Quote - >> "Photoshop opens fairly rapidly,"

CS4 Photoshop and Poser open at about the same speed on my MacBook.

That 'splains some of it (I don't have CS-anything for P-Shop... still using a way old version :) )

Quote - Ummm - rooms you don't use do not consume CPU cycles. They don't really initialize unless you open them.

And I suspect they take very little RAM, so there's no real savings versus the headache that would entail for the developers.

Separate libraries, then, or ...?

(now I'm gonna have to go look :? )

Quote - > Quote - Ummm - rooms you don't use do not consume CPU cycles. They don't really initialize unless you open them.

And I suspect they take very little RAM, so there's no real savings versus the headache that would entail for the developers.

Separate libraries, then, or ...?

(now I'm gonna have to go look :? )

Poser is a large (mostly) static linked executable.
DLLs have always been used for Python and the geometry I/O plugins (none of which appear to be delay loaded) and of course for all the system stuff that gets pulled in eventually.
P5 brought in some more (Dynamic cloth engine and some for image I/O).
P6 Unchanged.
P7 A few more (OGL shading, Collada)

A reasonable chunk of memory will also be used by the GUI resources (mutli-layer PSDs for decorating the controls etc.)

I picked up the 3D World magazine today and seen the full page advert for Poser 8 on page 37. The hair detail (hair, eyebrows etc) on the model looks very convincing, though the lighting is too high key for my taste. Softer lighting might have made the model look even more lifelike in the advert, as would less contrast and less saturated skin tones IMHO.
On page 15 there is a picture of "Girl with Earring" by Steven Sun and he managed what I think is perfectly convincing facial skin and eyes, and lovely use of lighting. Steven has apparently only been doing 3D work for two years and I think if he can produce work of this calibre in so short a time, then there is hope for newbies like me.

My new computer  Quad core , 8G ram 1G video card  Poser 7 Pro constantly crashes . Sad and angry  that i bot  a computer that poser will not work on  , I had no heads up that there where computers -- video cards Drivers that poser will NOT work with . thanks  smithy mac!
 Don't thank  I can buy Poser 8 when it comes out ,because it probably will not  work either.

And the award of record preference wipes go's to .,.................ME!!   thank you , thank you. 

What video card/driver?

9/10 it's video drivers that cause a poser crash these days, make sure you've got the VERY latest from the manufacturer & not just relying on the Microsoft default drivers as they're worse than useless.

I was just browsing at Poserworld, and they now state that their products are Poser 8 compatible...

Quote - My new computer  Quad core , 8G ram 1G video card  Poser 7 Pro constantly crashes . Sad and angry  that i bot  a computer that poser will not work on  , I had no heads up that there where computers -- video cards Drivers that poser will NOT work with . thanks  smithy mac!
 Don't thank  I can buy Poser 8 when it comes out ,because it probably will not  work either.

And the award of record preference wipes go's to .,.................ME!!   thank you , thank you. 

I would check for the latest vidiocard drivers first, also you vid card can be replaced, also the P7P update SR1 helped with the crashes quite a bit! I also had to uninstall p7 as they had a conflict for some reason so PP would work.

I just built a new pc with 12 megs of ram and an I7 quadcore and poser will still only use 3 megs of ram, also I am using windows 7 beta whch is much faster than vista. my vidio card works with poser but vue doesnt like it and says it is out of date, like you just once I would like them to think about cg artist instead of just bucks!

Quote - I was just browsing at Poserworld, and they now state that their products are Poser 8 compatible...

How do they define that? or is this just brash marketing?

if shanks is a tester, and if it's now o.k. for them to talk about it in a limited way, then he would know.

I read about 70% of this thread and still have to ask....

what kinda of release date/month are we talkin about?

..or did i miss sometin in the tread?

