I wasn't going to do it. I was perfectly happy to do my little GC-all-materials thing and with my paltry little system, heck, running XP Pro with 1 gig of RAM, Poser 8 was going to be just fine.

BUT

Along comes SM with the most brilliant of strategies. Sent me this email just now... they are going to Give me half-off a side-grade! Well! Now, what's a girl to do? So, yeah, I've gone ahead and purchased a programme I'm pretty sure will choke my poor little P IV 2.8 gHz, 1 gig RAM single-core little box.

But I couldn't pass up this sale. This was the one I was waiting for! Do you get e-mails from SM? I'm glad I got THIS one.

Wondering where I can get a bare-bones i5... out here in this techno-retarded Cow Town... :biggrin: ...actually, to be fair, you'd be surprised. Don't forget, we invented the Victa, Hill's Hoist, and 'http'... (developed at Woolongong University).

 LOL What is the techno-retarded Cow Town called?   That is a nice slogan for a town ;)

Oooh - congrats. You're going to be very interested in the new Matmatic and its ability to make materials with or without GC or with shader GC that automatically turns off in the same script with no changes to your script.

Since I work in Poser Pro mostly, this has been a huge time saver.

Quote - Oooh - congrats. You're going to be very interested in the new Matmatic and its ability to make materials with or without GC or with shader GC that automatically turns off in the same script with no changes to your script.

Since I work in Poser Pro mostly, this has been a huge time saver.

Thank you, Bagginsbill.

And re: the new Matmatic... interested? Waiting with baited breath! I'm still learning how to write using the current version. I can't even begin to imagine how you've accomplished this. Wondering if it's that thing IsaoShi was refering to a few months back?

There is just so much to get the head around.

Just got Photoshop CS 3... at an incredible price I couldn't pass up on eBay... software was shrink-wrapped and from a reputable dealer. I never thought I'd get Photoshop... but at that price, I'd be stupid not to get it.

And now Poser Pro 2010. I'm still getting my head around Poser 8!

bagginsbill so matmatic was turning of GC in the car shader?

You're so weak Robyn....lmao ;o)

Laurie

Quote - bagginsbill so matmatic was turning of GC in the car shader?

Yes - the shader has a color chip (SimpleColor) in it that is about 50% gray. It tests to see what is actually coming out of that chip. If it is decreased from the set value (anti-gamma corrected), then render GC must be on. From there it's a matter of making the GC factor = 1 in the shader whenever render GC is turned on.

When I challenged others to figure out how I did it, Isaoshi figured it out herself and posted how.

Quote - You're so weak Robyn....lmao ;o)

Laurie

Does resisting this incredible pair of boots yesterday whilst in the Queen Street mall (updating my passport, but there is a mall on the way) count towards redeeming my power to resist a bargain?

ETA: don't forget, it's winter here downUnder...

Software wins over clothes any day for us geeky gals of the world....lol ;o)

Laurie

Quote - > Quote - bagginsbill so matmatic was turning of GC in the car shader?

Yes - the shader has a color chip (SimpleColor) in it that is about 50% gray. It tests to see what is actually coming out of that chip. If it is decreased from the set value (anti-gamma corrected), then render GC must be on. From there it's a matter of making the GC factor = 1 in the shader whenever render GC is turned on.

When I challenged others to figure out how I did it, Isaoshi figured it out herself and posted how.

in the name of god. this is incredible.

so matmatic is already in PP 2010?

Quote - Software wins over clothes any day for us geeky gals of the world....lol ;o)

Laurie

Touche.

Heading over to Softwareholics Anonymous... "Hi, I'm Robyn... please help me stop buying stuff from Rendo..."

Quote - You're so weak Robyn....lmao ;o)

Laurie

So harsh Laurie ;p who can resist the lure of a deal, especuially one that gives you an excuse to buy a shiney new PC.

I've had a look around for barebones PC's, the word on the street is that they are not great value, usually poor quality components thrown together.  Best bet would be to buy the components individually, at least you know what you are getting then :)

John

Quote - > Quote - Software wins over clothes any day for us geeky gals of the world....lol ;o)

Laurie

Touche.

Heading over to Softwareholics Anonymous... "Hi, I'm Robyn... please help me stop buying stuff from Rendo..."

Sorry Robyn, there is no cure for that, you just have to learn how to manage your urges ;)

John

I was afraid you'd say that. About the bare-bones thingies, not about my urges... :biggrin:

Quote - > Quote - Software wins over clothes any day for us geeky gals of the world....lol ;o)

Laurie

Touche.

Heading over to Softwareholics Anonymous... "Hi, I'm Robyn... please help me stop buying stuff from Rendo..."

...and my clothes look horrible....but I've got SOFTWARE!!! Hehehehehe.....

