Quote - Can you categorize them within Poser without having to move them from their current folder?  If not, it's still a lot better than searching all over the place.

You can re-organize them into folder in Favorites without moving them.

There are much more sophisticated things coming in the future - the rebuild of the library was not just a matter of visualization. There is way more coming that will absolutely blow your mind.

I'm serious. It will blow your mind.

Quote - I'm serious. It will blow your mind.

Maybe I'm being naive, but why do we only ever hear things like this as teasing snippets buried deep in these threads (usually from you, bb!). Is the Renderosity Poser forum SM's de facto publicity platform for the product line?

If SM have 'mind-blowing' innovations planned for Poser, whether it's in the render engine, the lighting models, the library, the material room, or wherever, why can't they tell us at least something about what they have in mind? Why does it all have to be so hush-hush almost until release time?

Actually, it really doesn't bother me that much. I'm just curious why SM don't make the most of the fact that they do have a strategy for the Poser product line, which existing and potential users would be very interested in.

Competitors too, I suppose... is that the issue?

I like the old library system back please.... or at least have the option to choose between old or new.

BUT.... I rather see SR2 for Poser Pro 2008 which adds the same rendering improvements as are in Poser 8 right now. I know Poser Pro 2010 will come, but I prefer having Poser Pro 2008 with rendering improvements. It's a lot less buggy for me then P8 is.

Yeah, I agree that pro SR2 would have been nice. But there's no business case for doing it, as far as I can see.

Retro-fitting new (Poser 8) features to an old (Poser 7-based) product and releasing it as an SR2 would, I imagine, be a major headache, generate zero new revenue, and delay the development of the new things in the pipeline that will, we are told, 'blow our minds'!

So SM will undoubtedly concentrate on stabilising and improving Poser 8, and building the next Pro product upon that new foundation. I'm okay with that approach.

I doubt they will do it also, but one can always suggest. Unfortunally Poser Pro 2010 will most likely have the new library system also, that's why I suggested it.

SR2 would be very valid though, since technically Poser Pro isn't functioning correctly at all. It doesn't make use of the full CPU capacities, that should be fixed.

I'll add my vote for vilters coloured dial request, sheer genius! & I would love to have it, if it's possible.

I got poser 8 working now. 

While Putting Poser8 through it's paces,  I can't get my other Runtimes when I run my search. Nothing happens at all. All I get is Poser 8s Runtimes. I search for a figure, and I search for and for a Runtimes. I seached like you have for Rutime V4,  Runtime, or efrontier Runtime. Poser 8 just sits there laughing at me. Sayin, Ya big dummy, your pushin where you should be pullin.  There is no seaching being done! I can open any of my Poser 8 files, Hair, props and such.

Quote - I got poser 8 working now. 

While Putting Poser8 through it's paces,  I can't get my other Runtimes when I run my search. Nothing happens at all. All I get is Poser 8s Runtimes. I search for a figure, and I search for and for a Runtimes. I seached like you have for Rutime V4,  Runtime, or efrontier Runtime. Poser 8 just sits there laughing at me. Sayin, Ya big dummy, your pushin where you should be pullin.  There is no seaching being done! I can open any of my Poser 8 files, Hair, props and such.

Sorry for possibly a silly question, but have you added your other Runtimes to the Poser 8 Library list?

I honestly don't know why SM keeps quiet about long-term direction of the product.

History, maybe - bad experiences in the past talking about what will come, and then leave one thing out and they get eaten alive? Just guessing.

"Sorry for possibly a silly question, but have you added your other Runtimes to the Poser 8 Library list?"

That's what I was trying to do. I've had no problem with anyother Poser editions. What is the other way of adding Runtimes into Poser8 other than the search method through it's Library way.

To add a new library/runtime, click the indicated button.

Also if you already have all your runtimes loaded in an earlier version of Poser, you can import those using a Python script.

Menu Scripts/Partners/ShaderWorks/import_runtimes

I'm still downloading and will be all night.  I never should have started downloading the legacy content first.  Two hours and it wasn't even half-way done.  I killed it and rebooted and a lot faster now.  I blame it on Verizon DSL not CP or SM.

Maybe SM doesn't want to say too much about what's coming in case they change their mind and decide to scrap the idea if it becomes a pain in the butt to implement.

Do we still have to put our DAZ Mil4 figures in the runtime under Poser8 or can we just link to our external runtimes?  I can't remember if that was a Poser or DAZ limitation.  I much prefer not to have to copy all that stuff to the Poser folder.

