odf posted at 7:21 PM Thu, 9 June 2022 - #4439761

Out of interest, do you happen to have a good source that explains why? I have a distinct memory of having watched a whole video course about light transport at some point, but apparently my scatterbrain has not held on to much more of it than "we can go a lot faster than Monte Carlo by picking the rays we trace back smartly." :-)

Some of the best sources on it are from Epic Games, Intel, and Nvidia. I don't have specific links. Tessellation is very similar in how it works, and why it takes so long in a path tracer.

The new Unreal 5 engine is a prime example of it of why micro displacement is a really bad and outdated idea. Unreal 5 can handle millions of triangles in view at the same time, eliminating the need for micro poly anything. All while rendering far better and far faster than most engines. Unreal 5 is a path tracer that will probably never get support micro displacement. There is no need for it, and there is a good reason why. If you do need to use it (obviously some Poser content required it), Poser still has Firefly, Studio still has 3Delight, etc.

Micro polygon displacement can be controlled a few different ways. One way is how it is done in Blender with an adaptive node that modifies the geometry before or as it is sent to the engine, each time, more on this later... Another is by assigning a micro polygon displacement rate and ratios, and doing it during the initial render setup like FireFly does.

As example, Luxology uses rate and ratio to stop you from killing the render times. The settings were exposed in Luxology, and you could easily kill render times, run out of memory, or just crash the system. Ludology is also a Monte Carlo based engine that uses irradiance caching very similar to Firelfy, both are hybrid engines. Basically the settings are a cap to how far it can go before it causes problems, even in a Monte Carlo engine.

Both ways have limits to what they can do, and how much detail they can show before memory issues spiral out of control. 

All of this doesn't even get into setting the scene up multiple times in a path tracer, because where it looks from changes every bounce, on every path. That is where it kills a path tracer, changing views on every bounce, for millions or billions of paths. Monte Carlo paths are basically limited to the number of pixels, times the number of bounces. And it only has to set the scene up based on the camera view, and not every bounce.

This took one minute on my Acer Nitro 5 laptop:

To render the same scene in Superfly, I'd need "actual" grass with millions of polygons.

I have 32GB Ram, an i7 and a Geforce GTX.

How long do you think this would take me?

*

I think one look at the marketplace makes it clear what the average hobbyist Poser users (Those who bring in the $$$ for Rendo) really prefer:

A better figure or a more "PRO-like" render engine.

I'm pretty sure the G8 stuff outsells the Superfly products quite a bit.

;-)

Thanks for trying to slip some useful content into this thread past the trolls. I may yet learn something.

Blender has its adaptive subdivision https://artisticrender.com/how-to-use-adaptive-subdivision-surface-in-blender/ which seems like a reasonably efficient way to achieve the same ends (even though it is something different from actual micro displacement). If that's already supported in Blender and Cycles, it seems like it's something that could appear in Poser too, as Cycles in Poser gets updated to a newer version. I can get around the lack of micro displacement by simply subdividing many, many times (and I have done so on some occasions), but that obviously also has a cost in render times too. Adaptive subdivision would reduce the need to do so.

It's a little unclear to me whether Blender also has micro displacement. In my random Googling, I can't tell whether it actually does or people just don't know the difference between that and adaptive subdivision.

JoePublic posted at 11:27 PM Thu, 9 June 2022 - #4439768

I think one look at the marketplace makes it clear what the average hobbyist Poser users (Those who bring in the $$$ for Rendo) really prefer:

A better figure or a more "PRO-like" render engine.

I'm pretty sure the G8 stuff outsells the Superfly products quite a bit.

Would I like better figures? Sure. Am I learning anything useful from your complaining? No, not really sure what the point is. Probably isn't one.

Thanks for trying to slip some useful content into this thread past the trolls. I may yet learn something.

Blender has its adaptive subdivision https://artisticrender.com/how-to-use-adaptive-subdivision-surface-in-blender/ which seems like a reasonably efficient way to achieve the same ends (even though it is something different from actual micro displacement). If that's already supported in Blender and Cycles, it seems like it's something that could appear in Poser too, as Cycles in Poser gets updated to a newer version. I can get around the lack of micro displacement by simply subdividing many, many times (and I have done so on some occasions), but that obviously also has a cost in render times too. Adaptive subdivision would reduce the need to do so.

It's a little unclear to me whether Blender also has micro displacement. In my random Googling, I can't tell whether it actually does or people just don't know the difference between that and adaptive subdivision.

"...but people want realism"

No, they want beauty.

And fun.

*

If you need true Photorealism, just download Blender or whatever else is out there.

But it's only a small minority of "Nerdy McNerds" that for their own ego boost need Poser to be "Just like the PROOOOS".

Unfortunately the owners of Poser thought that that was a good idea.

(Studio made the same mistake, but eventually realized their error)

If Poser had put all their efforts into providing this community with better figures the moment Genesis "happened", we wouldn't have threads like this.

