o.k., who put the kittie in the chicken costume?
jay leno is back from holiday tomorrow and he's just gonna HATE that :lol:

p.s.  good luck with yer project. r.d.
work started on poser before my time (ca. 1986), hence there may be a bit of
catch-up involved.  and don't give up hope on poser yet, the rest of ya.

Actually,  William Fetter invented CG in 1960.  http://courses.washington.edu/eatreun/html/history/h_nw.html
Um 26 years before poser.  My opinion P3 was the last upgrade of poser.  Everything else is others licensed programs attached to poser.

I think RD will have no problem considering the wealth of programs and information available in the open gl community.

Quote - o.k., who put the kittie in the chicken costume?
jay leno is back from holiday tomorrow and he's just gonna HATE that :lol:

p.s.  good luck with yer project. r.d.
work started on poser before my time (ca. 1986), hence there may be a bit of
catch-up involved.  and don't give up hope on poser yet, the rest of ya.

Thanks, but fortunately for me there are a lot of other talented programmers out there who have already laid most of the groundwork.  Unlike back in 1986 when poser first started and there really wasn't anything to work with, I have a ton of source code already prewritten to draw from - Rendering engines like yafray, cloth simulators, 3d graphics API's, scene generators, the works.

I won't have to really do anything new or exceedingly complicated, I don't have to invent new technologies to accomplish my goal as they did.  All the hard stuff has already been done.  So really it's just a matter of getting a lot of these seperate projects integrated into one well thought out gui that will present the biggest hurdle, and then figuring out Poser and Daz studio's file formats so that the content can be easily imported and used  within the new program.

There are even open source projects for rigging an animation out there.  Just a matter of looking through there code, seeing what can be integrated, rewriting some things here and there and getting it all put together.  Granted, this will still take some time, but unlike the original developers of Poser I have a ton of predone libraries and API's, even sample source code to work with. Resources they never had to draw from, which is why there development cycle was much more difficult than mine will be.

Quote - *So sure, I'd love to have some original figures for "my app" - Just be advised that its going to take a while to get it going so you'll need ot be patient.  This isn't going to happen overnight, a lot of components need to be coded and brought together properly in a decent UI.

Excellent!  I'll hold back the mark 3 mesh for you.  Question,  do you want the figures separate or an adroginous one like makehuman?

Well, my goal is to design a system that will easily use both Poser and Daz file formats, however it will also have it's own rigging system (something hopefully a bit easier to use that Poser is now), so as far as format is concerned you could really do either.

I might even look at integrating it with the makehuman project, allowing it to easily import and rig such figures with a minimum of fuss, though of course this will probably be a little further down the line. 

*I doubt Poser will be allowed to die out. With the enormous user-base Poser has, there's too much money to be made by further development.

*That statement is completely correct. While poser has an enourmous user base, the number of users that actually buy is key to the further development of poser. Starting with the release of Poser 5, with each succesive version the number of buying users has been decreasing. If the user base isn't buying or upgrading to the new verison then poser will arive at a point that further development isn't worth the investment anymore, since good returns cannot be quaranteed any longer.

I like Poser, but I'm not buying every upgrade released. I'm on Poser Pro Base now and I really do love it, best version of Poser as far as I'm concerned. It almost works as Poser should work. Almost..... there's still room for improvements, like better memory handling with duplicate items & textures in a scene, a better light system, better camera system and so on. Will this ever happen? As much as I love Poser I doubt version 8 will be released, there are too little paying customers left to support the future development of Poser. SM has paid quite some money to take over EF and I seriously doubt they're happy with the sales figures up to now., I think they're starting to realise that the investment isn't as profitable as they thought it would be.

Haven't heard that many owners of PP complain it was bug ridden so far. That could either mean it's pretty solid or not that many folks have bought it and know how use it to break yet. Hard to believe nobodies having problems with the high end plugins.

There's another option.... only few people have actually bought it and that's more likely the case and so we do not see a lot of discussion and complaints.

Remember the release of Poser 5? Threads and threads and more threads soon after it's release. Then came Poser 6..... considerable less threads but still a good amount of them. Poser 7??? Compared to Poser 6 not too many threads and compared to Poser 5 little threads. Now we see Poser Pro..... even compared to Poser 7 there are very few threads about it. Compared to Poser 6 hardly any and when compared to Poser 5 almost none.

It's a clear downfall and it's worrying, since it's not a good sign for the further development of Poser.

Renderdog2000,  are you going to have support for Sub_D?

*It's a clear downfall and it's worrying, since it's not a good sign for the further development of Poser.

