Attached Link: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Friday-After-Thanksgiving-Sale/b/ref=gbbf11_launchstripe?ie=UTF8&node=384082011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=goldbox-ads2&pf_rd_r=13Z4W63F88E9KZPTRDZJ&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_p=1332878342&pf_rd_i=20

I read that Victoria 5/Genesis will not work in Poser 9 but have limited use in poser  pro 2012

Still pisses me off that the basic version had the old rigging and yet doesn't get the new rigging. :P

Laurie

I got Poser 9 and have not really seen a big difference in regards to upgrading from Poser 8, I would upgrade to the higher one if you are planning on doing more in your poser, I don't do all that much other then render and a little rigging, most of my work is done in different programs that is why I got only the small upgrade, but if I had seen the difference I might not have upgraded at all.  Not that it is a bad program, just wanted to stay updated, and should have known better to go big or stay home.

P9 has sss and can have figures that use weight-mapping. If that's not something you see as important and the fact it has significant interface improvements is not critically important, then nah.

And the fact that it is about 25 to 33% faster....

Good point, vilters... I don't have P9 (I have PP2012 which is HEAPS faster!) so I wasn't really well placed to comment on that but yeah...

Unfortunately for me then, Poser 9 does not seem as fast as my operating Poser 8, it does not appear to be slower, but not faster at all.  Sorry, but that is a fact on my pc, which is up to specs.

I was not down grading Poser 9, I was just stating a fact for myself.  Sorry if my statements seemed to have offended others, but I stand by what I stated for myself and what I have experienced on my pc with both programs.

As I stated above...." I don't do all that much other then render and a little rigging...", I did state what I use it for, I thought I was making my opioion clear on what my findings were for my use of the program.

Sharen

Aw..I don't think anyone was dumping on ya Sharen ;) hugz

Laurie

Sorry, Sharen - my remarks weren't addressed at you but to the OP... I didn't mean to offend. Actually, I have heard others say their installation of P9 was significantly slower on another thread, where BB actually commented as well, so you're not alone.

Let's say that P9 is designed to be faster...

I cancelled the order. Black Friday sales only give about 15 minutes to check out, so I had to do that, but didn't want to wait too long for the order to reach a point where it couldn't be canceled. Typically, I research an item long before the sale is live, but I was expecting P9 to be $40 more and generally like to wait a few versions before buying a new one unless there's something compelling to make it worth the jump.

Based on the comments, and the fact that I haven't done much with Poser in a few years, there wasn't enough to make it worth buying a new version. A $60 price tag was certainly enticing. I'd imagine that P9 still doesn't support RSR thumbnails while the new version of DAZ Studio still does.

Thanks for helping me decide.

Quote - I read that Victoria 5/Genesis will not work in Poser 9 but have limited use in poser  pro 2012

I don't think this should be the deciding factor for most people, but just to clarify: Genesis can be exported from DAZ|Studio and will work exactly the same between Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012.  The only difference there is that you can't modify the rig in Poser 9.

Going from Poser 8 to Poser 9, the big differences are:

• Greatly improved preview rendering, if that's important to you

• Very good subsurface scattering shaders (e.g., for skin and plastic-like substances)

• The ability to read in and use (but not modify) custom weight mapped figure rigs; modification tools for weight mapped rigs are only available in Poser Pro 2012.

There's a lot of other new stuff that may or may not be of interest to you, take a look at the features list:

http://poser.smithmicro.com/dr2/poser9.html?gclid=CNf_m8D90qwCFSOMtgodPFhHqQ&ad=8945340372

"I'd imagine that P9 still doesn't support RSR thumbnails while the new version of DAZ Studio still does."

That's correct. Interesting pivotal point.

Researching an upgrade in a forum will get you enough views that you can make an adequate decission for yourself.  Then researching facts about the software from the manufacture will add to your knowledge.  I hope that my opionion was taken as just what it was, my opionion based on my usage.

Have a good one.  Sharen

it still doesn't see RSR's? How's that a pro feature? LOL. That's assinine.

Laurie

Goes to show that there are things DS4 does heaps better. rsrs. WOW.

Oh, Pro doesn't do it either????

Laurie

Quote - I hope that my opionion was taken as just what it was, my opionion based on my usage.

Yours was the one that helped me make up my mind (not that the others didn't make me think about whether the new features were useful for me). You're using Poser more than me, so I wouldn't see a lot of advantage in the upgrade. By the time I start getting back into Poser more, there will be newer versions. By then, it seems likely that Poser and DS will be diverging more, so choices won't be so straightforward.