We'd be too busy enjoying those figures, making and downloading freebies for them and generally having a good time.

The point of Poser was never to cater to the (wannabe) pros.

The point was to cater to the rank amateurs.

Dork and Posette were so easy to use and modify that literally everyone could participate.

Poser completely lost its spirit.

Have fun discussing the pros and cons of professional render engines.

See how much sales this will bring to Rendo.

I rather play with my old and obsolete figures using less-than-realistic Firefly and generally having a good time.

*

For the record:

I do not care what render engine Poser uses.

If it works JUST AS WELL as Firefly, does, ON MY MACHINE, fine!

But better figures are the #1 priority.

But hey, Poser is not my responsibility.

I did not buy it and I don't need it to make money to pay my rent.

This once thriving community is 90% destroyed already, I'm pretty sure you manage to alienate the rest of those who still care, too.

This took one minute on my Acer Nitro 5 laptop:

To render the same scene in Superfly, I'd need "actual" grass with millions of polygons.

I have 32GB Ram, an i7 and a Geforce GTX.

How long do you think this would take me?

Gee I don't know, probably an eternity because you are stuck in the Monte Carlo mind set and don't know any tricks to get it to render faster because you don't even use Superfly or understand it at all. 

This took about 5 min to render on my machine (Optix Render), rendered out about 5 times the resolution of your render that doesn't actually have or appear to have any grass in it at all..... The video card used is a Turing series as well, and a I7 860 with 16 gig of first gen ddr3. You have a better system... To render like this in Firefly takes literally about an hour. A render like your plane would only take a few seconds in Optix. You don't need all that topology either. Just because you don't know how to do something, doesn't make it impossible.

This took one minute on my Acer Nitro 5 laptop:

To render the same scene in Superfly, I'd need "actual" grass with millions of polygons.

I have 32GB Ram, an i7 and a Geforce GTX.

How long do you think this would take me?

Wow, this took 2 seconds more than your plane render, and it has HDRI and low poly grass in it..... Another 5 min of setting it up, and it would be way faster......

OMG 79 seconds, the horror... This is a very similar setup, except nothing is touched material wise. It is even coughing up node errors. This is default, came with Poser content, rendering faster than Firefly, with zero optimizations.... I am not even going to post the Firefly times, it was embarrassing for Firefly to say the least.. 

This cant be possible thou, simply because someone on the forum says and insists Firefly is way faster, needs way more polygons, etc...

After all, if it is on the internet, it must be true...

Stop spreading things that are not true, like how Firefly is faster than Superfly.

Because that is so far from the truth it is scary.

You don't even have to touch a single material, and Optix blows Firefly's doors off...

These are nice renders, but...

I'm on Poser 11, as I need still full access to my Python script library.

And Poser 11 has no optix option.

And as far as I know, mobile GPU's like my GTX don't work with optix, anyway?

I sent you a PM with a download to my Fokker scene. (I had to leave out the Skydome, as I took that from Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 2.)

So you'd have to replace that with your own.

Let's see what you can do with it and how fast it will render.

*

As I said, I'm not against progress at all.

But to abandon Firefly, I'd need a solution that is an actual improvement on my machine.

And so far Superfly was always WAY slower and much more grainy than any Firefly renderer for me.

(Both CPU as well as GPU)

Wow, this took what seems like forever. Oh, wait, that was a firefly render, my bad...  Let me do it in Optix this time....

Almost 94 seconds in Optix... Imagine how slow this would be on a good system with a fast GPU. The horror..... 15, 20 seconds tops, maybe?

I don't understand how my lowly 2060 on a snail system is so fast.

This cant be the case, other people have insisted it can't be true.

Yet in every single test I do even with default non optimized materials and lighting on the Poser content, Optix blows Firefly doors in...

One would guess based on the Firefly speed claims all over this site, it is considerably slower...

The 9 or 10 seconds you would have to wait on the render on a nice current system would seem like an eternity....

Compared to Firefly, ya know.....

Seriously, Firefly is a snail compared to Superfly using Optix. On a good system standard Cuda rendering would be faster as well.

Or you can listen to people that don't use it, and want you to believe they have a clue.

Tuff choice, isn't it...

I sent you a PM with a download to my Fokker scene. 

Let's see what you can do with it and how fast it will render.

It took forever to render, almost 7 seconds....

I did not add a sky dome, just rendered it with Optix how you packed it up. The dome wont change the time much at all anyway.

I am sure I could make procedural shader changes to improve the looks of the grass, etc. but that wont make much change on render time either.

Everything you have brought up, is based on Poser 11. Everything.....

Poser 12 renders considerably faster than P11. I have a far slower machine than you do and it was about 10 times faster then your minute long firefly render.

Sigh. It looks like you're comparing apples and oranges.

Poser 12 is not an option as I'd loose all the legacy Python scripts I constantly need for my figure work.

