I loved writing parsers for text adventure games that had computers (DM's) responding in ways other than "OK" and "UNKNOWN ACTION" (ca. 1983).

Well, I finally got Poser 6 to work after I turned off external PMDs. No more "out of memory" errors. I think the upgrade price for Poser 6 owners is too steep. I'm not going to buy it. At least not unless I hear ALL bugs have been fixed, LOL!

I'll get Poser 8.  I'm sure it will be enough of an improvement over Poser 6 to make it worth a $129 cost.  efrontier is doing the same thing with Amapi Pro 7.5, I noticed.  Charging more than previous owners did for upgrades.

Did you get Poser 8,, wow...   I hear there is a discount on the new Poser 9.5..  but they are letting it out in 9.5 downloads.....     If you pose a figure's arm too quickly it tends to crash....  but I hear they are coming out with a f i x.....   soon.... yea...

Poser 8 is now owned by ______________  <--- insert least favorite software publisher here.

Microsoft?!

Don't even say that! (though, on XBox, it might even work decently) ;)

Parsers are cool - did I mention AI? ;D  One of the older, but more fun, areas of AI is natural language parsing.  When you go past, say, computer language parsing - where you have a very strict set of rules and grammars - things get interesting... let's say.  Since natural languages don't conform to 'strict rules', the parser has to be very flexible (a recursive descent parser doesn't always work very well).  The grammars have to be flexible ("this is it", "it is this", "this it is" are ALL valid for an extremely simplistic English grammatical case).  Codifying something like English for NLP is nothing to scoff at - PhDs in AI have spent decades on this problem.  While strides have been made, any application that purports to 'understand what you say' always teases a giggle out of me... 8)

Some problems are hard... some are NP hard.

SHONN said:

Quote - I loved writing parsers for text adventure games that had computers (DM's) responding in ways other than "OK" and "UNKNOWN ACTION" (ca. 1983).

kuroyume0161 said:

Quote - Parsers are cool - did I mention AI? ;D  One of the older, but more fun, areas of AI is natural language parsing.  When you go past, say, computer language parsing - where you have a very strict set of rules and grammars - things get interesting... let's say.  Since natural languages don't conform to 'strict rules', the parser has to be very flexible (a recursive descent parser doesn't always work very well).  The grammars have to be flexible ("this is it", "it is this", "this it is" are ALL valid for an extremely simplistic English grammatical case).  Codifying something like English for NLP is nothing to scoff at - PhDs in AI have spent decades on this problem.  While strides have been made, any application that purports to 'understand what you say' always teases a giggle out of me... 8)

I played around with writing some text parsers early on. I'd give 'em to friends to play with, and I had the programs record all of their input, so I could beef up the parsing dictionary as the game progressed. My friends thought they were quite the clever little pieces of software, not realizing what a parrot they really were.

My personal favorite of this sort is still Racter. Not even remotely AI, but fun nonetheless. What a hoot that was!

Captain Jack

have you seen the initial page banner in e-frontier about P7, appears a dancer and it is showed an explosion too, perhaps particle engine ?

bugs happen; it's a constant like death, taxes, or stupidity..;)  There is no way anyone can plan for every contingency; that's why they have beta testers (and early adopters, which I call gamma testers, but that's just me..;)

Considering that

1. No one who can talk actually owns it yet

2. Those who own it have a beta version, from which the company will compile their found bugs into an improved production image (i.e., beta testers don't have the final view of it either..;)

3. I haven't heard any reviews from the magazines (but haven't looked, to be honest..;)

what exactly are we complaining about?..;)

I've long been an advocate of the gamma testers trying out software, finding bugs, and allowing them to pass on info to the company for SP releases, etc. I didn't get P5 until it came out free (wasn't expecting it, but thank you very much anyway..;) ya just gotta learn patience.. In time, Poser 7 will be what most people expect ('ceptin' maybe the 'make art' button..;)

Quote - ... (and early adopters, which I call gamma testers, but that's just me..;)

gamma testers = beta testers + disposable income?

