Poser 7 English Service Release 2 (SR2) is now available for both Macintosh and Windows. SR2 offers several enhancements and addresses known issues present in the following areas:

• Performance Optimization
• Rendering
• Multiple Undo
• Talk Designer
• Plus Several Other Areas

In order to receive technical support and application service releases you must have registered your Poser 7 application serial number with e frontier. If you have not yet done so, please register now.

Once you have registered your serial number, you can access the service release for Windows or Macintosh.

Thanx for heads-up. I didn't have "Check for Updates" box checked.

Question:

If upgrading only from original Poser 7 release ( that is, without the SR1 and SR1.1), will the SR2 take care of all the intermediate patches as well ?

I presume so, they usually do, & the readme for SR2 lists all the changes made in the earlier ones.

Yes, it includes all updates from previous service releases. Content updates need to be installed separately from it though, so be sure you do that too if you haven't already.

A pleasant difference - switching to Materials room is much quicker ...

Thanks for the heads up!  I wish they would put these things in order though!  :blink:  It's like 2/3rd's way down on the list.  That makes no sense to me in the least!

I'll mention it - I can't promise anything though.

Cool, Thanks for the heads up.

Quick feedback:  

One VERY pleasant improvement:  The OpenGL preview is no longer
twitchy.  When I switch cameras or move between frames, the picture 
changes immediately and stays firm.  Previously it waited for a mouse 
move or mysteriously flipped back and forth between views.  
(This improvement wasn't listed specifically in the readme for sr2, or 
at least wasn't listed in any way that I could translate!)

Two things that still aren't fixed:

1. Make movie with P4Render still gives flat black images, no pictures.
2. Keygraph is still weird; mouse slides out of focus. 

Well, it didn't blow up when I installed sr2!  What's better is the Morph Brush works on V4's head!!! I seem to recall this being a VERY big fiasco recently. I honestly can't say I tried the MB on V4 before this sr, so I don't know if this sr2 fixed it or not.

Anyway, thanks EF and keep up the good work!

Fear... each new update I think 'Poser will work better with it... or I'll need to reinstall it due a massive crash since the update?

:$

Aw, go for it, Casette; Just save your runtimes, first. But so far, P7 seems to be responding well, and at least feels a bit quicker on the startup.

Crap!

All this time...after admitting it was a bug...and they still haven't fixed the, "Inherit bends of parent" function.

Cyberscape wrote

     *  What's better is the Morph Brush works on V4's head!!!

Hey! you really got me excited then. Unfortunately, there never was a problem with V4, but only with V4.1,  - and  it's still there, unless I'm doing something stupid.

As I understand it one of the new head morphs in V4.1 has a mistake in it , which causes Poser to crash, so it's Vicki who needs the SR! *

Yes, Daz tec has finally admitted to the problem of V4.1 and morph brush and said it will be fixed but also admitted they have no idea how long it will take for them to give it to us.

Can we say V5? LOL. 

ockham, I've just rendered a AVI using the Poser 4 render engine in SR2 - no problem. What codec are you using, maybe that's the issue? I used Uncompressed.

I never do AVIs, always separate images.  That's where the problem is.
Firefly is OK on separate images, but the P4renderer still goes black.

I'll have a look. Thanks.

Now I ask: if my browser has cookies enabled, WTF I need to put my Registered Serial Number one more time !!! 

One more time... and one more... and one more... and zillions more... :cursing:

@Cas:  They would be smarter to just leave out the registration entirely!
Customers don't really notice when an optional feature is absent, but
customers are outraged when a feature doesn't work.

Any one else not able to Save the rendered background to tiff? Use to work before the SR2.

Quote - Now preserving selection when adjusting camera position while editing spherical fall off zone.

Thank you.  That bug was a PITA while I was rigging Krystal.

Excellent.  Great to hear.  Thanks for the heads up on this one.

This update forced me to reinstall Poser from scratch... somehow one of the XML files got corrupted and it doesn't say which one.

Quote - This update forced me to reinstall Poser from scratch... somehow one of the XML files got corrupted and it doesn't say which one.

This really should not happen. Was your Runtime/heads/knownFaceRoomHeads.xml modified in any way? Most likely that's the file that caused you trouble. Please contact tech support via http://www.e-frontier.com/go/emailtech and send them your broken version of that file (if you still have it, if not please explain whether or not your version of that file was likely to be modified).

No, I didn't. This was a from a clean install... the only thing I did do was install the G2 super bundle, Miki 2, and Jessi 2 before the SR2 update.

The V4.1 vs. Poser7MorphBrushTool on head actor is not a Poser bug...it is a V4.1 bug.

