Considering that Metaform was essentially a poor man's RealFlow, yeah, there is a -LOT- that could be done with a 64bit multi threaded, updated version. Lots of people don't realize that 'fluid effect' means =anything= that changes shape to adapt to its surroundings. An MFII would do fire (and with current shaders, -light producing fire- that didn't look phony), smoke (or clouds. Hello new ideas for skydomes! All it takes is a collision plane that's invisible to keep the meta's above a certain height, and you can suddenly produce very nice cloud effects, again depending on the shaders), or any kind of liquid you want. Like oh, a running shower. A bleeding wound. A flooding room. A broken pipe. A garden hose. etc etc etc.

Toss in a particle generator for hair, and the range of potential effects you could create would literally skyrocket (particularly if the 'hair particles' could 'grow' on the runtime geometry of the metaballs. The sim time would be...imposing...but having a fluid effect that has the kind of grainyness to it that you only get in the real world...? Geekout!).

Yeah, it would require you to actually touch the timeline and set up (gasp) an animation for simulating, but those controls don't bite. Really. 

"Yeah, it would require you to actually touch the timeline and set up (gasp) an animation for simulating,...."

This Honestly has always puzzled me when see
many people ask for "particles" in poser wishlist threads

Is this not an animation/ VXF feature??

I would hope  that people realize that they will have to learn to set up animations even if only to get the right look for a still.

"
Toss in a particle generator for hair, and the range of potential effects you could create would literally skyrocket (particularly if the 'hair particles' could 'grow' on the runtime geometry of the metaballs. The sim time would be...imposing...but having a fluid effect that has the kind of grainyness to it that you only get in the real world...?"

Just curious but what other apps use a particle based system for hair other than Blender?

I ask only because looking at the blender Docs on it's particle based hair system makes me wonder how many  average poser users would "get along" with such complicated set ups just for a Gallery still.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Physics/Particles/Hair

Quote - "
Toss in a particle generator for hair, and the range of potential effects you could create would literally skyrocket (particularly if the 'hair particles' could 'grow' on the runtime geometry of the metaballs. The sim time would be...imposing...but having a fluid effect that has the kind of grainyness to it that you only get in the real world...?"

Just curious but what other apps use a particle based system for hair other than Blender?

I ask only because looking at the blender Docs on it's particle based hair system makes me wonder how many  average poser users would "get along" with such complicated set ups just for a Gallery still.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Physics/Particles/Hair

Blender has tons of features, I can't even find, let alone use. That's what I don't want for Poser. I know the tendency is for Poser to have all these features so you can just use Poser. That's all fine and dandy, but as long as I know there are programs out there that i can use to "enhance" Poser's performance, rather than over load Poser to the point where it's a jack of all trades, but can't do anything well, I'd rather Poser was left with a core suite of features, which it does well, and some add-ons which  let you enhance it.

Quote - "Yeah, it would require you to actually touch the timeline and set up (gasp) an animation for simulating,...."

This Honestly has always puzzled me when see
many people ask for "particles" in poser wishlist threads

Is this not an animation/ VXF feature??

I would hope  that people realize that they will have to learn to set up animations even if only to get the right look for a still.

You and me both, Wolf. I've been pointing out for a couple of years that we are nearing the end of the still image feature pool, and to go any farther people are going to -have- to get their hands dirty with the timeline. Particles have to be simmed. So do metaballs. So does anything with the word 'dynamic' in it. I'd -so- love for DaCorte to weightmap all his figures (one of the many reasons I'm working on learning it myself; Natalia 3 or Mariko with all those JCMs removed and nice clean maps would be a bit easier on system resources). TANSTAAFL At its finest...but also very, very easy to break things badly. And I really don't want to think about rebuilding my main runtime (although I am doing it in segments, as when done the big  multi gigabyte monster will be replaced by several not so big gigabyte rt's).

As for the particle hair, I honestly can't remember. I've read about it in the trades, but I couldn't tell you who was working it for love or money atm. It's more a fur generator component than a mane or hair replacement; nothing beats actual strands for proper follicle behavior.  

