Can I gripe for a minute?  I just today bought a few interiors from the Rosity marketplace, which is unusual for me.  I decided to test one right away.

So I loaded the room into a scene with one Antonia and clothing, and a few props.  I set up one IBL light and three point lights, only one of them with shadows.  And I began to render, starting my latest adventure with Poser.

Poser would not render more than half of the image.  It kept stopping, so I altered the render settings.  Then Poser suggested some more refined settings the next time it stopped rendering.  I made the changes and tried again, and got a series of the old "You are out of memory!" warnings.  Poser finally crashed.

So I opened a RAM monitor and tried again.  My CPU was going at 100% during the full render (as much of it as would run, anyway) and the free RAM steadily dropped until it was below 30%, when Poser threw a rod again.

So I reduced all of the tileable textures for my new interior to 256x256 and tried again.  Now the textures looked pretty crappy, actually, but Poser at least cooperated enough to render the scene.  Very slowly.  :lol:  The CPU was at 100% the whole time and the free RAM dropped below 25% and all of the fans were going full tilt.  I wasn't very impressed by this.  "Maybe I need to stick to Naked Antonia against a blank background", I thought.

But we Poser users must be persistent.  We must love it when Poser gives us a hard time.  Which is maybe 80% of the time, in my ten years of experience.  :lol:

So I opened this same scene in Poser 7 and rendered it.  The render was faster, the free RAM never dropped below 51%, the CPU usage was high but only rarely spiking to 100%, and the fans didn't work as hard.

Which is rather interesting.  So it seems I can still get better results by using Poser 7.  Poser 8 has had three service releases, has been out well over a year, and is finally stable.  It seems likely to have reached the point where it won't be patched up any more.  And yet.

I shall yell right away.  Are you prepared for me to yell?

POSER 8 ISN'T DONE YET!!!

Okay.  I feel better now.  At least until I try it again with Poser 8.  Seriously, what is the deal?  I mean, I am asking myself why I bother with Poser.  I know the deal with that: I'm a bit slow, really.  But what is the deal, SM guys?  Seriously.  Fix the thing.  Make it work.  Fix the bugs.  Stop making me hate you so much.

That's all.

It would be cool to get a report after the render to show which render setting consumed how much CPU, like a profiler for programming languages.

With all these negative reports from experienced users, I decided some time ago to skip Poser 8. I'm quite satisfied with v7, and especially so with its rendering speed and reliability.

(Check out Gage's "This Bag is not a Toy" prop on the Gage page link. Hilarious!)

One word:  Yup.

I tried to render a ten million polygons statue and Poser refused to load it. No problems with other apps.

Yes, I know that 10,000,000 polys is a big mesh, but we are in 2010!

Add another yup to that ;o).

When I try to render transmapped hair now that I have Windows 7 64 bit with IDL enabled, it doesn't even move. Nada. No render.

Actually, IDL was faster before SR3. SR3 broke it somehow. And we won't have another service release.

Ask me how much I wanna part with my money for Poser 9 ;o). It pisses me off enough already that all the early adopters of the basic version are basically beta testers that work out most of the bugs for the Pro version. I guess I shouldn't get myself started ;o)...

Laurie

Personally, I can tolerate new features which are buggy upon release.  I'll even accept it if those new parts still aren't quite right when the next version comes out.  They're new and they need to be perfected.  That's cool.

It's a different matter when things that were working fine have been broken and aren't being fixed.  Perhaps they aren't even being acknowledged as broken.  I interacted with customer support for a couple of months last winter, trying to get P8 to work.  I got angry with them, they got fed up with me, and their conclusion was that if I have difficulties with Poser 8, that's my problem, not theirs.  Kind of makes me snarly.

I don't really understand why they had to do whatever they thought they were doing when they made Firefly worse.  Think about that.  Firefly.  Worse.  Egads.  And for what?  Who knows.  Maybe it was necessary to make the fake AO effect, or whatever it is, work as desired. 

Blender's getting a new GUI.  Not for the first time, I'm thinking about defecting.  :lol:  Yeah.  That will happen.  Sigh.

Always an adventure, is Poser.  It's got the gremlins.

Sorry to be such a grump.  Maybe it's because it's so danged frigid-cold.  :lol:  And my mouse is doing weird things.  Oh well.  I'm going to go eat cookies.

Hope your mouse hasn't eaten all the cookies already.

I have poserpro 2010 and when I render to queue I hardly ever get weirdness.

Love esther

Quote - Hope your mouse hasn't eaten all the cookies already.