 They said after siggraph which is in early august.
Love esther

Don't see the poll results at SM's site so curious to see what "improvements" won at the polls

Quote - > Quote - My new computer  Quad core , 8G ram 1G video card  Poser 7 Pro constantly crashes . Sad and angry  that i bot  a computer that poser will not work on  , I had no heads up that there where computers -- video cards Drivers that poser will NOT work with . thanks  smithy mac!

 Don't thank  I can buy Poser 8 when it comes out ,because it probably will not  work either.

And the award of record preference wipes go's to .,.................ME!!   thank you , thank you. 

I would check for the latest vidiocard drivers first, also you vid card can be replaced, also the P7P update SR1 helped with the crashes quite a bit! I also had to uninstall p7 as they had a conflict for some reason so PP would work.

I just built a new pc with 12 megs of ram and an I7 quadcore and poser will still only use 3 megs of ram, also I am using windows 7 beta whch is much faster than vista. my vidio card works with poser but vue doesnt like it and says it is out of date, like you just once I would like them to think about cg artist instead of just bucks!

Yep first  thing I did was clean  the pref,,, out  did not fix it , so it keep  crashing so , uninsulated and reinstalled , that did not work  so you go to Smithy Mac  site look up help for the problem  the fix it for the possible problem did not work (vid driver up date and change video driver settings ,didn't work ), 

So as a last resort got in contact with tech support ,been email tennis for a week with that .

I'm gonna be a little harsh here, so apologies in advance, okay?

Those of us who are old enough to remember should recall the problems that came down with version 3 of Illustrator on a Mac. It installed beautifully but wouldnt open. It was driving Adobe crazy to hear all these complaints, because no one could figure it out.

Then finally someone realized it was because of a single font, that if you had that font as your choice for your overall system, something in Illustrator didnt like it and would forbid opening the program. It was a simple patch to fix it, but it took forever to solve what was going on. Still, Adobe didnt say, "Look, not our problem; deal with it yourselves." They found the issue and corrected it.

Having said that, consider how complicated computers have become in the decade and a half since Illustrator 3. Every manufacturer has a different approach and uses a different graphics card, a different this, a different that. I dont know what you're running, but I think I can say, with pretty good assurance, that the problem is not Smith Micro's not building a program that can run but one that has problems with whatever the set up is on your specific machine. Were the fora rampant with stories like yours, yes, you would have a good case that it's all SM's fault — but they're not. In the main, Poser 7 has been the most stable release of this thing since version 4. True, it's not perfect, but no program these days is: everything has some weird little bug that no one caught in testing because the manufacturers dont have access to an infinite number of computers and their respective operating systems to work with. As I wrote in another thread, I've run P7 on three separate generations of Mac laptops, and, with the occasional hiccup, P7 runs excellently on all on three, everything from a last-gasp Power PC G3 to a dual-core Intel G5.

Bottom line: you cant blame Smith Micro for this. You've not said what your machine is, nor its specs, but I assume (and confidently so) that the problem is there, not in some conspiracy by SM to steal your money and run off laughing like some maniacal Simon Legree. I would earnestly recommend you start by looking at the system requirements printed on the side of the box and comparing them to your machine. Chances are, you'll find soon enough why it's not working.

justdusty: what OS are you running? I'm guessing Vista 32 bit, since most computers are delivered with Vista 32 bit these days, even if a 64 bit OS would make far better use of the hardware. This is a widespread form of PC vendor stupidity.

Also remember that Poser 7 was released before the Vista RCs. So it's not too surprising that it won't install correctly by default under Vista - you have to alter some settings during setup.

I can blame them for the long-standing bugs with Poser's rigging (inherited from previous owners but still)

Mind you, I agree with Sean's basic assessment, but there's a couple of things that could use some expansion.

Quote -
Having said that, consider how complicated computers have become in the decade and a half since Illustrator 3. Every manufacturer has a different approach and uses a different graphics card, a different this, a different that.

Actually, it is far more complex, but far more stable than you think, especially with our particular corner of the world.

