Hello! I think Poser's great for animation/workflow and I have used it on a few professional projects. I recently upgraded to Poser 13 from 11 (on my Mac M1 laptop), and was obviously pleased with the GPU updates and changes to Superfly, but I did find it slightly buggy.

Normally I would not mention this as a few service releases normally iron-out that sort of thing, but I noticed at the bottom of the latest service release a few days ago, that 13.2  "likely marks the last of version 13 as the team turns their sights towards version 14 in the new year" ...

Um, please don't leave 13 like this!

Here are my problems (maybe it's just me ...):

- Area render does not work. Well, it renders 'an' area, just not quite the area you select, no matter how slowly and carefully you select the area. Normally it renders a much smaller area, adjacent to what you select. Sometimes it works okay ...

- Custom morphs crash Poser. Not always and if you keep it minimal it's okay, but I just tried to reproduce the issue so I restarted, made a blank environment and a default Victoria 4 (ie nothing too complex, a tried and tested figure), used the morph tool to shift the whole shoulder, and Poser crashed in seconds.

- If there is any scaling of a body part, the body part welding now breaks down and shows a significant dislocation in the render - it looks fine in the preview but renders any welded body parts with great fractures. I know it's best to use morphs to adjust body geometry, but yScale, xScale etc used to be a very quick way to alter shapes and the mesh welds would stay intact; this seems much more fragile around welded seams, is all.

- If a figure uses hair strands / follicle surfaces, the whole thing has a delay of up to a second whenever moving the figure, making it very difficult to work with in a scene. The hair also sometimes appears on the render, but sometimes isn't even there. Its shadow is, but not the hair ... a bit weird, that one.

- Queue Manager takes over 100 x longer than a direct or background render, and does not appear to be making use of GPU no matter what the render settings; it's hanging for some reason, so I've been avoiding it.

- When conforming one figure to another (eg clothing), Poser has a 30% chance of crashing out completely; just disappears.

- When I select a figure/body in a scene and hit the delete button, either nothing happens, or sometimes the Library window itself goes blank, and Poser throws up a constant bug error (below). I can't then go Window > Libraries to reinstate it, as it thinks it's still there. So I have to restart to clear it.

- If I'm using the Parameter Dials (eg. xTran) to move a figure, and then click-drag to pan the camera using the Camera Controls (so I can follow where I'm moving the figure), the 'selected' item under Parameter Dials then snaps to the camera dials, rather than remaining on the figure. Don't get me wrong - clicking a camera control to select that camera and show its dials is very useful, but if I'm moving a figure around a scene I'd prefer to be able to click-drag (as opposed to 'click') the camera just so I can follow where the figure's moving to, without any change on the Parameter Dials; I want them to stay on the figure so I can then shift zTran or yRotate or whatever. That might be a purposeful change, so may not be an actual bug.

- Poser asks my Mac if it can screen and audio -capture my Mac every few hours ... ahem. I just think that's a bit of a privacy issue if you've got that kind of request going on in the background, and dread to think what it's sending back from users' Windows computers. I know all software comes with a certain amount of trust involved, but unless you're specifically using live support, I don't see how keylogging reports or sending screen (and audio!) captures is a good idea?

Um ... no thank you. Unless I've requested live support or something, Poser is not Zoom. This may be an ethical point I'm making, but it's likely just a symptom of a quick engineering solution rather than anything actually nefarious going on.

... Again, just to reiterate, I think Poser is GREAT! It's such a fast workflow compared to anything like 3D Studio Max or Blender or Daz Studio or Maya - all of which I have used, and most of them professionally. Poser is a great ergonomic tool, so fast and easy to use. I'm just hoping v13, which I have only just bought, will continue to be worked on to iron out (or help me understand?) these little things above.

Pleeeeaasssseeeee!

Thank youuuuuu! 

I've never noticed any of these problems, but I'm a Windows user. I get the feeling that there's not as many Mac users, so they may not have gotten reports on these problems, if they are Mac only.

