Quote - - Some older python scripts don't work anymore but that was predictable.

Which scripts ?

fuggedabout Poser 8 GI... how is its regular lighting? Same old same old Poser/Firefly?

Quote -
After you launch Poser, go into Task Manager. Find the Poser process in Processes. Right click and choose Set Priority ... Below Normal.

This means that Poser will run 100% CPU unless you try to do something else. Then it will briefly let your desktop or other applications respond immediately to your mouse and keyboard.

I do this all the time, because while I'm rendering, I browse the forums. The browser is really sluggish with Poser at normal priority, but fast as ever with Poser at below normal priority.

If you're not doing something else, Poser will still get 100% of the CPU for the render, so it doesn't really slow anything down while you're reading stuff.

I never thought to bring it up, but I've been doing that with Poser and other apps for a while now, although my Q9550 quad core doesn't have a problem running my browser or email while Poser is at normal priority, and nothing seems to make it really use the CPU at 100% through the entire render. It seems it always drops down to 50% then 25% halfway through.

Quote - Unfortunately, there's no way I know of to make this permanent. You have to change the process priority every time you launch Poser. 

Make a different shortcut with the command line switch to force lower priority, read the command line help for the "start" command.

Quote - > Quote - Unfortunately, there's no way I know of to make this permanent. You have to change the process priority every time you launch Poser. 

Make a different shortcut with the command line switch to force lower priority, read the command line help for the "start" command.

OOOOOH!

Quote -

• The thumbs in the new library are ridiculous small (until you select an item) and that alone makes browsing the library imho in no way an improvement over earlier versions. It seems even more annoying than before to browse your content. And I couldn't care less for the new search function. I have a lot of content, but it is well organized and I know where to find my stuff.

Let me guess... Smith micro assumes everyone is using a CRT @ 800x600 still, and coded the thumbs to be small for those with teeny monitors, while not allowing for an option to resize them?
Somehow that wouldn't surprise me.

Quote -
I never thought to bring it up, but I've been doing that with Poser and other apps for a while now, although my Q9550 quad core doesn't have a problem running my browser or email while Poser is at normal priority, and nothing seems to make it really use the CPU at 100% through the entire render. It seems it always drops down to 50% then 25% halfway through.

Not any more. It will use 100% till the last bucket is filled. P7 used to do that because of the way the buckets were sequenced. Basically dividing the scene into quarters to render. P8 does it differently. When a bucket finishes the very it just grabs the next unrendered bucket. This helps complex scenes render faster. Especially if one part of the scene contains more detail than the rest of the scene.

For those of you with Poser Pro you can take the trick of lowering the process priority one step further. If you use the render queue set it's priority down. Then every render you send to queue  will be rendered as the lower priority. This allows you to work while scenes render in the background.

Quote - Regarding system sluggishness while rendering, here's a tip. I've been doing this with all versions of Poser forever.

After you launch Poser, go into Task Manager. Find the Poser process in Processes. Right click and choose Set Priority ... Below Normal.

This means that Poser will run 100% CPU unless you try to do something else. Then it will briefly let your desktop or other applications respond immediately to your mouse and keyboard.

I do this all the time, because while I'm rendering, I browse the forums. The browser is really sluggish with Poser at normal priority, but fast as ever with Poser at below normal priority.

If you're not doing something else, Poser will still get 100% of the CPU for the render, so it doesn't really slow anything down while you're reading stuff.

Unfortunately, there's no way I know of to make this permanent. You have to change the process priority every time you launch Poser.

 

Create this shortcut (Shortcut wizard works well here in Windows):

C:WINDOWSsystem32cmd.exe /c start "runbelownormal" /belownormal "D:Poser 8Poser.exe"

You will need to replace:

D:Poser 8Poser.exe

with the path of your poser installation + Poser.exe

Quote -
I never thought to bring it up, but I've been doing that with Poser and other apps for a while now, although my Q9550 quad core doesn't have a problem running my browser or email while Poser is at normal priority, and nothing seems to make it really use the CPU at 100% through the entire render. It seems it always drops down to 50% then 25% halfway through.

Hi Mike!
The multi-core support before Poser 8 was not optimal. With 4 cores, it assigned one quadrant to each core. If one quadrant was done, that core went idle and did not help out with the other quadrants.

Poser 8 does it differently. Each core is only given a bucket, not a quadrant. When it finishes, it starts the next un-rendered bucket. So you'll only drop to below 100% when there are less than 4 buckets left to work on.