The time co-ordinate can be an input in the function, and effects are greatest with simulation,  but simulation in no case is a necessity. 

Poser can do isosurfaces to some extent, that is, if you put up geometry, say a row of planes, you can give these a texture with the function plugged in the transparancy channel.  On the surfaces then appear sections of the object you define in the function.

The atmosphere function in Poser does something similar but is very computation-intensive and not geared for this purpose.

(description courtesy Wikipedia)

"The metaballs and isosurfaces I referred to have nothing to do with simulation and work perfect for stills.

The time co-ordinate can be an input in the function, and effects are greatest with simulation,  but simulation in no case is a necessity.

Poser can do isosurfaces to some extent,"

Hi if one looks at the most often discussed poser topic you may find it to be something related to FEMALE figures.
how the joints look and available clothing and skins etc etc.

Now as a nextlimit RealFlow® owner I understand how these isosurfaces may be used of a Visual Effects shot but now we are talking the "A" word ( animation)

I am curious
exactly how do you propose this time coordinate math function isosurfaces be applied to the current crop of poser native
females/figures/joints etc??.

I would really hate to see Poser become a sort of 'Jack of all trades, master of none' peice of software.  It has never been a modeling program, of which there are already so many to choose from. 

I like the way it has developed and would prefer to see it carry on in a simialar way.  If it needs a little more complexity to do better what is already does then OK but add it to what already exisits.  That way you are learning something new rather than starting a whole new learning curve.

The main strength of isosurfaces is that you can define geometry of environment and props etc. using expresions, not with verties and facets. You can compare it with how procedural materials define colour or transparancy without using bitmaps. Resolution of the definition is not an issue because the definition is exact an not an interpolation grid. Scale of the object, depending on how it is defined, can or cannot affect the scale of the object. A typical way of defining a brick wall is to intersect the volume of the wall, say a suitably sized box, with the spatial bricks texture. If you increase the size of the box by a number of brick units, you get, like it should, more bricks in your wall and not, Poser style, a wall with the same number of bricks that are larger.

Complex Solid Geometry between objects by multiplying them (with opposite sign).

The function would not affect the figures directly but be supportive.

The above is of course just a traditional V4 head intersected with a tranaparancy 'spiral'. Poser needs geometry to project the result on. Isosurfaces do same projecting the function into space, and would therefore show enclosed volumes.

Quote - to be able to read genesis (1-2) figures properly without DSON

Easier functionality in material room

get rid of face room and hair room

I want that genesis capability and I want it in Poser.  I'm not giving up my intuitive Poser interface just yet.

I

Quick question for those of you who say you would like a collapsed heirarchy window: Could you give a little more detail on what type of behaviour you want?

Quote - Quick question for those of you who say you would like a collapsed heirarchy window: Could you give a little more detail on what type of behaviour you want?

It should start out and stay collapsed, meaning all children are hidden until their parent item's expand arrow is clicked.  Closing the window and reopening it should remember its previous state, or always start as collapsed.

Most people would probably want the window to show all figures, props and lights (each collapsed) within the universe. Ideally, we could set the default window depth in preferences.  Ideally, we could set the default window depth in preferences.  A depth of one would just show "Universe" in the box.  A depth of two would list the Universe, props figures and lights that don't have a parent (aside from the universe).  That's the behavious I think most people would want. 

Part of the problem with it is that expand/collapse arrows do not behave the same way as the visibility toggle.  If we click the visibility toggle for the universe we can make all items (in)visible with a single click.  But for some reason clicking the expand arrow for the "universe" does not expand all figures and props in the universe, which seems inconsistent with expanding individual items within the universe.

And it should also stop popping in front of my undocked viewport when I do things like change rooms.

I actually meant to delete "ideally, we could set the depth in preferences" and ended up pasting it in again.

The arrow beside Universe could be used to show ungrouped items belonging to the universe; e.g. ground, lights, props, etc.  Basically anything that is a single object with no children.  Because just having "Universe" unexpanded by itself is useless.

