Hi EClark1894,

(Since EClark1894 relates to CP)
Is excellent Poser 8 being developed? How is the progress?
When will there be beta version?
Or, the development is not under consideration?

(I asked this because I would like to know whether it is worth waiting for next version of Poser, or look for other alternatives from nowon)

Thanks in advance

BagginsBill in another thread said that he is not allowed to say weather P8 is under development... so if he isnt allowed then they must be making P8, otherwise whats stopping him from talking about it... the real question is WHEN???? lol

Don't think I'll be buying into poser 8. Seems like every time they add a few more problems to the mix instead of just starting over and doing it right. Icing...no matter how good...will not take away the taste of a burned cake.

Quote - Hi EClark1894,

(Since EClark1894 relates to CP)
Is excellent Poser 8 being developed? How is the progress?
When will there be beta version?
Or, the development is not under consideration?

(I asked this because I would like to know whether it is worth waiting for next version of Poser, or look for other alternatives from nowon)

Thanks in advance

Why? What have you heard?   

Heh. I don't work for Smith Micro, or CP. My interests were purely self-motivated in that I thought a lot of people were getting some facts wrong and in other cases just making things up about the changes at CP. I don't think any of it was intentional, but a few reactions people were having were just simply over the top.

As for Poser 8, I'll find out when you do.

I am sorry, EClark1894.
:(

Quote - BagginsBill in another thread said that he is not allowed to say weather P8 is under development... so if he isnt allowed then they must be making P8, otherwise whats stopping him from talking about it... the real question is WHEN???? lol

The non disclosure act is stoppign him. Even if there is no next version of poser, the nda is still in effect. As long as he or Smith Micro doesn't cancel the nda, it is in effect and he's not allowed to say anything.

Poser 8 being developed is no quarantee that it will be released, a lot can happen while under development. From the information that is spilled it seems like Poser 8 is under development, but personally I doubt I'll buy. I do like Poser Pro the way it is and I do seriously doubt they will manage to give the firefly render engine such an overhaul that it will preform over 50% faster then it does now and I'm not settling for less. I've had enough of paying lot's of money for minor improvements. Perhaps it will be time soon to start looking elsewhere, instead of upgrading once every two years or so, paying lot's of money for minor stuff, while the real shortcoming drag on and on version after version.

Doubt whatever you like. I doubt you know what you should doubt. Actually, I'm certain.

i dont know if it can get 50% faster.

but i know that BB is good enough to make poser as fast as possible.

imag, if yer referring to daz|studio as the alternative to poser 8, then, while waiting for poser 8, try out daz|studio.  it's available at no cost IIRC.

the detail about 50% faster - as these 3d rendering apps become more professional, there's no certainty that they will be faster when all the maximum-quality IL/GI settings are invoked, but the next version is usually faster (on the same machine) with everyday default settings used by most.  there must be several threads here on how to speed up poser by not using max settings when they're not needed.  one tip is that a 2048 shadow map may not be much better than a 256 map, if the associated lite is adjusted correctly, but the render may proceed faster with the latter setting.

Quote - Don't think I'll be buying into poser 8. Seems like every time they add a few more problems to the mix instead of just starting over and doing it right. Icing...no matter how good...will not take away the taste of a burned cake.

Truer words never spoken. I JUST bought Poser 7 and and I'm having nothing but problems and crashes. Frustrating.

On the other hand, hi Marque. How are you doing? :o)

Laurie

Quote -

Truer words never spoken. I JUST bought Poser 7 and and I'm having nothing but problems and crashes. Frustrating.

Does the version you have include SR3?  It cures a multitude of quirks.

Personally I've liked the changes in Poser over the years and am looking forward to P8. I'm saving for it already. No guarentee I'll buy it though. A new company means it could go in a totally different direction and who knows what it will be like. People who are already knocking it,knowing nothing about it, well....

Quote - > Quote - Don't think I'll be buying into poser 8. Seems like every time they add a few more problems to the mix instead of just starting over and doing it right. Icing...no matter how good...will not take away the taste of a burned cake.

Truer words never spoken. I JUST bought Poser 7 and and I'm having nothing but problems and crashes. Frustrating.

