Hi folks, I wanted to give you some official news from the land of Poser. In case you haven't heard Steve Cooper and Steve Yatson have both moved to different companies. I've stepped in the fill Coop's spacious shoes. On the bright side when you say "Hey Steve!" in the office it's much less confusing: only one guy answers. (Yes there were 3 Steves).

 Don't worry though as all the rest of the Poser crew is still here and even some new faces. Fahim Niaz has been the product manager for Smith Micro's 2D Graphics products for years. He's my mentor in this job and I'm his mentor in the world of Poser. Together we'll keep Poser moving ahead.

 I want all of you to know that despite recent management changes Poser is still here for the long haul and we have focused our efforts on you: artists, content creators, and animators.  No matter how you use poser we realize one thing stands above all else: content is king.

 We intend to provide you what you need to create with Poser. We won't abandon years of established workflow. All improvements are carefully designed to retain as much compatibility as possible. You have huge collections of content and one of our goals is to keep all of it working as we move forward. Most importantly, we know that without you there is no Poser. You are the center of the Poserverse and we will support you.

 There's been a lot of interest lately in physically based rendering (PBR) and its ability to produce extremely realistic renders. For years this has been available using plugins such as Reality. Poser 11 will include it's own PBR as well, giving you, the artist yet another choice in production rendering. Our new render engine is based on the Cycles engine of Blender fame. Don't worry; the familiar FireFly render engine is still going to be there. We're just giving you another rendering option.

 Among other things, Poser's integration of Cycles (currently code named SuperFly) is going to give you a much-requested feature: rendered caustics. SuperFly will use the same material room you already know from FireFly. You won't need to learn a new material interface.

 Another part of the SuperFly implementation is the addition of Area lights. Area lights are just what their name implies an adjustable light source that isn't just a pinpoint. This gives you much more realistic highlights, reflections and soft shadows. You can also make any object become a light simply by increasing its ambient value.

 We are here, we hear you and we're making the best version of Poser ever.

Here's a test render from the new Cycles render engine. Remember this is a Work in Progress. (Sorry couldn't resist the checker board thing LOL)

Still messing with glass ...

Exciting news! I'm impatiently waiting for the new Poser. Thanks for the update.

Well, this is exciting!  Thanks, Nerd for the update!

Ohhh me likey!

Very exciting indeed!

Can we also look forward to improvements in the dynamics engine?  Sure hope so as right now, it's a bit sluggish.

Anxiously awaits more news.  :)

looks amazing. Definitely a step in the right direction.

Plus Points:

• Great idea to incorporate a 'constantly rendering' engine (you automatically made a better decision than DAZ and iRay due to that).
• Perfect idea to make the Cycles Render Engine use the current Poser Material Nodes.

Minus Points:

• You should be ashamed of yourself for not using Roxie for your demo render.
• A possible minus it that you didn't say whether the Cycles rendering takes place in the main Poser viewport or a separate one.

But anyway, it was a surprise to hear "Cycles" and that you've used the built-in nodes, that's pretty damn awesome!

So will dynamic hair work with this render engine? Too many won't do it.

Red, someone is working on a tool to make conforming clothes and hair dynamic. I have been waiting for the cloth and hair rooms to be updated, but everyone wants PBR so that is the focus it seems.

Among other things, Poser's integration of Cycles (currently code named SuperFly) is going to give you a much-requested feature: rendered caustics. SuperFly will use the same material room you already know from FireFly. You won't need to learn a new material interface.

^^^THIS is major!  THIS will mean most Poser users will adopt and use the new render engine.

I would trust this doesn't mean Firefly development has stopped. PBRs are nice and all, but for a lot of applications are not necessary.

Good news ! But what about renders artifacts ?

Very good news, thank you for the update.

Beautiful news!!! I have faith in you guys!

I would trust this doesn't mean Firefly development has stopped. PBRs are nice and all, but for a lot of applications are not necessary.