(Besides, after having to BUY POSER 11 TWICE because of their idiotic "phone home" scheme, I'm not really in the mood to reward Bondware by upgrading to Poser 12, anyway)

The GPU I have is a GTX 1650. Which has no RTX cores.

Which, at least from what I've read so far, makes her actually slower with Optix than Cuda.

https://blenderartists.org/t/tested-optix-for-gtx-the-good-and-the-bad/1233793

https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/r85j1s/cuda_or_optix_for_gtx_card/

I state again:

With Poser 11, on my machine, Superfly is WAY slower than Firefly. Tried it several times, including Superfly "optimised" scenes.

And replacing displacement maps with real polygons will be A LOT of modelling work, not to mention in some scenarios cause a massive slowdown. It's not just grass. What about all the detail work on clothing?

*

The Superfly preview is really bad. And as a "nice" preview is really important to me, that alone is a complete no-go.

My GPU is a Geforce 1650 GTX. That does not have RTX cores.

So probably no speed benefit for me, anyway.

*

Also, I have no "need" for a Photorealistic render, anyway.

The kind of semi-realistic "Poser-style" results I get are perfectly fine for me.

I'm all for faster render times.

But it doesn't look like the benefits outweigh the sacrifices.

*

But lets assume all those problems could magically be solved by upgrading to Poser 12.

And that all the Python scripts I use would be upgraded by some kind soul to Poser 12.

And I would find the time and energy to update / upgrade / convert all my Firefly optimized figures and scenes...

...all I'd have gained be a "better" render engine.

And Poser would still have no figures better or at least equal to G8.

*

Sorry, I upgraded Poser from Poser 4 Vanilla to Poser 11.

Without really high quality figures, I won't upgrade again.

Poser should NOT try to compete with all the other "high tech" 3D apps, optimized for photorealism.

The code is way too old for that.

*

It should instead re-focus on it's original target group: Hobbyists that just want to render pretty things.

Here are it's strenghts.

Build on them.

Don't try to emulate something you aren't.

Give your customers beautiful figures that can be adapted to any need with a single dial spin.

Or modified with simple tools that even a casual user can understand and afford.

Stay low tech, but add depth to your range.

Poser should NOT try to compete with all the other "high tech" 3D apps, optimized for photorealism.

That is nothing more than your opinion. Seriously, that is no different than anyone else either, it is just an opinion.

Poser has been and continues to be a program to pose characters in on a computer screen versus having a mannequin on your desk.

That was the original target group and the original intent of the program when Larry wrote Poser 1.

It has grown massively to the point of being more than capable of photo realism, animation, lip sync, etc, etc, etc.

People have posted renders using firefly that are so good it looks real, same with Superfly.

No Poser does not come with all the content for 100% realism, and no other program I have does either. 

Some programs have better content, some have far better tools to create help you create your own custom rigged character.

All of them have different strengths and weaknesses.

And if you think Poser is trying to compete with the big boys, I have news for you, they never have and probably never will.

I have two older versions of Houdini, a few really nice plugins for each, etc. Houdini is basically the pinnacle of making realism. And it came with zero content....

You are no different than a lot of people. Other than you constantly complain about what Poser is not, and what it should be in your world.

If G8 is everything a program needs character wise, Use G8 in Poser. No one is stopping you from doing so. And plugins were given away to the community to do so.

I use Genesis and Poser figures in multiple programs, there is no reason anyone else can't either.

I have worked on many Poser figures, far more than you probably realize. And you have been critical and complained about every one of them repeatedly.

So much so, that people that did the same thing literally stopped entire groups of people from creating content. Yet you blame them for things falling apart.

That is irony at it's best right there..... 

It is your turn to make the next best Poser figure, you are obviously an expert at it since you tear everyone else's to pieces.

I challenge you to make the next Poser figure, and not have it ripped to pieces by people. Go ahead, I will wait...

Is there a repository of successfully converted scripts anywhere?

Not that I know of.

I stand behind every word I ever wrote about any mediocre Poser (and DAZ!) figure in the past.

And I think the state the marketplace is in vindicates me completely.

I'm not a G8 "fan". NOT AT ALL. She just happen to s*ck less than the alternatives.

*

None of the "Vicky killers" I've seen in the past were any good.

Or at least good enough to fill the void that the loss of Vicky created.

Unless you actually think that it was my(?) critizism that prevented any of those figures from becoming a success.

I'm flatterened that you think I'm THAT powerful/influental/whatever, but I think it were rather the aesthetical / technical aspects of those figures that prevented their widespread acceptance by the community.

No, I won't help Bondware out of this mess.

(At least not for free. HeHe)

*

But I happily give you my formula for a "perfect" Poser figure:

1. Scan a beautiful woman. (And a man, and some kids, and whatever else you want to add to the Poser family)

2. Scan her in various poses, too.

3. Re-topo that first scan. Forget about that stupid "All quads, only" paradigma and "HI-Res" morphs and use edgelooping instead to bring out the muscular and bone detail.

