If this one doens't shut some people up then they just arnt going to be happy with anything :-)

Well, they could always say "but I don't use Poser for renders, so where's my new feature?"  But now they'll know we're onto 'em!  (I, for one, absolutely can't wait to get this baby installed!)

faster test renders maybe....

or maybe they will be content with poser renders.... though i'm not counting on that.

(I, for one, absolutely can't wait to get this baby installed!)

I'm right there with ya

Can you please post the verbiage as I don't have my newsletter yet! 

Thanks Tyger! 

Goody, goody, goody!

Let's see... don't have to constantly save 'cause there's multiple undos, may not have to always export to another renderer to get a project done on time, may be able to make sense of the lighting now and re-work it more easily. Hmmm... wow, where do I sign up?

Oh yeah, I already did. :lol:

Captain Jack

I dont normaly like when people do stuff like this. that is posting "special anouncements" but i'm just too excited about this one to hold back.

**Reason 4: Improved Rendering & HDRI Support for IBL!

Render up to four times faster with** Multi-threaded Rendering on machines with multiple CPUs. FireFly takes advantage of the processing power of the multi-core and multi-processor systems available on the market by rendering on up to four threads simultaneously. This optimization results in much shorter render times for most scenes.

Render more complex scenes than ever with new Tiled Texture Loading. Texture memory needs at render time are reduced to less than 10% (compared to previous versions for texture-heavy scenes). Hard disk caching results in greatly reduced memory requirements. FireFly’s tiled texture loading system also takes advantage of a new Texture Filtering approach, which uses a fraction of the memory of its predecessor.

Create even more realistic images with HDRI! Poser now supports High Dynamic Range Images (HDRI) for Image Based Lighting and textures, giving you rendered lighting quality comparable to analog photo film!

Poser 7 Delivers More

• Render in a Separate Process: FireFly now has the option to run in a separate process from the application, which can yield performance advantages when rendering highly complex scenes. FireFly also lets your system manage memory more efficiently and provides better system stability due to the separation of rendering tasks.
• Speed up Ambient Occlusion calculations with virtually no compromise on quality using the new Irradiance Caching feature. You can configure Irradiance Caching for draft (optimized for speed) versus final (optimized for quality) renders.
• Save more rendering time with Occlusion Culling, which enables FireFly to improve render performance by ignoring invisible scene elements at render time.
• Benefit from faster Raytracing with FireFly’s new kd-tree Ray Accelerator, which improves raytracing performance in densely populated scenes.
• Take advantage of Poser 7’s improved Depth of Field calculation to generate superior results in less time.

Hm. 4 threads, is it? You'd think they were aiming to gobble up the Intel quads and AMD 2X2 chips out soon. Sure looks like core code rewrite to me! It is sounding more and more to me as if there was some serious technology talk between eFrontier and e-on. V6I is supposed to have the separate render process scheme mentioned here, so you can continue to work on a scene while a render is occurring (as was occlusion culling and in Vue's case, texture spooling...which sounds a lot like what P7 is supposed to have). Or else this is the biggest case of serendipity to come down the pipeline in quite awhile.....

LOL,

Tyger_purr,

you certainly spend some time thinking about what others might say about "your" precious

Poser 7.

I just hope the feature actually works...

;-)

This is very good news indeed.

Those who don't render in Poser won't care, but it sounds kind of interesting to me. 

Will you still get a big improvement if you don't have hyperthreading or dual processors, though?

Thank you.  I'm impressed.  Very impressed.  I do want to still see though if there are going to  be any interface tweaks that are going to make selecting body parts and texture areas a bit speedier.  One or all is so behind the times!! 

Quote - Tyger_purr,

you certainly spend some time thinking about what others might say about "your" precious

Poser 7.

what can i say, im passionate bout my toys ;-)

people who don't render in Poser may do better holding out to see what Poser Figure Artist will do.

I can see why. This poser 7 looks very good.  I am excited about the next 3 reasons.  This marketing idea is working on me.

