SatiraCapriccio posted at 12:18PM Sun, 14 July 2019 - #4356886

I think it's important to know whether it was feature difficulty or missing features that led to those content providers abandoning Poser, as well as the last version of Poser they used.

I abandoned Poser shortly after P11 Pro came out; I had been excited for it and then, after using it for a while, I left it, disappointed. In my case it was a lack of features and because some things were needlessly complicated, and because the improvements I had hoped for hadn't happened. I admit that all these things that were dealbreakers for me do not affect the average user, but they did affect me as a content creator.

For example, not being able to select and edit multiple items in one go (material zones, dial names and settings etc.). Not being able to assign custom hotkeys in the way I needed them. Not being able to set up a realistic material without having to search the forums for examples by "shader gurus", and then not being able to implement the Cycles tutorials I found in Poser because of missing nodes. Not being able to easily replace morphs or subtract deformation (essential for making JCMs). Not being able to update the geometry of an already rigged item on the fly. After adding morphs to the figure to make the clothing fit better, having to jump through hoops to make it distributable. Not being able to save out and re-load a combination of clothing items + figure settings. Not being able to swap UVs on the fly. Convoluted process for creating JCMs in clothing. Having to spread one set across several folders and subfolders because of the restrictive library system. And that Poser still chops the mesh into groups (that has been mentioned by others, too).

To be fair I have to admit that I used to do certain steps of my development for V4 and M4 in DS already, from 2008 on when the Content Creator Tools were released. Most of my clothing sets for these figures wouldn't have been possible without those tools. I'd been waiting for Poser to catch up but it didn't happen. And yes, I did know Poser rather well at that time so I know what I'm talking about. I also am aware that over time there came 3rd party plugins that addressed some of the difficulties, and I used most (perhaps even all?) of them, but they were only workarounds and didn't work as smoothly as an integreated, built-in feature would have done. And plugins more often than not were broken with each major software update. Since I'm doing this for a living I need reliability, and ease of use ( i. e. getting things done quickly) is a hugely important factor to me. If I were in retirement and this was only a hobby for me I wouldn't have minded, but for professional work you need professional tools.

I've mentioned these lacking features to the developers over and over again, but each of my suggestions was declined or put off. Instead of adding tools that would have made it easier to create characters and clothing they added tools for text tool and measurements. So cool.

Add to that the fact that after my first steps in Superfly I had raided my savings account to get a Titan X video card to render faster. When the new card was installed I did some test renders: in Superfly I saw an increase in render speed of only 25% while in Iray I saw an increase of 400% - and that, together with all the other things mentioned, decided it for me.

So if you want to know what I would like to see in Poser, refer to the list above: I'd like solutions for these problems. I do not say that Poser needs to work like DS. I can, even should, follow its own way. But content creation needs to get quicker and easier. That a thing can be done in some way is not enough. It must be quick and easy, useably in a professional context.

I used to love Poser. It has some features I thoroughly enjoyed and which I miss in DS. But right now the issues mentioned above outweigh everything else. If the developer team manages to get those fixed I'd be happy to give it another try :)