Smith Micro Software, Inc. and the Poser team are pleased to announce that the Poser 7 English Service Release 3 (SR3) is now available for both Macintosh and Windows. SR3 will update any previous version of Poser 7 English to the latest version 7.04. SR3 offers several enhancements and addresses known issues present in the following areas:

• General performance and stability updates and improvements
• FireFly and Preview Rendering
• PoserPython updates and improvements
• Material Room, Face Room, Hair Room, Cloth Room, Setup Room and Content Room updates and improvements
• Talk Designer
• Walk Designer
• Animation
• Hierarchy Editor
• File I/O
• Parameter/Properties Palette
• Includes updates found in all previous service releases

In order to download Poser 7 SR3 or receive technical support for the product, you must have registered your Poser 7 application serial number. If you have not yet done so, please register now.

With your registered your Poser 7 serial number, you can access and download SR3 for Windows or Macintosh.

In the following post is the full list of Poser 7 English SR3 enhancements and fixes, by category.

Poser 7 English SR3 enhancements and fixes, by category:

General

-Improved stability after morph targets have been injected.
-Now updating conforming figure preview after applying Figure symmetry.
-Now preserving parenting when undoing Point At.
-Improved text width calculation for multi-byte characters (Mac OS X only).
-Improved stability upon deleting figure with parented camera.
-Enabled undo for changes 'Casts shadows' property.
-Enabled undo for changes to Parameter settings.
-Now also prepending morph target channels created via 'Split morph' to avoid distortion when applied and figure is bent.
-Fixed case where pressing Home or End keys could cause Poser to exit.
-Now pre-selecting text in text entry fields whenever possible.
-Now preventing side effects when duplicating light source.
-Now keeping focus on Graph palette while clicking & dragging beyond palette boundaries.
-Making QuickTime movie with 2D Motion blur now works properly (Mac OS X only).
-Enabled 2D Motion Blur for Image Sequence rendered in Poser (Mac OS X only).
-Memory dots and custom UI preferences now stored in language-specific sub-directory to facilitate concurrent installation of multiple Poser versions.
-Fixed case where problems with shadow camera parenting would prevent depth map shadows from getting rendered.
-Fixed case where polygon group got accidentally discarded if there were > 32 groups in an OBJ file while multiple group names were specified in the same line.
-Cmd-S shortcut for saving scene now more reliable.
-Improvements to texture map location for preview and rendering

FireFly Render Engine

-Fixed case where rendering multithreaded could cause artifact in first bucket (Windows only).
-Now properly reading greyscale 16-bit TIFF images during shading. Improved loading of EXIF tags in TIFF images.
-Improved quality of raytraced shadows.
-Fixed case in which rendering raytraced reflections with depth-mapped shadows in a separate process could cause instability.
-Now mapping textures more accurately at render time (FireFly only).
-Fixed case where rendering in separate process would cause freeze (Mac OS X Panther & Leopard only).
-Fixed case where some buckets weren't processed during multithreaded rendering.
-Fixed case where applying an HDR IBL set while an animation layer was active would fail.
-Now properly restoring current animation layer selection after applying walk to a new layer.
-Improved multithreaded rendering performance with large textures.
-Improved reliability of FireFly render engine when rendering complex scenes.
-Improved reliability of rendering in a separate process when 3D Motion Blur is enabled.
-Fixed case where HDR images were discarded from render cache early (Windows only).
-Fixed case where certain shader would cause render to fail.
-Fixed case where small-scale features applied to bump or displacement channels would produce rendering artifacts.
-Fixed case where running out of memory during raytracing database setup would cause instability.
-Fixed case where switching off texture filtering would cause artifact to appear at seams of high-res tiled textures.

Preview Render Engine

-Fixed case where line segment geometry could cause instability in OpenGL preview.
-Improved line width (Intel OpenGL only).
-Improved transparency map resolution in Preview mode.

File I/O

-Fixed case in which redundant Center of Mass props were written.
-Now consistently writing relative, platform-neutral paths whenever possible.

Animation

-Now preserving start frame of new layer upon re-opening saved file.

Talk Designer

-Now preserving text when settings are adjusted.
-Improved stability when applying to conforming figures without head morph targets.

