in your opinion?  

i remember those long summer days playing with negative shadows.

can't go back to p7 now.  
i collected the scatter from my content sets, pose, props, mats, brought them all together under characters

6, for sure.  The programmers were paying attention to user workflow.  P6 'remembered' what folders you were using to fetch and save images, and always put you into the right destination with the right format.  Later versions lost that 'memory'.

I agree ockham, got more accomplished with P6 and better and easier renders. I miss it since I up graded my system.

Poser 3 went from nothing to mind blown. Its then got progressivly gooder with each version but the big step was definitly Poser 3.

I had poser 6&7 before  getting  poser 9 but  still  like  P6

     Pro 2010's networking and IDL was a big step for me,  but I'll vote for the one which will let me do motion capture in Poser - animation is about get a lot easier.  :biggrin:

http://poser.smithmicro.com/gamedev.html

The latest :P

I started in P1, on a 1.44 disk.... Ordered P2 the very next day.

Poser 4 was a big step up.

Then Poser 5 was HUGE with the then "new" dynamic hair and the "new" cloth room.

Now?
PP2014, certainly and hands down, with the new fitting room, and the vastly improved morph brushes.

With each version, Poser becomes better and better.

Unfortuantely, it has also become more complicated, and more prone to end user errors.

IMHO : The next big step would be to make the it a lot more end user friendly and bullet proof.

• Remove or prohibit all "impossible" possibilities in the material room.
• Improve the by now old timer hair room.
• Improve the by now old timer cloth room.

And come with some bullet proof and "killer" figures in a family pack, with tons of hair , props and clothing.

best regards all, Tony

I've been wowed 3 times in Poser's history.

I started on Poser 4 so I don't have the Poser 3 experience but Poser Pro Pack was a huge jump.  Goodbye rsr and BUM, Python support opened up a new world of possibilities, the Setup Room was a new thing.

Poser's 5 features didn't really seem to stabilize until the last SR and while Poser 6 did clean it all up, I felt that Poser 7 was the tightest implementation so had a lot of fun with that one - more specifically Poser Pro (the second coming).  Background rendering, Queue and so on.

Recently, I'd say Poser Pro 2012 (Poser 9) for certain.  Weight Maps = tons of fun.  SSS and IDL (from Poser 8).  Yes, please.  Oh and certainly from my point of view, wxPython - better ways to go, goobye tKinter and XML dialogs (of course Poser 8 introduced but the Poser 9 wx is better implemented).

But... I'm still having a blast and I'm using Poser Pro 2014 and certainly things to be excited about with it, so I'm not looking back to think there was a time what was better than now.  Living in the now and enjoying it.  Yeppers!  And the sky's the limit.  Sorry that I'm disgustingly optimistic ;)

Attached Link: The History of Poser :o) ..... compliments of Dr Geep Studios

(click the link above the image to see some of Poser's history, version by version)

WOW!

Hard to believe it's been 20 years.

cheers
dr geep
;=]

Quote - - Remove or prohibit all "impossible" possibilities in the material room.

And the fun dies.  :lol:

Unless we're given tools to create mathematically-correct and "possible" materials, tools which are as accessible and obvious and straighforward as playfully linking nodes in the current Materials Room to see what happens, then Poser will have taken a step backwards.  Some of us need to develop shaders through experimentation.  Some of us rely on "impossible" shaders in our regular Poser work because there is no apparent way to achieve the desired rendering effect while remaining mathematically correct.

I've noted elsewhere that I can imagine two scenarios that might make Poser unusable for me, driving me away after my fifteen years with the program.  One is complete and total removal of Python scripting.  The other is if they make the Materials Room inaccessible to a dummy like myself.  Allowing us to create and render bizarre and impossible shaders furthers creativity.  I've long been frustrated by the way that those advocating a "correct" way in Poserdom seem to want to strip away other options in the process.  Why do they do that, I wonder?  Poser is a fabulous creative tool, and it's all illusion anyway.  Options are good for creativity.