Poser content will be the downfall of Poser.

*Poser content will be the downfall of Poser.

*It already is as far as I'm concerned...... at least the majority of content released, there are still exceptions.

I hear a lot of people talking about SM's sales. Do you folks have information the rest of us don't?

I guess you're not a share-holder then?

The percentage of bitching about 'Poser, versionX' on websites is hardly any kind of indicator as to sales. What there is is a growing nonvocal majority for whom the program does what they expect....or else they simply don't bother with arguing on a forum. I rather suspect that the 'Hell will freeze over before you pry my P4 out of my cold, dead hands' crowd would drop it in a second if some of the enhancements that the userbase has been asking for get implemented....save in the few cases of those afraid of new tech or simply not interested or unable to upgrade. P7P has a few more features to obtain before it gets close to that 'pro' (new, faster lighting engine, rigging enhancements or just adding an out and out weightmapping scheme, multithreading the dynamics, per bone sticky IK, and IMHO, and out and 'animation room' with none of the library pallet nonsense; just a viewport, the dopesheet, a triple graph display, things like that.), and that doesn't even consider the render engine, because to get that more professionally inclined user, its the animation controls that are going to be the attractor. If Poser ever got to the point where you could do quality character animations with comparative ease for use in other apps, it would take off once again... And let us know how the project goes, RD! If what you imagine is doable (particularly if you could work out rigging conversion for the older meshes), it might be the very thing to light a fire under both development teams...particularly if your app could export in Poser native, where it could be used as an animation plugin for something like Vue. If you get to that stage, you might even want to contact the vendors about compatibility issues. Some would ignore you, but some are geeky enough to think an open source app would be coolbeans....

Cook the books. :)

*but some are geeky enough to think an open source app would be coolbeans....

*Or someone could write a blender add-on that will make it read Poser content. The rest of the app for posing, animating rendering etc. is already written.

Quote -
That and figuring out all the eccentricities of both Poser and Daz Studio file formats so it can effectively use either, that way you have a world of premade content at your fingertips. 

Would you consider making this app multi-platform, so us Linux users would finally be able to dump Poser althogether? Just a thought... and BTW, the Linux community IS growing!

One of the problems with Poser (as I see it, and I'm a newbie in 3D stuff BUT) it tries to be too many things, and doesn't do real well with anything. The plugin concept is not a bad one - let some of the tasks be done by external software in separate processes (kinda like Kerkythea does, rendering in the background). Maybe the "rooms" could be splintered up some, so the whole thing doesn't load as a monolith.

I've found that Python tools - like those by PhilC and Netherworks - have made Poser 7 what I need Poser to be: a content tool.

If all I wanted to do was pose stuff, I'd go with D|S. Rendering? Kerkythea. Mesh creation? Blender3D or Silo.

What would be cool is when all these apps can use the same files to do what each particular app specializes in - perhaps RD's program could fire up the Kerkythea render engine like Blender3D already does or bring up a mesh-mod tool when you want to fix / mod content on the vertex level.

Just my two cents...

Don't think I do agree, Poser doesn't try to do too many things at all. It does what it needs to do, though some things it does it could do better.

Take out one of the parts and poser just wouldn't be complete at all. I do like FireFly and with PPro it can render in the background so it doesn't get in the way of still being able to work in Poser. I like having everything I need in one application, instead of having to switch back and fort between different applications and having to worry about compatiblity.

I've been using Poser for over 10 years and imo what it does it does pretty well, I still haven't found a replacement or a set of replacements that can do equal or better and still are affordable.

Perhaps what you need from Poser is not what the creators had in mind at all...... but python is a great addition, it can turn poser into something that the user needs, even though poser wan't created with that need in mind.

Attached Link: http://www.smallcapwatch.com/company.asp?TICKER=smsi&p=&d=6m

MOM! Aeilkema's eating the newbies again! :tt2:

Quote - Renderdog2000,  are you going to have support for Sub_D?

*It's a clear downfall and it's worrying, since it's not a good sign for the further development of Poser.

Poser content will be the downfall of Poser.

In the alpha?  Probably not - but eventually yes, I'd like to support it.

Quote - Would you consider making this app multi-platform, so us Linux users would finally be able to dump Poser althogether? Just a thought... and BTW, the Linux community IS growing!

Cross platform coding is a must as far as I'm concerned, there will be both native Linux and Windows versions available, and eventually perhaps Mac as well, the Mac version might be a bit slower coming as I don't currently own a mac and wasn't planning on purchasing one for a while yet.

The only problem with making it Mac compatible is that does slow down development somewhat, since most of the really good, easy to use GUI libraries haven't been ported to Mac yet. 

