Up until a few years ago i used the heck out of Poser. When daz Studio came along and daz no longer made figures for Poser I was at a loss. I tried DS several times  but never liked it for several reasons. But all the content seemed to be for DS. I didnt see where the Poser was headed. there was some fix to be able to use DS figures etc in Poser but I never could make it work. When I bought a new desktop i didnt think it was worth installing poser. I seriously had alot of content , spent alot of money and it seriously takes a HUGE chunk of time to install. It seemed also that at least for DS and I figured Poser as well there were suddenly all these different figures. With items for them and I had no idea what worked with what. I didnt see the point in buying things that only one for one offshoot of the latest Vicki or whatever. 

     Anyway, I was curious how Poser is now? What figures do they use as far as male and female standard most popular. How expensive and can you use older content. sadly, Life has not been kind and at this point there is no ability to buy new things. But, where is Poser at and where headed? maybe one day I can get back in.

Thank you

Alas you are only partially in luck with poser. As of version 12 you CAN still use the older figure (v4 etc.) but you are wasting a lot of functionality (some wil disagree with me here) since they are using figure without weight mapping at least if you want to use clothing etc form the same era.

Poser comes with LaFemme as it;s flagship figure these days. She is weight mapped and includes SOME later technology. Older content can be used for her if you use the fitting room and the set up room to convert the rigging. It's not easy but it's there. Some people seem perfectly happy using the older figures and content. 

There is a male figure L'Homme I don;t think he has a free version sold with Poser? Since he's built off of modified LaFemme rigging her has most of her tech.

There is a major amount of content for either of them yet but it is growing pretty much every day, and there as some very gifted content makers worhing hard to provide more.

Don;t know if this helps. If it does great!

Have a great day

What I wanted to know, thank you.

That is not all of course. Poser 12 has also an updated version of superfly. It is now pretty fast with a gpu based video card.

Here you can see what is possible with la femme.

Everything made by me

Now you can actually use real bpr values. It even renders faster when you respect the bpr rules. People that havent used bpr render engines OR iray probably need some time to adjust.

And you can of course also come back in the game with An older version. You are welcome ☺️

Thanks, the skin is really nice. I cant do it probably til early next year at best but may be worth a look. One thing with poser back when I was in the game. for the most part it looked like a 3d render. When I left it was getting better and at times I was pleased with it. but I learned in animation school that my love is of environments. unfortunately didnt get to finish and theres a long story i will spare you. I just always loved playing with light.

I appreciate the help.

In poser 12 you can use Hdri light, like it should be compared to 11. Light is my weak spot. But there is a lot to discover.

Poser 12 does come with both La'femme and L'homme. There are also a lot of little tweaks in the interface that can help make things go smoother that you might not notice until you go back a version. And I believe that CPU rendering for superfly is also faster so if you can't buy a fancy graphics card, you can still see improvement.

It can be tricky but so worthwhile. have been working on lighting in Unreal and so much more to it but when its on, its so nice.

There are weightmapped versions of the old figures available. A lot of people use Sasha-16, a weightmapped version of V4, because she has the advantage of weightmapping and can use all the old V4 textures, morphs, and clothing. I like La Femme, but there's not nearly as much stuff for her as there is for V4.

I'm also anxiously waiting for Hivewire to release Dawn 2. She's really a whole different figure from the original Dawn, and it sounds like they learned a lot from the mistakes made on Dawn 1.

The limits of the V ic4 were quickly shown with, for example, the bent legs.
Here is an example with a Sasha-16:

FWIW, if you have a lot of 'legacy' materiel, use via 'external library' function rather than loading more than a very few directly into Poser.

Link via 'library' to an item's own folder anywhere on an attached or networked drive. Poser will peek within and access the item's mini-run-time. Un-link that folder, another potential piece of clutter goes safely back into your archive...

'Gotcha' is that this only works so easily if 'external content' has its own mini-run-time. Easy enough to keep an empty 'run-time' folder tree, copy to where-ever needed, populate neatly.

If you only have eg OBJ+MTL and textures in folder, just import via file menu. Don't forget to add a tiny .txt to folder with scaling and other notes...

Sasha-16 is nice if V4 is your thing.  If I do anything with V4, it's really Sasha.

La Femme is nice but devilishly difficult to make conforming clothing for.  Not as easy to sculpt in Blender (for me).