That's really funny.. good one. :lol:

Captain Jack

Depends.  Maxwell renderer had 'gamma testers' as you define them - at $1000 a pop.  I had an 'alpha tester' - no upfront costs.  As a matter of fact, for his excellent help he gets a life-time registration.  It was like having someone to slap you when you implement things stupidly or don't think of a simple workflow enhancement. :)

Per your response to NLP, it just goes to show that Turing had it all wrong.  It is easy to 'fake' a computer program that is convincing as a real human being - to a certain level.  The hard part (afaiac) is not grammatics or syntax or semantics, but understanding.  Just like these autonomous driving vehicles can navigate and 'read' the road, avoid obstacles, and arrive at a destination - they are just sophisticated processing devices.  Mind you (pun - sorry), living organisms are just sophisticated processing devices.  It's just that there is that level of conscious interface between the 'real world' and the one fed into our brains that noone has ascertained as of yet.

I'll have to explore that Racter wiki in more depth when I'm at a lull in development - thanks! :)

Quote - My personal favorite of this sort is still Racter. Not even remotely AI, but fun nonetheless. What a hoot that was! Captain Jack

I remember Eliza on the old IBM 370 at my university.  I'm not a programmer, but I remember Eliza.  Whenever you said something that the program did not 'understand', then she'd respond by asking: "Why would you be interested in my ___________?"

IIRC, at the time the program was being looked at as a counseling aid for psychoanalysis, etc..

P7 is never going to play that role.  Victoria doesn't talk back.  Although I've seen a couple of stabs taken at making her talk back.  Or at least her rendered image.

I also saw a program called 'girlfriend' (or something like that) a few years ago.  I think that it involved video clips of a real model sitting on a couch slapped on top of a parser.

Quote - While strides have been made, any application that purports to 'understand what you say' always teases a giggle out of me... 8)

That sort of statement in a blurb always reminds me of the promise "our program understands English™!!!" — "English" was the company's trademarked BASIC-descended query language.  :laugh:

Quote - Some problems are hard... some are NP hard.

It's just left as an exercise for the student... if your student happens to build AI-capable androids with funny skin colours as a hobby...  :biggrin:

as I understand it

alpha testers- in-house company testers

beta testers- outside-the-company testers with NDA's..;)

gamma testers- early adopters

delta testers- the rest of us..go Delta!..;)

I had (actually still have, burned on a CD somewhere) GAGS, Generic Adventure Game Simulator..a text game maker. Never got that far into it (as an excersice in A-retentitivness, I modeled Level 1 of Zork, it's in my gallery. Some of the rooms don't line up IRL..;)

Wow, Poser 7 and Bryce 6 in a single week. This place'll never be the same..

An interesting snippet from the DAZ Bryce forum:

"Bryce underwent some major code revisions during the past year and a half to help keep it from dying. Bryce has been around for well over a decade and internally, it showed. But now, we have a code-base that we can begin to really make some signifcant improvements upon."

Substitute "Poser" for "Bryce", and you've got my main hope for P7.

Reason 2 is out...Reason 2: Built-in Lip Syncing!

Add incredible realism to your animations with new lip syncing functionality in Poser 7! Talking is one of the most challenging tasks in character animation, and using the new Talk Designer in Poser 7, even beginning animators can easily make figures talk with facial movements that match real human behavior!

The real fun of this much-maligned Poser 7 ad campaign is going to be watching all the early naysayers and whiners slowly get excited about Poser 7 as its new features get revealed.

I think that many of them will discover that they jumped the gun with their announcements on these boards of how they weren't going to upgrade, no matter what.

As I said earlier in this thread:

I predict that this will be one of the most EXCITING upgrades to Poser ever.

And for  measely $129 bucks, how can you go wrong?

I'm upgrading - and now I'm REALLY anxious to do it.

