Hey guys, after a solid week of work, I have finally uploaded my Poser 13 review

I think the program has lots to offer, but it is not without shortfalls and many bugs. See the full review here:

https://youtu.be/tvHTP0w5aBI

Not a lot I can argue with.

Not a lot I can argue with.

5 minutes and I stopped the video. 

Always the same criticisms, it becomes tiring.

it's been years that unimesh has been talked about, it's been years that people talk about it and want to make it available, if it hasn't been done yet, it's because it's much more complicated, an dit would have been even worse to give up with any legacy support. Especially when you inherit a past demolished by the companies that bought the product thinking they could make money by keeping their feet crossed on the desk.

SmithMicro made a huge step and then stopped, they give up. Bondware had to catch up with a huge backlog, my thanks to them.
As far as I'm concerned, a huge amount of work has been done and starting a review with this kind of criticism is not cool. I even think it's disrespectful for the technical team behind it: going from Python2.x to Python3.x is not changing neighborhoods or countries, it's changing the planet.

Just a little patience.

5 minutes and I stopped the video.

Good to know you gave it a fair chance then. I'm sure your opinion will be invaluable.

*I* wasn't the one, who just a couple of months ago was advertising the inclusion of unimesh figures - Bondware was.
They CHOSE to bring it to the tabel. Don't get snarky when I point out that they failed to deliver. If they had not mentioned it, nor would I.

"starting a review with this kind of criticism is not cool"

What's not cool is tolerating undelivered marketing promises.

"Just a little patience."

Yeah, because 15 years is not long enough. With each day, Poser gets more and more outdated, and here you're carrying water for them?!

5 minutes and I stopped the video. 

Always the same criticisms, it becomes tiring.

…

Always same unsolved problems gives the always same criticisms

Always the same criticisms, it becomes tiring.

Two sides two the same coin, yes it was advertised and yes it was pulled.  On the other side it was made clear a few weeks before, by newsletter and other means, that this aspect had been pulled.  I was not interested personally but even I knew it had been pulled and it was also made clear this was an early release with updates to follow.  No one should have purchased Poser 13 expecting it to be other than what is was.  A far cry then from SM's performance when they quietly introduced the deactivation feature in Game Dev where users only found out six months after purchase when their copy of Poser stopped working.

I stated earlier that there was little I could argue with in the review and I stand by that.  It is certainly not a trashing of Poser and many parts of the review it is very complementary of both Poser and the development team.  So heavily critical, yes.  Fair, maybe,  a complete downer on Poser 13 not as far as I can see.

Just as a reminder, AcePyx is the only one on YouTube who's promotion Poser. He does something Bondware should do in the first place. At least to my knowledge he does it in his spare time and for free. He's putting out content on a regular basis. That's more anyone else here does and I think he deserves a bit more respect for what he does for the Poser community.

Sure, he has his own view on things and I don't agree with everything he says but in general he's trying to make his points by having good and reasonable arguments. He's definitely not a cheerleader but that's why I think his content is valuable. I would love to see more people like him creating tutorials and software reviews especially for Poser on YouTube and similar platforms. 

I think the Tech team are great and the have a thankless task in trying to please everyone with Poser in the state they inherited it.  I do however feel the criticism of the marketing strategy to be very accurate and to the point.

As a software developper i know it's not easy to make a product evolve, keeping the backward compatibility. They must make some choices and it's hard to fight in this jungle where very good software can be free. The review  is fair and balanced.

I bought the upgrade, i'm happy with it, also it's not perfect yet, but definitly some progress.

Keep going and don't give up!

blackbonner posted at 2:43 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461667

Just as a reminder, AcePyx is the only one on YouTube who's promotion Poser. He does something Bondware should do in the first place. At least to my knowledge he does it in his spare time and for free. He's putting out content on a regular basis. That's more anyone else here does and I think he deserves a bit more respect for what he does for the Poser community.

Sure, he has his own view on things and I don't agree with everything he says but in general he's trying to make his points by having good and reasonable arguments. He's definitely not a cheerleader but that's why I think his content is valuable. I would love to see more people like him creating tutorials and software reviews especially for Poser on YouTube and similar platforms. 

Poser has always worked like a religious cult, that is bad in taking criticism and demonizing it as trolling, instead of taking it seriously as a chance for improving. 

This has been going on since Poser 5 times.

I think the Tech team are great and the have a thankless task in trying to please everyone with Poser in the state they inherited it.  I do however feel the criticism of the marketing strategy to be very accurate and to the point.