RSR was abandoned back with P8 and PP2010.  The converters are free, though, and can handle the change over to png.

Pngs are pretty much an industry standard, tho, right? Didn't RSRs sort of go the way of the rumble-seat? Just askin...

I think Poser 9 and up has drag and drop and automatic conforming. I also think that it changed to IDL for lighting.

So if those features interst you, then upgrade. But if Poser 8 does what you need it to do, keep it :)

I don't upgrade whenever a new version of a program comes out. I'm perfectly happy to keep using an older version of a program if it is doing what I need it to do.

Funny thing about .rsr's.  As a vendor also, we are not demanded, but requested to supply the .rsr for older versions of Poser and .png for the new versions, so creating .rsr's is still a process most vendors do still do.  Yes, there are very nice converters to do this, but for others that don't create and just use the software just want to use the program and not have to configure files.

I know that when MS Office came out with the new versions of files, the ability to use both files extensions were added in the programming to assist users.  Sometimes, I think programmers miss assisting the basic users when creating programs.

If I had to count how many converters I have just to pop from program to program, I would loose count.  Just a food for thought.

Sharen

Quote - Funny thing about .rsr's.  As a vendor also, we are not demanded, but requested to supply the .rsr for older versions of Poser and .png for the new versions, so creating .rsr's is still a process most vendors do still do.  Yes, there are very nice converters to do this, but for others that don't create and just use the software just want to use the program and not have to configure files.

I know that when MS Office came out with the new versions of files, the ability to use both files extensions were added in the programming to assist users.  Sometimes, I think programmers miss assisting the basic users when creating programs.

If I had to count how many converters I have just to pop from program to program, I would loose count.  Just a food for thought.

Sharen

Exactly...lol. I still use figures that have only rsr's. Maybe that's not the norm, but what about the folks who never come here? They'd never even know there was a converter.

Laurie

Cool... didn't realise any of this. Good points, Laurie and Sharen...

Up till around the time of V4, DAZ originals only had RSRs (around 2006). I'd guess that anywhere from 25%-50% of DAZ's entire catalog will show up as the shrugging guy in the last two versions of Poser instead of thumbnails. Considering that DAZ Studio doesn't have the same problem, it's a little embarrassing that the program they were originally made for can't show the thumbnails. Besides, I wasted a half hour trying to figure out why the thumbs weren't showing for some content I installed in P8. I did some searches here and found out that the new P8 library no longer supported RSR thumbs.

I wonder if any content creators have been blamed for the lack of thumbnails? A user installs content to P8/P9. Most have thumbnails, but a few don't. The natural reaction would be to blame whoever created the content that doesn't work right with the software. Users usually expect software to be 100% upward compatible with the content available for the software. It's all the more important for Poser since the software inherently relies on external content for its use. Poser has negligible capabilities for creating content within the program.

All in all, I was just looking for an excuse not to buy P9, so it didn't take too much to talk me out of it. The $60 price for a full boxed version of the program (not an upgrade) was awfully tempting. Subsurface scattering and weight mapping will still be around when I'm ready to upgrade a few years from now. They'd be nice to have, but I've lived without them this long and I don't need the latest greatest for what little work I'm doing with Poser right now.

If anyone would like a chuckle about user expectations, look at the below link and search for a review by "iceman". He bought a $17,000 camera for a vacation trip and was pissed off because it didn't come with a lens even though the heading says it's "body only". He would not recommend the camera for a friend. I'm going to guess "iceman" isn't one of the 99% because I do more homework buying a $200 camera than he did for a $17,000 camera.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/674543-STUD/Hasselblad_70380554_H4D_40_Medium_Format_DSLR.html

OMG.  He describes himself as a "casual photographer."  And he bought a Hasselblad.  To take to Disneyland.  Not only does he complain it didn't come with a lens, he was surprised that it didn't do video.  Ye gods. 

I have yet to buy content in recent times (last few years) in this marketplace that still provides RSRs. I apologise for my flippant attitude about what I was sure is a now-obsolete image format. Each of us come into this artform with different objectives. No ones is more or less valid than anothers - I seem to have lost sight of that. Sorry. :blink:

Quote - OMG.  He describes himself as a "casual photographer."  And he bought a Hasselblad.  To take to Disneyland.  Not only does he complain it didn't come with a lens, he was surprised that it didn't do video.  Ye gods. 

Boggles the mind. Seriously, a Hasselblad? You need like a degree in studio photography to bloody use the thing! My dad collected them: and gave my sister one. Like she could even get film for it. He was about as clued-up as this bloke. Might as well give her a Boeing 737-800 so she can get back to Napa from Brookings quickly... just a really weird thing to give as a birthday pressie, you know?

