Which Poser features do actually work?

What figure is the best to start from when you want to develop your own character?

Is Poser suitable for anything else then hobbiists dollhouse projects?

Its the 4rth time I give up on a Poser project after spending weeks in the software, and lots of $$$.

Heres is the point where I give up:

The hair looks like crap, and there is no usable hair for the base figure this was started from (Roxie) There is, in fact, not much usable hair around for any figure at all. Sure you can buy hair for $$ from Bondware but its mostly crap, more or less.

Despite that strand based hair was a novelty 20 years ago and Poser even has its own hair "room" There is no strand based hair that works. The whole hair room doesnt work. Ok, today we know that dynamic polygon hair is possibly the better alternative-. But there is no such hair. Its always static, and 96% looks like crap, and the rest needs about 2 weeks to render.

So I tried to make my own dynamic polygon hair but I fail completely at modeling and all that, cause thats not my thing Same with clothes There are no clothes for this figure. I am bad at modeling, and I dont have the time for that, and its 2020, and this soft comes with 130 years worth legacy content. Yet no clothes that look like anything for this figure. Just 1989 quality stuff.

So I tried to focus an what I was always good at, thats shaders and lightening. But the "IBL" doesnt even have hdr bit depth, and the material "room" has these bugs that make it close to impossible to use.

I give up on that. Again. What a waste this was.

And its such a pity, Poser could be and could have been an "industry standard". But its like a horse thats leading on the track and then just before the finishing line it struggles and breaks all its limbs.

So, what advertised features in this soft actually work as advertised? How do you make semi-professional project in Poser? What figure to start with? Where do you get dynamic hair? etc

Roxie was poorly supported, as were the rest of Poser's figure family, the most supported female figure was Victoria 4. There was, and still is AFAIK, a plethora of content for her, hair, clothes, shoes and boots that work, As for what works, you fail to mention what version of poser you are using, that is important information,

for example

if you are using poser 11, superfly can use HDRI's sufficiently well.

If you are using poser 10, you are using 6yo software, which will have some limitations by modern standards.

Sorry for my rant, had been super frustrated yesterday.

I am using the latest 11.3. ... , not sure about the last numbers, 181 I think.

I use HDRIs, the IBL can load them too but I am pretty sure it does not use the full bit depth, it seems to have less dynamic, when you use te IBL so you need to resort to different methods for HDRIs.

Sometimes Poser starts with different, obviously older UI grafics... seems to happen randomly and this indicates that something is really messed up with the program. Whats annyoing me the most however is that in the matrial room the modules jump around at random locations far away and you have to scroll endlessly to find them and put them back in place and then they jump again. This happens for instance when you forget to de-select them before you close the window. The input module always jumps a few 1000 pxiels when you touch one of the inputs. This and that I dont find a way to use hair thats moving naturally but doesnt poke through the face at the same time.

You can have good looking hair with Bullet Physics and it calculates quite fast, when it doesnt have too many polygons but either it pokes through or it gets a diamond shape from collision detection (and still pokes into the head regardless) And you need a haircut thats suitable for this, cause you need to set the weights, so with most hair styles you cant do it cause you need to set the roots rigid but the rest softer. In other words it could work when you invest a lot of time, develop your own hair etc but in practice it doesnt and you only find out after you invested a lot of time.

There is a positive thing, but it's kind of ironic cause I don't know it this is by another mistake: I bought Poser 11 standard version some years ago and now I have Pro after an update. Not sure if there is only Pro now, or why.

I didn't pay too much for the software and thats ok, but I paid quite some money for content on shopping sprees, so in the end this compensates for that.-- But whats more important is the time invested and abandoned projects.

And I dont get the neglect, like why some figures are so badly supported, Or why brand new "Paulines" where introduced just to be replaced by the "La Femme" concept a few weeks later. Or why Roxie has such technical issues, like unsuable eye shaders that are obviously wrong when you load the figure into the init scene. Or why there were so bad hair materials, and now the "Pauline" hairs have new, nice materials but you only discover that by chance. And when you install that content it gets installed into the user folder, not the factory folder. And like everything, it doesnt use any recognizable name scheme or folder structure. Each artist and each vendor has its own naming and folder scheme. Not even consistent with one artist. And there is hair in figures, hair, and props branches.

Its also a positive thing that obviously a lot of thinking went into keeping everything legacy compatible in the past. But its 2020, and sometimes you have to make a cut, and rethink that kind of concept. Do we need compatibility with every 1990ies software content? Or do we rather need a working software, and usable content? I dont know, I assume there actually are people who use this software professionally, but where are they and what do they say?