At least to my knowledge he does it in his spare time and for free. He's putting out content on a regular basis. That's more anyone else here does and I think he deserves a bit more respect for what he does for the Poser community.

Thank you. Yes I work for free out of a desire to raise the program's profile, and enthuse people. This review took a solid week, and it wasn't even spare time ;-)

"He's definitely not a cheerleader"

No, but that was a conscious decision. Whether people agree or not, they can trust that I'm *trying* to present a balanced picture.
I don't hate the marketing team, but nor do I think they are serving the program particularly well.

Absolutely agree, both the tech staff and the volunteer testers are beyond great, dedicated, professional and helpful. <3

The marketing of Poser is ... something else. As a primarily content broker site, Renderosity and Bondware probably has to walk a razorthin line between the software they own now and the other software most of their revenue on this site would come from in providing content. While I understand that, the way Poser is marketed and presented should be miles better. Right now it's the redheaded stepchild, the 'poor cousin of shiny renders' the 'this is what people stuck in the 1990s and early aughts use' vibe am getting if I look at what's there, with very few exceptions.

I have high hopes for Poser 13 ( and again, repeated kudos for the dev team and the testers), but it needs some help.

blackbonner posted at 2:43 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461667

Poser has always worked like a religious cult, that is bad in taking criticism and demonizing it as trolling, instead of taking it seriously as a chance for improving. 

This has been going on since Poser 5 times.

To find myself being part of a religious cult is quite bad news for me as a live long atheist.😂 

Jokes aside, I think this is not the right analogy. Poser user seems to be loyal to the software, yes. But they have no say in the development of the software whatsoever. The once who are making the decision for the development path of a software usually don't engage in public discussion about the pros and cons of the software, let alone trying to covert people who use other programs. I think there is a correlation between a loyal user base who isn't very critical and a development team that's is bond to an owner who doesn't care. A situation we had in the past with Smithmicro. Bondware seems to be an owner with a plan and good intentions for my favorite software.

Maybe the key problem is, that Poser has never been a chatacter animation and render program, but just a digital Woody pose and sketch it program.

It is just mind blowing to see so many fatal decisions made, that dropped Poser as the once  nr 1 consumer character app behind DAZ Studio and IClone.

Poser can neither compete anymore with DAZ content, base figures or render quality, nor IClone‘s animation tools.

It was a big step up for Poser to introduce the hair and cloth rooms in 2003. Why haven’t they ever been updated and improved since then? What has benn done about the skating effect in animations?

Where is the right in your face improvement on shaders?

Why do even Renders by the cheered stars of this Poser community look like from back in 2006?

I went through the „Show Your Poser 13“ threat and those renders have no potential to be a purchase argument.

Have you ever noticed, that neither Bondwsre nor any other previous owner had come up with renders as a marketing argument, but always like this time with heavy photoshopped graphics, that were based on Poser scenes?

Why can‘t Bondwsre cannot produce one single mindblowing advertisement render?

Furthermore, the feature list, that makes an upgrade worth an upgrade has become so poor since  PoserPro 2014.

Only those, who are still on Poser 10 and lower really benfit from going up to Poser 13.

Anything starting with Poser 11 feels just like Service updates.

It seems like Bondware has no motivation to bring back Poser back into the pole position, but rather milking their „loyal“ fan base.

Of course, you can accuse me of trolling, but it could be a win-win, if you just could prove me wrong.

'Heavy photoshopped scenes', lol.

It was a big step up for Poser to introduce the hair and cloth rooms in 2003. Why haven’t they ever been updated and improved since then? 

This specific part has been explained ad infinitum. Poser's cloth and hair engines are proprietary of companies that no longer exist, and whoever owns Poser can't change anything in those engines. The only thing they'd be allowed to do is REPLACE the engines, thus breaking former content.

I've been asking for them to replace them and find a way to make a conversion tool for older content for YEARS, but you know how scary it is to talk about breaking old content for Poser.

It seems like Bondware has no motivation to bring back Poser back into the pole position, but rather milking their „loyal“ fan base.

I highly doubt it's a motivation issue - I feel like it's much more of a budget issue. Bondware is a relatively small company.

Nevertrumper posted at 2:32 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461765

Got anything else constructive to say?

AcePyx posted at 7:08 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461829

Y-Phil posted at 2:47 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461771

Nevertrumper posted at 2:32 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461765

Got anything else constructive to say?

I could ask YOU the same thing.

nevertrumper has accurately identified a number of issues that many Poser users would like addressed. All you've done is shoot the messenger repeatedly. How is YOUR approach leading to a better program?