There is also Dawn and an upcoming Dawn 2 (a very experienced dev group on this).  From Hivewire, which is now store-fronted here.  More info on their forums.  A lot more :p

I went the same as you.  Poser for years.  Enjoyed LuxRender and Reality.  Daz stopped supporting Poser.  I tried DS.  Gave up.  It just never clicked with me.  Some time later, I happened to attend a SIGGRAPH and noticed Blender everywhere.   I started learning Blender 2.8 (new GUI) and when I got to character work I really missed a lot of what Poser offered.  Now I shift back and forth between them (depending on what I'm doing). I wrote a Blender plugin to make moving back and forth easier for what I was doing (sculpting).  If you haven't tried it, Blender is currently very slick.  Poser is better at what Poser does, though :)

Figure-wise, this is Dawn with some V4 clothing ported using a combination of Poser auto-rigging and Blender sculpting for fitting.  Dawn is relatively easy to fit with conforming clothing.  No extra morphing or JCMs needed for the clothing to work with Dawn.  The (youthful-stylized) character is also sculpted in Blender and applied in Poser 12 (one button Load Full Body Morph).  If you haven't used Poser in while, there has actually a lot of little things done to fix and/or fill in some of the features.  In any case, Dawn has a nice mesh and Dawn 2 is even better.

Nothing special here.  Superfly (on an iMac Pro, CPU rendering, about 15 minutes), simple mats, simple lighting.  No JCMs, no fix morphs.  Auto-rigged V4 clothing sculpted to fit in Blender.

I think Poser is viable.  I'm liking where the rendo dev team is going with it.  I'm also liking what the Hivewire team is doing with Dawn 2 (fully cross DS and Poser figure, state of the art, super-experienced figure devs.  Like nothing that's come before).  Poser plays nicely (for my purposes) with Blender.  And I'm thinking this will only improve (things like CyclesX in Poser being actively worked on).

Oh, here's La Femme:

This is using Blackhearted's HD morphs.  My own character (Blender sculpting, again :)

You can see how well her joints work.  She has a lot of JCM's to do that.  But the result is very nice :)

The clothing is made specifically for her, purchased here from a vendor with way more skill than *me* :D.

This is something I made and it was...  a lesson on what a slippery grip on sanity I had.  OMG those hip JCMs!

This lighting setup is even easier in Poser.  It's just an enviro sphere with a single HDRI source.  Also Superfly.  One click (though the sweet generously free EZDome add-on, which has been updated for P12)

Anyhow, Poser is still alive and kicking!

Very nice demos, beautiful characters.

Oh, here's La Femme:

This is using Blackhearted's HD morphs.  My own character (Blender sculpting, again :)

You can see how well her joints work.  She has a lot of JCM's to do that.  But the result is very nice :)

The clothing is made specifically for her, purchased here from a vendor with way more skill than *me* :D.

This is something I made and it was...  a lesson on what a slippery grip on sanity I had.  OMG those hip JCMs!

This lighting setup is even easier in Poser.  It's just an enviro sphere with a single HDRI source.  Also Superfly.  One click (though the sweet generously free EZDome add-on, which has been updated for P12)

Anyhow, Poser is still alive and kicking!

There are weightmapped versions of the old figures available. A lot of people use Sasha-16, a weightmapped version of V4, because she has the advantage of weightmapping and can use all the old V4 textures, morphs, and clothing. I like La Femme, but there's not nearly as much stuff for her as there is for V4.

I'm also anxiously waiting for Hivewire to release Dawn 2. She's really a whole different figure from the original Dawn, and it sounds like they learned a lot from the mistakes made on Dawn 1.

thoennes posted at 4:40 AM Wed, 15 June 2022 - #4439991

Sasha-16 is nice if V4 is your thing.  If I do anything with V4, it's really Sasha.

La Femme is nice but devilishly difficult to make conforming clothing for.  Not as easy to sculpt in Blender (for me).