-jjsemp

Quote - I predict that this will be one of the most EXCITING upgrades to Poser ever.

I second that :biggrin:

As I said before, I want all the intel on this puppy before I commit. Then I'll be excited....I hope ; )

Another thing they mentioned, and a thing that really puzzles me isn't touted more, as it IMO is a VERY USEFUL feature is

• Focus on creativity, not repetition, with new workflow improvements:- Easily populate your scene with identical, yet independent figures. Now you can duplicate selected objects (with animation) and save time without the tedious process of having to individually configure each object in your scene.
• Save animated poses with walk paths or full body morphs directly into your library. In Poser 7, you can now store figure transformation and/or full body morph target settings in a pose.

ernyoka, I agree - it seems strange that if this "identical, yet independent figure" feature works the way the blurb suggests, they just tucked this tidbit at the end of the Reason #2 email.  Seems pretty major to me.

Just guessing, but maybe 1) it doesn't really work very well, or has such limitations, that it didn't merit its own "Reason."   Or, 2) there are even more significant new features/improvements that dwarf this tidbit, and those merit "Reasons."   We'll see.... 

Me?  I'm still hoping Reason #3 is "Better Undo capability,"  and #4 is "Your keyboard can now be used to increment parameter dials."    (Yes, these are things that should have been included ages ago, but at this stage, it would really catch my eye.....)

Mmmm, I don't do animations (save Dynamic Cloth calculation, but that's not exactly the same), let alone animations with sound, so Reason #2 to me, doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot.

Sure, I bet it's impressive, and maybe the "bee's knees", but it's extraneous to me.

And lest anyone think I'm naysaying the feature, If I ever do produce an animation of any kind in Poser, it'll be nice to have a way to do lip synching without having to pay for another program (like Mimic).

You all realise that this allows us to infer a release date. 7 reasons, one per week, and we've just has the second. I'd agree that this one matters more for the animators, but some of the stuff hidden behind the Big Reason does look more generally useful. but duplicasting objects? You could already save to library and reload the whole clothed and posed figure. Still, if they've made this a bit more controllable, and you can save the animation with the figure, it does look useful.

Hi, the thing I’m waiting for is better non realistic characters – have you ever seen Pixar create an animation with photorealistic characters – no – and you don’t want to. Give us some characters that reflect the current world of animation. You watch the Incredibles, you say WOW, and then you go home and look a James for two minutes then close Poser. And no you can’t distort things in the face and figure, it just breaks when you animate. So why Isn’t Poser reflecting popular animation culture? If there’s a generic ‘character creation room’ that allows squash and stretch and will give me exaggerated oooo shapes on the mouth. Give me that and I’ll buy Poser in a second. I know people want realistic characters, probably for still images, but for animation there’s a reason Pixar do stylised characters – there more interesting to watch and you can bend the laws of physics. If there’s ever the day we have totally realistic 3D characters in movies (and it’s coming) that would bore the pants off me – I don’t want real when I go to an animation.

Did anyone notice the part about MacOSX Universal Binary support!?  That is significant.  UB code tends to run much faster than older PPC code.  I might actually be able to use Poser on my iMac now! ;D

As hoped, it appears the e-frontier isn't just sitting on their laurels and tweaking Poser a little here, a little there like some previous owners (::cough:: Curious Labs ::cough::).

Anyone notice how similar to instancing the 'identical but independant object/figure' sounds? Considering the cooperation that exists between eFrontier and eon, maybe some of Vue Infinite has made its way into Poser. And if instancing -is- in there, there would have had to have been major surgery to the source for memory management (maybe one of the reasons will be texture and or mesh spooling. That would solve a lot of the memory problems as well....). I'll want to play with the 'talkroom' before I say anything. If it has the flexibility that Mimic has, then the quality of that teaser was more the animator, not the app. True it was a little bland, but so was the lighting, and it looked as if there was little to no tweaking of the viseme strengths. Pretty much the effect you get in Mimic if you just dump a wav into it and don't bother adjusting things to look right to the ol' Mark One Eyeball. Poser now has a version of mimic integrated....DAZ resurrects Bryce from the grave.... Get the impression the war is on for our hearts and wallets?