Also, can I install Poser8 without all the content.  I think the new content will be downloading overnight and I really don't care out that or the legacy junk.  I have all of that and don't use it, but don't mind keep it as it would contain all the updates I'm sure.

Quote - Also, can I install Poser8 without all the content.  I think the new content will be downloading overnight and I really don't care out that or the legacy junk.  I have all of that and don't use it, but don't mind keep it as it would contain all the updates I'm sure.

yes, I did.

Sorry for all of the typos.  I didn't know if the install program needed access to the extra content or if I can just unzip and put them where I want.  I may do that as an external runtime even though I rarely use those figures.

Download almost done finally.  Then backups, then install.  I see the hotfix is included.  I assume this is not the SR1.

I'm not really looking for a lot of new features in an SR. Certainly not content. What I want is stability and aggravating things cleaned up.

Priorities:

1. I get horrible artifacts using raytraced shadows. The lip line is unsightly. I don't think others are having that particular problem, but raytracing still has serious artifact issues that need to be cleaned up.

2. Getting IDL nailed down.

3. The Material Room needs work. Easier navigation - the left to right horizontal scroll with an uncontrollable slider and wonky responsiveness is just not working. And whenever you remove detached nodes, the organization gets thrown all over the place. There should at least be an option to "rationalize" the nodes - i.e. stack everything in nice rows and kill the leftover space. (I know, easier said than done given how the nodes are interconnected all over the place.)

I'm sure there'll be more as I actually use P8 to build scenes etc; early on I've been doing a lot of rerenders, so my experience is still pretty narrow.

Thanks BB, I wasn't sure about that +box. I had to go and laydown a bit my eyes didn't want to stay open.

The ability to pause or stop an indirect light render at the end of the red dot phase so we can study the distribution.

Whichway

Before release sr1 make sure you find testers who will do thier job, and find faults and not just ignore them.

Quote - Before release sr1 make sure you find testers who will do thier job, and find faults and not just ignore them.

Am I going to have to have this whole discussion again?

Thank you, I will tell SM to find some testers who find faults.

The dozens of testers who found and reported hundreds and hundreds of faults will be fired - they will be forced to give back their Poser licenses and go over to DAZ Studio. I have reviewed the bug tracking system database and I have their names.

The engineers who fixed all those faults that were found before release - I will advise them to be fired as well, including myself.

don't bother Bill... he's not listening.

Quote - The ability to pause or stop an indirect light render at the end of the red dot phase so we can study the distribution.

Whichway

Can't you do that already? If you cancel it, isn't it still on the Render tab? (I must admit I haven't tried,but otherwise let it start the VERY first bucket and then I know you can cancel it and see what has (or hasn't) happened :)

Yes, but for renders that depend a lot on IDL, that pass takes the most time. I'd like some opportunity to study the red ant distribution, but not sacrifice all that CPU time.

Restartable renders would be much preferred.

Whichway

Okay, I have it installed and did a few things to get it set up and found a few issues.  Nothing serious.

1. When changing the background color from the menu, it doesn't work (Display>Background Color).  It started off a darker shade of gray than I wanted.  I like it white so I can see things better.  When I changed it to white, the entire background turned black.  It works if you select one of the four circles (the first I think) to the right underneath the posing window.  Not a biggy, but should be fixed.

2)  This is probably my fault, but I selected for the new P8 items to be installed to my external drive.  Since this was a download for me, the unzipped file was in a folder with other items that were downloaded.  The installation program couldn't find it so it was skipped and I had to do it manually.  It asked where I wanted to put it and I selected my external drive where my other runtimes are.  When loading Poser, I have the following error messages:

Couldn't find Camera.obj (I couldn't find it either until searched for just Camera and it was a compressed file (obz).

It also couldn't find a stupid toon texture file (toon3.png) I guess for that stick figure and couldn't find the character file for it either--as if I really care about that figure.  I like a blank working area when I load Poser.  When I found the toon texture and selected it several times, it ignored me and kept asking for it.  A possible bug.  I had to reboot.

Apparently Poser 8 has to have all of the content loaded in the folder where the program files are.

I like the Library.  It's a lot better since I no longer have to keep getting out of one runtime to go into another.  Before that was a real time waster.  This feature is long overdue.

I haven't done much in it so I hope I don't find any other issues.

Quote - Yes, but for renders that depend a lot on IDL, that pass takes the most time. I'd like some opportunity to study the red ant distribution, but not sacrifice all that CPU time.

Restartable renders would be much preferred.

