Quote -
You can also simply change the file extension from .pz3 to .pp2, which seems to work – I only tested a couple of files.

 

But keep in mind that a *.pp2 file DOES NOT SAVE LIGHTS or camera positions, a *.cr2 file does. So if you change a *.pz3 to one of both remember if you want to save the lights and camera positions too.

*"But keep in mind that a *.pp2 file DOES NOT SAVE LIGHTS or camera positions, a *.cr2 file does. So if you change a .pz3 to one of both remember if you want to save the lights and camera positions too."

I think what you're saying is be careful if you make changes to a .pz3 that's been renamed to .pp2 and then resave it right? I'm sure that's quite true. Just to clarify, the lights and camera still load from an unmodified (other than changing the extension) file.

Improvement to the Material Room (unless it's already possible and I'm unaware of it): When you copy+paste a network of nodes from one material to another, the node names should also be copied across and not revert to, say, "Math_Functions_22".

I would like the Dynamic Cloth simulations and the gravity script to use the same gravity constant, so solid objects and heavy carpets with zero air-damping fall equally fast,  as is told in day one physics class.

 yes - the scroll bar is too narrow.   your mouse slips off sometimes so just as you think you've located something you have to go to the top and scroll down again.  well at least it's fast.
I have to get myself into the habit of constantly watching the scroll bar or changing to finger dragging as i near the folder I want to select.

DIZZI - thanks so much for your tip about shift key when moving a body part of a figure.  that has made a huge difference to my posing, not to have to use dials all the time!!!!

**jerr3d has a very good point about a preview pz3 icon so you know which poser file is what.  that would be really cool.  It would probably add to the save time a little though.  but the save time isn't huge in poser (unlike DS).

**

Quote - An option to use the Poser 7 library Ducks Subsurface scattering, a better looking floating window option so the preview window doesn't have to be docked or ugly. And turn off texture filtering by default.

I, too, would like to use the Poser 7 library.  Since my Poser files once got destroyed by a virus, I do not connect my Poser PC to the Internet.  As a result, the Poser 8 libraries don't work and the software is useless.  I would love a non-Flash library alternative.

[quote} I do not connect my Poser PC to the Internet.  As a result, the Poser 8 libraries don't work and the software is useless.  I would love a non-Flash library alternative.

As has been explained numerous times, the library uses functions from IE and Flash, but for internal communications only - it has nothing to do with the internet.

Library:

I'd love to see actual content management via the native Library, preferably from a right-click menu on the item itself:

• Rename and Delete Folders.
• Drag folders in and out of other folders.
• Drag items in and out of folders (along with their pngs)
• Would be cool to eventually have the ability to user-order items.  Alphabetical by default but if you wanted Victoria 4 at the top of your "DAZ People", you could just drag her to the top and it would be at position 0.
• Maybe requiring a "shift" to drag so that you don't accidentally drag stuff around.
• Rename Items.
• Not related, but would be nice to see the references of any selected library file (what external file references it has and where they are located).

The library is definately the best we've seen so far and the improvements in Pro 2010 and Poser 8 SR-3 are great but personally I'm ready to have my socks blown off. :)

I'd just like to see all the really annoying things that have been with Poser for the past decade removed...
We all know what those things are, although our individual versions of that list may vary slightly. ;-)
Many have already been mentioned in this thread. Most are minor irritants and probably easily enough fixed.

I don't know about Poser 8 though - it's the only version since Poser 3 that I skipped over, but Poser Pro 2010 still has alot of really irritating things that could be done better - nothing major, and too numerous to list. I've sent my list to Smith Micro anyway.

Having said that, Poser Pro 2010 blows away all previous versions of Poser combined, and I'm definitely very satisfied with it. Its improvements far outweigh its shortcomings, and I hope that the next "pro" version continues the momentum.

Sadly, I am one of those that hasn't really seen a lot of the improvements in Poser Pro 2010. IDL can do some fun things if you can get it to work (I think I have managed one render with it, the rest die partway through); some people like the library, some hate it (me); some like the interface changes, some hate them, some are meh (me); some love GC, some don't understand it, some don't care and some use it wrong (me). But I haven't really seen much past that so I am still using Poser 7 for the most part.

 I've not had any renders die in poser pro 2010 and IDL + render to queue works really well on my new macpro - I don't know if it's 12 cores have something to do with that.
Love esther

No problem with IDL here and PPro 2010 - pretty sure IDL is also available in Poser 8.  Been using IDL Studio a lot lately :)  Love the render queue too... I find it a lot faster to cue up stuff and keep working.