This is exactly why FireFly is staying. there are also some things it does  better. This emphasizes that you need a choice in render engines. Now you will have another.

So will Cycles automatically convert Firefly materials or settings, or will you have to manually adjust in order to use in Cycles? Say for example I have a character with skin. How will that skin look in cycles? What additional work if any will have to be done? Or will this bridge do most of the work for you? Or will there be convert presets available eg an ezskin type product for cycles?

This is very good news.

Thats great news...But Chuck what about figures development...? Or even genesis compatibility? You cant just stand there and let Daz getting so much advanced over this matter....we cant be so...outdated! They have a new render engine as well...but we are very behind on figures matter.... What are you thinking about this? 

As a professional artist im giving you this advice...do not afraid to expand yourselves in this area just because the other program is free....people with deep knowledge of poser wont change their workflow over night...but with the path you have chose in a  couple of years you wont have any clients.....sorry for my outbreak but its been inside me for too long! YOU MUST RESOLVE THE ISSUE WITH FIGURES,!!  

Steve's gone. It's Chuck now.  :-)

Thanks Teyon..i assumed that when Chuck mentioned the 2 steves of 3, gone , that he would be the third one..my bad...sorry Chuck! 

about bloody time , good news indeed ,since  this engine is based on cycles , so iam assuming its gpu powered ? 

about bloody time , good news indeed ,since  this engine is based on cycles , so iam assuming its gpu powered ? 

The GPU render doesn't support the full feature set the CPU render does. If we implement GPU support we end up limiting capabilities of the render. Things like limiting the number of texture maps in the scene. I'm with you on speed. I just don't want to sacrifice quality to get there.

Thats great news...But Chuck what about figures development...? Or even genesis compatibility? You cant just stand there and let Daz getting so much advanced over this matter....we cant be so...outdated! They have a new render engine as well...but we are very behind on figures matter.... What are you thinking about this? 

As a professional artist im giving you this advice...do not afraid to expand yourselves in this area just because the other program is free....people with deep knowledge of poser wont change their workflow over night...but with the path you have chose in a  couple of years you wont have any clients.....sorry for my outbreak but its been inside me for too long! YOU MUST RESOLVE THE ISSUE WITH FIGURES,!!  

Content is king. Wait, didn't I already sat that? LOL. Much more in the pipe. This is just the first drop.

fair enough , i work with complex scenes in octane and the large textures does mostly definitely become a problem , Iam very interested to see the kinds of speeds when compared to firefly + IDL  you guys are getting with this new engine . Thanks for keeping us in the loop Chuck.

I would trust this doesn't mean Firefly development has stopped. PBRs are nice and all, but for a lot of applications are not necessary.

This is exactly why FireFly is staying. there are also some things it does  better. This emphasizes that you need a choice in render engines. Now you will have another.

I would note this doesn't actually answer the question I was implying, so perhaps I should ask it straight: are there going to be improvements/changes to Firefly or has development on it been essentially frozen?

So will Cycles automatically convert Firefly materials or settings, or will you have to manually adjust in order to use in Cycles? Say for example I have a character with skin. How will that skin look in cycles? What additional work if any will have to be done? Or will this bridge do most of the work for you? Or will there be convert presets available eg an ezskin type product for cycles?

Most, but not everything. Some stuff just doesn't translate to a physical render. Gather ... what's a gather node going to do in a physical render. That's what a physical DOES. Also part of the idea of the physical render is to reduce the need for some complexity in the shaders. We should be able to eliminate or at least reduce the part of the shader devoted to the way light responds to the material. That will be the render engine's job now.

Cool thanks.

Oh this looks pretty cool!

Okay......

So when do the keyframers get some love, hmmmmm...........?

And yes, please avoid the GPU until there is a shuffle bridge worked out so textures can be swapped into and out of system memory. Except for maybe preview acceleration. Or PhysX abilities.

But so far, nice one to get the interest up...!

