@hornet3d says:

>>The trouble with quoting facts and figures about a software program is that, in a lot of cases, no source is given for that information.  Information drawn from forums is rarely valid as most users do not visit forums and included in those are many that remain in lurk mode.  

This is true. And over time, all of the speculation posted in the forums becomes the basis for "alternative facts" that perpetuate on and on and on.

@ dlfurman, you must be joking, right?
Renderosity's YouTube Channel is promoting... Renderosity.
I was talking about a guy who does Tutorials, Content and Software reviews and critisism, almost entirely decicated to Poser.
Poser is a sidekick on Rendos YouTube Channel more or less.
If you want to misrepresent my posings and intentions, be my guest.
But don't expect me to let something like this slide.
Your argument is paper thin.

@Nevertrumper, I would like to know what collar pattern (I asume you meant Color) you talked about.
This Image is rendered in P13 and was not touched by PHotoshop, Gimp or even color corrected in PostFX.
It would be nice to know if you can point out the color pattern you mentioned above.

I'm always willing to learn something, so please go ahead...

JoePublic posted at 1:43 AM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462129

Sorry, but I find the native Poser figures since Poser 6 COMPLETELY unuseable. Some of them I made "beareable" with a lot of work (I've even managed to "un-ugly" Alyson), but for the most part they aren't worth my time.

Yet this all could have been avoided, as Poser is perfectly capeable to support high quality meshes with it's rigging system.

Most any figure Poser comes with can be customized to whatever extent you want to take it, often without a whole lot of effort. People used to do that all the time but creativity seems to have left the building and it's become more fun to criticize every aspect of the program and its content instead of being artists and making it your own, which is what the primary purpose of any figure actually is. 

I turned Roxie into something I preferred, mostly just using body scales to adjust proportions and a bit of zbrushing on her face. It took all of a couple hours back in PP2014. I've adjusted things off and on since then, and the other day ran across her again so decided to experiment with converting her default skin to cycles. She borrowed Miki2's hair and P13's copy morphs tool snapped her bathing suit right to her new shape once I converted it to an FBM - which has just been a cluster of scales and zbrush up until that point - and applied one of Alyson's poses. Sure, her shoulders and fingers could still use some work and I'm not crazy about her face but it's 99% a test project anyway so imagine what someone who actually knew what they were doing could produce if they bothered to try.

This is a nice render of Roxy, and I actually like her face very much. Her proportions also seem pretty realistic.

*

But, as for creativity, well...

This is Posette (NEAena) :

This is Posette, too:

This is the P4 Dork (AprilYSH remap):

This is V3:

More V3:

M3 vs David:

My most recent sculpts based on Don & Judy are in my gallery

Then there are my weightmapped V3, David, M4 14K and V4 14K.

And pretty much hundreds of other custom sculpts and hybrids I made but have never shown.

*

So, I think after 23yrs of mostly modifying, improving Poser figures, I can tell a "good" Poser figure from a "bad" one with some authority. ;-)

*

The point is, I shouldn't have NEEDED to do anything of this.

Sure, back in the Poser 4,5,6 days, we simply didn't have the technology to make a figure bend in a realistic manner. (Allthough I remember early attempts adding JCM's to Posette even back then)

But realistic sculpting, realistic expressions, a nice looking default face and proper mesh topology are not hard to implement into a figure from the get go with a little effort.

Also rigging these days is really not that hard, anymore.

*

And pretty much ALL of the current native Poser figures are severly lacking in several of these aspects.

And yes, DAZ figures have their shortcomings, too.

Genesis 3/8/9 have wonderful face sculpts and expressions, but the mesh topology is sorely lacking.

I wouldn't touch Genesis 9 with a 10 foot pole. She might be fine to be sculpted into monsters in ZBrush, but for the hobbyist user, V3 or V4 are a way easier to handle option.

So, yes, Genesis 9 is COMPLETELY UNUSEABLE to me, too.

