To Jump, or wait, that is the question..? Are the differences worth stumping up $130...?

As of now, my inclination is to simply wait. Don't get me wrong, I like Poser, I like Cycles, I even like Superfly... sorta. The thing is that one of the important parts of Cycles for me is missing. Several nodes, and curves. What really irks me is that any attempt in the past by me or others to get anyone in a position to do or say anything on the subject has been either met with silence or totally ignored.

ATM, any Python Scripts that you depend on will not work unless they are updated by the vendors or you recompile to work in P12. Something is up with some of the shader nodes not reproducing renders similar to P11, those need to be worked out also. Remember, the software, as is, is an Early Adopter, many features still need to be worked out, and we will see several updates down the line. I would hold off if you are looking to start off rendering images immediately until all the bugs are worked out. Go through the forum, you will get an idea of what's going on.

I will wait...Cannot afford any extra expenses now :(

EClark1894 posted at 1:17PM Wed, 04 November 2020 - #4403253

As of now, my inclination is to simply wait. Don't get me wrong, I like Poser, I like Cycles, I even like Superfly... sorta. The thing is that one of the important parts of Cycles for me is missing. Several nodes, and curves. What really irks me is that any attempt in the past by me or others to get anyone in a position to do or say anything on the subject has been either met with silence or totally ignored.

I would forget the curves, that would seem close to impossible to implement so I would seek another workaround. There is the addition of PrincipledBSDF and PrincipledHairBSDF nodes that are similar to Blender. They should make shader building easier, especially if you trying to duplicate established shaders created from Blender users.

I jumped ... glad I did. The time saved in render time is great. The quality in renders is greater. And I'm getting a kick out of the "assign" tab in the mat room for changing out maps!! Sure there are a few bugs ... but you get those taken care of in weekly updates and you can be part of those reporting tickets on such things. It's all good really. If I miss a python script that doesn't work ... I open PP11 take care of it and go back to P12. I'm rebuilding shaders and that is fun.

Load the Trial first , use it for the Period , it does not make any difference you can already get used to the features arrange your surface etc at the end of the period you can decide weather to buy or not <----- Best choice

hborre posted at 4:42PM Wed, 04 November 2020 - #4403257

EClark1894 posted at 1:17PM Wed, 04 November 2020 - #4403253

As of now, my inclination is to simply wait. Don't get me wrong, I like Poser, I like Cycles, I even like Superfly... sorta. The thing is that one of the important parts of Cycles for me is missing. Several nodes, and curves. What really irks me is that any attempt in the past by me or others to get anyone in a position to do or say anything on the subject has been either met with silence or totally ignored.

I would forget the curves, that would seem close to impossible to implement so I would seek another workaround. There is the addition of PrincipledBSDF and PrincipledHairBSDF nodes that are similar to Blender. They should make shader building easier, especially if you trying to duplicate established shaders created from Blender users.

And I would forget the curves... if someone would at least explain why or suggest another work around. I would still like the missing nodes.

Azath posted at 8:37PM Sun, 08 November 2020 - #4403289

Load the Trial first , use it for the Period , it does not make any difference you can already get used to the features arrange your surface etc at the end of the period you can decide weather to buy or not <----- Best choice

So far from this forum I'm getting the impression that 12 isn't worth it at any price. Has anyone installed then uninstalled trial 12? I'm hesitant to install and risk damaging/losing 11 and have to do complete reinstall.

You will not lose 11 if you don't uninstall 11. At no point it is asked that you do that, if you have the disk space you can have both on your computer. In fact, I have 12, 11 and Pro2014 on mine. They share appropriate runtimes.

WILL_I_AM posted at 2:01AM Mon, 09 November 2020 - #4403932

Azath posted at 8:37PM Sun, 08 November 2020 - #4403289

Load the Trial first , use it for the Period , it does not make any difference you can already get used to the features arrange your surface etc at the end of the period you can decide weather to buy or not <----- Best choice

So far from this forum I'm getting the impression that 12 isn't worth it at any price. Has anyone installed then uninstalled trial 12? I'm hesitant to install and risk damaging/losing 11 and have to do complete reinstall.