I enjoy and use the PSD output ability.  I'm also on 64 bit so I find that beneficial too.

Maybe I am trying to do complicated scenes or something but they all seem to die about a third of the way through.

 try less lights in the scene - you won't need as many, and I set my point lights to inverse square which looks good.
Love esther

It breaks with one light sometimes, I normally don't have more than 3 (for the most part)

I would like to see a couple things...

It would be nice to be able to cancel a render right away and not have to wait for any shadow maps to be calculated. As it is, you can't cancel it until all shadow maps have been created. You can hit the Cancel button, sure, but it won't do anything until the shadow maps are done. In a scene with alot of shadow maps, that can mean waiting a long time just to be able to cancel a render.

Also, while I realize that Poser isn't going to have an interactive preview render any time soon (and maybe never), it would be great if Poser 9 could have a limited version of such a thing.

For example, when I work in the material room I use the area render marquee drawing thingie alot to draw a small area around what I'm working on. And then after I change a material setting I have to redraw the marquee to get a new area render.
No big deal, but it would be cool if Poser could have an option for automatically updating a render when an area has been drawn, when working in the material room.

It wouldn't exactly be an interactive preview render such as many programs have, but it would be simply automating and eliminating the step of having to redraw the area each time a material change is made.

Actually, it would be cool to see that in the document window period, not just when in the material room - simply put, if an area is drawn out, it auto updates when any kind of change is made, perhaps also with the option to disable camera movement and posing or translating an object or figure from causing it to update. Or just limit it to updating automatically only on lighting or material changes.

 did you try adjusting max bucket size (render settings) and also render in separate processes (preferences)

I guess I'm gonna keep adding things. Might as well.

It would be nice if Poser 9 had a folder or some kind of collapsible grouping structure for all the figures and props in a scene. A scene can quickly get overloaded, especially with props, cameras and lights, and that list can get pretty long.
I'm doing a scene that has 2 book shelves in it and between the two there are 60 book props, parented to their respective shelves.
Now I'm thinking, wouldn't it be great if I could take one bookshelf and make it a folder, and have all its books in it - as I said either a folder or a collapsible hierarchy - a layer.

I guess the hierarchy editor could be used in this way, but it would be cool to have it available through the drop down lists too.

Wheel scroll for scrollbars
Better lights with sensible shadows (not the shadowcam stuff, it drives me nuts)

Quote -  did you try adjusting max bucket size (render settings) and also render in separate processes (preferences)

Yep and yep. Four threads with separate processes checked, tried various bucket sizes, default is 32 but did try others.

 there is something wrong.  This is not the behaviour others are reporting.  There are no crashes with rendering and I too do heavy scenes, sometimes with high quality settings eg stone mason with lots of poser daz people.
Love esther

It doesn't crash, it just quits rendering, like 3/4 of the image is left unrendered.

 there is something wrong.  that hasn't happened to me, nor have I seen widespread reports of that problem.  
I hope you find a solution so you can get back to having lots of poser fun again.
Love esther

Vertex mapping............too much to ask?

One would mention here that cage wrote an UVmapping script for use in poser7, but it wasn't
widely known at the time.  perhaps SM would care to contact him.

the library scrolls with various mice, e.g. magic mouse (OS X).

ghost, they'll look into it if ye send them more info, but tell us what machine/OS yer using?
also, poser pref settings et al.
it's not very helpful trying to deny that problems exist.  classic aristotelian logic - it doesn't
happen to me, therefore it doesn't occur.

 I was more suggesting that maybe the problem might be something specific to his computer or his installation or something ie not denying it can't happen.  I sure believe him and it must be really really annoying too.
But if others don't have the problem that surely gives him hope of a solution.
Love esther

 My husband used to think everybody saw everything blurry when he was a  kid, including seeing the blurry  the blackboard at school.  One day he realized that others see things clearly and now he has glasses.
Love esther

The last time it did it was with http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=9264, two buildings, a little street. My machine is an intel Mac with Two Dual-Core Intel Xeon 2.66 Ghz processors and 5GB Ram. One light. I tried about four times and it wouldn't complete the render ever.

 that's not a lot of RAM these days, although that is probably not your problem.  
Something is very wrong with your poser but I think you know that.
Love esther

I'd like to suggest maybe a bad RAM module.
I don't know at all how Mac deals with its hardware, but I once had a bad RAM module that only had certain memory addresses or sectors or whatever that were messed up. Windows failed to detect it and the only way I was able to figure out the problem was by running Memtest 86, using all the deep stress tests.
The symptoms were seen in inexplicable weirdness in programs using lots of RAM. Not Poser, but Zbrush and Softimage. I replaced the faulty RAM and all the problems stopped.