The complexity is mostly hardware, which has gone wild with options and new tech.

However, all that hardware has to hew to common software APIs, which has been far more stable over time than you suspect...

On the Mac side, OSX has had Carbon and Cocoa since it first launched nine years ago... and the only changes of note so far have been the inclusion of Universal Binaries, and the gradual phasing-out of Carbon (which was originally meant to be a temporary compatibility bennie anyway).

On the Windows side, everything began shifting to .NET back in 2001 or so, though C++ still works just fine on it for the engines and heavy-lifting. Aside from DirectX (which most of the CG world ignores), there really hasn't been too many big bumps, with most of those being related to Vista and security changes. If you wrote your code correctly in the first place, you wouldn't have had to worry too much even about that (and yes, this is a OSX/Linux guy praising them for that).

For UI and eye-candy issues, OpenGL hasn't really done too much at all as far as disrupting compatibility since Poser 5 (when it first got OpenGL inclusions, IIRC), which came out, what 6 years ago? I'm fairly sure that 6-year-old OpenGL calls should still work just fine today, with only minimum disruption (which is why you use OGL in the first place, so you don't have to go chasing multiple version shifts on multiple cards to accommodate multiple vidcard drivers/modules, etc).

It wouldn't have taken too much effort for SM/eF/EGI/CL/whoever to rewrite to pure OGL, with UI elements written to either .NET or Cocoa (or do what DAZ did and go straight to Qt for that).

For a bit of a comparison, take a peek at Unreal Tournament (the game) sometime. Its codebase is well over ten years old now, it has gained a shedload of features and GPU-punishing horsepower, yet its UI and core are still as flexible and nimble as a Russian gymnast overdosed on Glucosamine. 

Hell, look at OSX. An operating system is 5000x more complex than anything Poser can come up with, has to play nicely with bare metal (which does change with alarming frequency), and yet each iteration of OSX runs faster and smoother (so far) than previous versions.

Quote - I dont know what you're running, but I think I can say, with pretty good assurance, that the problem is not Smith Micro's not building a program that can run but one that has problems with whatever the set up is on your specific machine.

Not so sure about that one, either. Apples come in a very (relatively) small variety of flavors, with little in the way of hardware or OS customization (now if it were typical for Mac users to be playing with Onyx or other system tweakers, okay... but c'mon - it ain't that common at all).

Even on the Windows side, we've got, what, NVIDIA, ATI, or Intel (blecch) for video (all of which implement OpenGL, DX, SDL, Qt whatever), common frameworks for Vista or XP/2000 (with, granted, service packs)? None of these are insurmountable (thanks to Visual Studio), truth be told. So unless we're talking about gamers whose home page happens to be Tom's Hardware or hexus.net, I doubt that it would be all that big of a deal on the Windows side either.

Quote - In the main, Poser 7 has been the most stable release of this thing since version 4. True, it's not perfect, but no program these days is: everything has some weird little bug that no one caught in testing because the manufacturers dont have access to an infinite number of computers and their respective operating systems to work with.

Depends on the bug, really... little errors that only occur under certain obscure conditions usually don't (and honestly shouldn't) be worried about unless/until the biggies are squashed.

OTOH, if the bug is systemic and tends to break things under common conditions, well...

Quote -
what kinda of release date/month are we talkin about?

The ad says to see it at SIGGRAPH, which is the week of  August 3rd...

>> Apples come in a very (relatively) small variety of flavors

Except that I wasnt speaking specifically to the Mac side. Yes, I'm running it on three machines, and they're all happy little campers. But as I pointed out, the kind of systematic failure the poster described? We havent seen a flood of posts on that, not here, nor at CPs fora when they were around. People have issues with some thing or another, but not to the degree that he was talking about... which suggests to me that it's not Poser. It's his machine and however it's been set up. As such, to rant and rave about SmithMicro when the problem isnt theirs... well, seems a bit unfair.

