I have Poser 7, and I uninstalled it for the following reasons.

• Renders far too slow (to be fair, it only had single processor support).
• Cloth sims ok for stills, but always failed in animations.
• Hair sims always crashed, locked up or went nuts in animations (spaghetti hair).
• Twitchy walk cycles
• Slow/unresponsive UI
• Impossible to find content (morphs under "poses" hair under "Actors", crap like that).
• unpacking ZIP content files was tricky and if you screwed up: massive cleanup.
• Creating content like clothing in Wings3D was tricky if not impossible.

So my question is:  has it gotten any better?  Do your animations with cloth and hair actually work?  Do they render in less than a month?

No none of the issues you site are resolved.

Honestly a lot of that sounds like not enough time was made for putting in enough effort to make thigs work right . It might be a hobbyist program but it's one that you have to be super dedicated to to get good results a lot of the time. A computer that wasn't up to the challenge of meeting Posers requirments won't give you a good experience and probably explains the technical issues you were having, though there is no "Actors" tab in Poser 7, at least not that I remember, but yeah I do agree that things like hair and textures should all be in the same place.

Animations can work just fine, if you don't put time and effort into it sure it will look like crap but that can be applied to anything in life. Though it can be time consuming it animations can look great in Poser.

Rendering speed in PP2014 is about 35% faster in complicated scenes in my experience and about 60% faster is super simple scenes even with IDL enabled, but that depends entirely on your hardware. What's rendering fast for me may render very slow for you.

Bit of a loaded questions don't you think.  I am quite sure the render engine is multithreading capable.  Much of your performance issues could be your computer, what is its specs.  The content system is what it is and you need to put in time and effort to learn it, once you do unzipping zip files will make sense too.  Don't blame Poser for the fact Wings3D is a box modeller.

Edit: dang my slow typing.

I don't do animations with dynamic cloth, and content locations are still up the whim of the vendors (morphs under Poses has become the standard location), but I find Poser Pro 2014 to be vastly improved over Poser 7 in speed and capability, although the cloth and hair simulations are still single theraded.  However, I had few issues with Poser 7 when I used it; the Service Release must have fixed them...

Seriously, what can I answer?

I'm using Poser since version 4. P7 wasn't slow to render if you knew what you're doing, but some things need more rendertime. P10 renders much faster, but things like indirect light, blurred reflections or atmosphere do need time. This is true for all render engines, there are things which are quick and other things which need a lot of time. Blenders Cycles can be a lot quicker than Posers Firefly, but that's not true for all scenes. If you build your scenes for quick rendering, a frame can be rendered in less than a minute. But if you want it to look good, well..... 

Cloth sims are good for animations. Conformers tend to look too stiff in animations, the cloth engine is faster and more stable now. But it's still a learning curve involved.

The UI works for me, I don't find it unresponsive, but I did not have Problems back in P7. The content library has improved, but there is still the distinction between Figures, Poses, Lights, Cameras, Materials - and Poses is still a group in which some vendors put theri Morphs and Materials 

Unzipping ZIP files and working with external editors did not change. There are a lot of people who make stuff for Poser with Wings (I use Silo and ZBrush), but thats nothing new. Modeling is a skill which needs to be learned, even with tools like ZBrush.

It's a mighty poor craftsman that blames their tools......

I've seen some really good animations created in earlier versions of Poser.  From what I've read Monty Oum did his animations using Poser for his Dead fantasy series. http://montyoum.net/videos/deadfantasy01 .  I've also seen some Poser Hair animations that are excellent too.

As for the issues with the slow responsiveness with your UI, it sounds like it may be an issue with your computer's processing and memory capabilities.

Oh to answer the original question.  Is Poser better?  Poser Pro 2014 is awesome and the bullet physics looks nice.  The addition of the fitting room is a big plus.

yes, poser is better now.  advanced features of PP2014 made poser 7 obsolete.

Why would creating clothes in Wings 3d be a Poser issue?

you can buy a realtime 3D card & render engine for Poser.

for dynamic animation I would use Autodesk.

• Renders far too slow (to be fair, it only had single processor support).
  PP2014 renders about 35-50% faster using better render options.