Not so good news then, not if it doesn't make use of the GPU, and you still haven't said if Cycles runs in the main Poser viewport or a seperate window.

If it's a window, we'd be better off using Reality cause at least Reality makes use of the GPU as well (if you want it to).  As a sidenote, I hope Baggins' recent scarcity on the forums means he's the one working on the SuperFly nodes and stuff.  As it's always Baggins who ends-up having to mentally reverse engineer the FireFly node system in order to document it's shortcomings for the members here, I really hope he's the one doing the node stuff.

YAY CAUSTICS!

So... Anything new with hair going on, these days? :)

I hope that you enable both CPU AND GPU together in the new PBR, because without GPU rendering, NO ONE and I do mean NO ONE is going to want to use the PBR. Prohibitively slow. If you enable both, and the scene is small enough, the GPU can handle the load and if it's too large for the GPU they can either share the load or it can switch over to CPU only (hopefully they share). If you can't do that, maybe you shouldn't bother with the PBR ;). Not trying to be mean, just realistic. LOL.

As to the material room sharing both render engines: are the materials for the PBR going to be more like Cycles nodes or stay like Poser's nodes? I'm still trying to see how that would work since Poser's nodes are geared toward faking when a PBR needs straight forward stuff related to true physics. Hopefully you show a screenie of the material room soonish :).

Also, I'm with isikol, so I hope you have some good things to report later on :P I will be watching because it will mean the difference between me continuing to buy Poser or, after more than a decade and a half, passing it by.

Laurie

You said content is king...Will we get a queen too? ;)

about bloody time , good news indeed ,since  this engine is based on cycles , so iam assuming its gpu powered ? 

The GPU render doesn't support the full feature set the CPU render does. If we implement GPU support we end up limiting capabilities of the render. Things like limiting the number of texture maps in the scene. I'm with you on speed. I just don't want to sacrifice quality to get there.

That's too bad. I've been using PBR via the GPU for quite a while now (Octane first and now Iray as well) and find that in most cases the limitations of the GPU rendering are often offset by the speed. Letting the user have the choice to use either GPU or CPU would be my preferred approach. If it's limited to CPU only it's value goes down significantly for me, as would the reasons to upgrade to the next version (Reality/Lux should have roughly equivalent speed with Lux 1.5 - or even faster if LuxCore GPU us supported). 

As a sidenote, I hope Baggins' recent scarcity on the forums means he's the one working on the SuperFly nodes and stuff.  As it's always Baggins who ends-up having to mentally reverse engineer the FireFly node system in order to document it's shortcomings for the members here, I really hope he's the one doing the node stuff.

Nope - I've not been involved at all. I am looking forward to playing with a better renderer in Poser. But ... if I have better software, I may be left with no challenge but to become an artist, and what's the point of that?

awesome, cant wait. thanks for the sneak peek, looking foward to more as time goes by.

Oh aren't we greedy! A sniff of something good, and we want everything. But the truth is, that's the way it is. Poser developers are facing the biggest challenge ever.

I have used Cycles in Blender not employing the GPU, and I haven't found it slow. Much faster than Lux in my experience.

I am behind you guys.

Sorry but I'm not at all impressed! Quite the contrary! Very disappointed as we are not rendering 90% glass (although I've seen similar and better with previous versions of poser i.e. Exnem's Glass promos here in RMP) but mostly people! Is this GND Anastasia with that HORRIBLE skin? I own her and Blackhearted's skin is fantastic and so are his renders, how on earth have you managed to make it look so dull and indifferent? It's the glass ball that we care about or the people mostly?

So no GPU support (most essential in our days to sell a 3D app that even free programs offer nowadays), baked highlights in hair since kozaburo's days (seriously?) but a glass ball to be impressed!

Sorry but I'll pass by! It's clear to me now that Poser doesn't even bother to check competition and stand up to it! Maybe the time has come to jump ship after 15 whole dedicated years!

