Ok a bit of contraversey a few months back-but still no updates really

?

https://www.posersoftware.com/article/553/poser-update-may-25-2022

"The last public release of Poser was 12.0.757 on November 30, 2021.

While the team did take a break over the winter holidays, work on Poser has since continued with updates to underlying libraries, improved Python build processes and a series of software improvements that have been released to the beta testing team.

On the Mac front, updates to the wxWidgets and wxPython libraries have enabled a long overdue update to the latest graphics APIs.

These updates along with new features such as enhanced support for material layers, research on CyclesX/Embree and research into new Post FX functions based on bgfx are in the pipeline.

One area that has not progressed as intended is native support of unimesh figures inside Poser.  Simply stated, this is a daunting task that touches almost every aspect of of the Poser code base.  Our resolve to move forward on this front is directly related to the recent job postings seeking to add capacity to the Poser dev team.

We hope to announce another public release of Poser in mid-summer 2022."

Bit like the hydra-headed water damage to my kitchen: Each repair seemed to reveal two more problems requiring non-trivial fixes costing time, money and/or ingenuity...

I won, but the hardest part was doing it right, getting it 'future resistant'...

Long ago, far away, I crafted lab & utility programs in 6502 Assembler and a bunch of BASIC dialects. Coding was easy, but clean coding was an order of magnitude harder. Worse if you were stuck with a snarl of badly maintained legacy stuff. Happens I'd the patience to comb out 'spaghetti', the wit to build in lots of flexibility...

I'm still on P_11. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to see in P_12 that probably won't arrive until P_14~~15. FWIW, there are bugs in my P_11's UI that I remember from P_4 !!

IMHO, Bondware / Rendo have a battle on their hands. There's so much catch-up & clean-up from the Smith Micro era, so many changes needed to support the new versions of Cycles & Python, all while sorta keeping up with several well-known 'game engines'.

Top of my wish-list are gas-gauge / trash collection, better handling of complex models, much more robust rigged FBX import and, perhaps, easy import of other rigged formats such as XPS and PMX. Comprehensible 'Cycles' would be nice: Is there a cross-platform 'For Dummies' in the house ?? My understanding is that the further future of Poser is critically dependent on getting unimesh working right. Right, mind. Which, in turn, requires lovingly marrying two very, very different rigging systems such that they 'play well' together. And, with that, importing other formats becomes so much easier...

YMMV.

Someone please clue me up...

Why would I need Unimesh rigging so urgently?

Will it allow me to load G8 natively in Poser?

Thanks.

The reason I have been given is that it will make it easier for a poser figure to be used in other software.  To a small degree that makes sense in that the border between body parts would only be one vertex instead of two identical (or very close) vertexes.  That way you could take a morphed figure it into say Blender and make more detailed changes and be able to use that model as a morph target that has the correct vertex order.  Problem with that is the Ken1171's script Uni-mesh exporter for P12 does that so makes it a moot point.  Another is that rendering would be better as there would be no seam breaking apart between body parts.  Although in that case it would be a matter of simply welding the parts together to send to the render engine since it makes no difference if you lose the exact vertex order as it is meant to be tossed after the render.  The third case would be Posers Morph brush would not hiccup on pairs of vertexes between two body parts.  Again there is a work around although a bit more complex.

To get G-8 into Poser is still going to require a File Translation program since DS encodes its object files in its own specific format.  And once there then you would need to use the same algorithms to move the resulting vertexes around.  That is something that is highly un-likely to happen as DS code is not available for public use.  

https://www.posersoftware.com/article/553/poser-update-may-25-2022

We hope to announce another public release of Poser in mid-summer 2022."

Bit like the hydra-headed water damage to my kitchen: Each repair seemed to reveal two more problems requiring non-trivial fixes costing time, money and/or ingenuity...

I won, but the hardest part was doing it right, getting it 'future resistant'...

Long ago, far away, I crafted lab & utility programs in 6502 Assembler and a bunch of BASIC dialects. Coding was easy, but clean coding was an order of magnitude harder. Worse if you were stuck with a snarl of badly maintained legacy stuff. Happens I'd the patience to comb out 'spaghetti', the wit to build in lots of flexibility...

I'm still on P_11. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to see in P_12 that probably won't arrive until P_14~~15. FWIW, there are bugs in my P_11's UI that I remember from P_4 !!

IMHO, Bondware / Rendo have a battle on their hands. There's so much catch-up & clean-up from the Smith Micro era, so many changes needed to support the new versions of Cycles & Python, all while sorta keeping up with several well-known 'game engines'.