So at the moment I'm experimenting a bit to see what the best combination of libraries is going to be, then I'll figure out what platforms it will eventually support, but Linux and Windows are a must.

The app itself will be modular, so that you can plug in different sections as you go - which will also allow for it to be easly extensible.  I plan on giving it an internal render engine for it's own use, but I also hope to be able to connect it effectively to external render engines in the open source realm as well, giving the end user a wide vareity of engines they can use if they wish.

The native file format I'm leaning towards is just simple XML, though I've considered making the native file format for it collada as well, but I might just go with XML for it's own internal file format.   By using simple XML to describe files it makes it easy to edit and very transportable across networks, and it has a lot of other advantages as well.  I'll also give it the abiilty to zip and unzip files on the fly to conserve drive space if the user so chooses.

It will be able to read both Poser and Daz studio formats and make use of either.  I'll probably add in 3ds support as well, and write a really easy to use SDK for anyone wishing to add additional file importing or exporting capability.

Unlike poser it will have a database of files and where they are actually stored on the hard drive, and it will generate it's file lisitngs from this database - this allows you to quickly search or filter even across multiple runtimes for the specfic items you desire, even while using files stored in Posers native runtime structure.   By using this database structure it will be a lot easier for other external programs to be able to find files even if they are just stored in Poser's runtime directories and relatively referenced.  It also allows the program to have functions like integrity checking built in, as well as the ability to safely move or delete files listed in the database without risking the chance that you might delete a texture file that is referenced by another object that needs it.

Other than that I have a few ideas in mind, I need to do a bit more investigating to determine my best course for libraries, I'm even considering doing a full blown Java app so that it would run on any platform but the way things look at the moment my guess would be this will probably be a job for C++.

For the OpenGL/3D part of things I'd suggest OGRE. Cross-platform, open source, a large community, and on Windows you get to choose between DirectX and OpenGL, without sacrificing portability to MacOSX and Linux. And the HLSL support is neat. There's also normal mapping, parallax mapping, and a lot of other goodies incorporatied right into OGRE. Think about the possibility of realtime animation rendering at modern game quality... Combined with good animation tools such a package would definitely gain some foothold in the 3D CG world.

I love dockable windows and toolbars in GUIs.
In general, I'm not that enthusiastic about multimodal apps. Switching modes can be a pain. Dockable palettes are usually a more user friendly way.
Then again, some tasks are clearly different. The Setup room for example, that is quite different from "normal" Poser use, so a special Setup node is not unfriendly to the user.
Actually, something like the Setup room would be a suitable plugin candidate.
Materials, however, are part of the standard Poser workflow and should not require a separate mode. Dynamic cloth and hair - and rigid body dynamics? Why not incoporate ODE into this app? - questionable. I use it as part of my standard workflow, but not everyone is that much into dynamic cloth and hair.
Functionality comparable to the face room - I'd say a separate mode. We're talking morph generation here, not a typical part of the standard Poser workflow.

Wow, I am impressed! I'll be patient... but impatient at the same time... when you get ready to go to testing, I run Ubuntu Linux ... I'll be upgraded to 8.04 LTS by then. Very much looking forward to this, RD!
:thumbupboth:

Quote - For the OpenGL/3D part of things I'd suggest OGRE. Cross-platform, open source, a large community, and on Windows you get to choose between DirectX and OpenGL, without sacrificing portability to MacOSX and Linux. And the HLSL support is neat. There's also normal mapping, parallax mapping, and a lot of other goodies incorporatied right into OGRE. Think about the possibility of realtime animation rendering at modern game quality... Combined with good animation tools such a package would definitely gain some foothold in the 3D CG world.

I love dockable windows and toolbars in GUIs.
In general, I'm not that enthusiastic about multimodal apps. Switching modes can be a pain. Dockable palettes are usually a more user friendly way.
Then again, some tasks are clearly different. The Setup room for example, that is quite different from "normal" Poser use, so a special Setup node is not unfriendly to the user.
Actually, something like the Setup room would be a suitable plugin candidate.
Materials, however, are part of the standard Poser workflow and should not require a separate mode. Dynamic cloth and hair - and rigid body dynamics? Why not incoporate ODE into this app? - questionable. I use it as part of my standard workflow, but not everyone is that much into dynamic cloth and hair.
Functionality comparable to the face room - I'd say a separate mode. We're talking morph generation here, not a typical part of the standard Poser workflow.