On the other hand, hi Marque. How are you doing? :o)

Laurie

Are you using Service Release 3?
What Video Card are you using?
Are you using OpenGL or SreeD?

Quote - > Quote - Don't think I'll be buying into poser 8. Seems like every time they add a few more problems to the mix instead of just starting over and doing it right. Icing...no matter how good...will not take away the taste of a burned cake.

Truer words never spoken. I JUST bought Poser 7 and and I'm having nothing but problems and crashes. Frustrating.

On the other hand, hi Marque. How are you doing? :o)

Laurie

I just bought Poser 7 as well and it works fine for me. Doesn't crash, and it's definitely faster than P6.

And bad Icing, even on a well baked cake, can make it unpalatable.

I'll probably get version 8 as I didn't upgrade to version 7. Any differences between 6 and 8 will be worth the upgrade. Got Poser 3 on a mag years ago and upgraded to each version, but was short of cash when 7 first came out. In my experience Poser is like Star Trek films, the even numbered ones are usually better! (Until some smart a*se comes along, reboots the franchise, and possibly makes it better ;)  ).
Just pray to the programming gods that we get a better renderer, and for newbies/ lazy/ on a limited schedule the mythical "Make Art" button and Alan Alda figure!

I hope P8 does something new and very snazzy.
They're losing me to DS more and more, especially since their figure setup tools. I noticed a little bit of a trend in the same direction.  What I don't know is if the numbers of people switching over are significant or not.
I'm not very "program faithful".  Typically, if the tools suits me, I use it, sort of like picking the right size wrench.

For me as long as the output render can match that of other software (GI,radiosity etc, and not have artifacts)i will look forward to it, as all poser versions produce a rather unrealistic lighting image....
oh and as for SR3 on poser 7, i uninstalled that and went back to SR2 because sr3 caused the 100 percent processor usages bug (not during renders) so was unworkable....

GI? 
ohh come on.

Quote - I hope P8 does something new and very snazzy.
They're losing me to DS more and more, especially since their figure setup tools. I noticed a little bit of a trend in the same direction.  What I don't know is if the numbers of people switching over are significant or not.
I'm not very "program faithful".  Typically, if the tools suits me, I use it, sort of like picking the right size wrench.

My thought is that even if Poser came up with one click rigging, it would still have it's detractors. You'll never be able to please everyone.

 I will acknowledge that I think DS has the development advantage as they seem to be very responsive to their customer base, but on the other hand DS is free. Poser's not. 
Considering the reaction people are having to the store making changes, could you really see them being more forgiving to Poser putting out a bug-ridden version just to get the latest feature out to the public??

DS is not FREE to get it comparable to Poser there is a significant cost. however the FREE version is a good starting point

*My thought is that even if Poser came up with one click rigging, it would still have it's detractors. You'll never be able to please everyone.

The detractors just don't know rigging!  They're blaming the tool instead of themselves!
See,  Poser's rigging is joint envelope.  Joint envelope rigging is an option available in many high end apps.  Poser even has weight mapping,  Thing is you have to use the mat sphere's to assign the values to the vertices instead of painting them like in high end apps.

Given this one should pre plan their figure accordingly. 

Now,  I think what would really put Poser 8 over the top...would be
bigger butts and bigger boobies on the female figure. 

People always used to say that Poser had a strange user interface, but I'm able to use it. DS and Blender I would love to be able to use, but despite spending ages trying, I find them impossible to understand. For non figure modelling I like Sketchup. The easier it is to understand, the quicker I can get my work done.

From the "pointed" questions that were in the Smith Micro survey a while back, it looked as though one of the new features would be a better library indexing/search feature to save you trawling through thousands of files looking for a particular prop etc. Though I hope the new version offers more than that.

Quote - DS is not FREE to get it comparable to Poser there is a significant cost. however the FREE version is a good starting point

True, but with DS you're only paying for what you need or want. I prefer Poser, but it's features are woefully underutilized by me.

Quote - The detractors just don't know rigging!  They're blaming the tool instead of themselves!

I know rigging.  I blame the tool because it is badly bugged (falloff zone orientation).

Quote - > Quote - The detractors just don't know rigging!  They're blaming the tool instead of themselves!