Walk Designer

-Now preventing event handling problems after entering text field values on Parameter palette.
-Now properly restoring current animation layer selection after applying walk to a new layer.

Parameter/Properties Palette

-Now preventing instability when recursive value operations on an object's parameters are present.

Hierarchy Editor

-Improved stability of Hierarchy editor.
-Enabled creation of figures from Hierarchy Editor.

Face Room

-Fixed case in which using Space Navigator device in Face room could cause freeze upon applying face.
-Fixed case where repeatedly undoing changes would cause Face Shaping parameters to become inaccessible.

Cloth Room

-Fixed case where simulation data would be lost after re-opening a file with multiple simulators.
-Corrected text field locations (Mac OS X only).

Hair Room

Improved quality of dynamic hair simulation results for Bend Resistance values >0.

Material Room

-User_Defined node now handles its parameters properly.

Setup Room

Fixed case where adding the skeleton of a figure with dynamic hair from the library would cause instability.

Content room

-Increased flexibility of automatic content installation.

PoserPython

-Updated to Tkinter 8.4. (Windows) NOTE: Please contact script developer if compatibility issues with Tkinter are encountered.
-Enabled PoserPython-driven morph target injection from external Runtime libraries.
-PoserPython method scene.SetBackgroundImage() now more reliable.
-Enabled JPEG quality parameter for scene.SaveImage()
-Improved stability of PoserPython undo/redo system.
-Now using the standard content search method for finding referenced Python files, depending on the user's specified search policy preference.
-Now accepting any type of value to specify scale factor upon import.
-Improved stability by preventing reinitialization while script-based dialog is showing.
-Now accepting any type of value <= 0 to disable scaling upon import. Omitting kImOptCodePERCENTFIGSIZE will result in import at the last size specified.
-Fixed case where Collect Scene Inventory script would omit certain referenced files.
-Enabled script-based cloth dynamics calculation for scene with multiple simulators.
-Added Poser.Quit() method to enable script to terminate the application.
-Added MovieMaker.SetMovieRenderer() and MovieMaker.MovieRenderer().
-Added Scene.SetRenderDimAutoscale().
-Added Scene.Resolution() and Scene.SetResolution() methods.

ENHANCEMENTS AND BUG FIXES IN Service Release 2.1

FireFly Render Engine

• Corrected case where reflected raytraced shadows would look wrong.
• Improved stability when rendering objects consisting of large polygons that intersect with camera plane.

Preview Render Engine

• Added preference for controlling hardware shading during tracking (please change PREVIEW_OGL_HWSHADING_INTRACKING 1 to PREVIEW_OGL_HWSHADING_INTRACKING 0 to prevent lag in camera adjustment on certain NVIDIA chipsets; NVIDIA OpenGL Hardware shading only).

File I/O

• Enabled saving and reading of DYN simulation cache files (Mac OS X only).
• Fixed case where JPEG export quality setting would default to -1.
• Corrected JPEG export label text to read "Quality".
• Now also accepting "::", ":"" and ": "" as valid specification of an empty texture map
  reference (please don't specify empty references this way, it is still not correct).

Animation

• Fixed case where Layer order was not preserved on saving file.

Material Room

• Enabled animated shader preview on Material palette nodes when playing back animation.

Face Room

• Fixed case where generated shape variation in 7.0.2 would look different from 7.0.1.

Misc

• Now adjusting Python distribution permissions to ensure proper launch when logged on as restricted rights user (Mac OS X only).

Here are some helpful notes about a few improvements in the SR3 updater and how they may affect you.

File I/O

The SR3 updater incorporates an important change when working with referenced content found in Poser scene files. Poser 7.0.4 saves files with relative, platform-neutral paths for content components such as geometries and textures whenever possible. In previous versions of Poser, paths were written that may have been either relative or absolute. This could potentially create problems when opening up scene files in a cross platform environment or when working across machines with different runtimes.

Poser 7.0.4 now writes consistent paths. The benefits to this change include:

-        Backward compatibility with older versions of Poser on OSX

-        Better portability when moving files from Mac to Windows, or vice versa, from one machine to another if the runtime locations are not identical, and when runtimes are moved on a system (such as when a new hard drive is added).

-        Less clean-up will be required before sharing a newly created library item with other users.