OGRE is a great suggestion, I'll definately look into that.  Dynamic cloth will be built in, but I hope to make it much more user friendly and useful than the poser version.  ODE looks fantastic, I can think of a ton of uses for it, not sure I can get them all up and running in the alpha version but eventually I can see a lot of extremely useful features that ODE could provide.

The face room - well, I've never had much use for Posers face room, it's a wasted tab for me since it only works with such limited geometries.  I haven't really done enough research yet into the particulars, but it would be great to be able to generate a decent representation of a 3d model from a couple of 2d pictures and have that built in to the programs functionality.  I'll probably have to do a lot of reading and experimenting before I can even begin to tackle a project like that though.

My thinking on this is a bit different though - I've tried the face shop demo and in all honesty I've never been able to get anything out of it that remotely resembles a human face, at least not one that hasn't been infected by some horrible disease.

The demo videos I've seen make it look so easy, but when I outline the jawline in particular I've noticed that very, very minor variations in the outlining process lead to huge variations in the resultant figure.  If I'm going to do a "face room" type of app I want something that is easy to use and will give you usable results with minimum effort, something that won't go outside certain parameters unless you shut off a limiter switch so your end results don't completely suck.  So I wouldn't look for anything like that in the alpha release - Lol

Mostly I'll be concentrating on reading in files, formating them properly, morphing, posing and rendering.  I'd also like to include an easy to use, straight forward rigging system and hopefully a simple, easy to use animator as well.

Once that's done I'll start looking at adding other bells and whistles, at some point it might have it's own modeler, uv mapper, etc - but these are all features that are not on my A list, at least not at the moment. 

Quote - Wow, I am impressed! I'll be patient... but impatient at the same time... when you get ready to go to testing, I run Ubuntu Linux ... I'll be upgraded to 8.04 LTS by then. Very much looking forward to this, RD!
:thumbupboth:

Lol - okdoke, consider yourself on the beta test list then.  Two biggest hurdles are going to be getting it to read Poser and Daz Studio file formats, since neither is particularly well documented, and getting the GUI down so that it is intuitive enough for those who use Poser/Daz studio to be able to use it easily without a steep learning curve.

Good luck to you if you can do it. I would like to see a system like your talking about. But until I actually see it / meaning a working copy in my hand, I'll file it under the same folder as I do with everything Daz says and hypes. Say one thing and a couple of years later still nothing but hype.

That doesn't mean i don't believe you can do it, I don't know you and couldn't say what you can and can't do. I will watch and remember / BM this thread and see what has become of this talk in months to come. Then we will know. All the best to you in doing this.

Quote - Good luck to you if you can do it. I would like to see a system like your talking about. But until I actually see it / meaning a working copy in my hand, I'll file it under the same folder as I do with everything Daz says and hypes. Say one thing and a couple of years later still nothing but hype.

That doesn't mean i don't believe you can do it, I don't know you and couldn't say what you can and can't do. I will watch and remember / BM this thread and see what has become of this talk in months to come. Then we will know. All the best to you in doing this.

Nothing to worry about really, got a pretty good notion as to how the direciton I want to take the development in, which for me is most of the battle.  I had planned to finish my other project first, but I think I might just put it on the back burner and swing into development on this project instead, since it will pretty much make the other one obsolete.

Now I just need to do a bit more reading and get a plan going for the GUI, and then I can start coding.  At some point when I feel I have enough of a codebase started I'll head over to sourceforge and see if I can get some other developers interested in helping with the project.  Always a bit easier to do when you actually have a codebase started.

After that we'll just see how it goes, as I said most of what I'd like to do has already been done, in bit's and pieces, by the open source community so I'll have plenty of examples to draw from.  Really just a matter of putting it all together.

Quote - Good luck to you if you can do it. I would like to see a system like your talking about. But until I actually see it / meaning a working copy in my hand, I'll file it under the same folder as I do with everything Daz says and hypes. Say one thing and a couple of years later still nothing but hype.

That doesn't mean i don't believe you can do it, I don't know you and couldn't say what you can and can't do. I will watch and remember / BM this thread and see what has become of this talk in months to come. Then we will know. All the best to you in doing this.

Oh, and one other thought occurs, I won't be making dime one out of this, unlike Daz, so I have no use for hype one way or the other.  I'm offering this as an open source project to give back a little bit to the community.

So if the alpha version doesn't meet with your approval, so be it.  I'll make what changes and additions I can because I'm always open to suggestions.  But I won't "hype" the program or it's development, because there is nothing to be gained by doing so, and frankly I resent the implication that I would.

When the project succeeds it will hopefully be of benefit of the whole community, but as an open source project this won't be something I'm doing for my own personal benefit, nor will it require "hyping" since I won't be making dime one off of this either way.