I know rigging.  I blame the tool because it is badly bugged (falloff zone orientation).

I personally hate rigging. Would love to see a 1 click tool, but I doubt that we will see this in either Daz Studio or Poser.

I don't think you can expect any real changes to how Poser handles rigging, because too many people are complacent with it even though it's really screwed up and primitive from a technical standpoint.  I had a really hard time even getting SM technical support to even acknowledge the flipping falloff zones bug (only after I demonstrated it 100% repeatably in Sydney) , so I doubt they get very much pressure to fix it from other users.

*I blame the tool because it is badly bugged (falloff zone orientation).

I've never had a problem with it.  Course,  then again I write down all the values from Lightwave and type 'em in Poser.

Typing in stuff in Lightwave, whether it works or not, is not a measure of how wonderfully Poser's rigging works.

By the way, that falloff orientation bug that you've never had before - you've had it before.  Check RWoman's thumb falloff zones for "Up Down". edit: see pic

shed, poser already has GI (which calculates indirect lighting with results somewhat analogous to renderers using radiosity) but I can't say that its algorithm is similar to (or as elegant as) those created by autodesk, which was apparently unable to purchase poser from smith micro last year.  it's true that poser's version of GI (FFRender) is prone to various artifacts and is a bit slow, but they are aware of the problems and they know that users still posting poser 4-style renders in 2009 is one of the reasons that poser is the laffing stock of the 3d-snob community.

*By the way, that falloff orientation bug that you've never had before - you've had it before.  Check RWoman's thumb falloff zones for "Up Down".
edit: see pic

Oh brother...

Hmm...let's see
Joint orders are symmetrical
Centers are symmetrical
Rotations are symmetrical
Joint angles are symmetrical(Subtract the values)
Spherical fall off zones are symmetrical

Golly...what could be!?!

Wait...I know,  you have no clue what you are doing in Euclidean space!

Yes Pat, blame the bug on me.  This is just as I was saying (people don't push to get this bug resolved so it will never be fixed).
Please note:  This is not a comment on your rigging technique, it's an illustration of a bug in Poser.

*Yes Pat, blame the bug on me.  This is just as I was saying (people don't push to get this bug resolved so it will never be fixed).

IMO There is no bug,  unless you consider .005 to be one.  As for me,  I consider it part of Poser's gimbal lock protection.

I dunno, I consider a symmetrical rig that is made asymmetrical (and produces an asymmetrical deformation) to be a serious and obvious bug.  Smith Micro's support agrees, although again I doubt they'll fix it.

Quote - > Quote - The detractors just don't know rigging!  They're blaming the tool instead of themselves!

I know rigging.  I blame the tool because it is badly bugged (falloff zone orientation).

Yeap, same here. DS does the same Rigging Poser does, but the tools are organized in a much more practical and productive way. And one can add ERC controls and various other cr2 modifications within the rigging tools. Not have to go hacking a cr2 with a notepad, or a cr2 editor of sorts.

Also, many morph loading and handling tools, right within the application. I ended up not needing a whole plethora of add-on applets for rigging. It's all inside one ap - much like it is with more advanced/higher end programs.

To clarify, it's DAZ Studio's Figure Setup Tools bundle I'm talking about.

Quote - shed, poser already has GI (which calculates indirect lighting with results somewhat analogous to renderers using radiosity) but I can't say that its algorithm is similar to (or as elegant as) those created by autodesk, which was apparently unable to purchase poser from smith micro last year.  it's true that poser's version of GI (FFRender) is prone to various artifacts and is a bit slow, but they are aware of the problems and they know that users still posting poser 4-style renders in 2009 is one of the reasons that poser is the laffing stock of the 3d-snob community.

is poser's GI a really GI? 
iam no expert thats why i am asking. but i have been reading somewhere that when you use GI in poser that AO is automatic turned on. funny because for GI you dont need AO. or is GI in poser just the gather node on every material with ambien occlusion? beause this is not real GI.

i found out weeks ago that DM shadows in poser dont work how they should. poser doesnt even have samples in the raytraced shadows. i dont know if there is a 3d software that wouldnt first have good shadows before making GI.
but its also my opinion that its ''cool'' to say hey i want GI because everyone is saying it.

