Hi Renderosity community, The SR2-2 Beta release is now available for download at http://www.curiouslabs.com/go/sr2beta Please follow the updater instructions and view the readme.txt before installing the updater. These are the areas that were fixed in this SR2-2 beta patch: - Reduced memory requirements for rendering. - Implemented several rendering accelerations. - Canceling the render before shadows finish will no longer crash (bug introduced in SR1) - Opening previously closed Libraries palette now works correctly when exiting the Materials room. - Added UNDO functionality when moving feature points in the Face room. - Fixed pasting and applying nodes in the Materials room. - Fixed crosstalk between multiple figures when reading a pose file which had body parts not on the current figure - Reverting the scene now resets the Cloth room as well. - Fixed an ignore actor issue in the Cloth room. - Adjusted alpha map output. - Added Will & Penny morphs to the Face room. - By default, backface culling is no longer active. - Backface cull is less necessary now, and will not give good results when rendering tranpsarent objects. - Fixed occasional changing of actor names in the Properties/Parameters palette (The Left Shin Camera bug). - Cannot delete root Atmosphere node anymore. - Gel maps and shadow map scaling now work correctly. - Disabled screensavers when rendering AVIs. - Fixed upside-down copying/pasting when using the FireFly renderer. - Fixed transparency falloff settings when importing Poser 4 (or earlier) content. - Fixed scale zones bug introduced in SR1. - Fixed a crash with the mouse wheel in Windows 98/ME. - Pressing [CTRL]+[SHIFT] while clicking now deselects selected parameter in the Parameters palette. - Fixed forced power of 2 texture scaling and improved other texture scaling functions for improved image quality when rendering. - Fixed an occassional redraw of the Document window immediately following a render. - Fixed several large memory allocations during rendering and when looking for missing textures. - Updated default Face room textures to better match the figure texture. - Ray traced shadows now properly appear in reflections. - Objects set to not cast shadows no longer cast shadows in ray tracing. - Activated Depth Cue and Atmospheric rendering capabilities as a new object selection in the material room. - Speeded up checking for possibility of transparency in ray traced shadows. - Further speed improvements when rendering. - 0 length hairs are no longer generated into the rendering engine, eliminating a crash. - Poser will no longer incorrectly detect an insufficient disk space situation. - Resizing the render window while rendering no longer causes application/window errors. - Fixed crashes with textures larger than 4K by automatically scaling them down to 4K. - Importing 3DS models with 0 length polygons no longer causes a crash. - Vertex groups now display correctly in orthogonal cameras. - Fixed possible divide by zero error (renderer) - Fixed crashes when reading empty shader trees in material libraries. - Fixed an XML problem in the Render Options dialog where the Render Now button wasn't the right size. - Fixed a crash that occurred when users reduced the number of frames in an animation using the Render Options dialog. - The Render To New Window option now appears at either its set size or slightly smaller than the user's screen space (whichever is smaller) instead of defaulting to the Document window size. - Fixed a render crash caused by improper data culling and added extra data checks. - Improved ear morphs in the Face room. - Improved zoom handling in the Face room (vertical mouse motion now supported). - Renderer default no longer culls back-facing polygons. - Clicking the CLOSE (X) button in the render window no longer causes a false crash report. - Deactivated menus while simulating cloth & hair. - Fixed Library window height problem. - Text visibility issue in the Hierarchy editor is fixed. Again, thanks for your continued support, Brian Romero Curious Labs, Inc

Hey Brian thanks! Going to go get it right now. Ron

Ummmmmm.... which of these were the "non-critical bugs" it didn't ship with? Oh... and which of them are the "User Error" and the "System Compatibility Issues"? Enquiring minds want to know.

people want to know what tagging is? see message above.