Now the question is whether just the renderer and associated modules are multithreaded, or the entire app. Although being up to multithreading at reason 4, one wonders if we might actually see some of the more esoteric requests like weightmapping in some form, or dynamic micropoly LOD around joints, or actual soft body dynamics to a limited degree; multithreading would make the calculations for sbd reasonable.... Customizable UI is also probably one of the reasons... ...and wouldn't it be a hoot if they'd implemented .daz file support? Or possibly .psd export support, Vue Infinite.... Is it time for 5 yet...?

Quote - ...and wouldn't it be a hoot if they'd implemented .daz file support?

DAZ once said they are open with their file format. If ef wants to open daz files they could easily get the needed info to do it.

I'm still hoping for network rendering... like shade grid or bryce lightning etc

Hmm I was waiting for "news" on lights before jumping, I appear to have some of that although I'm not sure what it means for Volumetric lighting, it's really bad in P6 compared to Vue 5 so I'm hoping for a big improvement in P7 [if I jump! :-)]

I'm pretty much teetering into sending my $130 to efrontier. The last 2 new features are pretty much enough for me. New content and lip synching is frosting.

First Bryce with multi-core and HDRI support and now Poser 7. It just doesn't get any better than this...or maybe it will, there's 3 more reasons to go...

Dunno 'bout anyone else but I'm psyched and ready for it...

Oh, and those who "...don't render in Poser..." will no longer have a reason not to use Poser to render.

Quote - Now the question is whether just the renderer and associated modules are multithreaded, or the entire app. Although being up to multithreading at reason 4, one wonders if we might actually see some of the more esoteric requests like weightmapping in some form, or dynamic micropoly LOD around joints, or actual soft body dynamics to a limited degree; multithreading would make the calculations for sbd reasonable.... Customizable UI is also probably one of the reasons... ...and wouldn't it be a hoot if they'd implemented .daz file support? Or possibly .psd export support, Vue Infinite.... Is it time for 5 yet...?

Most apps are multithreaded.  Not many apps are multi-processing.  Cinema 4D only utilizes the processors for rendering.  This goes for most 3D apps that do multiprocessing - it is restricted to the rendering engine.  Problem with it in other areas is that there really isn't a need for that level of support and user-interaction.

P7 will be the way to go, if you're a Poser user.

And Vue 6 will be the ideal partner.

we shall see.

it would be cool if it is significantly improved...but being the pessimist i am...

where the hell is wales??? lol!

Quote - where the hell is wales??? lol!

the bit on the left of England nearest Ireland...
(where they film Doctor Who and Torchwood)

thanks khai,

it was a friendly jab at fixer. ;P

Whales......?  I think that they're in the ocean........although I've seen a few of them at Sea World in years past.

I just noticed something on the new P7 splash banner over at Content Paradise.  It adds Sanctum Art to the list of content contributors.

I wonder what he'll be contributing ....

"

• Save more rendering time with Occlusion Culling, which enables FireFly to improve render performance by ignoring invisible scene elements at render time. "

HUH?! You mean poser 6 doesn't do this now? That's like the simplest, most basic thing you do when rendering is to cull out unseen geometry.

Quote - Whales......?  I think that they're in the ocean........

If they are not then someone will try to blow them up

I was really hoping to hear this. I haven't rendered anything in Poser in almost a year. It sure would be nice to stay ahead with just one program. We'll see...
Any word on a release date?

release date..in the fall was the last word..so it will be probably before 21 December. the way they're pushing out the feature list, probably before 21 December

Quote - I was really hoping to hear this. I haven't rendered anything in Poser in almost a year. It sure would be nice to stay ahead with just one program. We'll see...
Any word on a release date?

Well, they got me.

I'm in.

Just order the downloaded version of Poser 6 and I will get the free downloaded version of Poser 7.

Goodbye Poser 5.  I'll miss you.

:-(

I already pre-ordered the first day. This is what I have been saying all along about what ef can do with software. 3 more reasons to go, I'm guessing second week of Dec. for release. I'm hoping we get our Vue6I by that time.

Quote - > Quote - ...and wouldn't it be a hoot if they'd implemented .daz file support?

DAZ once said they are open with their file format. If ef wants to open daz files they could easily get the needed info to do it.

For the low low price of $995.

I'm sure EF has a price for their sdk too.  I just doubt either company is willing to pay for it.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - ...and wouldn't it be a hoot if they'd implemented .daz file support?