So by all means, save this thread.  And no matter what eventually becomes of this project at least I can hold my head high and say that I tried to do what I could to give back to the community. 

i was wishing you luck in your attempt. I also don't know why you should care about my approval. I only said I will believe it when I see it. For you see, there is always someone that says they can do it better when this topic comes up or it has in the last 7 years I've been reading them. Also why I pointed out the Daz hype, which has nothing to do with money or me questioning your reasons. Just pointing out that it has been said before and nothing ever happenes.

No need to get offensive about it. I'm rooting for you to suceed. Sorry if the word Hype bothers you, all I can say is, Oh Well.

Quote - i was wishing you luck in your attempt. I also don't know why you should care about my approval. I only said I will believe it when I see it. For you see, there is always someone that says they can do it better when this topic comes up or it has in the last 7 years I've been reading them. Also why I pointed out the Daz hype, which has nothing to do with money or me questioning your reasons. Just pointing out that it has been said before and nothing ever happenes.

No need to get offensive about it. I'm rooting for you to suceed. Sorry if the word Hype bothers you, all I can say is, Oh Well.

Well, mom always told me if I didn't have anything nice to say, not to say anything at all.  Guess that pretty much covers most of what I could do for a response. 

However  The implication of your post was clear, and insulting.  This response isn't really much better, truth be told.  No, I don't care if I have your approval, don't need it at all.  Also don't care if I have your support, again, unecessary for my goals and aims.   As to believing it when you see it, feel free.  I don't hype - again a clear implication of your statements.  Daz may have been blowing smoke up your skirt for 7 years, but I'm not Daz, not affiliated with Daz, and have never once in my life claimed that I was going to write a program that I didn't end up writing.  Coding is more than just my profession and livelyhood, it is my passion. 

I have no idea why you would be so nasty to someone who merely wants to see if there is interest in an open source project that could potentially replace Poser and Daz Studio at some point.  I have no idea why you continue to take pot shots at me and my reputation based on what some totally 3rd party and  unrelated company has done or said in the past regarding development of a completely different project than the one I'm currently proposing.

And most of all I have no conception as to how in the world you would get the impression that your approval would mean squat one way or the other.  However, for the record, it doesn't.  I'm starting this project in the hope of giving something back to the community.  If you benefit from it all, perhaps you could work on a huge apology letter considering so far you've done nothing but make snide comments and post innuendo about my skills and my intent. 

But lets just say for the sake of argument that the project fails to get going and doesn't produce any useful work product.  What have you lost?  What did it cost you?  Nothing.  I'll have lost a great deal of my free time trying to make things a little better for the community, and you and the rest of the community will have lost nothing.

Perhaps you should consider that, before penning yet another personal attack or snide comment.  What I'm doing costs you nothing, and does nothing to harm you.  What I am proposing could be of great benefit to you down the road should I succeed, and in return I'm asking for nothing.   I'm investing my personal time and donating my skills.  All your doing is making nasty comments and deriding me for statements made by some other company or some other people some years ago.

So, who do you think has the moral high ground here?  Give it some thought. 

Dear renderdog2000;
If you make your app NURMS sub-division compatable, woud that or wouldn't that tend to make the higher poly Poser figures, such as V3, M3, Aiko, and V4 way too sluggish to practically pose?  Could it mean that such figures as Posette, DorK, Judy, Don and M2 and V2 would be more ideal?
Just asking, since I've started learning Max, I've become much impressed with its method of nurms smoothing, and using textures to do the detail.  On the other hand, when models become a bit poly intensive, then Max starts to buch and kick.
Also, any chance of incorporating Vray in this app?
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

BS you read what you wanted and not what I said, again oh well. For the record as I said in my post, I hope you succeed because we could use it.

Dear renderdog2000;
I am most interested in seeing you succeed, and will be most grateful when you do!
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Quote - Dear renderdog2000;
If you make your app NURMS sub-division compatable, woud that or wouldn't that tend to make the higher poly Poser figures, such as V3, M3, Aiko, and V4 way too sluggish to practically pose?  Could it mean that such figures as Posette, DorK, Judy, Don and M2 and V2 would be more ideal?
Just asking, since I've started learning Max, I've become much impressed with its method of nurms smoothing, and using textures to do the detail.  On the other hand, when models become a bit poly intensive, then Max starts to buch and kick.
Also, any chance of incorporating Vray in this app?
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Ok, as to the NURMS question, NURMS is used on low polygon mesh to make the surface smoother, so it really isn't designed to be used for higher polygon models.  Not only from the speed aspect, but also because they don't really get much benefit from it.  However NURMS, provided I can incorporate it properly, will be available and have more or less an on off switch that you can apply to each object in your scene as you see fit.  Might even have it do a quick polygon count on the object first and pop up a warning message if you try to apply it to an already high poly count figure, have to see how feasible that will be.