Good Lawd ,would you look at that list?! WOW Thanks for the heads up Brian Tom

That's not "tagging", wdupre. That's a legetimate question based off of stuff that CL reps have been stating. I'll demonstrate tagging if you'd like me too. ;]

wdupre: I'll probably be accused of tagging too (and I still don't know what the hell it is) BUT... "Fixed crashes with textures larger than 4K by automatically scaling them down to 4K." I haven't bought it yet, and if this is the fix (I use and will continue to use textures larger than 4K) I give up. If I can't use textures larger than 4K then P5 is seriously limiting (for me anyway as I like DinaV and have a lot of "textures in progress" that are larger than 4K). It's just a fact. The face room doesn't interest me at all, I'd kind of like to be able to render water in Poser, I'd never use content paradise, and the cloth room, well for me it's not important at this time; but this texture size limitation along with the registration aggravation (get serious here, what if they DO go under????) is too much. I'd post this in the beta test forum but I don't have P5 Jan

Thanks Brian!

I don't knwo that anyone SAID Poser5 didn't ship with critical problems IB - I DO know thatI ad others said Poser5 didn't ship with any critical issues known to the beta testers. I checked that bug report databse several times a day, and there was not one "show stopper" or critical bug reported and open when the beta closed. As for the user errors... I don't recall anyone listing any of the above AS user error. However we have several threads here on R'osity of people screaming "bug" at the top of their lungs about things when they simply don't understand (and sometimes specifically don't want to learn) what their error is. There is enough in life to be upset abut without creating new stuff that as far as I can tell didn't happen. I DO find it amusing that now CL is getting slammed for fixing things. It's a funny world :)

OK, still trying to make this work. For the record, I'm really wanting to buy P5. Is this texture size limitation present in P5 pre-SP2 or was it introduced with SP2?

Isn't it though? ;] That's not a slam though. Honest. That's a question... fairly bluntly [and possibly tackily] stated I'll grant you, but a question. Man - you of all people have seen me write a slam. You know the difference by observation by now.

I installed the update, and all I can say is Thanks CL! This fixed a lot of problems I was having! I like to use Caspses Roxanne, and she got deformed in P5 but she works fine now!

IB just a question. Does your bed have a matteress on it or are you just sleeping on springs? You are so negative and anti Poser so why dont you go some where else. Ron

IB, I think you know very well that your message would do nothing but bring out animosity in a thread which was just intended to announce a new bug fix release. that is why I call it tagging. just my opinion but it seems that you enjoy nothing more then to incite an argument.

Why should I? Let's see... I'm a user of the program. I'm a cutomer of well... MetaCreations, not Curiouslabs, but CL acquired the prog I bought [and the problems, which they also designed in]. I've actually been a contributor to this forum and to Poser Technical off and on for some time. And a contributor to this site, in a number of ways for several years. I'd say I have as much apparent right to be here as you have to suggest I not be. Stiff off. ;] I'm not anti-poser. But - based on what I've seen of them over the course of the past two years or so, culminating in this release, I am more than a bit cynical about CuriousLabs. Now. It's my belief that someone should ask them pointed questions off an on. Doesn't have to be me - but I'm one of the people who is doing it. One among many. If you don't happen to like that, wellll... too damned bad, Ronny. Deal with it.

Thanks Brian, Got it.

movida how big do you render your images? I don't quite understand why you would need your textures to be larger then that unless your images are being rendered to poster sizes. for most even 4k images are unnessasary. and no I do not consider your post tagging.

IB seems like you cant afford a copy of P5. Let me know I will purchase one for you. You seem to make a lot of comments with out knowing. Oh by the way I noticed you mentioned Messiah in one post as an alternative to Poser. Surely you did not mean that. Hey what ya drinking tonight? Its becks here! Save me a shot of what your drinking. If there is a worm in the bottle I have dibs on it. Ron