Quote - Hi, the thing I’m waiting for is better non realistic characters – have you ever seen Pixar create an animation with photorealistic characters – no – and you don’t want to. Give us some characters that reflect the current world of animation. You watch the Incredibles, you say WOW, and then you go home and look a James for two minutes then close Poser. And no you can’t distort things in the face and figure, it just breaks when you animate. So why Isn’t Poser reflecting popular animation culture? If there’s a generic ‘character creation room’ that allows squash and stretch and will give me exaggerated oooo shapes on the mouth. Give me that and I’ll buy Poser in a second. I know people want realistic characters, probably for still images, but for animation there’s a reason Pixar do stylised characters – there more interesting to watch and you can bend the laws of physics. If there’s ever the day we have totally realistic 3D characters in movies (and it’s coming) that would bore the pants off me – I don’t want real when I go to an animation.

And some people want more realistic characters in animation.

Poser isn't a part of "popular animation culture", it's a 3D graphics program.

And I postulate that your idea of what's popular in animation is limited to what the US animation companies are producing for children, because that's the demographic that animation has been limited to by our society.

I've seen a Japanese anime series or two with extensive use of more realistic CG than you usually find here in the US, and even a movie that took the stylized look of regular anime and made it far more realistic, there was nothing boring about them, and they even broke the laws of physics.

You can have interesting, physics-ignoring 3D animated characters that are as detailed and realistic as a real human, by limiting what you think should be, you stifle the industry and quash potentially good ideas because they don't fit into your idea of what should be.

Quote - but duplicating objects? You could already save to library and reload the whole clothed and posed figure. 

I MAY be reading too much into this but I must admit that I read this as "instancing"

And that IS a major breakthough in Poser.

Quote - Hi, the thing I’m waiting for is better non realistic characters – have you ever seen Pixar create an animation with photorealistic characters – no – and you don’t want to. Give us some characters that reflect the current world of animation. You watch the Incredibles, you say WOW, and then you go home and look a James for two minutes then close Poser. And no you can’t distort things in the face and figure, it just breaks when you animate. So why Isn’t Poser reflecting popular animation culture? If there’s a generic ‘character creation room’ that allows squash and stretch and will give me exaggerated oooo shapes on the mouth. Give me that and I’ll buy Poser in a second. I know people want realistic characters, probably for still images, but for animation there’s a reason Pixar do stylised characters – there more interesting to watch and you can bend the laws of physics. If there’s ever the day we have totally realistic 3D characters in movies (and it’s coming) that would bore the pants off me – I don’t want real when I go to an animation.

Pfft.  Why does "realistic" always have to mean "real".  What I mean is, why do some people think if something is rendered in a photorealistic style, that it's suddenly something you see "everyday"?  We could theoretically render fantastic things that no human has ever seen before (because it doesn't exist), and do it in such a way that makes it SEEM real.  In fact, there's more CG done this way than the Pixar way for movie FX.

I find it rewarding and challenging to animate realism.  Not still images, but realistic renders with realistic and complex movement.

I don't ever remember going into the woods and seeing Gollum running around in there.  And there's nothing boring about Gollum.  My preciousssssssssss.  Or going on vacation to an island and running into Kong.

Quote - I MAY be reading too much into this but I must admit that I read this as "instancing".

It might be safer to assume that duplicating objects means duplicating, not instancing.

I'm not a 'toon fan, and I don't use 'toon figures for purposes other than testing.  "Realistic" is exactly what I want to see in new characters.  Nothing against 'toon fans, BTW -- this is just my personal taste.