So my preference would be when collapsed the Universe would still list all compound objects and figures below it.  Clicking the Universe bar would expand it to show the extra ungrouped items (lights etc.).  Clicking the arrow would expand/close all items.

Goals for improving would be:

1)Trying to keep the arrow behaviour consistent with the visibility toggle.

2)Trying to always show compound itesm such as figures, clothing and compound props.

3)NOT defaulting to showing every single item in the Universe.

And while were at it, I think things like Goal/Center of Mass and IK could use their own check boxes at the top along with deformers, lights and cameras.

It's a matter of making it convenient for more than one style of working.  I don't use the balance tools, so I don't need to see goal/center of mass when my list is expanded.  I rarely change IK settings within a project, so again those expand my list undesirably.  The current behavior seems to be a hold over from when most Poser scenes only consisted of a few figures and props.  The addition of center of mass and IK to the list is only a small amount of clutter, but now many users are navigating scenes with more figures, more lights and many more props.  The hierarchy panel today for many users seems to exist in constant flux between showing too much information and not showing enough.

There really are multiple ways the hierarchy could work.  If we could agree on one I'd even file a ticket on it.  Since my mind hasn't moved from this idea yet, here are a couple more thoughts...

I notice in my Windows folder hierarchy that I can collapse at any level, but I can't make things stay collapsed.  If I open "programs" then collapse "desktop", programs will still be expanded when desktop is re-expanded.  I'd think clicking desktop would only show items directly under it, while clicking the global expand might better open every folder all of the way down.  What's there now just seems time consuming.  Open a folder, you have to close it.  I think if I click the folder above the one I'm in, the folders within it should collapse. 

The idea of it opening to a certain depth didn't seem too important yesterday.  But then I slept on it and remembered that many times when having multiple characters interacting I group them to a plane.  I can see some people wanting the hierarchy to show one, two or even three levels.

The most important change would simply be to give it a memory.  Even if no other behaviour were changed that would save us a lot of clicks.

My only fear here would be that if something is collapsed, and it stays that way until you uncollapse it, how do you know you won't accidentally miss something?

Quote - My only fear here would be that if something is collapsed, and it stays that way until you uncollapse it, how do you know you won't accidentally miss something?

I'm not sure what you mean...  Miss it when?

I just think it gives too much info by dfault when you load a large scene...  You see every figure, prop, light, center of gravity, IK link, and magnet, plus the ground and universe.

When I load a scene, especially one that is largely "finished" it's either a setting, or it's a setting with figures.  If it's just a setting, I'm probably going to add figures at some point.  If there are figures, I'm probably going to start posing them.  It just makes more sense to me to expand a figure when I begin working on it, rather than have to collapse everything in order to make sense of everything in my scene.  I can only work on one thing at a time.  Have you ever scrolled down the list looking for a figure's hand only to realize you'd scrolled past that figure onto an item of clothing attached to it, or maybe even another figure entirely?  That's because an expanded heirarchy can have several "r_hand"s in it.  If it it were closed by default, then the only "hand"s I'd be seeing would be those of the character whose hierarchy I chose to see. 

Quote - > Quote - My only fear here would be that if something is collapsed, and it stays that way until you uncollapse it, how do you know you won't accidentally miss something?

I'm not sure what you mean...  Miss it when?

I just think it gives too much info by dfault when you load a large scene...  You see every figure, prop, light, center of gravity, IK link, and magnet, plus the ground and universe.

When I load a scene, especially one that is largely "finished" it's either a setting, or it's a setting with figures.  If it's just a setting, I'm probably going to add figures at some point.  If there are figures, I'm probably going to start posing them.  It just makes more sense to me to expand a figure when I begin working on it, rather than have to collapse everything in order to make sense of everything in my scene.  I can only work on one thing at a time.  Have you ever scrolled down the list looking for a figure's hand only to realize you'd scrolled past that figure onto an item of clothing attached to it, or maybe even another figure entirely?  That's because an expanded heirarchy can have several "r_hand"s in it.  If it it were closed by default, then the only "hand"s I'd be seeing would be those of the character whose hierarchy I chose to see. 