Top of my wish-list are gas-gauge / trash collection, better handling of complex models, much more robust rigged FBX import and, perhaps, easy import of other rigged formats such as XPS and PMX. Comprehensible 'Cycles' would be nice: Is there a cross-platform 'For Dummies' in the house ?? My understanding is that the further future of Poser is critically dependent on getting unimesh working right. Right, mind. Which, in turn, requires lovingly marrying two very, very different rigging systems such that they 'play well' together. And, with that, importing other formats becomes so much easier...

YMMV.

I thank you for the reply, Richard60. Much appreciated.

*

Well, I just finished weightmapping Michael 2 and he's now able to tie himself into a knot without breaking or bodyparts exploding, just like my other weightmaps.

While I was at it I "re-discovered" D.P.Hoadley's remapped M2 in my runtime, and used it to build a "M3RR head on M2 body" hybrid that can natively take M3 textures overall.

And right now I'm trying to upgrade Poser 5 Don to make him a little bit easier on the eyes.

All this took a lot of hackin' and slashin' and mesh manipulatin' and cr2 editing and morphbrushing and magnet-morphing and none of these ancient meshes were ever welded or "Blender friendly" or "all-quads" or whatever else.

(The morphbrush / weightmapping brush works across bodyparts just fine for a couple of years now)

*

So, if the "endgame" isn't full G8 compatibility, to be honest, I don't really see the point in spending so many man-hours to implement this new functionality.

Yes, smoothing Poser meshes in ZBrush (and perhaps blender) caused the seams to split open, but there were easy workarounds.

And since the Morphbrush has gotten so good, I don't even bother with ZBrush anymore.

And if you really, really want high res, elaborate ZBrush / Blender sculpts in Poser, you need to subdivide maybe 3 or 4 times at least to get enough polygons.

Which will massively slow down Poser.

*

I'd say they should rather start from scratch and just keep the name "Poser" for whatever brand recognition there is left.

Maybe build a web-app or a smartphone app to "create your own avatar" or something like this.

And release "classic Poser" into the wild so that maybe a few enthusiasts can pick it up and fix bugs and maybe add functionality that is really needed. (Like instancing)

*

Anyway, there are still tons of ancient meshes in my runtimes waiting for a little TLC, so I'm going to have have fun with my obsolete tools for the forseable future, whatever happens with Poser or not.

Stone-knives and bearskins, I guess...  ;-)

Happy 4th of July.

:-)

The reason I have been given is that it will make it easier for a poser figure to be used in other software.

And that will go a long way to putting Poser back on the map. The walled garden approach is not a recipe for success in a modern 3D software environment. Content has to be portable without a lot of fuss, in order to maximize its user base.

And if you really, really want high res, elaborate ZBrush / Blender sculpts in Poser, you need to subdivide maybe 3 or 4 times at least to get enough polygons.

Which will massively slow down Poser.

It doesn't slow down that much if you have a decent amount of system ram. Off the shelf PCs from the big box stores are all 32gb standard these days. Sometimes higher than that even.

Also, there are 2 sliders, one for preview, one for render. There's no real reason to navigate the scene at a high preview level unless you're only rendering preview images. So you can have HD morphs at render time and not worry so much about your viewport/navigation slowing down. Keeping the preview at a lower resolution still allows a general representation of the HD morph at lower subD levels because the morph is still moving the base mesh where it can.

And also, I've made full body vein and wrinkle maps as HD morphs in zbrush without the mesh splitting apart just to see if I could. P12 handles subD much better I think than P11 does. There is still that random spiking at the seams bug sometimes, which full unimesh implementation would eliminate.

@AmbientShade:

While weightmapping M2 I made a little experiment. I subdivided M2Lo twice and then Morphbrushed the better detailed FBM musclemorph of M2 onto him.

So I then had two meshes with almost identical appearance:

M2 using edgeloops to create body detail and M2Lo + a HiRes morph.

Turns out that:

The M2Lo HiRes morph was still "softer" than the M2 "edgelooped" one.

The M2 Lo HiRes morph took noticebly longer to render than the M2 "edgelooped" one.

The M2 "edgelooped" one showed up crisp and nice even in the preview, while of course the HiRes morph didn't show up at all.

(Because, yes, I of course switched off subdivision in preview)

Still, Poser has to to store and process that HiRes morph data somewhere.

*

In the end, the properly edgelooped M2 came out superior in every way.

