I read the FAQ about the upcoming Poser Pro version coming soon, and read what their new features are going to be but I was wondering if anyone had any insights into whether or not one of those new features is going to be a better workflow.
You know, like Pros would like to have.
For example:
It would be good to be able to assign our own shortcut keys.
It would be better to be able to select body parts on a figure with shortcut keys instead of having to scroll through a long list.
It would be good if body parts ten miles away and behind what I wanted to select didn't offer themselves up instead of the foreground part my mouse is clearly over.
It would be good if Poser didn't have to "think" after a render and spend 20 seconds doing whatever the hell it's doing before going back into preview mode.
It would be good if the lights in the render actually rendered out more or less the way they look in the preview.
It would be good if there were an interactive previewer such as real Pro apps such as 3ds max, LightWave, maya and so on have.
It would be good if there were a way to center the camera to revolve around a selection. "Point at" works that way, but has to be changed every time you want to point at something else. Pro apps don't have such limitations.

I'm sure I could think of lots of other things, but the real question is will this actually be a "Pro" app, or is that just a catchy name? The pricetag isn't very Pro, and has me a bit concerned whether this will be a real Pro program, or just an Advanced Hobbyist application.
I'm not concerned about the cost - it would actually make me feel better if they were charging more, but if it's going to be just the same ol' same ol' Poser with a higher version number and a little more hoopla, it's going to be mighty disappointing.

Poser has always been hobbyist app, and the 'Pro' tag won't change that. Remember the
Poser 'Pro Pack'? It was an expansion to Poser 4 that added features to the base app.
If you want REAL professional features, you WILL pay a professional price. Poser IS a nice
hobbyist app, but no pro would touch it because it's workflow isn't intuitive of fast enough.
It's good enough for me, and since I don't need to pay $3000 to $6000, I'm happy. :)
I won't be getting Poser Pro though. Poser 7 is enough trouble as it is.

Greywolf

Well that's kind of a bleak outlook. ;)

I agree that Poser 7 is enough trouble as it is. I haven't messed with poser in quite a while but recently felt like giving it another shot. I'm just as irritated with it now as I was before.
But reading about the new Poser Pro coming out made me think maybe it'll redeem itself where I'm concerned. Who knows.

Although I disagree about the price of pro apps having to be that high. LightWave is definitely a Pro app and is less than a thousand bucks, same with modo, not to mention Photoshop.

Thanks for the reply. :)

I have Modo, and it was worth every penny, though I got it during the promo. :)
With Poser changing hands, all we can do is hope that it will improve. Poser 7 IS
better than Poser 6, but it's so bloody unstable, crashing to windows at the drop
of a hat. Before doing Pro, they should fix Poser 7 first. One thing I like about Modo
is that it is customizable from the ground up, right down to the 'Hot' keys. Poser's
workflow hasn't really changed much since the Poser 3 days. Features added, but
the awkward GUI remained basically unchanged. Poser's GUI needs to change, or
more modern 3D apps will leave it in the dust.

Greywolf

Yeah, I do modo too. I'm still at 203 because I haven't really liked all the bitching about 301 I've read in the modo forum at Lux's site. I don't need the sculpting since I also bought ZBrush 3.1.
Modo 203 is bad to the bone though. :)

I'm not having issues with Poser 7 crashing, and I've been loading it down with some really hires models and textures. shrug I've always been lucky for some reason and haven't had the crash problems. I have 6 gigs of DDR2 RAM at 800 mhz though, so maybe that's why.
Although it's all the other things about it that get me frustrated with it, such as the things I mentioned above. It's always wanting to put up a fight with me and all I'm trying to do is select and move stuff. ;)

Poser's GUI has never been the best.  But Poser users are so used to it that radical changes in a single version probably wouldn't be such a good idea.

IMO, that's the type of change that should be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.  MS tried that with Vista.......among other faults.

I don't mind the GUI at all really. There are things I'd change about it, but it's nothing I can't deal with.
My problem is its functionality. ;)

Hmmmm. If I remember correctly, When you are over a part, and you are having trouble
selecting the part you want, right click, and a list appears of all the parts under your mouse
pointer, then select the one you want. DAZ Studio does this, and I seem to remember that
Poser does this as well.

