I posted some comments in another forum along the lines that I thought that there was still too much stuff being distributed that is really only PP compatible (although it does work in P5/P6) - but all it really is is P4 stuff that uses pngs, and it doesn't make use of the various nodes available to P5/P6 users and my thoughts were that this is holding back development in areas like the material room, clothing room, hair room & displacement. It raised some interesting comments - so I thought I'd ask the question here and get some more input.

I'd love to do more stuff for P5 but I have a problem. My eyesight is not tooo great and P5 requires 1024 or higher screen resolution. That makes all the text too small. When I try to increase the text, my comp hangs. So I ohly use P5 occassionally. Why can't they do a patch for it to handle 600X800 screen res?

In my opinion p5/6 nodes are grossly under utilized. Much time, disk space and processor/memory (at render time) could be saved with P5/6 nodes.

I think part of the problem is that EF still sells Poser Artist and there are still a lot of P4 users out there. As a merchant, the moment you try to make something cool that uses P6 features, you get people whining about how they want it for P4 and they don't want you making things they can't use or can't export to Bryce etc etc. I certainly think P6 features are way underutilised at the moment, but until customers are prepared to embrace them, you aren't going to see merchants using advanced features much. Another factor holding things back is that the premier content maker for Poser is DAZ and at the moment if a product isn't going to work in DAZ Studio, they're not interested and that pretty much means they don't want to make or sell anything that uses advanced P6 features.

I would love to see more P5/P6 support. It is slowly getting better, though many products still only use P4/PP features.

I am moving in that direction. I'm currently working on projects and coming up against the "What about P4 users?", question, and Poser 5 users for that matter. My feelings are definitely towards taking advantage of the great P6 functions and moving forward. Depending on what it is, my policy now is to publish a Poser 6 main version and supplement it with a Poser 4 compatible version.

"Oh but it won't work in DS!!!!!!" .... Good grief deal with it. I'm not going to restrict my creativity to the confines of a give away free program.

Well said, Phil.

I still primarily use ProPak and I love it. I would like to see however, not just support for materials, but would love to see more dynamic clothing in P6. I'm also a merchant and I will continue to support all versions of Poser, I don't think it has to be a choice of either or, we can make both :)

I don`t use poser 5 much either partly because of having to change the screen size every time I use it. If something is made for poser 4 or propack it will work in other 3d programs but if it is specifically made for poser 5 or 6 then it wont.

Message edited on: 11/20/2005 02:37

Attached Link: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1774271,00.asp

Dear Santa,

This year I have been very good.......
...... honest ;)

With the next version of Poser(being7), most merchants will likely discontinue Poser4/ProPack support. Supporting 5 versions is just rediculous and beyond unrealistic.

You don`t have to support 5 versions just poser 4/propack and the current version.

So far I've made most of my stuff compatible in Poser 4 and up, but I'm moving more and more towards procedural textures. So people would still be able to LOAD the model in Poser 4 /PPP but without the textures of course. It is a problem with those who are used to export to another program for rendering (Bryce/Vue/other) and of course Daz Studio. But you just can't please everybody, and it's my feeling that Poser 5 and especially 6 is gaining a large market now. And it's kinda daft NOT to take advantage of all the nifty features in order to support a 6 year old program.

There are internal issues to rigging, why Poser4 and ProPack should be abandoned. You can't hold on the the past forever.

I'm sticking with P4 and Pro, mainly because I want everyone to be able to use my stuff. Most artists don't use the advanced features in P5/P6 or in the models they purchase. When was the last time you saw loads of movies animated with video textures ? Plus not everyone can afford the hardware and a copy of P6, and how long before P4 appears on a cover disc ? Think of all those artists wanted freebies and products. Thats going to be a big market for the merchants here. Then again I don't want to rule out the minority that does want more P5/P6 features. So I'm trying to aim for the middle ground, having a base model that works fine in all versions but with P5/P6 extras. If RNDA can do it with their stuff we can.