(But I'd kill for a native Poser figure with V9's face sculpt and expressions)  ;-)

These shots, Renders, Are Shocking! Does not fit to the 2023 technology at all

There seems to be allot to be fixed to get things right

Hope that Poser 13 is not to be blamed for these qualities and if then lets hope that Poser 14 will be better, but my guess is that poser artists have allot to catch up. Remembering times of great renders long before Poser 13

A " Déjà-vu "  of Pablo Picasso ..... with some luck they might be successful one day :) 

Curious, what renders are you talking about, sir?

Certainly not his own. Not a single example of his "mastery" at all.

This is LaFemme............... Nuff said........

@JoePublic 

>>> And pretty much ALL of the current native Poser figures are severly lacking in several of these aspects.

shvrdavid posted at 3:21 PM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462274

This is LaFemme............... Nuff said........

VERY nice face, Love it!

@Rhia474, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what he's talking about. It seems to be a theme, everytime one of this "critic's" appears and they get pressed to back up their claims with evidence, you get nothing. We posting our work, exposing ourselves and they have nothing better to do than take a dump on our work. Thanks for nothing.

shvrdavid posted at 3:21 PM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462274

This is LaFemme............... Nuff said........

Yes, that is a great render and a great face sculpt.

But the face is not the problem I have with LaFemme.

(Although I find L'Hommes default face a lot more realistic)

*

It's her rigging that irks me. Tons and tons of unnecessary JCM's and a very complicated control matrix in her cr2. And a severe lack of muscle topology.

How do you do a character like this by using LaFemme without a ton of subdivision?

That's the original Stephanie AKA "The Mystery Figure", who was based on the Michael 1 mesh.

She's just 34636 polygons, because all that muscle detail is built right into the mesh.

THAT's what I call a "good" Poser figure.

Of course you don't NEED to use all that detail if you don't want to.

One flick of a dial, and she's just as "smooth" and feminine as all the other meshes.

First, I'd like to say I've never used Poser and I've been using Daz for 8 years, and yeah, making "adult" content. I say this so those who think that makes my opinions here moot can just ignore the rest of my somewhat lengthy post.

Basically, I haven't used it but since Bondware got Poser I have been following it. Personally, I'd love for Poser to compete at Daz level, I think that competition would make both programs better and I wouldn't mind also owning Poser if it did. Sadly, it hasn't imho, at least for my needs.

The issue isn't the app itself, Superfly might not look as good as Iray (imho and at the moment; being based on Cycles and seeing what Blender can do, it could get much better in the future) but it still allows to make decent physically based renders while not being limited to using Nvidia cards. The issue is the content. Or lack of it. They claim you get so much content for the price but the truth is much of it is reeeally old stuff that is unusable (at least if you want to make realistic renders with decent quality). You can probably salvage some of it but it's going to take work, and that means time. As they say, time is money, so you could just buy a better one. AcePyx mentions on his video that Daz content is expensive, having to spend around 100$ to get one figure with hair and fully clothed. This isn't true. Same as this site or other sites selling stuff like online courses, you never buy the stuff at the base price. There are always huge sales and things like the Prime Membership or Daz+. Just as a reference, Daz released Julia 9 this week and I was able to get her "gamer bundle" which includes the figure, 2 clothes, 1 hair, make up, props and an environment for something like 15$.

I know some people get annoyed by the unimesh talk but that's just the way it is. I don't know the specifics of what it would break but afaik it's old stuff. I personally think Poser needs to start thinking more on the future than on the old stuff. Sure, Daz has managed to still let people use old content but they don't really support it anymore. If Bondware doesn't have the money to invest in a figure that can actually compete with the Genesis or the CC4 base figure, then I'd honestly just try to make the Genesis figure their main figure too. I doubt Daz would have an issue with it considering how they are making and sponsoring all sorts of ways to send their content to other apps, and I'd hope there isn't anyone still holding on old grudges from both sides. It'd mean Poser would get instantly a ton of more content, Bondware doesn't have to find a way to make artists create stuff for their figure instead of Genesis (which they won't because that's where the money is at) and Daz would just get more people buying their content.

Even Reallusion with their awesome figure and way more expensive apps put a lot of effort on making them usable with all sorts of external content. And that's really it, imho. Poser seems to want to compete keeping itself in a bubble of outdated content while not having the money needed to actually do that. At the very least I really doubt going all in with the L'Femme/L'Homme figures is the way to go.

