Ok I love Poser, it's what got me into this lark.  And I love making models and doing textures and all that kind of stuff.

What I don't love is making models and textures and the like work in Poser, it's a right pain in the bum :)

Ok fair enough all the standard stuff is straightforward enough, but step outside the bounds of normality and it's like walking through a tunnel full of potholes wearing a blindfold with your arms tied behind your back.

but tell me why oh why

1. Posers uv handling is aproximately out by 1 pixel when compared to every progream I UVMap in?

Sure adding some padding during the texture export works, but why? why oh why oh why?

1. Normal maps that work a treat in other apps, show seams which generally makes them worthless in Poser?

Am I doing something wrong? generating a TS normal map and using it in Poser?

1. Displacements, don't get me started there

So the question is :) love it or not, what drives you nuts about Poser?

John

That people complain about Poser instead of adjusting the render settings. giggle

Have you tried testing your off-by-one-pixel with texture filtering off and with min shading rate well below one pixel?

Quote -

1. Posers uv handling is aproximately out by 1 pixel when compared to every progream I UVMap in?

Which programs have you used for this? I ran into this issue myself with UVmapper.   I had to offset the UV map templated I used for texturing later..   I'm wondering though if this is due to poser, or if it's due to the exporting program. Anyone knows?

Quote -

1. Displacements, don't get me started there

I have used tons of displacement maps, and they work fine?

Quote -
So the question is :) love it or not, what drives you nuts about Poser?

Not all that many things actually. Usually odd bugs that occur rarely, but enough to be annoying when they DO appear (like exploding meshes, disappearing hips, stuff like that.)

Oops I forgot to seriously answer your question. What drives me nuts:

Top 3:

1) Self-shadowing and related artifacts. Concave polygons don't reflect correctly. Modest displacement or smoothing reveal torn polygon edges when shadows are on. Drives me crazy tweaking these away.

1. Can't render clean with IDL - spontaneous leaks and extra shadows at corners.

2. Noise nodes reveal grid-like regularity - not random at all.

*1. Posers uv handling is aproximately out by 1 pixel when compared to every progream I UVMap in?

Sure adding some padding during the texture export works, but why? why oh why oh why?*

I'm guessing you colour inside the template from the Uvmapper right? well.. the lines (1 pixel) have to go somewhere on the map don't they? yup thats your 1 pixel (or more) right there...  go over the lines by about 2-3 pixels. anything that is outside the map will be ignored but you'll lose that 1 pixel offset..

Quote - That people complain about Poser instead of adjusting the render settings. giggle

Have you tried testing your off-by-one-pixel with texture filtering off and with min shading rate well below one pixel?

I'm not really complaining Bill, all things have their foibles :) I meant this to be light hearted but I guess it didn't come across that way.

Turning texture filtering off does indeed work, which bege the question what is the Quality option for and why is it on by default.  I turn it off for all textures because it messes with my detail :)

John

Quote - > Quote -

1. Posers uv handling is aproximately out by 1 pixel when compared to every progream I UVMap in?

Which programs have you used for this? I ran into this issue myself with UVmapper.   I had to offset the UV map templated I used for texturing later..   I'm wondering though if this is due to poser, or if it's due to the exporting program. Anyone knows?

Quote -

1. Displacements, don't get me started there

I have used tons of displacement maps, and they work fine?

Quote -
So the question is :) love it or not, what drives you nuts about Poser?

Not all that many things actually. Usually odd bugs that occur rarely, but enough to be annoying when they DO appear (like exploding meshes, disappearing hips, stuff like that.)

On the uv map thing I believe it is a Poser foible.  As Bill says turning texture filtering off solves that issue.  I use 3D Coat for texturing though I know people who have the same issue with ZBrush.

Displacements occasionally drive me nuts :) when I get 4 displacement maps off a flat plane each with a different displacement value.  Fortunately ZB gives a good displacement value, 3DC I think uses a different value calculation, which needs toning down.

On the whole there isn't all that much that drives me nuts :)  it is only when I am making stuff for distribution that I get really annoyed with it all.  Because I dont want to release something that's compromised by one flaw or another.

John

Does "giggle" not convey lighthearted? Hmm. Once again I'm unclear on forum communication.

For the record, I don't usually giggle. I usually snort.

Self shadowing is a pain it's true.  But not as annoying as displacements and smoothing messing with the mesh.  Smoothing burns are the bane of my life :) and exploding meshes with a minor displacement are a mystery.

Not done much with IDL myself, since I render in Vue when I render at all.  I would like to get better results out of Poser for product renders though.

