I downloaded the Trial Version today and I am not impressed. I loaded a scene I loaded a 153MB scene. The render engine with the same settings for Poser 12 using an RTX3060 12GB GPU took a minute longer to render. Also errors were returned in the message log about textures on one of the figure's outfit. That possibly means a lot of work removing nodes in the Materials Room. Maybe in time all the bugs will be ironed out but after the trial period I won't be buying Poser 13. Also, Poser 13 crashed three times when I tried to move the camera. Eventually Poser 13 settled down.

My PC is only three months old and has the following and is suited for gaming although I don't use it for such purposes...

Gen 12 i7 12700F with 32GB ram and an NVidia RTX3060 with 12GB. The SSD is a PCI version which is leagues faster than a standard SSD

No, textures are there. The render engine doesn't like certain nodes from the looks of things...here's part of the report.

I have added all my old Poser Runtimes. I have been using various Poser versions since 2002 so I might have a vague idea of what I am doing. I'm not being sarcastic here.

That texture thing sounds like the same sort of sheet show we have with Poser 12 when using products we have previously purchased.

My guess is they upgraded cycles without caring that it breaks older content. Again. It should check the materials when they are loaded and provide the option to fix/change them to ensure backwards compatibility imho. 

I've not tried the trial yet, and as a second-class citizen (Mac user) I won't be until they release not only a Mac version, but a Mac version that is native Apple Silicon and supports GoZ for ZBrush 2023.

On that subject, the new posing features (proxy posing) in ZBrush 2023.1 mean that where I have been taking sculpts back to Poser for rendering I am more likely to just ditch Poser now. In ZBrush I can quickly and easily pose and animate figures that have millions of polygons. 

First feelings:
Con: can't have Poser12 and Poser13 at the same time: the independant library fails on the second Poser launched
 -> so easy to avoid this by selecting another port but...

Pro: THIS!

It used to drive me crazy that Poser12 insists on putting the render cache folder on an automatically synched folder. Now we can change this.. 

I will do further tests later, once my job is finished... Can't wait 

I have a lot of old stuff and when I took the plunge to get Poser 12 in late November 2022 there were no issues for me whatsoever.  You are probably right about backward compatibility.  The textures were in the render but looked slightly darker compare to the P12 render.  I can change what Cycles doesn't like easy enough and hopefully it is only for a few things that I have but I doubt it.  Perhaps some of the shader scripts may have warning errors as well as they are heavy on nodes that Cycles may not like. The only way for anyone to find out is to the Trial Version and see what doesn't work.  :)  Gotta run. I need to be somewhere else.   Have fun or frustration with the new toy... :)

@ Y_Phil:

The path is already set for for Temp13

@ Y_Phil:

The path is already set for for Temp13

Loads faster than Poser12
And new splash screens

Guess who's coming home, virtually...

Much faster rendering and much improved copy of morphs and weight maps.

Much more stable.   

I am happy with Poser 13  

enigma-man posted at 11:11 AM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4459976

No, textures are there. The render engine doesn't like certain nodes from the looks of things...here's part of the report.

I don't know what's going on - but my SuperFly render is taking about 30X longer than it did in 12.

In 12 and previous - I could see the render use the 32 hyperthreads - each had it's own bucket to render (CPU Render)

But this version doesn't seem to do that, and it taking a lot longer to render 1 bucket.

I don't know what's going on - but my SuperFly render is taking about 30X longer than it did in 12.

One scene: 2'21 down to 45.86 seconds, same settings: wow

With another scene that was computing correctly with Poser12, now makes Poser12 AND Poser13 crash... gulp...
Not sure if it's related but just in case: my scene has a dynamic necklace, with beads and a material item labeled "Default".
With a pure Firefly setting, it crashes in RTX mode. Added  a simple setup and Poser13 rendered fine.
The weirdest: the scene had been setup and rendered a few days ago using Poser12, and I had to do the same modification to render it with Poser12, which could mean that now Poser12 and Poser13 could be sharing something more than just a few settings and runtimes.