Poser 7.0.4 now searches for referenced files such as geometries and textures next to the PZ3/PZZ that is being opened, if those referenced files cannot be located in either the current or main runtime directories. If your runtime files are messy and contain duplicate file names, the search process results may be unpredictable. Creating files with unique names with a runtime directory structure that resembles the standard Poser runtime setup will help alleviate future issues.

When adding an external runtime to Poser 7.04, the key word “Runtime” must be in the path for the search engine to properly locate your referenced content. In simple terms, your content’s directory structure should duplicate the standard Poser Runtime naming structure. At the top level, content should be in a directory named Runtime, which includes subdirectories that follow Poser’s naming conventions.

FireFly Render Engine

In the development of Poser 7.0.4, we measured several instances of increased FireFly rendering performance; however there are isolated cases where the improved quality of raytraced shadows, Ambient Occlusion, and Displacement/Bump mapping effects can result in slower renderings at similar quality settings. In those isolated cases we’ve improved, the final rendered results are far superior to renderings from previous versions of Poser 7.

Also, not sure if it made it into the final release, but I just used a v4 with a clothing item, and the clothing crosstalk feature was restored!

Tiny had some hair room issues, got them to iron out those issues, and now she can release good quality furred critters for poser 7+!

Not a good start. I've had Poser 7 registered since I bought the SE version when it first came
out, yet the site doesn't recognize the serial number. I registered the number with SmithMicro,
assuming I had to do it again with the new owner. Still no dice. I don't have the time to keep
dealing with efrontier, and now SmithMicro screw-ups. Please let me know what the problem
could be. Poser has been collecting dust because of it's instability. If this has been solved, I'd
like to get back on the horse. :)

Greywolf

sigh  Go figure, they aren't accepting my Serial No. even though I registered it when I got the program and have had absolutely no problems in the past downloading the updates.  Just my luck.

Now if only the validator at Smith-Micro was working.....

worked fine for me... accepted my serial and I'm now running OK

I suggest copying your serial from your CP account (Mystuff) and pasting that directly... it'll stop any mistakes from happening...
but the validator is working.. that I can confirm...

Too bad it won't let me download. It won't accept my valid serial number. I had to email SM about it. So now I play the waiting game...

edit: I did copy and paste!!!

"-Now keeping focus on Graph palette while clicking & dragging beyond palette boundaries."

Yay!  This was a very serious problem.  I'm happy that they finally paid a little
bit of attention to animation!

well....i clicked the link....dint put my serial number in cos i couldn't be bothered to go search it out ...... i just hit the download link and sr3 is downloadin as i type

edit to say : d'oh...i hit the wrong link :P

Serial number no go.  Says "must be all capital letters", but they are all capital letters.

I cannot find my serial number listed at CP.  I bought and registered my copy of Poser 7 directly through e-frontier.  Maybe that's the problem.

Watch out for oh's and zeros, dont type O by mistake.

My guess would be a call to smith micro or an email would resolve your issues far faster then a forum post.

When I upgraded lightewave, I had to call them 3 times to get the proper info to make my dongle work properly. (And was on hold long distance for 20 minutes each time, no less!)

When I upgraded Vue6I, I ran into the same issues, the servers were flooded, so I couldn;t even download the patch, and after I had it and tried installing it, I STILL had to call Eon and again wait forever on hold until they could sort out my serial number issues.

Odds are, and email to them, or phone call tomorrow when they are open will resolve it quickly.

I quadruple checked what I entered.  It simply is not being accepted.  This is ridiculous.  I'll deal with it later.  Got better things to do at present.

Ditto. I'm not so enamoured of Poser at present, that I'm willing to jump through hoops to
get what I paid for. At Present, I use Poser only for rigging. Other programs in my Toolset
are superior renderers. If I can't get SR3, Poser gets to stay as my rigger only, at least until
DS gets rigging. :)

Greywolf

Took my serial number no problem and I have downloaded the update maybe the problem with the serial numbers are fixed?.  But I won't install it yet until I clear some jobs out I am working on.

No, according to what I've read here, and on the DAZ forums, some are accepted, some
aren't. Since the numbers not being accepted are registered, many from pre-orders of the
SE edition from efrontier, it might be that THAT is what is causing the problem. If so, they'd
better fix it. This is hardly the way to keep customers who were already pissed by eFrontier
screw-ups of this nature.