BTW, I'm having 32GB ram on my Nitro 5 Laptop. And an i7 chip.

But I still don't like wasting these resources if I don't absolutely have to.

I think Poser thrived exactly because it was a "walled garden".

Because it allowed hobbyists to work at their own pace, shielded from the "dog eat dog" mentality of professional CGI.

And it still managed to earn a living for quite a few people.

:-)

At one time it did thrive, to an extent, but that was a time when there weren't nearly as many other options and the overall 3D hobbyist/freelance user base (and content artists in general) was much smaller to begin with. DS, iClone, Blender, none of those existed, and UE4, Unity, etc., weren't free for everyone to use. There weren't 100+ other content stores out there, and the ones that did exist were usually targeted at professional artists with steep price tags. Maya and 3DS didn't have a $300 LT version for hobbyists and freelancers. Poser was unique in its market position at the time so it could do pretty much what it wanted, however it wanted, without too much regard for how the 'pro' software did things. That's not the case today. You look at those other apps today and what is the common denominator? Most of their content is virtually interchangeable with minimal effort, or their devs have built plug-ins to make their content compatible with the top platforms with minimal effort. Upgrading Poser's code to implement ways of making Poser's content more compatible with other software is only good for Poser, and its users, from hobbyists to content artists.

As a purely end user, I started only with Poser 7, so by many I am considered a whippersnapper in digital terms. However, I saw other programs come and evolve and the interchangeability is a big deal. Poser is  left behind in that regard; it was left languishing and semi-dead in SM's hands for a long time after the initial development. The source code, from what I understand from various discussions here and elsewhere, is essentially unchanged and needs to be rewritten to be able to handle 21st century technology. And that takes time.

I'm willing to wait (again, from a purely end-user viewpoint) in order to potentially be able to export and import to and from other applications which already provide cross-platform functionality. At the same time, I'm also eagerly awaiting material room stability improvements and...le gasp... more content that is not skimpyware. I look at what's available at that other site sometimes for those of us who like scifi and fantasy, and wonder how they can solve the 'fantasyware does not equal leather bikinis' conondrum so much better these days.

For the record: Without re-rigging, I can usually coax free Noesis into porting rigged figures from eg SFM 'Ragdolls' (MDL+VTF) and XNA/Lara ( .MESH.ASCII directly, re-exported if XPS or .MESH, plus any textures) and get an FBX that usually 'plays nice-ish' with Poser.

Upside, usually only one (1) or a few (<10) sub-rigs. First in list usually allows wary posing.

Downside, scaling may be wildly huge or tiny, YMMV. IIRC, P_12 has 'auto-scaling'. Plus, texture allocation may be wonky, due Poser 'diffuse' vs  specular / albedo etc... 

And, import may go horribly wrong, spawning ~20, ~30, even ~70 sub-rigs. IIRC, I once got ~130+: I sorta wept and, rather than wrangle via hierarchy,  just closed Poser.

As yet, even respecting TDA porting prohibition, I've found no simple way to get rigged figures out of MMD's PMX format. Yes, Blender can do it via a complete re-rig, but that's beyond my skills...

This guy with vaguely familiar face began as an SFM Clone Trooper by stefano96 on DA, went via Noesis to FBX. 300% import scale, 7 sub-rigs...

"Where am I ? What happened ??"

 I don't recall people being chased away because they offered to help. I remember people being told that copying models without permission is copyright violation.

Productive discussions on how to get Poser content working properly in Blender and other software has never been grounds for banning here. If that were true then Poser never would have attempted implementing FBX, Collada, etc. There are still several forum threads on the subject that are easily searchable.

Rhia474 posted at 12:56 PM Mon, 4 July 2022 - #4440712

 I don't recall people being chased away because they offered to help. I remember people being told that copying models without permission is copyright violation.

Would be interesting to know if one of you would have the skill to figure out what  NikKelly proposed, would end up sharing it with a community that right away tell that copying models without permission is copyright violation. NikKelly just indirectly asked for a Bridge and not a model, so what he might do with it is up to him as end-user.

This is exactly the Problem that is preventing Poser and the community to evolve, blocking it's potential because some unskilled members think that they need to give Permission. Even if it is just a Import plugin that has nothing to do with the model it self.

Not a Model it is on how to bridge between the different 3D formats, this naturally needs visual 3D samples, I do not believe that any 3D samples were ever offered, the bridges were offered, the skills, so it is up to the end user what he will do with it not the one who offers the Program.