Whichway

Whichway you are further along in IDL then most. Since the IDL pass takes longer then the actually render, can you think of a reason you would want to store the .icache file created on your harddrive during precalculating for re-use. If you change the lights in anyway not good. If you moved the camera, not good....just thinking out loud with a really wild and dumb thought. 

Not a dumb thought, but the answer is animation; things usually don't change much from one frame to the next, so most of the cache is still good. I think I read that Poser 8 actually does save and update it when doing animation.

Also, the render I currently have underway is the other way around. It has a lot of explicitly reflective detail and was a bear even without IDL in Poser 7.

Restarts would be great for those occasions when, after an hour or so, I'd really like to do something else for a while and resume the first render to run overnight.

Whichway

Quote -

Restarts would be great for those occasions when, after an hour or so, I'd really like to do something else for a while and resume the first render to run overnight.

Whichway

PoserPro2010 with background renders and or send to queue will be the ticket to do just that.

The queue, however, does not have a pause. It should. But only necessary as an overall system resources issue, as obviously you can still use Poser Pro with both background render and queue render running.

Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but I miss the ability to remove a runtime folder from the library.

Quote - Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but I miss the ability to remove a runtime folder from the library.

?? I think this has been treated elsewhere but I hit it myself. It is possible, but for some reason the documentation comes across as confusing, even though it is accurate.

First, above the library tree there is a drop-down list labeled "Show" and which probably has ""  selected. You must first select the library you want to delete from this drop-down list. Once you have the library selected, a folder icon with a "-" on it will appear. Clicking this icon will unlink the runtime library.

Hope this helps.

Whichway

Many thanks, Whichway! That seems a bit unintuitive, but now that I know how it's done, I can live with it.

And what do you mean, documentation? What's a documentation? :laugh:

I'll have to send a bug report, as I can't Zero the face on V4. It want's to retain the last face expression, especaly the eyebrows.

Also I can't load Mimic files.

I know there is Talk Designer, but I have an 1 1/2 hr movie that I am trying to finish up. I have all the M4 & V4 Mimic files ready made and ready use to go for in these clips. Also I would have to fix up V4 & M4 to be able to use in Talk Designer. I'll just have set up the Mimic files in Poser Pro, then reopen them in Poser 8.

I love the file system with only two complaints. If it could open up with bigger pics. and 1 other thing that would be handier, more than a nessisty. That would be just the Runtime folders either a little larger than the other folders, or a different color.

I do love the lighting system. Using it in Poser 8 making movies, I can't use the more detailed 2 and 3 hour per renders per frame, but I do get a very good hi quality Render at a decent per frame rate.

well bill im sooo sory for the poor testers, the same people who tested p6, p7,p7 pro and p8 and the same faults in each version after 6.
i go by the saying of 1 rusian hacker who joked how on a 3d aplication not poser, but 1 of the other major programs.
he hacked the program wrewrote some code the printed what he had done, sent it via mail so it would arive for them to sign for.
you guesed it they tottaly ignored his fix of the program and was put out for people to buy.
question bill now if people find a simular bug after purchase, how come you testers all missed it.
cut the crap please after 30 years in the computer buisness i have seen it all, and have heard it all before, even to the yank software houses when purchase european houses.
they tell the programers dont compres code we yanks dont like it, over 30 years ago why yanks never compress as they said we can afford big hard drives ect.
it was british and european programers who shone the way in compresion and how to make a program take up less space, that yanks could not do.
a lot of 3d games out thier work much beter when indi programers take it apart and fix it.

A few cosmetic changes I'd like to add:

In the library (which takes up a lot of space), vertical scroll bar on the left instead of the right.  I have to use the horizontal scroll bar to get to the veritcal.  Also a collapsible button like in earlier versions.  I know I can close it or undock it, but reopening it is more steps than necessary.

The Memory Dots:  take up too much space as well by still being a row of three.  Why can't these all be on one line?  There are only nine of them.

All that space after the "room" tabs.  Why can't we put things up there like the library and other tools that would be available in other rooms?  This would be a real space saver!

More flexibility in docking like putting side by side.

Two entirely different questions:

How do I get my old Python scripts into Poser8?  I tried copying them over to their respective folders and Poser crashed when I tried to load one (DAZ/Mac's Room Creator Quick Pose, which I find very useful for moving any object).

I already have PhilC's Wardrobe Wizard2.  Do I need the one that came with P8?  I use the external version anyway because it's faster.

<--- would really like an ignore button

Thank you for the contribution for Alyson.  I haven't even tried the new characters yet.

I've seen a lot of posts that claim they stink.  Anything is better than what came with Poser 7.  I always thought Simon was just the ugliest 3D creature there ever was.  Even toon characters have better faces, and I don't even like toon characters.