If you Install Poser 12 trial and then later decide to remove it it will not really damage your Poser 11 Install , the only thing you need to be aware of is that the file formats have been assigned to Poser 12 in the registry removing Poser 12 will let the computer think that there is no Poser on the machine and make Poser 11 sort of Portable.

To fix this after uninstall of the trial just run the latest update of Poser 11 again this will reassign the File formats to the registry.

The two live and even work happily side by side.

Thank you.

Azath posted at 8:40PM Mon, 09 November 2020 - #4403950

WILL_I_AM posted at 2:01AM Mon, 09 November 2020 - #4403932

Azath posted at 8:37PM Sun, 08 November 2020 - #4403289

Load the Trial first , use it for the Period , it does not make any difference you can already get used to the features arrange your surface etc at the end of the period you can decide weather to buy or not <----- Best choice

So far from this forum I'm getting the impression that 12 isn't worth it at any price. Has anyone installed then uninstalled trial 12? I'm hesitant to install and risk damaging/losing 11 and have to do complete reinstall.

If you Install Poser 12 trial and then later decide to remove it it will not really damage your Poser 11 Install , the only thing you need to be aware of is that the file formats have been assigned to Poser 12 in the registry removing Poser 12 will let the computer think that there is no Poser on the machine and make Poser 11 sort of Portable.

To fix this after uninstall of the trial just run the latest update of Poser 11 again this will reassign the File formats to the registry.

WILL_I_AM posted at 8:44AM Tue, 10 November 2020 - #4403932

Azath posted at 8:37PM Sun, 08 November 2020 - #4403289

Load the Trial first , use it for the Period , it does not make any difference you can already get used to the features arrange your surface etc at the end of the period you can decide weather to buy or not <----- Best choice

So far from this forum I'm getting the impression that 12 isn't worth it at any price. Has anyone installed then uninstalled trial 12? I'm hesitant to install and risk damaging/losing 11 and have to do complete reinstall.

A number of people here are aggressively looking for a reason not to buy Poser 12 and/or had no intention of EVER buying it.

They would would reject Poser 12 if 'Rosity came to their house, gave them a copy for free, installed it, upgraded their computer, converted every last item to use the Superfly render engine, converted every G figure to be Poser native (by illegally reverse engineering DAZ's code), and Made Art for them.

It is well worth the money spent.

I do think it would have been better if they had bought out Netherworks and integrated his products into Poser, but that could still happen.

I installed then uninstalled. It appears that they've improved workflow in terms of keyboard action, but they've blocked essentially ALL existing Python. I've got hundreds of scripts that I use frequently for work and play, and I'm not going to revise all of them from TK to WX just to make a new version work. If they open up the use of TK, there would still be some minor revisions needed but not total rewrite, so it might be worth the trouble.

Python 2 is dead. It has been dead for a while now.

It would have been better for everyone if the Poser team had moved to Python 3 a decade ago, but they didn't.

Well good news install/uninstall worked without affecting 11. Bad news couldn't even try the trial version as the product registrations box required an non existent serial number.

What happens if you add your Poser 11 serial? That is what I used?

Rhia474 posted at 8:41PM Tue, 10 November 2020 - #4404160

What happens if you add your Poser 11 serial? That is what I used?

I believe it said something along the lines of invalid serial. I'm going to pass on 12 for the time being so not really concerned about making it work.

I was wondering if there are any changes that will make the move worth it, for someone who renders with Octane? from what I've been reading, I cannot tell. seems like some improvements for the rendering engine, which is irrelevant for me.

please let me know if you think otherwise, and why so.

gsfcreator posted at 6:42AM Wed, 11 November 2020 - #4404187

I was wondering if there are any changes that will make the move worth it, for someone who renders with Octane? from what I've been reading, I cannot tell. seems like some improvements for the rendering engine, which is irrelevant for me.

please let me know if you think otherwise, and why so.