Greywolf

Yeah, I know about that, and I do it when I have to, but I'd rather be able to just have it select what's in the foreground only. Or it would be a good idea to have it as an option: Select Foreground Parts Only.

That WOULD be handly. Do you have any idea how MANY times I've selected a part, and the
selection box changed just as I pressed the mouse button? It's enough to make one spit acid.
Alas, this appears to be a problem with older 3d apps, though, come to think of it, DS doesn't.
In Poser, for example, if you click on a figure's arm, you select the sleeve covering the arm. In
DS, you get her arm. It can be a pain if one DOES want the cloth, but with DS, you can't select
the objects in back UNLESS you right click, or turn the camera. If DS can do it, Poser should
have it implimented as well. It's what I meant about the outdated interface.

Greywolf

Oh, I was thinking just GUI, but I see what you mean.
Yes, I've had that same problem with Poser through the years. The whole selection process has probably been my Number One Peeve, for that matter.
At least you can leave the hierarchy window open and expand it and select that way, but in a complicated scene, you're still doing alot of scrolling and searching.

This has been a common complaint for years.  Perhaps e-fron.......I mean SM......will finally do something about it.

SM?
You saying Poser's been sold again?
That's why greywolf said " With Poser changing hands..."
I was wondering about that. Who's SM?

Smith Micro, I believe. They did the stuffit program, which is like Zip, but for Macs.

Greywolf

Smith Micro.  There have been several threads about the aquisition in recent weeks.

http://www.smithmicro.com/default.tpl?group=news_full&id1=414&id2=13

As you'd expect with anything new in the Poserverse, some are predicting dire consequences to follow.  While others of us are taking a 'wait 'n see' attitude.  Hey -- a few oddballs have even suggested that it might be a good thing.

I see. Thanks for the info. Interesting.
Poser seems to be the bastard red-headed stepchild of the 3D world. You'd think that a company would want to hold on to something with such a loyal, huge and fanatical following. I wonder if D|S is making a huge impact on sales or something.
Oh well, makes no difference to me, and it may very well be a good thing.
I'm just waiting for LightWave's Open GL to get as fast as Poser's is. ;)

I'm not sure what's up with ef's site, but it seems to be having a few issues at the moment.

Quote - I'm not sure what's up with ef's site, but it seems to be having a few issues at the moment.

It's always had issues. ;)
I hate that site. It's like a Seinfeld episode, a whole lot about nothing. ;)

12/9/07

The Content Paradise Forums say that E-F, and CP are changing servers.

LMK

Thanks for that bit of info, lkendall.  This might be a good thing, too.

As for body-picking, I'd kind of like to hope that they would adopt what D|S did with "Power Pose"... that is, you have a picture of the body that you simply select the body part in there with. I use it a lot for hands (esp. fingers). This way you don't have to wait for the selector to 'settle' on the part you need, and can get at it right away. Shortcut keys I don't have much use for, becuase that would mean mapping (and memorizing) all the key combos... and not all figures in a scene are going to have standard names (esp. articulating props). /P

Ah, but I've become a fanatic about keyboard shortcuts as of late. I bought this Logitech USB gaming keyboard with 18 programmable keys, over 3 selector switches for a total of 48, that can be mapped to pretty much anything, even to open programs. I'm getting lazy in my old age. ;)
Plus, I've gotten so used to using shortcut keys with LW, it's become second nature.

I would think it would be possible to map keys to any unique body part names and store that info in the relevant cr2 file, no?

I'm not going to start a new topic for this, but man, there are waaayyy too many Announcements and Stickies at the top of this forum.
You have to scroll halfway down the page to get to the beginning of the messages.

