Everybody's always talking about adding a feature or two to Poser, but what about the opposite? What Poser feature do you think is worthless,  or has outlived it's usefulness and you can't wait for SM to see the light and dump it?

The hair room ... and implementing (something like)  HairFarm instead =) :D ;)

The Face Room - never used it.

The Hair Room - I used it and gave up... wish there were something easier to handle (like the Cloth or the Fitting Room)

The Content Tab - I always delete certain lines in roomTabs.xml so it looks like this:

I use the face room every day.

I use the hair room every day.

I never use the basic material room, only the advanced one.

I think the Kai Krause interface is no longer a feature and can do with an overhaul.

I don't use the content room.

Well, I'll agree with you about the Conent Room. Never use it.

I've never used the Content room either.  It may have been useful when Content Paradise also sold Renderosity's and RDNA's catalogs, but that time has long passed. (EDIT; speaking of CP, I just realized it's First Friday!)

Never used the P4 render engine either, so I didn't miss it when it was taken out.

I wish the Setup room tab was removed and Setup was put onto a menu like the Joint Editor so I don't hit it accidently.

UI Dots could be handy, but you have to remember them all, so I don't use more than one to store my default UI.

I wish the hair room were improved.  Carrara's dynamic hair appears much better in renders.

Quote - I wish the Setup room tab was removed and Setup was put onto a menu like the Joint Editor so I don't hit it accidently.

Very good point! Happens to me all the time and is really unnerving. In fact there should be only the Pose tab/room and the other tabs/rooms could be placed in a menu, maybe to be opened with a right click on the mouse.

What should we get rid of? The fitting room, SSS, weightmaps, ray tracing, all forms of dynaimcs, python scripts, addons, and IDL. I mean come on who uses any of that? :tt2: Just joking. We should keep all of that.

Seriously though the content room. The downloads folder in the library. All it seems to do is confuse people. Several of the obsolete nodes could be removed from the menus, but still accessable by the program for old content, or the program could "translate" them into new and improved node set up. The old scatter node was used? Ok now we'll make it the new custom scatter. The styling tools in the hair room should be thrown out and new easier to use tools added. The faceroom. It's realy not any different than morphs. Just add morphs that do the same thing as the face room dials.

In addition to the Content Room, I also think the Figure Menu should get rid of the Figure Height selection. Frankly, It's never really worked and it especially doesn't work on any figure now.

Good idea from Mackis3D.  The "rooms" should be just another menu item instead of tabs.  Would take up less space on the screen, and would be harder to hit accidentally. 

There are some antique outputs like the "Animation Set" stuff for VRML.  I don't think anyone ever used VRML, and it's certainly gone now.

Quote - In addition to the Content Room, I also think the Figure Menu should get rid of the Figure Height selection. Frankly, It's never really worked and it especially doesn't work on any figure now.

yup ... and the genetalia on/off setting (who actually uses this?). Hair and cloths need to be just updated. I renember the hair and cloth room used to work so much better in Poser5. It took longer, but the collisions worked pretty well at least.

Quote - What should we get rid of? The fitting room, SSS, weightmaps, ray tracing, all forms of dynaimcs, python scripts, addons, and IDL. I mean come on who uses any of that?

Hey, wait... didn't you just describe Poser Debut?  :unsure:

In general, I wouldn't want to remove anything from the software, as that reduces the potential of Poser and might break our beloved backwards compatibility.  I like being able to load old P4 figures sometimes.  Recently I dug up an old scene from 2003.  It still loaded and rendered, albeit with some materials and lighting oddities.

I do think we're going to end up losing some features, eventually.  Maintaining them must make Poser rather unwieldy for the programmers.  I expect big changes to the lighting, the rendering engine, and the Materials room, with significant loss of backwards compatibility.  But... what do I know.  Umm.  :unsure:

I did kind of like the old tweak to remove the Content tab.  I have never understood the Content tab.  Does anyone use it?  I suppose someone must.  Huh.  So maybe I'd advocate removing that feature from Poser, but not much else.

Content tab can certainly go, and the Setup should go to a menu item.

I also agree much of the interface needs an upgrade, such as the camera controls. That cute symbolic UI looks nice, but really it takes up too much space and is pointless since the state of the industry has gotten away from that sort of thing.

Oh god yes I renember that I jumped and danced for joy, because they finally got away from that childish rediculous Kai Krause UI. I want SM to leave all that P4/Posette cra.... ahem ... stuff leaving behind. PoserPro2014 makes me looking foreward into a modern Poser. Since Poser8 they are on a good way :)

I'm curious though. Those of you who say we should scrap the current camera controls don't say what you should replace them with. Any ideas in that regard?