Why on earth don't you check around and try to bring the greatest program ever to second best choice and doomed to be wiped out? None has a marketing degree? :(

Sorry if I sound very harsh but somebody with a long experience who absolutely adores and is in love with Poser, uses it 100% for 15 years and never even tried anything else as she HATES the competition app from day one.. needs to tell you the absolute truth rather than exclaim in satisfaction with a couple of renders that I've seen better by many vendors in previous Poser versions! Open your eyes and look at the other side before posting this sort of mediocre renders.. as you lose dedicated customers rather than win more on your side! :(

Honest criticism is what you should be after since in beta stage, right? - not someone to caress your ears!

As a sidenote, I hope Baggins' recent scarcity on the forums means he's the one working on the SuperFly nodes and stuff.  As it's always Baggins who ends-up having to mentally reverse engineer the FireFly node system in order to document it's shortcomings for the members here, I really hope he's the one doing the node stuff.

Nope - I've not been involved at all. I am looking forward to playing with a better renderer in Poser. But ... if I have better software, I may be left with no challenge but to become an artist, and what's the point of that?

---- Sure ! You can have the better engine if you dont work your meninges you will have crappy render. Render engine dont do all, working on shaders and lightning is the most important, and for that the actual Poser version a real challenge as say BB.

Sorry but I'm not at all impressed! Quite the contrary! Very disappointed as we are not rendering 90% glass (although I've seen similar and better with previous versions of poser i.e. Exnem's Glass promos here in RMP) but mostly people! Is this GND Anastasia with that HORRIBLE skin? I own her and Blackhearted's skin is fantastic and so are his renders, how on earth have you managed to make it look so dull and indifferent? It's the glass ball that we care about or the people mostly?

So no GPU support (most essential in our days to sell a 3D app that even free programs offer nowadays), baked highlights in hair since kozaburo's days (seriously?) but a glass ball to be impressed!

Sorry but I'll pass by! It's clear to me now that Poser doesn't even bother to check competition and stand up to it! Maybe the time has come to jump ship after 15 whole dedicated years!

Why on earth don't you check around and try to bring the greatest program ever to second best choice and doomed to be wiped out? None has a marketing degree? :(

Sorry if I sound very harsh but somebody with a long experience who absolutely adores and is in love with Poser, uses it 100% for 15 years and never even tried anything else as she HATES the competition app from day one.. needs to tell you the absolute truth rather than exclaim in satisfaction with a couple of renders that I've seen better by many vendors in previous Poser versions! Open your eyes and look at the other side before posting this sort of mediocre renders.. as you lose dedicated customers rather than win more on your side! :(

Honest criticism is what you should be after since in beta stage, right? - not someone to caress your ears!

Puuuh, that is harsh, but I was thinking similar. If that were just renders, I'd say, they look okay, But for PBR- renders, I am quite disapointed. The glas looks good, but the rest is meh. I kept thinking, it is a very early stage, so I'd better keep my mouth shut and wait for later previews. I'd just go with that: Let's wait and see, what's going to come. I don't expect to have a new Poser before mid 2016, so there is time for development. At least I see where SM wants to go. Let us not bash them to early ;)

 I don't think Rena or Laurie were bashing.   It's still early enough for SM to consider users' opinions who have been around 15 years or so like myself and others.   I was hugely disappointed that GPU rendering will not be supported.   I mean, really?   So many FREE renderers have implemented it and Poser will still be left behind.   Our frustration is a result of our loyalty to this software that we have supported through the years not a desire to bash.  However, there comes a time when, as a paying customer, loyalty that is unrewarded will fade.   Unfortunately, if enough Poser users haven't jumped ship to DS already I'm afraid the new Poser version will lead them to do so.

As for the renders, well when you want to draw attention to the latest and greatest that you expect people to pay for you make sure you promote it in the best possible way.   Sorry but the above renders look like rush jobs.   I'd rather have waited another month and see something that would blow my socks off than get this sample that just makes me look at the DS renders even more longingly :( 

I don't want to beat up my friends at SM, but I don't like those renders much, either.

