I've been using Poser since Poser 3 and initially it was on a PC but I switched to a Mac about 5 years ago and haven't looked back. I've been using Poser Pro 11 since it came out with no real problems, but tempted to try out Poser 12. Unfortunately, most people post negative things and problems but rarely the good things, so I'd like to hear from those of you mac users who are having good experiences with Poser 12. is it worth it? (I know there's another thread about Poser 12 and Mac, but it devolved into general mac-bashing.) By the way, I'm using Big Sur and having no issues with Poser Pro 11 to date.

You can try Poser 12 for 21 days and see if you like it and if it works they way you want. Since each person has different uses for Poser it would be really hard to give you an good answer as what I use it for and deem critical may have no value to you.

I was not aware of the 21 day trial period. Thanks for the info!

I haven't jumped. The main reason to switch is that Superfly is much faster, but folks are having issues with materials looking different in that iteration of Superfly. I don't use Superfly at all except to test my freebies. The HUGE downside is that most of your python scripts will no longer work because Poser 12 uses Python 3. That includes the DSON converter that lets you use Genesis figures. So if you rely heavily on scripts, you will have to switch back to Poser 11 to use them.

I lost most of my Python scripts when I switched to a Mac since a lot of them wouldn't work on a Mac, so I got used to it. Some still work, and I read where some of their writers are working on updating them. I don't use the Genesis figures because even with the workarounds, I still can't get them to work properly on my mac. I do use Superfly, though, and I've read that the materials do look different (not sure what a BDSF is anyway!) I use it mostly for still renders (using Superfly) and the cloth room.
I'll wait a little longer, I guess, and then give it a 21 day tryout.

DocMatter posted at 7:33PM Sat, 06 March 2021 - #4414422

I lost most of my Python scripts when I switched to a Mac since a lot of them wouldn't work on a Mac, so I got used to it. Some still work, and I read where some of their writers are working on updating them. I don't use the Genesis figures because even with the workarounds, I still can't get them to work properly on my mac. I do use Superfly, though, and I've read that the materials do look different (not sure what a BDSF is anyway!) I use it mostly for still renders (using Superfly) and the cloth room.
I'll wait a little longer, I guess, and then give it a 21 day tryout.

Compared to Poser 11, which implements an old version of Cycles, Poser 12 implements a very recent version, almost up-to-date of what you'll find in the last version of Blender, which means that you may most of their recent tutorials. Event though all Cycles nodes are not present, but most are.

Anyone running Poser 12 on a MacBook Pro if so what configuration. Planning to run Poser 11 and 12 in parallel on two machines. Not risking legacy content with Python issues. Planning to set up scenes in Poser 11 and moving them to Poser 12 Cycles lights, materials and Superfly rendering when that is called for. Present computer stuck with old graphic card and can't accept new ones. Will be getting new Macbook anyway.

Lots of older python scripts made use of TkInter for their GUI programming, which has always been notoriously broken on macs. Those which switched to wxPython worked better, but still had significant issues unless designed or modified to work on both platforms. Poser Python on Windows also received updates that did not propagate to mac Poser Python until Poser 12, where both platforms now run Python 3.7.9 and wxPython 4.1 (Phoenix).

They're a lot closer in their codebase, now, but there are still gotchas in the GUI implementations for each OS. Mostly, things can work with tweaking.

I’ve recently installed the Poser12 free trial version and I don’t see any superfly render speed improvement at all.

I’m struggling to see any reason to upgrade if I’m honest.

I see that:

“ Removed 4096 limit dialog warning on high resolution images.”

Does this mean that the 4096 limit for textures has been removed? If so, what is the new limit? 8192 x 8192? This, if true, might be the only reason to upgrade for me at present.

I was just able to load an image that was 16384x8192

I like the sound of that :) thx I will investigate further.

Okay, surprised no-one called me out on my comment above ;) I thought Poser11 still had a texture size limit of 4096, seems that was just the background-size limit.

I have been doing some more testing on render speeds too.

It seems to me that if one ignores the new Adaptive Sampling options then render times are, as I suggested above, about on par with Poser 11.

However, the new Adaptive Sampling is really, really great! Even with the default automatic setting of 0.00 threshold, I see big reductions in render times, but I'm finding values as high as 5 percent useful. This feature alone would be a good enough reason for me to upgrade if Poser12 didn't have other issues as detailed elsewhere. (Primarily Poser12 seems incompatible with a dual monitor setup).

Oh, I think the Intel DeNoise works really well too for cleaning up quick renders if you don't mind the minor softness it understandably brings!

So I'm not giving up on Poser12 just yet, if the dual monitor issue gets fixed I can see myself setting scenes/figures up in Poser11 and then rendering in Poser12.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "incompatible" with dual monitor setups. I have two iMacs with that configuration, and nothing about Poser stops it working with that, it's just that some room switching from Poser 11 times seemed to ignore the dual monitors and place windows on the primary. The workaround has been to use memory dots with your preferred configuration. Sometimes those need to be applied twice to get the windows distributed as desired on both monitors, which is frustrating, but not a showstopper.

When other priorities have been dealt with, it will be worth pushing for that to get solved finally. :-)

I think Poser12 is definitely incompatible seeing as it is unusable for dual-monitor setups (unless it's just my iMac and Apple Thunderbolt monitor setup of course).

I can't change a texture in the material room, for example - the popup dialog is invisible and unfixable no matter what I do so I have to force-quit the application or unplug the second monitor.

Personally, I have no issues with Poser 11.

Poser 12 is a whole new world of pain for dual monitors.

Well, now that I've bought it and tried it out, I'm going o answer my own question and say "No, it's not worth it!" With a simple scene, it crashes almost every other time I try and render in Superfly. When I tried rendering the same scene in Firefly, my whole computer crashed. I submitted a ticket several days ago, but haven't heard anything helpful back yet. (A known problem with Firefly, but nothing about my Superfly problem.)

That’s odd, must be something specific in the scene, perhaps a material configuration it doesn’t like. If it was me I’d make multiple copies of the scene and try deleting things one at a time to isolate and identify - but I get that not everyone wants to bother with that kind of thing.

Then again it could be something in Big Sur as I haven’t had any crashes in Catalina at all. I’ve not got a Big Sur installation I can test on as of yet as I’m trying to hold out for newer Apple Silicon Mac (M1X or M2 as the M1 is about on par with an iMac we have).

I'll give that a shot and see if its something in my scene. Another problem I'm having in every scene is deleting objects. Selecting them from the drop down menu and then hitting "delete" has always worked in the past for every version of Poser, but now I have to physically click on the object before the "delete" key will remove the object. Anyone else having this issue?

Note that the latest Mac release seems to have fixed Firefly crashing.

That;s what I hear, but where'e the update. I don't see a link anywhere and my software won't update.

Never mind... I found it.