To answer the question in the OP, I think I found Poser 7 to be the most fun, but I should note that I skipped Poser 6.  Poser 7 was a more stable and reliable upgrade, for me at least, than most of the others have been.  Far fewer crashes.  That one was fun to use.  Of course, I go back to it now from time to time, and can't adjust to using the old GUI again.  :lol:

I get what Tony is saying but I highly agree with cage.  I don't want to see anything so structured that we can't experiment or "accidentally" come up with new ideas.  Sure there are mistakes made, but part of the fun for me is the exploration, whether that is playing in the material room, scripting, building figures and trying new things and so on.  There should be "hand holding" but it should never take away from the discovery aspect.

Instead of a prevention with materials, maybe need more guidelines.  In the manual, which does a great job of explaining things, show an example of each node in use (hell, even include a tutorial folder with each example that could be loaded).  Why not useful tooltips when you mouse over a node?

An example. (Sorry, when giving examples I want them to be clear, LOL.)

I can connect a Reflect node into displacement.  => Poser allows that.
It's things tlike these that should be prohibited.

Bucket size, another example.
I can type a bucket size of 34,2790236; no problems.

And end users often get confused?? Wondring what is happening.

Bucket sizes shoudl be a power of 2, and only these values should be alowed.
2,4,16,32,64,128,256

Some even use an MSR of 0.000.
While no body adjusts any of the groups in the scene, when they go below 0.2.
So? ? What is the purpose of that?

I see some complaining about render times being too long, and when you ask to see the Material room en render setups, THESE things surface.

*I am all in favor for an "open" material room and "open" and flexible render settings, but some end users should be protected agaisnt "impossible settings.

Best regards, Tony*

For now -  Poser Pro 2014

Sept '14 - Poser Pro GameDev

I don't care about animation - I need crowd scenes.

Same here now. PP2014 Game Dev.

I do not have the intention to go outside of Poser, but the new tools in the Game Dev version are giving a lot more options to fill scenes and keep resources under control.

And combine figures, (figure, clothing, shoes, hair), with reduced resources, saved to library for future use.

I started with Poser 6. For me, each subsiquent iteration has been my favorite...

Increased flexibility

Faster render times

Fewer restrictions on how things are done

Faster rendering times

Increased realism

(Did I mention "Faster Rendering Times?"

Right on.  :thumbupboth:  Thank you for explaining.  I wish I had the option to "thank" you for your clarifying post, or a "like" option for posts or something similar.  It will be interesting to see how the Poser Team elects to balance such concerns, if they go that direction.

You did make me wonder what a reflection node plugged into displacement might look like.  I think it's kind of cool that Poser lets me do this, although I can't really see much use, offhand, for the result I got in the attached image.  :unsure:

Quote - > Quote - I am all in favor for an "open" material room and "open" and flexible render settings, but some end users should be protected agaisnt "impossible settings.

Right on.  :thumbupboth:  Thank you for explaining.  I wish I had the option to "thank" you for your clarifying post, or a "like" option for posts or something similar.  It will be interesting to see how the Poser Team elects to balance such concerns, if they go that direction.

You did make me wonder what a reflection node plugged into displacement might look like.  I think it's kind of cool that Poser lets me do this, although I can't really see much use, offhand, for the result I got in the attached image.  :unsure:

it's fun looking :)

i used to experiment with fun house mirrors, way back 

I think the most fun was had with Poser 7 for me. I have had all of the versions from Poser 1 and I think the most fun was had in Poser 7. I failed to get the Poser 7 Pro and that could have been fun. The more recents versions have some good features but the library and layout take away a lot of my fun and speed.

I have to say that playing with the fitting room last year was the most fun I've had with a prog in a long time.  But then I had a HD crash and lost 8 mos or so of my wips (pretty much everything that I just didn't think was finished enough to back up).

Every version has been fun for me in its own way. 

Poser 4 was the first I used, so it was fun just posing and screwing around. 

Poser 5 added Firefly, and that was a lot of fun to play with as it really broadened my understanding of rendering.