Poser 8 will use up to 32 cores, far more than the previous limit of 4.

When we get to 256 or 1024 cores, even the new strategy will be inadequate, as the number of cores active cannot exceed the number of buckets left. I wonder what they'll do then?

Decent program for doing this easily is Advanced Shortcuts Composer -

http://download.cnet.com/Advanced-Shortcuts-Composer/3000-2084_4-10558084.html

Quote - Let me guess... Smith micro assumes everyone is using a CRT @ 800x600 still, and coded the thumbs to be small for those with teeny monitors, while not allowing for an option to resize them?
Somehow that wouldn't surprise me.

LOL. No they're not stupid. It's my fault. (I wrote the library GUI)

Well not exactly my fault, but Adobe's. See, this is written in Flex, and I'm using the Flex Tree widget. Just getting it to show custom thumbnails on a per-item basis was tricky. Getting it to support thumbnails at different sizes was even trickier, but I made it work.

(Thumbnails can even display larger than 91 by 91 now, the previous display limit. If you have Apollo Maximus, check him out. His thumbnails is HUGE when you select it. )

Back to our story. Getting the control to display a child item count was tricky. Getting the tree control to cache the folder thumbnail was tricky. Getting it to open folders when you click the name, but not other parts was tricky. Lots of tricky.

So I added an option to display all item thumbnails large. The tree control went berzerk. unable to scroll, lost its content altogether, etc. I spent weeks trying to find out why the tree control went berzerk when filled with large thumbnails. I'm still working on it.

Meanwhile, people have something to play with, it is usable, it is hundreds of times faster than the old library. I'm working on it. Sorry about that. I'll try harder next time. :)

Quote -
For those of you with Poser Pro you can take the trick of lowering the process priority one step further. If you use the render queue set it's priority down. Then every render you send to queue  will be rendered as the lower priority. This allows you to work while scenes render in the background.

You know, I've never even used the render queue. Thanks for the tip, I'll have to try that.

Quote -
Hi Mike!
The multi-core support before Poser 8 was not optimal. With 4 cores, it assigned one quadrant to each core. If one quadrant was done, that core went idle and did not help out with the other quadrants.

Poser 8 does it differently. Each core is only given a bucket, not a quadrant. When it finishes, it starts the next un-rendered bucket. So you'll only drop to below 100% when there are less than 4 buckets left to work on.

Poser 8 will use up to 32 cores, far more than the previous limit of 4.

Thanks for the reply, Bill.

No, I knew about the Poser 7/Pro rendering deal, but I always wondered if there was a hack, a way around it.
Poser 8 being able to use all cores for the entire render is something I already knew about from other threads here, and probably the main reason I will be upgrading soon. At least it seems Smith Micro is on a better track with Poser than any of its previous owners... maybe my hopes for UberPoser will be realized one day. ;-)

As for the thumbnail size, I can live with it. It's no big deal to me, really. I could do without thumbs altogether since 75% of the stuff I load into Poser is my own stuff anyway, and I know what it is without seeing it. I could do with only text, actually, and I really like the idea that it has creation and modified dates available.

I'm pretty much just waiting for the glut of orders to subside a little before I order it. I wish they had a current server load graph on their site.

Bookmarking, and thank everyone for the input to this thread.  It's amazingly helpful.

Indi.

Quote - > Quote - Let me guess... Smith micro assumes everyone is using a CRT @ 800x600 still, and coded the thumbs to be small for those with teeny monitors, while not allowing for an option to resize them?

Somehow that wouldn't surprise me.

LOL. No they're not stupid. It's my fault. (I wrote the library GUI)

Well not exactly my fault, but Adobe's. See, this is written in Flex, and I'm using the Flex Tree widget. Just getting it to show custom thumbnails on a per-item basis was tricky. Getting it to support thumbnails at different sizes was even trickier, but I made it work.

(Thumbnails can even display larger than 91 by 91 now, the previous display limit. If you have Apollo Maximus, check him out. His thumbnails is HUGE when you select it. )

Back to our story. Getting the control to display a child item count was tricky. Getting the tree control to cache the folder thumbnail was tricky. Getting it to open folders when you click the name, but not other parts was tricky. Lots of tricky.

So I added an option to display all item thumbnails large. The tree control went berzerk. unable to scroll, lost its content altogether, etc. I spent weeks trying to find out why the tree control went berzerk when filled with large thumbnails. I'm still working on it.