From the basic aspect if you are owner of Previous Poser versions there is actually no good reasons to Update as for the moment there is not a gain , It rather might cause if you are a big collector having to update allot of assets to get em to work right. then it depends on what graphic card you are running. The question if you use Pytons is , if and when are these going to be updated, will you have to buy em again? How could you legally access an update as allot of these came from RDNA and CP ?

as for a new Poser user there is no workaround they have to get Poser 12 if there interested learning to render with it and learn how to use it . these depend on it as every Previous version is removed from the Market . For them a take it or leave it .

but at the moment if you prefer Rendering and make art without a huge fix it is better to stick on the old version until Rendo shuts it totally down :)

Azath posted at 8:34AM Wed, 11 November 2020 - #4404188

gsfcreator posted at 6:42AM Wed, 11 November 2020 - #4404187

I was wondering if there are any changes that will make the move worth it, for someone who renders with Octane? from what I've been reading, I cannot tell. seems like some improvements for the rendering engine, which is irrelevant for me.

please let me know if you think otherwise, and why so.

From the basic aspect if you are owner of Previous Poser versions there is actually no good reasons to Update as for the moment there is not a gain , It rather might cause if you are a big collector having to update allot of assets to get em to work right. then it depends on what graphic card you are running. The question if you use Pytons is , if and when are these going to be updated, will you have to buy em again? How could you legally access an update as allot of these came from RDNA and CP ?

as for a new Poser user there is no workaround they have to get Poser 12 if there interested learning to render with it and learn how to use it . these depend on it as every Previous version is removed from the Market . For them a take it or leave it .

but at the moment if you prefer Rendering and make art without a huge fix it is better to stick on the old version until Rendo shuts it totally down :)

exactly my thoughts :). and I don't know if it's legal for them to "shut it down". I've just purchased 2 extra licenses for poser pro 11 not long ago, and those licenses are supposed to be perpetual. so...they can choose to stop updating it - but shutting it down = they'll have to pay the buyers their money back.

if it's not broken - don't fix it (Actually I had high hopes that rendo will get to work together with DAZ like it was in the past, and get us the new G3 and G8 figures. that would be a reason enough for me to upgrade. and I trust that I'm not alone).

I run P11 and P12 at the same time on the same machine. I am not so stupid to think I could render with both at once. However; I have yet to try and render a scene that was saved in P11 and created with 2.x scripts that does not render in P12 with all the advantages that come with using the updated Superfly/Cycles. The shaders may need a tweek or two but isn't that all part of making art?

As to video cards. Except for bleeding edge cards that cost more than 5 times the cost of the software, there are no real apparent issues that do not seem to be in the pipeline for update in the next one or two.

Tim has assured us that there is no intention to kill off the P11 servers despite the fact that I myself pointed out that it is now an unsupported product and could be shut down at a moments notice leaving those with existing installs stuck with wasted hard drive space. I was one of those not convinced to dole out the hard earned and monetary converted to $US almost $200 in local currency for a chance to be screwed twice.

Money's tight and times are hard. It isn't easy for some of us to drop this cash on an if-come maybe it'll survive as seems to be implied by some in this and other threads. I am one of them. I dropped the cash because I got a bonus for risking my life in these trying times. I do not regret it. If you are a Firefly exclusively user. If you do hard surface modeling and don't need SSS for your metal tractor. If you are a diehard Blender user. This release is not for you. If you want to use the latest tools for your art then this is for you. If you are load a figure, add a pose preset or two, and render; then save your cash up and go elsewhere for now.

In short; if you like Poser and use many of it's included features in your art, then this is worth it to get through the teething pains. If you don't use many of Poser's included functionality in the making of your artistic visions, and do indeed rely on third party scripts; then wait for a while. Maybe buy it for Christmas when the kinks are more ironed out and the script writers get their stuff up to date. It is up to you.

This is a site dedicated to artistic vision. It hosts many various groups for the software of your choice. This is different from sites dedicated to particular software or techniques that many of us visit. It should be easy to find something that does suit your personal style of work than to continually denigrate that which you do not or, possibly: will never spend your hard earned ducats upon.