Poser 6 was fun because I liked the figures included with it, and it seemed much more stable than 5.

Poser 7 added the morph brush, which I would not want to live without now.

Poser 8 improved the OpenGL interface, and I really enjoyed seeing things look closer to their rendered appearance.  Enough to spend more time with it than I had been.

Poser Pro was just so much faster I went started attempting things that I didn't have the patience for before.

PP2012/14, just so many little things made everything better.  I had seriously considered jumping ship a few times, but now I can't see that ever happening.

For me, no version has been any more "fun" than the others.  Some versions OTOH were definitely more frustrating.  I get more enjoyment from using Poser the more I learn how to do.  If it never evolved beyond where it is today I would still enjoy it more each time I upgraded to a faster machine.  In the last few years I've undertaken some fairly time consuming projects.  I look forward to having the time to just "have fun" with Poser again.

Here is a visual illustration of the difference between the Blinn and the ks_microfacet specular reflection models.

Visualizing the subtle difference by brightness is very difficult. But transforming reflection amount into a displacement lobe makes it easier to see how they differ. Such displacement lobes are frequently used in the study of shaders.

Systems like LuxRender that declare these configurations impossible make them unusable to me.

If you want realism, then what you want are high-level nodes that do all the work - there is no reason to avoid adding such nodes. SM tried to offer this with the composite node, which would allow me to put together everything you need in a single box. However, they didn't do it right, and so the effort was wasted. That could be remedied. I'd like to see that remedied.

But one of the coolest things about the Poser material system is that realism is not the only thing you can do with it. Trying to judge which of those should be kept and which blocked is impossible.

Also, when people assemble "wrong" shaders, it's not usually because they plug things into displacement. It's because they don't understand physics at all.

@ BB
Sir, with all respect : YOU know what you are doing in the "math" room.

YOU are one of the few that can predict the outcome of a shader, and its influence on render time.

But YOU are not the average home alone end user that's pulling his/her hairs. LOL.

The "math" room could do with some restrictions to make Poser a bit more "end user friendly", without taking away the toys. (with respect)

Just propose to bring some logic in it.
Flow chart style.
Limit the combinations to a more logical and predictable outcome for all end users.

Yes, I choose the word "Math" room on purpose. LOL.

In answer to the OP for me the most" fun" version of poser was ,and remains, the venerable POSER 6!

This ,for me,is due to a confluence of multiple external factors.
After buying the P4 "propack" to use its hosting plugins with Maxon Cinema4D 7

I was ecstatic!! ....for an extremely brief period until I realized that
Curios labs had no intention of updating the propack plugins at the same pace as the targeted host Apps( C4D,LW, MAX etc)
so a slight "bug fix "update to C4D or LW would permanently Break My propack plugin connectivity

So I languished skipping  the largely disastrous poser 5 entirely.

Then came Poser 6!!
soon followed by Paul K's Poser physics Plugin along with the KDZ "interposer pro"plugin for C4D.
I now had a way to create Amazing animated Character& prop physics simulations and a dedicated programmer supporting his poser content import C4D plugin with regular updates.

The beauty of the "interposer pro" plugin is that is is NOT actually a poser plugin per say but a POSER/DAZ CONTENT plugin for Maxon
Cinema4D.

This means one can load pose'Daz content(figures props,pose files mat file etc)
from any standard poser runtime directories without actually having the poser or Daz studio application even installed

This workflow made all subsequent releases of poser/DAz studio Moot for me.
as posers subsequent owner chose to ignore the Core animation tools (save for a few "new" gimmicks)
And final rendering in poser is not something to even be considered as I have access to Way more advanced rendering engines not the least of which is Vray from Chaos group.

"If you want realism, then what you want are high-level nodes that do all the work - there is no reason to avoid adding such nodes. SM tried to offer this with the composite node, which would allow me to put together everything you need in a single box. However, they didn't do it right, and so the effort was wasted. That could be remedied. I'd like to see that remedied.

But one of the coolest things about the Poser material system is that realism is not the only thing you can do with it. Trying to judge which of those should be kept and which blocked is impossible.

