python scripting. And separate plugins for the material room, cloth room, hair room, setup room. Those plugins would come with their own sets of Python methods.

Could not "Drop to 'something'" be done using a Python script? The one issue here is that to drop to 'something' requires that one thing be selected and you subsequently select a target. Otherwise you would have to calculate all possible targets in the scene using 'rays' to determine the object (and I should know, I wrote a plugin for C4D to drop to a target). Once you go beyond dropping to planar surfaces, you have to deal with some extremely difficult maths in order to consider minima and maxima (which brings up issues of false minima/maxima) and other juicy tidbits of fun. Even when the target is specified, you still need to do collision detection starting from crude box-box overlap and ending with point minima/maxima collision. I'm sure that most of you have seen what it takes to do collision detection in the Dynamics Room... :)

svdl, this is what Maxon did to Cinema 4D starting with v8.0. So far, there are many mixed feelings about this 'modular' structure especially when going ala carte and upgrading. Check out CG Talks Cinema 4D forum for more information.

"Drop to something" is certainly possible using Python, my WalkThisWayV2 script does exactly that.

Vue 5 has a similar approach, and it seems to work there.

Very good, svdl. I've been getting 'hints' from users of my COFFEE plugin to allow it to drop multiple objects individually onto other objects. One of these days - I have more pressing matters first to address. One thing that I note about Poser (over C4D, for instance) is that they don't seem to convert popular plugins into integrated features. Please feel free to provide examples if I'm mistaken here. Wardrobe Wizard is one that stands out as a strong candidate. Something like your "Drop to something" script should be integrated. Maxon has consistently pooled new features from indispensable plugins - Mesh Surgery being a prime example. This lack of pooling new features from successful plugins and the undo issue (which, as I've mentioned previously, has been deemed impossible by the developers without complete rewrite of Poser) speaks about the problems that will continue to plague Poser if they do not, even incrementally, start addressing the archaic code base and modernizing it. One thing that has changed my entire development process (to great advantage, by the way) is the concept of atomism of the holistic goal. Every step of development should be done individually and with consideration, but towards the set goals of the software's functionality, user interface, and feature set. Curious Labs/e-Frontier say that certains things cannot be done. Assuredly they can. Just don't try to do them all at once. Achieve small steps towards the goal over reasonable time periods and the end results will be transformed. Just a little developer philosophy there. Back to regular digressions...

- higher precision inputs, 3 digits is NOT enough
- spherical falloff zones centered on the joint they belong to by default
- option to include BODY position/rotation and FBM while saving
- option to save only morph setting (MOR file creation)

Seconded.

I'd like to toss in a workflow request for the magnets ... a Hierarchy Editor-style checklist when adding elements to be deformed. As the interface currently stands, when I click the add button, I can only add one actor at a time. And if I make a mistake and add the wrong part to be affected, I have to start over, because I can't remove it.

Long time no see ya Richard!!! :) Good to see you around again! These are a pretty good suggestions, hope the e-frontier people take them in mind. I would like to see a more stronger aplication that doesn't need from other 3th party to export poser animatios to high end 3D software as Maya, lightwave or Max, it is very anoying to buy a program like reiss studio to export animations to other programs. Regards Virus

Ohh I forgot! the posibility to add to a walking path steps in the y axis! please, to allow the characters to go up or down stairs! :)

Thirded. :) Also, for the Parameter Window dial interface: Give an option to use either the Kai 'dial' or a more bland number edit box, and most important, with scroll up and down arrows. The dials already have a step setting, use that for the up/down arrows event increments. Clicking the dial and entering the numbers manually (one at a time yet) is workflow-disaster par excellence.

Virus, from one ignorant of all of the WD interface, is there no way to move the spline points in the y-axis!? If not, that alone would address the problem of, say, walking over a rough terrain. Just position the spline points over the terrain. Do I hear a chorus of "Drop to somthing" in there? :)

Note and plug: I am currently working on a Java application to 'externalize' morphs as PMD or 'internalize' morphs from PMD files. I opted for Java since this would expedite cross-platform availability. So those of you using Poser 5 and earlier, expect to be neglected no more (in about a week).