Productive discussions on how to get Poser content working properly in Blender and other software has never been grounds for banning here. If that were true then Poser never would have attempted implementing FBX, Collada, etc. There are still several forum threads on the subject that are easily searchable.

To understand it correctly what NikKelly is proposing to the community is to achieve is a possibility importing Ported models in a easy way or rigged models in Blender to poser keeping the quality 1:1 being able to pose these in Poser. (MDL+VTF) and XNA/Lara ( .MESH.ASCII directly, re-exported if XPS or .MESH, plus any textures) MMD's PMX oh and psk

Renders made with xps Articulated models in poser firefly

This sure should not be a big magic for all these professionals in here after over two decades of Poser experience.

I was able to completely weightmap ancient M2 in two days.

Using Poser's backwards stone knives and bearskin style tools.

I also rigged many objects I modelled myself from scratch for Poser.

*

So I doubt that a "one-click-import" of <ZENSORED> game assets is what decides over Poser's future.

I really think we're talking about two completely different demographics here.

Of course Poser users are not a monolithic block, but looking at the various marketplaces, I don't think it is such a stretch to say that the majority of them are not up-and-coming "hungry" future CGI artists that just couldn't afford a full seat of MAX or Maya in the past.

(The serious ones among them would simply use a <ZENSORED> copy of said programms, anyway. Because there is no bigger tarnish for your reputation in "THE SCENE" than being caught using Poser or it's assets in your original artwork)

But just elderldy woman (and some elderly men, of course) that like to play with a virtual Barbie doll. The same clientele that otherwise would take up a Bob Ross painting course.

These were the "lifeblood" of Poser by spending their disposable income for Vicky's newest gladrags.

*

Poser is for sickenly sweet fashion renders, often really afwul porn, kitschy folk art and maybe once in a while for telling a sincere story.

And there is nothing wrong with all that as long as it makes its users happy!

*

But trying to "elevate" Poser to be on par with its peers, to make it "respectable" and "cool", is killing it's spirit.

DAZ tried the same with Vicky, dreaming of making her the "Face of the Industry", by bringing her rigging and mesh design up to "modern standards", but eventually had to peddle back.

*

Poser's greatest asset was always that it was so accessible to everyone.

You could just literally use it to play virtual dress-up-dolly with store bought poses, light, scenes, hair, clothes and even characters that were just dial spins.

No need to learn a gazillion arcane shortcuts or to browse through layers upon layers of GUIs.

Just a few knobs and dials and a few rooms.

But you even never ever had to leave the pose room to make a nice render and post it to the gallery

*

But the more complicated you make it, the more sophisticated everything gets, ("Photoreal" shaders, uber-complicated rigging),

the less inviting Poser becomes.

As I mentioned above, I just made a hybrid figure using M3RR's head on top of a remapped M2's body.

This took me just a few hours as both M3RR and M2 are very solid and simple figures.

With a "modern" figure with all it's unnecessary complications like "face chips" or a gazillion of "helper bones", I wouldn't even know where to start.

And even If I'd do, the chance of something going wrong would be a lot greater.

*

So, I don't think that Poser is heading into the right direction.

It might "move forward", but it already left most of it's clientele behind.

But, hey, that's (thankfully) not my decision to make.

I'm happy as long as my PP 2014 and Poser 11 work, as long as I can build stuff in Wings and as long as I can tinker around with all those old and obsolete figures lingering around in my hundreds of runtime folders.

If nothing else, we sure had a good run.

I think the people you describe @JoePublic, are the ones who don't get the new versions no matter what, because they're happy with the basics. Thus, it's no market loss because they already are 'happy with what they got' and would buy nothing else as assets anyway. Those who'd like to have 21st century features for a price they can afford, the new generation of users, need the new tools and will get them if Renderosity provides. If not, they will go and use the Other Software, as simple as that.

Tons of franchises have been "re-imagined" in recent years to stay "fresh and relevant" for a new demography, kicking their old (and highly supportive) fandom into the curb.

It usually didn't end up well...

;-)

I was ready to buy upgrade to P_12, had a heap of store-points towards it, when a plumbing disaster in kitchen distracted me.

( Vermin damage to drain pipe within wall !! Ick. Documented over at DA...)

By the time the dust settled, the sealant foam hardened and the soused kitchen units were repaired, I'd had time to look at what P_12 offered.
Or, rather, did not...