I suppose the Noise node creates what is effectively a UV tile to apply to the texture.  I have no idea how to get over that.  I have not seen a repearing pattern on the node setup myself.

John

Quote - Oops I forgot to seriously answer your question. What drives me nuts:

Top 3:

1) Self-shadowing and related artifacts. Concave polygons don't reflect correctly. Modest displacement or smoothing reveal torn polygon edges when shadows are on. Drives me crazy tweaking these away.

1. Can't render clean with IDL - spontaneous leaks and extra shadows at corners.

2. Noise nodes reveal grid-like regularity - not random at all.

Quote - *1. Posers uv handling is aproximately out by 1 pixel when compared to every progream I UVMap in?

Sure adding some padding during the texture export works, but why? why oh why oh why?*

I'm guessing you colour inside the template from the Uvmapper right? well.. the lines (1 pixel) have to go somewhere on the map don't they? yup thats your 1 pixel (or more) right there...  go over the lines by about 2-3 pixels. anything that is outside the map will be ignored but you'll lose that 1 pixel offset..

Sadly not, I don't use a 2D application to create textures, I use a 3D Painting application that lets me paint directly onto a 3D Model, mah brain don't compute painting in 2D for 3D.  My weapon of choice (3D Coat) takes care of what goes where on the map, which is one pixel out compared to Posers uv handling.  ZBrush has exactly the same issue.

As Bill mentioned turning texture filtering to None does the job, also adding padding when I export the textures from 3D Coat also does the job.

John

Quote - Does "giggle" not convey lighthearted? Hmm. Once again I'm unclear on forum communication.

For the record, I don't usually giggle. I usually snort.

Appologies for appologising Bill, I took your giggle to be somewhat maniacal the first time round ;)  I shall look out for the snorts over giggles next time.

John

Quote - > Quote - *1. Posers uv handling is aproximately out by 1 pixel when compared to every progream I UVMap in?

Sure adding some padding during the texture export works, but why? why oh why oh why?*

I'm guessing you colour inside the template from the Uvmapper right? well.. the lines (1 pixel) have to go somewhere on the map don't they? yup thats your 1 pixel (or more) right there...  go over the lines by about 2-3 pixels. anything that is outside the map will be ignored but you'll lose that 1 pixel offset..

Sadly not, I don't use a 2D application to create textures, I use a 3D Painting application that lets me paint directly onto a 3D Model, mah brain don't compute painting in 2D for 3D.  My weapon of choice (3D Coat) takes care of what goes where on the map, which is one pixel out compared to Posers uv handling.  ZBrush has exactly the same issue.

As Bill mentioned turning texture filtering to None does the job, also adding padding when I export the textures from 3D Coat also does the job.

John

silly question. but are you sure thats going to the edges? would be the first place I'd check.

The way Poser stores every texture loaded from start, even if the items which use them are no longer in the scene and/or I started a new project.

What I hate most of all, though, is all the shiny new toys available to P8 and PPro users, while I'm stuck with P6.  Boo and even hoo. 

I like the look of dynamic cloths, once the calculation is done and the result is like what you wanted to "have". It can really look SO real.
But the next time you want to re-load this scene, with the dynamic cloth(s) in it, the cloths are all gone bonkers and you have to let them re-calculate all over again. So annoying, and time consuming, espec. when you're having a longer animation.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - *1. Posers uv handling is aproximately out by 1 pixel when compared to every progream I UVMap in?

Sure adding some padding during the texture export works, but why? why oh why oh why?*

I'm guessing you colour inside the template from the Uvmapper right? well.. the lines (1 pixel) have to go somewhere on the map don't they? yup thats your 1 pixel (or more) right there...  go over the lines by about 2-3 pixels. anything that is outside the map will be ignored but you'll lose that 1 pixel offset..

Sadly not, I don't use a 2D application to create textures, I use a 3D Painting application that lets me paint directly onto a 3D Model, mah brain don't compute painting in 2D for 3D.  My weapon of choice (3D Coat) takes care of what goes where on the map, which is one pixel out compared to Posers uv handling.  ZBrush has exactly the same issue.

As Bill mentioned turning texture filtering to None does the job, also adding padding when I export the textures from 3D Coat also does the job.

John

silly question. but are you sure thats going to the edges? would be the first place I'd check.

Well 3D Coat, creates the UVMap, Paints the UVMap and exports em.  They work in every other app I use except for Poser :) my conclusion is that Poser is the odd one out.  Nowt I can do about it except deal with it in the manner previously mentioned :) such is life.

John

Quote - The way Poser stores every texture loaded from start, even if the items which use them are no longer in the scene and/or I started a new project.