Some shader nodes have changed in P13, mostly the ones related to Cycles materials, and the team did their best to handle the backwards compatibility. If you find a particular material that crashes in P13, please report it to tech support, so they can fix it. :)

Ken1171_Designs posted at 2:28 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460046

Some shader nodes have changed in P13, mostly the ones related to Cycles materials, and the team did their best to handle the backwards compatibility. If you find a particular material that crashes in P13, please report it to tech support, so they can fix it. :)

And in this case, it was a firefly-base setup 

We have to consider that even Firefly materials also have to work with Superfly (which is amazing), so Firefly nodes also went through some changes. The dev team has ironed out some combinations that could cause crashes, but if you find something they have missed, make sure to report it. ^__^

I guess if the shader nodes are different, it would be hard to run benchmarks for render times.

I'm finding the ground prop disconcerting. The default is invisible now. And if you make it visible, it's black.

randym77 posted at 2:51 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460060

I guess if the shader nodes are different, it would be hard to run benchmarks for render times.

I'm finding the ground prop disconcerting. The default is invisible now. And if you make it visible, it's black.

As for the GROUND prop, I use a custom default scene in my Poser launch, where P13 has a new feature that not only allows saving your preferred scene, but also launch to your preferred UI settings, which wasn't possible before. If you look at the Settings dialog, that's a new feature. ^^

Ken1171_Designs posted at 2:41 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460056

Y-Phil posted at 2:30 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460049

And in this case, it was a firefly-base setup 

We have to consider that even Firefly materials also have to work with Superfly (which is amazing), so Firefly nodes also went through some changes. The dev team has ironed out some combinations that could cause crashes, but if you find something they have missed, make sure to report it. ^__^

Yay or the crew: they've done an AWESOME job, even though bugs may still play hide'n'seek with us 

For me the purchase, download and install was no trouble.  I then had a senior moment and got myself tied in knots while adding runtimes and my first attempts at rendering.  All down to me and nothing to do with the program.  I then thought I had a problem with textures until I realised if I started with an empty scene from the launcher it was indeed empty.  Once I realised I needed to add a light my texture problem disappeared, see how confused I can get.

So now up and running.  Renders are indeed very much faster and the program releases the render when complete very much quicker.

I used the Superfly GPU high for my test render that includes my character, hair with the Ghostship hair shaders and the CKV01 outfit, all of which would figure in a lot of my renders with them, all working it gets me off to a good start.

@ Y-Phil:

I tried rendering the scene in P13 Firefly and nothing was reported back in error.  It was really quick but looked like hell. As for the outfit I have no idea how old it is but likely before Superfly. I'm doing a webcomic and the Lovelace Halloween outfit was on sale last week and exactly what I was looking for.  I haven't had time to try other scenes as of now but I won't like it if I have to edit a lot materials.  If that is the case, I will pass on Poser 13.  Poser 12 Superfly suits my needs and P13 is a trial version. I will use it for the remainder of the trial but won't plunk down $300 Canadian dollars for it. I don't expect any software regardless of what it happens to be or who created it to be perfect out of the gate. For a new splash screen and some fancy effects and slower render times in Superfly, Poser 13 ain't for me.  For all you Poser users on the fence, it's your money so if you think it's worth upgrading then do so. Can't wait to see 1000 renders in the gallery using the "bloom" effect. Actually I won't. I don't look any longer...

If you download the P13 HWDawn zip from Poser 13 included you'll get updated shaders for her. Same goes for Dusk

So now up and running.  Renders are indeed very much faster and the program releases the render when complete very much quicker.