Might be worth looking into at least, if you can find a free Mac utility that does a deep stress test for RAM problems. In the case of my problem, the RAM wasn't maxing out, so it didn't matter if it was enough or not - it was only when it tried to use certain memory addresses I suppose.

I think it should be enough but yeah. I got it when most programs ( like Poser) didn't use more than 2GB anyway.

I must agree with MagnusGreel's comment, institue a freeze on new features until the application is fixed, then go for a version change.
Yes all 3d apps are buggy but Poser is one of the worse and this isnt going to change until they fix it BEFORE thay add latest must have new features.

Having the latest wiz bang features is of no use if the applications crashes, freezes or disapeares into thin air every time you sneeze.

Just thought of another few things...

It would be great if a locked object couldn't be selected in the document display window, but only through the hierarchy menu or that drop down list, and if it didn't highlight when moused over. I have dozens of locked background objects that all want to compete for my mouse's attention when all I want to do is select an arm of my foreground figure...

It would be great if when you select an object that's parented to a figure if the figure's name showed in the document window instead of whatever figure was selected before.
Example-  hair objects: Say I have a hair prop on V4 called V4 Hair, but I have M4 selected. It will show M4 as the figure name with "V4 Hair" next to it. It should change the figure name to V4, if that's what the hair is parented to.

It would be cool if lights that are set to invisible STAYED invisible even if you selected them to make a change, like all other objects do. Lights always turn back to visible once selected.
And by visible, I mean the icons, not whether it's on or not. I make them invisible because they get distracting and in the way of what I want to see at times, especially when I have alot of them in a scene.
Sure I could change the size to so small you can't see them, but when you reload a scene, the lights are back to normal size again... which reminds me...

Quote - Library:

I'd love to see actual content management via the native Library, preferably from a right-click menu on the item itself:

• Rename and Delete Folders.
• Drag folders in and out of other folders.
• Drag items in and out of folders (along with their pngs)
• Would be cool to eventually have the ability to user-order items.  Alphabetical by default but if you wanted Victoria 4 at the top of your "DAZ People", you could just drag her to the top and it would be at position 0.
• Maybe requiring a "shift" to drag so that you don't accidentally drag stuff around.
• Rename Items.
• Not related, but would be nice to see the references of any selected library file (what external file references it has and where they are located).

The library is definately the best we've seen so far and the improvements in Pro 2010 and Poser 8 SR-3 are great but personally I'm ready to have my socks blown off. :)

This.

i would love to be able to export a texture map for clothes,
like the faceroom does for the native poser figure heads.

and i would love to be able to color pick from an image map texture and be able to assign a new material to that area of the image color.

when i tried to make V4's thighs part of the leg material zone and not the hip, 
there was some kind of crosstalk, the next V4 added to the scene copied the new material zone.  i wish it wouldna do that :glare:

Quote - Vertex mapping............too much to ask?

Ooh.  This, please!

And Hair Room design tools which don't steer like two drunken cows.

That, and fix the Poser Python bugs in 8.x which still haven't been addressed.

Quote - The last time it did it was with http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=9264, two buildings, a little street. My machine is an intel Mac with Two Dual-Core Intel Xeon 2.66 Ghz processors and 5GB Ram. One light. I tried about four times and it wouldn't complete the render ever.

A couple of things to look at on your mac. One is activity monitor. It will tell you if the app actually went dead or struggling thru an area with say some windows or a lot of reflective items. In order words in the cpu activity or memory changing for poser or is it stuck on the same numbers for more then a few minutes (say 5).

Two look at the console log at the time it went dead or stopped rendering. There might be something pop up in there that could point you to the problem. Sigbus means a memory error typically. Could be bad ram or Poser stepped into another apps ram or didn't release what it had correctly.

load the scene and under render settings un check cast shadows and raytracing. Render. Then turn one on and render. Then turn the other on and the one you had on in the first render off and render. If it dies on one of the other you can start to hunt it down.