 3Dream.. She's beautiful but you do not need to spam every thread here with her.

I would like a better color contol/picker. The one provided now (in the materials room) is very barebones. I am color blind (I see some colors, but not all of them). The sepia gradient at the bottom of the first picker really does not produce browns, and I cannot pick out the different colors from the swatches on the secondary color control.

LMK

lkendall - Do you know that, on Windows anyway, if you hold down the Ctrl key when you click to pick the color, you will get the Windows System Color Picker instead? It may still not be good enough, but I find it to be better. I use it all the time.

Whichway

Does anyone know of a color recipe resource (R,G,B,Hue,Sat,Lum)? It would help those of us who are color blind.

LMK

What do you mean by "color recipe resource"?

I mean lists of colors that are named, and have the numbers for RGB and HSL. These can be entered into the MS Color Picker, and the color is reproduced.

LMK

The only thing I would really like is to be able to have a rotate or move tool in the preview window itself. And maybe a mirror function in the hair room so my selections are symetrical.

Ooh and maybe sp1 can bring me a beer and rub my feet too?

lkendall - This is just from Google-ing, but it sounds useful.

http://www.padring.com/soft/Utilities/ColorPickers/WhatColor.html

Whichway

I would like to be able to use the search function for just one runtime. So if I want to search for Boots for V4 I don't end up with boots for A3 and M4 as well. I have a seperate runtime for each figure...

As mentioned before I would like the option of always displaying the large icons in the library. I have way too many poses with useful names like "pose1", "Pose 2", etc.

The ability to rename or move things from within the library would be nice too.

I don't know if any of the testers ran animations. Or this might be something with my machine and Poser 8. All my other Posers editions I have. usually at the end of (AVI) animation. It gets faster. I am doing a firefly Raytrace rendered animation. At the beginning of the animation, it starts off with about 1:55 min. per frame. at frame 84 of 105 frames. It slows down to 5:45 minutes per frame.

What I do if something I don't like in the render, I correct and just rerender the bad frames, and strip them into Preimier. Which is very seldom I have to do this.

What I had done in my situation of the big slowdown with my animation by frame 84, I was going to render frome 84 on. But when I tried to render from 84 on when I opened the render the movie, at the bottome there was a message, See Help?  Well I rebooted and ready to render as just mentioned, but wanted to know if anyone else has rand into the animation problem. I love the Poser 8 final render much better than the ones before, but something is slowing down the renders.

When they get the bugs out, SM is going to have an Excellent Product. Just wondering if anyone else has had this problem that animates. I did put in a bug report on this also.

I just found something else.  The vertical scroll bar needs to be thicker or a little larger.  If you have a lot of items in one folder as I do, the scroll bar becomes almost invisible and very hard to select.

Should we be sending these to Smith Micro and is there a link for doing this?

One other thing I discovered is that if you use any Python tools and have it open while using the parameter dials, the dials will not work.  I use Maclean's QuickPose from Room Creator2 for quickly arranging any props or figures, and it worked fine in Poser7, but not in 8.  The dials do nothing even if the QuickPose window is minimized.

Quote - I just found something else.  The vertical scroll bar needs to be thicker or a little larger.  If you have a lot of items in one folder as I do, the scroll bar becomes almost invisible and very hard to select.

Should we be sending these to Smith Micro and is there a link for doing this?

I assume you are talking about the vertical scroll bar in the library. I would vote for wider also.

Also when you click on the arrow in the lower right of the header, the pop up should from there like it is in P7, etal, instead of having  to move your mouse to the other side of the menu to use the pop-up. In larger runtimes I use the pop a lot, but have to click here and then there, seems weird and not friendly.

Quote - I assume you are talking about the vertical scroll bar in the library. I would vote for wider also.

Yes, I forgot to say the scroll bars in the Library.

Quote - Also when you click on the arrow in the lower right of the header, the pop up should from there like it is in P7, etal, instead of having  to move your mouse to the other side of the menu to use the pop-up. In larger runtimes I use the pop a lot, but have to click here and then there, seems weird and not friendly.

I'm not sure what you're speaking of.  The lower right of the Library header?  The Library is just too wide.  All of the important tools should be on the left, not the right.  That is just common sense.  Not everyone has two monitors or a wall-size monitor.  I would love to get a second monitor just to put all the tool items on and have a descent workspace.

Right clicking doesn't seem to work for anything either.  I think it's a much better layout, but still needs work.  I submitted my "thoughts" to SM just a little while ago.