This has always been one of my favorites. The good old multiple choice error message, texture can't be found, not enough memory..blah blah blah... Funny thing is, the scene I got this error from while loading takes up maybe 600 MB of RAM as it is, although it's a little hard to tell in Vista what with the superfetch and all. Still, it barely makes a dent in 6 gigs of RAM. Funnier still, all the textures do in fact load, and everything else about the scene seems just fine. Wasn't this false error supposedly fixed waaayy back with the 4.03 update to Poser 4? Like in 1999 or early 2000? No, when Poser has this particular problem of not being able to locate something it wants and browsing fails to locate it, it does the next best thing usually - hangs until you closse it with CTRL+ALT+DEL... You can add that to my list of what a Pro app doesn't do - give false error mesages.... would be nice if the next version of Poser loses this message entirely and makes any other error messages a little less cryptic. ;)

Quote - This has always been one of my favorites. The good old multiple choice error message, texture can't be found, not enough memory..blah blah blah...
Funny thing is, the scene I got this error from while loading takes up maybe 600 MB of RAM as it is, although it's a little hard to tell in Vista what with the superfetch and all. Still, it barely makes a dent in 6 gigs of RAM.
Funnier still, all the textures do in fact load, and everything else about the scene seems just fine.
Wasn't this false error supposedly fixed waaayy back with the 4.03 update to Poser 4? Like in 1999 or early 2000?
No, when Poser has this particular problem of not being able to locate something it wants and browsing fails to locate it, it does the next best thing usually - hangs until you closse it with CTRL+ALT+DEL...
You can add that to my list of what a Pro app doesn't do - give false error mesages.... would be nice if the next version of Poser loses this message entirely and makes any other error messages a little less cryptic. ;)

 

I agree ... I think, it's the most important with the time of render ... or less options in the material, hair and the cloth rooms for some better options with the export options, like max, blender and other softwares made for render !!!

"Let poser animate let the other render !"

I sem to be readin the whole Poser Pro announcement in the other direction... I don't see it as a step towards turning Poser into a 'pro' package, but rather tweaks anf ixes to help pros intergrate Poser into their workflow in other packages. Sure, that means that certain parts of the native Poser workflow are going to be altered, but the main thing is the plugins for other apps to get seamless import of Poser resources into their programs. That, for me, was the major seller. I'm not seeing this as targeted at the hobbyist market who already use Poser, but at the pros who might consider using Poser if its import into their program was better.

I dont' think I've noticed anyone else taking this tack in looking at the Poser Pro news, so maybe I'm just looking at it wrong.

JonTheCelt

Quote -
I'm not seeing this as targeted at the hobbyist market who already use Poser, but at the pros who might consider using Poser if its import into their program was better.

Could be, but one might ask the question...why?
I mean, 3ds max, XSI, C4D...Maya, LightWave... All those programs have far better, more advanced rigging and animating tools than Poser does. I can't see a single reason why someone who works with 3ds max would want to import a Poser scene.
A fully-rigged character, complete with textures intact, yes, but not a full scene.
And if that is their hope that professional studios will want to import full scenes, then they'd definitely better work on the workflow aspects. People don't have time to screw around fighting Poser just to get a scene out of it to import into something like XSI.
Fully-rigged characters, yes, if it works, that is. COLLADA and/or FBX.
but even I, who am not a professional.. even I can import a V4 mesh into LightWave and fully rig it in about an hour, then have access to far better animation tools than what Poser can manage as it exists now. And that's just LightWave. max has better CA tools still, and XSI even better.
I see what you're saying and I agree, but they're going to have to fix alot more about it before they can even hope to get the big time's attention.

By the way, there's a beta COLLADA exporter for Poser 7, available on the e-frontier site.

I am just a hobbist too and I can see paying 3 grand for a program if 3D art is your livelyhood and your career. I have actually been happy with Poser 7 it does what I need it to do and I have made a few commissions using Poser 7 as well. I think this kinda goes back to how one uses their tools one can have the most expensive 3D app but if they are too lazy to learn the ins and outs of it they will not get the results they want.  I have been really learning the ropes on using nodes and the HDRI lighting this is my latest render using HDRI and poser 7:

"The patio"

This is only 3 lights and an HDRI probe and 4 minutes tops in render time. I agree poser is a great hobby app but if you really work with it Poser can do some amazing things.