 

Let's say, for example, that you open the hierrachy window and everything is collapsed. You want to expand the body, which has the chest. You expand the chest, which has the collar... and so on. If you're new to Poser, you may not know that or where to look. That's all I'm saying. You might miss what you're looking for.

"Let's say, for example, that you open the hierrachy window and everything is collapsed. You want to expand the body, which has the chest. You expand the chest, which has the collar... and so on. If you're new to Poser, you may not know that or where to look. That's all I'm saying. You might miss what you're looking for."

That is easily solved with an "unfold/collapse all" or "unfold/collapse selected" option in the hierarchy menu.

most modern programs, even My OLD Daz studio 2.3, has this option.

1. A useful 3D modeler, preferably similar to the one in Lightwave 3D (independent but with link to Poser)

1. A faster (and better) rendering.

1. Ability to save the renderbuffer to Photoshop layers.

Quote - 1. A useful 3D modeler, preferably similar to the one in Lightwave 3D (independent but with link to Poser)

1. A faster (and better) rendering.

1. Ability to save the renderbuffer to Photoshop layers.

You have Lightwave 3D, correct?  I use Wings3D primarily.  There are probably a dozen other modelers people use.  Not only would developing a modeler from scratch cut heavily into the resources available for improving Poser's core functionality, there's a high chance most users would continue using their current modeler of choice (What if it were powerful but unintuitive?  What if it were intuitive but only provided the most basic of tools?)

My question (I personally think adding a modeler to Poser would be a huge waste of development resources and would likely result in a bigger/slower/buggier program) is what would be gained by having a modeler included with Poser, aside from eliminating the need to import/export?  It sounds as if you would be happy having that modeler be a separate program, so how would this be better than using one of the many tools already available?  

There would be advantage if the modeler (or rather geometry-editor) would respect morph definitions etc, so one can make changes to the mesh while maintaining UV maps, morphs and weight maps.

"My question (I personally think adding a modeler to Poser would be a huge waste of development resources and would likely result in a bigger/slower/buggier program) is what would be gained by having a modeler included with Poser, aside from eliminating the need to import/export?  It sounds as if you would be happy having that modeler be a separate program, so how would this be better than using one of the many tools already available?"

Agreed, a modelor is a content creation tool with many varieties/options available as stand alone apps.

Poser is a Content Consumption/Delivery tool

There are Full CG suites that "do it all"
Like the ones from Autodesk, Maxon,
Newtek, SideFx etc.
and ,of course Blender.

Smith Micro should not try to turn poser into a Full CG production App.
Its not posers market.

Enhancing the morph brush. Maybe to have a morph room would be cool.

I would like a huge environment to work with to build a city with some of the great city blocks.  I heard (I might be wrong) that DAZ has a way to do this.  However, I like Poser and would like to be able to build a city and not have it disappear as I keep building forward.

I would like SM to keep doing exactly what they've been doing.  P2014 was a great upgrade and I think the best bang for the buck of any Poser version.

Quote - I would like SM to keep doing exactly what they've been doing.  P2014 was a great upgrade and I think the best bang for the buck of any Poser version.

Agrree, but still there has to be a further development. So everything, that improves figure, morphs, posings and animations is allways wellcome.

Quote - 3. Ability to save the renderbuffer to Photoshop layers.

You already can render some of the render information to separate layers (like Normal, ToodID, Z Depth, Position and Texture coordinated).

Click on the Auxilary render data arrow in the bottom right corner of the Render settings dialog

I'll throw my vote in with Moogal's description of the hierarchy editor window.

Quote - I would like SM to keep doing exactly what they've been doing.  P2014 was a great upgrade and I think the best bang for the buck of any Poser version.

I would vote for that as well, carry on down the same path,  There are plenty of modelling programs out there so spend the time on improving what Poser does already.

Quote - I would like SM to keep doing exactly what they've been doing.  P2014 was a great upgrade and I think the best bang for the buck of any Poser version.

Agreed.  They may finally be getting some real competition in iClone 6 though...  Especially for artists who want realistic preview/fast animation rendering, and those who think dynamic cloth should be simple to set up and "just work".