What I hate most of all, though, is all the shiny new toys available to P8 and PPro users, while I'm stuck with P6.  Boo and even hoo. 

Bless you Sam, I with you had P8 or Pro too.  In fact I wish everyone did so that I could make stuff that use the new shiney things and everyone could use them.

John

PS do people treat you differently now your profile pic is of the cutest lil baby I ever saw?  If so I'm finding a picture of a kitten instead of my own grizzled fizog.

Quote - I like the look of dynamic cloths, once the calculation is done and the result is like what you wanted to "have". It can really look SO real.
But the next time you want to re-load this scene, with the dynamic cloth(s) in it, the cloths are all gone bonkers and you have to let them re-calculate all over again. So annoying, and time consuming, espec. when you're having a longer animation.

I love the cloth room too, it gives such great results :) Especially as I now know how to add details and suchlike.  I used tohave that problem but I can't recall it happening since I got Pro2010.  That may not help you in the least though.

The most annoying thing to me is that I can no longer use them in Vue, possibly because I need to upgrade my version 6 to whatever is current.

John :)

Quote - I like the look of dynamic cloths, once the calculation is done and the result is like what you wanted to "have". It can really look SO real.
But the next time you want to re-load this scene, with the dynamic cloth(s) in it, the cloths are all gone bonkers and you have to let them re-calculate all over again. So annoying, and time consuming, espec. when you're having a longer animation.

One extra thought :) forgive me if I'm teaching you how to suck eggs.  Once your simulation is done, export the cloth item.  That way you can import it back into your scene, no need for a recalculation then.

John

ErickL88...

Load your scene with the dynamic clothes, then select the last frame. Your scene will re-appear as it did in the Cloth room. The mess is frame one, with everything in native positions before the sims were run.

Quote -

Bless you Sam, I with you had P8 or Pro too.  In fact I wish everyone did so that I could make stuff that use the new shiney things and everyone could use them.

John

PS do people treat you differently now your profile pic is of the cutest lil baby I ever saw?  If so I'm finding a picture of a kitten instead of my own grizzled fizog.

I don't think so.  I picked the new avatar because it cheers me up every time I see it.  It's a perfect summation of my little boy's personality.  I'll be sure to pass your compliment on to him.  :)

Quote - > Quote -

Bless you Sam, I with you had P8 or Pro too.  In fact I wish everyone did so that I could make stuff that use the new shiney things and everyone could use them.

John

PS do people treat you differently now your profile pic is of the cutest lil baby I ever saw?  If so I'm finding a picture of a kitten instead of my own grizzled fizog.

I don't think so.  I picked the new avatar because it cheers me up every time I see it.  It's a perfect summation of my little boy's personality.  I'll be sure to pass your compliment on to him.  :)

It is a happy picture for sure, can't help but smile with him.

John

Quote - ...

1. Normal maps that work a treat in other apps, show seams which generally makes them worthless in Poser?

Am I doing something wrong? generating a TS normal map and using it in Poser?

I do not know if you are doing something wrong, but i know that i cannot normally plug the ts-normal maps from 3dcoat into poser, without inverting the green channel first. If i do not invert green, everything looks slightly off, and some seems show up in some areas (strangely not everywhere).
I plug the normal map into the "Gradient_Bump" input and use the "Normal Map (tangent-space)" on the "Gradient_Mode" input. That seems to work then.
 You probably could invert the green channel on the normal with some shader node, but i did not figure out, how (yet); so i use a painting program for that.

Quote - > Quote - ...

1. Normal maps that work a treat in other apps, show seams which generally makes them worthless in Poser?

Am I doing something wrong? generating a TS normal map and using it in Poser?

I do not know if you are doing something wrong, but i know that i cannot normally plug the ts-normal maps from 3dcoat into poser, without inverting the green channel first. If i do not invert green, everything looks slightly off, and some seems show up in some areas (strangely not everywhere).
I plug the normal map into the "Gradient_Bump" input and use the "Normal Map (tangent-space)" on the "Gradient_Mode" input. That seems to work then.
 You probably could invert the green channel on the normal with some shader node, but i did not figure out, how (yet); so i use a painting program for that.

 

Interesting info there :) thanks for that.  What do you do in 3dc to invert the green channel?

John

Sounds like the Great Poser Bump Map Disaster is still rumbling on, somewhere deep inside the code. ;)

Quote - ... it's like walking through a tunnel full of potholes wearing a blindfold with your arms tied behind your back.