Meanwhile, people have something to play with, it is usable, it is hundreds of times faster than the old library. I'm working on it. Sorry about that. I'll try harder next time. :)

Thanks for your words and work. When u think we will be able to get the update or download to fix the thumbnails? Thanks

beat me to the start command method. You can use the free process utility to create a couple of .bat files to raise or lower the priority without needing to go through Process Manager if you want to adjust it on the fly during renders.

beyondlogic.org/solutions/processutil/processutil.htm

"I'll try harder next time. :)" Sounds like you more than earned your pay! Being a Luddite, I'm leery of the notion of browser based GUIs for desktop apps. I've done it and the cross-platform portability is nice but I'm not keen on the proposition - still, one must adapt.

Quote -
Thanks for your words and work. When u think we will be able to get the update or download to fix the thumbnails? Thanks

Well that depends on lots of factors, of course. I don't have any data about when there will be a service release, but I know there will be one. I still haven't figured out how to make it work.

If I find a way much earlier than the first SR, I'll ask SM if I can distribute the updated GUI module. It is a separate file from the rest of the GUI so is field replaceable. No promises, though. It's a very difficult problem.

Of course, we could do away with the tree altogether, and go back to the simple list, showing only the contents of one folder, but that's no fun, right? Heheh.

Quote - Uh... that's not external render. Nowhere on that tab does it say external render -- I'm guessing you're looking at Poser Pro.

Separate process is under the Number of Threads. (And I already set that to 4, since I'm on a Quad Core.)
I'll give it a shot with that though.

Turning on Separate Process is turning on the External Rendering. The Renderer is treated as a Separate Process by your OS, giving a fresh Allocation each time you start a Render.

I'd like to see some examples of the supposedly fixed normal mapping in Poser 8. Maybe there have been already, elsewhere, but I think I would have noticed that, as that's one of the main motivations I have for upgrading.

Quote - > Quote -

Thanks for your words and work. When u think we will be able to get the update or download to fix the thumbnails? Thanks

Well that depends on lots of factors, of course. I don't have any data about when there will be a service release, but I know there will be one. I still haven't figured out how to make it work.

If I find a way much earlier than the first SR, I'll ask SM if I can distribute the updated GUI module. It is a separate file from the rest of the GUI so is field replaceable. No promises, though. It's a very difficult problem.

Of course, we could do away with the tree altogether, and go back to the simple list, showing only the contents of one folder, but that's no fun, right? Heheh.

Thanks for answering. That will be great! If need a tester just let me know.

My first impression is .. not a good one.
While the rendering time is really awsome and I love the interface and the general layout I am having a huge problem with hair.... all my hair is no longer working while it was working fine in Poser 7. All I get is the texture could not be loaded. Image map file could not be found or there is not enough memory to load it. I had the same problem with poser pro eventually it stopped but i ended up returning poser pro for a number of reasons.
So I checked everything a million times reinstalled some of the hair I was trying but I got way more ram then I need to run anything and everything.

So I like Poser 8 a lot... though unfortunately I will very likely end up returning it if I can not find a fix to the issue.

Just a quick question ... did you add the hair's runtime folder to the library? It sounds like that is what you might need to do. 

Oh yeah naturally I did.
I found a way to work around it which is much work for me. basically it will only run the hair and some of DM's stuff like spirit asylum when installed right into the poser 8 runtime. which is a pain for me because I usually like to keep my runtimes on a diffrent hard drive so i dont clog my windows drive up too much and have it all backed up instantly. Now aparently with some things I can not do that which makes me less then happy

OK ... next possibility ... is it possible that you might have a duplicate copy of the hair files somewhere else in another runtime folder?  Sometimes that can throw things off too.  It's just a thought.

Nope checked that too I am likely the most OCD about my runtimes you will ever meet...( I can spend days simply rearranging my 300 gigs of runtime) I will just have to reinstall certain content into the Poser 8 runtime folder and it will work just fine.

You can install your Poser 8 content library in an external runtime. When you install Poser 8 there are four options for locating your runtime folder. I selected the last option, and installed it to a partition that's dedicated for content (so all my Poser 8 content goes to D:/Poser 8 Content).

Then I have lots of others, like D:/Hair, D:/Props, D:/Mil 4 Females, and so on.  

I think there are some Python Scripts that you might HAVE to install to the Poser installation folder on your C drive, but for regular content type stuff you can use an external folder.

I usually do it just like that too its just the hair and Spirit Asylum from DM that completely and utterly refuse to work like that all the other content works as intended. I guess I am stuck with the cheap work around. because poser is on my windows drive the G drive while all my runtimes usually reside on a poser content only drive that is D. No idea what the problem is in this particular case.