As far as that memory message, the only time I ge that is if I bring in an article of clothing that has cartoon colored body handles or hair that is cartoon shaded yet the textures load just fine.

Well, before this gets out of hand I want to make it clear that it is not my intention for this to be an anti-Poser thread.
I was mostly wondering if some of these things that have been causing workflow problems for years were finally going to be eliminated.
I'm sure Poser 7 works great for alot of people, but the things I mentioned are real issues as far as I'm concerned, even just being a hobbyist, and these are things which have been complained about for years.

Pagan Artist, consider yourself lucky if you don't get that error message. :)
I think it has something to do with where textures are stored. I don't go for that idea of having stuff scattered all over the place, and I don't even like Poser's Runtime scheme, but instead of having copies of textures everywhere, I have them all in my various LightWave Content folders. Poser cr2 and pz3 files store full paths, so it's not an issue, but i think it's the source of some of those errors I get. Fake errors though, as I said, and Poser 7 bitches and moans, but loads the stuff anyway. ;)

Nope don't think this is an anti-poser thread just stating how much I've enjoyed using the program and wanted to point out it's a great little app for hobbists and those that do not do major production work just smaller commissioned art. With a little patients, sitting down and really getting into what  poser can do with the resources it has within itself it's surprising what the little app will do. ; )

Maybee instead of half solutions it's time for poser to be rewritten in a new modern way, keep all the files formats working and put over all the new things we have after poser 5 (dynamics, lights, face room) new interface and then sell this as a professional version and not an old patch over patch poser 4! Pause poser hobby version to poser 7 with all bugs fixed and move poser to a new era... Or else we get new things on every version that don't work 100% due to old code... (I am not a programmer it's what I hear for years now) So we need a daz studio made from a company that makes programs that work and not programs to shell content... If not I am afraid poser current 'style' will not hold much...

smith should simplify it IMVHO, as newbies are finding it overwhelming and never use most of the features. I reckon it's a good job that it isn't the xmas/channukah/kwanza season in bangaloru - should help in getting it out by xmas or new year's.

Well they couldn't very well call it Poser Pro if they simplified it. ;)
Maybe they could release a Poser Lite, or a Poser Partial...

I have to admit that I do not use the face or hair rooms but I do use the cloth room and the nodes. But if they kicked out the face and hair rooms I wouldn't be sad at all. Of course the last time I brought this up about the face and hair rooms people showed up at my home with torches and pitch forks.

"Torches and pitchforks". :)

Yeah, that's why I threw in that little disclaimer a few msgs back... something about Poser brings out the latent raving lunatic in people, and woe to he who even appears to be insulting it. ;)

While I'm at it though, another reason for why they ought to make it so we can program our own keyboard shorcut assignments:
Ctrl+E is rstore element. However, right next to E is R and W. Hit ctrl+R accidentally and off you go, rendering away. God forbid you have a bunch of shadow maps, because cancel ain't doing a thing until those maps are done rendering.
Of course, ctrl+w is Close. Hit that accidentally right after saving and...well, you're out of there.
Ctrl+S is Save. , right next to Ctrl+D, Drop To Floor. Go to drop something to the floor and if on that off chance you're not paying attention, instant overwrite..... Brilliant, just brilliant. ;)

I'm thinking the same thing about rebuilding Poser from the ground-up (and have been preaching it for what... four years now?)

Quote - Or else we get new things on every version that don't work 100% due to old code... (I am not a programmer it's what I hear for years now)