Mmm... Inspiration... :lol:

Thanks for the heads up about the cloth simulation, John (Fugazi1968) and basicwiz.
I haven't even thought of exporting the finished simulated cloth as an obj.
That might come in very handy and saves a lot of time, whenever you want to use this certain piece of cloth, with/in this certain pose again.

You can do 2 things

• convert the green-channel "by hand" (this is what i mostly do): Using gimp, load-the normal-map; then use the colors->curves tool, select the green-channel and turn the ramp-up into a ramp-down.
   - or (which seems to do the same): in 3dcoat's Edit->Preferences, choose "Maya" for the normal-map-export item (see image. the default is "3ds-max, lw"). This probably the easiest way if you are using only 3dcoat/poser.

I use the lengthier approach with gimp mainly because i want to use the normal-maps from within blender, too, and for that i have to invert the red-channel, also, and there is no equivalent option in 3dcoat for that. So, since i have to do some manual adjustments on the anyway, i do them both by hand. And besides, after an update to 3dcoat (which happens quite often) the preferences are back to default and i have already forgotten about it...

Quote - > Quote -

Interesting info there :) thanks for that.  What do you do in 3dc to invert the green channel?

John

You can do 2 things

• convert the green-channel "by hand" (this is what i mostly do): Using gimp, load-the normal-map; then use the colors->curves tool, select the green-channel and turn the ramp-up into a ramp-down.
   - or (which seems to do the same): in 3dcoat's Edit->Preferences, choose "Maya" for the normal-map-export item (see image. the default is "3ds-max, lw"). This probably the easiest way if you are using only 3dcoat/poser.

I use the lengthier approach with gimp mainly because i want to use the normal-maps from within blender, too, and for that i have to invert the red-channel, also, and there is no equivalent option in 3dcoat for that. So, since i have to do some manual adjustments on the anyway, i do them both by hand. And besides, after an update to 3dcoat (which happens quite often) the preferences are back to default and i have already forgotten about it...

Cheers man :) that is extremely handy to know :)

The green-is-up versus green-is-down issue is not unique to Poser. Apparently there are other programs that do not agree with each other on this. This is the reason that programs used to generate normal maps offer some sort of option.

It is easy to change in the Poser material room, using two Color_Math nodes. In matmatic notation, you want:

MAGENTA * normal_map  + GREEN * (WHITE- normal_map)

I don't have Poser with me so cannot make a screen shot. But basically:

Color_Math:Add
Value_1 = RGB 255, 0, 255 and plug into the existing normal_map
Value_2 = RGB 0, 255, 0 and plug into ...

Color_Math:Sub
Value_1 = RGB 255, 255, 255
Value_2 = RGB 255, 255, 255 and plug into the existing normal_map

The Color_Math:Sub is making a negative of the normal_map

The Color_Math:Add is combining the positive red and blue with the negative green.

Quote - The green-is-up versus green-is-down issue is not unique to Poser. Apparently there are other programs that do not agree with each other on this. This is the reason that programs used to generate normal maps offer some sort of option.

It is easy to change in the Poser material room, using two Color_Math nodes. In matmatic notation, you want:

MAGENTA * normal_map  + GREEN * (WHITE- normal_map)

I don't have Poser with me so cannot make a screen shot. But basically:

Color_Math:Add
Value_1 = RGB 255, 0, 255 and plug into the existing normal_map
Value_2 = RGB 0, 255, 0 and plug into ...

Color_Math:Sub
Value_1 = RGB 255, 255, 255
Value_2 = RGB 255, 255, 255 and plug into the existing normal_map

The Color_Math:Sub is making a negative of the normal_map

The Color_Math:Add is combining the positive red and blue with the negative green.

Nice one Bill, I shall give that a try.

John

After some node-experiments i came up with this (see image), which is basically 

abs (GREEN - normal_map),

which seems to work fine (it renders correctly), but uses some intermediate negative color-values, could this be a problem?

Very clever millighost - that will work as well. I like it.

Quote -
So the question is ... what drives you nuts about Poser?

I'll tell you one thing that's driving me nuts right now:
I  have a scene with a whole lot of lights in it and I don't want to have to look at them since they interfere with what I DO want to look at when editing. So I have the visibility un-checked for all of them, but whenever I select one to edit it, its visibility comes back on. Other objects don't do that, so I don't see why lights should.

Not a big deal, but seriously annoying.

Here's another one:

*Not being able to cancel a render before shadow maps are calculated.

I couldn't count how many times I've accidentally hit Ctrl+R (Render) when I meant to hit Ctrl+E (Restore Element), being that the R key is right next to the E key, and then couldn't cancel my accidental render until all the shadow maps were calculated.