The trick here is to USE the new features, and forget the old style cheats.
Use IDL and GC, forget AO, and forget a gazilion lights. There is only ONE sun out there, and that is ONE infinite light.

• Cloth sims ok for stills, but always failed in animations.
  Cloth sims require a learning curve, but are pretty stabe.

• Hair sims always crashed, locked up or went nuts in animations (spaghetti hair).
  Hair is still a problem area, but some seem to get the hang of it.

• Twitchy walk cycles
  Same as cloth sim, it requires a learning curve.

• Slow/unresponsive UI
  Never seen that on a good multicore PC with more then 4GB RAM

• Impossible to find content (morphs under "poses" hair under "Actors", crap like that).
  The Library has improved, but you still need a "feel" of what is where.

• unpacking ZIP content files was tricky and if you screwed up: massive cleanup.
  Tja, put this on end user management.

• Creating content like clothing in Wings3D was tricky if not impossible.
  There are end users using anything from anim8or to Wings, Blender, Zbrush, and ,and, and, all getting good results.
  The trick here is to build a bullet proof workflow between Poser and your favorite modeling app.

Thank you all for your replies.

I do have much better hardware now, and even tried installing poser 7 on it, but the fact that it was single core meant that it still ran very slow.

I am saddened to hear that the hair has not been fixed, I would think they'd spend some time on that.  You don't know how many times I left a 200 frame animation running hair and cloth updates all night , and then two days for a high quality render just to find that the arms and boobs popped right through the cloth and the hair "scrunched" at around frame 30.

It's quite frustrating when you have 4 days setting up and 3 days rendering and your animation is crap when you're done.

For me this is a hobby, I am not making money at it.

I think based on what I have seen here I will not upgrade and give it another try, as some of the fundamental things I want to do seem to still be - if not unworkable - at least problematic.

Maybe after I retire and have nothing but time on my hands.

Quote - Maybe after I retire and have nothing but time on my hands.

I had the same thought before I retired.  Now I have retired there seems so little time and certainly not enough to do everything I want to.  Of course, your retirement may be different, but I would not take the 'time on your hands' for granted.

Quote - Thank you all for your replies.

I do have much better hardware now, and even tried installing poser 7 on it, but the fact that it was single core meant that it still ran very slow.

 

I am saddened to hear that the hair has not been fixed, I would think they'd spend some time on that.  You don't know how many times I left a 200 frame animation running hair and cloth updates all night , and then two days for a high quality render just to find that the arms and boobs popped right through the cloth and the hair "scrunched" at around frame 30.

It's quite frustrating when you have 4 days setting up and 3 days rendering and your animation is crap when you're done.

For me this is a hobby, I am not making money at it.

I think based on what I have seen here I will not upgrade and give it another try, as some of the fundamental things I want to do seem to still be - if not unworkable - at least problematic.

Maybe after I retire and have nothing but time on my hands.

With due respect, if you expect high end results, perhaps you should be paying for high end products. For what it costs, Poser does a reasonable and great job. Could it be better? No doubt, and it is constantly improving while still staying affordable.

And no offense, but why would you run a 200 frame high quality animation  for two days without running a preview first to make sure everything was to your liking? I've owned Poser since version 2 and I've yet to run a full quality animation for that very reason. Why waste the time? I learned that lesson from Bryce 3D.

I'm definitely in hobby mode with Poser, but there are some great deals out there for being able to afford Poser 9 or even 10, both of which are leaps and bounds over Poser 7. My suggestion is that before you pass final judgement you do a little actual testing and put Poser Pro 2010 0r 2014 on your much better hardware and see how that works out for you. Is it going to be perfect? I suspect not, but it should at least get you closer to the ballpark than you are right now.

hahaha, such a funny thread this is!

Time to start up my good old Poser 1 (yep: ONE)

• renders sooo fast on my current HW
• no (failing) cloth sims
• no (crashing) hair sims
• no (twitchy) walk cycles
• no (unresponsive) UI, just the original Painter-style one
• no content to search for (and no library issues either!)
• no zip's to handle
• no (issues with) interfacing with any 3D product

I bet you'll love it ! Windows only, I'm afraid (though I'm not that sure).