The figure size things that haven't worked really since Poser 3 or 4.

Quote - What should we get rid of? The fitting room (...)

Never ever! I can't joke about it - I spend more time in the fitting room than in my kitchen. :-)

I had to read this because I am generally opposed to removing features that I find useless because others may indeed use them...

That said, I forgot about the content room as it is that pointless to me.  I wouldn't miss it if it were gone, but let's see if anyone chimes in in defense of keeping it.

Genitals on/off...   I don't think this should go, but rather I wish there were a better way to replace any body part and create switchable geometries using arbitrary meshes that align and contain similar edges.  I'd love to be able to replace forearms with ones that have gloves/cuffs, closed zippers with open zippers, heads etc.  But genitalia are a sensitive area (ahem) for many.  I find the barbie/ken look disturbing, but if I wanted to walk a client through figure creation or posing, I'd definitely want figures to load with genitalia disabled.  If anything, there should be a way to mark any prop or conforming item to disappear with a global toggle.  Modern figures often have separate genitalia which renders the current toggle useless.

Dots aren't bad, what is bad is having to remember which dot holds what.  I think they would be more useful if mousing over them would cause a small thumbnail to appear next to the dots to show what is stored there.  That may have been a waste of resources long ago, but I think we all have the ram and diskspace to hold 27 thumbnails.  Maybe it could be turned off in prefs.

Figure height has the same problem as drop to floor.  It should be rewritten (based on the figures it was originally implemented around) to use the figure's body scaling.  How hard would it be to scale any figure to a certain height, or make sure any figure is actually resting on the ground (and offset it if wearing shoes)?  Along these lines, % of figure size in the object import seems totally obtuse and useless to me.

I still like the KK interface.  If anything, I'd like borders or snapping to allow me to easily move them as close together as possible without overlapping.  Maybe the camera control should be floating so it could be moved over the preview window?  If it were scrapped, I'd prefer something like Truespace's nav widget, or the option to choose cam controls which mimic other programs like Wings (Maya, nendo etc.).

Old content (lights/mats) should probably be removed or at least categorized to indicate they are for the P4 render or whatever.  I have long felt that the older figures should be replaced by modern equivalents.  I know many users have improved older figures by tweaking the joint fall-offs, adding weightmapping, running EZskin etc.  I'm not saying total overhaul, just that these figures generally look a lot better after just a little effort, and so should be updated as included.  New users would likely not know how to do this and so may not see the value of the P3-6 figures, but many of us still use them to create populated scenes or put people in the background. 

The library for sure, get rid of it and replace it with something that doesn't depend on flash or air. The rest of the features I would keep for sure!

Quote - The library for sure, get rid of it and replace it with something that doesn't depend on flash or air. The rest of the features I would keep for sure!

Even the Content Room?

quote: "Genitals on/off...   I don't think this should go, but rather I wish there were a better way to replace any body part and create switchable geometries using arbitrary meshes that align and contain similar edges.  I'd love to be able to replace forearms with ones that have gloves/cuffs, closed zippers with open zippers, heads etc.  But genitalia are a sensitive area (ahem) for many.  I find the barbie/ken look disturbing, but if I wanted to walk a client through figure creation or posing, I'd definitely want figures to load with genitalia disabled.  If anything, there should be a way to mark any prop or conforming item to disappear with a global toggle.  Modern figures often have separate genitalia which renders the current toggle useless." There is a way hacking cr2-files that make it possible to switch bodyprts by using the parameter dials. Don't know , how it is working, but it is described in the book: "Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser5" .

Quote - > Quote - The library for sure, get rid of it and replace it with something that doesn't depend on flash or air. The rest of the features I would keep for sure!

Even the Content Room?

Yes, of course, it's my favourite :tongue1: I thought they got rid of that already, I must not have been paying attention to much to the tabs in Poser at all. so I have to revise my statement...... The rest of the features I would keep for sure, EXCEPT for the content room!

I emphatically agree about the library - it has been causing me endless headaches with its slowness. I don't mean that Poser should not have a library system - a library is essential, and it should accomplish what the current library does - but it should be much more efficient. I also understand that the library has to address a complex problem since people organise their content differently, and I have huge respect for the person who developed it. But it doesn't work very well.

Overall, the library is the most irritating aspect of working with Poser. On my laptop, which is not underpowered with an i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, 2TB of hard drive space and an a current NVidia graphics card, Poser is virtually unusable because the library takes forever to refresh.

Yeah, the library is currently the most irritating thing about Poser.

It works "quite well", unless Windows is trying to reset its LAN/WLAN connection, something which, thanks to my ISP, happens about two dozend times a day.