Laurie

Actually barebones PCs are usually an excellent value. Typically they only have the base stuff you need, and you can soup them up asd much as you like.

I've bought nothing but bare bones systems the past 5 years, and have been very pleased with them.

You just need to shop around and do some research first.

I always end up putting in more ram, and a good videocard, ith a bigger power supply, and thats all we usually end up adding to them.

My current system is a barebones gateway, and my wife's is my own older barebones hewlett packard.

Don't just buy anything in eagerness.. shop around, ask questions, and see what people in the know recommend.

I've also been buying a lot from amazon, buy.com, and newegg the past few years.

Quote -  LOL What is the techno-retarded Cow Town called?   That is a nice slogan for a town ;)

It's under my avatar, Vestmann... next to location. Actually, Bris-Vegas is a really nice city, as cities go. THE fastest growing region in Oz, largely because of the weather.
Even 'cold'... isn't. Well, not really, next to ... like... Wisconsin.

Software is infinitely more expensive than softwear... we have really great places to shop for everything you can imagine except software.
I priced Poser 7 when it first came out at Hardly Normal's (Harvery Normans) : AUD$790!

So you will agree, Gareee: a new system is in the cards for PP2010, right? Too much I can't do, otherwise. ?? Like background rendering?

Or will it run reasonably well seeing how my poor little workhorse runs Poser 8 reasonably well? If I were to just upgrade one thing, would it be like RAM? (only 1 gig atm)

Quote - > Quote -  LOL What is the techno-retarded Cow Town called?   That is a nice slogan for a town ;)

It's under my avatar, Vestmann... next to location. Actually, Bris-Vegas is a really nice city, as cities go. THE fastest growing region in Oz, largely because of the weather.
Even 'cold'... isn't. Well, not really, next to ... like... Wisconsin.

Software is infinitely more expensive than softwear... we have really great places to shop for everything you can imagine except software.
I priced Poser 7 when it first came out at Hardly Normal's (Harvery Normans) : AUD$790!

Hehe I hadn't thought of looking under the avatar.

AUD$790 is about  ISK 91.000.- which is my local currency.  That's about as much as the Adobe Creative Suit cost a few years back (I don't want to know much it costs now).  I live on an island north of pretty much everything and if it wasn't for the internet I wouldn't even be able to buy Poser.

I'd love to go to Oz some day.  I´ve always found it very interesting and it's one of those places that I have no idea how the people are or what I'd expect to see.  I like places like that.

Quote - ... AUD$790 is about  ISK 91.000.- which is my local currency.  That's about as much as the Adobe Creative Suite cost a few years back (I don't want to know much it costs now).  I live on an island north of pretty much everything and if it wasn't for the internet I wouldn't even be able to buy Poser....

Well, then you know what cold means... here in Brisbane, the nights dip into the chilly teens (Celcius) but during the day, we're up in the 20s. Cold is relative.

On the other hand, from a buying-software standpoint, we're in a similar place. Mind you, I just bought PS Creative Suite 3 for AUD $84, and that was from an Aussie vendor! I'm sure better deals can be had from the States, but - for instance - Amazon refuses to ship Elements 8 to my default shipping address. So, no point in buying from them.

ETA: for interesting, you can't beat Australia. Sat down to the news last night to find that we have a new Prime Minister: Julia Gillard! Beaming on all four cheeks, I was. Awesome woman, Julia! She's got a real challenge ahead: I wish her well.

Quote - so matmatic is already in PP 2010?

 
No, not at all. Matmatic is just a way of making nodes instead of building them by hand in the material room. It is not involved in the shader. It is a description of the shader, but what it can describe is no more and no less than you could make by hand. It's value is that it captures complex stuff in a couple lines of code or even less.

The trick we're talking about for auto shader GC enable/disable is actually just three nodes and you could build it by hand quite easily. However, connecting it to every color you need in your shader is somewhat tedious. Matmatic makes it easy.

Poser material files (mt5, mc6) contain a kind of language. This language tells Poser what shader to build and use in your scene. But the mt5 language is not a very efficient language, and you'd never want to type them by hand.

Matmatic scripts are made in another language - one that is highly efficient and much more powerful. But the set of all shaders that matmatic can describe is the same as the set of all shaders that mt5 files can describe, no more, and no less. There is no new shading abilities from matmatic. Just a new way of describing how you want the shader to work.

Quote - > Quote - ... AUD$790 is about  ISK 91.000.- which is my local currency.  That's about as much as the Adobe Creative Suite cost a few years back (I don't want to know much it costs now).  I live on an island north of pretty much everything and if it wasn't for the internet I wouldn't even be able to buy Poser....