Also, when people assemble "wrong" shaders, it's not usually because they plug things into displacement. It's because they don't understand physics at all."

BB your knowledge in this area is unequivocally VAST!! and Appreciated by poser users for certain

I have spent many years in various so called "High end" program specific discussion forums:
Newtek, Maxon,nextlimit and Luxology and I have never encountered such **
eye glazing discussion of the mathematics of Shaders**
not even in the Blender forums which have a truly WORLD CLASS node based Shader& internal Compositing system.

this is Not a criticism of you BB as you are effectively an Engineer in this area

But I think there is a reason why even the so called "pros"
have HUGE & ever growing online community repositories of Shader presets for Maxwell, Modo,Vray and the like.

Just My opinion but I suspect that Alot of poser users  here simply do not care to know the physics of a shader they just want to get on with rendering.

Past Poser versions? Fun? No, the fun is only starting now.

"You remember Budapest very differently......"

I would rather have my balls mashed flat with a hammer than to EVER have to deal with the limitations of Poser 6 & 7 on a day to day basis.

I still have Poser Pro installed on my system for when I need to convert hair to the SM Gen2 figures (HCS II).  My only goal is to get in & get out.

It sort of sounds like proposals for a more controlled Material Room might be moving toward the idea of an Intermediate tab for materials.  We have the Simple tab, where there aren't many possibilities at all.  Then we jump straight to the Advanced tab, where I guess there are too many possibilities.  An intermediate tab could fall between these, in some attempt to balance the potential of Advanced with the accessibility of Simple.

Or Poser could begin including more decent shader examples, templates and recipes for the sort of results the user base is apparently demanding.

It's an interesting time in Poserdom.  When I was sold Poser Pro 2014, they marketed it to me using increased realism and cartoon rendering simultaneously.  Not everyone using Poser is purely interested in realism, or in cartoons or any other style Poser might crank out.

Quote - It's an interesting time in Poserdom.  When I was sold Poser Pro 2014, they marketed it to me using increased realism and cartoon rendering simultaneously.  Not everyone using Poser is purely interested in realism, or in cartoons or any other style Poser might crank out.

Whereas for me the "Copy Morphs From" command in and of itself sold me on 2014.  The same can be said for the fitting room.

The beauty of Poser 2014 is that it can reach multiple needs, not just the NVIATWAS crowd.

Quote - The beauty of Poser 2014 is that it can reach multiple needs, not just the NVIATWAS crowd.

Exactly my point.  A creative tool is about possibilities.  Shortcuts to a certain result are great, until they restrict possibilities.

@ Cage

Well, you could also try a normal map in transparancy. LOL. And there are a ton more of those crazy idea's.

No, I also love to experiment, but some possibiities are just, well stupid.

And I? I will always be at the "home alone end user" side. How to make Poser more "end user friendly".

How to reduce the number of frustrations for the guy/gal that has a single hr of free time a week, does not visit forums (or does not have the possibility to do so) , wants to get "something" on screen in his/her free hr without pulling his/her hair.

Trying out the advanced room without a 3rd degree in Math, and preventing him/her to get insane.

Some "impossible" possibilities should be blocked.

And as I said before, and MSR below 0.2 should automatically give a "Pop up warning".
=> Hey do not forget the adapt each and every group in their parameters palette!!!!

An MSR of 0.000
=> How do you like a devide by 0?

A bucket size of 50.56723
=> Hey this is gonna cost you in resources. Stick to 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256

Connecting a color map in transparancy, bump, displacement should:
=> Hello, I prefer a B&W map set to GC 1.000

Pixel samples at 36.
=> Ready for a LONGGG render time? LOL. Do you realy need more then 1-2?

Whenever the third infinite lights gets loaded at 100%?
=> Poser should ask you to enter the name of the Galaxy you are in, so it can automatically add the required number of Suns. (We only have one)
Or?
Do you really want to wash out all shadows?

What does a glossy bump sound like?
Or how does a velvet transparancy look on mondays?
I could see a use for a brick transluence. LOL.