"Then again I don't want to rule out the minority that does want more P5/P6 features." I'd say they are fast becoming the majority & D|S is not a market to ignore either, my free D|S downloads get just as many hits as the Poser ones & I know I have many regular customers who don't even own Poser " When was the last time you saw loads of movies animated with video textures ?" saw an animated displacement by Little dragon today. ;) Cheers Stefan

'my free D|S downloads get just as many hits as the Poser ones & I know I have many regular customers who don't even own Poser' Yep, I have a large DS customer base. I make poser and DS versions of each product now, and sales have rocketed in the last 6 months. My gripe with P4/PP is not so much about material nodes as the fact that they can't use .mt5 files. At the moment, P5/6 and daz studio can all use single materials which apply to any surface, without the need to have everything smart-propped. For my products, that's a huge advantage. But P4/PP can't use these files, and it's a total pain. I'd like to blame CL for hanging on to an outdated app just to make a few extra bucks, but I suppose from a business POV, it makes sense for them to squeeze every cent they can from their old software. It just makes life hell for everybody else, is all. mac

As a merchant I am starting to support P5/6 with my next pack, which will have P4/PP/P5/P6 conforming and a P5/6 dynamic version of the garment with specific mat files for each version. I would love to drop P4, it's the first time I support all versions and it's too much work. Besides I would rather texture in P5/6's material room, it's just far superior. It's not realistic to expect merchants to support 4 versions of Poser plus DAZ Studio something has got to give, it's time to move on. I think we are partly to blame for users sticking to P4 we have gotten them used to easy MAT files where they don't even have to look at the settings to get results, P5/6 is more demanding for them in that respect.

What about "us" the new people (aka yours truly) who have only P6 and have been working hard to make a decent product to sell in the future? I don't know what i'm going to do cause i don't have P4, PP or P5 to test.
The few differences i'm aware between P4 and P6 besides the shader nodes in the material room, are the thumbnails files format and the bumpmaps.
Either i try to focus on a P6 specific figure like Miki or Koji (which are awesome, btw) or.. i throw away all my work with V3 so far?

Decisions decisions :(

I can honestly say it is a pain to support all the programs now. I just had to do it for my newest product and it wasn't fun but it is something that has to be done. How much support is another matter. The node stuff is a pain but it can do some cool stuff but I feel it has to be used to augment a P4 style product and not replace. it. You also get into the area of tiem with it. Not to mention the fact that only about 10 people seem to understand the node system fairly well. I am an artist and I don't want to have to pull up knowledge from twenty year old math classes and break out the old math calculator to try to do a texture. Plus it is annoying that it took me three weeks of screaming to get something that looked half as good as the P4 version in that took five minutes ...

.

Yes,, you can pump it up to 1900 x 1200, set the system for "Xtra Large Fonts" and you will have a gigantic, huge Poser workspace. Please don't spread this around or e-f will add more doodads to the Poser interface. "Hey, boys, users now have 3-foot wide screens! Let's add more floating palettes!" Anyway... didn't someone do a survey about how many users still use P4 and PA? How does this number compare to the number of P5/ P6 users? If it's significantly higher, then you can't stop supporting P4 users. Though, at what point do you decide to discard the P4 users and just say, "This product requires the advanced features of P5 and P6. Please upgrade." Remember, eventually Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 95 users with a response of "Upgrade to Win2000 or WinXP". --John

My last product was P5/P6 only, because of the use of displacement. Of my next two products (whenever I get time to finish them UGH!), one I know for sure will be P6 only because of the advanced features and the other may be P5/P6 -- I haven't decided if I'll do a PP version yet. I've always been more concerned with creating the best product I can with whatever tools I have than with getting as many sales as possible. If I can get better results using P6 only features, then I'm fine with the hit my sales will take by eliminating PP support. Of course, I don't really depend on my Poser income for anything, so I'm in a different situation than some fellow merchants.

There are a few merchants who provide both P4/PP and P5/P6 materials files in their products. Although I use P6 exclusively I appreciate these merchants because P5/6 procedurals don't export to other programs well if at all, whereas image-map textured items do. I'd love to see more dynamic cloth too, but I wonder if people are aware of how much there already is? PhilC's site, PoserPros, RMP and DAZ all have great dynamic cloth items. Much of PhilC's is free.

onething that came up in a conversation a while back "they can afford to buy every little thing thats published to V3.. but they can't upgrade to poser 6?" a lot of truth there, huh? (also goes for the cry of "my system can't take it") you may now flame. I won't be here ;)

Maybe they don't WANT to upgrade to P6. It is their choice, just as it is our choice as merchants what to support and what not to :) There are other reasons for staying with P4/ProPak, as was stated in post #25....not everyone that starts in Poser, renders their final product in Poser.

lol. Well I am sure my sister didn't WANT to upgrade to VCR from her BETA tape player either. These debates get silly.

Why do they get silly? There are more then enough products in the marketplace for someone that wishes to stay with ProPak or P4 to purchase for a long time.