LOL, I had Poser1 on a 1.44 disk.

(I must be getting very old. ) Current download, including content is about 5GB, compressed, pfffft.

With regard to the content issues, most of your complaints are a result of a certain popular content creation company turning user hacks into standard op.

Mat poses (mat files as pose files) and mor poses (morphs as pose files) were hacks discovered by users.  Curious Labs did not view them as legitimate.  eFronteir accepted them because many of their late PPP products and up used them.

Hair comes in two forms.  Conforming or figure hair and prop hair.  Prop hair ends up in the hair folder.  Conforming or figure hair ends up in the figures library because it has a cr2. 

Since you are using P7, you are still bound by the rigid Poser runtime library set up.  This restriction ended with P8. 

Zips are common to every brokerage these days.  Including DAZ. 

I never bought P1, as store geeks told me it was no good.  then they would proudly discuss their 2-week-long bryce renders of grand canyon (still in progress).

I had Bryce 3D and tried to do an animation that took about two days. I never did finish. But I did go to work one day and when i came back it was still rendering.

there's a few youtube videos that's a test or real simple runways.

but are there any Poser shorts with dynamic hair n cloths ?

If there are I'll be as impressed as I was with ODF modeling antonia in wings.
Still think they should have given ODF AutoDesk for that accomplishment.

"then they would proudly discuss their 2-week-long bryce renders of grand canyon (still in progress). "

Yeah I remember those Days
it was as though rendering animation in Bryce was some sort of Bizarre, Macho
"endurance test" to some people.

I admit to a 72 hour animation render in bryce (with horrible flickering!!)
but since animated Characters were
not possible in bryce I eventually gave it up as my alternative render engine for poser figures.

Quote - I am saddened to hear that the hair has not been fixed, I would think they'd spend some time on that.  

There are other options for animated hair in 2014 Pro. You can now use conforming hair and setup physics on it. It is worlds faster than dynamic, and gives far more predictable results.

Quote -   I do have much better hardware now, and even tried installing poser 7 on it, but the fact that it was single core meant that it still ran very slow. 

     Clarify;  your new hardware is single core, or are you under the impression that P7 renders single thread?  Look under edit:general preferences:render

     As I recall, P7 (and the original Poser Pro) was the first Poser version to render multi-thread, albeit it only divided the render frame into halves or quarters, as opposed to the P8+ system of distributing the render by buckets to whatever core next becomes available.

     Dynamic cloth excels at animation; you must have been doing something wrong.  Maybe we can figure out what.

     Walk cycles -and all other raw motion sequences- always need refinement, in my experience.

     As for render times, you need to develop a sense for balancing off render speed versus quality.  It is like bargaining for a purchase - you figure out how much render quality you can get for the amount of processor time you're willing to spend.  Of course, you could buy a dual-processor workstation;  Cwichura has dual HyperThreaded 10-core Xeon processors in his workstation;  that's forty rendering threads!  The current Poser will use every one of those threads;  sure is faster than single-threaded!

Quote -
I'm definitely in hobby mode with Poser, but there are some great deals out there for being able to afford Poser 9 or even 10,

Right now there's someone on eBay selling unopened brand-new copies of Poser 10 for $39.99 with free shipping.

oooh, color, err rather render me intrigued!

Quote - > Quote - I am saddened to hear that the hair has not been fixed, I would think they'd spend some time on that.  

There are other options for animated hair in 2014 Pro. You can now use conforming hair and setup physics on it. It is worlds faster than dynamic, and gives far more predictable results.

I started with Poser2-on a Mac. I still have it-but can't run it on my current Mac. I got Poser3 almost immediately after 2-so am most familiar with 3. Ah the Pre-transparency days of plastic helmet hair! Bryce 3D was my go-to for higher quality renders back then.

Quote - hahaha, such a funny thread this is!