There is also Dawn and an upcoming Dawn 2 (a very experienced dev group on this).  From Hivewire, which is now store-fronted here.  More info on their forums.  A lot more :p

I went the same as you.  Poser for years.  Enjoyed LuxRender and Reality.  Daz stopped supporting Poser.  I tried DS.  Gave up.  It just never clicked with me.  Some time later, I happened to attend a SIGGRAPH and noticed Blender everywhere.   I started learning Blender 2.8 (new GUI) and when I got to character work I really missed a lot of what Poser offered.  Now I shift back and forth between them (depending on what I'm doing). I wrote a Blender plugin to make moving back and forth easier for what I was doing (sculpting).  If you haven't tried it, Blender is currently very slick.  Poser is better at what Poser does, though :)

Figure-wise, this is Dawn with some V4 clothing ported using a combination of Poser auto-rigging and Blender sculpting for fitting.  Dawn is relatively easy to fit with conforming clothing.  No extra morphing or JCMs needed for the clothing to work with Dawn.  The (youthful-stylized) character is also sculpted in Blender and applied in Poser 12 (one button Load Full Body Morph).  If you haven't used Poser in while, there has actually a lot of little things done to fix and/or fill in some of the features.  In any case, Dawn has a nice mesh and Dawn 2 is even better.

 

Nothing special here.  Superfly (on an iMac Pro, CPU rendering, about 15 minutes), simple mats, simple lighting.  No JCMs, no fix morphs.  Auto-rigged V4 clothing sculpted to fit in Blender.

I think Poser is viable.  I'm liking where the rendo dev team is going with it.  I'm also liking what the Hivewire team is doing with Dawn 2 (fully cross DS and Poser figure, state of the art, super-experienced figure devs.  Like nothing that's come before).  Poser plays nicely (for my purposes) with Blender.  And I'm thinking this will only improve (things like CyclesX in Poser being actively worked on).

I was using Maya for a few years because I got to go halfway through animation school. But life had other ideas. My maya is too old now so have started learning Blender. I've seen so many cool things it can do. And it's free. Unreal I love but it doesnt take long to go beyond me. 

     Up until a few years ago i used the heck out of Poser. When daz Studio came along and daz no longer made figures for Poser I was at a loss. I tried DS several times  but never liked it for several reasons. But all the content seemed to be for DS. I didnt see where the Poser was headed. there was some fix to be able to use DS figures etc in Poser but I never could make it work. When I bought a new desktop i didnt think it was worth installing poser. I seriously had alot of content , spent alot of money and it seriously takes a HUGE chunk of time to install. It seemed also that at least for DS and I figured Poser as well there were suddenly all these different figures. With items for them and I had no idea what worked with what. I didnt see the point in buying things that only one for one offshoot of the latest Vicki or whatever. 

     Anyway, I was curious how Poser is now? What figures do they use as far as male and female standard most popular. How expensive and can you use older content. sadly, Life has not been kind and at this point there is no ability to buy new things. But, where is Poser at and where headed? maybe one day I can get back in.

Thank you

thoennes posted at 5:11 AM Wed, 15 June 2022 - #4439994

Oh, here's La Femme:

This is using Blackhearted's HD morphs.  My own character (Blender sculpting, again :)

You can see how well her joints work.  She has a lot of JCM's to do that.  But the result is very nice :)

The clothing is made specifically for her, purchased here from a vendor with way more skill than *me* :D.

This is something I made and it was...  a lesson on what a slippery grip on sanity I had.  OMG those hip JCMs!

This lighting setup is even easier in Poser.  It's just an enviro sphere with a single HDRI source.  Also Superfly.  One click (though the sweet generously free EZDome add-on, which has been updated for P12)

Anyhow, Poser is still alive and kicking!

and just in case you weren't aware: you may also use Poser's Background node. There are a few solutions, described in the threads around. Here is the setup I'm using:

the Mapping Node's Rotation is used to turn the background pic (2nd value): 0 = to the right, 1.57 up, 3.16 to the left (yes: these are rad values), and its location (2nd value, too) can  be used to raise or lower your all scene, compared to the background pic: 0, 0.1, 0 = 10% up.
Gamma should be 1.0

More examples of La Femme, Superfly and stuff we can push Poser 12 to do:

Character was hand sculpted by me in Blender, her skin made in Substance Painter. Hairstyles and bikini also by me in Blender. That dynamic jumpsuit is a freebie by gordo with materials by Atenais.