Can you take a scene shot of your render settings and post here?

Quote - Just thought of another few things...

It would be great if a locked object couldn't be selected in the document display window, but only through the hierarchy menu or that drop down list, and if it didn't highlight when moused over. I have dozens of locked background objects that all want to compete for my mouse's attention when all I want to do is select an arm of my foreground figure...

Right click and you get a list to choose what you want selected. dizzi I think posted  a tip on how to keep the same item selected. Those notes are at home and I am in Asia on business. Somebody else  who knows that trick, can you please post the details.

Quote -

Right click and you get a list to choose what you want selected. dizzi I think posted  a tip on how to keep the same item selected. Those notes are at home and I am in Asia on business. Somebody else  who knows that trick, can you please post the details.

Well I know that, but that little feature has its own problems too, although I use it all the time.
I would really prefer though if a locked object didn't even present itself for selection.

If I've locked an object, I've done it for good reason and I know how to get at it if I should want to move it again.
Thanks for mentioning that anyway. :-)

When you open a texture node in the material room it would be nice if Poser opened the folder that contained the actual texture that's already applied so you know you're at least in the proper  texture directory.

Quote - When you open a texture node in the material room it would be nice if Poser opened the folder that contained the actual texture that's already applied so you know you're at least in the proper  texture directory.

I am not really sure if I like this one. The current behaviour is to open the last used texture/image folder which is often the correct one if you want to change more than one texture on an object or figure.

But yes, there is a lot to improve in the folder handling of Poser (scenes, images, objects, textures, python scripts)

Quote -

I am not really sure if I like this one. The current behaviour is to open the last used texture/image folder which is often the correct one if you want to change more than one texture on an object or figure.

But yes, there is a lot to improve in the folder handling of Poser (scenes, images, objects, textures, python scripts)

Well I'd be happy if it just had the full path listed somewhere.

The full path is in what Poser calls the "texture manager". If you click on the black arrow above the Browse button, you will get a (sometimes very long) list of all textures used in the scene. The one with the checkmark is the currently selected texture with its full pathname.

The way the list is presented needs be improved however (like the prop selection listbox in the document view)

Quote - The full path is in what Poser calls the "texture manager". If you click on the black arrow above the Browse button, you will get a (sometimes very long) list of all textures used in the scene. The one with the checkmark is the currently selected texture with its full pathname.

The way the list is presented needs be improved however (like the prop selection listbox in the document view)

Yeah, you're right about that, now that you mention it. I always forget about that because I got out of the habit of using it since it's kind of a pain in the ass, being that it can get pretty long. Would be cool if it just displayed the full path when you select the texture.
On the other hand, there's a python script for showing all that, so it's not a total loss, but it just takes time.

There are a whole lot of small and simple things about Poser that need to be improved and could probably be done relatively easily and quickly.
I agree with whomever it was who wrote in here that it would be great if Poser 9 concentrated on improving the existing features rather than adding a whole lot of new stuff.

Of course it would be even better if they released "Poser 8.5" and "Pro 2010.5" versions as free updates to adress some of these issues. ;-)

 It would be nice if the lights were more visible and bigger and easier to move around.
It would be good to be able to shift click on a group of objects and move them all around in one hit.
Love esther

Quote -  It would be nice if the lights were more visible and bigger and easier to move around.
It would be good to be able to shift click on a group of objects and move them all around in one hit.
Love esther

You can change the size of the lights, you know. The spots and points, that is.
However, when you reload your scene they come in back at normal size for whatever bizarre reason, but you can make them larger at least while you're working.
You can also change their display style through the Preview Styles controls.

I totally agree about shift-clicking to select objects.
I also wish we could shift-click a range of morphs in the parameters to select a whole group with two clicks.

 Hi - yes I've made them bigger but I never thought of playing with their display style.
Love esther

Hey I just discovered that if you change the size of a light and set its parameters to use limits, and set the min/max for size to what you want it to be, Poser won't resize it back to normal when you load a scene.

That might help you some, esther.

 Yes, sounds useful.
Love esther

Quote - An option to use the Poser 7 library Ducks Subsurface scattering, a better looking floating window option so the preview window doesn't have to be docked or ugly. And turn off texture filtering by default.

Yes the Poser 7 library. I do not want an adobe Air or Flash dependent library. I hate it. I WANT the OPTION for the Poser 7 library back please.