I am not angry that those that wrote scripts I use have yet to update them to Python 3.x. That is for them to deal with. It is not up to Bondware tho they seem to be doing a yeoman's effort in getting as many as possible updated. There are rendering issues and they have yet to be addressed. That is within Bondware's power. That is what I expect to see rectified. Quality of life issues we have had for years. Figure creation problems. That is within Bondware's preview. These things matter way more to me that whither or not I can use the latest DAZ product in software that it was never made to run in or that your workflow using other software is superiour to that of Poser users. I am interested in Poser. If I want to know about DS, Blender, iClone, or whatever, I will peruse the appropriate forum and post my queries there.

Software evolves, changes, improves. It is the nature of things. I agree with what parkdalegardener writes above in large part. I got the upgrade k iwing 3rd party Python apps that used to work seamlessly in previous versions won't operate any more and am waiting for when those can be back. What caught me unawares, and I hazard many others, was the broken shaders for Superfly that worked in Superfly literally two weeks ago. The speed and stability of P12 is great, and the bugs eventually will be ironed out. Early release and community bugstamping is working, as evidenced by the first service release. Now just hoping for better promo renders for released products so they are actually attractive to buy as opposed to 'buying to support the release based on hopes, not looks'.

I wouldn't worry too much. Remember when Studio would break all the add-ons it had everytime they upgraded?

@ Will I AM you can use Poser 12 for 21 days without a Key. Just click the continue button without filling in any of the Key information. I believe you have to put in your name and e-mail address. The rest can be left blank.

I can't tell anyone what to do nor would I wish to, but personally I am beyond thrilled to own Poser 12. It renders so much faster than Poser 11 and I don't even have an RTX card! If I did, I would be able to use the included OptiX tech and render even faster than I already do which blows my mind. (I'm currently saving up for an RTX card but it will be a while.) There are a few bugs here and there but it's a pre-release and we were warned about that so no biggie. There are some new features I'm quite fond of like rendering on transparent background via render settings (much better than the other way which left artifacts) and while I haven't quite figured out the PostFX they do look promising. If you'd like to see what it can do, this was rendered in Poser 12 yesterday: Portrait of Fiona I'll be releasing my first product created in fully Poser 12 (though it will be fully compatible with Poser 11 as well) very soon.

I have NO IDEA if this is true of Poser, but in the indie game world it's ideal to buy games early in development so that the game studios have more funds to create the best version possible of the in-development game.

If only pre-ordering games actually got us better games......

I'd hold off on a new card - the 3000 series aren't supported by either Poser or DS right now.

I do wish Poser would show AMD cards some love.

I'm ordering a 6800 ($579) on the 18th. 16Gb of Vram makes it a no-brainer.

I've got the funds ready for upgrade, but a near-pathological aversion to Beta-releases, so I'll wait until the dust settles some-what...

Meanwhile, taking bites from my to-do list. So far,

($$) Balancer, a clever poly-count reducer with an intuitive interface I've yet to grok. Full home-use version, as free version would choke on big RM/DE OBJ sets.

Generate folder.jpg for a dozen or so freebies.

Try to figure LaFemme's exact height, the better to scale imports...

so far it's faster at renders and the background lighting finally works and gives the best render results I've ever gotten out of Poser. The parts that aren't working will be fixed.

I've just downloaded the trial and done half a dozen test renders. The speed difference has already impressed me.

I'm in the market for a new graphics card but it's a really difficult decision now. The Optix optimisation seems like a great idea for RTX cards but at my budget the AMD cards have that "all important?" 16GB of VRAM.

I preferred simpler times :-)

GuernseyMan posted at 1:42PM Tue, 17 November 2020 - #4404907

I've just downloaded the trial and done half a dozen test renders. The speed difference has already impressed me.

I'm in the market for a new graphics card but it's a really difficult decision now. The Optix optimisation seems like a great idea for RTX cards but at my budget the AMD cards have that "all important?" 16GB of VRAM.

on the webinar they said that it would be unlikely that Poser would get AMD GPU support any time soon.

I preferred simpler times :-)

ghostship2 posted at 2:30PM Tue, 17 November 2020 - #4404910

on the webinar they said that it would be unlikely that Poser would get AMD GPU support any time soon.