Just like Michael 1/2 did, but double the polygon count and the edgelooping so there is even more detail available.

The figure should be able to go from "totally ripped" to "Zombie" by just turning a dial.

4. Keep the UV mapping simple, so that everyone can modify textures who has a simple 2D paint software like Gimp.

5. Keep the rigging simple. I prefer additional buttock actors, but they are not a must have. No face chip rigging or "ghost bones" or whatever clever trick that has been used in the past. All those gimmicks will make modifications harder and the cr2 more suspectible to break in the worst moment.

The simplicity of the 2nd and 3rd Gen DAZ figures is pretty much my ideal, but I prefer "integrated" genital actors.

So actually Don & Judy are even better.

*

Use bulge maps before you even think of adding a JCM.  It takes maybe longer but it is worth it.

Use the "posed" scans I mentioned above to create realistic joints and skin deformations.

If the mesh deformes exactly as the actual human does, the joints are correct.

NOW you can use JCMs to get that last ounce of realism.

*

Do not add to or modify the default scanned shape "for artistic reasons" or because you want to make the final product "your own".

That can all be done later with morphs.

The default state of that figure should be that of a realistic human being. A beautiful one, of course, but realistic.

So that even those who can't sculpt can have a believeable, realistic human being out of the box.

*

Add lots of morphs. Preferrably based on scans of real people, too.

The more versatile the figures are, the more people will use them.

There should be room for professional ZBrush market place sculpts AND freebie dial spins.

*

Don't be afraid of Hi-Res meshes. Around 70K is ideal for the hero mesh, give or take a bit. This will allow sharp muscle definition without subdivision. Additional detail can then be added then with a Bump / Displacement map.

(I'm not completely against subdivision. But it is no magic wand to cover up problems)

A low res (20K) and super-low res (5K) version for background / clothed use would be very welcome.

I found the various M4/V4 "LOD" meshes to be extremely useful.

*

So, yeah, basically my favorite option would be to license the DAZ Michael I / Stephanie I mesh from DAZ, double their edge looping, "vacuform" them over an actual 3D scan and create a native weighmap rig for Poser.

As Michael 2 was derived from the P4 Dork (Which originally was made by Zygote), and P5 Don was also derived from the P4 Dork, too, maybe it's even possible to turn P5 Don into that "miracle figure" I envision?

Not to mention that P5 Don features the same mapping as Michael 1/2 (As DAZ failed to copyright the mapping), so that would give a P5 Don derived figure access to a ton of M2/V2/V3/M3/V4/M4 textures.

*

Of course one can build a figure completely from scratch, too.

Just don't try to re-invent the wheel and bee "too clever" for your own good.

Stick to what has turned out to be successful over the years.

The goal is to give hobyist users a versatile, robust and "easy access" figure.

*

Probably won't happen anyway.

As I said, I'm good. I have everything I need.

And I will "Poser on" exactly the way I see fit.

*

I'd be really happy to be proven wrong and Poser would one day become again "The premiere rendering and animation tool" it once was even without a set of new figures.

*

But I somehow doubt that.

Even CPU rendering in P12 superfly is light years faster than it was in P11. I have an ancient GTX 970 that has never been able to handle Poser rendering (never figured out why) so I just use CPU, which currently is a ryzen 7 3700x and 32gb of ram. Renders that took over an hour in P11 are done in 10 minutes or less in P12 and look far better.

I'd love one of the fancy RTX cards but thanks to all the bit miners and nft'ers a new gpu would cost me more than what I spent building my entire system.

My findings.

It is true that POSER is an excellent software that integrates many features.

However, it is also true that POSER lags behind its competitors in terms of individual features.

Even at my garment manufacturing site, POSER is not able to transfer all JCMs automatically and perfectly. With POSER's current complex JCMs, it is very difficult to create beautifully deforming garments. Therefore, it is easier to choose Clothe simulation. However, Clothes Room & Bullet Physics has also been in a state of limbo for many years. Currently, MARVELOUS DESIGNER in Korea is on the cutting edge, and POSER is not even close to being on its feet.

I don't expect it to go that far, but I would like to see it evolve to be more intuitive and usable by everyone.

They discontinued FaceRoom, I'm not saying it should become FaceShop, but if they claim to be a comprehensive software, please don't give up on creating facial shapes and textures even if you have an external modeler.

Animator has not improved its bugs and is being left behind by other companies.

Morphing brushes remain stagnant with no change in the number, type, or accuracy of brushes and no plug-ins to add brushes.

Superfly's rendering is a bit unrealistic. The colors are somewhat cartoonish, and the atmosphere is not clear, even when set with exposure and gamma.

The DAZ figure is covered in spawn, while the POSER figure is still slippery.