More examples of La Femme, Superfly and stuff we can push Poser 12 to do:

Character was hand sculpted by me in Blender, her skin made in Substance Painter. Hairstyles and bikini also by me in Blender. That dynamic jumpsuit is a freebie by gordo with materials by Atenais.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 8:06 AM Thu, 16 June 2022 - #4440036

More examples of La Femme, Superfly and stuff we can push Poser 12 to do:

Character was hand sculpted by me in Blender, her skin made in Substance Painter. Hairstyles and bikini also by me in Blender. That dynamic jumpsuit is a freebie by gordo with materials by Atenais.

Looks really good.

Actually, we need more artist that do environments.

Actually, we need more artist that do environments.

@ Liquid_Ice:
One of the best Poser skin shaders I've seen so far. How do they look on different light sets?
@ Afrodite-Ohki
Face character morph and hair look good on both pictures.
Great pose, nice dynamics and shaders on clothes on the left picture.
@thoennes
Cute toon Character for La Femme.

scottl posted at 3:50 PM Thu, 16 June 2022 - #4440047

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 8:06 AM Thu, 16 June 2022 - #4440036

More examples of La Femme, Superfly and stuff we can push Poser 12 to do:

Character was hand sculpted by me in Blender, her skin made in Substance Painter. Hairstyles and bikini also by me in Blender. That dynamic jumpsuit is a freebie by gordo with materials by Atenais.

Especially like the face. A few years back I was halfway through animation school. Sculpting figures isn't easy esp the faces. Tbh i've never tried texturing people in Substance though have done many other things. After a hiatus of sorts I need to get back, my passion being environments tho. I just dont have time or patience to learn figures.

Looks really good.

Poser is very capable of doing some very cool things.  There are figures, add-ons, shaders, morphs hair and clothing.  You can go back and forth between it and Blender without too much trouble.  Superfly is not too far off of cycles so if you know one you know the other.  And it's back to evolving.  In what seems (to me) to be a good direction. :)

Thanks everyone, you are too kind :D

Beautiful as always Ohki, a feirce character, and the scaring adds such a suitable look!

Mike

scottl posted at 3:50 PM Thu, 16 June 2022 - #4440047

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 8:06 AM Thu, 16 June 2022 - #4440036

More examples of La Femme, Superfly and stuff we can push Poser 12 to do:

Character was hand sculpted by me in Blender, her skin made in Substance Painter. Hairstyles and bikini also by me in Blender. That dynamic jumpsuit is a freebie by gordo with materials by Atenais.

Especially like the face. A few years back I was halfway through animation school. Sculpting figures isn't easy esp the faces. Tbh i've never tried texturing people in Substance though have done many other things. After a hiatus of sorts I need to get back, my passion being environments tho. I just dont have time or patience to learn figures.

Looks really good.

La Femme + everything Ohki makes for her is a winning combo!  La Femme bends so very well, she can be used in dance and gymnastic poses effortlessly.

Poser is very capable of doing some very cool things.  There are figures, add-ons, shaders, morphs hair and clothing.  You can go back and forth between it and Blender without too much trouble.  Superfly is not too far off of cycles so if you know one you know the other.  And it's back to evolving.  In what seems (to me) to be a good direction. :)

scottl posted at 10:32 AM Sat, 18 June 2022 - #4440090

So, pretty easy to bring Poserr figures into Blender? how do they look?

Bringing the static base mesh to morph or to sculpt clothes+hair into Blender is very easy, but it won't pose.

scottl posted at 10:32 AM Sat, 18 June 2022 - #4440090

So, pretty easy to bring Poserr figures into Blender? how do they look?

Not with the rigging. I bring the obj into Blender for morphing, then import it in Poser as a morph :) Those renders were made in Poser.

Bringing the static base mesh to morph or to sculpt clothes+hair into Blender is very easy, but it won't pose.

I do the same as Ohki, OBJ into Blender, which for a non-morphed mesh is as simple as import then export back (keeping vert order on import).  I use an add-on for  poser morphed meshes (which poser exports incorrectly) to change them back to unimesh (in Blender) so I can further sculpt the export such that Poser can use them for morphs.

There are some nice sculpt improvements in the 3.2 version of blender.  Maintaining edges is much easier.

If you're curious as to the level Blender has reached: https://www.chrisj.com.au/ (set faces on stun)

Not nearly so easy to use as Poser, of course :D

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 8:56 AM Sun, 19 June 2022 - #4440114

scottl posted at 10:32 AM Sat, 18 June 2022 - #4440090

So, pretty easy to bring Poserr figures into Blender? how do they look?