DAZ once said they are open with their file format. If ef wants to open daz files they could easily get the needed info to do it.

For the low low price of $995.

I'm sure EF has a price for their sdk too.  I just doubt either company is willing to pay for it.

a one time fee of $995?  thats nothing in the overall cost of development.

Would any programmer types and/or folks who are familiar with some of these buzz words (maybe from higher-end programs) care to explain them?   Irradiance Caching, kd-tree Ray Accelerator,Tiled Texture Loading.

Ie, is there anything the average user needs to know about these features, other than what they put in the newsletter? They sound really useful.  

Whatever it will be I'm sure it will be terrific!

And watch it Mrpeabody

I'd just like to point out that the $995 for the daz studio SDK is not money that DAZ is asking for. That's the price of a Trolltech QT license, and goes to Trolltech, not DAZ. If you already have a Trolltech license, you don't need to pay anything.

It's also worth mentioning that when poser Face Room compatibilty with DAZ figures was talked about, CL wanted $10,000 to allow DAZ full access (only to the Face Room, not the full app).

mac

Note i don't know what exactly they are doing 'under the hood' in the P7 engine but based on my experience with similar things in other apps,

1. kd-tree Accelerator: This is basically a way of organizing the data of your scene in a way that makes it faster to render raytracing. How raytracing (reflections, refractions, IBL, AO etc) works is that the camera shoots rays into a scene and then searches through the scene to see if the ray 'hit' any triangle/object. But if the scene is dense then this could mean a slow search through a large number of triangles to see just which one the ray actually 'hit' Kd-trees are a way of organizing the scene such that this process of search becomes much faster. You can find the tech details on google or something, but in general it should speed up everything that uses raytracing in any form, like the previously mentioned reflection, refraction, image based lighting, occlusion etc. But note that for best results the kdtree has to be 'tuned' for a scene by the user (if poser 7 allows this) and you have to find an optimal value for 'depth' and 'size' of the tree, which are the 2 values that control how the scene gets split into the kd-tree.

2. Tiled texture loading: Normally when you use a texture in poser (no matter what format) poser will load the entire texture into mem and then use it as and when it is needed in the render. This means that even if say the texture is on a tiny little cube in one corner of a scene, the entire texture will still be loaded and take up RAM. What the new method should do is that it will only load parts of a texture as and when needed. Like in the cube example, it wont touch the texture until it gets to the part of the scene that actually has the cube, and even then it will only load the parts of the texture it actually needs, not the whole thing. In other apps, this sort of thing usually requires that you save your texture in a special format that the renderer can use in this fashion, I dunno how they are doing it in P7, maybe they will do it automatically for every texture or have an option to convert them etc.

3. Irradiance Caching: now this is a tough one to explain cause its quite technical. But in very simple terms, it is basically a way to speed up GI. How it works is that before the scene actually starts to render, the engine sends out virtual 'photons' from the lights in the scene. These then bounce around the scene, adding light to it and gradually becoming weaker till they finally die out. After this process, what is left behind is a 'map' of how the light is interacting with the scene (ie how the light is bouncing around and contributing to the scene) This map is then stored to disk (the cache) and when the render starts, it can be used to simulate realistic looking GI in the scene and the photon map used to calculate how each light will contribute to the scene in a more realistic fashion.

Of course what these terms actually mean in P7, is something we will find out only after we get it.

"Sure looks like core code rewrite to me!" Well, all these seem to be features of FireFly, which AFAIK, was developed by Andrew Bryant of Pixels3D and ported for CL's use in Poser. I kind of doubt that improvements in that dept. are necessarily connected to Poser's core code. That's not to say they haven't done a rewrite of course.

Ok, somebody has to say it. How many times will the Poser community buy promises?

i'd rather say:" How many times will the Poser community buy USELESS promises?" as we all know, poser's archaic joint-system bends geometries like sticks. when you bend a stick, it breaks. the announcement promises that now you can render your broken sticks even faster. does that really make you happy?

Reason #4 was all I was waiting for--I'm in.  I've got about a half-a-dozen scenes that were to complicated to render with P6.  Now it looks like I'll be able to finish them. 