Anyway, again, this is me hoping for Poser to get better, not trashing it. I sincerely congratulate Bondware on keeping Poser alive and I imagine they have had to make difficult choices and surely will have to make more in the future. I really hope they can get Poser to give Daz its run for their money one way or another so they also get off their asses and make better improvements (I mean, we have been waiting for Daz 5... for quite a while now xD)

JoeP

How do you do a character like this by using LaFemme without a ton of subdivision?

Personally I don't care what the topology and rigging of a figure is like, because all of them have downfalls. When I did production figures, every scene used a different figure for a reason. And that reason is that one size all, doesn't exist. Pick the mesh you need for the scene, and stop thinking that there is a figure somewhere that can do everything, because there is no such thing....

MazinkaiserDX posted at 4:13 PM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462285

First, I'd like to say I've never used Poser and I've been using Daz for 8 years, and yeah, making "adult" content. I say this so those who think that makes my opinions here moot can just ignore the rest of my somewhat lengthy post.

I read it; but will happily ignore everything else you have to say. You have never used the software and thus your post on the function of Poser, and how to use and improve it; are completely useless similar to many of the other posts in this thread. This thread does make for good entertainment each morning while I drink my morning coffee; but has no direct impact on my upgrading from P12 or switching to DAZ. I've watched these amusing threads for years but I still use Poser. Silly me.

DCArt posted at 6:50 AM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462230

@hornet3d says:

>>The trouble with quoting facts and figures about a software program is that, in a lot of cases, no source is given for that information.  Information drawn from forums is rarely valid as most users do not visit forums and included in those are many that remain in lurk mode.  

This is true. And over time, all of the speculation posted in the forums becomes the basis for "alternative facts" that perpetuate on and on and on.

That is also true, I remember when I moved from using V4 to Dawn SE there were any number of threads stating the Dawn and Dawn SE did not work in Poser, clearly all posted by people who had not tried.  That went on for years although I have not seen such a thread in the last couple of years, I guess they are all keeping their powder dry to start all over again when Dawn 2 is released.

parkdalegardener posted at 5:18 AM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462326

I read it; but will happily ignore everything else you have to say. You have never used the software and thus your post on the function of Poser, and how to use and improve it; are completely useless similar to many of the other posts in this thread. This thread does make for good entertainment each morning while I drink my morning coffee; but has no direct impact on my upgrading from P12 or switching to DAZ. I've watched these amusing threads for years but I still use Poser. Silly me.

No idea about the kind of work that you do with Poser but if you are happy enough with it and the current state of Poser, great for you. Can't speak for others here but at least my goal wasn't trying to stop you from upgrading to P13 or switching to Daz, if that's the impression you got then I feel you didn't get the point. As far as I can see, myself included even though I haven't used Poser yet, the whole point is wanting Poser to be better. That you are content with its current state doesn't change the objective facts that Poser is nowhere near as popular as the other similar apps out there. If you think that's fine because it works for you, you are probably wrong. Sure, Bondware released P12 and P13 but for how long can they continue supporting Poser in its current state or if it keeps getting worse? And it's a fact you can see just by the amount of content made for it, specially figure-wise because people making things like props and environments can simply "double-dip" making it for Daz and Poser. The amount and how much it actually sells what actually gets made.

And yes, not having used Poser I definitely can't speak about the upgrades the app itself needs or doesn't, but it really doesn't matter if it doesn't have the content to back it up anyway, which is why I think they need to do something about that first. I haven't used Poser but I do use Renderosity quite a bit so I believe I can talk about the vast difference there is in content made for Daz vs Poser.

parkdalegardener posted at 5:18 AM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462326

I read it; but will happily ignore everything else you have to say. You have never used the software and thus your post on the function of Poser, and how to use and improve it; are completely useless similar to many of the other posts in this thread.

I respectfully disagree. If Bondware wants to Poser to grow, MazinKaiser is EXACTLY the kind of user they need to appeal to (as they made it clear with 13 that they are not really doing much to satisfy the hardcore user. Mazin articulated his (gonna assume a male) wishes for the program, from the perspective of someone using a rival program. He recognised that vibrant competition is good for both programs. Any company hoping to attract new customers, who ignores those potential customers when they articulate their desires, is missing a great opportunity for intel about the direction the future program should go.