I must have misheard. I thought that he said AMD support wasn't as good. The Cycles documentation says that it does have OpenCL support for GCN. It doesn't mention RDNA let alone RDNA2 so I think that's what was meant. I do have a friend with a Radeon VII so we'll download Poser 12 and see what happens.

I think I'll need to wait for the dust to settle and keep my trusty old GTX 980ti for a while longer, it's not too sluggish yet.

For the record, I didn't jump, I was pushed. Someone gifted me Poser 12, so I'm going to take it and run. :)

Well there's really two questions for two groups here.

1. Existing experienced users. Personally I might get the upgrade when the big December release happens, as a Poser 11 user. I like the faster SuperFly rendering, and Sunday's webinar was also interesting for showing how to set up the PBR (Substance Designer etc) materials that have been enabled by the new version of Cycles/SuperFly. I would expect the December release to ship with a number of fixed Python scripts from partners, judging by what was said in the webinar. I have a major unreleased script I need to check in Poser 12, so that may push me to jump in December. I'd be even more keen to jump if there were some improvements in non-photoreal, such as Comic Book and Sketch, and if the SuperFly materials problems have been solved.

2). New users. Poser 11 is no longer sold by Renderosity (though for the next two days NeoWin Deals is happy to sell you a Bondware Poser 11 Pro licence for $80) and as it stands I'd be very wary of recommending Poser 12 Early Access to newbies - until we see what sort of fixed public Poser 12 ships sometime in December as announced. Even then I might advise newbies to hold off until the first big patch, which I would expect toward the end of January 2021.

HartyBart posted at 8:39AM Wed, 18 November 2020 - #4404972

2). New users. Poser 11 is no longer sold by Renderosity (though for the next two days NeoWin Deals is happy to sell you a Bondware Poser 11 Pro licence for $80) and as it stands I'd be very wary of recommending Poser 12 Early Access to newbies - until we see what sort of fixed public Poser 12 ships sometime in December as announced. Even then I might advise newbies to hold off until the first big patch, which I would expect toward the end of January 2021.

I would say to those same newbies, be aware of what you're buying. Early Access is just that "Early". As a result, some parts or features may not act right until they get it all sorted out.

EClark1894 posted at 1:02PM Wed, 18 November 2020 - #4405000

I would say to those same newbies, be aware of what you're buying. Early Access is just that "Early". As a result, some parts or features may not act right until they get it all sorted out.

That's exactly why I haven't grabbed it yet. The only "early" access I would accept is being on the software beta team. Otherwise, I'll wait until there's a relatively well done (fixed) version.

I tend to use a lot of legacy content. I used to use Reality as it gives such great results but decided I should embrace SuperFly. However, I find my use of legacy content in Poser 11 needs Snarly’s EZ-Skin. And now it seems Poser 12 breaks SuperFly shaders resulting in EZ-Skin not working as it used to. So I can’t see me upgrading until Bondware fix the shader issues, which are frankly not acceptable. Creating a scene in Poser 11, opening that scene in Poser 12, it has to render pretty much the same or Poser 12 is dead in the water imho.

Snarly is working on fixing his scripts to work with Poser 12. But yeah, all the Python scripts need to be fixed, and some can't be. Be thee warned.

Its not just scripts that are broken.

Superfly shaders that worked in Poser 11, Superfly shaders that are released in products you buy on the marketplace advertised working, do not work in Poser 12. Some do. Some don't. End users should not be expected to figure out why something that worked a month ago in same renderer suddenly don't.

I know it is being worked on. I know its early release. But am tired of trying to figure what works and what doesn't. And stuff that was released since P12 came out should be working in the program.

( I deleted way too many expletives from this post because I understand what the team struggles with, I just think something was really fugged on the way between too many midwives and not enough hours).

It’s either by design (feature not a bug) or zero testing.

Either way, really poor form to be honest (I’ve had several decades experience as a programmer so I know what I’m talking about).

At the very least some backwards compatibility should be present. For example Python 2 should be an option in Poser 12 and Poser 13 move to Python 3 exclusively. Things should be deprecated for a while before being removed.