And so on.

I was around when POSER was acquired by a Japanese company (from POSER4 to POSER7).

I have been using POSER since POSER4 and have distributed many of my works for free on Japanese blogs (I also distributed two robot figures on Renderosity).

In Japan, there used to be many POSER communities, but now there is none.

Many POSER blogs have also become DAZ blogs.

This is the sad reality of POSER in Japan, which used to flourish so much.

POSER 11 was not a success, but at least up to 11, new features were added.

In 12, however, features have been removed, but no new features have been added.

Of course, figures are important.

We are waiting for beautiful figures that we want to use.

Now we are approaching a world where AI can generate and animate 3DCG from a few 2D images in real time with a single click.

nvidia's AI 3DCG program is also impressive.

Do a search for AI 3DCG.

I'm now hooked on AI programs. There is a whole new world opening up for all AI applications.

I currently have POSER 12.7.5.7, but the new PC I purchased in December does not have POSER installed.

I have not touched POSER for at least 6 months.

It does not have to be free. Please create a new POSER that will be exciting for everyone, users who have enjoyed and used POSER in the past, and will want to use it.

I want to be excited again too.

Please, please, please.

@Ambientshade:

Poser 11 already "broke" my figures with it's stupid introduction of "MasterSynched". One of these Gimmick features that sound good on paper, but did more worse than good.

The result was that I actually didn't use Poser 11 for over a year, until I found a way to pinpoint the problem and find a solution.

Poser 11 also messed up my "Poser native" Genesis I figures and broke my V2Lo figure!

So I'm very skeptical about what Poser 12 might do to my custom figures and my general workflow.

*

But be that as it may...

The main Python scripts I currently use are "MagnetMirror" and "MorphMirror2"

These are the two "must haves" for my sculpting work.

Provided someone would be willing to update them for Poser 12 ...

(I can buy something from his/her wishlist or send him some stuff I made in Wings like the Fokker triple-decker I rendered in a previous post. Or a "scale model" version of the USS Enterprise. Or some authentic 1950's Ray-Ban sunglasses for the various Poser girls)

...THEN I'd give Poser 12 a try.

*

I just hope it won't mess up my machine or any previous installation of Poser (Poser 11 and PP 2014 currently), if I need to unistall it later because it again broke something that previously worked fine.

(Or if there is no noticeable performance gain)

*

But I'll risk that, so noone can say I'm stubborn.

But these two Python scripts I need updated, because I won't switch constantly between Poser installations just to use a simple script.

Or go back to manually mirroring magnets by writing down their data on a piece of paper.

*

@Joe:

I'm not sure what your workflow is but I know there is a mirror feature built into the morph brush. I seldom ever use Poser's morph brush (zbrush has spoiled me I guess), but on the occasions that I have I can't really recall having a problem with its mirroring features. I do use it to split my zb morphs and that has always seemed to work well for me too.

I thought there was a built-in way to mirror magnets, but that's another feature I rarely have a use for so I haven't looked into it that far.

I generally have never needed to use many python scripts in all my years of Poser'ing so I can't really comment much on it being such a deal-breaker. I can understand the frustration tho for folks who have favorite scripts that no longer work in P12 and haven't been updated or replaced due to the original creators moving on, or in some cases passing on. (I do have a dire need for one script currently that I can't seem to find an equivalent of and for some reason have never been able to adequately explain it to anyone that understand python. I'm highly tempted to figure out how to write it myself as it should be fairly straight forward and simple to accomplish. Maybe I should dig into learning Poser's python).

Maybe its different for folks using a mac, but I have P11 and P12 installed on the same drive on my PC and both seem pretty stable. I haven't run into any issues with one corrupting or causing problems with the other, and the same runtimes are loaded into both. I rarely need to open P11 anymore but sometimes I do just to check certain things. I do have one script that requires P11 but I use it so rarely it's not even an issue for me to boot up P11 for the few minutes it takes to use the script, save the work and load it back into P12. And I mean rarely, like maybe once every few months if that.

P12 has a 21 day trial you can download from posersoftware.com. That could help solve some of these debates and give you a better understanding of the improvements its made over P11. At least then you could argue your disagreements from a foundation of having tested them out first-hand. And I don't mean that as an attack on anything you've said, I can agree with much of it, at least in terms of what Poser's figures need, and I've always admired your work as a character artist and the things you've done with the older figures. It would have been ideal if Poser had created its own set of in-house figures years ago and stuck with them to evolve along side Poser's evolution and not depended so heavily on a 3rd party source. But that didn't happen, so here we are.

The problem is that many Poser figures are not perfectly symmetrical. Also the mirror functionality of the morphbush is not quite perfect.

So while I do a lot of morphbrush work, errors will add up. (Sometimes that's actually good, as the human body, including the face, is never perfectly symmetrical)

But a non symmetrical sculpt makes rigging very hard. Weightmapping is quite unforgiving compared to spherical falloff zones.