As far as I'm concerned, V4.1 is a bug. ;)  The gratuitious use of readScript (132 of them - with multiple readScripts from these) - which is an 'undocumented and unsupported' feature is not professional.  Reliance upon such a feature could at any time turn into a disaster - even if unlikely.  Not that e-frontier will pull such support but it is a gamble and one upon which the entire figure is constructed!

And to prove the problem, I see that V4.1's catastrophe is rippling across every extra-Poser support system.  GestureMax - probably will never support it.  Carrara plans tp support it eventually.  I already have added said support. ;)  Who knows who else will bother.
The more esoteric the constructs, the more likely they will not be stable - this is already evidenced in Poser7 with V4.1.

SR2 installed fine here.  No muss, no fuss.  Smooth as silk.

P7 runs faster now.  Things load quicker.  I don't have any other detailed observations yet -- just overall impressions.

I am very pleased with what I've seen so far.

Has anyone tried saving a background render in .Tiff?

Well I hope this SR has fixed the using binary morphs option I don't care what anyone says it worked fine for me until this SR1.1 update. Now when I have them turned on I get an error when ever I save a scene I have to turn them off and that's a pain cause it takes forever for a scene to save. IT used to be SRs were good things now everyone looks at them like they are looking at a
le guilotinne!

Quote - Well I hope this SR has fixed the using binary morphs option I don't care what anyone says it worked fine for me until this SR1.1 update. Now when I have them turned on I get an error when ever I save a scene I have to turn them off and that's a pain cause it takes forever for a scene to save. IT used to be SRs were good things now everyone looks at them like they are looking at a
le guilotinne!

le guilotinne ? Hahahahaha......  P7 worked(sic) better without the last service packs so I have to admit to being afraid of another one myself. x_X

LG2.0 ( le guilotinne 2.0 )? ROTFL.  I hope not. m(_ )m  inches closer to trying it  <<

Well I  installed the SR2 update and still V4.1 throws fits. Now before you all start with the "It's not poser it's V4.1" stuff on me I know this. This is what happens when V4.1 is in a scene with other characters half of the morphs on her OR the other characters will not work. You can turn dials until yer blue in the mug and nothing happens.

So far I haven't gotten any of those PMD errors when saving a scene now. So the binary morph targets are switched back on for now. Seems to load the libraries from external runtimes faster.
Seems to render faster too.

I seriously think it was V4.1 that was causing the PMD errors...I hope!! LOL! IF not well I say to those at EF.... "S'ils n'ont plus de pain, qu'ils mangent de la brioche!"* * LET THEM EAT CAKE!!
Sort has that guilotinne sort of feel eh?

"Guilotinne we've got the sharpest little guilotinne
it cuts so nice and clean, guilotinne.
Its real sharp you bet it even beats Gillette!
I'm talking 'bout my little guilotinne!!"

It looks like SR2 also fixed a VERY annoying Python/Tkinter bug, at least, Tkinter scripts with scrollbars don't crash Poser to the desktop anymore.

The problems that some others are reporting with V4.1 ring oddly to me -- because I haven't had a split-second's worth of trouble out of that figure.  Admittedly, I haven't attempted to use the morph tool on V4.1's head, so I can't address that issue.  But I will say that I haven't seen ANY of the other V4.1 problems which a few people have been describing in the forums.  Please note: I am not saying that those problems are imaginary: just that I haven't experienced any of those issues myself.  And I've been using V4.1 regularly for awhile now.

BTW - P7 SR2 is working out great for me, too.  So far.  No problems: only improvements.  I don't have anything negative to say about it.

Quote - Carrara plans to support it eventually.  > Quote -  

Heehee! 
Yes and well they should since Carrara is also a DAZ product. That support should be forthcoming at some point later on in this century, probably in 2017, their unannounced secret release date for M4. But dont tell, no one should know this. DAZ doesn't announce even an approximate target date for forthcoming releases. They have a hungry, addicted. captive client population that will gleefully take all the disregard they can dish out to them!

As far as pre-announcing release dates go, DAZ is in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" type of situation.  If DAZ were to make some approximate-time statement like "M4 will be out in the Fall of 2007" -- then certain parties would start complaining about how come M4 wasn't out in the middle of August.  While others -- possessed of greater self-control -- would patiently wait until the official first calendar day of the Fall season -- and then they would promptly start ripping DAZ a new one in the forums for not having M4 out yet.  "Well......Fall's here!  Where's my M4?!  Wahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

So, DAZ is left with a choice between two PR evils -- pre-announce a release date: and then risk running into unforseen issues which prevent a release in that time period.  In which case they'll be hammered in the forums.  Or else DAZ can choose to remain silent on pre-announcing even an approximate release date for the new figure.  In which case they'll be hammered in the forums.

Perhaps it's merely a choice over which action results in less hammering.  Perhaps it's better to remind the kids that Christmas comes but once a year -- and that it'll get here when it gets here.  Because otherwise, the kids might throw a temper tantrum when the first hints of the cooling temperatures of "in the Fall" begin to evince themselves.