Not with the rigging. I bring the obj into Blender for morphing, then import it in Poser as a morph :) Those renders were made in Poser.

Bringing the static base mesh to morph or to sculpt clothes+hair into Blender is very easy, but it won't pose.

I do the same as Ohki, OBJ into Blender, which for a non-morphed mesh is as simple as import then export back (keeping vert order on import).  I use an add-on for  poser morphed meshes (which poser exports incorrectly) to change them back to unimesh (in Blender) so I can further sculpt the export such that Poser can use them for morphs.

There are some nice sculpt improvements in the 3.2 version of blender.  Maintaining edges is much easier.

If you're curious as to the level Blender has reached: https://www.chrisj.com.au/ (set faces on stun)

Not nearly so easy to use as Poser, of course :D

That is not all of course. Poser 12 has also an updated version of superfly. It is now pretty fast with a gpu based video card.

Here you can see what is possible with la femme.

Everything made by me

No, not really I am updating some stuff in the shader and also want her to be more detailed. I will contact you a bit later :)

Just wanted to chime in with the last few remaining poser renders. The second one I just love the expression. The first, well, just like the way it looks. I do miss messing with poser, Maybe once studies slow down.

Hopefully soon,  we need more artist lol

This year is probably spoken for. Studying for a new career, estate sale and sell the house end of year. Hard to focus anyway...

I spoke to another artist in the field a couple of years ago when we were working on a project, and he aways said that if you wanna sculpt in your free time, just sculp an hour a day.

we really really and i cant stress this enough but we really need environment and scene artists. 

I remember delighting in using I want to say Danie and Marformo's buildings. One problem I would have is textures. I am not a texture artist. In what I do have time to create I use Substance or megascans (in Unreal). It used to be before the sale, that Substance would let you use their textures if you altered them significantly. I've asked adobe and been ignored. Guess I will sort that out when the time comes. It seemed to me the meshes were rather simple and the detail was in the materials.I had planned on creating some architecture as I learn Blender and posting it as Freebies. Just have to find Blender time.

you can do a lot of those textures in blender too or another 3d paint app. If im not mistaken there are also free apps that work the same way as substance painter.

 I have substance but prefer zbrush myself. I think you mean the underlying structures where one would bake spec maps and normal maps from. You can create those yourself. I sculpt them myself with my own created brushes in zbrush. Blender has that option as well.

 I have substance but prefer zbrush myself. I think you mean the underlying structures where one would bake spec maps and normal maps from. You can create those yourself. I sculpt them myself with my own created brushes in zbrush. Blender has that option as well.

I have been using Poser since I bought Poser 3.0 off the shelf of a best buy in the mid 90's.  Poser 12 seems to be the most unstable version of Poser ever released.  Are there any plans/progress for producing updates that fixes all the problems that cause it to crash constantly?

Also, I have had no luck with getting tight fitting clothing to work with La Femme and the various La Femme character packages available from rosity.  So I am still using V4 for the most part.  Any suggestions on how to get clothing to fit La Femme in Poser 12?  

Hydra, i think you have to use copy morphs and paste them onto the clothing.

P12 is very stable for me. Are the crashes random? Or more specific?

Hydra posted at 7:57 PM Sat, 2 July 2022 - #4440667

I have been using Poser since I bought Poser 3.0 off the shelf of a best buy in the mid 90's.  Poser 12 seems to be the most unstable version of Poser ever released.  Are there any plans/progress for producing updates that fixes all the problems that cause it to crash constantly?

Also, I have had no luck with getting tight fitting clothing to work with La Femme and the various La Femme character packages available from rosity.  So I am still using V4 for the most part.  Any suggestions on how to get clothing to fit La Femme in Poser 12?  

Tutorial

WW is no longer offered because PhilC has retired from the scene.  And even if the software was available you would need a La Femme license.

At times, Poser 12 is really unstable: I may use for hours, even without saving, and without a single crash, and all of a sudden it crashes for weird reasons

I'm not a professional user, so that even if it scares the hell out of me at the time, it's part of the fun
I suspect that when it crashes, that's because I reacted too fast, forcing Poser to launch 2 Python scripts at a time (I have an old Core i/ 8700K)

And it's true that we're all waiting for an update: the current version is 7 months old