Quote - However, all that hardware has to hew to common software APIs, which has been far more stable over time than you suspect...

I didn't even read the rest. I have to cry bullshit, because I am right in the middle of that bogus belief system right now.

I've worked an extra 3 f'ing weeks on Poser 8, trying to make the UI mouse clicks and wheel events to work the same in PC and MAC. I'm programming in Adobe Flex/Flash, which means I'm not even dealing with the OS from different vendors - I'm dealing only with the Adobe standard UI interface API.

It does not work the same. And if Smith Micro would just tell you Mac f'ers to go to hell, my life would be a lot simpler. I am busting my balls trying to making the God DAMN Macintosh work like it is supposed to. We're talking about simple things like Mouse Down, Mouse Up.

If it sounds like I'm a little sick of the "standard API" idea, I really am. I've had a much easier time when I wrote my own GUI in assembly language directly to the hardware.

whoa! I just noticed that 722 is using "bean" as avatar.  whilst I hated "bean", I loved blackadder.

but anyway, bill, the OS X.4/5/6 market share of some of these softwares is only around 10% (or less), hence why not hand off the OS X interface work to one of yer colleagues? no need to take out yer frustrations, however justifiable, on our hapless mac brethren.  I know the admins here treat ya with kid gloves because they value yer input, but it's not a licence to abuse IMVHO.

if that was abuse, we need some seriously thicker skins round here.....that wasn't even close to abuse.

Nah.... I would call that downright frustration to the Nth degree.  I understand about that plenty.  Hope you get it sorted out bb!

Quote - whoa! I just noticed that 722 is using "bean" as avatar.  whilst I hated "bean", I loved blackadder.

but anyway, bill, the OS X.4/5/6 market share of some of these softwares is only around 10% (or less), hence why not hand off the OS X interface work to one of yer colleagues? no need to take out yer frustrations, however justifiable, on our hapless mac brethren.  I know the admins here treat ya with kid gloves because they value yer input, but it's not a licence to abuse IMVHO.

I agree, I'm not a MAC user, but no reason to treat them like this. No one forced you to test on macs and pc's, you choose to do that, you could also stick to testing on the system you mainly use and let others test on the other type of system.

You seem to get away with a lot lately..... abuse.... breaking the NDA your under.... swearing.... attacks..... Anyone else might have been banned by now.

Lot of self appointed moderators...

I hope you get it sorted out, Bill.  I suppose I'm  fortunate, as I've only been beating my head getting my old laptop to hibernate under Debian 5...

then don't read it and grow a skin.

Given that the very first version of Poser was Mac only, dont blame us for being long-term users. :)

I had Poser 1 on PC ... I think it did come out on Mac first, but it was eventually released for PC. Came on one or two 3-1/2 inch disks. Wow, have times changed. LOL

Quote - > Quote - However, all that hardware has to hew to common software APIs, which has been far more stable over time than you suspect...

I didn't even read the rest. I have to cry bullshit, because I am right in the middle of that bogus belief system right now.

I've worked an extra 3 f'ing weeks on Poser 8, trying to make the UI mouse clicks and wheel events to work the same in PC and MAC. I'm programming in Adobe Flex/Flash, which means I'm not even dealing with the OS from different vendors - I'm dealing only with the Adobe standard UI interface API.

It does not work the same. And if Smith Micro would just tell you Mac f'ers to go to hell, my life would be a lot simpler. I am busting my balls trying to making the God DAMN Macintosh work like it is supposed to. We're talking about simple things like Mouse Down, Mouse Up.

Guess that means we shouldn't be asking for a Linux version, then. Since the current Mac OS is based on OpenBSD...

Quote -
Guess that means we shouldn't be asking for a Linux version, then. Since the current Mac OS is based on OpenBSD...

True, but the desktop is all Apple.  Poser7 runs decently under Wine, so merely building it with Winelib should get it close for Linux...