Magnets are a much "safer" way to mirror a morph, so I still use them frequently.

I do a lot of figure "hacking", using morphs and shapes from various sources, so I need reliable tools.

So without at least these two scripts available, I'd have to constantly switch between Poser 11 to Poser 12, and that will get old really fast.

*

I'm on a PC, and I experienced in the past that new installations of Poser happily "take previous settings" hostage and overwrite them or destroy things that previously worked fine.

Even after a complete uninstall some problems were persistant.

It's a lot of work "settling" in a new installation of Poser. I have literally thousands of runtimes scattered over several drives, to keep my Poser library at least halfway organized. I never was a friend of just dumping everything in one big runtime and just rely on the Poser search engine.

To make a new installation work, I have to manually install at least 50+ runtimes, as automated install won't work.

I also have to edit the preferences to get rid of many of the annoyances of Poser's default state.

So it's not just "Download and run". It takes about a day before everything is where I need it to be.

IF Poser doesn't throw me a curveball like Poser 11 did with the "MasterSynched" nonsense.

I use the pose dots to automatically activate full body JCM correction morphs alongside a certain pose.

(If we had more or "programmable" pose dots in Poser, that would be a great way to simplify posing, BTW)

But with Mastersynch activated, the pose dots suddenly stopped memorizing those full body JCMs.

This made Poser 11 completely unusable for me.

So it sat dormant for over a year on my old laptop.

Then the switch happened between SM and Bondware.

When I got my new laptop, I tried to re-install Poser 11, but that hairbrained "phone-home" snooping software demanded that I log in with my original serial #.

Which I couldn't retrieve from my old laptop.

So in the end I bought Poser 11 TWICE, one time from SmithMicro, one time from Bondware.

Still took me a while to solve my "MasterSynch" problem and get my pose dots to work properly again.

Then Poser 11 broke Genesis and V2LO. I could fix both, but it was a lot of work.

So, sorry if I'm a little reluctant jumping on the Poser 12 bandwagon.

Fool me once ...  ;-)

*

Anyway, thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated.

Yeah, it would be much better if we could talk about the latest "Posette 2022" and "Dork 10+" products in the marketplace instead of having conversations like this.

prixat posted at 6:52 AM Fri, 10 June 2022 - #4439788

Is there a repository of successfully converted scripts anywhere?

And in my case, I've started to do the same as a few others: I'm writing my own tools

The script(s) in question or Ockham's and they basically just need converted from Tkinter to wx. http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/

Without photorealistic figures, photorealistic rendering makes no sense.

Sorry for coming back to this, I just wanted to comment on a thing... So according to this idea, then it makes no sense that Disney went from this level of 3d quality

to this?

What a waste of time, huh? Just because the characters are cartoonish and not photorealistic, it's useless that they've developed real light simulation rendering, realistic fabric flow, realistic hair movements, realistic reflections, oh Disney Pixar has been wasting their time and resources all these years with 3d quality enhancements because only photorealistic characters can make use of that! It makes no sense!

(In case it's not clear, this post contains high levels of sarcasm.)

I just read through the rest of the replies and let me see if I get this straight.

Poser should stop all advancements, all new things, to cater to Joe, who has repeatedly made it clear he will NOT purchase new versions of Poser because he's stuck with old Python version! Look at this EXCELLENT business decision: get your program stuck in time to cater to this one single Joe Doe - I'm sorry, JoePublic - who will not spend more money on the software! BRILLIANT!

Ahem, my apologies, my sarcasm is leaking today. /endrant

@MNE: Face Room was removed because it required a load of work to support EACH figure. You can do better, more freely, on ANYTHING, using the Morph Brush tools - and I'm still baffled that so few people use it. I use it all the damn time, from effects to fixing pokethrough to making actual morph shapes.

And Poser was left stagnant yes, and that's what Bondware is trying to fix. They got years of dust to clean up, with a very small staff number.

Actually, I find this modernistic "cartoon characters in a photorealistic environment" style quite unnerving.

No, I don't like it.  Sorry.

It doesn't help the story nor is it especially nice to look at.

It's just a another marketing gimmick to lure movie goers into the cinema.

But then, I also really don't like the new CGI that was created for the 1960's Star Trek TV show, replacing the old special effects:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8plObJh5aM

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The only time cartoon + photorealism "works" is when actual humans interact with them in the real world, like in "Roger Rabbit"

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Besides:

La Femme is not a toon.

A good toon character is not just a figure that aimed at photorealism, but failed.

It is something else.

(And, yes, I've seen the new toon character based on La Femme. Not my cup of tea, as I rather stay with the original GIRL.

But at least she's prettier than the original.)

*

Doesn't mean we can't have nice light or pleasant looking skin or so in toon renders.

But still, full on photorealism with "not quite" photorealistic characters is indeed a waste of time in my opinion.