I agree what was said about the content and quality thereof, but the issue goes deeper there, intothe question  of 'why', and 'how easy it is to create content ' on which am not qualified to speak, being simply an end user. 

I don't see a reason why a Poser figure should "NOT" have a well designed mesh topology, so it could be morphed into a variety of different ages, genders and body types?

This is V3, again:

(Actually it is V3RR, hence the blockiness of the head. But the render was made long before Poser featured subdivision)

*

This is the original THE GIRL:

Why can't a Poser figure be The Beauty AND The Beast?

"It's better to have and not need, than to need and not have!"

IMO, if they REALLY want to compete with more modern apps like Blender or whatever, they'd probably have to re-invent Poser from the ground up.

That means no legacy content anymore whatsoever. No Firefly, no spherical falloff zones, no eliptical falloff zones, not even legacy weightmapping.

That of course would mean to me that 23yrs of sculpting and rigging work as well as countless hours developing Firefly materials and lightsets would all go down the drain.

IF (A big IF!) they would supply 100% perfect (Or at least near perfect) conversion tools, perhaps I might do that switch.

But I'm 58yrs now. I can't invest another 23 years to redo everything again from scratch.

I'll probably then just stay with any version of Poser that still works with my content and let you do that journey without me.

Rhia474 posted at 12:25 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462349

I agree what was said about the content and quality thereof, but the issue goes deeper there, intothe question  of 'why', and 'how easy it is to create content ' on which am not qualified to speak, being simply an end user. 

Creating content is no big deal now day's, it goes fast, it is easy, poser supports Simple skinning, means that a fully Articulated figure can be generated in less then a week. To understand what simple skinning means, what you so call unimesh in new terms is a fast and simple way of rigging a figure up to almost perfection. This can be done with a type of universal bone structure " If you Have it " this system also has been used in Nexus mod or in game models. Actually not far off a game model. Poser users just look way to far even if it is right in front of there nose. This is caused due the lack of knowledge. Not meaning to offend anyone, but I mentioned already quiet a few times that all is already there for a good and fast creations.

The why, this is not happening, well it is because allot of users in these forums like you say are just end users, most if not all have no Idea about getting a High end model done, especially when it comes to rigging. Most are limited to the old way it was made, never even reached the full level of Weight Mapping.

This naturally caused large conflicts with users that were trying to help, users that had the knowledge, the real knowledge. Due a lack of attention this forum allot of times misinterpreted there purpose trying to help, so for most they stopped to bother, allot of these even got into great conflicts with these forum members that rather of real know how, had a attention disorder. This caused that allot of valuable members and creators gotten banned from renderosity, or they just left ! 

Bringing us to the point, that it is going to be really hard getting new creators, creators that have the knowledge to bring up new ideas and Improvements for model creations. Bringing back old creators? No Way , they are pissed, and they will rather take there knowledge and improvements into there grave then to share it here again.

Once Renderosity was a great community of creators and artists sharing there Ideas on model creations in Forums but exactly on this point it failed, Renderosity just got rid of the wrong users, they just made the wrong decisions in there forums.

It is to understand as Creators artists can be quiet a little impulsive at times, this is a known fact amongst Art especially if they have some know how ... but so many rules and Laws on a site blocked this part that is making an Artist what he is so that these just end up with a red flag on there accounts  getting hunted so that they never could come  back.

I do not know if meanwhile something has changed, I do not know if it is to late, what I know is, sharing great ideas to a community that acted this way for several years now is going to be hard as trust needs to be earned back, so that these would share there know how without fear getting ripped of. They might forgive but will never forget.    

Simple bone single skin is not optimal for a Poser figure. It basically just converts the rig to be exported to other apps. You get one weight map for each body part and you're essentially back to the rigging used in Poser 1, just with a weight map instead of a falloff zone. That means you're using JCMs for each and every joint rotation unless you like that bent straw look on shoulders and elbows. 

This isn't a bad option for mechanical type figures that don't have fleshy stretchy bits, but otherwise, it's a big nope.