I'd like to give this app the ability to export to both .3ds and the collada formats, so worst case scenario you should be able to import into MAX if all else fails.   I haven't done a lot of work with Vray but provided it has a decent SDK available I might be able to whip something up to allow you to bypass Max entirely, no promises of course but more than happy to investigate it and see what's possible.  ATM I'm concentrating more on integration with open source rendering engines that are available for both Linux and Windows, but should Vray integration prove feasible I'd be more than happy to provide it.

Quote - BS you read what you wanted and not what I said, again oh well. For the record as I said in my post, I hope you succeed because we could use it.

That's ok, it takes a pretty big person to apologize even when they are clearly in the wrong.  For the purposes of future communication with other posters I would encourage you to go back and reread your own posts, and see all of the implications and remarks you made and try to imagine someone reading them without the benefit of knowing your intent or anything else about you.

I think you'll discover quite quickly how it is that your posts could be considered so offensive, at the very least I hope you can realize how incredibly negative they were and how completely unfair it is to judge statements that I make based on the reputation of a compeletly different source, like Daz.

For the record I hope this project does succeed and that you do get some benefit out of it.  I would also hope that when it does you'd be a big enough person to at least offer thanks or congratulations, if not an apology.  But regardless I won't hold you to it nor will I expect it.  Other than that I think we can consider this particular conversation closed.  

While I'm more than happy to entertain any suggestions or advice you might have concerning features or interface, I really have no desire to hear any more about your personal feelings toward this project, my abilities as a programmer or my intent behind beginning this project in the first place.  I think that pretty much covers it.

Dear renderdog2000;
Just a minor point, but if you could incluse such Max like features such as a gizmo, and the ability to lock onto an object after selection (pressing the spacebar inMax), and even to freeze them occassionally, it'd make character manipulation and posing so much easier.
Poser is inferior to Max in many ways, but in one specific thing it's superior -I find it a lot easier to push and pull a character's appendages into the pose that I want. 
On the other hand, selecting a figures body, and trying to push it across an open space without moving scenery can be a pain.  In max, I can simply lock onto an object, and no matter what else I may click on won't, it won't be selected until I first unlock the previous object.
Another thing, I'd suggest the max system of spinners for parameter selection rather than either dials or sliders.
All the best,
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Quote - Dear renderdog2000;
Just a minor point, but if you could incluse such Max like features such as a gizmo, and the ability to lock onto an object after selection (pressing the spacebar inMax), and even to freeze them occassionally, it'd make character manipulation and posing so much easier.
Poser is inferior to Max in many ways, but in one specific thing it's superior -I find it a lot easier to push and pull a character's appendages into the pose that I want. 
On the other hand, selecting a figures body, and trying to push it across an open space without moving scenery can be a pain.  In max, I can simply lock onto an object, and no matter what else I may click on won't, it won't be selected until I first unlock the previous object.
Another thing, I'd suggest the max system of spinners for parameter selection rather than either dials or sliders.
All the best,
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Figure locking should be easy enough to implement I would think, just a matter of ignoring any additional calls that might be made within the scene if another object is inadvertandtly clicked on until the lock is shut off.

I've also considered the push pull for appendages, and I'd like to try something like Posers with a little "twist" - I'm going to see about allowing you to push pull on all three axis, or to only have your push-pull affect the axis you select.

For example, if the limb is already where you want it in the Z axis, you can select via toggle switch or radial buttons (probably radials) to only move in the X & Y axis, or the X & Z axis, or whatever combination you wish.  Naturally their will be a selection for all three axis as well and that will be the default setting when you select a body part,  but I think it would be very nice feature that would save a lot of time posing figures.

As to spinners, I'm not a big fan of posers dials to be honest, so I wasn't planning on duplicating them.  Spinners might be the way to go, I'll have to see what's available in whatever GUI API I finally settle on and go from there I guess :)

My apologies to you. My posts were not meant to be offensive or directed at your character.

My last words. Modo support

Dear renderdog2000;
Would it be possible to also include multi-track animation, the same as in Max, or is this becomming too high end already?  I know it's possible in Max to render two seperately animated objects at the same time, but not too sure how it's done, or at all in Poser 5.  On the other hand, trying to bone and skin a figure in Max is all but pure hell.  This is precisely where Poser comes into it's own!  It comes already with ready-made figures, and doesn't require one to reinvent the wheel each time one launches a new project.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Quote - My apologies to you. My posts were not meant to be offensive or directed at your character.