It's a delightful phenomenon that programmers like to refer to as "cruft". Basically, it describes bits of code that are inefficient or resource-sloppy, but you can't quite get rid of them for one reason - there's nothing more efficient code-wise that would behave the same way for a feature, and if you do ditch it, suddenly the old content no longer works like it did. It's increasingly tough to write around it as time goes by, and the stuff takes little to no advantage of new OS and/or hardware features that could make it run faster. Apple had this problem in 1998-1999, but decided to damn the torpedoes and write OSX anyway, building a "Classic" emulation layer to run old MacOS code with. The move had paid back in huge dividends, becuase OSX is sleek, fast, and IMHO pretty sexy to boot (okay, maybe I went overboard with the last part...). Microsoft has a HUGE problem with cruft now, which explains why Vista runs kinda clunky at times. I think Poser can pull it off, though - after all, DAZ has already had to deal with making Poser files behave halfway decently without using Poser or its codebase to do it... I don't see why Poser's codemonkeys can't do the same thing. Of course, they're going to need one Hell of a solid architect. DAZ had/has Taylor Wilson... having spoken shop with the man from the word "go", I can say with full certainty that he knows what the hell he's doing, and built a damned solid foundation for D|S. No kick against Poser's team, but they need a guy like that, and I hope they either have one, or can get one. -- Poser's UI has to go. Kai Krause was revolutionary back when the PC world consisted of Windows 95, 1024x768 SVGA resolution, and you had (at best) a Pentium II @ 400MHz w/ 24MB of RAM to run everything on. But nowadays, in an era of multiple desktops, monster desktop real-estate, native 3d hardware video acceleration, and UI tools that (no matter the platform) can do double- and triple-duty? Man... For instance - compare Poser's UI with something that's not D|S... like Modo. In Modo, you can arrange the workspace, the menus, the contexts, and even the tools to suit you. You're not bound to any one look and feel. Now Poser has come a long, long way since P3, but no matter what you do to it, it still looks, feels, and behaves like ...Poser. The 'window' eats the entire desktop it loads on, and doesn't play nice with other user interfaces (try to use the OSX Expose' feature, and it goes all wonky sometimes, especially with pop-up windows. To be fair though, it's not an easy feature to code for). In all, it's due for an overhaul... /P

Quote - "Torches and pitchforks". :)
While I'm at it though, another reason for why they ought to make it so we can program our own keyboard shorcut assignments

I got no kick against that - you should've seen me back when I was a Quake freak... my keybind file was second only to the NSA's archives for best-kept secret. :) /P

Were we not told at first that P5 was going to be a re-write and all they did was wedge more in and on top of. It has been passed on to a couple of companies and nothing but more wedging. Now a new company and with another P7 SR, allegedly, to come out and a Pro version, some day , already writen at least for the most part. Do you really think that they are going to re-write from base up? Not going to happen.

If it does happen, it's going to cost big time or worse, make it all plugins and then it will really cost you big time. DS is a perfect example, It cost more than poser now with all the plugs with a free base.

Quote -
I'm thinking the same thing about rebuilding Poser from the ground-up (and have been preaching it for what... four years now?)

Yeah, I've been hearing you talk about Poser code for quite a while now. Or should I say seeing you write about...

I'm no programmer, but I'm sure you're dead on with what you say about this.
As for all the comparisons between Poser and D|S.. I'd take that a step further. Obviously DAZ has created a great product (as well as a brilliant marketing strategy) with D|S, but if I were them I'd be thinking bigger than that...

Quote - Were we not told at first that P5 was going to be a re-write and all they did was wedge more in and on top of. It has been passed on to a couple of companies and nothing but more wedging. 

 

nope, changes are happening

Quote - Now a new company and with another P7 SR, allegedly, to come out and a Pro version, some day , already writen at least for the most part. Do you really think that they are going to re-write from base up? Not going to happen.

 

It is happening and has been happening (example, if i recall correclty one of the later P6 SRs mentioned in the readme that they had rewritten the library code.)

Quote - If it does happen, it's going to cost big time or worse, make it all plugins and then it will really cost you big time. DS is a perfect example, It cost more than poser now with all the plugs with a free base.

 

It doesn't have to "cost big time" if it is done incrementally over versions instead of dump and start over from nothing.

Hmmm, I had thought that they had said it was going to be a re-write and then changed it to the, "changes are happening," thingy. LOL so long ago maybe it was what we were all wishing for instead of what we got.