And it makes the problems of the characters stick out even more.

Whereas I'm way more ready to forgive typical Poser figure shortcomings when the whole render says:

"I'm a Poser render, I am what I am and I don't pretend to be anything more"

*

But do whatever you like in Poser.

 These are YOUR renders, and I don't have to like them.

Just as noone has to like mine. (Besides myself. At least sometimes. Lol)

*

But I still reserve the right to call out poor craftsmanship when I see it.

Especially when people want me to pay real $$$ for it.

:-)

Actually, I find this modernistic "cartoon characters in a photorealistic environment" style quite unnerving.

No, I don't like it.  Sorry.

Then go back to Poser 4 and stop bothering people who want more modern things, grandpa.

Edit to add: you don't need to lecture me on what a good toon character is.

edit again: I may have sounded way more accusing/insulting that I meant to. Sorry. I was trying to be playful, not to insult.

@Afrodite-Ohki:

No, Poser should not cater to me.

I have enough figures and stuff to keep me occupied for quite some time.

Right now I'm contemplating weightmapping the P4 Dork.

And perhaps P5 Don, too, now that I fixed his muscle morphs.

Maybe revisit NEAena.

Still have to finish weightmapping Hiro 3, though.

So many toys. So much fun.

*

But Poser should finally cater to all those who left Poser in order to play with G8.

Instead of all those who are hypnotized by every little move "THE PROS" make.

People left Poser to play with G8 because Poser was left stagnant, then content creators got annoyed and jumped ship, and buyers folowed + too many people loyal to Daz figures went to DS because the newer Daz figures wouldn't work in Poser.

I can GARANTEE you that they did NOT leave Poser because it deviated from its roots or whatever. (And if what makes DS successful over Poser is, according to you, not trying to be like "the pros", then why are sites like Artstation - where the world's most pro pros post their stuff - full of DS ads?)

Anyway, those sound like nice projects, considering what you seem to like the most in Poser. Have fun!

To tell the truth. and I know it won;t be popular, but I've proposed this since the first Poser 12 release. The next up grade should be radical, drop everything not current. Yes the face room, firefly and bring the interface into a modern program look for the 21st century not a kid's program. Drop the rooms design and incorporate a realistic way to open the various sub programs into the main screen. Oh and let's not for get to strip out everything BUT weight mapping.

For those that don;t like the idea well sorry this IS the 21st century and it's time to move on. just losing the "weight" of all that code should significantly speed up Poser and rendering.

To tell the truth. and I know it won;t be popular, but I've proposed this since the first Poser 12 release. The next up grade should be radical, drop everything not current. Yes the face room, firefly and bring the interface into a modern program look for the 21st century not a kid's program. Drop the rooms design and incorporate a realistic way to open the various sub programs into the main screen. Oh and let's not for get to strip out everything BUT weight mapping.

For those that don;t like the idea well sorry this IS the 21st century and it's time to move on. just losing the "weight" of all that code should significantly speed up Poser and rendering.

"What are the fastest ways to kill Poser? For $200, Alex"

I am saddened that POSER, which I once grew up with in Japan, is disappearing in Japan.

AIKO,HIRO,MIKI1&2,TeraiYuki1&2, AnimeDoll, NearMe, ChibiBel, kururu, etc. were born in Japan and in Japan Many more minor figures were born in Japan.

And most of those authors are now working in DAZ.

I got into POSER back in the day when 3DCG was not so common, rendering realistic humans at that time, and evolving with new technologies.

Japan is an animation powerhouse. Today in Japan, the toon character is not desired in POSER, and the POSER toon character is not appealing to the Japanese.

In the past, the toon character was also favored in POSER, but now Japan has MikuMikuDance.

It is very easy to create, install and animate a toon character. There are many motion files available, and you can showcase your character on the MikuMikuDance channel on the Net.

If you want to play with toon characters on a personal level, MikuMikuDance is all you need.

In Japan today, 3DCG modeling is being done by AI and broadcast on TV with a quality that is as good as that of the celebrity himself/herself.

Even if we can't match this, we want to create as realistic CG as possible on a personal level. This is the true desire of POSER and DAZ users in Japan.

Therefore, the revival of POSER in Japan requires more beautiful characters and more realistic rendering than DAZ.

I am sorry, this is a very difficult request.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

JoePublic posted at 6:32 PM Fri, 10 June 2022 - #4439817

But I still reserve the right to call out poor craftsmanship when I see it.

Especially when people want me to pay real $$$ for it.

:-)

Just so you know.... And just so you know that I know.... And just so everyone else knows.....

Every figure that ever came with Poser from P9 back was weight mapped. Every one of them....

How do I know that? I did work on most of them, checked all of them over for errors, assigned people to teams, etc.

I still have every one of them in my Runtimes... Imagine that.... Lots of stuff was posted about it forums, but you were not in those forums, they were not public... 

