One of the things I really love about Poser is having to figure out a workaround for almost every scene I render.  I've gotten the "multiple renders and fit it together later" bit off pat but sometimes I face a real challenge when I'm incorporating lots of reflective surfaces.  

Even back in the Poser 4 days I frequently pushed Poser's rendering capabilities to ridiculous lengths and had to wait for ever for a render to finish or - as I learned rapidly - split the damn thing into bits and pieces so I could finish the pic before I became of pensionable age.

I suppose the mental exercise will keep my ageing brain from withering away too soon but I still find all this pratting about to be a huge pain in the nether regions when all I want to do is make a fecking image.

I know there are other, more efficient apps out there but they all cost money, which is, as it says in the song, too tight to mention.  Plus, I really don't want to have to suffer the bollock aching tedium of replicating Poser's shaders in a non-native enviromnent.

Ok, that's my whine over.  Your turn.  And, please, pretty please, don't turn this thread into a flame war.

My contribution:

For the love of God, it's 2007, version 7, when are they going to give us keyboard control over the morph dials? This nonsense about clicking, dragging, and hoping the dial lands somwhere in the vicinity of your desired setting is utterly pathetic and inexcusable. Posing figures using the dials is the essence of Poser; why must it be the single most frustrating part of the program?

Yes, I know I  can type a number in. But every program I use for audio and video that involves precise values allows me to add/subtract tiny increments with the keyboard arrow keys or something. Why can't Poser?

OK, I feel better now.

Agreed all the way across the board.  And while we're at it, how about some program or script thingy that will allow the user to delete content from their runtime folders in an intelligent, "idiot friendly" manner? I'm terrified of my runtime...and I need to get about 5Gb of content out of it but I don't know what will happen if I delete the wrong file.

anyway, now is a good time to get those suggestions in to e-f, in case they've begun the coding of the P8 alpha. amongst my suggestions would be to include the several hidden render variables in the user interface, and hire somebody they can trust to do a proper manual, devoid of the circular definitions which have plagued all previous poser manuals.

Ohhh is this just a Poser complaint thread or all of 3D?  Maybe best just to stick with Poser lest my complaint list become the size of the Bible (King James).

So my biggest Poser complaint is SCALE.  Why for the love of god must they make the scale in that program so freakin small in comparison to the modeling programs.  Scaling up to 500 then down to some fraction, then back to this for other program only to have to import back into poser and find that I was off by .00004 and no I don't get to KNOW that number, I have to guess at it and hope.  It's absurd.

"Everybody|Nobody (pick one) does [completely random thing] and therefore, Users|Customers|Vendors|Brokers (pick one) are [bad thing]." If I see one more iteration of this, I'm gonna need a drink of something much stronger than coffee. Bonus irritation points if this is a matter of taste issue. Extra triple bonus irritation points if the statement is patently false and would be proven so if the people spouting off these sweeping universals looked around a little bit before making them. Equally irksome, similar: "I do things this specific way, even though there are a dozen totally valid ways to do it. Anyone who doesn't do it my way is [insert laundry list of bad things here] and they should be Pelted with Rotten Eggs|Eaten by Rabid Badgers|Be Reincarnated as a Celebrity's Vanity Purse Poodle." Alas, the software can't fix this one, I fear. (Not a flame about any other post in this thread in any way at all just in case anyone's taking it that way, it's just the #1 thing I had need to vent.)

I want a cable to plug in my head so what i can imagine actually comes out on the screen, course wireless would be several versions later, i'm realistic

i hate it when i have my white 3/4 shorts on (for playing footy in) and i go and make a cheese and brown sauce (HP) sandwich, just before setting off to practise my Beckham free kicks, that with the first bite, i get a big brown splat o' sauce on me crotchy bits, and attempted cleaning only makes it worse and bigger.it is so hard to pose after scoring my goal with a big brown crotchy stain!!

i also hate the fact that bounty bars come as two little bars, instead of one big bar like all other chocolate bars, i know that i am missing at least a bite of bounty bar, it doesn't make it cool to have two bars, and i have no intention of ever sharing my bounty bar with anyone, so give me back my bite........DAMMIT!!! give me one big bar!!

i have to buy two bars to compensate for that missing bit.

that's me done, next..........

"every program I use for audio and video that involves precise values allows me to add/subtract tiny increments with the keyboard arrow keys or something. Why can't Poser?"