I do not use Python macros, so the version change was not so bad. Losing the 'basic' material room would be a problem, as I seem unable to grok 'Cycles' beyond rudiments.
'Eye of Newt & Leg of Toad' !!
As I quipped above, is there a platform-independent 'Cycles for Dummies' in the house ??

"Um, let's see what the updates bring ?"

Six months along, I've now even more store-points waiting, enough for the thumb-drive, too. And I'm checking eg Amazon Books for a non-Blender 'Cycles' text....

You don't need to use the Cycles nodes to achieve PBR.  The Physical Surface root works perfectly fine in SuperFly and you can use free PBR materials and the recent tutorials published here to achieve excellent results. Seriously, why is everyone so hung up on Cycles when most of the newly published stuff uses Physical Surface and not Cycles?

JoePublic posted at 6:01 PM Mon, 4 July 2022 - #4440730

Tons of franchises have been "re-imagined" in recent years to stay "fresh and relevant" for a new demography, kicking their old (and highly supportive) fandom into the curb.

It usually didn't end up well...

;-)

If it takes them so long to implement it, one would think it must be more involved?

I also thought this new "unimesh" system is something completely different from the "old" unimesh system?

And as I explained above, the old(?) system combined with JCM's already grants me full control over a mesh' deformation, even with figures like M2 (or Dork, or Posette, or, or...) that were never designed for it.

Weightmapping + reverse defomation JCM's that I can create "on-the-fly" was a big step towards creating better figures.

I'm all for progress if it serves a purpose.

*

But I don't trust "Automatic rigging conversion" solutions.

V4 was designed for Studio, so to properly work in Poser, DAZ had to stuff dozends of magnets into her cr2, resulting in her being a massive resource drain.

Dawn was rigged in Studio and then just "auto-convert-exported" to work in Poser, resulting in her rigging in Poser to be extremely lackluster.

So I doubt that even with full Unimesh functunality implemented, the rigging of those imported figures will be more than basic.

And escuse me for being snarky for a second, but...

What current native Poser figure would someone want to export from Poser to use in another program, anyway?

They are so full of design flaws, I don't even want to use them in Poser itself. (Sorry, just my opinion)

Implementing a new technology takes time. And time is money.

And you can spend that money only once.

And as soon as a new technology is implemented, somone will raise his/her voice to get "rid of the old"

We lost the old line renderer, we lost Wardrobe Wizzard, Face Room, the simplified material room and 99% of the python scripts.

How soon that someone will claim that "Firefly" and "Sphere rigging" and even "old" weightmapping are just dead weight that weighs Poser down in it's glorious path into the future and need to go?

And of course there will be no money left for new, professionally desgned figures, because, well, we spent it all on implementing "NEW TECH".

I said it before:

Give me a set of well designed and properly edgelooped figures derived from actual human body scans.

Fix some of the more annoying bugs (And drop the spyware, pleeeze?)...

...and I'll happily pay you $500 for Poser 13!

Otherwise, I wish you good luck, but I'm out.

But all good things probably must come to an end.

I hated Capaldi and I think I haven't seen more than one and a half episodes of Whittaker.

I don't think I'll ever rewatch the last three Star Wars movies.

And it takes all my strenght watching "Strange New Worlds", which turnes out to be just as stomach turning as "Discovery" or "Picard" were.

It's sad, but I guess it is what it is.

I still have Eccleston and Tennant and Smith.

And the original triology.

And TOS and TNG and DS9. And even Enterprise and The Animated Series.

And I have PP 2014 and Poser 11.

And my trusty old 3rd Gen DAZ meshes. What else would I ever need?

:-)

From what I've read with my exchanges with the support team: the implementation of  the unimesh system is not easy as they don't want to break everything that already exists or it would result in a nonsense.

It is not constructive to constantly criticize, especially since it is not part of the standards of the person who criticizes, whoever that person may be. Bondware has choices to make, priorities to choose, and a so-long badly supported program to revive, that's a daunting task.

But it's on its way

From what I know all the features of Unimesh are already in Poser for quiet a while , I think that most users just do not know how to use these. Poser already offers a wide range of compatibility it is just not right in your face, like a little button. 

From what I know about  bridges it even enables cross compatibility between Poser and Daz Studio, and I am not talking about the en-bedded features like exporting as CR2, it is sure possible to use any Genesiss model in Poser just like all the other mentioned formats NickKelly mentioned without any restrictions. If you know about Cad Exchanger so you can imagine what I mean ( A communicating cross Platform ) able to send a Mesh from one application to another. I have to ask my self why asking for something that is already in Poser just because you do not see it or you are not aware of it , this naturally makes it very difficult for the ones who work on Poser to Improve it and sure might break something if you try adding something that is already there.