I was an Administrator at Poser Place and a leader of the weight mapping and programming teams. I don't recall you being there.....

Those figures were not publicly released, because of a few issues that you probably know nothing about, and full well knowing people would just cut them to pieces.

How did we know that? We released two that got cut to ribbons, repeatedly, even by you. Years after Antonia was released you were still dissing it... Same with V4 WM...

You also posted in this very forum, that you had discussions with people weight mapping Antonia, V4, and the other figures.

Phantom3D was not the only person weight mapping the figures. Cage was not the only person working on the scripts.

You were not there, and have no clue who was on what team.... 

Yet you repeatedly claimed that you did know, talked to the crew about it, warned them about whatever, etc.

It was like you wanted everyone in the forums to think you were apart of it....

I have one of those posts up right now in another tab, and it is pathetic.... Complete BS....

You cut up every figure and the people that created it that you could cram into it, in the same dam post, on top of claims that are not the case....

Poser should not cater to the people that already left. That would kill the program for sure.

I have no clue how you can come up with logic like that, I really don't.

It is even worse when you make claims with people participating in the same thread that know for a fact your were not there, know nothing about it, and or misleading people.

Now with that out of the way, tell everyone about the version of Antonia that was done later at RuntimeDNA that you had absolutely nothing to do with either.

I know where those posts are as well..................................................

MNE posted at 11:06 AM Fri, 10 June 2022 - #4439805

POSER 11 was not a success, but at least up to 11, new features were added.

In 12, however, features have been removed, but no new features have been added.

But I was surprised to find just how great PrincipledBSDF is. That made Cycles really accessible, and is very easy to build on. New feature that I never would have upgraded for, and now I use it all the time.

Post effects and the Intel denoise feature have been pretty useful for me too. New feature.

Replacing all instances of a image map across all materials is a pretty helpful new feature. I have not really made any use of the new drag-and-drop functionality there though.

Those are the ones that matter to my workflow. There is still a lot of functionality I have not been able to dedicate the time to learn yet (including old functionality, e.g. fitting room).

@shvrdavid:

Almost all my rigging work is public. Feel free to "cut it apart".

(I just ask you don't do this out of sheer malice, but because you actually want better figures)

If you read the included ReadMe's, I actully ASK for people to modify / improve my rigs as they see fit and re-distribute them.

They can even have all the credit they want, as long as they also include my original ReadMe.

*

But, honestly, I don't give a rat's a** how many private little clubs you've been part of.

I don't care about all that "social" stuff.

All I care about is the final result.

*

So far there are three weightmapped V4's out there:

Aery Soul / As Shamin's (No official release)

Phantom3D's

My V4-17K

Guess which is the one who's butt does not explode?

Honestly, your whining and attacks get a little tiresome.

There are no parcitipation trophys in CGI.

Respect has to be earned and can't be demanded.

If you or your "secret" friends can't deliver the goods, don't complain to those who are willing to do.

If you think my criticism is harsh, try building prototypes for scale models.

Or mingle with the real CGI pros.

*

I'm a rank amateur, just tinkering around in Poser, trying to fill a void many people are obviously unwilling to fill.

I'd be more than happy if a real professional would come along, offering me some truly realistically sculpted and rigged Poser figures to buy, so I'd never have to touch that da*n joint editor again.

*

But this actually hasn't happened yet, so I think I have to keep going on.

*

And now you will excuse me.

I've more productive things to do than listening to you whine that none of your little toys was good enough to replace Vicky.

Yep, that's the original one.

Her mesh design is still riduluosly bad, but her sculpting and expressions are so heartbreakingly good, that I thought she'd deserved a couple of hours of my attention.

And yes, Poser dumbed her down when they released the 2.0 version of her.

And Sydnyeyey was a complete travesty.

Whoever greenlit that abomination must truly hate Poser.

I never tried to replace Vicky, that is what you have claimed for years about everyone else thou....

I have designed plenty of scale models. More of your assumptions.

I am very proficient at Solidworks and I can also write the ladder logic to control it.

I don't have any comment about your rigging, never did either. And you can go back and check that as well if you like....

My main point was that you treat everyone like crap that contributes anything to Poser that you don't like.

You cut everyone down for anything they do for the community simply because it is not up to your standards.

You make assumptions about things you know nothing about, then repeat it like gospel for years..

You mock the owners and devs of programs decisions, figures, content, etc, etc, etc. Even on their own forums.

You think my attacks are tiresome? The vast majority of your posts are nothing but attacks and mockery.

I am sure it is perfectly acceptable for you to do it in your own mind, and then cry wolf when someone points it out to you. You just did.....

Rendo obviously doesn't care that all you do is launch personal attacks. Even at them no less, on their forum no less...

As soon as anyone says anything about you doing this, you grip and threaten to take your toys and go.

Your excused... Go pout now.

Unfreaken believable.....