:blink:

I tend to run everything I buy through a runtime repair program first - it converts the rsr's and corrects any little errors. It can be surprising how many get through the net sometimes, so I'm happy to do this and have been doing it long enough that I wasn't affected by the drop of rsr support - it always struck be as odd that they should drop it though, I mean, what's the benefit of reducing function?.

If I remember, I think that Poser began using png format with Pro Pack (the one that expanded Poser 4). Of course, back then, Poser would create the rsr for you, I think that content creators today might find it a bit of a hastle to make them.

Once upon a time though, and I think still with Poser 4 content (I remember the old DAZ dragon did this), rsr's were used for geometry. It could cause a few problems too.

Quote - ... it always struck be as odd that they should drop it though, I mean, what's the benefit of reducing function?

Slightly smaller runtimes? Being able to look in a folder in Windows Explorer and actually see (from the thumbnail) what it contained, when the filename said something like "My Incredibly Cool Electric McFinster Complicator" - which you couldn't do with an RSR?

PNG is fairly ubiquitous - most browser/viewers support it. RSR? No. You need to open an (now older) version of Poser or DSx to see it. I see that as limiting.

FYI, bet you did not know that as a vendor you are also asked to pull the zipped file from an older version of Poser so that when a customer unzipps it, they don't get that little message," this was created in an earlier version, Poser will attempt to load it."

Example, when I create a new product and get it ready for  users, it was requested that I put it in an older version of Poser so that the customer did not get that message, so vendors like me use older versions alot to package and finish the creating process in (my example) Poser 6.

You can see this if you look at the .cr2 files from the library, it will say at the top, Poser 6.

As a poser user, I use the older versions of poser to help create a product and the newest just to see how it renders and if it works, checking to see other little issues.

Vendors really know alot about the mechanics of Poser just because of all our testing of products and getting them ready for customers.

Antonia went through that phase, Sharen, for her recent distro ... we had to manually replace version number 9 with 6 in PFE or NotePad++ so as not to get that error ... the shader was not very reliable in anything older, so we felt 6 was a good base to work from.

Quote - > Quote - ... it always struck be as odd that they should drop it though, I mean, what's the benefit of reducing function?

Slightly smaller runtimes? Being able to look in a folder in Windows Explorer and actually see (from the thumbnail) what it contained, when the filename said something like "My Incredibly Cool Electric McFinster Complicator" - which you couldn't do with an RSR?

PNG is fairly ubiquitous - most browser/viewers support it. RSR? No. You need to open an (now older) version of Poser or DSx to see it. I see that as limiting.

I wasn't clear. I understand the switch to png's and am fully behind that - I was converting to them back when I had P4ProPack, after all. What I was talking about was removing Poser's ability to read rsr's at all. Converters are, as has been said, free but it did force an additional hastle on some customers who didn't really want it - that seemed needless.

Quote - PNG is fairly ubiquitous - most browser/viewers support it. RSR? No. You need to open an (now older) version of Poser or DSx to see it. I see that as limiting.

It's because the Library bacame a Webkit app, and IE (or any browser-the Library will run in Firefox) doesn't read rsr files, which were a Mac format-does OS X even use them anymore?

However, SM still should have included a converter...

Quote - Antonia went through that phase, Sharen, for her recent distro ... we had to manually replace version number 9 with 6 in PFE or NotePad++ so as not to get that error ... the shader was not very reliable in anything older, so we felt 6 was a good base to work from.

I always do that for my freebies. Got used to doing it as a vendor. I really hate that message...lol. If you get one with Poser 6 or newer with one of mine it's because I forgot :P.

Laurie

"FYI, bet you did not know that as a vendor you are also asked to pull the zipped file from an older version of Poser so that when a customer unzipps it, they don't get that little message," this was created in an earlier version, Poser will attempt to load it."
Example, when I create a new product and get it ready for  users, it was requested that I put it in an older version of Poser so that the customer did not get that message, so vendors like me use older versions alot to package and finish the creating process in (my example) Poser 6."

recently ive been setting mine to the earliest version of poser known to support the features used in the product. im not going to set it back to, say, P4 if the product only works in P8+.