I bet, that in that unlikley case, Bondware would address every issue, I pointed out,

none of the „Poser loyalists“ would protest against it.

Poser 12 felt like a pretty significant upgrade to me. The speed improvements alone were worth the price of admission. Improvements in material assignment. The addition of PrincipledBsdf. Those are things I take advantage of every time I use the software. It's also been pretty interesting to see functionality added over the course of the release cycle. That increased visibility about what the team is actually working on is what does not match up with the comments above.

I NEVER criticize the work of others, at least not in public: if I have something to say, I address the company, the developer, the person.
When you give your opinion in public, you have to accept to be criticized in turn. I don't mind at all to be criticized for being annoyed in public for a criticism that comes back for the 1'000th time this year.

Daz and Poser are not the same applications since a long time, they are not comparable because they do not have the same purpose.

That's the  life online.

So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?

Is there somewhere that shows a list of all the additional content that's included in Poser 13?

It's not even mentioned on the product page in the store, but I've seen a few folks render some scenes that I got the impression are included.

That alone could be a selling point for 13 if the additional content is appealing enough.

I only downloaded the trial mainly to test out the new rendering and the content creation tools and I noticed that the trial comes with basically nothing, which is rather odd.

I realize they don't want people getting the trial just to swipe the content (tho that could be curbed with encryption, like reallusion does), but I don't think Andy is inspiring enough to attract new users.

At the very least, a comprehensive list of all the content you get with the purchase would be helpful, or highlight the best of it. Something.

I NEVER criticize the work of others, at least not in public: if I have something to say, I address the company, the developer, the person.

"Praise me in public, criticise me in private" hmmm?
This is the manipulative request of every manager and company, that wants their shortfalls addressed in private where they cannot start a contagion of others criticising, but I'm sorry, if you want your praises in public, then you must risk the counter side as well.

"I NEVER criticize the work of others," Oh really, so telling someone "5 minutes and I stopped the video. Always the same criticisms, it becomes tiring." is not a criticism? Of course it is, and it's an arrogant one at that. You are implicitly saying "I am so bored by hearing this criticism that Poser's owners have not addressed after decades, that if anyone raises it, their work is beneath me to listen to."
Frankly, the opinion of a single woefully misguided and irrational person is trivial to me, but please, spare me the sanctimony. Your method of addressing the issue accomplishes almost, if not literally zero unless you have some particular leverage with Bondware that you are not mentioning. Changes happen when companies are incentivised to do so, not when fangirls or boys, blow smoke up their backsides.
"they are not comparable because they do not have the same purpose."
Daz and Poser are competing in EXACTLY the same creative space. Don't think that DS's advanced functionality places it in a different category.

Y'all are gonna get this thread locked if you don't tone down the argumentative tone.

Just sayin.

Poser 12 felt like a pretty significant upgrade to me. The speed improvements alone were worth the price of admission. Improvements in material assignment. The addition of PrincipledBsdf. Those are things I take advantage of every time I use the software. It's also been pretty interesting to see functionality added over the course of the release cycle. That increased visibility about what the team is actually working on is what does not match up with the comments above.

Y'all are gonna get this thread locked if you don't tone down the argumentative tone.

Just sayin.

Is there somewhere that shows a list of all the additional content that's included in Poser 13?

I commented upon the lack of a list in my review. I did endeavour to click through much of the content though. It's bookmarked on the vid. Far from ideal, but possibly better than nothing?

AcePyx posted at 9:21 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461856

ChromeStar posted at 7:39 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461836

Poser 12 felt like a pretty significant upgrade to me. The speed improvements alone were worth the price of admission. Improvements in material assignment. The addition of PrincipledBsdf. Those are things I take advantage of every time I use the software. It's also been pretty interesting to see functionality added over the course of the release cycle. That increased visibility about what the team is actually working on is what does not match up with the comments above.

The speed was a game changer, but a hugely belated one.

So...  the updates to that point were not sufficient, and Poser 12 was the one that delivered the important thing? That's the opposite of the claim above.

Principled came in 70% through 12's lifecycle. It was welcome, but simplified the technology that already existed.

I never felt like Superfly was accessible to me before Poser 12. Yeah, it was there, yeah, I tried it, but it was too complicated to pick up easily and too slow to be worth spending that effort. Both of those things changed in 12. Maybe I could have done everything in 11, but maybe I could also have invested in a nice set of colored pencils and learned to draw.