I've experimented with numerous 3rd party figures that tried to reinvent the wheel when it comes to rigging. Some were much more interesting than others but ultimately all of them failed because most users weren't interested or found them too complicated to work with.

Nevertrumper posted at 10:51 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462029

(BTW: DAZ Studio is free and it includes a render engine, that costs about 300$, if you‘d buy it separately.

Poser costs 250$ and it includes a ripp off of a render engine that comes free with Blender.)

Am I really the only one here, who thinks, that Poser is milking his loyalists in an dishonest way?

Cost isn't the hill you want to die on, Nevertrumper.

To reach rough feature parity, you will drop around $600 dollars in 3rd party scripts. 

That number wasn't picked out of a hat btw, that is what I spent trying (unsuccessfully) trying to make DS my daily driver.

There are a number of things that are simply not possible with DS - like multi-GPU render support out of the box.

Then there are the initial design compromises that crippled DS from the very start.......

Rhia474 posted at 12:25 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462349

I agree what was said about the content and quality thereof, but the issue goes deeper there, intothe question  of 'why', and 'how easy it is to create content ' on which am not qualified to speak, being simply an end user. 

Creating content has never been easier, but creating good quality content is a different thing, not only creating the content itself but the whole time involved in getting good enough to do it. It is also a very competitive market. So artists wanting to make a living out of it have to make the most of each piece created which means going where the money is, and the money is where the most popular stuff is. And what's popular? Genesis stuff, and even more specifically, sexy female stuff. It is a common complain around the Daz forums how there is so much more good content for the female figures than for the males.

JoePublic posted at 5:38 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462390

IMO, if they REALLY want to compete with more modern apps like Blender or whatever, they'd probably have to re-invent Poser from the ground up.

That means no legacy content anymore whatsoever. No Firefly, no spherical falloff zones, no eliptical falloff zones, not even legacy weightmapping.

That of course would mean to me that 23yrs of sculpting and rigging work as well as countless hours developing Firefly materials and lightsets would all go down the drain.

IF (A big IF!) they would supply 100% perfect (Or at least near perfect) conversion tools, perhaps I might do that switch.

But I'm 58yrs now. I can't invest another 23 years to redo everything again from scratch.

I'll probably then just stay with any version of Poser that still works with my content and let you do that journey without me.

I don't think it's expected of Poser to compete with Blender, it is a different beast. It's more about competing with Daz or CC4/IClone. In that regard, I don't think Poser has to eliminate things like Firefly or being able to use old figures. Daz has managed to keep 3delight (their render engine before Iray) and V4 in there, they simply don't update them anymore and artists rarely make anything for them, if ever. I could be wrong, I don't know the inner workings or the differences between both apps, but that's just how it seems to me.

ssgbryan posted at 7:18 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462401

Nevertrumper posted at 10:51 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462029

(BTW: DAZ Studio is free and it includes a render engine, that costs about 300$, if you‘d buy it separately.

Poser costs 250$ and it includes a ripp off of a render engine that comes free with Blender.)

Am I really the only one here, who thinks, that Poser is milking his loyalists in an dishonest way?

Cost isn't the hill you want to die on, Nevertrumper.

To reach rough feature parity, you will drop around $600 dollars in 3rd party scripts. 

That number wasn't picked out of a hat btw, that is what I spent trying (unsuccessfully) trying to make DS my daily driver.

There are a number of things that are simply not possible with DS - like multi-GPU render support out of the box.

Then there are the initial design compromises that crippled DS from the very start.......

I don't know what kind of scripts you are talking about and what kind of features you need to make DS your daily driver, but I just wanted to point out that DS has had support for multi-GPU render for a while now, out of the box. I used to render with a RTX 2060 Super and a GTX 1070, then I had a dual 3060 setup for a while before getting a 3090. Unless you mean that the VRAM of the cards don't get added up. And still, afaik you can do that if you use cards compatible with NVLink.

blackbonner posted at 9:36 AM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462238

@Nevertrumper, I would like to know what collar pattern (I asume you meant Color) you talked about.
This Image is rendered in P13 and was not touched by PHotoshop, Gimp or even color corrected in PostFX.
It would be nice to know if you can point out the color pattern you mentioned above.