Quote - ...and those who think dynamic cloth should be simple to set up and "just work".

Well, if you hve ever tried Marvelous Designer you will know dynamic cloth CAN be a lot more simple than with current clumsy cloth room, and yes in many cases it 'just works' on the native figure and across figures, not different from real life people wearing ready made clothes.

hint: Marvelous Designer offers a 14 days free trial, there are ready made examples. Free Angela from Mankahoo happens to have the same size as the female avatar that comes with MD4, so you need not play seamster to make them fit.

I would like to see SM buy out Marvelous Designer, or at least license the product for inclusion inside Poser. It's hilariously easy to make clothes with this program, as quite a few merchants have been using it over the years to make Poser content (once you get into the program, you'll spot a few things that are too similar to be coincidence).

The Cloth Room and Hair Room are fine, they just need to be fixed:

The Cloth Room's default settings are for everything to behave like water. It's a CLOTH Room, not a BATH Room.

The Hair Room needs a great deal of explanation. Back when we had printed manuals and got software on disks in boxes, even then there was a one page blurb that said "click this tab to enter the Hair Room. Click anything else to leave it."

Yes, it's the bane of Poser users everywhere, and while I'm no fan of Blender, I'm shocked that a freeware app beats the pants off Poser's Hair Room. They've had 15 years to make it right (it used to be an Easter Egg in Poser 3 in 1998 - you typed "hair" to access it, along with "tree" to access a basic plant-making program that didn't work).

But, with any luck I should be able to get at least one tutorial on the Hair Room uploaded soon. Been killing it all weekend, and I think I've finally made it my bizatch :lol:

It's actually simple once you get the right work flow going, but it's time-consuming, tedious, and really, really repetitious. And it's easy to bjork it all up.

Lupus: Poser as a simple (heh) mesh editor is already built-in, by way of the Grouping Tool. While you can't generate a mesh from vertices as with TrueSpace et. al., you can very easily take any imported mesh apart piece by piece with the Grouping Tool. I've even modded Skyrim assets with it (though getting it back into Skyrim is a PITA involving 3 other programs and a laundry list of hacks you need to make to the mesh itself).

Obviously there are other mesh-editing tasks it can't do, such as surface sculpting and whatnot, unless you really tweak the living crap out of something with magnets and deformers and parent it onto a common base object with some degree of surface separation, but yeah, simple Boolean operations would be nice to have natively in Poser.

-Quietrob: As for generating worldspaces, there is an item that claims to do that for Poser. I'll have to find the link I ran across the other day. It's not that Infinito at Daz, it's something else.

However, the "without disappearing" part is probably not possible unless you're on a very high-end system. Games are designed to not render that which is beyond the player's current view, and to load low-detail assets at the farthest range (depending on the system's power) and gradually increase the resolution of those assets as you get closer. Poser, not being a simulator, can not possess this functionality, nor make use of it. If you've got items disappearing from view in Poser, you may want to tweak the camera properties. I have imported large-scale assets into Poser and had to back the camera way off to even see them, and then scale and manipulate the other camera settings to keep it from disappearing.

Speaking of which, I'd really like to see Poser abandon the MicroCosm scale factor and get on board with the industry standard sizing. Assuming there is one, of course. If not, there needs to be one so that import/export functions between anything that can import/export 3D meshes does so at the exact same scale.

-wimvdb: lupus was talking about the render buffer, not parceling out render work to something else. The render buffer is the little strip of most-recent renders to the left of the main window.

(quietrob) 

Quote - I would like a huge environment to work with to build a city with some of the great city blocks.  I heard (I might be wrong) that DAZ has a way to do this.  However, I like Poser and would like to be able to build a city and not have it disappear as I keep building forward.

     Tink's Cafe' (see freebies forum) has a large asphalt plane and skydome (they can be scaled up further if needed), and several buildings.

     If things are disappearing as you get further away, that's probably just the preview camera's yon setting (on the parameters panel).  Just dial it up to a bigger number.