Quote - > Quote -

Guess that means we shouldn't be asking for a Linux version, then. Since the current Mac OS is based on OpenBSD...

True, but the desktop is all Apple.  Poser7 runs decently under Wine, so merely building it with Winelib should get it close for Linux...

C'mon, you dont want Bill to go into complete meltdown, do you? :)

Quote - C'mon, you dont want Bill to go into complete meltdown, do you? :)

heheheheheh Bill's been trying to help me learn shaders, which must have taxed his patience to breaking point... don't you think I've pushed him to that point before?
I really should send him something fermented - not sure if Bundy rum is something he'd find at all appealing, though... (what us Aussies have in times of duress)

I can't believe how some people react to me. As if you were sure you understood that I was insulting somebody, or that I break rules you think you understand, or that I'm a regular and frequent asshole who doesn't like you or care about your needs. Again, I have to point out that if I was going to insult you, you'd be so insulted that you wouldn't even be able to type.

Let me take this apart for you.

When I call somebody "f ' er", I'm having fun and being myself, which includes a lot of good-natured ribbing. Some loading-dock vocabulary is fun for me as I am usually amongst a bunch of suits.

Smith Micro would like to support the Mac people. I would not, unless it was worth it. In my opinion, it doesn't seem to be worth it. Making the software work the same across the platforms, even with so-called right-once-run-anywhere software SDKs, is a lot of work and a lot of money.

Nevertheless, I agreed to build this UI for both PC and Mac. It has turned out that the common API for GUI under Adobe Flash is unreliable across platforms. As a result, I have been tasked with trying endless new combinations to make it work on the Mac, ON MY NICKLE.

My reaction and comment was partly because in some past postings, I've seen whining and complaining about SM's commitment to customers, and commitment to the Mac. Let me make this clear to you. SM is bending over backwards to make this work right on a Mac, and as a result, despite what I would do, it will work on a Mac. You can thank them, not me, because I'd have cut the Mac loose already. There aren't enough of you buying this to justify the effort and expense I've put into it. You Mac users should put together a formal letter of thanks and send it to SM.

As to nobody forcing me to test on a Mac, that's incorrect. SM is "forcing" me to make this work on a Mac because I agreed to. But I cannot test for the Mac because I do not have a Mac or any access to one. So I submit new software and the testers test it. I dont' test it, because I can't. I'd need 30 computers to do the various test cases I'm dealing with. I understand that isn't "forced" in that I made an agreement that wasn't coerced. I did so under the assumption that I'd be using Adobe software that is guaranteed to work the same on all platforms. That assumption has proved incorrect, and now it's costing me, personally, literally thousands of dollars.

Bill, have you contacted Adobe, perhaps they can help you out??  It's their software.  Might be someone there that knows a work around or something for this sort of issue (s) your having making it cross platform.

Quote - You seem to get away with a lot lately..... abuse.... breaking the NDA your under.... swearing.... attacks..... Anyone else might have been banned by now.

This stuff really cracks me up. You're really not putting 2 and 2 together very well.

I have told you guys that the Poser leadership team reads this thread. I have told you that I speak to them every week. I have told you that they know everything I say here. I have told you that they find this thread very interesting. Are you still unable to read between the lines? 

For the really slooooow learners, read this: I did not "break" my Non Disclosure Agreement - Daddy said I could say whatever I wanted.

As for the swearing, I wasn't aware that was a problem. I see pictures of huge tits and large dicks and swollen balls all the time here so I figured this was a pretty racy place. I was sure that some letters that spell bad words was not going to be a problem. I don't swear too much online, but believe me, what I'm dealing with right now calls for it.

But you raise an interesting point. Anyone else might have been banned now, eh? That's a fascinating thought. Banned for what exactly? 

I was going to give you some P8 renders, something nobody else is allowed to do.

But, now maybe I'll just lick my balls for a while.

Quote - Bill, have you contacted Adobe, perhaps they can help you out??  It's their software.  Might be someone there that knows a work around or something for this sort of issue (s) your having making it cross platform.