I'm always willing to learn something, so please go ahead...

Quote:
"I'm always willing to learn something, so please go ahead..."
allrighty then:
First indeed not brownish. In order to avoid that, you have to have bluish lights, in this case coming from a HDRI. Looks like you've set it pretty high, because the sky looks like a bit into green, which also happens in other software on high exposure values on HDRI or render settings.
I am going to tell you now, what is wrong with your render as it is on 99.5% of other Poser users' renders:
1) For close up renders use a higher camera frame width, which gives less distortions on your model.
2) Use hair with less baked shadows and highlights in its texture maps
3) Give your model a focus. these eyes look dead, starring into nowhere. Give your character a point of interest, by looking at something or into the camera.
4) Add Depth of field to the camera. Sharp model, blurred background.
5) Something's wrong with the skin shader. Might not been your fault, for I have never seen a convincing skin in Poser, except for some tech demo renders with a demo head.
6) The model La Femme looks just terrible. It takes a lot of modeling skills to shape a convincing human being into her. do not use the default figure.
7) Her left hand pose looks weird. Alter the pose a little bit to actually see, what she is doing with her hand. Her hand looks also to tiny compared to her head. Maybe due to a problem with the figure itself, but also a wrong camera setting.
8) what is the material of her bathing suit made of? Is it plastic, neoprene? There are no folds.
9) I'd place the model more into the lower left of the picture, leaving more space to the head.

Sorry, I am picky here, but I am not more picky, than I'd be on my own work, and since you said, you are always willing to learn... 

JoePublic posted at 11:43 AM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462248

Then there are my weightmapped V3, David, M4 14K and V4 14K.

And pretty much hundreds of other custom sculpts and hybrids I made but have never shown.

*

So, I think after 23yrs of mostly modifying, improving Poser figures, I can tell a "good" Poser figure from a "bad" one with some authority. ;-)

*

The point is, I shouldn't have NEEDED to do anything of this.

Sure, back in the Poser 4,5,6 days, we simply didn't have the technology to make a figure bend in a realistic manner. (Allthough I remember early attempts adding JCM's to Posette even back then)

But realistic sculpting, realistic expressions, a nice looking default face and proper mesh topology are not hard to implement into a figure from the get go with a little effort.

Also rigging these days is really not that hard, anymore.

*

And pretty much ALL of the current native Poser figures are severly lacking in several of these aspects.

And yes, DAZ figures have their shortcomings, too.

Genesis 3/8/9 have wonderful face sculpts and expressions, but the mesh topology is sorely lacking.

I wouldn't touch Genesis 9 with a 10 foot pole. She might be fine to be sculpted into monsters in ZBrush, but for the hobbyist user, V3 or V4 are a way easier to handle option.

So, yes, Genesis 9 is COMPLETELY UNUSEABLE to me, too.

(But I'd kill for a native Poser figure with V9's face sculpt and expressions)  ;-)

There seems to be no way around a proper JCM set and custom expression sets for every character. Although G8 is my preferred figure to work with, the expressions are still horrible. 
I do agree on G9. G9 is a complete fail and a step back. The only advantage is, that since G9 is out, I am saving lots of money, for I don't buy anything anymore.

parkdalegardener posted at 5:18 AM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462326

MazinkaiserDX posted at 4:13 PM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462285

First, I'd like to say I've never used Poser and I've been using Daz for 8 years, and yeah, making "adult" content. I say this so those who think that makes my opinions here moot can just ignore the rest of my somewhat lengthy post.

I read it; but will happily ignore everything else you have to say. You have never used the software and thus your post on the function of Poser, and how to use and improve it; are completely useless similar to many of the other posts in this thread. This thread does make for good entertainment each morning while I drink my morning coffee; but has no direct impact on my upgrading from P12 or switching to DAZ. I've watched these amusing threads for years but I still use Poser. Silly me.