I am not having any problems with V4.1 -- except the famous morphbrushtool on head for which we have the work-around until there is a V4.2.

So much so does the lady work well, and so uncertain is the M4 arrival....I have begun morphing her into a guy.

::::: Opera :::::

@svdl:  By golly, I think you're right.  It's hard to spot the disappearance
of a bug, and I'd modified most of my scripts to get around the scrollbar
problem anyway. 

It didn't seem to happen when the listbox was long and wide
enough, but there was no firm way to know how much was "enough"!

I tried shortening some listboxes back to the height that had caused
problems, and then zoomed the little thumb-bar up and down fast,
which would have guaranteed a crash before.  It doesn't crash now.

[Crossing fingers.]

I'm noticing some weirdness with the reflections of raytraced shadows, but at least it appears that they've finally fixed the reflection-culling bug.

L_D, what kind of weirdness are you seeing? Can you post an example?

Quote - Has anyone tried saving a background render in .Tiff?

Works fine for me here. There is one change in SR2 though - by popular demand, Poser now does not discard the alpha channel any more when rendering with FireFly over a background image. So depending on what software you use to view the TIFF, it might look like the background is missing. The reason would be that that software applies the alpha channel before viewing (Microsoft's built-in viewer does that for example, whereas ACDSee and Photoshop hide the alpha channel)

Well, this is the first time P7 (even the no-SR-right out of the box P7) actually crashes on me. I had V4.1 on scene, did a render, and when I hit the tab to go back to the Preview window, the desktop greeted me. It hasn't happened to me again, but then again, I haven't used V4 again either. The more I play with V4, the more I find myself going back to A3...

Basically, the reflection shows shadows that aren't there.

I've attached a pic of test renders in P6 and P7.  Two square props, meeting at a perpendicular angle, form my mirror object.  Three shadow-casting light sources.

Note that in P7, the reflected figures show shadows extending away from the mirror, even though these shadows aren't being cast in the "real world".

"The reason would be that that software applies the alpha channel before viewing (Microsoft's built-in viewer does that for example"

Yep, that's what it was. Looks fine once I put it into one of my paint apps.

Thanks.

That is wierd LD.

Quote - As far as pre-announcing release dates go, DAZ is in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" type of situation.  If DAZ were to make some approximate-time statement like "M4 will be out in the Fall of 2007" -- then certain parties would start complaining about how come M4 wasn't out in the middle of August.  While others -- possessed of greater self-control -- would patiently wait until the official first calendar day of the Fall season -- and then they would promptly start ripping DAZ a new one in the forums for not having M4 out yet.  "Well......Fall's here!  Where's my M4?!  Wahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

So, DAZ is left with a choice between two PR evils -- pre-announce a release date: and then risk running into unforseen issues which prevent a release in that time period.  In which case they'll be hammered in the forums.  Or else DAZ can choose to remain silent on pre-announcing even an approximate release date for the new figure.  In which case they'll be hammered in the forums.

Perhaps it's merely a choice over which action results in less hammering.  Perhaps it's better to remind the kids that Christmas comes but once a year -- and that it'll get here when it gets here.  Because otherwise, the kids might throw a temper tantrum when the first hints of the cooling temperatures of "in the Fall" begin to evince themselves.

So then...avoiding "getting hammered in the forums" is a... marketing strategy? So its better not to communicate with the customer population? Ok I see thanks fro setting me straight?
(shakes head and leaves)

Quote - Any one else not able to Save the rendered background to tiff? Use to work before the SR2.

Same problem.  Maybe this is another one of their fixes.  After all, according to UliK, all previous versions of Poser were not handling the alpha channel correctly when rendering over background and saving to TIFF.  The Render Police strike again.

Quote - So then...avoiding "getting hammered in the forums" is a... marketing strategy? So its better not to communicate with the customer population? Ok I see thanks fro setting me straight?
(shakes head and leaves)

Oh, no.....not in the least.  I'm sure that DAZ realizes that they'll get hammered in the forums no matter what they do.  Because regardless of what 'it' is: somebody out there won't be happy about it.  Sure, they "communicate with the customer population" regularly.  But nowhere nearly as loudly as various members of the "customer population" communicate with them.

And of course: companies would never do anything so gauche as to engage in developing marketing strategies for themselves.  Because as everyone knows: they're always better off, business-wise, to fly in blind.

Quote -
Same problem.  Maybe this is another one of their fixes.  After all, according to UliK, all previous versions of Poser were not handling the alpha channel correctly when rendering over background and saving to TIFF.  The Render Police strike again.

Read this thread again, especially the last posts of beryld and me. Thanks.

Are any of the Content updaters necessary to download if I already had the last patch installed?