The wine glass realism is blown by inferior shapes. This drives me crazy - wine bottles and glasses are all around us - do we have no artists who can reproduce the proportions correctly? This is a pet peeve of mine - try finding a spoon that actually is shaped like a real spoon. You'd think all Poser spoons were made by 4-year-olds from playdough. The refraction color chosen is that of urine, not wine - do you not see the excessive green? The table cloth - what material  is that, exactly? Blow my mind and show white linen with complete fidelity.

Better yet - if you want to show compatibility to the existing Firefly procedurals, while looking more realistic, then grab my BB Leather and show us how it works with SuperFly.

And, yeah, the skin has no specularity at all. Don't you guys realize that the lesson of PBR is that everything - every damn thing - in the real world displays some specularity. Obviously we can do better skin right now. The new renderer has to be able to do the same, and I've no doubt that it can.

So, I'd say don't judge Superfly/Cycles on the basis of those renders. If you were only to judge Poser on what Poser's owner show or have shown, you'd not know what it's capable of at all.

Baggins Wrote:
"Nope - I've not been involved at all. I am looking forward to playing with a better renderer in Poser. But ... if I have better software, I may be left with no challenge but to become an artist, and what's the point of that?"

It's a bit like that 'Relation Game' where someone says a word, and the next person has to say a word related to the previous word and so on:

• Girl - Sexy!
• Sexy - Pose!
• Pose - Poser!
• Poser - Nodes!
• Nodes - Baggins!

Personally, I find being an artist to be the biggest challenge no matter what the software, so the only chance I'll have is with my faviourite medium (pencil).
I've tried to become an artist with software and have given up many times (mainly due to the software).

Not knocking their decisions when it comes to the path they've chosesn, but it not accessing the GPU is totally "Dumbass" as Roxie would say.  All they have to do is colour-code the material nodes so that, for example, all nodes in Green can be used in GPU or CPU mode, while the ones in Red can only be used on CPU.  That way, they have a very logical, easy to understand on-the-fly system, and one they can easily adapt with SRs etc.  Perhaps in an SR, they made another node work on the GPU, all they have to do is change that node from Red to Green and we know it'll work on the GPU when we add it to the Material Room.

Anyway, I'm not even buying the thing due to the activiation system, but nevetheless, something like that would be much better than them offering Cycles without the ability to render in GPU mode, that's just crazy, cause like others here, I use Cycles in GPU mode within Blender all the time and have no problem with it, and they're always updating it so that more and more stuff works on the GPU - they're even rendering volumetric plumes of smoke with the thing last I read!  If Poser adopted a colour-coded node system, there would be nothing stopping them doing the same, it would even feel easy and logical to update.

On the release of each SR they could say something like ...  "Good news, another ten nodes turned Green on this release!"

I note that we generally can work around the problems FireFly has with glass, but I really am looking forward to just not having to do any workarounds.

Here's a morphing wine glass I made a few years ago. The interaction of light under the base never works right in FireFly.

I would hide the problem with a dark and busy table top.

I am looking forward to never seeing this problem again.

The PBR was expected of course, although feels a like a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to iRay. I was expecting them to fully incorporate Reality to be honest.

Not sure what the point of the wine glass render was, other than to show the glasses hovering over the red/white check tablecloth. And the second image was an excellent example of the kind of image that should never be posted... And I've posted some real crap at the beginning... And still do, I'm sure some will say.

I've only been using Poser 2.5 years, but I love it. As I came to the party late, I'm still on V4, and have no intention of moving to DAZ anytime soon, but G3 might force my hand.

If there is a big new character announcement (that merchants are willing to support), or if they can incorporate G3, then I'm sure they'll do fine... Even if I buy Octane instead of using Superfly. But unless they have a great new figure with 30-40 new skins and an array of male and female clothing, or they support G3, then who is the product being marketed at? Roxie, Antonia, and V4 users only? Even if Poser Pro were free, what would be the point in that instance?