Merchants and users alike should have a choice of what they want to do, somehow I don't think that's silly, Anton. As has been stated, users that export to other applications don't always have the luxury of getting to decide either ProPak/P6, the P6 materials just plain don't work in other apps. That is not silly. The thing that I find "silly" about this debate is that we have this debate at all. Just do what you want and use what you want and be done with it. If you are a merchant, support what you want to support, there is no need to try to force people to change or upgrade simply because you no longer want to support ProPak. Just be prepared to take a bit of a pocketbook hit when you decide to do so and you'll be fine :) I find saying that people need to "move on" "get over it" etc is a bit insulting to a customer who is more then willing to part with their money to purchase our creations. But that's just me :)

Message edited on: 11/20/2005 14:21

Good comment Anton...LOL Some really good comments in this thread and mostly very valid points made - The comment that has caught my attention is DominiqueB's - I really think there is a lot of truth there....

Actually, as I need to, I'll be supporting two versions of Poser, ProPak and P6...for P4 all I need to do is include rsr's which take about 30 seconds to convert from png's and poof, it's P4 compatible also. So I guess that's three.

"I find saying that people need to "move on" "get over it" etc is a bit insulting to a customer who is more then willing to part with their money to purchase our creations."<< Deb, noone is this tread used either of those expressions.

Anton, I didn't say they did, now did I? But actually it was said "it's time to move on" now do you think that means forcing the market to change because of merchants? Merchants don't drive the marketplace, the consumers do. When the demand for P6 products overreaches ProPak then the market will change. Anyway, the sentiment is there in some of the posts. And this debate, not a new one...has actually said that in different forums. But that's okay, it's people's opinions :) They are going to do what they want to do and support what they want to support. Customers are going to buy what they want to buy according to the software that they have :) As for me, I have some work to do, so I'm outta here:) Have fun!

I would have to go with the opposite on that comment, merchants are sort of holding the marketplace back by producing what is basically P4 stuff dressed up to look like P6 all that has been done is P5/P6 MAT files added - the basic product is still just using the functions available in PP/P4. From Poser 3 - to Poser 4 we saw really big advances in what was available but since then it seems to have just stagnated, sure there are some out there pushing the limits and I salute those folk. The forcing the market place argument doesn't work for me as what if Ford had of continued supporting the Model T? I suppose another point in this is one of my pet peeves - file sizes, how many times have you seen a DAZ download that is split into 2 or more parts and then when you install it you find it is full of rsr's, P4 compatable files etc?

"Merchants don't drive the marketplace, the consumers do."<< Actually this isn't accurate. At one time it was but that business model is long out of date. I think people try and apply generic pop-marketing concepts to Poser. But is is more complex tham that.

"The forcing the market place argument doesn't work for me as what if Ford had of continued supporting the Model T?"<< I agree. But some types of products are easier to make for all versions. Poses, and perhaps textures aren't bad if you aren't using the material room.

Agreed Anton, but once you start using the advanced features of the material room in any product you just aren't going to get the same result in P4/PP and then you have to decide whether to sell something that won't look as good as your promo images or drop support for the versions that don't use the material room. And I'm not sure but I get the feeling a lot of Merchants are frightened to move away from that safe customer base that has grown from PP and as a result we aren't seeing all the innovation and advances that we could in the market place....

It is amazing how things look so different, depending on where you render it. Not sure if it is fear. Merchants aren't quite as Poser savvy as people think they are. Many have been reusing the same files for years and plug everything into them. I think with proper docmentation and education, things will move forward in a good way for everyone. Realsitically, peole who buy products have already upgraded, except for a small and vocal percentage. My understanding was Poser6 presales exceeded all of Poser5 sales to date. And if Miki's success is a factor, people have upgraded in waves upon waves, not caring whether it works in ProPack or not.

My main concern is, that I like to use my Poser stuff sometimes in other programs like Vue or Cinema4D. Seems this will not be such a big problem in future. Vue5 also supports a node based material system and even basic phyton. So you may be able to bring the more advanced features of Poser6 to other programs soon. At least partially. The product I'm working at the moment will be working in P4, but it will work much better in P5/6 with the node based material system and displacement maps. Maybe I'll include special materials for Vue in this package.

Poser6 does have a "simple Material" mode. I don't see anything that would prevent people from using P6 stuff in them. It may not look the same, but the P4/ProPack versions wouldn't look the same as P6 anyway. Very few people make figures or clothes, so what we are really talking about is textures, lights, and a few other things. Texturists will do whatever sells the most. Catering to the broadest user base makes more sense for their sales. Don't get me wrong. I, myself, support all versions. But at some point this dog and pony show has to be cut down to a 30 minute act. hehe. No offese to dogs or ponies.