You can "cheat" and add multiple lights with raytraced shadows that are slightly offset from each other and get pretty much the same thing as other apps' sample numbers to get fairly nice blurred raytraced shadows, but yes it would be nice if this was built into Poser's lights.

Oh, did I mention the tumbling falloff zones bug with Poser's rigging?  That's another painful one.

How about if Poser actually embraced ERC and crosstalk and used it as a feature instead of treating it as a semi-bug?

I've never said anything about a possible poser 8 since today, but i know one thing, if you integrate a better GI, a better clothes room a better hair room and some things we found in other 3d softwares i'm sure it will be more expensive like the present ... What do you prefer ? A litte accessible software ( ~ 200 or 300 € ) who you need a little reflexion to match the better render or a gaz factory like 3ds with all the surface you can imagine and paid it around 2000 or 3000 € ???

In the second case we dont need poser 8 or 9 or whatever ...

The fact who made poser what is it is his "simplicity", i think ... No need to tell tall stories ...

Quote - You can "cheat" and add multiple lights with raytraced shadows that are slightly offset from each other and get pretty much the same thing as other apps' sample numbers to get fairly nice blurred raytraced shadows, but yes it would be nice if this was built into Poser's lights.

yeah i think you showed this trick .

Quote - I've never said anything about a possible poser 8 since today, but i know one thing, if you integrate a better GI, a better clothes room a better hair room and some things we found in other 3d softwares i'm sure it will be more expensive like the present ... What do you prefer ? A litte accessible software ( ~ 200 or 300 € ) who you need a little reflexion to match the better render or a gaz factory like 3ds with all the surface you can imagine and paid it around 2000 or 3000 € ???

In the second case we dont need poser 8 or 9 or whatever ...

The fact who made poser what is it is his "simplicity", i think ... No need to tell tall stories ...

but you dont need to buy the new poser 8 when it comes out.if you have everythign that you need.

i would love first a software that has what they promote. for example shadows on figures,cloth,props,....

Quote - I've never said anything about a possible poser 8 since today, but i know one thing, if you integrate a better GI, a better clothes room a better hair room and some things we found in other 3d softwares i'm sure it will be more expensive like the present ... What do you prefer ? A litte accessible software ( ~ 200 or 300 € ) who you need a little reflexion to match the better render or a gaz factory like 3ds with all the surface you can imagine and paid it around 2000 or 3000 € ???

In the second case we dont need poser 8 or 9 or whatever ...

The fact who made poser what is it is his "simplicity", i think ... No need to tell tall stories ...

But people have complained about the firefly renderer since it was first used in Poser. It's all very well adding better lighting, GI, more realistic hair, VSS etc, but if the renderer is limited what's the use. Don't get me wrong I love using Poser and lots of people get really good results rendering with it, but it's a program for creating art or animations of people. Look in many of the Poser galleries, and the most realistic renderings of skintone, lightining etc have been rendered in another program.
I can't afford 3ds max or anything like that, and I understand that if Poser itself could render like that it would probably push it way out of my price bracket. Poser is aimed price wise at beginners and hobbyists, but that doesn't mean that it can't improve. There are plenty of free or cheap 3D modelling programs and renderers that do a better job than Poser does at rendering.
Sometimes it comes down to preference of style. Lots of people can look at a Poser picture and say "that must have been rendered in Poser/ DS/ Carrara/ Vue etc" because of the lighting and way each program renders things.
Lets face it, Poser is never going to have a renderer that everyone is happy with (does any program?). What future versions of Poser will need to do to keep in line with other programs, be taken seriously and ditch the reputation that it has amongst some in the 3D community that it is just used by most for creating their own "Poser porn"  is to have the ability to create more realistic renders of people, objects and surroundings etc.
How do you do this without hiking the price up?

1. Improve the lighting, materials and renderer the best you can in the target budget.
2. Create the ability to export whole Poser pz3 files with at least 2d texture links intact (not just as obj, 3ds etc) as different formats that other external free and comercial renderers can recognise. People can pick the one that does the best rendering for the type of art they are producing.

Just used up my daily quota of the word "etc" I'll shut up for now!