My last words. Modo support

Apology accepted and as far as I'm concerned that should close the matter, I'm not one to hold a grudge.

Quote - Dear renderdog2000;
Would it be possible to also include multi-track animation, the same as in Max, or is this becomming too high end already?  I know it's possible in Max to render two seperately animated objects at the same time, but not too sure how it's done, or at all in Poser 5.  On the other hand, trying to bone and skin a figure in Max is all but pure hell.  This is precisely where Poser comes into it's own!  It comes already with ready-made figures, and doesn't require one to reinvent the wheel each time one launches a new project.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Multitrack might be possible, again probably not in the alpha release, but later on down the road.  Boning in Poser I've always found to be a nightmare, it's not bad if you have a premade bone structure to apply (this is something Poser does exceedingly well with) but if you don't it can be a royal pain in the keester, never did like how the boning tool always assumes you want everything connected together unless you put your new bones way out in lala land.

Doesn't work too badly for standalone figures I suppose, but when your trying to add bones to a clothing piece you want to be conforming it can get to be a royal pain.  Perhaps a locking feature would come in handy here as well - certainly something to consider.

But an easy to use rigging system has very high, indeed probably top priority even for the alpha release.  

I'm reading throught the thread again and I can see a lot of peoples hopes scattered. Does anyone seriously believe all of this is going to be pulled off by one man? Poser..... team years of development. DAZ..... team years of develpment.

No way on man is going to achieve what is being asked.

Dear renderdog2000
So, along with all the rest, (especially the Vray, if possible), if you could als fit it with one of the FREE modeling programs (i.e. Anim8or, or some such), you'd have a very nifty app that could indeed be a poor man's replacement for Max and Maya!  Also,like Max, try to give us a larger default woorkspace all around, with less intrusive meus and tool bars.  Also, a beautiful feature of Max is the multiple ways that one can do the same task, i.e. icon click on a toolbar, click on a drop down menu, of right click the view port and select from what's know as the 'Quad-Menu.'  Each of these methods is to enable one to have multiple access to the exact same tool or task, and being able to choose which method best suits whatever worker, his mood, and the task at hand.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Quote - I'm reading throught the thread again and I can see a lot of peoples hopes scattered. Does anyone seriously believe all of this is going to be pulled off by one man? Poser..... team years of development. DAZ..... team years of develpment.

No way on man is going to achieve what is being asked.

Maybe yes, and maybe no, but it certainly doesn't hurt to dream!  The worst that can happen is that we're right back to where we started!  Why does all this flak remind me of the crap I had to take when I decided to remap Posette to take V3 textures?  Or when I also remapped V4.1 to do the same?  Could it be that someone feels a vested interested threatened?
David P. Hoadley!

Quote - I'm reading throught the thread again and I can see a lot of peoples hopes scattered. Does anyone seriously believe all of this is going to be pulled off by one man? Poser..... team years of development. DAZ..... team years of develpment.

No way on man is going to achieve what is being asked.

Ok.. well, as far as the one man theory goes, my guess is you probably missed the part of the posts where I talked about this being open source.  I won't be the only developer on the project, in fact once it gets up and going I have a feeling the number of developers working on it will probably greatly exceed the number of team members on both Daz and Poser combined.

Poser got started back when there really wasn't much in the way of code samples or libraries to draw on.  However if you take a quick peek over at source forge I think you will discover, as I did, that such is no longer the case.

Most of the features I've discussed have already been implemented in a variety of other open source projects, giving me a very nice roadmap to follow as well as high end libraries that already accomplish a lot of what I need without a great deal of addtional coding.

Somebody else has already done the hard part of inventing the wheel.  I don't have to do that like the Poser development team did.  I've already got a ton of proven technology and code backing up the project - it's a huge head start from where Poser began.

As to development cycle, no, I don't expect to have this done overnight.  The alpha release is at least 6 months out, possibly longer depending on how much time I can give to the project and how many other developers I can get interested in helping out in the pre-alpha stage.

Once the alpha is out though, I expect we'll probably attract a bit of attention and pick up a few more really good developers, and after that we can forge ahead to a full release version.

So no, I wasn't expecting to code this entirely myself from the ground up, and no, I'm not starting from scratch as the folks that made Poser did, so yes, this is a feasible project.

All I can do is wish you and everyone waiting for it good luck! If you don't mind, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it, done that too many times before.