"I wasn't clear. I understand the switch to png's and am fully behind that - I was converting to them back when I had P4ProPack, after all. What I was talking about was removing Poser's ability to read rsr's at all. Converters are, as has been said, free but it did force an additional hastle on some customers who didn't really want it - that seemed needless."

there is no reason to use RSRs anymore. IIRC GND2/Irina Adventuress were the last products i made them in.

the way i see it (and ill take flak for this im sure) is that if you are using a piece of softare that is a decade outdated then the onus is on you to learn how to convert new content to it, not vice-versa.  it is holding back merchants to have to support the previous half dozen versions of poser, some of them a decade outdated.  and no im not referring primarily to RSRs, but it is an example of outdated technology along with other favorites like .BUM files :P*

oh, and with regards to the OP's question:

yes, the difference is definitely worth it.  as i said before, the price of admission is worth it for SSS alone since its a huge boost to any character realism.  but there are many other features like the performance improvements, accurate light falloff modes, a much-improved real-time OpenGL preview that (reasonably) accurately previews your lights in the scene, tablet support for the morph brush (which is getting to be quite awesome, btw), light emitting objects, and apparently hair/cloth improvements - which i havent even touched yet since ive been too busy working on other content.

cheers,

-gabriel

Quote - it is holding back merchants to have to support the previous half dozen versions of poser, some of them a decade outdated.*
*/quote] RSR is outdated for thumbnails and I was surprised that Sharen mentioned that some stores still ask for it to be used. It's more a question of whether the Poser program should have the capability of showing thumbnails for products that didn't include PNGs. There is still a considerable amount of commercial content available that only used RSR thumbs.

My favorite product of yours is Irina. If somebody were to buy Stephanie 3 to use Irina, they'd get shrugging guy in Poser 8/9 because S3 didn't have PNGs and DAZ hasn't repackaged all their inventory before late 2006 (when they finally switched from RSRs to PNGs for thumbnails). Nobody should expect DAZ to repackage a large portion of their content inventory because DAZ Studio displays the older thumbnail format. To DAZ, the problem is with Poser and not their software.

The better preview for lighting would have been the most useful feature for me. I've always been frustrated by the schism between the lighting I arrange in the preview mode and the final render.

"RSR is outdated for thumbnails and I was surprised that Sharen mentioned that some stores still ask for it to be used"

I am confused, why would you be surprised I mentioned it?

Sharen

Re-reading this thread, it appears that my comments have rubbed people the wrong way.  I am confused as to why, I did not think I was verbally attacking anyone.  If I have, in no way was this meant to offend.

I will state this, when I post something, I try to always post my opionion only.

I base my opionion on facts that I experience.

Sharen

Quote - "RSR is outdated for thumbnails and I was surprised that Sharen mentioned that some stores still ask for it to be used"

I am confused, why would you be surprised I mentioned it?

Sharen

Perhaps the phrasing was not quite right: could be that the poster was surprised that some stores still ask for it to be used, not that you mentioned it, Sharen? Just guessing...

"recently ive been setting mine to the earliest version of poser known to support the features used in the product. im not going to set it back to, say, P4 if the product only works in P8+."

That seems like the most reasonable approach to me. 

 I wouldn't expect vendors to supply .rsr or .bum files. OTOH Having the application recognize .rsr files and convert them silently to .png is just a nice thing to have, given there's still a huge amount of 'legacy' content out there (and sitting on our HDs) that is still quite usable. I can understand taking it out of the main program as it evolved but they could stick it in an external library and call it when needed. It shouldn't be difficult to implement, and I say that only because I wrote a rsr2png.dll  Might be even easier for the Mac since .rsr is just a Mac .pict image file with some additional stuff tacked on. It's not a huge deal I suppose, just a matter of avoiding annoyance/work for the user if it can be done without a great deal of work or sacrificing performance etc. 

Don't get me wrong: I don't think ppl should STILL be providing .rsr's or .bum files at all. It's just that it's sorta silly that the program that used them in the first place has no way or no tool to do it. It's nice that Dizzy made a script to do it, but like I said before, someone that never comes to renderosity would be living with the shrugging guy forever or have to learn how to change them to pngs themselves. I got a funny feeling that the majority of Poser users have never heard of this place ;).

Laurie

valid point about the older products, both of you.

but... how ancient does a product have to be not to use PNGs? my oldest product i have on hand is Elowen.. i think she was for Vicky 2.  its dated 2002.  i have PNGs for everything (and RSRs).

thats ten years!! how far back do we need to go here?  :)

Quote - valid point about the older products, both of you.

but... how ancient does a product have to be not to use PNGs? my oldest product i have on hand is Elowen.. i think she was for Vicky 2.  its dated 2002.  i have PNGs for everything (and RSRs).

thats ten years!! how far back do we need to go here?  :)

I still dig Elowen out now and then ;) (my prize in "The Biggest Mouse Callous" contest - I won...lmao).