It isn't just their (Adobe's) software. There are 4 layers between me and the mouse. I won't really explain more. Suffice it to say I know my job.

but we have faith in you BB
just like that little engine
we know you can
we know you can
we know you can
for it is moments like this that prove that the human mind is the greatest computer..

>> "When I call somebody "f ' er", I'm having fun and being myself, which includes a lot of good-natured ribbing. Some loading-dock vocabulary is fun for me as I am usually amongst a bunch of suits."

Perhaps it is to you, but without any other clues (like the occasional emoticon), it just came across as mean-spirited. As you say, you know your job. You know what's expected of you. Rather than come here and complain, I earnestly suggest you just suck it up and deal with it, as opposed to "jokingly" insulting the folks who, in their clearly miniscule way, pay for your job.

We all have technical issues to deal with. I'm working on over 250 short animations, all due pretty much last week, and some of them are f'ing disasters because I cant get the damn rigging to work like I need it to. But I'm not gonna whine at the guy writing the cheque. I'm gonna figure it out and send the invoice in and move on to the next assignment.

Further, whatever your position outside SM might be, right now, in this thread, you represent the company. You've made that pretty clear. SM probably wouldnt take too well to having someone on their staff (even as an outside consultant) trashing part of their customer base in an open forum, no matter how you may have intended it.

If you need to blow off steam at having to deal with Mac platform, this is not — trust me, not — the place to do it.

 as a mac user I appreciat all the efforttconsidering how diffiucult it seems to be - so i don't feel trashed
Love esther

Guys, let's keep this civil.

Sean,

Are you gaslighting me?

Do people read my posts in isolation, and ignore the statement that I was reacting to? You seem to be reading things in the wrong order or something.

I did not jump in here to insult the Mac and its users.  I was responding to a claim by Penguinisto that "all that hardware has to hew to common software APIs, which has been far more stable over time than you suspect". I disagree with "stable" as if that means that cross-platform testing is much easier than it used to be.

My response was to explain that cross-platform testing is as hard as ever, despite these common APIs. And rather than just make some wild response unencumbered by facts or direct knowledge, I described what is happening with Flex on Mac versus PC.

It was then taken as some sort of insult to Mac users, when in fact I was insulting Penguinisto. :) It was HIM I was contradicting.

I really don't like it when people filter what I've said and what I've quoted. Read the whole post, including the quote.

>> Are you gaslighting me?

Per Jeff's request, I'm going to keep this civil.

Pointed, but civil.

If your insult was directed at Penguinisto, you indicated that only in passing,. Instead, you marched straight into a mini-rant about how Mac was such a problem, that Smith Micro was bending over backwards to accommodate Mac users, that you were frustrated with having to deal with it in the first place. Having done that, you came back later and said "Ha ha, just kidding, guys", when in fact there was nothing in your post to indicate you were kidding at all.

I suggest you go back and re-read your first post on the matter. Pretend for the moment that someone else wrote it. Take the words at face value, with — as you request — no filtering.

>> "And if Smith Micro would just tell you Mac f'ers to go to hell, my life would be a lot simpler. I am busting my balls trying to making the God DAMN Macintosh work like it is supposed to. We're talking about simple things like Mouse Down, Mouse Up."

Now, tell us how we're supposed to react to that.

Quote - Guys, let's keep this civil.

Cool currency in your sig!

no Sean.

for once I'm going to be blunt.

he made a passing comment. Not a mini Rant. you are blowing this out of proportion.

for once.. just stop the drama.

just stop.
 

Quote - Cool currency in your sig!

Thanks.

*>> " for once I'm going to be blunt.

he made a passing comment. Not a mini Rant"*

That's your interpretation. 

and your blowing it out of all proportion.

have some consideration for the rest of us. and Stop The Drama.

I've said my peace on this.

Go find your "drama" elsewhere.