If you look at Rooster Teeth RWBY and several of the sessions of Red vs. Blue Poser is used a lot. The first two sessions of RWBY were made with Poser. As far as the Content issue there are a lot of factors in the problem. Poser 5 introduced the hair room and dynamic cloth. At the time it took a lot of computer power to run those features. Also at that time DAZ had their program and it had none of those features. SO content was made to the lowest common feature set. Over the years Poser has tried to introduce better ways of doing things only to be shot down because it requires people to learn new ways of doing things. And as we all know change is bad. So we stick to using a bug from around Poser 3/4 times to make clothing follow the main figure. It is to the point that if you were to make a Pencil Skirt that in real life would restrict the wearer to be able to move their legs maybe 12", in Poser the figure has to be able to the splits without the skirt tearing or showing signs of distortion.
The under supported figures were made by Poser/Smith Micro to show off the newest features of the program when it came out. The problem is that unlike the real world where you can go into a store and buy a pair of jeans in your size and they fit fairly well. In Poser each garment has to be tailor made to a specific figure or it would work correctly. Since V4 was out for about 10 years as the only doll that worked in both programs that is the default figure things are made to work with. Poser allows you via the Fitting room to take content from one figure to another with some work. Problem is that is work and people don' want to be bothered.

99% of the vendors are self employed and don't have a written work flow that they follow each time. One vendor I have almost all the Poser content for makes scenes and each of them is complete in and of it's self. The problem is the textures are almost always the same images, however they are located in separate folders labeled for each block. Probably has to due to store requirements that all the elements are labeled in a manner so you can track down the parts of kit. However it does lead to having 20 versions of the same brick pattern.

I am pretty frustrated cause I just spent more than one super labour intense month learning this software and reactiviating an old Cinema 4D license I own but never really used, and learn that too (its pretty quick to learn btw), just to hit a wall.

And this happend each time I tried Poser: its wasted time.

And had high flung plans, for two projects, had to scale them down the more problems I encountered. I was 95% there 3 weeks ago and quite euphoric. Now, I am 95.3% there. Cause the limits I hit are 75% not my own limits but bugs I cant change, no matter how much work I put into that.

Now it was the material room that started to freak and become unuseable, and then it was the Bullet Physics where one parameter (Internal Pressure) starts to rest itself to zero since today.

I just spend about 3-5 hours to understand whats happing. Used different scenes, different objects. No change. It stopped working. It just resets, at random frames. Quite possible that its due to a problem in the object I made, but no matter what I tried it its the same, so how can I know? There is no report in the log file, at least none I can relate to. And it was s the n-th time I remade this object (the crappy hair from above)

So all these weeks were all wasted, the projects all nonsense. Plans are obsolete. Money I had spent for content is also wasted, basically.

I just wonder what I can do to save a little of this wasted time.

I wonder if it makes sense to switch to DAZ, and port the project if possible, but it doesnt have the physics it seems, and I dont want to waste even more time.

starlingblue posted at 8:29AM Sun, 06 September 2020 - #4398688

I was 95% there 3 weeks ago and quite euphoric. Now, I am 95.3% there. Cause the limits I hit are 75% not my own limits but bugs I cant change, no matter how much work I put into that. .....

I do understand your fustration (been there with Poser and many other apps myself) but rather than ranting here contact Poser support with the issues you face.

Yes you are right, sorry about that, however last time I mailed support (Smithmicro) I didnt get any specific help (The 11.1 update never installed and worked for me properly despite uninstalling the older version) nor information whether these were known issues.

About the issue with the Internal Pressure resetting, I could narrow this down to either a problem with several objects I made (like, possibly, unconnected vertices or similar. IDK) OR a problem with one of the several file cross-references Poser makes and keeps. Unfortunately I can't narrow it down further.

I looked into DAZ last night, it made quite some progress since last time I checked (several years ago) and some things are actually better and more modern than Poser, however I find it slightly confusing and it seems less focused on content creation.

The renderer is quite fast but I didnt find my quick test results too stunning, and despite I tried relaxed parameters it seems to put an even higher load on CPU and GPU Also it crashed several times with a very basic scene without much content.

starlingblue posted at 7:08PM Sun, 06 September 2020 - #4398666

The hair looks like crap, and there is no usable hair for the base figure this was started from (Roxie) There is, in fact, not much usable hair around for any figure at all. Sure you can buy hair for $$ from Bondware but its mostly crap, more or less.

I used Roxie for several projects. Mainly with hair "borowed" from Pauline (Gwenith Hair). Here is a sample:

Fact is, you have to know how to use your tools. And Poser is a tool. Like a hammer. If you grab it by the wrong end, you can't put a simple nail in the wall with it.