You might want to check the Poser 13 forum, to see if anyone else has these issues, and submit support tickets, so they know there's a problem.

@dt00swc - please open a support ticket at: https://support.posersoftware.com and our staff will do their best to address you questions/concerns.

On the library. The library is a Safari web browser window. [Backspace] in Safari is "Back" so it goes back to no page at all. To get the library back use [Command]+[right arrow] to go "Forward" tot he library. We've tried to make Safari just not do that but, no. Windows machines use a Chrome browser window and it obeys the "Don't navigate away from this page" settings.

For the screen recording, that's for the color picker. For the color picker to work it has to access the screen. I don't know why it keeps asking. Once set your Mac is supposed to remember the setting.

Oh and the Camera dials being selected. If you click and don't drag the camera ball it selects the camera. If you click and drag it doesn't. Yeah that's kind of vague but it's supposed to work that way.

Thanks Nerd 3D - I'll try that workaround on the Library. I understand Safari is a law unto itself (having battled with IE back in the day ...).

Click and drag on the camera unfortunately does seem to select, which is my problem. I tend to use the dolly camera, if that makes a difference.

Any ideas on the body part welding issue? It applies to conformed (ie. non-dynamic, non-cloth-simulated) clothing too; it does seem that welds between joints are much more susceptible to disjointed rendering, even if the mesh looks perfectly smooth in the drawn preview. Scaling body parts exacerbates the issue, but even if everything's 100%; any out-of-the-ordinary (ie beyond the usual A-pose), can be more likely to cracking between joints than I've ever encountered with previous versions of Poser - on PC or Mac. 

nerd posted at 1:44 PM Tue, 19 December 2023 - #4479338

On the library. The library is a Safari web browser window. [Backspace] in Safari is "Back" so it goes back to no page at all. To get the library back use [Command]+[right arrow] to go "Forward" tot he library. We've tried to make Safari just not do that but, no. Windows machines use a Chrome browser window and it obeys the "Don't navigate away from this page" settings.

For the screen recording, that's for the color picker. For the color picker to work it has to access the screen. I don't know why it keeps asking. Once set your Mac is supposed to remember the setting.

What about the audio?

Plazagaai posted at 9:53 AM Sat, 23 December 2023 - #4479498

nerd posted at 1:44 PM Tue, 19 December 2023 - #4479338

On the library. The library is a Safari web browser window. [Backspace] in Safari is "Back" so it goes back to no page at all. To get the library back use [Command]+[right arrow] to go "Forward" tot he library. We've tried to make Safari just not do that but, no. Windows machines use a Chrome browser window and it obeys the "Don't navigate away from this page" settings.

For the screen recording, that's for the color picker. For the color picker to work it has to access the screen. I don't know why it keeps asking. Once set your Mac is supposed to remember the setting.

What about the audio?

Yeah it is a bit weird that. Presumably it's just Mac settings so it's not like Poser needs the audio but the Mac is saying its all or nothing.

On the welding - I just found an 'enable legacy welding' option under figure properties, so I'm hoping it's that.

UPDATES ON THESE BUGS: (I would update the original post but I can't), here's the solutions for posterity, in case anyone has the same issues:

SOLVED - If there is any scaling of a body part, the body part welding breaks down and shows a significant crack in the rendered figure joint. UPDATE: this was a major dealbreaker for me but is now solved; turns out if you go Figure > Skinning method and switch it to Unimesh, it's all fine. Superfly changed the way it handles welding after Poser 11, so this update needs to be selected or things break.

SOLVED - Poser asks my Mac if it can screen and audio -capture my Mac every few hours (because I was denying permission). UPDATE: it turns out that's a color picker thing and Poser has been less buggy / crashy since I've enabled that option. I was suspicious of it but after googling, found lots of references to things like Adobe Illustrator having the same issue - it's Mac's paranoid system settings getting in the way rather than Machiavelli Poser reporting back - though it could still be that, but let's hope not.