I dragged my feet and had P5 on my computer for a couple of years without really doing anything with it. The allure of reflecting floors called and just as I got going in P5 and playing with the Nodes, boom, P6 comes out. Now I have all three versions on my system with almost everything loaded into P4 for convenience (it's still easier to use injection morphs for V3 and M3 in P4 than in P5). However, I wish there was more support for the material shaders in P5. I have looked all over and believe that I have all the free shaders available and have bought several packs from Renderosity. P5 and P6 should have come with certain shaders as standard, such as Water, Fire, and Fog. I wish there was a way for Poser to import materials from Bryce since there are tons of free materials for Bryce 4 and 5. P7 would do well to have a function for an infinite sky plane like in Bryce and have perhaps a sky lab in it. Right now I'd just like more material shader support.

Message edited on: 11/20/2005 17:53

Since Daz owns Bryce and Studio nad considering e-frontier has a good relationship with Vue, I would think your best best for that happing would be a 3rd party utility. Though, even if one was made, I am not sure if Daz would sell it. But I would bet ContentParadise would. I agree and think Poser should have Enviornmental features, and I hope see that become a reality at some point.

It might be helpful to pin down exactly what we mean by P5-6 support. Strand-based hair is pretty ropy (no pun intended), so I don't see that as being a big factor. And the face room doesn't exactly lend itself to merchants' requirements. So, we're left with dynamic cloth and shaders (I'm not counting support for P5-6 figures, which doesn't really come under general poser sales). So, if that's the case, what it comes down to is what type of product you make. Clothes makers have the choice of supporting P4 or P5-6, or doing both. Folks who make human texs aren't going to be using the nodes to any great extent. That leaves the bulk of merchants who make sets, scenes or 'other'. And this is where the whole thing goes pear-shaped. Example - I make houses/furniture, etc. For now, I mainly stick with scanned textures of materials. When it comes to things like wood or stone, doing it in the material room takes way longer to get even an acceptable result. And by using texs, my products work for any user, in any app. I do make a lot of .mt5 files. It's by far the easiest way to apply materials without messing around with smart-propping. And daz studio uses a similar system, so I can do it for the DS version too. I also use displacement, mirrors and refraction for P5-6/DS, and the P4 crowd just don't get them. I'm sorry, but what can I do? Not use these functions at all just because they don't work in P4? But other problems come up when I go beyond the material room and into the scene itself. Lights, for instance are becoming a nightmare for me. I now have to do 3 versions - P4, P5-6 and DS. Cameras aren't so bad, although the DS users probably get the best deal there, since cameras are so much easier to use in DS, and they can be included in scene files. (I sell through DAZ and they don't accept .pz3s). All in all, it's becoming more difficult to make a complex product work in all apps, but I keep trying. I don't want to exclude any one sector of the market (yet), but the more time that passes, the more P4 looks like something from the stone age. My DS sales now make up a large part of the total, and I'm already at the point where I care less and less about P4 support. mac

maclean said <b>"Folks who make human texs aren't going to be using the nodes to any great extent" But it is starting to happen - there is a lot more option to use shaders and get away from the single texture and bump map option - I've been playing around and now I find it unneccessary to use a grayscale map anymore so there goes 1/3 of the download size, also the reflection optiions are vastly better in P5/P6 or you can go all the way like face_off. Other simple things like being able to change makeup without a seperate head texture for each colour makeup, just makes the use of P5/P6's features more alluring from a development point of view, as well as allowing more features in your product at less download size. So I'd say the scope is there for human character makers if folk would just embrace the ideas.....

Is there a way to selectively change areas in the faked bump map node? For example, if you use the main texture as a bump map then you have inverted nipples, body hair, eyebrows, etc. It is what a lot of people do but it just isn't right. If there is a way to do that without adding another map to the mix to invert them then that might be something to consider, for me, but the separate maps work much better than simple inverting the diffuse or addint the diffuse as a bump etc. The makeup thing is an option but I don't do that so it doesn't affect me really. But, once again, that kind of thing totally leaves out anyone that doesn't render in P5/P6. Plus it is a lot of work for what can be done in three minutes in Photoshop.

As you said though - you cut out PP/P4 users, but that's a decision that we as merchants have to make if we are going to use the newer functions of P5/P6.