The point of his post isn't to stop you from upgrading, he actually wants Poser to improve because competition really is what Studio needs right now. Yes I'm using Studio exclusively but before I switched over I was a dedicated Poser user having used Poser 4 - 11, I was active on this forum and both RDNA and the SM forums before they shut down, I also left the Poser ecosystem with thousands of dollars worth of content collected from 20+ years. You can take a look at my gallery here, it's not that great and I hate everything I render but I do have some stuff up dating back to 2011.

Having said that, I disagree 100% on what he said about Poser and Genesis. The solution isn't making Genesis the main Poser figure, that would never work and speaking as a former Poser user I wouldn't want that to happen anyway. I don't know what the solution is but I can tell you what my problem were and what pushed me to make the leap to Studio.

My biggest problem was content, not old content but new content for the more recent Poser figures. What really killed it for me was when Rendo took over publishing Poser from SM I thought that there'd be in influx of content for LF but there wasn't and I saw so much stuff being advertised for G3/G8 that it was overwhelming most of the time. I had to scroll ALL THE WAY down the product list to find anything for Poser native figures that aren't v4 and if I was having such a hard time getting to Poser content as a daily Poser user, I can't imagine how very casual users had the patients to find a single thing. Not only was the content hard to find the promos for the items usually weren't very good so if I did find something I might be interested in I usually was turned off to it by image three.

There's also the Poser GUI, I never cared for the big goofy playschool buttons style that followed Poser since the beginning but it's what we had and I got used to it. Later on I bought all the scripts and tools I could to replace as many elements as possible, like the Netherworks Scene Toy Pro and Cam Panel Plus that would start up when the program did so I'd never see certain Poser panels again. When I made the switch over the more modern interface of Studio was such a nice change, a bit confusing at first but I quickly figured it all out and the times I went back to Poser to do something the more I regretted opening up the program.

I also am not a big fan of LF, BH did an amazing job with her but she just isn't what I was looking for in a figure, I also think the bends are bad with wonky shoulders and at the time it was very hard to un-LaFemme LaFemme. Now, going back to my point on the heavily advertised G3/G8, they were everywhere on this site, heck G8.1 still is sitting at the top banner right now on my screen with three different products... but the promo characters looked so good and realistic, it's what I wanted to achieve and if Rendo was going to spam me with G8 products I might as well try them out. So I did and with my very first render I was more impressed with g8 than any figure I had ever rendered in Poser and that was that.

I've browsed the entire P13 gallery thread, jura made some nice architectural renders and some others posted some decent shader examples but I didn't see anything that would make me want to come back to Poser, once the figures are in the renders it all falls off very quickly for me. The version of Cycles that's in P13 should absolutely be able to rival iray in Studio, the problem is that with so many people using older content that's not designed for Cycles a render done with content from 2008 is still going to look like content from 2008 now matter how new the render engine is. If Bondware is hoping for a flow of new users it's certainly not going to get them by having renders that look like they were outdated ten years ago.

I don't hate Poser and I'm not bashing it, I'm just saying some of the reasons why I eventually left and made the switch to Studio. I'd love to come back because this was my home for a very long time and I miss seeing a lot of familiar names here, but I need a reason to start using Poser again and so far I haven't found it.

@ JohnDoe641 :
You've nailed it.
It is not about bashing Poser. It is the anger about Poser falling behind and refusing to do anything about it.
Once Poser has been nr. 1 in this segment, now it is far behind DAZ and Reallusion.
Part of the problem is also, that most Poser users are acting like cult members. 
Just by praising Poser, the software will never get better. There has to be strong demands for improvements.

Nevertrumper posted at 1:30 AM Fri, 21 April 2023 - #4462924

@ JohnDoe641 :
You've nailed it.
It is not about bashing Poser. It is the anger about Poser falling behind and refusing to do anything about it.
Once Poser has been nr. 1 in this segment, now it is far behind DAZ and Reallusion.
Part of the problem is also, that most Poser users are acting like cult members. 
Just by praising Poser, the software will never get better. There has to be strong demands for improvements.