No, but... no cookies.  All gone.  Had to eat beef jerky, instead.  :lol:

hmmm - try poser pro 2010 and the cookies may come back.

Actually i am having my first problem with render to queue as opposed to straight render in poser - with different textures on a prop depending which one I use.  but that whole pz3 is corrupted I think, and usually render to queue fixes every memory error message.

Love esther

The problem with Poser is that is a ´program that had bad luck. Poser had been passing from hand to hand, some company purchased it, used some time and then sold to other company repeating the process who knows how many times. With every new purchase the new owner knows less what Poser software does, glue over it some new features and later sell it to another company. In the end Poser is a stack of software glued one over another, done in different ways, by different hands and many times by people with very little knowledge on the subject. Poser's creators long time has gone away and who knows who they were.

Quote - hmmm - try poser pro 2010 and the cookies may come back.

Well, I bought this Poser 8, see, and they haven't finished cooking it yet.  It's not done, not really.  I may be developing trust issues with SM after repeated frustrations and disappointments.  :unsure:

But it's nice for you guys for whom things are working.  That's good, anyway.  I'll just continue to wail out here in the dark.  :lol:

In the overall scheme of things, none of this is at all important anyway, really.  :shruggy guy:

Quote - The problem with Poser is that is a ´program that had bad luck. Poser had been passing from hand to hand, some company purchased it, used some time and then sold to other company repeating the process who knows how many times. With every new purchase the new owner knows less what Poser software does, glue over it some new features and later sell it to another company. In the end Poser is a stack of software glued one over another, done in different ways, by different hands and many times by people with very little knowledge on the subject. Poser's creators long time has gone away and who knows who they were.

The creator is Larry Weinberg and he's at Smith Micro and I talk to him all the time.

And the people who made Poser 4, 5, 6, and 7, are the people who made Poser 8.

Their names are on the splash page.

Do you make stuff up for a reason, or just because you don't know how to do otherwise?

Quote - In the end Poser is a stack of software glued one over another, done in different ways, by different hands and many times by people with very little knowledge on the subject.
Poser's creators long time has gone away and who knows who they were.

I think Larry W and the other one, whatsisname, are still around, at least.  Coop.  Cooper.

But, yeah.  I tend to think of Poser as being held together with cellotape and paper clips.  :lol:  Which is unfair, probably.

Quote - Do you make stuff up for a reason, or just because you don't know how to do otherwise?

Ooh!  Maybe this will be the first time a thread I've started gets locked!  :lol:

I'd assume he meant the original programming team for Poser, rather than Larry, the originator. 

Cage,

I was discussing the problem you found with Steve Cooper a little while ago. You're probably going to get an invitation to beta the next P8 SR 3.1. Yes there will be another SR.

Hi Cage.  I feel for ya, I had much the same probs with P-7 it never did work for me, but everyone else I talked to swore it was the most stable. So I used P-6 till Poserpro 2010 came out, now it is the best for me. Dont know why that it is that way. But it was the same with Zbrush, I cant use the new one at all, crashes constantly.

Cheers.

Quote - Cage,

I was discussing the problem you found with Steve Cooper a little while ago. You're probably going to get an invitation to beta the next P8 SR 3.1. Yes there will be another SR.

Well, golly.  Thanks for making sure SM heard my voice.  I'm not convinced that's been happening, when I've dealt with customer support.  (Apologies to... ratscloset, is it?  There's no jerk like an angry consumer.  :lol:)

It's nice to hear that an SR will be coming.  By my problem, I assume you mean the CPU and RAM issues?  Or just the render crashing?    I can't say I'm necessarily a desirable candidate for beta testing.  Huh.

Quote - Cage,

I was discussing the problem you found with Steve Cooper a little while ago. You're probably going to get an invitation to beta the next P8 SR 3.1. Yes there will be another SR.

one hopes it also fixes the bloody IDL and transparency slowdown. as in glacial slowdown (pre SR3 was a LOT faster)

An example on how things are being done. Since many years ago any new CPU is 64 bits but most people used it with 32 Windows and of course with 32 bit applications. Today more and more people are using 64 bit Windows and the number of 64 bit applications is increasing. From a software point of view, if you have the code is very easy to convert a 32 bit application into a 64 bit, just compile it with the 64 bit switch and all is done. The same program compiled as 64 bit will work the same as the 32 bit version. You can optimize the 64 bit version using some features that exist only in 64 bit mode of the CPU, in this case the 64 bits version will be faster than the 32 bit version. In either case you can release 32 and 64 bit versions at the same time and it was been done by many apps since many years. Now back to Poser, what did some genius of Poser? The genius decided to make a part of Poser using Flash in times when 64 bit CPU and Windows already existed. What happened, until today 64 bit Flash did not exist, Abobe did not make 64 bit version yet, probably because they inherited a crap done by Macromedia based on the Microsoft AcitiveX crap that was removed from 64 bits Windows (Windows 3.1 or DOS doesn't work in 64 bit mode CPU) Which was the result? Poser64 is a patch of 32 and 64 bit glued software and will continue to be until Adobe releases a 64 bit version of Flash or Poser get rid of Flash and do the respective part in a conventional way and of course in 64 bits.

well this was a nice thread wasn't it? shame it dies so very very young...