There is no great secrets in any of these setups they are all out there in one tutorial or another, it just seems a reluctance to use them in commercial items...

Message edited on: 11/20/2005 21:44

I have P4, PP, P6 (and DS). I mostly use PP and switch to P6 for features like shaders, dynamic cloth, and firefly. What I would like to see happen is: 1) All clothes, figures, and props should come without maps applied. 2) Make Mat poses for P4, PP, P5/P6. This is VERY easy to do in seconds with Shader Spider. 3) Conforming clothes should also come with a dynamic version. This is very easy to do. 4) More Shaders. Shaders are truely wonderful. bB

um, as a customer, i actually tend to turn down many products because they don't take advantage of displacement. i can't tell you how many clothes i don't even look at because of the lack of wrinkles and folds that could be easily added with displacement. same goes for environments and scenes. yeah, i could do it myself, but frankly, advertising works. i look, i see a perfectly smooth mesh wrapping around a figure's body, and i just think "wow, that looks like plastic," and move on. i don't spend a lot of time trying to picture what products could be like. and since D|S supports displacement, i would think that would mean that making a D|S compatible version would be easier. as for the material room node stuff, yes, please. i mean, maybe people using p5 and p6 aren't making their own skin shaders. but isn't face_off still one of the top merchants here because of his products? and his last product came out in august. all the most photorealistic renders in the galleries here seem to mention either one of face_off's products or individually derived shader. so human textures don't need node work? i beg to differ. frankly, just adding ambient occulsion would be a nice addition to materials (face_off has posted that ao is better placed in the materials than the lights, in his forums if i remember correctly). using bitmap textures and using materials aren't at all mutually exclusive. in fact, they're best when they complement each other. i'd rather have a bunch of material settings to change hair color than a bunch of textures with their hue shifted in photoshop. i'd rather have stone that looks like actual bumpy or carved stone than fake looking bas-reliefs with no dimension or roughness. i'd much rather have properly reflective eyes. as for the hair, well, even the beautiful sapphire fox hair shows it's mapping, so to me, it's 6 of one, half dozen of the other. i still haven't seen any transmapped skull caps get as realistic as this render by Olivier at RDNA. frankly, since shader spider lite is now free and distributable, i've been hoping more merchants would make partial shaders, so that their special effects, tattoos and make-up could be applied to various textures. maybe i want that awesome dragon tattoo to be a mark of a gang, and all my characters need it. and then i wouldn't have to download and store an entire separate head or body texture just to have a small difference like a different color of eyeshadow. it just seems like so many problems could be solved with proper use of displacement, shader nodes and mesh smoothing. i mean, i'm not saying, "don't support the p4/ppp group." but i definitely feel that stuff doesn't need to be so resource intensive and less realistic just to cater to people still using software 5 or 6 years old. if the p4 version doesn't look as good, well, then they have a reason to upgrade. but how is releasing a product that just doesn't look as good as it could without the more advanced alternative better than offering the choice? but you tell me: outside of the rigging issues that anton mentioned, if you don't use only procedural textures, how hard is it to make a p6 product into a p4 "lite" version? i mean, i'm sure morris could sell a p4 version of the hyperreal texture, or of g.i. jill, and it would be popular even if it didn't look as good. it seems to me, as it is, there's also less pressure to upgrade because only a few of the experts show what can be _done. to be honest, i think most poser users assemble more than create from scratch. if only a few products make use of the new p5/p6 features, what incentive do p4 users have to upgrade? g.o.m. - didn't you say you were coming out with a new product for v3 using displacement? and isn't p5/p6 displacement and materials a selling point of your rogues for david (at daz)?

cobaltdream said "there's also less pressure to upgrade because only a few of the experts show what can be _done. to be honest, i think most poser users assemble more than create from scratch. if only a few products make use of the new p5/p6 features, what incentive do p4 users have to upgrade?" Thank you - you have managed to put into plain english the exact thoughts I have been trying to communicate in this thread.....

I intend (hopefully starting in Jan) to be offering a regular p4/pp version of all the PW stuff I make, but also a P6 shader set. There are many very cool things I could do with the nodes in the cloth room ... but right now my hardware is too old to make running p5/6 anything but pure tedium. A pp compatible base and optional p6 libraries should cover both crowds, hopefully. And for that matter once I can make the complete switch over (instead of having 2 runtimes and BOY is that a mess) then I can start to develop the environmental p6 textures my users have been clamoring for. Lyrra