Looks nice - I think I downloaded your dress btw., like your work However I assume this is not the original P11 material of the hair but the later updated one or your own?

Cause when I got P11 the hair for Pauline had a rather dull and lo-res texture if I remember correctly. Also - this hair is static. You can adjust an animate the long part on the shoulder an a few things but its not up-to-date dynamic hair... and I just got P11 Pro and the updated hair a few weeks ago.

The new textures are indeed quite ok.

Also, about knowing your tools - you are right, but what I do know is that this tool does indeed have a lot of bugs... The last update alone listed a lot of them that were fixed, but there are still a few.

I just toy around with the toon shader for instance - you can connect and combine it to many things, it seems, so you think it might be a way to create great interesting non-photo styles/looks.

And when you do that, it seems to work and looks pretty much like expected in the preview. Just in rendering, it has totally irregular behaviour and looks totally different-

For instance when you switch the outline mode to "improved" the objectmay turn black with dots, and such things. The "improved" mode isnt usable. But you need to make a lot of tests to figure that out for sure. Change render settings to see if its an issue with that, and so on.

So this is another thing where you seem to be 85% there quickly, but then you hit a wall. And five hours later you are still only 85% there and wasted a lot of time with bug.

I think now I understand why this mode rendered black:

the shader, ist seems, doesnt use the geometrie for the edge, but the surface angle/normal. So its basically similar to a (smooth) step function on a normal shader with some fresnel or egde blend.

WHen you have bump, the pixel that in the "edge" angle are tinted with the outline color.

This is different to the comic book look that you can have in the editor.

Not sure if this is true, but thats my theorie about it - so it isnt really an error of the program, it just does slightly different things than you'd expect.

So you could make your own toon shader easily, that wokrs the same way I guess.

No, it's not stock. As I said: Poser is a tool. The stock items are the basics. Poser has anything to make something special out of it. This is the "Art" part.

What do you mean with "up-to-date dynamic hair"? Real up-to-date dynamic hair needs a lot of hardware power. And a lot of know-how from whoever wants to use it.

None of the existing hair-props are made for dynamics. Even not in the form Poser can handle. But that is not Posers fault. There is simply no seller able or willing to make some. Maybe because most of the users will not pay for it, because they don't need it. 99% of users create mainly static images. Everything you need for static hair is built into Poser. From the morph-brush up to the material-room.

So, yes, it is possible to make dynamic behaving hair with Poser. But it begins with a geometry made for this. And it want work by click-a-button and render.

VirtualWorldDynamics does dynamic hair as strips of mesh. REsults look good you may want to check it out.

Thanks for the link - maybe Ill get it, but I spent too much on content already. its basically what I did, then, I guess. And this kind of works, but the collision detection is too coarse , since Bullet Physices seems to only use a "convex hull" that comes down to a rounded diamond shape for the head. It should use a finer mesh, than it would work. This would need more computation, but its basically the same as the cloth room simulation. Still possible, and reasonable. Idealy you would need a dummy for the head that has a somehwat lower resolution to save some.

It has advantages over strand hair since you need less vertices, and, in theory, you could use it in games than (as premade animations).

Id post my hair sim, if my basic hair shape was nicer modeled, but as I said I am bad a modeling, just started a few weeks ago, basically. Otherwise its quite nice actually, and you can make new hair styles easily, by letting the figur jump around and using the resulting hairshapes as morph targets...

The shape from the picture in the first pose is dynamic polygon hair.

About the bug with the toon shader: I was wrong, it is still a bug. Only happens in Firefly progressive mode. Unfurtunately, in the other mode there is also a different bug, with the same shader and outline mode. So you have the choice between two render bugs it seems.

It wouldnt be so bad if it wouldnt cost me a whole day to investigate this.

here you can see the dynamic hair and what I try to achieve at the monent:

I want this Art Nouveau style look, where the figure has a very soft skin tone but with quite elaborate nearly realsitic shading, and strong dark outlines.

A few minutes with several toon shaders inside the material from the image in the first post got me this, so I thought, great, this will work well, just need to improve it a little bit- Many hours later, it still looks like this and I cant improve it, that is, I cant get better or stronger outlines.

For instance when I choose "Improved outline", the head gets black., When I increase the outline width, I get more grey shadows and cant make the contrast the way I want it.

When I switch render mode, it works with "improved2 line but the line of the dress disappears. And so on.

Sigh.

Same with the hair - first experiment got me basically the same result as above. Then I spent weeks trying to improve it slightly, like make one strand go away that comes out of the head at the wrong place Just, each time I import a new hair without the strand, the simulation breaks.

No idea why.

So, sorry if I come across a little bit frustrated, but I spent to much time with things that dont work for very unclear reasons.