But a commenter on my vid made the observation that the underlying technology has been stagnant for a decade, and by and large, I don't much disagree with that notwithstand superfly in 2015. Innovations rather than streamlines have been awfully thin on the ground wouldn't you say?

The claim above was:

Only those, who are still on Poser 10 and lower really benfit from going up to Poser 13.

Anything starting with Poser 11 feels just like Service updates.

And that's just the opposite of my experience. I went from 11 to 12 and it was a huge step forward. It was the earlier updates that felt slow and incremental. There is plenty left to do, and there is a limit to how quickly they can iterate based on the available budget, but I feel like the progress they are making is a big deal.

ChromeStar posted at 10:23 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461866

AcePyx posted at 9:21 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461856

ChromeStar posted at 7:39 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461836

Poser 12 felt like a pretty significant upgrade to me. The speed improvements alone were worth the price of admission. Improvements in material assignment. The addition of PrincipledBsdf. Those are things I take advantage of every time I use the software. It's also been pretty interesting to see functionality added over the course of the release cycle. That increased visibility about what the team is actually working on is what does not match up with the comments above.

The speed was a game changer, but a hugely belated one.

So...  the updates to that point were not sufficient, and Poser 12 was the one that delivered the important thing? That's the opposite of the claim above.

Principled came in 70% through 12's lifecycle. It was welcome, but simplified the technology that already existed.

I never felt like Superfly was accessible to me before Poser 12. Yeah, it was there, yeah, I tried it, but it was too complicated to pick up easily and too slow to be worth spending that effort. Both of those things changed in 12. Maybe I could have done everything in 11, but maybe I could also have invested in a nice set of colored pencils and learned to draw.

But a commenter on my vid made the observation that the underlying technology has been stagnant for a decade, and by and large, I don't much disagree with that notwithstand superfly in 2015. Innovations rather than streamlines have been awfully thin on the ground wouldn't you say?

It has been stagnant, that's absolutely true. And Poser 12 is when that started to change. Cycles was updated, and then updated again in 13. Python was updated (for all the good and bad).

The claim above was:

Only those, who are still on Poser 10 and lower really benfit from going up to Poser 13.

Anything starting with Poser 11 feels just like Service updates.

And that's just the opposite of my experience. I went from 11 to 12 and it was a huge step forward. It was the earlier updates that felt slow and incremental. There is plenty left to do, and there is a limit to how quickly they can iterate based on the available budget, but I feel like the progress they are making is a big deal.

With the benefit of hindsight I can see the purchase was the opposite,  the devolvement team have breathed new life into a program that was struggling to survive.  Even the initial signs were good, doing away with the pro version was long over due, and offering the Poser 11 free to many current version users a nice touch.   I purchase Poser 12 as soon as it was available knowing full well I was buying early access and just a promise of progress and updates in the future.  It was a purchase I never regretted and, from my point of view, the development team delivered on their promises.  Which explains why I was so keen to the continue the process with Poser 13 at the earliest opportunity, what I have at my fingertips today justifies the price of the upgrade alone and there is still the promise of more.  

I have been playing with Poser for over twenties years and reading it would be dead in the near future for every one of those years.  While I knew it was struggling I never gave up hope and the last few years have proved I was right to hope.  Poser's future is brighter now that it has been for most of those twenty years and it has delivered so much fun to me since Bondware purchased it.  I have so much respect for the team and what they have done.

>>>> But a commenter on my vid made the observation that the underlying technology has been stagnant for a decade, and by and large, I don't much disagree with that notwithstand superfly in 2015. Innovations rather than streamlines have been awfully thin on the ground wouldn't you say?

This does not mention the fact that Smith Micro laid off the entire original Poser team in 2016, and replaced them with a team that was almost entirely unfamiliar with the application. This was a "cost cutting" move, not a performance move. In the three years between the layoff and the time that Bondware purchased Poser, there were only two very minor updates to Poser 11 (11.1 and 11.2, both released by the replacement team). The only "major" feature released in those two versions was a paths palette, that didn't really work as well as it should.

Bondware purchased Poser in June of 2019 and the first initial release was to fix that the Smith Micro releases "phoned home" to an authorization server that SM has shut down. After that Bondare started working on Poser 12, and included some of the original developers on their team. That was a step in the right direction.

Has Poser lost ground? Yes, it has. But that finger points to the previous owner that nearly ran it to the ground. Not to Bondware, who is at least moving it forward.

I should also acknowledge that Bondware added two new code warriors that are entirely capable and dedicated to Poser as much as the original team members. 