And while that happens, the library goes dark and becomes unresponsive for about 5 minutes until the connection has re-set itself.

Not to mention that flash/air and Explorer are a huge security risk which I'd rather not have on my machine.

All the other things listed here, I'm not really bothered with. I have zero use for the Fitting Room, as I manually refit clothing using the MorphBrush and the SetUp room. It is faster and much more exact than letting an algorithm do it.

Also no use for the Content Room, of course.

The Hair Room works still nicely for animal fur, and the Cloth Room, while limited, is still great to add natural looking morphs to skirts.

Genitals off/on is still needed for some older figures.

Figure Height stopped being useful once Poser 3 was released, but maybe the programmers keep it as a good luck charm ?  :-)

The included content I delete/don't even bother to install 95% of it. Lots of it was made for older versions of Poser and simply isn't up to current standards.

Until they remove the necessity and dependence of Flash or Air, or whatever, OR ANY OTHER THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE (other than Windows) it’s all a non-starter.  Happy enough with Poser 7 that I see no reason to upgrade until if/when Smith Micro creates a stand alone version of Poser.

As I see it the hobby is lagging.  Smith Micro tying up with Adobe and DAZ refusing to bundle their wares into normal ZIP files (rather than extractors) have pretty much caused me to stop upgrading and buying content.  I do shop here, but have to more and more careful to avoid items made for the newer versions of the software.

Best Wishes to all,
R

Quote - As I see it the hobby is lagging.  Smith Micro tying up with Adobe and DAZ refusing to bundle their wares into normal ZIP files (rather than extractors) have pretty much caused me to stop upgrading and buying content.  I do shop here, but have to more and more careful to avoid items made for the newer versions of the software.

Virtually all DAZ' content is availible as .zip files, and has been for some time;check in your account under Product Library.  The archives' root folder is called Content, containing the Runtime folder.....

Yes, they do have zip files indeed, but they're so akward to use..... so poser customer friendly to have a content folder as root and not just a runtime folder. Oh well, what's new, DAZ is always so good in dealing with poser customers.

Quote - quote: "Genitals on/off...   I don't think this should go, but rather I wish there were a better way to replace any body part and create switchable geometries using arbitrary meshes that align and contain similar edges.  I'd love to be able to replace forearms with ones that have gloves/cuffs, closed zippers with open zippers, heads etc.  But genitalia are a sensitive area (ahem) for many.  I find the barbie/ken look disturbing, but if I wanted to walk a client through figure creation or posing, I'd definitely want figures to load with genitalia disabled.  If anything, there should be a way to mark any prop or conforming item to disappear with a global toggle.  Modern figures often have separate genitalia which renders the current toggle useless." There is a way hacking cr2-files that make it possible to switch bodyprts by using the parameter dials. Don't know , how it is working, but it is described in the book: "Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser5" .

I was vaguely aware that that was possible or figured someone had figured out something like that...  But if I have to hack the cr2 it points to a deficiency in Poser's feature set.  We have a replace body part with prop, but it doesn't create the  smooth join of the replaced part.  Perhaps it was assumed that most users would not know how to properly create a body part that could be inserted and welded at the join, but it seems like it would be the same process as creating a working morph target in another program. 

OK, so that's not really about removing a feature... 

Quote - I was vaguely aware that that was possible or figured someone had figured out something like that...  But if I have to hack the cr2 it points to a deficiency in Poser's feature set.  We have a replace body part with prop, but it doesn't create the  smooth join of the replaced part.  Perhaps it was assumed that most users would not know how to properly create a body part that could be inserted and welded at the join, but it seems like it would be the same process as creating a working morph target in another program.

In a way, this topic may reveal why it's nice that Poser has generally retained legacy features, even when they have no common utility in later versions.  The body-switching hack was devised to exploit the method used to give Poser 2 figures multiple hand shapes.  Those figures had a dial which switched the hand geometry between different static obj files for the various hand poses.  Poser 3+ figures have fully poseable hands, but the hand-swapping code is still in there, allowing us to swap out any body parts at all, albeit with a cr2 hack.  The code is still in there, but it hasn't been formally opened up for access within Poser, because the feature only existed for those Poser 2 figures.

Leaving old features in Poser helps create a playground for the Poser-techies.  IMO, that's one of the things that makes Poser so much fun.  The Poser-techie extras are harder to develop and maintain, though, which can be a bit irritating.  If and when they start dropping features, we could lose some of our techie hacks.  I suspect some of those hacks are things we'd miss if they were gone, and some of them we may not even think about as hacks.  MAT poses, all the other extra sorts of poses are techie hacks.  There are bunches of them.