Well, then you know what cold means... here in Brisbane, the nights dip into the chilly teens (Celcius) but during the day, we're up in the 20s. Cold is relative.

On the other hand, from a buying-software standpoint, we're in a similar place. Mind you, I just bought PS Creative Suite 3 for AUD $84, and that was from an Aussie vendor! I'm sure better deals can be had from the States, but - for instance - Amazon refuses to ship Elements 8 to my default shipping address. So, no point in buying from them.

ETA: for interesting, you can't beat Australia. Sat down to the news last night to find that we have a new Prime Minister: Julia Gillard! Beaming on all four cheeks, I was. Awesome woman, Julia! She's got a real challenge ahead: I wish her well.

Yeah I know cold all right.  Over the summer time the temperature goes well below the tens during the nights but we do get good days with temperatures going up to the 20s.  Winters are just flat out cold.

As for interesting, a stand-up comedian was recently voted mayor of our capital Reykjavik.  His whole campaign was pretty much a joke but his party won the city by a landslide.   We also have a woman for prime minister but she's not doing that well.  Congratulations on your new minister. I'm sure she'll do great things.

Speaking of GC... this is going to make a MASSIVE difference in how I produce my shaders in the future. Initially, I was distributing a GC version with a fairly elaborate pdf explaining how to install Parmatic and manage GC using that... and support nightmares ensued, solely because no one spent any time reading the dad-blamed pdf!
I mean, the pdf had pictures and everything, with circles and arrows pointing to things, explaining what things were. Still there were dramas.

So, now I've resorted to creating two folders:
--Poser 5-6-7-8
--Poser Pro
Both have exactly the same shader: same everything, except GVal is set to 1 for Poser Pro.

This solution is far more elegant and less of a space hog. Thank you.

 OK now I'm envious. I haven't got any side grade offer but I HAVE got me a new (used, but new to me) computer so I was sorta ready for Pro.. only I can't afford it at the regular price right now. 

Did you get an email? Link? anything? I want!

If only they had an option for Poser related only email alerts.   Or it's open the floodgates to StuffIt.  :scared:

Quote - So you will agree, Gareee: a new system is in the cards for PP2010, right? Too much I can't do, otherwise. ?? Like background rendering?

Or will it run reasonably well seeing how my poor little workhorse runs Poser 8 reasonably well? If I were to just upgrade one thing, would it be like RAM? (only 1 gig atm)

I dunno how they're doing in OZ, but I bought my new PC and Laptop just a couple years ago, barebones, and they BOTH came Dual Core with 3 gigs of ram! The Desktop can be upgraded to 6, which I'll do someday as well as get a decent video card. Oh and the prices were under $500 US.

Quote - If only they had an option for Poser related only email alerts.   Or it's open the floodgates to StuffIt.  :scared:

Yeah! I do wish I could turn the spam from SM off and just get Poser only news from them!

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - Software wins over clothes any day for us geeky gals of the world....lol ;o)

Laurie

Touche.

Heading over to Softwareholics Anonymous... "Hi, I'm Robyn... please help me stop buying stuff from Rendo..."

Sorry Robyn, there is no cure for that, you just have to learn how to manage your urges ;)

John

Actually, there is: being Flat Broke.

No money = No Rendo purchases, it's quite simple for a cure really. ;P

Yeah my poverty enforces that kind of thing much better than willpower.

Quote -  OK now I'm envious. I haven't got any side grade offer but I HAVE got me a new (used, but new to me) computer so I was sorta ready for Pro.. only I can't afford it at the regular price right now. 

Did you get an email? Link? anything? I want!

The Smith Micro Poser Pro 2010 page has the sidegrades listed among the purchase options. I think the email was just a way of getting people's attention.

You mean you paid $125 for the sidegrade?! Where's my SM email!? :|

I did not get my SM email either.  :crying:

I got one today for Anime Studio and hot products, but no Poser Pro...  CP ALWAYS LOVED YOU BEST!!! :sad:

Drop me a sitemail, and I'll forward the email on to you... I'm sure SM won't mind. :biggrin: I did sign up for specials emails to be sent from SM, so that's why I got it.

Quote - I got one today for Anime Studio and hot products, but no Poser Pro...  CP ALWAYS LOVED YOU BEST!!! :sad:

That's the one!

"To celebrate our latest release, we're Giving Away Anime Studio 7 and coupons for up to 80% off ANYTHING.

Anything means anything....

Oh dear - here I've been doing this all wrong. There IS a link to a webpage in case you can't actually see the graphics in the email. You can see the webpage here:
dr.bluehornet.com/hostedemail/email.htm
Let me know if this works for you.

The other thing is to have a look at the SM site and see if any special offers are there for the taking...

It worked for me. I was surprised, since the page said the coupon will only work once. I ordered the physical sidegrade hybrid of PP 2010.