*I dunno, I consider a symmetrical rig that is made **asymmetrical** (and produces an asymmetrical deformation) to be a serious and obvious bug.  Smith Micro's support agrees, although again I doubt they'll fix it. * I wonder if Poser's symmetry is set to the second decimal place?  If so, I can see where one would find it lacking.  

As for the other issues,  I've decided to take matters into my own hands. 

ice, what I've found with poser GI is that it gives results that look like GI/IL renders in other apps, e.g. carrara. it's similar to algorithms used by other apps in that it uses increasing bounces, samples and decreasing irradiance error in calculating how all the diffuse surfaces combine to globally illuminate the entire scene.  poser appears to calculate ray-trace shadow edges wrong (not in regard to shadow maps), as in the above example with the same dim point light illuminating the girl/mirror inside the same white box. to use GI in poser, I've found that it's best to turn off depth-map shadows to avoid crashes.  the part about AO is that a radiosity or GI calculation is gonna find the surfaces that get illuminated by all the diffuse light bounces, and the nooks/crannies remaining are what one would get with an AO-only calculation, but since those areas aren't illuminated, there's no point in enabling AO in a poser GI render.   in the above render, the mirror has zero diffuse, hence it's not illuminating the girl.  there may be a way to enable caustics, but my text editor froze yesterday whern trying to search the FFRender doc for the term "caustic".  there appear to be a bunch of things in there that aren't in the gui or manual.

sorry but this does not look like a GI render. not to me.

o.k., try the same scene (girl/mirror inside white box with dim point light) in your favourite non-poser GI  renderer.  note: a poser GI render of a girl/mirror inside white box with dim point light is gonna look very different from a poser diffuse IBL/AO render of a girl/mirror in an empty poser scene, in the extremely unlikely event there's any confusion between a diffuse IBL/AO render and a GI render.  there have been several attempts to explain GI and radiosity in this forum, in case that helps.

*o.k., try the same scene (girl/mirror inside white box with dim point light) in your favourite non-poser GI  renderer.  note: a poser GI render of a girl/mirror inside white box with dim point light is gonna look very different from a poser diffuse IBL/AO render of a girl/mirror in an empty poser scene, in the extremely unlikely event there's any confusion between a diffuse IBL/AO render and a GI render.  there have been several attempts to explain GI and radiosity in this forum, in case that helps.

GI...

Anyways,  could this be implemented in Poser?  http://www.hesido.com/base.php?page=tutorials&sub=fakegi

As I've mentioned to SM for years now, most Poser rigging problems could be helped a lot if they would just adopt a "normal" scale. Poser's scale is so tiny that most software won;t work well with poser figures at normal scale, so you're forced to scale figures up and down to model and morph. And as patorak mentions above, poser's internal math doesn;t  seem to be up to handle the placement on figures as small as posers are so there are "rounding" errors that cause a lot of problems.

I suggested that they change the standard scale of Poser to a more normal one and supply a python file to convert the existing figures to the new larger scale. Yeah memory usage may go up a bit but I think the improvement in rigging and things like rendering artifacts and piss poor shadowing would make up for it. If you want to see what I mean scale some objects up by even 10% and see how the artifacts in small repetative patterns (such as cloth weave etc.) acts, as well as shadow fall off etc.

oh well

Quote - http://www.hesido.com/base.php?page=tutorials&sub=fakegi

i think they can do better now in poser 8 in 2009.
this was written in 2004.

i think we could do this in poser with a sharp RT shadow and AO.

Well patorak,  I don't see anything in that Lightwave GI simulation that Poser can't do, so it should be possible.  It requires parenting a number of lights to specific locations on a "dome" type object. then spinning the object very quickly while rendering with motion blur.  Setting up the rig may take some time as well as adjusting light intensity and such (Python scripting would help here).

If Poser 8 is released with GI, then that may be the prefered solution.  However, if all you have is Poser 6 or 7, then using Bagginsbill's gamma correction technique, plus fake GI, might look awsome.

Also, fake GI means that render times will be reduced to a tiny fraction of what full GI would take.

thanks for the link

take care
jdc

So there is no more official poser forum in cp. There is no way to see the feature requests.(I posted many requests there. :P)
Would they forget to add those features to Poser 8?