Time to start up my good old Poser 1 (yep: ONE)

• renders sooo fast on my current HW
• no (failing) cloth sims
• no (crashing) hair sims
• no (twitchy) walk cycles
• no (unresponsive) UI, just the original Painter-style one
• no content to search for (and no library issues either!)
• no zip's to handle
• no (issues with) interfacing with any 3D product

I bet you'll love it ! Windows only, I'm afraid (though I'm not that sure).

Quote - No none of the issues you site are resolved.

It is so much easier to make clothing in Poser now than in Poser 7. 

I use Wings to make all kinds of stuff for use in Poser, and the improved morph brush and fitting tools make converting clothing items into conforming clothes much easier than it ever was before.

Also the raytrace code is much improved, so renders are indeed much faster, especially with things like IDL turned on.  The more demanding the render, the bigger the improvement.

The only time I find the UI slow or unresponsive is when trying to cancel renders.  I no longer see Poser diasppear to desktop on a regular basis or get other random hangs.  And the OpenGL preview is much improved over P7, and so should be smoother on adequate HW.

I'm pretty sure there were improvements to some of those other areas as well, but I'm only listing things I know for a fact are much improved over pre-SM releases.

Plus there are loads of improvements that weren't asked about (Bullet, comic render)...

Hopefully this isn't sounding too picky.  I'm only telling my own experiences.

I've never had slow Renders but it's subjective to what you are trying to render and what settings you are using to accomplish your rendering goals.  Are you cranking up settings without knowing the implications or using "ultra" style settings when carefully adjusting them would be better?

My renders usually are a few minutes, maybe 20 on a heavy scene.

Never had a slow UI issue (unless it was an addon in Poser 9+) and have not experienced unresponsiveness at all.  I've been using the Pro versions since Poser 7 though.

Content issues - as others have cited, its community issues and cross-support issues with "other program" (until quite recently viewing the history of it all).  Morphs still under Poses though.  Need morphs folder.  Fiddling with zips will always be an issue because not everyone has the same thought processes on how to structure (or build) content - there's a loose standard but still lots of variety within.

Can't speak for Wings (but I've read issues on occasion).  Maybe other 3D applications are better suited to the clothing building?  If it has trouble with grouping or setting materials or whatever, there are other tools that can do that so perhaps build there and optimize for clothing use elsewhere?  Seems like a problem with the modeler of choice rather than something the needs to be fixed in Poser.

Some of the solutions could be system-based (CPU, disk, graphics card, etc) and some might just be being more flexible with regards to choices (render settings, scene load, other applications).

Dude

Quote - > Quote - No none of the issues you site are resolved.

 

It is so much easier to make clothing in Poser now than in Poser 7. 

I use Wings to make all kinds of stuff for use in Poser, and the improved morph brush and fitting tools make converting clothing items into conforming clothes much easier than it ever was before.

Also the raytrace code is much improved, so renders are indeed much faster, especially with things like IDL turned on.  The more demanding the render, the bigger the improvement.

The only time I find the UI slow or unresponsive is when trying to cancel renders.  I no longer see Poser diasppear to desktop on a regular basis or get other random hangs.  And the OpenGL preview is much improved over P7, and so should be smoother on adequate HW.

I'm pretty sure there were improvements to some of those other areas as well, but I'm only listing things I know for a fact are much improved over pre-SM releases.

Plus there are loads of improvements that weren't asked about (Bullet, comic render)...

 

At no point in the OP was there a request to resolve any of these issues he just whined and quit

There isn't a make a disneyesque animation over night in 12 clicks on my PC script

(excepting make art button Thanks Phil C)

Most of the OP's issues are User related

With know tech attachements to guide my troubleshooter I gave a default answer

Hence, no none of the issues you site are resolved is still true

I read the OP as asking if any of those areas had been improved since Poser 7.  Poser 10/2014 is an improvement on Poser 7 with regard to the areas I mentioned.

I assumed the OP was asking whether anyone could recommend Poser 2014 based on his previous experience with Poser 7, and so I did.  Without knowing anything about his computer at the time of using Poser 7 I have to assume his current computer is likely more powerful.

See how people see differently I thought the OP (a 10 year member) was venting his spleen in an attempt to get attention.

He only has 24 posts over those years; he likely posts only on matters of importance to him...