Now, if you re-write something for an old base, wouldn't that mean you are just improving the code to work better with the code of the old base? And, wouldn't you have to re-write it again to work with a new base code if that was done? So wouldn't you  have to re-write everything to work with the new base code to get it all to work right? I'm not a programmer so I don't know. I do know in normal everyday things that you can modify something to work with something old but adding something old onto something new is still cludging things in and does not work as well or needs to be replace with something new.

So how many versions/years will it take to get a re-write and how far behind the curve will it be when it does get done.

Quote - Hmmm, I had thought that they had said it was going to be a re-write and then changed it to the, "changes are happening," thingy. LOL so long ago maybe it was what we were all wishing for instead of what we got.

 

I think the lack of any significant change in the UI, no significant jumps in performance and no real statement from the programers about what has been happening has lead many to belive that nothing was changing.

Quote - Now, if you re-write something for an old base, wouldn't that mean you are just improving the code to work better with the code of the old base? And, wouldn't you have to re-write it again to work with a new base code if that was done? So wouldn't you  have to re-write everything to work with the new base code to get it all to work right? I'm not a programmer so I don't know. I do know in normal everyday things that you can modify something to work with something old but adding something old onto something new is still cludging things in and does not work as well or needs to be replace with something new.

 

I have limited programing experience, and i dont know what they are working with, or how they are going about it, but in my expereince you can make such changes without problems.

a simple way of explaining it is that in a given portion of a program there is data input, the process runs, and data is output. How that process is programed or changed isn't relavent to any other portion of the program so long as that process accepts the input and produces the output.

Quote - So how many versions/years will it take to get a re-write and how far behind the curve will it be when it does get done.

 

dropping the code and rewritting from scratch would definatly put them behind the curve as they would have to fight their way back to what they have now before they could make additions. Rewriting a bit at a time alows them to keep advancing (possibley taking advantage of already updated code) as the base code is updated.

as for when it will be done.... there is no telling. there may be some portions that don't need to be rewritten and some that wont make any noticable diffrence for the user. so completing the rewrite may not be a significant event to the user.

@MikeJ: In P7 you can change the hotkeys, within limits.  Find the
file Poser.xrc in the Prefs subfolder, and you'll see the definitions
for existing hotkeys.  With caution, you can apply new 'accel' lines
and delete old ones.  

Unfortunately it doesn't include all of the key assignments ... 
for me the most annoying one of all is Enter running
the animation, which isn't defined by the XRC stuff.  

I've pretty much lost interest in poser upgrades. I'm still on Poser 6 and I'm sure I will be for a long time, unless the real issues are tackled. I don't need new features, I need a faster loading & responding poser. I don't need more render gimmicks, I need faster rendering that is using resources much better. I don't need more content, I need a better library system. I don't need tons of new features, I need a new and up to date light system.

For me P7 and P7 Pro seem a complete waste of money, since the real issues haven't been tackled at all. At least they managed to fix the multiple undos now after all these years, but I'm not going to pay $129 for that, knowing I have to put up with all kinds of new issues. Poser 6 is very stable for me and I'm still hearing mixed reports about P7.

I'll wait a couple of more years with upgrading..... perhaps they may have fixed the real issues in Poser or D/S has finally better then Poser is without having to buy tons of plugins which make it much more expensive then beying Poser.

We already have a Poser pro,  it's called Carrara.

Carrara is Poser Pro??? In your dream perhaps :-) In the real world Carrara is far from being able to replace Poser.

Quote - We already have a Poser pro,  it's called Carrara.

 

can it use MC6s?

well, it's got an even more hideous interface than Poser so does that count ?

Okay,  I've been thinking about this topic, while working on my V4 morphs.  The first thing I'd like to say is I liked the old Ray Dream studio interface,  what has changed with Carrara?  Second,  if Carrara's SDK is avaiable then one should be able to script a ui to their liking.  Third,  Ray Dream Studio was able to import Poser's materials,  again what has changed with Carrara?  Fourth,  speaking of SDK's,  when are they going to release Poser's SDK?  Fifth,  Carrara $249,  Poser Pro $400+  hmmm.

Does Carrara import Poser scenes with fully rigged Poser people?
I don't mean that to sound contentious - I just don't know anything about Carrara.