Quote - Dear renderdog2000
So, along with all the rest, (especially the Vray, if possible), if you could als fit it with one of the FREE modeling programs (i.e. Anim8or, or some such), you'd have a very nifty app that could indeed be a poor man's replacement for Max and Maya!  Also,like Max, try to give us a larger default woorkspace all around, with less intrusive meus and tool bars.  Also, a beautiful feature of Max is the multiple ways that one can do the same task, i.e. icon click on a toolbar, click on a drop down menu, of right click the view port and select from what's know as the 'Quad-Menu.'  Each of these methods is to enable one to have multiple access to the exact same tool or task, and being able to choose which method best suits whatever worker, his mood, and the task at hand.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Ok, do you one better there.. how about a hotkey mapping feature that stores it's mapped keys in an XML file?  That way if your a Max fan you can load the "Max" keyboard set and it will emulate the same hotkeys that Max uses for roughly equivalent features?  Same for the Maya crowd, etc - a little SDK on the keyboard mapping layout and anybody can very quickly build a keymap file that will allow them to have the same hotkeys they are accustomed to in their 3d program of preference - simple geek trick but effective :)

I'd like to do a modeler plugin in for it at some point, again probably not in the alpha release but I think in the long run being able to do so, even just for morphs, would be huge.  I may have to do the modeler as a seperate component - we'll have to wait and see on that one.  In the meantime this will import obj files so that should be sufficient to start with I think.

I like the idea of maximizing workspace, but I don't want the app to be too intimidating either - so I'll have to give that some thought and see what I can come up with.  Perhaps a dual interface, a "beginner" interface and an "advanced" interface - Beginner would present you with the nice friendly menus and advanced would maximize your workspace - not sure, I'll do some thinking on that one and get back to you.  Maybe sliding menus or a combination of all three -  lot of options here really.

Quote - All I can do is wish you and everyone waiting for it good luck! If you don't mind, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it, done that too many times before.

Do whatever makes you happy I guess.  Personally I'm not too worried, compared to my last project this one seems much easier, I've got a lot more code to work with at startup.

Quote - Maybe yes, and maybe no, but it certainly doesn't hurt to dream!  The worst that can happen is that we're right back to where we started!  Why does all this flak remind me of the crap I had to take when I decided to remap Posette to take V3 textures?  Or when I also remapped V4.1 to do the same?  Could it be that someone feels a vested interested threatened?
David P. Hoadley!

Not sure, and honestly I'm not going to worry about it anymore.  Let the flak throwers fire away, wouldn't be the first time I've had to run through a little ak-ak to get the job done.

Funny thing is, Blender is an open source 3d graphics app that was registered on source forge in August of 2007, and they already have a huge support base even though the app itself is not exactly what I consider to be user friendly, and nobody seems to bat an eye over that.

I guess it's a good thing that nobody who first started on that project listened to all the folks who said it was impossible or that they'd never get that project off the ground, because it's doing pretty good for an app that is so relatively young.  I seriously doubt they started out with a big development team either - just one guy who said, wouldn't it be great if

But I guess a lot of people aren't too familiar with open source, particularly those who haven't had much experience with Linux, so I guess not much point in taking it personally.

*I guess it's a good thing that nobody who first started on that project listened to all the folks who said it was impossible or that they'd never get that project off the ground, because it's doing pretty good for an app that is so relatively young. 

*Blender relatively young? I guess you don't know much about the history of blender, it didn't start out as open source at all. Blender has been around since 1999, was a commercial project, company was shutdown and it took some effort and money to get blender open source.

If you look at blender as your inspiration you must realize that the core never developped as open source at all, but by a company that invested a couple of million dollars into it. Without these millions Blender would have never come as far as it has now and even before Blender became open source it already had a user base of 250.000, that's more then DAZ and Poser have combined.

I do hope you realize that......

Quote -
Ok, do you one better there.. how about a hotkey mapping feature that stores its mapped keys in an XML file?  That way, if you're a Max fan you can load the "Max" keyboard set and it will emulate the same hotkeys that Max uses for roughly equivalent features?  Same for the Maya crowd, etc -

Wow... that would be cool... I'm one of those weird people who actually LIKE the Blender interface - yes, like it a LOT. Whenever I go back to Poser and middle-mouse-try-to-rotate... grrrrrr bloody unintuitive app! and that hokey gizmo you HAVE to use to pan and stuff. Most other apps let you use a variety of means for navigating the viewport... or perhaps I've missed something about the Poser interface?

Wouldn't surprise me. When they were passing out brains, I thought they said milkshakes and asked for 'thick'....