It crashed after I saved the picture when I tried to go back to the preview window :( 
Save save SAVE your scenes :) 

Is that a collar bone I see wrapping all the way around his neck and vanishing into his shoulders?
Have they kept the tradition of creating really alien looking humans or something? That just looks all kinds of wrong.

Well it certainly renders much faster.  Even with HSV and Indirect light it's pretty fast.

great thread guys. Bookmarking, but also want to express my dissatisfaction on the downloading from CP. I have tried downloading the content at least 6 times. i have 2 pcs trying to grab it.  It keeps resetting, timingout, or giving me half zip files. I don't mind the reset cause it picks up where it left off... but when it results in an unfinished zip file I have to start ffrom 1%, and that is *&(^%ing crazy.

Although I'm not satisified waiting for it to be shipped, so I guess it's a toss up!! :P

LOL I got mine early befor very many people were downloading. I bet there's 10,000 people trying to download right now.

Not laughing at you phionix. I know how frustrating that can be, I once lived in an area that only had dial up, used to go on week long download marathons.

Quote - Is that a collar bone I see wrapping all the way around his neck and vanishing into his shoulders?
Have they kept the tradition of creating really alien looking humans or something? That just looks all kinds of wrong.

Yes, they all look alien :) Maybe they do it on purpose so content creators can 'fix' them :) 

The collar bone thing might be because I used a 'Universal' pose, which usually makes them look more feminine. Whatever - it was just a test :) 

Quote - great thread guys. Bookmarking, but also want to express my dissatisfaction on the downloading from CP. I have tried downloading the content at least 6 times. i have 2 pcs trying to grab it.  It keeps resetting, timingout, or giving me half zip files. I don't mind the reset cause it picks up where it left off... but when it results in an unfinished zip file I have to start ffrom 1%, and that is *&(^%ing crazy.

Although I'm not satisified waiting for it to be shipped, so I guess it's a toss up!! :P

I was hoping to have the files on my pC when I got up this morning, but the download crashed somewhere >80%. If they would at least support a resume....

bagginsbill, one more thing about the library, don't know if it's doable but it would be good if we could just scroll using our keyboard arrows.   Mouse scroller skips some items and clicking each one is too tiresome.

But when I try to use the arrow keys I find I can move up or down for about 4-5 items and then it stops responding.   Anyone else having this problem?  Any chance of having this fixed - it would increase ease of use tremendously regardless of thumbnail size.

Is  there any way to delete, i.e., unlink a library once it has been added? I don't see anything obvious. The manual claims there should be a folder with minus sign and little man, but I'm not seeing it. Thanks.

[Edit: Nevermind. I didn't realize I had to set the Show dropdown to the library in question.]

Whichway

Quote - bagginsbill, one more thing about the library, don't know if it's doable but it would be good if we could just scroll using our keyboard arrows.   Mouse scroller skips some items and clicking each one is too tiresome.

But when I try to use the arrow keys I find I can move up or down for about 4-5 items and then it stops responding.   Anyone else having this problem?  Any chance of having this fixed - it would increase ease of use tremendously regardless of thumbnail size.

I find the number of times I can use the arrow keys to scroll through the library seemingly random. In that I can't see a particular pattern.

Generally... I can get between 6 to 20 moves up or down within a folder and through folders. Pressing the spacebar will open and close folders sometimes... sometimes not.

This feature would be very useful if it was reliable... particularly at the moment with the tiny icons... which expand to larger size as they are scrolled through without having to click on each one with the mouse.

Mornin' Everyone :)

I've just a quick question - does Poser 8 have some glowing light effects now?
Because if I remember right that's still the reason why I saved my money on P7 and still play arround with P6.

I think i'll update this time (there will be more options and stuff I'm sure ^^) but I want glowing light effects! I want everything to glow! I love glowing thingys!

Greetings from Germany
Da_DingG
ropose

just got home and have started playing with Poser8 after a very long download lol
and have to say i really like poser 8 so far,

Really like some of the improvements,indirect lighting,render speed etc, the ui is ok but one thing i have to say i really HATE is the library 
all the numbers about how many things are in the folder,when the item was modified or installed and the size of the item???? wtf do we really need these ????

personally these things arent usefull to me aswell as the search and favs,would probably never use these features.
not to forget the really small thumbs and how much freakin space the library wastes.

and was really hopeing that we could just press the first letter of the name of one of the folders in the library and it would just go to it like in dazstudio,have always found this very usefull.
to be honest would have just like the old library with just some new features,but hey guess i will just have to learn to like it lol:P

also another thing that i was a bit upset with lol was the cloth room
doesnt seem like they have improved much of the cloth room or maybe they didnt even touch it :)
doesnt seem like most people even use the cloth room these days but i really love it lol and was really hopeing for improvements:(
owell i guess

but apart from these things im really enjoying it lol :D

@ corvas

regarding the Poser 8 Library features...