I look forward to more creativity expressed in the galleries now: instead of just one naked V3 every third post or so, perhaps we can have a whole host of them.  Imagine that, thousands of naked V3's & Jesse's flooding the galleries every day.  Yipee!!   I doubt there'll be room for the Brycers or Terrageners anymore.  

Quote - " - Save more rendering time with Occlusion Culling, which enables FireFly to improve render performance by ignoring invisible scene elements at render time. "

•  

HUH?! You mean poser 6 doesn't do this now? That's like the simplest, most basic thing you do when rendering is to cull out unseen geometry.

You are thinking Frustrum culling and hidden surface removal.  Occlussion Culling is not so basic.  It is used in game engines, but usually under very controlled circumstances (ala Doom-style terrains).

The usual techniques that 'sort of fake' this are z-buffering (polygons are sorted by distance from the view plane) and raytracing (where only the closest polygon is hit by a ray shot from the view plane into the scene - rudimentarily, ignoring reflection and transparency).

Quote - i'd rather say:" How many times will the Poser community buy USELESS promises?" as we all know, poser's archaic joint-system bends geometries like sticks. when you bend a stick, it breaks. the announcement promises that now you can render your broken sticks even faster. does that really make you happy?

Yes, it does make me happy.

these are the most advanced stick that i can afford.

If i were to move to some more advanced system/software i would not have the library of resources i have with poser. I would not be able to produce works (which meets my satisfaction) as quickly as i do. I would have to spend many months (maybe years given my limited amout of free time) modeling and rigging (because there is no equivalent content market in other software).

if poser were to introduce a better joint system then production of content would be more complex, take longer, and be more expensive. It's not that i don't want poser figures to bend better, i just am leary of what affect it will have on the market.

well, Tyger_purr, although incompatible with my opinion, your answer is still a solid argument and cannot be washed away easily. my respect. you know, i turn each penny ten times in my pocket before i spend it. with three exceptions: music equipment, cocktails and tools - digital or real. that i do not have the big money for so called high-end apps is no reason to spend my little money for less. anyway...p5 came for free - i can wait;) A.

I don't suppose multi-thread rendering means we can render in the background and still work on the scene?

JP

"I don't suppose multi-thread rendering means we can render in the background and still work on the scene"

No, but the ability to render in a separate process may well do :-)

Multi-threading as talked about here means if that you have a dual core or dual thread processor, then Poser can finally make full use of that Processing power, whereas currently it only uses one core/thread.

They  got my interest with multiple redo's but now I'm starting to get actually excited.

Quote - .....  This marketing idea is working on me.

It is almost killing me... I WANT P7 NOW!  

I'm sold but I still don't like this marketing strategy by e-frontier.  Their strategy to drag things out might just boomerang back on them when they start competing in the Christmas season for dollars that we need to spend on gifts for friends and family members.  Any word on the release date?

Quote - i'd rather say:" How many times will the Poser community buy USELESS promises?" as we all know, poser's archaic joint-system bends geometries like sticks. when you bend a stick, it breaks. the announcement promises that now you can render your broken sticks even faster. does that really make you happy?

What are the useless promises?  The last two reasons they gave will greatly benefit anyone currently using Poser.  Of course, they won't be doing anything new, just doing it faster and with less hassle.  I gather that's your point; that broken figures will still be broken and wonky deforms will still be wonky.  AFAIK, that's all true.  Still, there are figures that do work really well in Poser, and now we'll be able to render them quicker, which many of us will be happy with.

I'm hoping that there will be improvements made to the bending and deforms, but I don't see the concern some people have with this.  I don't see why traditional figures couldn't coexist with an improved figure type, nor why it would need to be difficult to convert the current figures to a new type of rigging should one become available.  I don't think the problem is the skeletons, but rather just the weighting of the joints is imprecise compared to what could be achieved with weight mapping.  If a new system could be devised in which traditional joint parameters could be converted to weightmaps and improved further, then I think that'd be very good.  I don't really have a problem with having to weld seams or not having more than 2 pieces meeting in the same place.  I was looking at soft body simulations in blender and noticed that the softness can be controlled by the weight map (makes sense IMHO).  I hope we get that someday, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that a version 7 that doesn't include this is "USELESS". 

I use Firefly for more than just rendering figures, so my opinion may seem unusually biased.