Here's the link to my Poser 8 blog with details:

http://poser8.smithmicro.com/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2009/09/22#Poser_8_SR1

Steve Cooper
Poser Product Manager

Got it!

Face room fix!  Yay!  Thanks!

 I don't know if you're checking this, but, Steve, could you share the email address to support?  I'm having problems with the support site.

Amen. Can wait to drive this baby into the ground with the new updates. :) -Les

Quote -  I don't know if you're checking this, but, Steve, could you share the email address to support?  I'm having problems with the support site.

Here's the direct email address for tech support: techsupport@smithmicro.com

And the URL for the support site:
my.smithmicro.com/support/index.html

Thanks, Steve! 

And poser still does not like comas as decimal points, which is extremly annoying as european user :crying:

Just got the update installed. Interesting. Still poking around to see if I can notice many differences, but one thing I've ran into is the libraries hanging the program for long periods after selecting something out of a Pose library. Just a heads up on that... -Les

Quote - And poser still does not like comas as decimal points, which is extremly annoying as european user :crying:

GAH?! I reported this as a bug and it was listed as "resolved " :( Wonder what else isn't fixed then :(:(:(:(:(

Sorry.. I'm trying to be positive, but this was the BIGGEST problem I had with Poser 8. Why'd anyone go BREAK it in the first place? It worked fine in previous versions :(

Hm. Oh well.. When I get home from work I'll have to see if that's the only thung that remains to be fixed or what. Shouldn't be too hard to fix that decimal point once should think.. so.. an SR 1.2?

Has the Material Room sluggishness been solved?

Update: it's not just Poses... anytime I load anything out of any library, it will load fine but when I go to load something else in, anything, the library is completely unresponsive and the program hangs for at least 30-45 sec., sometimes longer. -Les

Testing ...

Thanks! This is great news. :-)

Quote - > Quote - And poser still does not like comas as decimal points, which is extremly annoying as european user :crying:

GAH?! I reported this as a bug and it was listed as "resolved " :( Wonder what else isn't fixed then :(:(:(:(:(

Sorry.. I'm trying to be positive, but this was the BIGGEST problem I had with Poser 8. Why'd anyone go BREAK it in the first place? It worked fine in previous versions :(

Hm. Oh well.. When I get home from work I'll have to see if that's the only thung that remains to be fixed or what. Shouldn't be too hard to fix that decimal point once should think.. so.. an SR 1.2?

Has the Material Room sluggishness been solved?

Material room is now fast.

The decimal point/comma feature was not "broken", in the sense that they took the feature away. The entire GUI system was changed to wxWindows. Every single GUI object was written over again. Even the ones that look exactly the same as the old Poser are actually brand new.

P8 was not a mild update to the GUI, wrapping some docking around the existing components. It was a complete, 100% re-build of the GUI. If you're not a programmer, it may be difficult to understand what a monumental undertaking that is.

Given the pile of problem reports with the new GUI, and the limited amount of engineering time available to SM (who must operate with a very small number of engineers in order to stay profitable - we are an expensive resource) they have to prioritize. I don't know why/if the problem was reported resolved, but actually not resolved. I only know in general there were crashes due to GUI component problems. Those had to be fixed right now. The "merely annoying" problems are below all the crashes and other types of problems that prevent the program from being used. Those get fixed first.

All is faster than before !

But the better, we can work without reducing the process priority !

Just been messing about for an hour..............looks good to me, everything seems AOK...LOVE the new, sizeable library thumbs Aaaaaaaaand... NO more problems trying to find texture files.

So...A happy bunny here then!

Many thanks SM engineering/ programing peeps

What's all this you need to register to be able to download stuff? Why not give the direct link?  my.smithmicro.com/win/poser/update_files/Poser8-SR1.zip

Definitely faster, definitely better render quality.

Library much more user-friendly and faster to load.

A big thank you to all involved.

Quote - Why not give the direct link?

The answer is simple. That link is not necessarily the correct file.

Where is the uninstall for SR1? I wanted to go back to the non-updated version to check something, but I can't find the SR1 uninstall.

Seems to me that the OpenGL preview is messed up, but I could be wrong and I want to revert to the first install to check if looks the same there.