All the above is "possible". LOL.

I agree with you about a lot of that, Vilters.  Constraints or guidelines for render settings would make more sense to me than the suggested restrictions to the Material Room and node-linking options.  I simply don't understand why it should matter whether users can link a velvet node to displacement or transparency or whatever.  (I've actually used velvet in transparency on a shader, IIRC.  It provided an effect I liked at the time.)

I am not a math guy, so I fully sympathize with the idea of removing the need to know physics and math from the Material Room.  But I'm also a tinkerer.  I experiment, I futz around to see what happens.  Poser allows this, and I love it for that.  I have a bunch of shaders in frequent use which do not follow any set of rules except "Ooh, that looks cool!"  Take away the options for some of the bizarre ways nodes can be linked up, and you break my shaders.  "Waah, poor Cage," right?  Maybe it's not just me.  Maybe others make use of the creative potential of "impossible" node links.  What you propose for the Material Room (and I focus on that specifically) seems like you want a formalized regression introduced as an enhancement.

I would love to see some parts of Poser made more accessible.  Engage me on the topic of Gamma Correction some time, if you want to see how my small corner of the user base can freak out over awkward or inapproachable features.  :lol:  Gamma Correction apparently represents "possible" lighting parameters, versus Poser's legacy lighting, which was mathematically inaccurate and "impossible".  I will engage in slippery slope argumentation.  "Why not tell users that they can only use 'possible' lighting setups?" I ask.  Why not dictate to them how they can rig a figure?  Much of Poser is arguably too complex.  Too many notes.  Trim a few.  Which few, sire?

There's some sort of balance to be struck, with such concerns.  I don't trust the absolutist tone of "Some "impossible" possibilities should be blocked."  Rather than closing off possibilities, I would like to think in terms of making Poser's higher potential more accessible.  There are surely ways of doing this, other than removing existing features or babysitting users to tell them what they should or shouldn't do with their creativity.  :unsure:

I wish we could split off a sub-thread, dangit.

BTW, what is "MSR"?  It sounds like something I would read on a cereal box, or some term relating to quaterly profit reports. 

Quote -"You remember Budapest very differently......"I would rather have my balls mashed flat with a hammer than to EVER have to deal with the limitations of Poser 6 & 7 on a day to day basis.

I still have Poser Pro installed on my system for when I need to convert hair to the SM Gen2 figures (HCS II).  My only goal is to get in & get out.

As we dance to the masochism tago ,,, da ... da ..... da ..... :lol:

I'm having the MOST fun I've ever had with Poser NOW! Probably because I know more of what I'm doing now so I'm actually making use of features I never used that much before.

Quote - You did make me wonder what a reflection node plugged into displacement might look like.  I think it's kind of cool that Poser lets me do this, although I can't really see much use, offhand, for the result I got in the attached image.  :unsure:

Could be the basis for a sci-fi comic; might this have a survival value somehow for a creature with skin that did this? 

On topic, I think that Poser 7 was the most fun because it was new and I was just having fun screwing around with it and seeing what I got...

Just because I can't think of a reason to connect displacement to reflection doesn't mean there isn't a time when someone would want that.  I have to wonder why someone would do that...  As in what would they likely be trying to do?

I really don't know what the problem here is.  Yes, the material room can be confusing, and there are only a few here who truly seem to grok it.  But I don't think dumbing it down is the answer.

What I'd like to see would be for SM to separate out all of the legacy content into degrees of usefulness.  For example all of the P4 lights really should be removed or put someplace where it is explicitly clear that they are for the P4 renderer and older content.  The figures should be kept, but why can't they be minimally updated.  Not brought up to modern standards necessarily but just given the 15minutes of attention an experience user would give them.  Run EZSkin on Posette and Dork, clean the models of .bum files and their references... 

Give new users a basic set of materials, or better yet EZMat, and they'd have less reason to visit to the mat room in the first place.