Hmmm...it's still a mighty big mouse callous.

I still use the Zygote fairy too sometimes...a use a lot of my old Bbay stuff....etc.

Laurie

You do have to admit (well, you don't have to, but you know what I mean :biggrin:) that you set standards for excellence other vendors do have to strive for in order to meet, Gabriel. When we made our "characters" I held up your products as a measure: "this is what we are aspiring to be like."

But the point of adding like a .dll that autoconverts/reads/sees .RSRs would be a cool addition, particularly since it's already written. Maybe suggest it? Or does the new library system and Flash and all that have issues with it? Woulda thought BB woulda shown up by now, seeing how it's a library thing?

"I got a funny feeling that the majority of Poser users have never heard of this place ;)."

Very true :-)

"Or does the new library system and Flash and all that have issues with it?" 

I wouldn't think so since you'ld be converting .rsr to .png before displaying it. I worked using a Perl script Dodger wrote as an example, that uses the open source ImageMacick library to do the actual .pict to .png conversion. I don't know how Poser used to handle it - if it was already a simple call to an external routine or if it was more part of the main code. They may well have gotten rid of it in moving to 64 bit because they were calling something that wasn't 64 bit friendly on one or both platforms. Or just because they felt it was time to stop supporting it, which I couldn't really criticize them for either - their call.

The library will accept URL's from Poser for display of thumbnails, which means that a dynamic converter from RSR to PNG could have dealt with it on the fly.

Also, Poser could just convert PNG to RSR in the background as a matter of course whenever it scans a folder on behalf of the library.

I cannot give any plausible explanation for why the conversion is specifically and intentionally not present in Poser.

That doesn't mean there isn't one, and for the sake of any future income from SM being at risk from me saying bad things, I'm going to just assume there was a reason that I'm unaware of and leave it at that.

Quote - > Quote - but... how ancient does a product have to be not to use PNGs? my oldest product i have on hand is Elowen.. i think she was for Vicky 2.  its dated 2002.  i have PNGs for everything (and RSRs). thats ten years!! how far back do we need to go here?  :)

I still dig Elowen out now and then ;) (my prize in "The Biggest Mouse Callous" contest - I won...lmao).

Hmmm...it's still a mighty big mouse callous.

i didnt even remember that.  hah, thanks for reminding me...  maybe its time for a revival of the award.  IIRC it was 'the first annual mouse callous award'... so much for annual, but its nearly time for its 10th anniversary :)

did i just send you elowen or did i mail you a disc of my entire store?

Attached Link: https://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=4398

As to when something is old enough to stop being supported is a tough question. I guess it gets down to availabilty and criticality. I wouldn't say any content for Poser is very critical. Old business correspondence and spreadsheets could be needed years later. It's important for MS Office to be able to read those files long into the future. Then it gets down to a question of availability. If all DAZ originals didn't have PNGs until after 2006, how much content is still in the DAZ store that won't show thumbnails in Poser anymore? I'd guess a couple thousand products. Older Poser users have a lot more content from older purchases and freebies that don't have PNGs.

One funny thing is that Poser still imports MetaCreations 3D Paint files. I've never run across any 3D file that uses it. I wouldn't be upset to see that functionality go away someday because I've never needed it.

Quote - *"RSR is outdated for thumbnails and I was surprised that Sharen mentioned that some stores still ask for it to be used"*I am confused, why would you be surprised I mentioned it?

Only because I was unaware that any store would still want RSRs. It was interesting info I didn't know.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - but... how ancient does a product have to be not to use PNGs? my oldest product i have on hand is Elowen.. i think she was for Vicky 2.  its dated 2002.  i have PNGs for everything (and RSRs). thats ten years!! how far back do we need to go here?  :)

I still dig Elowen out now and then ;) (my prize in "The Biggest Mouse Callous" contest - I won...lmao).

Hmmm...it's still a mighty big mouse callous.

 

i didnt even remember that.  hah, thanks for reminding me...  maybe its time for a revival of the award.  IIRC it was 'the first annual mouse callous award'... so much for annual, but its nearly time for its 10th anniversary :)

did i just send you elowen or did i mail you a disc of my entire store?

It was just Elowen that I remember (but may have been Black Eyes too - can't quite remember).. And I don't even remember anymore if I got it thru email or how you sent it :P. Would be nice to see you do it again. I'll refrain, cause I think I'd still win! :P

The Second Annual 10th Anniversary Mouse Callous Contest...lmao.

Laurie