There have been numbers of 'realistic' animations.  But some few people find those to be creepy, rather than attractive.  To them, the effect is probably reminiscent of "living department store mannequin" episodes of old TV shows like Twilight Zone.  This is the same reason why some people don't like 3D art at all -- or at least 3D art involving human figures.

But as has been hinted at here -- the day is coming when 3D renders (including animation) will be indistinguishable from a real photograph or video.  Just imagine the potential for creating embarassing ads of your political opponent......doing whatever.  Or for that matter of anyone else.  I can envision a whole new set of government laws regarding the creation of realistic videos using your neighbor's, or co-worker's, or whoever's image...........

We'll also probably start to see an entire new industry of "do it yourself" wannabe movie directors.  No real actors/actresses to pay -- and all of the special effects that you want created on your home PC.  Sell your self-created movies online -- or on DVD at your local video store.

I don't think that P7......or even P8.....will be there yet.  But I think that it's coming eventually.  The better the hardware/software -- then the easier it'll be.  You'll no longer need to be a top-notch high-end 3D expert to produce realistic 3D scenes.

I think the world is big enough to accommodate both realistic characters and stylized characters (note I don’t use the word toon). The problem that I’m raising is that Poser seems, to a large extent, to ignore the idea of a diverse 3D world and is producing a program that is exclusively aimed at manufacturing more and more realistic characters (that have a lot of time and effort spent on them). I never used the word toon as this to me implies that it’s bias towards entertaining kids. Pixar has never produced animations exclusively for kids. In fact 3D animations made exclusively for kids I find less inspiring or unwatchable e.g. Robots. The bottom line is if you want to animate and exaggerate the movement of your characters it can’t be done in Poser as realistic characters just plain and simply don’t look right. I’ve found some hand drawn animations to be very moving, and I’ve even been moved by Ice Age’s highly stylised characters, but I have never been moved by a highly realistic 3D character. I was moved by Gollum (styled) and I was moved by Harry Potter’s Dobby (styled) Please e-frontier just balance out the Poser universe a bit – less squeaky clean bland popular culture characters and more Faggins and Shreks characters – and make them work properly (fully articulated and expressive).

Oh, and you’ll never eliminate actors as they would be the artist necessary to bring alive any 3D character

Quote - Oh, and you’ll never eliminate actors as they would be the artist necessary to bring alive any 3D character

Currently, yes.  But I can envision a future where the software is so sophisticated that it's no longer true.

Quote - I think the world is big enough to accommodate both realistic characters and stylized characters (note I don’t use the word toon). The problem that I’m raising is that Poser seems, to a large extent, to ignore the idea of a diverse 3D world and is producing a program that is exclusively aimed at manufacturing more and more realistic characters (that have a lot of time and effort spent on them).

I don't think they're ignoring anyone.  Poser 6 came with some "stylized" characters by Sixus 1, and also made some improvements upon the toon shader (for NPR rendering).  When P6 was first released, many many people complained that Jessi was not particularly realistic enough, and even now people seem to complain that the preview images seen so far of the new characters for Poser 7 are not realistic enough.  What's a company supposed to do to please everyone?

Daz seems to be the company more focused on pushing out hyper-realistic models than eFrontier/Poser, but that's just my observation.  However, considering the demand for realistic characters, there still seems to be more than a good share of stylized characters available in their store as well.  However, what I consider "stylized", you might find too realistic... so imagine the problem of trying to figure out what people who buy the software want, and then pleasing them all.

e-frontier is either ignoring or is oblivious to a massive chunk of the 3D market, and here’s how. Millions of people get a lot of pleasure out of Pixar movies and are rightly inspired by the animation – you can’t say Pixar animation is bad (didn’t go to see Cars however). Granted folk go to see anime or other forms of 3D animation and they are inspired by that, but that’s another argument and one for them to pursue. Getting back to my slice of the cake – a large percentage of the folk inspired by the Pixar movies are trying to pursue a career in animation and one day want to work for Pixar. These people use generic rigs to practise animating to short sound clips usually from a movie. Lowman and Generi Rig are two popular rigs - Generi Rig being more popular because it’s well made, is fully articulated and can express a full range of emotions. And because of the generic nature of these rigs you can use them for male or female characters – Lowman even allows you to modify body proportions.