I don't see that anything has been said yet that should cause a thread closure, but then I'm not a mod.

Quote - The creator is Larry Weinberg and he's at Smith Micro and I talk to him all the time. And the people who made Poser 4, 5, 6, and 7, are the people who made Poser 8.

I really have no idea who created Poser, Poser4 is Poser3 with a nice user interface done by Metacreations, but Poser was not created by Metacreations. It doesn't matter, what matters is the result. If I create a software, it has a bug and someone gives me a precise description on what is happening, is very easy and fast for me to find and correct the bugs, many times it is done within minutes. On the other side, if I have to fix a bug in some software done by some other person the problem can be not so easy and many times very hard to do. In one occasion with a years buggy software, done by many people and one correcting the bug of another, I decided and it was more easier and fast to throw all the software into the trash can and do a fresh new one from ground zero and it was the end of all the problems.

Well, just in case it gets locked, I'm going to invoke Godwin's Law here and mention Nazis, just to have that going on.  I don't have a good Nazi analogy, offhand, so it's an incomplete invocation.  :unsure:

Quote - In one occasion with a years buggy software, done by many people and one correcting the bug of another, I decided and it was more easier and fast to throw all the software into the trash can and do a fresh new one from ground zero and it was the end of all the problems.

^This.

I'm not going to hold my breath on a Poser re-write, though.  I think maybe that was Daz Studio, which I, at least, have actually found to be less accessible than Poser, when I've tried it.  :unsure:

I guess I'm a Poser loyalist, albeit a grumpy one.  :lol:

Quote - well this was a nice thread wasn't it? shame it dies so very very young...

Yes I know, and you knows what happens......

I asked SM to let me write Poser from scratch in Fortran - a very conventional language with no bugs. I asked for $1 million. They refused.

and it would have been mac compatible I presume?

Quote - I'm not going to hold my breath on a Poser re-write, though. I think maybe that was Daz Studio, which I, at least, have actually found to be less accessible than Poser, when I've tried it.

I had a bad experience with Daz Studio, first it doesn't work and crashed in my computer, I reported the bug, joined the bug tracker, received communications, but no reply how to solve the bug. Next version was so slow that I quited trying to use, in another version they tried to open the internet each time I launched DazStudio, no internet, no Daz. With internet two hours to open, I quited. Now I have a fast computer, a fast cable and a new DazStudio version, but have not experimented yet and still continue with the old buggy Poser and my favorite is Poser4, I can blame it, but I love it too.

Quote - I asked SM to let me write Poser from scratch in Fortran - a very conventional language with no bugs. I asked for $1 million. They refused.

It's a pity the Poser community isn't larger.  Maybe we could try to do something like the Blender thing and hire you to write the program for the community.  I'm getting a lottery ticket now.  :woot:

Quote - I asked SM to let me write Poser from scratch in Fortran - a very conventional language with no bugs. I asked for $1 million. They refused.

Much better do it in PL/I, Fortran is a subset of PL/I. PL/I includes Fortran, Cobol and Algol and is the master of all languages far superior to C and is 100% IBM genuine, nothing much better for an IBM PC.

they've still got fortran? with cards and binary decks and that?  o.k., I reckon we don't need punchcards nowadays.

but they can't rewrite it from the ground up; this has been discussed ad infinitum.  they can only build on the existing framework, as they run the risk of a derivative work, unless one can produce a demo that belies that.  IMVHO cage shall be an excellent beta tester, as he's written several scripts that are useful in poser, as well as creating some nice characters, e.g. batgirl.

Quote - they can only build on the existing framework, as they run the risk of a derivative work, unless one can produce a demo that belies that.

Seriously?  I've never seen these discussions.  Poser can't be rewritten from scratch because, what?  It might end up being derivative of Daz Studio? 

Intellectual property stuff is just put together sideways. 