Every time I go back to P12 to do something, I am instantly reminded of how SLOW it renders compared to P13. It was the same with P11 and 12, where 12 rendered many times faster than 11. One of my favorite new feature in P13 is how we can now save a preferred UI state, in addition to the preferred state scene. Before this, Poser would save its UI state every time we closed it, and use that in the next launch. Now we can save a fixed UI state and launch to it in every launch. Awesome!

Does someone knows how to have the shadow catcher? I thought the the PoserSurface's Shadow_catch_only checkmark was enough?

Does someone knows how to have the shadow catcher? I thought the the PoserSurface's Shadow_catch_only checkmark was enough?

enigma-man posted at 3:36 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460077

@ Y-Phil:

I tried rendering the scene in P13 Firefly and nothing was reported back in error.  It was really quick but looked like hell. As for the outfit I have no idea how old it is but likely before Superfly. I'm doing a webcomic and the Lovelace Halloween outfit was on sale last week and exactly what I was looking for.  I haven't had time to try other scenes as of now but I won't like it if I have to edit a lot materials.  If that is the case, I will pass on Poser 13.  Poser 12 Superfly suits my needs and P13 is a trial version. I will use it for the remainder of the trial but won't plunk down $300 Canadian dollars for it. I don't expect any software regardless of what it happens to be or who created it to be perfect out of the gate. For a new splash screen and some fancy effects and slower render times in Superfly, Poser 13 ain't for me.  For all you Poser users on the fence, it's your money so if you think it's worth upgrading then do so. Can't wait to see 1000 renders in the gallery using the "bloom" effect. Actually I won't. I don't look any longer...

Of course, ignore me if you are still on Firefly.

Here's Dawn with the P13 skin shaders that come with Poser 13.  It uses Cycles root node and Principled BSDF shader. Note that it will preview gray but it renders beautifully.

Ken1171_Designs posted at 3:41 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460081

Y-Phil posted at 3:39 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460080

Does someone knows how to have the shadow catcher? I thought the the PoserSurface's Shadow_catch_only checkmark was enough?

I believe the Poser Surface Shadow Catcher only works with the default Poser ground, but I could be wrong. I never use it with something else, so I don't know. 

Looks like the scene I was using has something wrong.
But it works.

Here's Dawn with the P13 skin shaders that come with Poser 13.  It uses Cycles root node and Principled BSDF shader. Note that it will preview gray but it renders beautifully.

my own P13 Cycles skin shader.

my own P13 Cycles skin shader.

ghostship2 posted at 4:11 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460092

my own P13 Cycles skin shader.

Was hoping the master would pull some rabbits out of his hat 8-)

Yeah same with mine, I used the KISS principle. Mainly a PBR type shader is all.  But REALLY glad you're jumping in too!

The Principled BSDF node was my personal request to the dev team, and I am glad we can use it in Poser. Using native Cycles shaders can bring materials to the next level, though we can still get away with the simpler Physical Surface root, which is also based on native Cycles shaders. The Physical Surface has been improved and expanded in P13 to include additional controls for SSS, and a new "Walk" SSS method that is much better than what we had before. I believe "Walk" is now the default SSS method with the new P13 Physical Surface root node. 

Uhhh... This thread is about if you are satisfied with Poser 13, Start your own threads about other topics not relating to the topic you are posting to...

The main issue other than the materials thing is Poser 13 Superfly being slow. The image below was rendered in both P12 and P13 using the exact settings in Superfly for both. P12  did this is 31.94 seconds. P13  did it in ( not impressed ) 239.17 seconds and both use the Optix option. This is far from an improvement. As I mentioned before, this is a complex 153 MB scene.

@enigma-man did it sound like I was unsatisfied with P13?

@enigma-man You might try bumping up your bucket size to 512 or larger. Experiment. I was using 256 on P12 and get faster renders in P13 using 512. Other users have even larger bucket sizes with those 3xxx cards

@enigma-man: I do not recognise your observation of Superfly in Poser13 being slower than in Poser12. During the beta phase I have extensively used the thing and from my observations I can only confirm what others have already reported: Poser13 has much higher render speed than Poser 12 had.