What I am trying to say is that Poser actually already got it all and it is working just fine, the thing that is missing is the experienced user that knows how to use it and may be some cross Platform. These type of Platforms were releases in masses at the time as little apps or Pythons. So actually my opinion would be the need of more skilled creators that could offer these and not a bunch of members that always try restricting there creativities, 

Poser members are way to fixed on the idea that Bondware needs to add features that already exist. Causing that there are not enough creative heads left that could offer these. I remember times of this Community when People worked together to figure out solutions not just rejecting them when they came from other places. 

It could be excused as most Poser communities Closed or gotten crushed by the big ones, but you can see what is left . You are no winner if you end up to be alone.  

Rhia474 posted at 4:57 PM Mon, 4 July 2022 - #4440727

I think the people you describe @JoePublic, are the ones who don't get the new versions no matter what, because they're happy with the basics. Thus, it's no market loss because they already are 'happy with what they got' and would buy nothing else as assets anyway. Those who'd like to have 21st century features for a price they can afford, the new generation of users, need the new tools and will get them if Renderosity provides. If not, they will go and use the Other Software, as simple as that.

It is not Firefly, Superfly or the Poser 4 render engine as you can make with all of them outstanding renders, it is not the Poser Crew that writes the codes, it is the artist that is just not capable anymore to use Poser.  People think I hit a button and get the cool result , but it is not the way it goes. So there is no reason at all blaming the Poser Crew.

The first step is to be made by the artist that sales the Product. If it is top notch, great Promos, then sure these who think they got em all would spend some buck on it, often they do not by the product they by the Art, the promo , they just want that great thing even if they do not have real use for it . If it looks like something made in 2004 well then there will never be allot of interest as Poser 4 could already do better then Poser 12

>>> I also thought this new "unimesh" system is something completely different from the "old" unimesh system?

DCArt posted at 5:51 AM Wed, 6 July 2022 - #4440807

>>> I also thought this new "unimesh" system is something completely different from the "old" unimesh system?

In a manner of speaking, yes. When you import a completely welded (aka "unimesh") OBJ into Poser and then convert it into a figure, Poser splits the mesh apart at the group boundaries. If you export that OBJ back OUT from Poser, you have one of two options. If you don't weld the mesh each of the body parts will become a separate OBJ, and trying to morph it in a third party program will be difficult because the group seams aren't welded and they will become separated. 

But let's say you tell Poser to weld the OBJ during export. It welds the OBJ together at the group boundaries, but for some odd reason leaves one set of the vertices still inside the OBJ, floating and connected to nothing. If you try to bring this OBJ into your sculpting software, each app handles these floating vertices differently. Some allow you to weld the vertices together by choice, others do it automatically. No matter which way, the end result is the same .... the vertex order of the OBJ file changes, and when you dial the resulting morph in Poser, it "explodes" and doesn't work as expected.

Geting the vertex order back so the morph works properly isn't always easy. Some apps have ways to fix it, others don't.  Where this becomes most problematic is, if you do a "copy morphs from" to copy morphs into clothing, and then want to export one of the morphs to clean it up in your modeling software. It ends up being three times more work than it needs to be. 

Back when Poser was first written, it broke the mesh into individual groups to make it easier on system resources. Now that computers are more powerful, Poser can be updated to work on the mesh as a whole. But there are years of code to dig through and update to make it happen. And as someone has already stated, the fixes go deep and touch almost every aspect of Poser.

As far as the FireFly vs SuperFly thing, I far prefer SuperFly because it has PBR (physically based rendering) capabilities. You can use something like Substance Painter or an equivalent to create PBR maps with metal-rough workflow. All of the magic is done with texture maps (usually a minimum of diffuse, normal, and roughness, but also transparencies, metallic, emission, and others). No fancy node tricks ... and the maps you create work equally well in Poser SuperFly as they do in Daz Studio IRay.

So really, associating the "Unimesh support" with "better Genesis support" doesn't touch the heart of the issue. "Genesis" is more than just a unimesh, it also deals with other features that work in conjunction (auto fit, auto smooth, etc etc etc) 

The only restriction you will get is that if you plan using the setup room on such Changing or adding  Groups your model might explode, Poser can not handle it any further these depend on a external program like Blender or whatever. This would only concern Groups other things you can use the normal way. But The model will not be split apart when creating this type of Figure .