If you plough back to page 4 of this thread... you will find some posts by bagginsbill with reference to the Poser 8 Library. Why it is like it is... what features BB hopes to change in the future, etc.

Do not give up hope... all is not lost :-)

Quote -

@ corvas

regarding the Poser 8 Library features...

If you plough back to page 4 of this thread... you will find some posts by bagginsbill with reference to the Poser 8 Library. Why it is like it is... what features BB hopes to change in the future, etc.

Do not give up hope... all is not lost :-)

thanks lol
didnt read that :P haha

Glad that the library is being looked into. I can cope for the time being :)

I was really pleased to note that linking my p7 runtime to p8 didn't affect the usability of the mil 4 folk. Don't know why it would to be honest but you never can tell. I had visions of having reinstall them and it's such a pita. Glad to find I didn't have to :)

Quote -

(Thumbnails can even display larger than 91 by 91 now, the previous display limit. If you have Apollo Maximus, check him out. His thumbnails is HUGE when you select it. )

Actually you have been able to make larger thumbnails for years. I think it was back from Poser 4 Pro but it may have been Poser 5 not sure. Anyway, I've made a lot of my thumbnails 182x91 for years (double height) because they are much nicer to look at and easier to find and see. They still look nice and big when clicked, and as small as anything else now when just displaying in the library.

I have the same problem with keyboard scrolling btw. When I use the scroll wheel on my mouse it skips soome bits, pushing them off screen. But with the keyboard I can only scroll 5 times before it stops responding. If I then click a thumbnail I can scroll 5 more times with the arrow keys ect.
So I'd say that is a genuine bug. It should either work all the time or not at all :)

Is there an official place to file bug reports?

Quote - Is there an official place to file bug reports?

**Bagginsbill care of Bagginsbillville Post Office ** (j/k)

The collar bone wrap around is present, dominant and I could not morph it away. I only played with the Poser8 characters for about 20 minutes, then installed V4 and I am happy.

This is not to say people can't get the Poser8 people going good, but if I were so inclined I'd take the new cross-group morph brush on that collarbone right away.

I don't like the arms and shoulders of the P8 people, so I just happily am back with V4.

V4 people TURN OFF EXTERNAL BINARIES. Poser still crashes with V4 if external binaries are on.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - Can also confirm that Poser 8 does not touch other versions of Poser you might have on your system.

As stewer says... just link to your other runtimes. Sooo easy in Poser 8. I currently have my (now older) Poser pro and an even older Poser 5 runtimes connected to Poser 8.

The new library features in Poser 8 are very good... I am finding that switching backwards and forewards between runtimes is virtually instantaneous.

How do you link the runtimes  ,,,  poser pros run,, to poser8  ?

Quote - Is there an official place to file bug reports?

http://my.smithmicro.com/support/index.html

I'm also getting issues with loading things. It wouldn't load the shadow dancer outfit at all. After a little bit it crashed, so I restarted it. Hadn't saved the scene, so I started rebuilding it but some of the mat poses wouldn't load either.

I've been downloading since 1 pm.yesterday. I can't tell you how many times i've had to restart the download, or just see a corrupted zip sitting in my folder. Another delivery method ( download ) would have been nice. I realize this is what I can expect with heavy traffic on DAY 1, but come on... think ahead. Well, I have 2 out of 3 zips and about another hour and a half to go. Then maybe, just maybe I'll sleep.

But who am I kidding. Once it's done I'll install and want to play with all the pretty features.

Quote - bagginsbill, one more thing about the library, don't know if it's doable but it would be good if we could just scroll using our keyboard arrows.   Mouse scroller skips some items and clicking each one is too tiresome.

But when I try to use the arrow keys I find I can move up or down for about 4-5 items and then it stops responding.   Anyone else having this problem?  Any chance of having this fixed - it would increase ease of use tremendously regardless of thumbnail size.

The keyboard in the tree view is another problem that would not go away. I'm not sure where the problem lies. It won't stay that way, though, I promise.

If I have to, I will write a new tree control from SCRATCH!