There is certainly a lot of truth in that but, demands need to be worded in a way to show that people making those demands are actually doing it to try and improve Poser.  Acting like cult members ?  Maybe but don't forget Poser users have, to my knowledge, been told for over twenty years that the program they use is about to die mostly from people that never use it.  True there has been constructive criticism over the years but that has been overwhelmed by those with a scarcely hidden agenda to move everyone on to DS.  In years past there have been massive flame wars on the subject resulting sadly with many knowledgeable and helpful users, and vendors, not moving to DS but leaving the computer art community for pastures new.   Happily such flame wars are a thing of the past but even today there are people knocking Poser, Poser 13 and Superfly with information that is presented as facts that are clearly nothing of the sort.  This results in Poser users just ignoring such posts and, sadly, some good nature discussion on the future of Poser in the process.

 

@Nevertrumper

I asked you a specific question about this color pattern you can spot in "all" Poser images.
I did not asked for artistic advice and the topic of my post was also not related to anything surrounding the LaFemme Figure.
The picture I created for this post was made with the purpose to show you that Poser does have the capabillty to produce realistic images without an unavoidable color tint.
I did not used the rule of thirds, I also did not mess with the camera settings to set up a perfect portrait or put any affort into the material shaders.
My single goal was to use everthing out of the box exept for the lighting situation to create an decent looking render.

But I did a second render in Daz Studio with similar settings regarding the lighting, which was composed of an HDRI and a single point light in Poser 13.
I used a Genesis 8 female without morphs, the default skin, a short hair prop also shiped with Daz Studio. I chosed a similar pose and put her in the bra which also came with the Program.
In order to take the bluish color, you noticed in my Poser render, into account, I went to the Enviroment tab and gave the enviroment tint a slightly blue touch.
I think we can all agree to the fact that Daz Studio uses HDR Images for the Dome, so I left everything as it was by default.
Here is the result.I like to ask you which lighting and color scheme do you prefer.
Remember, I'm not talking about the figure, skin shader or the lack of foldings in a clothing item, just the colors of the picture.
In lack of a better english word, I would call it atmospheric mood.
Anyways, have all a great weekend and happy rendering, regardles which program you prefer.

Your first render was not realistic at all.

This second DS render looks so much better in pretty much everything. 
Let's see, if you can recreate that quality in Poser.

@Nevertrumper, why should I recreate such an inferior render result? I could probably post a photograph of a female in open sunlight and you will complain that it isn't realistic. I honestly doubt you know the difference between real and realistic.

If you look at my Poser Render, you will clearly see that the light behaves realistic. It bounces of the fabric of the swimsuit and skin of the figure and creates some indirect light and edge lighting as well. This is done with one light and a light emitting SkyDome, just as it was set up on DS 

Go and search for this lighting in my Daz Studio render. It's not there! I have work with DS, C4D, Blender, Poser, 3DSMax and every Renderengine they had to offer, including VRay and I'm doing it for two decades now. 

blackbonner posted at 9:35 AM Fri, 21 April 2023 - #4462951

@Nevertrumper, why should I recreate such an inferior render result? I could probably post a photograph of a female in open sunlight and you will complain that it isn't realistic. I honestly doubt you know the difference between real and realistic.

If you look at my Poser Render, you will clearly see that the light behaves realistic. It bounces of the fabric of the swimsuit and skin of the figure and creates some indirect light and edge lighting as well. This is done with one light and a light emitting SkyDome, just as it was set up on DS 

Go and search for this lighting in my Daz Studio render. It's not there! I have work with DS, C4D, Blender, Poser, 3DSMax and every Renderengine they had to offer, including VRay and I'm doing it for two decades now. 

Well, fine then. What ever you are happy with.
I went through Poser galleries and tried to figure out, if Poser is just that bad at rendering or if users are unable to handle Poser.
I used Poser frequently until Poser Pro 2014 and got me the Octane plugin for better renderings. 
Poser 11 and above showed no evidence of better render capabilities. 
So why?
a) Poser can't do it?
b) Poser just doesn't make it easy for users?
c) A vast majority of Poser users just don't know, how to do it?
d) A vast majority of Poser users just don't care about their artwork quality?

You've just proven, that as soon you are using DS, your work looks actually much better.

You should have stopped after the first sentence and then following your own advice.

Everything after that is your own opinion. You are unbelievable arrogant.

since this thread is no longer a productive discussion but has devolved into name calling, it's being locked.