Maybe you best contact technical support with details of your scene. There may be certain details/settings in there that adversely affect performance when rendered in the new SF and can  better be arranged in a different way.

I will give it a try with a bigger bucket size.

Bucket size of 512 with the same settings is and underwhelming  219.61 seconds. Still no damn good...

@FVerbass: My scenes never consist of a single character. They are complicated and if Poser 13 can't render the scenes as I want to make then what good is it to me ? Maybe the developers missed something or assume that everyone only make simplistic scenes.  The scene as shown has two V4/G4 hybrid characters created by my in fairly simple clothing. They are in a 2 person submarine with an undersea setting with a video animation as background footage.  The image was to show the characters who are not seen in the short 500 frame animation. To make a 500 frame animation with Poser 13 would take 3000 minutes or  50 hours. Same thing with Poser 12 would take around 4.5 hours. Not acceptable for me so I'll wait until it goes on sale near it's end of life, maybe. :)

enigma-man posted at 3:36 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460077

@ Y-Phil:

I tried rendering the scene in P13 Firefly and nothing was reported back in error.  It was really quick but looked like hell. As for the outfit I have no idea how old it is but likely before Superfly. I'm doing a webcomic and the Lovelace Halloween outfit was on sale last week and exactly what I was looking for.  I haven't had time to try other scenes as of now but I won't like it if I have to edit a lot materials.  If that is the case, I will pass on Poser 13.  Poser 12 Superfly suits my needs and P13 is a trial version. I will use it for the remainder of the trial but won't plunk down $300 Canadian dollars for it. I don't expect any software regardless of what it happens to be or who created it to be perfect out of the gate. For a new splash screen and some fancy effects and slower render times in Superfly, Poser 13 ain't for me.  For all you Poser users on the fence, it's your money so if you think it's worth upgrading then do so. Can't wait to see 1000 renders in the gallery using the "bloom" effect. Actually I won't. I don't look any longer...

Gwt the GoPhysical script from Ken1171_Designs. Converts old textures to Superfly Physical with one click seamlessly. 

Of course, ignore me if you are still on Firefly.

@enigma-man You prob have some material that is stuffing up your render. What mat do you have on that cockpit window?

@hornet3d  Good to know.

Okay here's my last update :

I removed the video footage and rendered again. It went up from 219 to 223 seconds. I removed both characters leaving only the props and it rendered for a time of 169.7 seconds. Something isn't right in the render engine. If Poser 13 works for you in the scenes you make I'm glad to hear it. For what I want to do Poser 13 can't even render obj props in an acceptable amount of time.  Case closed. No Poser 13 for me.  Adios.

We have to take into consideration that the new CyclesX used in P13 was a total rewrite of the Cycles engine. Some things have changed on the rendering parameters. There are new parameters. Some of the parameters use different values, or perhaps values in a different scale. Some of them I don't even understand yet - it's a new engine after all. But in my own renders with an RTX 3090 24GB, I use MUCH larger bucket sizes. I easily go to 1200 or higher, depending on the image size. That alone affects rendering times significantly.   

As a comparison, using bucket size of 512 on a 30XX card is like spoon-feeding an elephant. One thing you can do is to test how far you can push this value, depending on how much VRAM you have. Your goal is to match the larger dimension from your image size. For example, if your render size is 900x1200, try setting the bucket size to 1200. That will allow Cycles to render your scene in 1-pass, instead of several. Give it a try and see how far you can push bucket size based on your scene contents, and how much VRAM your GPU has. 

There is no mat at all on the window. It only a light blue colour with the transparency set to .97  so it's not that.  The sub has Cycles nodes for reflections that were duplicated from a Bondware tutorial. 

Did someone ask for bloom?

Sarcastically, I mentioned it a few hours ago. Looks good and for sc fi images a definite bonus.