I have a copy of Poser 5, thank you. And I make a lot of comments knowing precisely what I'm talking about. And what I'm basing them on - including reading the beta froum here. I'm just choosing to not be a part of the "CuriousLabs $349 Beta Test For Us Club". I can - and will periodically ask them pointed questions, and/or point out areas where they seem to be ummm... less than consistent. Again, you dislike that? Your choice - your problem. By the way... precisely which part of "Stiff off" were you translating as "Gee, let's go have a brew and be buds?" snicker

wdupre: I'm playing at texturing and DinaV is my favorite (I like the realism of the model, nice smooth head, morphability, posability and blah blah blah). I've got head textures (psd layers) that are upwards of 6K...not final, but wip's...hi res digital photos (Canon's got a new model, the D1s I think)...are 11 million pixels, full frame ... layer a head texture with digital photos sliced 'n diced and 4K is not good and you have to render and re-render... how to do it in P5 if you've got a 4K texture size limit? The realism of renders is more dependant on textures than models (in my totally un-professional opinion). You can take a crap model/figure and it'll look good if you use a good skin ... I learned that one with the first Mike head morph I did...it was crap but looked ok because I used Syyds' Kane on it. BUT...you can't use a crap skin on a good model and have it look good, just doesn't work. So the point of all this rambling is that many people want realism ... digital based skins are the most realistic in close-up renders. If P5 can't handle anything over 4K texture sizes you're limiting how far artists can push it (at least in this direction). Many people have upgraded their hardware for P5, so ... the machines can handle it and P5 should be able to also. I'm not one in favor of limiting what a lot of these texturers will be able to do with figures/props etc., because if you do that...you limit Poser and it's usefulness in ways that may not be apparent right now. I just do not like arbitrary, senseless limitations which will hamper creativity. Just think of the 3D worlds that could be created (like HMann's 3d world, which I really like) without texture size limitations or rendering issues. end of intended guilt inducing plea to CL to get rid of the f'n 4K texture size limit g Jan

IB sometimes your "Pointed questions" can be nothing more then a sharp stick poking at an open wound, you of course have a right to make them, but then I also have a right to say they are useless and unproductive.

Ah. Meta_mannix again? snicker

I deleted my first reply, 'cause I am trying to be a gentler person :) I >like< the 'tough questions'... only I usually expect them to have some grounding in what actually happened or was said. It's sort of pointless to ask the tough questions about a fictitious event :) Personally I like IB generally, he has a good shoot from the hip thing going that has in the pastcut through a LOT of BS around here. I just hape to think this time around his pointed stick is facing in a really rong direction. Wanna be annoyed? Fine. Want to ask tough questions? Good... but try and be accurate with them... it's more sporting. BTW - A 4K texture means 4096 pixels on a side. Thats 409640963 (bytes) or almost 49MEG of in memory texture footprint. I promise, you don't need all that for what you are almost certainly doing. In order for it to be even remotely relevant, you woud need to be rendering images so close to the skin that the texture was rendering 1 x 1 with the output and then your output size would need to be huge. Under all other circumstances your texture is not rendering 1x1 on the output, and a 3K or 2K texture would be fine. Now, should the restriction go away? I guess it won;t hurt to drop it.... but let's not pretend that this is a feature that is effecting the output of Poser5 in any but the most extreme theoretical conditions.

Attached Link: QB White of CuriousLabs

"Personally I like IB generally, he has a good shoot from the hip thing going that has in the pastcut through a LOT of BS around here. I just hape to think this time around his pointed stick is facing in a really rong direction." No probs, Soulhuntre. I happen to generally like you also. I especially like the way that you think things through, you tend to stay calm no matter what, and you generally illustrate your points with research. Sometimes you're f*cking scary - and that's a compliment. ;] I don't have a problem with you here on this, really. It's possible that you're right and the pointed stick is facing wrong - it's also possible you and I aren't seeing the same things. It's even possible [probable?] that we both have different research sets to base from. Np. I'm sure you've also noticed that If I prove to be in the wrong, I'll own it. But I take a lot of proving... and gibbering attacks from past or present company employees aren't likely to do much except set my teeth in things. grin

More like a Curious Labs affiliate actually Ironbear, is it Mr. White? Or have you forgotten that you are identified in this forum as a "friend of many years" by Curious Labs. Shame really, you've given a very bad impression with your little hissy fit there. Never mind, it's understandable that you'd be "protective" towards your friends. Oh, and in case anyone is interested. Here he is... http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=491680 Shame, I would have thought someone with their own business would have been more... polite and inventive rather than behaving like any other common forum weasel. I guess not. Good luck with your business Quintin, with friends like you Curious really doesn't need enemies.