Quote - I don't know why/if the problem was reported resolved, but actually not resolved.

The support system that we (customers) can access, auto-closes and marks incidents as "Solved" after a week without an update (and they don't appear to be reopenable).
Whatever bug tracking system the developers use will be where the real status is to be found.

Questions for thinkcooper:
Should a new incidents be open for things not fixed by SR1 ?
Is there any way to find out the real status of bugs previously reported ?

Setting both thumbnail size settings to 91 = Ah... Relief for tired old eyes! The library is noticeably faster all around.

The material room is now a pleasure to use again.

Ok, the new shadow samples setting for raytraced lights. What's it good for? After a couple quick renders, I don't see a difference between 10, 20 or 30 samples. Admittedly, my test renders were pretty simple.

Quote - > Quote - I don't know why/if the problem was reported resolved, but actually not resolved.

The support system that we (customers) can access, auto-closes and marks incidents as "Solved" after a week without an update (and they don't appear to be reopenable).
Whatever bug tracking system the developers use will be where the real status is to be found.

Questions for thinkcooper:
Should a new incidents be open for things not fixed by SR1 ?
Is there any way to find out the real status of bugs previously reported ?

We can't open our internal bug database, it's a very complex system that I have to wrestle with on some days, typically two cups of coffee adds clarity. Tech support will be involved with forum reports, and directly reported issues logged into our system get filtered into the internal bug database. The critical part of it is repeatability. If we can't repeat a bug it's very challenging to track down the problem.

We are already flagging known issues for SR2 and will add issues that arise. So by all means report bugs on the support page. It's the most direct channel. I often check in here, as does ratscloset, and stewer but we aren't always online.

Ah, sweet relief. The library now sees the full contents of folders (it didn't before under Mac OS 10.6) and the icons for library contents can be enlarged. (The new library options are sorta hard to find, they're under a bar at the bottom of the library)

These were the biggest impediments to me using P8. Thank you! Now to see how well the other bugs were fixed.

Quote - Where is the uninstall for SR1? I wanted to go back to the non-updated version to check something, but I can't find the SR1 uninstall.

Seems to me that the OpenGL preview is messed up, but I could be wrong and I want to revert to the first install to check if looks the same there.

Aeilkema,

Do you still have the little Hotfix installer? Use that to go back to build 10199.

I don't think there's a roll-back or uninstaller for SR1.

Quote - Setting both thumbnail size settings to 91 = Ah... Relief for tired old eyes! The library is noticeably faster all around.

The material room is now a pleasure to use again.

Ok, the new shadow samples setting for raytraced lights. What's it good for? After a couple quick renders, I don't see a difference between 10, 20 or 30 samples. Admittedly, my test renders were pretty simple.

Give me a few minutes to get de-annoyed from another thread and I'll show you.

Quote - Give me a few minutes to get de-annoyed from another thread and I'll show you.

That'd be awesome!

So it ruins the workflow. And while it's not the end of the world, it's still annoying.

And for the record, the case was NOT closed due to inactivity. I got a message that it had been solved.

This is what Ratscloset wrote when I addressed the issue:

*Thank you for reporting this issue. The American system uses the Decimal Point only (comma Separators are used between Hundreds, Thousands, etc...

I have reported this to the Project Team.

*And when I looked then, the ticket was marked "solved" - so naturally I assumed it was the case.

I am fully aware that there were a LOT of things that needed fixing in this SR - but I don't like that my "case is closed" with a mark that says "solved" when it's clearly not the case.

I'd rather be told that "we're working on it, and it will eventually be solved. I'm not a baby that needs pampering - I can wait - if I know it IS being dealt with.

I'm happy for the things that ARE solved, the thumbs are bigger! Thumbs up for that ^_^
 
But I don't think the Material room is faster. Still takes several seconds to add even a simple noise node...

Ray-traced shadows can be set to blur the edges. The amount of blur is chosen to correspond somewhat with how big (physically) a real-world light source would be, as opposed to the tiny point sources we use in Poser. This is applicable to infinite, spot, and point lights (lights with a specific origin or direction), not IBL.

In real life, the amount of blurring is not just because of the size of the light source. It also depends on the distance from the object casting a shadow to where the shadow falls. As the shadow falls farther away, the shadow should get more smeared out. Poser ray-traced blurred shadows do this.