Also, I have to chuckle at "telling Poser what Galaxy you are in" when using multiple infinite lights...  My current scene has three infinite lights (mostly for diffuse).  I'm rendering items for use in a 2D game, and that was the combination that gave the desired result.  There's probably not a thing that can be done that is "wrong" 100% of the time.  Even in moderately realistic scenes I still sometimes point an infinite light upward (in tandem with the down-pointing "sun") to simulate IDL.

Poser 4 and Poser 6

Both those were BIG jumps in what the program could do, and made for exciting changes.

Rawn

Poser 6 and Poser Pro (1)..... why? They had excellent improvements and best of all, they had the good old library! The new sucks and has taken a lot of fun out of Poser for me. Now that I'm only using Poser for setting up figures, I'm back to good old Poser Pro. Works great and no annoying library and library issues.

What ever version Sam Therapy used to use when he posted his OT jokes. Plus Dr. Geep via the naysayguy would add some wit like a cherry on top to his great tuts he posted around the same time. The forum was lighter and brighter back then.

The air of excitement of what people discovered in Poser and posted in these forums seems to have disappeared after about versions 7 or 8 IMHO.

Said another way, I have fun in Poser all the time using the current verisons...back then there seemed to be more of a community having fun together vs it being more soloistic now. YMMV

guess I'd say P6 lol upped to P7 months before 12 came uot

12 came out on same day as my heart bypass ;-( give up for a while(despite SM offering to keep offer open ;-) well done SM)

did all the trials(houdini lightwave etc) tried blender it stuck {Wow it stuck)

just got P14 love it having lots of fun (wish it was more like hush ;-) )

but in a free world I'd go back to autocad an peps (or would I with 3d printing)

(MooGal) 

Quote -   Just because I can't think of a reason to connect displacement to reflection doesn't mean there isn't a time when someone would want that.

     Exactly.    Many innovations were first done as "mis-use" of some Poser feature - MATposes, for example.

     As soon as P8 with its IDL came out, I was "mis-using" its IDL response to ambient, to make glowing neon for the jukebox and building signage of TinkerBell's Drive-In Cafe' and the paper lanterns of the elven antediluvian gnarly mulberry tree.

.

     I also mis-use the anisotropic specular node to get sparkles on water and snowfields, and to make luminous sparkles in pixie dust trails.

.   .

     Apparently, my unseen IDL emitters mis-use the "[ ] visible in camera" property, since I've been told that was intended to allow for cameras to see through walls where camera placement was difficult.

     And I suppose we could include driving animated displacement (rippling water, e.g.) with the movie node.

.

     I like experimenting with unintended uses for Poser features.  Often, first attempts crash and burn.  That's OK.  It's this experimentation that I find to be fun in Poser. :)

I've been here for 12 years now.  Still seems like a friendly place to me.  I just think back about my first few years with Poser and how arcane it all seemed.  So many new file types to learn, the runtime structure and where everyting goes...  Trying to figure out which 3d format was the best for interchange among other programs...  Vertex orders and .bum files...

A lot of that stuff is common knowledge now, or at least seem like it would take far less time to figure out.  Everybody uses .obj format.  Most everyone seems to understand UV mapping now and terms like topology and normals... 

The hobby just doesn't seem to have the pitfalls, and upheaval it once did.  New releases tend to be evolutionary, less often revolutionary.  Poser is friendlier, and can do far more than it could before.  We can rig figures in Poser now, convert clothing in Poser now.  I don't feel limited by my inability to parse a text file, it is no longer an obstacle in my way as it once seemed.  If it seems there are less people asking questions maybe it is because there are more people able to give the correct answers.  The knowledge level of the coummunity as a whole is greater, and more people feel comfortable attempting things on their own.

That said, I didn't use to feel very in tune with the community's taste in genres.  I prefer power armor to suits of armor, spaceships to pirate ships, hover bikes to flying horses.  There never was much content I wanted to buy aside from occasional new hairstyles and "street" clothing.  And the stuff I did like was more likely to inspire a project than a purchase.

Love Poser 6,8 and 9 soon be working on Poser 10. It

just keeps getting better.