I'd settled for a fully working Poser 6 for the moment. That transparency that hides completely the model in the work document so you have to go in material room every time to disconnect/reconnect a texture to have the parts that have transparency show up. And especially now, I would love to have that Miki faceroom module installed in my Poser 6. Hopefully (for my bank account), EF won't release Poser7 for at least another year or so. ;o)

Francemi, any word from EF about your situation? I notice that the 'quick fix' slated for Monday hasn't arrived. Obviously, not as simple as exected. Things never are, are they?

One more sensational breaking-new feature in Poser 7:(Tada!)Everything works perfect right from the start.

kuroyume0161.. Nope, nothing yet. And Steve (from CL?CP?EF?) asked me to send him an IM here with my email address that I used to send in my help request. That was yesterday morning (I think). I've sent him the IM but he still hasn't read it because I didn't receive the notification that he had received it. The way things are going now, I might in fact get Poser7 before I can install this module. I am not the kind of person to complain all the time and most of the times, I find excuses for problems like that but to tell you the truth, I have more than enough with all these "fixes" that can't even fix themselves in order to give us a small chance of fixing our problems! And in this specific case, I would have appreciated even an email from them saying they don't know what to do to solve my problem. It would be better than to feel completely ignored by people to whom I gave many of my hard-earned dollars.

A different render engine, "firefly Sucks" Multiple undo! That's about it!!! thefixer, poser coord.

Poser 7?!!!! Didn't Poser 6 just come out this past March or something?

Multiple undo.

A woman who:

• Looks human, with anatomically correct proprtions.
• Looks fairly pretty when rendered without any morphs.
• Works in the Face Room.
• Comes with a pair of boots that actually fit, and are not gawdawfully ugly.

For good measure, the ever elusive "Make Art" button!

• An interface, that's up to todays usability standards - 64 bit support

I still want the animation maker in poser to be more like the lightwave 5 one, it is much better than the poser one (and less complicated than the newer lightwave one).

It would be nice if they fixed a lot of the bugs already in poser before making version 7. Copying and pasting all data would be good in poser 7 for figure makers.

I just like to see two features implement, well more like 2 rooms perhaps. [1] The Modeling Room. A room where you can do you're modeling in. A good range of simple splines, simple booleans and such would make me very happy. [2] The Landscape Room. Nothing fancy, just a room that would implement some trees, plants, landscapes and cloud backgrounds. Doesn't have to be Vue or Bryce, more like Terraformers and MicroCosm, but in a room with plants & trees added to it. If those two rooms would be added to Poser, it would be a full blown 3D application and would eliminatie the need of having a modeling application (like Cinema4D, TrueSpace or such) and landscape application (like Bryce or Vue) next to Poser. If possible I want Poser 7 to be compatible with WinXP 32 bit too, so I can still use it when it comes, without the need of investments into a new pc with XP64.

For me, two things would do it in addition to fixing the bugs in P6: 1- get rid of the dreadful interface and change to something modern and functional, as seen in almost every other 3D app; 2 - do something about the light controls, which IMHO are awkward and hard to use.

Interesting ideas, but it looks like almost everyone wants poser to become a full blown 3d app. Downside of this would of course be a huge price increase. Making a stripped version, and selling add on modules is a BAD idea. Companies typically do that when they want to charge more for an app then the entire package complete. Imagine a "base" P7 at $150.. then every "room" costing $50 or so. the animation module.. $50.. the cloth room.. $50. Want P6 like material room? $50. Your now at $300 now, without adding any new features at all. Basic wants here? 64 bit support, editable shortcuts, fix everything broken in python for the wonderful utilities being created, clear out the bandaged old code, and rewrite the new app properly. If Newtek can do it with lightwave, EF can do it with poser 7.

I agree Gareee, hope P7 will not go modular as Vue for example did. You end up paying a lot more indeed.