SOLVED - If I click-drag to pan the camera using the Camera Controls, the 'selected' item under Parameter Dials snaps to the camera dials, rather than remaining on the figure. UPDATE: this no longer happens, which is great. It was probably the screen capture thing above causing the bug.

SOLVED - When I select a figure/body in a scene and hit the delete button, sometimes the Library window itself goes blank white, and Poser throws up a constant bug error. UPDATE: this still happens, but you can right-click in the window and select 'Forward'. Restarting Poser also clears it, it's apparently just a Safari browser issue (it's all about delete being 'back' and if there's no back to go to, Safari [which is presenting the Library window] now shows a blank nav pane, hence 'Forward' solving it).

- If a figure uses hair strands / follicle surfaces, the whole thing has a delay of up to a second whenever moving the figure, making it very difficult to work with in a scene. UPDATE: according to Poser support, I could reduce the verts etc to solve this. I reduced all the hair display settings so much the figures had very noticeably patchy, jagged hair, and it still displayed with the same delays ... but I think this may be a problem of my chosen working display mode (I use Hidden line Wireframe all the time), so I'll probably just have to live with it, though I don't understand why older versions of Poser were fine displaying hair and #13 isn't, it's probably just changes in the way Poser presents previews rather than an actual bug.

Outstanding issues - (1) Area render does not render the area you select. (2) When conforming one figure to another, Poser likely to crash. (3) Queue Manager takes over 100 x longer than a direct render. (4) Working with custom morphs much more likely to crash Poser than ever before. UPDATE: these are still issues, but I haven't yet raised support tickets for them. Probably only the Queue Manager issue is one I'd like to solve; I'll comment on this thread if I find a workaround.

dt00swc posted at 5:00 AM Wed, 3 January 2024 - #4479925

- If a figure uses hair strands / follicle surfaces, the whole thing has a delay of up to a second whenever moving the figure, making it very difficult to work with in a scene. UPDATE: according to Poser support, I could reduce the verts etc to solve this. I reduced all the hair display settings so much the figures had very noticeably patchy, jagged hair, and it still displayed with the same delays ... but I think this may be a problem of my chosen working display mode (I use Hidden line Wireframe all the time), so I'll probably just have to live with it, though I don't understand why older versions of Poser were fine displaying hair and #13 isn't, it's probably just changes in the way Poser presents previews rather than an actual bug.

One thing to check on strand based hair, make sure none of the groups have to "show populated" checked. That will cause a lot of delay. And some hair have one small group (like bangs) with it checked while the rest are unchecked.

RedPhantom posted at 8:40 AM Wed, 3 January 2024 - #4479932

One thing to check on strand based hair, make sure none of the groups have to "show populated" checked. That will cause a lot of delay. And some hair have one small group (like bangs) with it checked while the rest are unchecked.

Thank you RedPhantom ~ yes I did try that, and all sections of hair, all groups, removing Show populated as well as drastically reducing density and verts per hair, and I still had the same issue - it could be that another figure in the scene was causing issues with draw speed or something like that. It's not a deal breaker, just a weird niggle, is all.

Don't get me wrong. I'll probably buy Poser 14 (have brought them all since Poser Debut), but I too hope any outstanding bugs with Poser 13 still get fixed rather than having to buy the next version for those fixes.

As for the screen recording on Mac, I had the same, even though I did give it permission. I found that re-adding Poser to the Screen & System Audio Recording has fixed it from asking.

Yeah apparently my tickets have unearthed some actual bugs, so that's good they're working on them. (Open support tickets, people!). 

Being worked on for hotfixes:

- Area Render doesn't render the right area on Mac

- HSV nodes are ignored in Background and Queue renders

I'm not sure about the other issues (like if a figure uses hair strands at all, it really slows down preview, or body part welding is very sketchy unless you use Unimesh, and even then it can be easy to break), but it's good they're working on the main things and fingers crossed there'll be a service release pre-v14.