Hopefully Bondware will fix the shader issues and then Snarlys update will have a chance at working.

I think they were kind of in a bind, due to the timing. Python 2 reached its end of life in January 2020. They probably should have been preparing for it long ago (the original EOL was 2015, I think, but was pushed up to give people more time).

Given that, I can't see including Python 2 in Poser 12. Maybe SM should have done that for Poser 11, but that's water under the bridge.

Fair point(s) randy.

As far as fixing Superfly to match p11 shaders, it some instances it can't see this thread for why. For the nodes that are truly in error, the team is working on them as it has been stated else where. If vendors are updating their shaders, I would hope so, but I wouldn't count on it happening until after more of the bugs are fixed. If the team is making corrections, they may have to update again later. Even if they aren't going to wait, keep in mind it takes time to update. The vendors, like the rest of us have to learn what is different, why it's different and how to make it look good again. They then will have to apply those changes to their products, repackage them, and probably make new promo renders. And I believe they would have to go through testing again in the market place. It will take time.

Most Creators jumped to DS and allot of them might just have left there Poser Packages in the store, I sure have doubts that they will fix any of there Packages to work in Poser 12. Comes to it if the Artist jumped on DS He She will probably not ever upgrade to Poser 12 making an investment to just Update all the Packages in the store. It is A large learning curve and comes to it that some of the Artists Vendors have to Fix all the Pyton that they also integrated in the Packages that are still being sold . A endless Tedious thing. The only thing is to look forwards , hoping that there will be new Creators and take down all these non working Packages from the store to avoid a mass of requests for refund as these are not compatible any longer with Poser 12. Packages will not be able to hold the Promise , Customers will be disappointed and it would cause even more damage then already has been done .

The other Part of the big hassle is there will be over 50% Poser users that will not upgrade. Due the massive changes they will not be able to use most new releases, so these fall of the list of future customers, The ones who Upgrade to Poser 12 or start of with it will not buy older assets due the lack of support, so all just goes into one direction and there is not a big chance for a win win situation.

Most users have no experiences they want a Package to Play with , make some renders , there little stories , expecting it to work as sold , they do not want to fix Shaders, they do not want to fix Hundreds of material settings brought with the packages, they have no Idea how to fix them , they just want to Play and enjoy what they buy the way it is Presented. What is the point to sell a add'on texture Package if it just is not working right and you have to fix it , then you might as well do it your self and save the money.

100% agree with Azath. Killing off compatibility with all pre-Poser12 superfly products will be the end. Saying P12 cant be fixed to match P11 shaders is just plain incorrect. From a developer perspective Bondware had a choice to implement the new Superfly as a default “option” but it seems they chose not to. Bad move imho.

It's not like we haven't gone through this before. There were issues when Firefly was added (remember those ugly texture seams?), and then when Superfly was added.

Snarly's Scenefixer and EZSkin scripts fixed a lot of outdated shaders. I'm hoping he'll update them.

Those two scripts should honestly be part of Poser.

I am not at my home computerr atm, but I am talking about products that came out since P12 was released not rendering right in P12. That is sloppy to say the least.

Now, lest someone think I'm kidding, here is a comparison of the exact scene, exact skin (La Femme Another Look), exact light (background only), hair (Leticia hair) and figure (La Femme Pro) rendered in Poser 12:

And in Poser 11:

That hair was released after Poser 12 came out and I know the vendor puts out quality product, always. And yet the hair looks like crud under basic background node natural lighting in Poser 12. Looks like it was made of fake velvet strands that are sort of clumping together. Likewise the skin lost its natural hue and has a washed out pallor to it.

Now mind you, the rendering time is much faster 8n Poser 12. But if out of box materials that work fine if Poser 11 are broken in P12, not sure it's worth it for those who can't just jump into the material room and casually tweak it.

For me it's impossible to work with poser 12 because DSONimporter doesn't work anymore. So I switch to Blender there it's possible to import the Genesis figures. I am realy disapointed of Poser. So I must start from zero and that will be blender and not Poser 12