Ok so let’s look at Poser 6 – we have Alpha Man – not too much wrong with this character but what can you use him for. Yes exactly you can use him as Alpha Man. So long as I want to animate super heroes I should be happy (and I have to say nowhere near as much attention has gone into Alpha Man as James or Jessie).  All I’m asking for here is for a well crafted generic rig with top notch facial expressions and joints that bend as they should. If you go to the theatre and someone steps onto the stage in a policeman’s uniform then you assume he’s a policeman. If someone stepped on to the stage wearing a black all in one cat suit then with good body language that person could be anyone, a doctor, a builder, a traffic warden.

Xenophonz, so are these future animated characters going to think for themselves and if they do would we want to listen to them. Anything worth listening to has got to be related to the human condition. Half of the appeal of the Pixar animations is the voice talent. So would that be synthesized in the future too? So someone types in to a computer “…but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy mixed up world" (Casablanca). And it will come out of the mouth of a perfecly animated synthetic Bogart and we’ll all wipe a tear from our eyes. Why bother lets watch real actors bring their own life experiences to unique and living characters.

All I’m asking for here is for a well crafted generic rig with top notch facial expressions and joints that bend as they should.

I think we'd all like that.  But Poser is going to have to be re-written from the ground up to get it.

yes eecir, but what are you actually  saying ?

i doubt pixar works from a home pc, and i doubt what you say about the future of animation. as for these animations thinking for themselves sorry but it sounds like  twaddle. the animations are brought to life by the animators. actors do voice overs. it isn't outside the realm of possibilities that pretty soon an animated film will be made complete with animated voices. if it save a few million in voiceover fees someone will come up with a program to do it. as for actors being needed....who knows, unless of course you have a crystal ball....in truth i doubt e.f could  give a fuck about what you want personally. it won't cater for the individuals taste. it can't as a business afford to. if you don't fall in the broad spectrum of their customer base then it's tough shit as far as they're concerned.  they're running a businesss not a keep eecir happy shop. why is there a need to make everyone think the way we think. thats what i'm seeing in these silly ef threads. why did everyone who started a new ef thread feel the need to start their own ef thread.  sorry but apart from the original and the parody thread all i pretty much see is ego trying to outdo ego with new er threads. you may feel you know what er is ignoring or is oblivious too but it doesn't mean you're correct. somehow from the response here i'd say they're pretty much playing to the masses.  and that their marketing is working. it's certainly generated more life than one would assume from an ignorant oblivious dynosaur.

i know, i know. why did i bother posting....i got bored with all the bullshit and thought i'd get out the old ego and spread some of my own. who gives a fuck if you buy it or dont buy it. if you pre order it or don't pre order it. not having a go at those that did or didn't. just at those who are sat down saying how it should be according to the word of joe bloggs. you really have no say in whats going to be in it. that parts done and dusted. i won't get it cos i don't use it enough to warrent getting it. if i did want it i would have had my pre order in.  it's not as if it's an exorbitant price.  some of the things ive seen said are really silly. i think i said i wouldn't get it unless the grouping was improved. how silly is that. but the thing is do we really give a shit. come, be honest do we actually give a shit will whats been done actually make a difference as to whether the poser masses will buy or not. the only real thing that will make a diff is if we can afford it or not.  or if we need it or not. on the whole it's a toy and we all know we love a new toy.

jmo of course

billy

Poser sells for $129.  What are you guys expecting from it, other than getting more gallery hits than other 3D apps manage to get here?

A generic character similar to Lowman http://lichiman.aniguild.com/?s=lowman only with a better mouth.