This method offers you mixing hard shell , Mechanic Movement with Stretchend muscular movements without distortions, brings us back to the point that you need the bridge and not a big change in Poser .

In 2006 I bought a pretty amazing set of mechanical toys for poser , Really amazing articulations with Spring effects a mix of bendable and Mechanics, as I loaded the model it was a Prop  in one piece , I was so surprised ! A static Prop but articulated , one of its kind. The artist made a few of them . Hell I tried to rip it apart as it was Genius trying to replicate how it was done. But I never figured it out  how it was done . Same like Easy - Pose who would of thought at the time that such a stupid error could be possible generating such movements in one Chain, and even giving the option of Gravity in combination with IK's. All was already in Poser, users were just not aware of it , and still aren't . 

You might remember Ontarget ( Store Closed )... Creators of WW2 Tanks boy these are mind-blowing , the artists figured out a way to make these Cata-pillars work like real , sure if you know the code no problem but the head that was behind it figuring it out !  Full respect ! Users would of said , that is just impossible as the Caterpillar are static built on the model , but it worked, the sad part of all this is that there are almost none left that are capable of such great Ideas and mind blowing effects what remains is sold Tanks with static Caterpillar and artists that might just say " Impossible to make it work "

Here a animated sample of one of these Caterpillar these are very Old models, just to see what was already possible and got lost meanwhile.

Animated Track

Gee, folks, I'm tinkering around with Poser for 22yrs now.

I actually do now that Poser internally splits it's figure meshes along group borders.

I probably spent hundreds of hours in Wings3D stitching bodyparts back together at their seams which had split apart for one reason or another.

BUT for years we have easy to use tools now to work around this problem.

And the Morphbrush has gotten so good that I haven't bothered with an outside modeller in decades to sculpt anything.

*

Not to mention that proper edgeloopes are vastly superior over subdivided HiRez morphs, anyway.

If you build the mesh correctly, you do not need to subdivide the figure like crazy to add detail.

And if you wouldn't get so hung up over "physically correct" render engines (While 99% of the Poser content isn't "physically correct" in the first place), you could just use a displacement map to add any detail you want.

What I'm talking about is an everyday "workhouse" figure, something to be used by amateurs to play virtual dress-up with.

NOT something ideally suited for some elaborate "3D ART" project.

*

This is the amount of detail 35.146 polygons can give you, if you NOT follow that stupid "ALL QUADS, ALL REGULAR" mantra:

And despite all those "difficult to rig" edgeloops, I was able to weightmap him in a couple of days so he can do this:

Without using a single JCM!

*

Can you now understand that I'm a wee bit "underwhelmed" by the performance of all those Poser figures currently out there?

*

Now imagine a figure with double the polygon count, based on actual 3D scans. Rigged by a professional and not an amateur like me. Maybe sprinkle in a few(!) JCMs for "squishy" flesh deformations and for extreme poses.

*

But maybe I see all this the wrong way.

Maybe I just should not care.

Yeah, I think it's time to officially not care anymore.

If you're all so hellbent to invest your energy in anything else rather than creating better figures, then so it be.

*

In a week or two I'll do a final "official" post about my weightmapped M2 for those few veterans who still care, and then I'll go into lurking mode.

These forums are dead, anyway.

I won't close my account, so I can still be reached via PM, but other than that, it's goodbye Rendo.

It was fun while it lasted.

Gee, folks, I'm tinkering around with Poser for 22yrs now.

I actually do now that Poser internally splits it's figure meshes along group borders.

I probably spent hundreds of hours in Wings3D stitching bodyparts back together at their seams which had split apart for one reason or another.

BUT for years we have easy to use tools now to work around this problem.

And the Morphbrush has gotten so good that I haven't bothered with an outside modeller in decades to sculpt anything.

*

Not to mention that proper edgeloopes are vastly superior over subdivided HiRez morphs, anyway.

If you build the mesh correctly, you do not need to subdivide the figure like crazy to add detail.

And if you wouldn't get so hung up over "physically correct" render engines (While 99% of the Poser content isn't "physically correct" in the first place), you could just use a displacement map to add any detail you want.

What I'm talking about is an everyday "workhouse" figure, something to be used by amateurs to play virtual dress-up with.

NOT something ideally suited for some elaborate "3D ART" project.

*

This is the amount of detail 35.146 polygons can give you, if you NOT follow that stupid "ALL QUADS, ALL REGULAR" mantra:

And despite all those "difficult to rig" edgeloops, I was able to weightmap him in a couple of days so he can do this:

Without using a single JCM!