YOU MEANT IT DOESN"T DO THAT? I was hoping I'd finally get to the place in the tutorial where it would tell me how to do that!  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Well I'm not much a Poser user because of the interface.  Give us more options for the interface.  HELL rip off the Studio interface and get that written into the Poser interface so those of us that DO want more options and tools can feel comfortable working back and forth between apps.  Of course this would include a switch to take one back to the default Poser interface that many like so much.....

This current click on one body part at a time or select ONE surface at a time is just archaic considering most of the other apps out there allows you to use the Ctrl key or Command key to click and choose what parts or surfaces you want selected to work with. 

Color schemes would also make it more enjoyable.  A way to UNPLUG unused rooms so upon load up Poser might just load up a bit faster! 

There, this coming from a Studio user that upgrades his Poser every time just in case eF DOES listen!! LOL

Here's a Poser gripe that's always annoyed me but I've never bothered to mention it, until now!
I hope I can explain this right, it's only a small gripe though.
I'm in my main 'Poses' section in the library of which I have many many subfolders. Let's say I'm in my characters section which has quite a few subfolders becauce I have alot of varied skin textures. I may have to go through quite a few folders to find say a certain eye texture I need or lips etc. After I have come out of a folder I would like to move straight onto the next one, but oh no, I'm right back at the top of the list again so I have to start scrolling again.
Does this make any sense or am I just mad! :tongue1:

vince3 - I'm totally with you on the Bounty bars! Damn, I could do with one right now. :tongue1:

At the moment I don't have any Poser bitchings, but a big grouse for another
e-frontier product.  I just plopped down $150 to upgrade from Amapi Designer
to Amapi Pro 7.5  ... basically taking advantage of a temporary low price to
get into the upgrade path for Amapi 8, coming out soon.   After trying out A P 7,
I find it has no significant advantages over A Designer, and more bugs.   
Selecting points takes more steps; naming things is no easier; separating
material groups is no easier; creating shapes is no different.

Tried one of my standard shape-building methods, which works smoothly in A D,
and A P crashed hard.

Just hoping some of these things will be improved in A P 8.

I'm not even going to mention Vue. I'll leave that one for thefixer!!

I was so mad driving to work today, a lady in a left (fast) line driving 5 miles under the speed limit. I was ready to throw my breakfast burrito at her.  Instead, I'm wearing the breakfast burrito on my shirt today. 
Vue... oh NO... I just acquired Vue waiting to install, no.. NOOOO....  don't wanna hear anything about vue... at the moment.  [kitty covers her eyes plugs up her ears and runs under the bed]

@RAMWolff... Poser interface? There's someone that actually LIKES poser interface??? :blink:

well i luv vue!

awww!!....and i luv vue tooooo!!

(that is only the second time i have used that gag, so it's still quite new really!!)

recommends trying new "Starbar" to stormy, thems better than a boost bar even!!

Quote - @RAMWolff... Poser interface? There's someone that actually LIKES poser interface??? :blink:

Yep ... Well, most of it.

Quote -
@RAMWolff... Poser interface? There's someone that actually LIKES poser interface??? :blink:

Guilty as charged. I honestly love the Poser interface and absolutely prefer it to D|S's fugly lightwave'ish boring ... something.

I would wish the dials worked better of course, but as a whole I like the interface. It's wonderfully intuitive and at least to me, pretty, too.

Then again I've always liked Kai Krause's interfaces. I guess it's a love or hate thing with'em.
Now lessee.. something to bitch about...

Right: The weather! Today they'd forecast miserable weather, and I got hubby to drive me to work (he's on holiday now) - and hoped that he would pick me up afterwards again. But since the weather - quite against all odds - stayed (fairly) nice and dry, he went out to photograph trains instead so I had to take the bus home!

Now THAT's just not on!

right?

Quote - Here's a Poser gripe that's always annoyed me but I've never bothered to mention it, until now!
I hope I can explain this right, it's only a small gripe though.
I'm in my main 'Poses' section in the library of which I have many many subfolders. Let's say I'm in my characters section which has quite a few subfolders becauce I have alot of varied skin textures. I may have to go through quite a few folders to find say a certain eye texture I need or lips etc. After I have come out of a folder I would like to move straight onto the next one, but oh no, I'm right back at the top of the list again so I have to start scrolling again.
Does this make any sense or am I just mad! :tongue1:

oh yeah, makes perfect sense and drives me nuts !!!  How hard can it be to sort it out ????

