EClark1894 posted at 6:29PM Sun, 13 November 2016 - #4289900

DustRider posted at 12:19AM Sun, 13 November 2016 - #4289896

Just my opinion and point of view.

I have Poser 2 through PoserPro 2012, but haven't upgraded to PoserPro 11. I was excited about Cycles coming to Poser, and was hoping that SM would finally either provide better support for Genesis figures or have their own "great" figure. Unfortunately I was a bit disappointed with both. Even though I know Cycles is an excellent render engine, I was rather underwhelmed by the renders from SM, and extremely disappointed by the renders from the early adopters. This made it seem like a product that wasn't quite ready for prime time. Then there were all the issues with the new figures, this really made if feel like a product that was pushed out the door way tooo soon. The lack of instancing was also a big negative for me.

I'm a Carrara user "first", and have been using DS a lot more since the introduction of Iray, and Poser in now in a distant 3rd place. P11 for me just didn't provide enough bang for the buck compared to what I already have with Carrara and DS (I also have the Octane plugin for both). I still check out the Poser forums every now and then to see how it is progressing. So for me, it's not dead yet, but it is on a wait and see status (life support??).

Keep in mind, I was able to create great renders (or at least great to me) within a few hours of installing the DS beta with Iray, as were many, many other people. With Superfly, there were very few inspiring renders being posted (with the exception of a small handful of users) for months. Superfly "shouldn't" be that hard to use and get great results from. This also gave me great pause, not being sure what was the real problem with the inability to create great renders.

Anyway, between Poser and DS, for me, the way I like to work, and to the results I want, right now I like DS better (and I prefer the Genesis line of figures). I'll keep watching Poser to see what happens in the future. For those that prefer Poser, I wish you and SM the best of luck, and maybe someday I'll be a P11 (or later) user again.

I don't know quite how to respond to you Dustrider. Superfly really isn't that hard to use once you really invest a little time into learning it. But no you're not going to instantly be producing Michangelo or DaVinci grade "great renders" out of the box either. If you couldn't draw well with a crayon, giving you a paintbrush probably isn't going to help much.

I guess I was trying to say something, without actually saying it (seldom works). There were several issue regarding the implementation and general user results of Superfly that concerned me, but the quality of the render engine wasn't one of them. Keep in mind the following are opinions based on what I could get from various forum posts and other web sources, as a perspective purchaser.

First, IMHO, it seemed as if Superfly (PBR renderer) was a quick last hour addition to P11 in response to Iray in DS. Maybe it wasn't, but it did seem that way, and perceptions are very important. If we were to view DS and Poser as "competing" products, then I would expect SM to provide at least a rudimentary set of shaders/scripts/lights to provide good quality skin with the most popular figure for poser (V4) when launched. I would also expect them to provide an outstanding texture/shader set for their own flagship new figures. I would expect many outstanding renders from both SM and beta testers to show case the new render engine. Additionally, I would expect that early adopters would also be producing a lot outstanding renders within 1-2 months. From what I saw in the forums, this wasn't the case (but this is what happened when DAZ introduced Iray in DS).

Yes, I know that it takes time to learn a new render engine. But my expectation is that more users should have been able to produce great renders within 1-2 months. These expectations are based on my own experiences using Poser (Firefly, Reality/Lux), Daz Studio (3Delight, Iray, Octane, Reality/Lux, Luxus), Carrara (Carrara's internal renderer, Octane, LuxCore), and Vue Complete. With all of the mentioned applications and render engines, I have been able to produce images in less than 2 weeks that I would consider better than 90+% of the images I saw posted for almost a year from Superfly. Of course this is just my opinion, which may be completely different than most other people (but I kind of doubt it), but it is an important factor in my decision to not purchase the upgrade yet.

I'm not so concerned that I can't produce something I would be happy with using Superfly, because I feel I could. What concerns me is that for a product where the quality of the images being produced by said product are very important to "lure" new (and old) users to invest in the product, I haven't seen a lot of the WOW factor that I would expect is needed to attract the masses. This makes me question what/where the focus for Poser now is. As so many have noted, is it for the 3D figure "tinkerer", those that enjoy creating and doing their "own" thing, and don't really care about the visual quality of their renders, and/or the figures/textures/shaders they use? If that is the case, then I'm definitely not too interested in Poser going forward. Not because I don't enjoy tinkering too, but my ultimate goal is to create images I find visually pleasing, and that I'm proud of.

Also, I have a huge personal investment in this hobby in terms of time (learning and making/tweaking stuff) and funds (buying things I don't have the talent and or time to make such as human figures and accessories). As Poser and DS/Carrara diverge, I feel a bit compelled to protect my personal investment, and look at which may be moving forward in a direction that both best fits my interests and goals, and is pushing technology to improve and attract a strong new user base.

I know what I'm about to say won't be popular here, but it is my honest opinion, and ultimately the factor that tipped the scales away from upgrading to P11. So much of what I saw in the forums with the release P11 was ..... ummm ..... the same old group, doing the same old thing(s). Many of the images coming from Superfly were simply uninspiring. Then there were the people fixing the poor quality figures for SM (this, to me, was totally unprofessional on the part of SM, Charles states that "content is king" the they push out figures like Pauline and Paul ...... really???). The whole release of P11 seemed very unprofessional to me. Yes, SM has addressed and fixed many of the issues, but it really turned me off, and made me feel that maybe Poser isn't for me anymore.

Poser could be so much more than what it is, and P11 could have been a must buy for me had there been a lot of drop dead gorgeous images from Superfly, and had Pauline been a great figure "out of the box", and if they had added instancing (come on SM - it's 2016!!). I really hope they can turn the ship around, and make me want to get Poser again. Just waiting to see now.

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