*

Can you now understand that I'm a wee bit "underwhelmed" by the performance of all those Poser figures currently out there?

*

Now imagine a figure with double the polygon count, based on actual 3D scans. Rigged by a professional and not an amateur like me. Maybe sprinkle in a few(!) JCMs for "squishy" flesh deformations and for extreme poses.

*

But maybe I see all this the wrong way.

Maybe I just should not care.

Yeah, I think it's time to officially not care anymore.

If you're all so hellbent to invest your energy in anything else rather than creating better figures, then so it be.

*

In a week or two I'll do a final "official" post about my weightmapped M2 for those few veterans who still care, and then I'll go into lurking mode.

These forums are dead, anyway.

I won't close my account, so I can still be reached via PM, but other than that, it's goodbye Rendo.

It was fun while it lasted.

Rhia474 posted at 12:56 PM Mon, 4 July 2022 - #4440712

 I don't recall people being chased away because they offered to help. I remember people being told that copying models without permission is copyright violation.

-Flat-out teaching how to crack Poser's license protections in the official forum for Poser

-Trying to impersonate a vendor to taint her reputation (oh, hey, that was against me!)

-Making at least 6 accounts pretending to be said vendor

-Making dozens of accounts to go around bans (which by itself is also a violation of the site rules)

-Calling other members things as low as "little wh*re"

-Starting mindless flame wars against Poser in the Poser forums

-Giving misleading or false information about Poser to newbies coming over, in the attempt to get the newbies away from using Poser

But they always, ALWAYS claim they got banned for "trying to help". I wonder why.

On another note, JoePublic, would you please stop posting figures in those weird impossible hip-bending-into-belly poses... I'm getting nightmares by now LMAO! 🤣

It is a way of Interpretation, a site is free to decide whom they like, whom not and remove accounts they dislike. Like JoePublic mentioned the forums are almost Dead, always the same People around making some little chat's but nothing really Improving. There were better times but guess they are just gone. Sure miss the Rdna forums and many others, also here it once was allot more productive. Concluding it is a waist of valuable time atm. There is no real interest for improvements, after two years Poser still is at prelaunch, actually a little sad thing to say, Like said it is all in your hands and up to you what you do with it .

For sure it is not alone up to the Poser Crew, as without any good Creators that present something valuable and new ideas, Poser is having little by no chance to survive. 

If you are a little experienced , or well wish learning something you can 

Check This Out

"Not intended to make publicity for an other app" an Auto rig can be essential for a good work flow and basically save you allot of time. In theory you can even Rig a older Doll you have in a perfect way " Say V4 or La Femme ", naturally intended to end up back in Poser. You would not have all these bending issues and breaks like known in most or not all models rigged in Poser based on Triax and Capsules, Mag etc. After rigging your model correctly you actually need to bridge it to Poser Preferable as XNA/Lara resulting to have a sunning bendable Model with no breaks and bending issues. You naturally need a little experience on mesh building not to end up with a  Triangulate Mesh or split body parts that could break in Poser.

It is a way of Interpretation, a site is free to decide whom they like, whom not and remove accounts they dislike. Like JoePublic mentioned the forums are almost Dead, always the same People around making some little chat's but nothing really Improving. There were better times but guess they are just gone. Sure miss the Rdna forums and many others, also here it once was allot more productive. Concluding it is a waist of valuable time atm. There is no real interest for improvements, after two years Poser still is at prelaunch, actually a little sad thing to say, Like said it is all in your hands and up to you what you do with it .

For sure it is not alone up to the Poser Crew, as without any good Creators that present something valuable and new ideas, Poser is having little by no chance to survive. 

Nice to hear that cool things might be incoming , let's hope also some enthusiasts with particular capabilities, these sure would be needed!

I should of droppend this 

Video

in here for a sample concerning auto rigging it might give a much better Idea, motivating some that plan to create some unique standalone " Creatures and Characters " in the future and not just Barbie outfits, morphs and Tex for existing Dolls as there are plenty of them. It may also show that the possibilities are not out of reach as one might think it is, getting some neat standalones into Poser in the future. Might even offer some future to poser rather then to be just fixed on that 1 Doll  expandable addon feature. It is like being stuck in a endless Loop in a 3D world of so many possibilities.

Might just be writing all this for nothing in a forum with just a few clicks but lets say , Hope dies Last.

I am planning to make free tutorials soon. Simple ones that everybody can follow. But i have to wait  too. Everything in due time.