PS I wish they'd fix the #@(&)&% spellcheck; it works in PM!

Quote - See how people see differently I thought the OP (a 10 year member) was venting his spleen in an attempt to get attention.

Sometimes that's the case where someone is only trying to get attention, but then you are left with the question of "Do you let inaccurate information stay without response?"

The downside to that is that people will believe the wrong thing.  If  you look at the responses then you'll see that some valuable things were said.  Better to see the responses than for someone to stumble upon the topic and just assume that Poser is a worthless program that has not made any improvements since Poser 7.

Quote -

Can't speak for Wings (but I've read issues on occasion).  Maybe other 3D applications are better suited to the clothing building?  If it has trouble with grouping or setting materials or whatever, there are other tools that can do that so perhaps build there and optimize for clothing use elsewhere?  Seems like a problem with the modeler of choice rather than something the needs to be fixed in Poser.

It can be tricky getting Wings and Poser working together, but when they do it's a very complimentary pairing.

First thing to learn is scale.  Setting Wings' .obj import to 10.0 and export to 0.1 will bring Poser objects in at a reasonably large size (they are notoriously small) and export them at their original size.

Of course you have to choose the correct import/export options in Poser also.  Using the default export options, and unchecking "cenetered" and "percent of figure size" will allow you to move objects from Poser to Wings and back without them moving or changing size.

And finally, don't use spaces in your material names or Wings will truncate the part of the name after the space.

But they are quite a good combination once these habits are adopted.

This isn't to say Wings couldn't use a few features here and there, or make more operational sense (wish Wings' magnets worked like Poser's magnets) but Wings does work well with Poser imports, and Poser works equally well with Wings' exports.

Quote - The downside to that is that people will believe the wrong thing.  If  you look at the responses then you'll see that some valuable things were said.  Better to see the responses than for someone to stumble upon the topic and just assume that Poser is a worthless program that has not made any improvements since Poser 7.

Pretty much why I chimed in to begin with.  SM don't get enough credit for developing Poser, IMHO.  It's a much more capable tool than it was just a few years ago.

I keep forgetting what a sandbox this place is.

I think poser have improved a lot especially in performance. 

However some things would be nice improvements which i hope they will add at some point, which is a localized pivot point for faster workflow. When you are used to other 3d programs you really miss it. Even though you can turn it on, it just feels a bit messy to use i think.

Would also like to see an overhaul of the lighting system, so it was a bit more streamlined with the other 3d apps out there. And so they were easier to control, im not a huge fan of that ball thingy they have and controlling lights in the viewpoint is not easy either i think.

But think these a minor things, when looking at Poser as a whole, it does a really good job in what it is suppose to do.

Working with characters, creating scenes etc etc. is really easy compared to other 3ds apps, where creating a character is really difficult and requires a lot of experience, to rigging it and get the same control you have in poser would make 95% of the users not wanting to use 3d i think.

But following Poser and the new versions that comes, i think it improves quite a lot each version, with the bullet system added, cloth fitting etc. Now they just need to add particle effects, improve the render engine (Even though i think it does a decent job) and it would be really nice. 

And now GD version is available as a $39.99 upgrade so yes Poser is really improved

but I still say no in the context of the OP

I'd rather use PP2014 and Wings to make content than use Wings with P7, and I'd rather use Firefly to render in PP2014 than in P7.  Pretty sure it's not just because I have a faster computer now.  According to SM those areas have been improved.

@OP:

in current Poser versions you can put library files where you want to within the "Runtime:Libraries" folder. If you want to put MAT poses of a hair prop in a subfolder of the hair prop in "Runtime:Libraries:Hair" folder, go ahead and do it. Poser hasn't cared about file locations in a looong time now - the vendors and users are the ones who keep insisting on keeping MAT pose files in "Poses" -folder. 

But the emphasis is in the word YOU. YOU will have to arrange YOUR content as YOU see fit. Poser is now flexible enough to accept this. I've personally arranged everything I have in a neat and logical single Runtime - and I find anything I want quite easily.  Yes, it takes time and effort and determination. Poser is just like any other hobby ... it demands dedication to get results.