But until now, we had no control over the quality of this simulation. For mildly blurred shadows, this was OK. But for quality and realism, we want some control.

The problem is that to blur a ray-traced shadow, the renderer has to do more than just send one ray from the lit spot to the light source. It has to send multiple rays, and average them together, to figure out if something is fully lit, partially lit/shadowed, or completely shadowed by another object. So how many rays should it send out to do each sample? 

Before you had adjustable Shadow Samples, the value was fixed at 19 samples. This is pretty fast and works OK for some situations, but not others.

Click this render to observe the details. Each prop is identical, but a different distance from the backdrop. The rightmost prop is far enough away that nearly its entire shadow is blurry. Because the blurred shadow is so obvious on that one, we notice the quality of it more, which is not very good. It's grainy, and unrealistic.

On the installer I clicked the option to backup my current preferences. Does anyone know where those preferences get backed up?

/

Aha! That's handy. Thanks, bagginsbill!

I have to agree with TrekkieGrrrl, the decimal point/comma bug is annoying as hell. AND, it's an old bug!

We got the same bug with the first release of Poser 5 if I recall correctly. It was fixed quickly with a service release and never showed up again in later Poser versions. I'm very surprised that bug is back with the initial release of Poser 8.

Other than that, Poser 8 SR1 runs great so far.

Excellent. Very glad to see the the first SR out so soon from release date. Thank you.

I'm very impressed - The library options are a nice touch & the program is much more stable.

Good job to the folks at SM .

Quote - On the installer I clicked the option to backup my current preferences. Does anyone know where those preferences get backed up?

/

It varies by OS and sometimes users (accidentally) force it to be somewhere unusual.

To be certain where yours are, launch Poser 8. Use the menu item Scirpts/Python Shell. This brings up an interactive Python interpreter.

Type this and press enter: print poser.PrefsLocation()

You cannot paste it - you must type it.

It will display the folder where preferences are kept.

I'm not certain of the backup location, but its either a folder inside the above-displayed preferences folder, or it's beside it. Look for something with the word "backup" in its name.

WooHooo! IDL sure sped up! :biggrin:  That's gonna help lots. 

Thanks S/M and team.

pjz99: have you checked out the improved symetry with the mat spheres yet? I was interested if that got fixed or not, but dont know how to check it myself.  :)  I know it was listed in the fixes.

 so far SO GOOD!   Great work BB and SMith Micro.  All working well so far.  All the things that weren't working before are now working!!! Yeehaa!!!
Love esther

 hmm - maybe search isn't working still, but I can live without that.

Er... um... I can't find the Shadow Samples setting. Is it supposed to be in the main render interface, or the D3D advanced one? I can't find it in either place....

Quote - Er... um... I can't find the Shadow Samples setting. Is it supposed to be in the main render interface, or the D3D advanced one? I can't find it in either place....

It's in the lights. You change the value in the settings on the light properties panel. Few pre-saved p8 and or poser Pro scenes I have open so far in P8.1 showed the value at 19. Not sure if this is the default value or not.

Ah, thanks. I was wondering if it was individual setting somewhere. Should have clued in that it would be on the lights. Kewl.

Library question:

Is there any way to see items in a folder in stacked horizontal rows (like the old way) rather than just one long vertical list?

Attached Link: Please read...

There doesn't appear to be.

Please read my post ref this and add your opinions....

OMG OOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMGGGGGGGGGGGG shadow samples.

thanks SM and thanks BB. thaaaaaaaaaaaank you.

IDL is faster. i will do more test before i  writte if i like it or not.

i have a trick for brighter IDL. insted of using 3 bounces  try 2 bounces and 1.3 intensity. it makes it more brighter .

Attention with idl and al the "exotics" shaders like faceoff or vss, may be we have a bit of surprise ... They are made to work with certains type of lights not with global illumination ...

Settings
RT bounces 2
IC 50
IDL 7
Picel sample 3
shading rate 1

about 5 min ... Not bad !
 

The hdr20 picture, found on deviantart ... http://zbyg.deviantart.com/art/HDRi-Pack-2-103458406