Yes, Poser 6 just came out in March, but there are still issues that need fixing, some of which are still around from P4 and P5:

• Multiple Undo/ Undo history. Make Poser similar to Photoshop or Lightwave or any other Windows program with the ability to step forward and back through undo and redo.
• Keyboard shortcuts that actually work. Yes, P6 is a big step forward from the broken shortcuts in P5, but there are still a lot of broken ones. For example, if you're on the Parameter Dials Palette, some keyboard shortcuts still don't work. (And, before you ask, YES, I do know what the keyboard shortcust are and I'm not hitting the wrong keys. The shortcuts work fine when you click on a different part of the screen and switch "focus" to a section of Poser that responds to the keyboard shortcuts.)
• Standard Windows Dialog Boxes. Yes, I know CL/ e-frontier takes the easy approach by programming Poser in a mutli-platform development environment. But, it's 2005- we should have dialog boxes with Yes, No, and Cancel in the correct location. (In case no-one noticed, OK/ Yes are always to the left, and Cancel/ No are to the right.) Also, these dialog boxes need to respond to the keyboard: space bar/ Enter key for "OK/ Yes" and Esc for "No/ Cancel". The keys worked fine in previous versions of Poser, but broke in P6. Think about this: it is much faster to add something to the library by typing the name and hitting enter than it is to type the name and then move the mouse to a point over the OK button and then click. --John

Daz studio will probably be modular like that so it will cost you an arm and a leg to get all the modules to make the program work. Plugins might be a good feature, though. Like the ones in lightwave that you don`t actually need to make the program work but they add functionality to the program, it would be good for things like a real cartoon renderer and other effects and maybe even newer import and export plugins.

True, but DS is actually free, so I wouldn;t mind buying plugins for it. I'd hoped it would have been out in 1.0 format by now, with a nifty rigging plugin, and a material room node like plugin with additional features. If they could incorporate the darktree proceedural textures, that woul be GREAT, and well worth a cash investment.

Funny thing. Standard OS dialog boxes IS the easy approach - they're provided by the OS. Both MacOS and Windows have a wealth of standard functionality - use it! And it'll also make sure the shortcuts work as expected. Yes, it'll probably require a rewrite of the old code base. That should have been done in P5 already. It's way, way over time. Oh, and while you're at it, why not write the complete app in the form of a Python extension? Programmable from the outside? Then integration of Poser into almost whatever would be a breeze. It'll make the app much, much more professional.

If poser 7 had plugins like the lightwave type then things like darktree would be fairly easy to add to poser.

"Plugins might be a good feature, though."

They're called Python scripts ;)

"maybe even newer import and export plugins."

Feel free to visit my website and download my scripts plugins to export to 3Delight and Yafray and import Lightgen light sets and D|S poses.

Previous threads here on Poser 7 Requests: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2232821 http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2190054 http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2144448 http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2041161 http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2336303

They will all be ignored, like 99% of the requests for poser 5 and 6.

What we need here is a full frontal assault with proper organization. e-Frontier/Curious Labs has never listened to its userbase, now has it? They have added and added and added and added and added more junk (some of it good junk) without addressing long-standing issues, bugs, problems... There is only one way to fix this and that is to get all of these feature/fix requests into one document, organized by type, and prioritized. Have all users interested sign the document and send it to e-Frontier Customer Support (or other relevant department). It is obvious that individual requests and complaints do not add up to a hill of beans. You have to send the entire fleet of quarry-haulers filled with beans and dump the beans on them with the force of a large number of users. Then they might actually have some motivation and direction (?). What do you think?

An organized list sent to e-frontier probably would have more of an impact.

Definitely 64bit support. Should be a P6 update and allow us to address a larger memory area (>> 3GByte)

But not only 64 bit support...

Could we set up a poll here on 'rosity? Or maybe DAZ? With the goal to create that organized and prioritized list.

I'd just be happy if they would make it so my Dual 2.5 Ghz G5 wouldn't chock on three figures when I hit the render button. My POS 1.6 Ghz AMD will render it just fine, and it has a quarter the ram!

The more features the less stable.Hit me or not Poser needs a totally rework.For those who like the old programm structure e-frontier has to offer further support.(spedler:"1- get rid of the dreadful interface and change to something modern and functional, as seen in almost every other 3D app".)YES PLEASE!!!!!