I also like the Poser interface and Vue is bloody awesome

I'm actually one of the shameful weirdos that likes the Poser interface, too. It appeals to the 'OOOO, what does this shiny little button do?' that goes on endlessly in my brain. I do get why a lot of people find it counterintuitive, however. A lot of other interfaces, to me, look like work. I don't know how to explain it other than that, but I do find that my creativity is strongly linked to my sense of "play", and it ends up making a huge difference in the final result as well as my enjoyment while working on a project. The interface on the ZBrush demo I tried, for comparison, made my inner child shriek wildly and hide under the bed. grin

Why, smack me silly!!! 
There's people that actually like poser interface!

then again, I kind of like Bryce interface, so... go figure!

Quote - @RAMWolff... Poser interface? There's someone that actually LIKES poser interface??? :blink:

I know hon, can you believe it??  Now watch, the droves of folks will begin to throw rotten veggies at me for my little quip!!

Vince... bad bad Vince.  Bad quips, worse than mine!!! HAHA!!

I like the Poser interface, too.  With some qualifications, though.  I wish the library palette would support multiple open libraries instead of having to jump backwards and forwards from Figures to Pose, to Camera or whatever.  I also think the trackball area could be made half the size it is and give me some more real estate on my screen.

grin No rotten veggies here. If someone is looking for something specific it is almost impossible to find on a 'oooh, what does this button do?' interface. They're good to learn on, though, if you can make the mental connections between 'shiny button' and 'performs this function', because then you can look for it by function on other software.

Conniekat8 - I happen to love Vue, I do most of my renders in this great program. I mentioned it because it does give some people problems. I only have 1GB of memory so I have to manage my work carefully. GI & GR are a godsend! You will love your renders Connie if you want realistic lighting.

vince3 - There's a new Starbar? I have to try it, I loved these when I was younger. :tongue1:

Here's a screen grab of my Poser interface.....

I admit I'm another who likes the simplicity of the Poser interface. I agree with you Surreality, the ZBrush interface is just pig ugly!

I think Blender people must have made Z brush interface. Those two drive me batty. And I'm used to complex interfaces... at work.

Thanks stormchaser, I'm looking forward to using it :)

One of my (few) gripes about Poser is to do with the light controls. Those little circles representing each light are very hard to maneuver. They have a mind of their own - a bit like shopping trolleys in the supermarket.

Sorry, I've gone off the topic of griping. I'll think of something else!

I totally agree with you, stormchaser, about the library thing... very irritating. My pet peeve, and I'll swear this is a new issue, is well, let me 'splain...

Maybe it's just me, but it used to be...
Saving a PZ3, navigate to the directory I wanted it in, name it, click save. Export the picture, default to the same directory I just saved the PZ3 in, and as I'm typing in the name it's trying to smart fill out the name for me... That was just in Poser 6... I loved that. Now in Poser 7, every frickin time I turn around, it's trying to save exported images to the default runtime's texture folder.

Which brings me to my bigger pet peeve, when is Poser going to automatically generate thumbnails of a PZ3 file? There is really nothing that you can preview a PZ3 in, they take forever to load and fill up your memory with things you don't need just because you're trying to find a file.

kalon - Yeah, that annoys me when it tries to save to the texture folder. What the hell's that about?
I'm so glad you brought up the thumbnail thing, I knew there was something I wanted to mention on here in the past. Vue generates a thumbnail for you so it's so easy to look through your folder & find which file is the one you really want to load. Yes I know we should always name our saved files properly but sometimes having the thumbnail there would be so much easier, especially when you can have so many saves from the same project. This should definitely come with Poser 8.

hmm...I'm not a big fan of the interface (I'm just used to it..;), but the 'start at the top' bit does get on my t**s..;)

My current gripe is trying to use a texture, and Poser will spend 2 minutes for every @#$ing bit that's loaded; and if anything's missing, Poser locks up. This after actually copying (manually), everything to the correct directories..suspect it's because I'm using 5 (which I'm quite happy with, considering the price I [didn't] have to pay..;)

but then I'd complain if I was hung with a new rope..;)

"but then I'd complain if I was hung with a new rope"

pakled - I'm glad my last post read tonight was a good 'un, LOL! :laugh:

How about this?

Most folks on this site are about a hundred times better than I am, but for the most part we all get paid the same. :)

Ditto Kalon.  P6 finally got the folder locations right for file opening and saving.  
The default locations were just where you expected them to be.

Now P7 goes to Runtime:Textures for everything, including exported images
and animations.  This can get seriously confusing, because the files that
are supposed  to be in Textures are all image files.  