Greywolf

If you experience difficulties downloading Poser 7 SR3, please contact Smith Micro tech support via my.smithmicro.com/support/index.html and let us know what updater you were trying to access, and what your serial number is. We'll try to address any issues there might be as quick as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Quote - No, according to what I've read here, and on the DAZ forums, some are accepted, some
aren't. Since the numbers not being accepted are registered, many from pre-orders of the
SE edition from efrontier, it might be that THAT is what is causing the problem. If so, they'd
better fix it. This is hardly the way to keep customers who were already pissed by eFrontier
screw-ups of this nature.

Greywolf

Maybe I just lucked out my copy was a pre-order SE addition. Wow I actually got lucky at something.

Good to see an official post in the thread here within minutes of an issue report! Obviously they are burning the midnight oil keeping an eye on things...

No thanks. SmithMicro tech support pages are like many others, a PITA to navigate through.
I'm just not interested enough to go through the trouble, though I encourage others to do so.
I haven't used Poser, except for rigging, since it came out, due to stability issues, and have
since moved on to other software. I had thought to get SR3 and try again, since Starlet's post
mentioned that the stability issues had been addressed, but no. I have jumped through
customer service hoops many times, and it is always an exercise in frustration. Thanks
for the info, but I'll pass.

Greywolf

Sounds like someone has some personal issues.. LOL!

No go with the updates here.  And mine's an SE version, as well. 

I mean... couldn't they have put up a copy for download at their other Rendo-like site (won't put the name of the place here, but its first letters are "C" and "P")?  I've never had any trouble getting updates using that method. 

Something's obviously FUBAR at the Smith Micro site. 

Anyone that has a problem getting their Serial Code to be accepted can also contact Customer Support at Content Paradise with their Serial Code. Support@contentparadise.com

NOTE: the SR is for English Language only currently. If you are MAC make sure you are on the MAC Page, not the Windows Page. If you are non English, you will need to wait for that release. Also, make sure you are entering it in the Serial Code Field for the Service Release, not the Upgrade Purchase.

Not really, Gareee. It's just frustration talking. Customer service, the times I used it, provided
little sevice and major headache, with service reps who knew diddly squat. :) I'll fire off an
email to the above addy. I'm willing to give SM a chance. After a tough day, I kinda snapped. :)

Greywolf

I hear ya.. it's very easy to do, and you can tell when people are posting, but also having real life issues.

FWIW, after I saw Uli's post here, I fired off an email to Poser's dev team, so they also had a head's up when they get in tomorrow that something is amiss somewhere.

Believe me, I went nuts when I did my last Lightwave upgrade, especially since my ONLYphone I had available was my cell phone, and it was on a short charger cord while I was trying to deal with being on hold for 20 minutes each time! LOL!

Course that's nothing compared with my HP "customer service" (and I use the term loosely) last year.

I HATE outsourced technical support with troubleshooting flow chart books, with no actual clue.

We all have days like that... the good thing is when those days are over! LOL (the bad thing is when the bad day starts on Monday and it is over on Thursday!)

Actually it;'s GREAT they did this today, because it means they won't be gone for a VERY long weekend before being able to resolve the situation.... ;)

True, I got a reply that my serial was missing two characters. DOH.
Unfortunately, the full number still generated the error. Odd, since they
confirmed that I was registered. Well, no hurry, they'll figure it out. It was
whether I was registered with them or not, that was worrying me. :)

Greywolf

My SN doesn't work either. Did last time i used it. It works at CP too.

I take it will be a while before we get a P7Pro SR?

Well I sent them an email about an hour ago. 

According to the nice gentleman at the other end, there is an issue with a block of Serial numbers.  They will be fixed in the morning.

BUT, he did hook me up.

Got the download & am installing now (crossing my fingers!)

I went to site and did everything as told by efStarlet when the thread was posted.  Went to SM's site which was a lot of leaps and bounds, then went back here to click on the link to SM's Poser page and did the SN of my product, only mistake I made was forgetting my own e-mail address.  On top of that no problems, d/l the SR3, installed and the only thing I found different was that there's no e-f, just SM's logo with the same P7 splash screen.

Hadn't played around it a bit, but hope it would run smoothly tomorrow.  Unlike the others, I'll keep my finger's crossed on this new update.