Speeding up rendering times is nice but far away from being worth called a full upgrade.

Speeding up rendering times is nice but far away from being worth called a full upgrade.

That might be true but the fact is there is more, the changes to Superfly not only speed is up but has a major impact in other areas such as lighting.  It is now much easier to light HDRI scene and possible to light a scene by nothing else in the sphere itself.  

There is the Launcher, which seems small but it does give some good options on start up.  I am confident there are even more positives with lots more to come.

DCArt posted at 8:08 AM Wed, 12 April 2023 - #4461895

>>>> But a commenter on my vid made the observation that the underlying technology has been stagnant for a decade, and by and large, I don't much disagree with that notwithstand superfly in 2015. Innovations rather than streamlines have been awfully thin on the ground wouldn't you say?

This does not mention the fact that Smith Micro laid off the entire original Poser team in 2016, and replaced them with a team that was almost entirely unfamiliar with the application. This was a "cost cutting" move, not a performance move. In the three years between the layoff and the time that Bondware purchased Poser, there were only two very minor updates to Poser 11 (11.1 and 11.2, both released by the replacement team). The only "major" feature released in those two versions was a paths palette, that didn't really work as well as it should.

Bondware purchased Poser in June of 2019 and the first initial release was to fix that the Smith Micro releases "phoned home" to an authorization server that SM has shut down. After that Bondare started working on Poser 12, and included some of the original developers on their team. That was a step in the right direction.

Has Poser lost ground? Yes, it has. But that finger points to the previous owner that nearly ran it to the ground. Not to Bondware, who is at least moving it forward.

SM last update was Poser Pro 11.1  11.2 was the first release of bondware, this release already messed up the Python engine as they literarily changed the version number length causing most scripts not to work any longer. Only fix was a Py that you need to launch with poser from a third party getting these to work correctly.

Concerning the activation of Poser SM had a permanent activation and a permanent offline activation for poser 11 that was removed by bondware the SM offline activation server was still online for almost a half year after the purchase of Poser from bondware, the moment bondware got aware of this still running activation server they forced SM to take it also down.

The next thing came right up by sending out a killer to terminate any Permanent running Poser to obligate the trusted users to use the Latest Poser 11.2 release from bondware. this got send by the  integrated producturlsupport.com periodically to make sure that any legal registered Poser 11.1 license gets killed removing every permanent licence. 

Bondware removed the offline activation and Permanent activation replacing it with there new weekly renew version that throws a new script into your C Drive every week, actually not a Piracy protection as this system only controls the honest clients and only these who have a legal licence can be reached with this system.

meanwhile also the killer producturlsupport.com got taken down removing any trace of the act as there is no more need after 2 years chasing the honest customers killing there permanent poser activations.

So the intention, or lets say excuse, SM made this activation that could not be removed was never true. they made it even worse then it was before by force. Not even intending it to be against piracy as this could not be stopped. It all was intended to catch every client and previous honest Poser buyer by force sending them a little notice " Hey your poser id dead " you need to come to us to get it running again. Right in there face on the Desktop

So do you think this was a honest move towards honest Poser users ? I personally thing NO it was NOT , but it is the passed, some accepted the happening others did not. The ones who accepted all of this, jumped onto newer releases, the others just keep the older versions running until they die then change to another optional hoppy. As simple as that.

Personally and also from many discussions with my community members, majority did not find a good acceptance about this whole doing, sticking on older poser versions or just jumping to DS. Allot of trusted users gotten hurt with this business affair " Sure understandable " so in silence they go.

You might call all this a full new start, the old ones will be forgotten, and may be fresh blood will be attracted in the future that never had anything to do with poser the past decades, also removing any dependence of a V4 or older poser stuff that is no longer supported. Like you always mention Poser can't be stuck on all this old stuff and needs to Improve so the old literarily needs to be replaces. All the old stuff for Poser never will be supported again as these creators are long gone! So the only way is a cold Start and if this does not work because of wrong managing and marketing, if no new creators or customers appear, well then you might figure out the answer your self.  But all this " The Plan " is not including us old users that stand short before our retirements with already one leg in the grave.

Considering the deceitful way SM introduced the deadly deactivation feature with Game Dev I struggle to see how SM did Poser users any favours then or after they sacked the dev team.  I am much happier that Poser is in the hands of Bondware than being left under the ownership of SM.

hornet3d posted at 6:15 PM Wed, 12 April 2023 - #4461963

Considering the deceitful way SM introduced the deadly deactivation feature with Game Dev I struggle to see how SM did Poser users any favours then or after they sacked the dev team.  I am much happier that Poser is in the hands of Bondware than being left under the ownership of SM.