:) snicker

Oh I give up... Back to work... I can't compete with you guys. All the best...

I'm nobody, not affiliated with anyone, but darn it IB this is utter arrogant crap. Thank you not for hijacking this thread. I'm sick and tired of you and your kind myself. At this point I don't give a whit what facts or experiences you base your spleen on. Your posts have simply become noise to me and countless others. That makes them worthless to everyone but you.

Spit. An awful lot of us agree with you.

unbookmarking, thanks again Brian. :)

"So the point of all this rambling is that many people want realism ... digital based skins are the most realistic in close-up renders. If P5 can't handle anything over 4K texture sizes you're limiting how far artists can push it (at least in this direction). Many people have upgraded their hardware for P5, so ... the machines can handle it and P5 should be able to also" Movida, I am one of those people, like yourself who would definately appreciate higher res for photorealistic portraits among other renders. I'll take the longer render times when I need crisp results. I will keep suggesting this to CL until it is part of the software. You also mentioned the Canon D1s. That is one sweet camara. If you want to see sample shots go to Dp review and look in the news section. This thing is rivaling medium format cameras. Unfortunatly its price is dear at around 7to 8 grand us.(ouch) Kodak is releasing a 14 megapixel camera shortly for under 5 grand. So yes, I want higher res to stay ahead of the curve. More artists will be demanding it soon anyway. Gentlemen..carry on.

What would you say was the time difference in rendering pre and post update? That atmosphere is damn delicious isn't it.

Wanna have some fun with atmosphere. Pick up Snowsultans new free light on the 3rd page of poser freestuff. You can place it anywhere ie. torchlight, behind a window (to allow a beam of light through) etc. Some really cool possibilities.

Thanks you for the tip Lapis!!!

Now I downloaded the beta about a week ago, is this a new one or the same one? Sharen

Brand spanking new as of friday.

Okay, on my way...Sharen

Lapis: I haunt DpReview g kind of decided on a Canon D60 for myself when I'm ready Can anyone verify if the 4K texture limit was present pre-SR2? If it wasn't I might take my chances and buy P5 and only install SR1, the ability to use large textures is that important

In general, pre-SR2, if you had a texture greater than 4K, it would crash, hence the fix. I would like to see the limit properly fixed and removed, but I don't really have a problem with using the smaller (and still large) texture.

One thing that seems to have been fixed in this beta, although it hasn't been clearly identified as fix except under the 'general render speed improvement', was the render speed slowdown that would sometimes cause a simple scene to takes hours to render depending on the camera position. I was trying to compile a definitve bug report for this, but, having just tried my example scenes with SR2-Beta2, the bug seems to have been solved. This is a big relief since myself and, I suspect a lot of other people, were finding this bug alone made working with P5 impossible. Bill

you mean that patch to fix ALL those bugs? well i want to thank you for making up my mind if i'm going to get P5 for the Mac.. looks like you lost one mac user. wonder if other mac users will follow? P5 released in Sept. and now a Month later, they have a patch, wonder if CL will make it up to th folks who LOST time and Money waiting on a fix for a program they put on a market way too early?

Jcleaver: thanks for the reply...well, that hosed that idea lol

And in defense of IB: All I perceive is his (and a few others) trying to keep things honest. If the damned problems are there, then they're there and hiding your head in the sand doesn't really make them go away. I for one, have been duped by exclamatory posts accompanying the release of products here, bought them, and was disappointed. I think those lauding products should be required to identify themselves as having been beta testers and therefore, received said product free. I was approached once and when I said I didn't want anything free I was told it wasn't free...all I had to do was post glowing reviews. No, I'm not going to name names but it really opened up my eyes. The same principle applies to this P5 fiasco. There are people here for whom, in the past, I've had the utmost respect and now that's dwindling. I'm not swayed one way or the other by the revelations. What does sway me, is the way they have to be brought forward.

Hi IB. Everything going ok? ;-)

IronBear is one of the nicest people I know on the internet. I find him refeshing honest and very helpful. Attacking The Bear does not make the problems go away.