JB

Well, at least it loads faster...that's nice.

Mine isn't working either and taking it directly off the email they sent with the sn when I bought it. What a load of crap, how hard is it to put the numbers in when you register a program? Give me a break. And yes I have personal issues with this, tired of all the screwups with this company.

I didn't have any problems with the serial number last night. I opened the email they had originally sent me when I bought the P7 upgrade back in 2006 and copied the number from that. Then I went to SM and pasted it in there and it accepted it with no problem. File downloaded without a hitch but I haven't installed it yet.

Quote - I didn't have any problems with the serial number last night. I opened the email they had originally sent me when I bought the P7 upgrade back in 2006 and copied the number from that. Then I went to SM and pasted it in there and it accepted it with no problem. File downloaded without a hitch but I haven't installed it yet.

Did the same. I've installed it and have been using it for the last three hours.

Mike

Quote - > Quote - I didn't have any problems with the serial number last night. I opened the email they had originally sent me when I bought the P7 upgrade back in 2006 and copied the number from that. Then I went to SM and pasted it in there and it accepted it with no problem. File downloaded without a hitch but I haven't installed it yet.

Did the same. I've installed it and have been using it for the last three hours.

Mike

Cool, you having any issues or problems with it yet?

And when you install, make sure to click on "Create backup of preferences"! With the new logo Smith Micro it starts as if you never used it before in factory state and all external runtimes gone :(

Just use the backup copy of the libraryPrefs.xml from Poser 7 ...Date...Time... into your p 7 preferences folder and it works again.

Und wo klickt man auf Create backup of preferences? Davon abgesehen kann ich sowieso nichts downloaden, Probleme mit der SN - wieso auch immer. Ich konnte ohne Probleme damit das PPro Upgrade kaufen, aber für einen SR download reichts nicht? seufz

Sorry, we had a problem verifying your registration information. Please use the back key to make sure you entered it correctly. UPPER CASE LETTERS ARE REQUIRED. If you continue to get this message,

GREAT UPDATE SITH MICRO !!
now can you fix the problem with the Pre odered Poser 7 Se versions...
I tryed to put it on the CP forums
but i can wait 3 hours before thats Site is loaded ...a other great Sith Micro thing...

LOL ... same here, BAR-CODE - problem with SN and CP takes forever and a  day to load.

Bravo! 

SM responded to the email with a good download link.

Installed it, now trying it.

This is the first SR in Poser history that fixes most of the problems I've noticed;
some of which (like the OBJ import bug) have been problems since P4.

Specifically, I thank SM for these fixes and changes:

-Now keeping focus on Graph palette while clicking & dragging beyond palette boundaries.

-Improvements to texture map location for preview and rendering

-Fixed case where switching off texture filtering would cause artifact to appear at seams of high-res tiled textures.

-Fixed case in which redundant Center of Mass props were written.

-Now consistently writing relative, platform-neutral paths whenever possible.

-[Python OBJ import] Now accepting any type of value <= 0 to disable scaling upon import.

-[Python] Added Scene.Resolution() and Scene.SetResolution() methods.

Good job!

My serial wouldn't go thru either... I have P7 SE Boxed ordered from CP.
I emailed tech support (techsupport@smithmicro.com) as suggested and got a download link promptly.

They sent me a link to their faq about what to do if your sn doesn't work. WTF is up with these people are they running a business or not?

Please only select 'Remove existing preference files' or 'Backup existing preference files' during updater installation if you intend to do that. Yes, those options will return Poser to the factory state, including the runtime library setup.

If you want to continue with your current preferences, please choose 'Use existing preference files' instead.

This is what I got from sm.  I was very clear and said poser 7 pro. Are they really that friggin dense????????????????????

 I apologize for the confusion. There is no Update for Poser Pro. The Update is for Poser 7. If I have misunderstood the issue, please provide the URL of the Update you are trying to aquire.

Ok figured out they wanted the sn from poser 7, the OLD poser 7, not the newest one I just bought so which Poser 7 is this release for? They should have just named the newest one poser 8.

it's for Poser 7. not Poser Pro. (which is poser PRO not poser 7 or poser 7.5. anyone telling you that is just getting it wrong. it is considered a seperate product for sales and upgrades)