The contract was clear it was not only a purchase of a Application but it included all costumers including there information there accounts there purchases. This is how business runns. If a hacker can remove that kill switch the day of P13 release, why is it so hard for the owner removing it him self ( Talking about the actual ) not the one who had it before. So who do you think is in charge and how easy would it of been keeping poser DEV active. The one who sold the rights is not in charge for this happening, the decision was taken by the new owner and no one else. Luckily Previous poser had no built in Kill link in the EXE else you can only imagine what would of happen. 

It is how business goes, This is the way most application owner act at the moment, as long as customers play that game. The future might not get any better, considering that every new created poser asset that you will purchase for future poser versions will depend on the Poser activation, no matter if you made the purchases from independent creators of poser. If such a decision would be taken again it would include any of your investments no matter where you got them from that you use in Poser. This basically already is causing fear to the customers making any Investments as they could lose it all. Same for Creators all there efforts there creations for future poser versions depending on Bondware ( A real motivation killer ) ain't it ?

It is not only me that thinks this way many other poser users have the same fear for some others it is just subconscious hoping that it never will happen, but see it realistic, it will, else where would be the gain. It is where our Industry leads to the way of business, not just Bondware, one started with this system other realized that with this controll system you can generate money and fallow the system. once the money stops to flow you just cut, giving some excuse and obligate customers to make all new investments for a new version. Or just sell it the new one kills it and takes over all customers for he's Nr version change letting you use some of your Investments for a while.   

The future might not get any better, considering that every new created poser asset that you will purchase for future poser versions will depend on the Poser activation, no matter if you made the purchases from independent creators of poser.

That seems a little detached from reality. The vast majority of content I've bought would transfer just fine to DS, some of it to other applications as well. There's a much smaller proportion that is only suitable for Poser, like python scripts, dynamic clothing, and superfly shaders.  "Every new created poser asset" is at best a gross exaggeration. I don't know the details of the licensing issue, but when I put these two sets of claims side by side, frankly, making statements like this one destroys your credibility on the other.

So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:34 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462006

Nevertrumper posted at 8:09 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461842

So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?

Which one of them?

Just put it like this:

Show me links or pictures of realist style Promotion renders, that can convince people to purchase or upgrade Poser - please.

Show me those awesome renders, like any other 3d app would use in order to bait customers.

Show me those „Must Have“ renders.

Considering the deceitful way SM introduced the deadly deactivation feature with Game Dev I struggle to see how SM did Poser users any favours then or after they sacked the dev team.  I am much happier that Poser is in the hands of Bondware than being left under the ownership of SM.

There has been a short period of time, where I actually thought, that SM is finally doing the right thing.

Introducing weight mapping, making the morph brush useful, reverse deformations on morph target creation and giving us more control over morphs with the dependencies editor.

It just feels like, they‘ve lost interest in Poser after the PP2014 release.

Nevertrumper posted at 9:02 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462015

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:34 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462006

Nevertrumper posted at 8:09 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461842

So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?

Which one of them?

Oh come on. Please do not pretend to be clueless.

Just put it like this:

Show me links or pictures of realist style Promotion renders, that can convince people to purchase or upgrade Poser - please.

Show me those awesome renders, like any other 3d app would use in order to bait customers.

Show me those „Must Have“ renders.

What if that render that you claim is "heavily photoshopped" is one of those awesome renders you seek?  How are we to know which render you claim is heavily photoshopped unless we know which one you are talking about?

There has been a short period of time, where I actually thought, that SM is finally doing the right thing.

Introducing weight mapping, making the morph brush useful, reverse deformations on morph target creation and giving us more control over morphs with the dependencies editor.

It just feels like, they‘ve lost interest in Poser after the PP2014 release.

Absolutely correct. SM abandoned the program. When they bought it, it was the second most pirated software in the world after Photoshop according to their marketing guy. By the end, even the pirates didn't consider it worth copying.

But let's try to be positive and look to the future. Smith Micro's appalling treatment of the program bears no relationship to Bondware. I think that they genuinely have good intentions for the program, but it lost so much ground to Daz Studio and iClone, that they cannot invest the money it really needs until it starts to sell a lot more copies, but it won't sell more copies until it becomes a lot better...
In that context, I can appreciate the moves that they are making, and the speed that they are working, even though I desperately wish they would move faster.