Please! Please don't make me go to DAZ!!!!!

I await the responses, and my partner will punish me accordingly.

I like the idea of a PBR render engine. I am finally getting the hang of the IRAY one and digging the results. So that is one step in the right direction for poser catch up with this decade.

But rendering was not my big issue with poser, so does not really go a long way to bring me back.

My poser support slowed to a stop this year because there was no way I could dumb-down my characters to work in poser and still have the quality that I expected from them. The ability to use genesis figures natively in poser would be a key factor, the ability to effectively handle High Definition morphs. The ability to auto-fit clothes to any body shape. Also what would help create more products would be better tools for product development. Making anything for poser still feels like you are hacking code to get things to work, even after the 15 years I have been using it. You would think by now there would be some proper tools to make that aspect of content creation much easier.

Rawn

Hey Nerd,

all good news. I was wondering if there is any chance that vue xstream could add poser to its list of 3d softwares that it works with so we could bring billions of instances into poser for crowd scenes and nature etc.

Love esther

BTW....how well will the materials for this PBR transfer to IRAY?...and how will IRAY materials transfer to this one?

"But unless they have a great new figure with 30-40 new skins and an array of male and female clothing, or they support G3, then who is the product being marketed at? Roxie, Antonia, and V4 users only? Even if Poser Pro were free, what would be the point in that instance?"

Quoted for Agreement^

Hmm... In a recent thread it seems I accurately predicted that the major new feature of the next version of poser would be a PBR of some sort.

I suppose that is good news for existing poser users.

I am curious as to why you are sticking with posers Math intensive, unintuitive nodes system when the one blender has ( for example) is quite elegantly implemented.

I am not sure an internal Bridge to Cycles ,(in a likely PAID upgrade) is much of an incentive for people if they are stuck with "Rex& Roxie 2" as their native figures though.

A casual browse of the surviving forum threads here should indicate to anyone that improved figures are what the majority of users are demanding or Direct support for the genesis figures.

People truly desiring an alternative to firefly (both free& paid) have already availed themselves to the many PBR options that are currently in existence.

I was NOT bashing at all. As for the renders...bah, Nerd was in a hurry and not really taking his time, so they really had no bearing on my above post. It was what he SAID that had everything to do with my post. And I don't think it's bashing if I let the powers that be know that what they do hinges on my buying their software or not. Maybe they might understand how important it is to knock the socks off the customer. I want that to happen, I really do. Poser is at the very least stable on my machines, whereas DS is an unstable mess. I just want them to wow me now that I've seen DS. I don't think it's too much to ask that GPU rendering be enabled when others have managed to do it, and if they can't manage it, to put the development budget somewhere else. I PAY for this software. I've invested heavily in it's content over the years. I have a right to let them know what I think they need to accomplish. What others think and whether SM decides to listen is up to them. LOL. Mileage may vary ;). I've never pulled any punches with SM - been telling them for years their figures are less than good. I'm not about to start now. There's loyalty, which I have been for 16 years plus, and then there's a point when one doesn't care nearly as much and loyalty kinda goes out the window. I'm getting there.

It's sorta like a best friend relationship...you stick by them, no matter what, even if ya fight once in a while. But if sooner or later all they do is disappoint you, then it's time to move on, even if you don't WANT to.

Laurie

All I'm saying is that those render examples didn't make me excited. I would have gotten a render artist to showcase what this engine can do. Show how well skin can look, then focus on glass. I mean it's an announcement of a new render engine!! Show what it can do. Show how well your figures can look in it. Wow people. Get them excited. Kinda poor marketing on their behalf. My biggest issue is the lack of GPU support. That to me is a no no. I hope this changes, because I have seen the difference in speed in Cycles with cpu vs gpu support.