I still have a deck of 500 cards program, but I can't find a slot in my PC where insert them. But, you can't imagine what this 500 cards program was able to do in 1970, it simulated a full electronic circuit!!!

and the mac?  If it was rewritten like that kawecki - would it work on mac still???

Quote - and the mac?  If it was rewritten like that kawecki - would it work on mac still???

Or Linux!  If Poser ran natively on Linux, I could stop fighting with Windows.  Oh, joy beyond imagining!  :woot:

Did I say Fortran? That was a typo. I meant Lisp.

Girls program in PL/1 - it's safer.

Quote - and the mac? If it was rewritten like that kawecki - would it work on mac still???

This depend on how is planed the software. A well planed software can work in Windows, Mac and Linux. Poser has versions for PC and Mac, but not Linux. PovRay works anywhere. In a well planed software most part of the the software doesn't depend on the operational system and remains the same in any version. What only changes is the window management part that needs to be adapted to Windows or Mac or Linux.

you can already stop fighting with windows - I don't.

Poser works well for me on the whole. My cookies are all in the jar, my renders render, and as long as one of you million dollar men doesn't re-write it for PC only I will stay happy.  Actually I couldn't see them making a PC only version as they would lose a lot of customers.

About 4 of the 10 colleagues I work with regularly have switched to macs in the last 12 months.

Love esther

Quote - Girls program in PL/1 - it's safer.

Until a bug eats her.

Quote - > Quote - and the mac?  If it was rewritten like that kawecki - would it work on mac still???

Or Linux!  If Poser ran natively on Linux, I could stop fighting with Windows.  Oh, joy beyond imagining!  :woot:

Dare we dream??? I'd be paying twice what I paid for a Linux version. Perhaps someday... then we could run Blender ... and GIMP and Python and Poser ... all in the same OS ... the imagination positively reels. :biggrin:

As I understand it MR Baggins, We in  Wiltshire, in the country of animation would be more than happy to put up the one million, we have a currency called pebbles, we wash them every day at the Bitham Brook whilst watching Poser render.

Would you like to have the payment? you could work in the studio we will keep you warm with hot toddies and mince pies.

In turn you with the final rewrite of Poser could make Millions more $$$$$$$$  or pebbles.

All us Hobbits would be very happy, to spred the word.

that sounds like an offer too good to refuse.  wish I could program.

Quote - Dare we dream??? I'd be paying twice what I paid for a Linux version. Perhaps someday... then we could run Blender ... and GIMP and Python and Poser ... all in the same OS ... the imagination positively reels. :biggrin:

BTW: poser 8 and 2010/32 bit run almost perfectly with wine, including OpenGL and all. "Almost" because the library does not work at all, but  those Python-Libraries from Dimension3D and Shaderworks do.

I have an early version of Poser (2 maybe?) and I'm sure it was Fractal Design's Poser.

Metacreations, back to Fractal Designs?, e-frontier, Smith Micro.

I've another, early, software package from Fractal Design's on an old Windows 95 machine and for life of me can't remember the name of it.  Good software but wanky to install - and on FLOPPY DISKs.

Was FD the original Poser software company?

-R

Fortran may have been around for a while, but that hardly means it's obsolete. The language has been constantly updated over the years and it is still the choice of many programmers who need speedy processing on high end computers, especially in scientific applications.

I think the last update was released a couple of years ago, but I could be wrong, what with my memory seeming to grow shorter and shorter these days.

Why are we talking about Fortran? All programs should be in PL/1 or Lisp. They run great in 16K of RAM. And both have no reserved words so it is easy to make incomprehensible programs in either. I prefer to write really long programs that other developers cannot understand. More for me.

Fortran came up because your mis-spoke yourself ;).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poser 1995: the birth of Fractal Design's Poser.  I think I left out Curious Lab's in my list of owners ...

Quote - Fortran came up because your mis-spoke yourself ;).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poser 1995: the birth of Fractal Design's Poser.  I think I left out Curious Lab's in my list of owners ...

and efrontier ;o)

Quote - I have an early version of Poser (2 maybe?) and I'm sure it was Fractal Design's Poser.

Metacreations, back to Fractal Designs?, e-frontier, Smith Micro.

I've another, early, software package from Fractal Design's on an old Windows 95 machine and for life of me can't remember the name of it.  Good software but wanky to install - and on FLOPPY DISKs.

Was FD the original Poser software company?

-R

Whoops, sorry ;o).

Laurie

I'd love to see someone write a version of Poser in COBOL.  :)

Nonononono, for the latest, bang up to date programming language, Poser would need to be rewritten in

Lolcode!