It also fails to handle the base name properly for image sequences; it
defaults to " .png" and if you forget to fill in the front part, you get names
like TEXTURES_0001.PNG.   [This seems to be part of  a larger confusion
between folder names and file names in P7, which also shows up in saving
a new figure.]

Earlier versions filled in the base of the sequence with the "MovieName" 
which is always contained in the PZ3 file, and warned you if you were overwriting
an existing set.

Compared to any Autodesk product, Poser's interface is extremely user friendly. I've always considered it to be one of the program's better features.

Well, since this is an open invitational, I'll bring up my biggest pet peeve. It's a little embarassing, as apparently it doesn't bother anyone else...

The light system.

Yes, I know the earth is round. Yes, I remember reading something where it was mentioned that Poser doesn't have any limits as far as depth and width of scene. But frankly, I don't see too many renders where someone is trying to render something so vast that it shows the curvature of the planet. I must be missing them.

Why the devil can't the light system be based on a flat xyz coordinate system?

Okay, it's out. My secret pet peeve that demonstrates my total inadequacy with lighting.

Thankie!!

I know the background can be changed (I have seen some really nasty ones that people have shown) but I am not sure how. I don't know about the others but I think they can be done as well. Maybe a new thread might get more notice?

Perhaps a Geep Tutorial on how to change and modify the interface would be in order?  Oh...Doctor....??

DAT would be veddy veddy nice!! 

I love Poser 6, for what you pay for it, it's an awesome deal. I really like the interface, I find it well thought through. I never took the effort to upgrade to Poser 7 and from what I'm reading over and over again, I don't seem to be missing much. Poser 6 suits me well and I just like the way it looks, works and what can accomplish.

I've got nothing to whine about..... if I had payed as much for it as I've paid for some of the other applications I do own, I sure would be complaining.... a lot. If you hate Poser's interface try TrueSpace. If you really want broken features, try TrueSpace. I've paid more then double for TrueSpace and gives me more then double trouble then Poser. So for the 'little' amount they ask for Poser they did a good job on it. I haven't seen any better alternative for the same amount (or less) I've paid for Poser 6.

ohh a rant thread.

you know what I hate?

***SPOILERS!!

why do newspapers, TV programs etc think it's their god given right to spoil books and movies?
example : in the UK the 'sun' keeps running articles on Doctor Who giving away plot details! thanks assholes.

today? newpapers publishing details about the last Harry Potter book! thanks. shall I bother reading it now?

oh aeilkema, whats 'broken' in trueSpace exactly? I've not found anything 'broken' in the many years I've been using it. some bugs yes. but nothing that does not work.

Quote - ohh a rant thread.

you know what I hate?

SPOILERS!!
why do newspapers, TV programs etc think it's their god given right to spoil books and movies?
example : in the UK the 'sun' keeps running articles on Doctor Who giving away plot details! thanks assholes.

today? newpapers publishing details about the last Harry Potter book! thanks. shall I bother reading it now?

Yet another reason to avoid the tabloids.  I wouldn't wrap me chips in 'em.

heh. it's not just the tabloids...

Quote - heh. it's not just the tabloids...

No kidding, on my way in to work I heard it on one of the major radio stations here. Personally I haven't read any of Harry Potters, but man, it really sux for the fans. They announced on the radio how the book ends. That really really blows!!!!!!

@stormchaser - That looks great. Like Bryce (I like Bryce), only thousand times better! I'm so bummed, I didn't get to play with Vue last night... I really hate it when RL cuts into my 3D time.

Quote - heh. it's not just the tabloids...

Ah. I rarely read newspapers these days.

I for the most part only use poser and Vue.  However, my biggest gripe for poser is pretty simple----

HOW HARD CAN IT BETO MAKE THE UNDO BUTTON WORK????

lol.  I screw up way too much for it not to. heh

Thankyou and good day. :tongue2:

*"*HOW HARD CAN IT BETO MAKE THE UNDO BUTTON WORK????"

Now there is one reason to upgrade to P7, muli undo's.

My gripe is that I changed over to a new bigger, faster, better vid card machine and my P6 won't let me check my export option boxes. Worked fine on my old compute. My P7 exports fine. The only thing I have not tried yet is to toast both versions off my new computer and install again in proper order. I did install P7 first, the first time round. it's the only thing I can think of.

The default PNG and directing to the texture folder in P7 may be the biggest hassel for me. What the @@@@ were they thinking/drinking/smoking when they did that one. ( insert roll eyes smilie when they get them fixed, here.)