I wonder who got the 80% off coupons :) Maybe I will in the next couple of days! Would be just my luck. (Naw, I'm just kidding. This is a good deal. Thanks for the link.)

Everytime I clicked the link I got the exact same 20% coupon code. I believe it recognises your IP address or something.

Quote - It worked for me. I was surprised, since the page said the coupon will only work once. I ordered the physical sidegrade hybrid of PP 2010.

I wonder who got the 80% off coupons :) Maybe I will in the next couple of days! Would be just my luck. (Naw, I'm just kidding. This is a good deal. Thanks for the link.)

I'm glad to hear that. I think it was one of those: "up - to" deals, where your discount could be 12% or 80% - luck of the draw. I feel quite fortunate to have gotten 50%. This sort of thing doesn't happen to me very often...

Quote - So you will agree, Gareee: a new system is in the cards for PP2010, right? Too much I can't do, otherwise. ?? Like background rendering?

Or will it run reasonably well seeing how my poor little workhorse runs Poser 8 reasonably well? If I were to just upgrade one thing, would it be like RAM? (only 1 gig atm)

It should run it the same as P8. Background rendering will probably be out because of the RAM use but you can still make use of the queue render to queue things up and then let them render in their own time. If you could upgrade the RAM then it would be worth it.

Thank you, Magic_Man. Would you consider just buying two sticks of the same denomination, or just adding to the existing? I've heard it both ways: some say it makes no difference, others claim you get best performance out of identical RAM.

Adding more to the existing is fine as long as the new RAM is at least as good as the existing in terms of timings. The board will run all the RAM to the specs of the least.

If you were overclocking the machine then the best option would be to keep the number of sticks to a minimum and therefore replace what you have with higher denominations. For your purpose, adding to what you have should be fine as long as the board supports the mix. Obviously, keeping what you have will limit the max you can get.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but XP will natively address no more than 4 gig... is that correct? I'm thinking of getting 2 x 2 gig sticks... mind you, they are bound to be dear, seeing how this is an older system. Over-clocking? No, I leave things fairly vanilla... that's a bit beyond my skill level.

Maybe I should save my money and just upgrade with another 1 gig module, because the current type of RAM probably won't work on an i5 or i7 motherboard, which is probably where I'm going.

Thank you for all your sage advice, Magic_Man...

XP 32 bit is licence limited to 4GB - around 3.5GB max after memory space is allocated etc. (it's a licence issue why it's given the 4GB max rather than a 32 bit issue, it can be made to see more but that's another matter...)

Your current system is probably DDR2 memory, an i5/i7 board would be DDR3 so wouldn't be compatible with a later build but adding another GB should be relatively cost effective and will probably give you noticeable results.

Ultimately, an i5/i7 would take you potentially leaps and bounds ahead of that PIV but you're looking at a new motherboard, CPU and RAM at the least for that. If your current motherboard is AGP video then you're also looking at a new PCIE graphics card.

Glad to help, best wishes.

You've been very information and helpful in clearing up questions I had about which way to go with upgrading. I'll go ahead and get another gig of RAM for now, and save the rest for a new system (yes, I have an AGP graphics card - like one of the last before the PCIE was all that was available).

Thank you so much for that, Magic_Man.

There was a hack to make WinXP32 see up to 3GB of RAM.  But WinXP64 is needed to see 4GB of RAM.

I just have 2GB of RAM on my old Pentium 4 AGP system running WinXP32.  One day I will upgrade.  But everything still works fine on it for now.

Win32 will happily 'see' over 3GB, less than 4GB since the memory space is mapped for devices and so, depending on graphics card memory size etc. you'll get less than 4GB. 3.2/3.5GB for example. It can be made to see more than 4GB but you need to hack and recompile the kernel to do so and then make all applications compatible with this so not really of much use.

The 3GB 'switch' will allow such 'aware' applications to use more than the 2GB memory space allocation but can have side effects.

Quote - Thank you so much for that, Magic_Man.

No problem, glad to help.

Just curious... how would XP be hacked to "see" more than 4GB of RAM, given that addresses are 32 bits, both on the hardware address bus, and in software. My understanding was that 2 to the 32nd power was the DEFINITION of the 4 GB limit, not some arbitrary choice.

Attached Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

You can't.

Quote - ... given that addresses are 32 bits, both on the hardware address bus, and in software. My understanding was that 2 to the 32nd power was the DEFINITION of the 4 GB limit, not some arbitrary choice.

See attached link.

I thought the PAE Kernel was only included in Windows Server...

Quote - I thought the PAE Kernel was only included in Windows Server...

It's in the non-server versions, but is only used for controling execution (the NX and XD bits), see the notes below the Windows table.