HI Kristi

Thanks for your message.

As I wrote my interest is in finding product and arttwork, on 'Rosity, largely the same, so that newer and less well off vendors who can't really afford much in the way of an advertising budget can have their work found.

I know there's no such thing as "perfect" search and that there's no way of preventing someone from "gaming" the system so that their product (s) always get a high return ranking.  If there was I'm sure Google would have got thier paws on it or developed it by now.

From a customer perspective I'd like to see "all in one" character packaging discouraged as far too often I find some part of the package be it clothing, hair or a pair of shoes that would work with what I'm doing but end up not purchasing because, for one reason or other, I'm not interested in the character model itself. 

On a personal level there are two vendors, both of whom make frequent appearences as Vendor of the Month because of that and a couple of other thing, who I won' t purchase from on the general principle that I feel they're gaming the system.  I've no proof they are mind you but I can't escape the feeling that showing up on just too many search results that may have little or nothing to do with what I entered makes no sense other than they've included just about everything in the description/jkeywords/tags to ensure that it happens that way.  Both of whom do a lot of, or almost exclusively, "all in one" character packaging.

That's no flame bait, it's an observation and if they can get away with that they way things work right now more power to them.

To me a creative community thrives when there are a wide variety of choices and differences that one can look at and learn from. When that's not present the community suffers, including the successful vendors.

Good luck with improving the search function and criteria, I mean that, because we all will benefit if product is easier to find.

Happy Rendering

ttfn

John

P.S. Enjoy what's left of the weekend!

You know that every time a  new version of Poser is released the threads fill with people trashing it.  So I'm not surprised that its happening again.

For what it's worth the download was flawless, the install easy after I read through it all and applied the included patch file.

On line registration actually worked this time!

Load time is significantly faster on Vista 64. 

There wlll be endless arguments about this but I like the new interface it's clean, simple and fast.  The new library management system is a dream come true, AFAIC.

I've done a couple of small renders and they've rendered faster than Poser Pro ever did and I swear by Poser Pro.

The program feels and is lighter and faster.  My guess is that a significant portion of the UI was either rewitten or cleaned up to improve execution times because the old UI was starting to suffer from old-patched-code-itis.

I git GI to work, even if not quite how I'd want it to but that's more   I suspect PBAK as much as anything.

Since the release of P5 there's been the feeling on these forums that every new version of Poser will be a mess and after a while it becomes a self fulfulling prophecy.  Are there bugs I haven't tripped on, sure.   But bugs are a reality of software it's what SmithMicro does about them that's important.

The suspicion lingers after the P5 debacle where we were told there weren't serious problems until they finally had to fess up that the publisher, whoever it is, will hide things.

This release just feels better, not perfect by any means but not all that bad either.  And I'm sure I'll run into some serious problems as I get deeper into it.  I'm just taking it easy right now while I get used to the interface and new features.

I certainly have higher hopes for this one than I've had for previous releases.  With luck it will live up to most of them.

ttfn

John

With regard to the lighting in final (not that anything is ever really, really final!) renders I read on PoserPro.net that because of changes in how the renderer interprets things you might need to fiddle a bit more with the lighting to get the results you're looking for.

The PoserPro.net site is something that should have happened to Poser many moons ago, IMHO.  It's a good spot to refer to and to get hints from on the new features of PoserPro.

It would be even nicer if it evolved into a wiki over time so that it could become a place to go for reference and a place for ideas to be posted.

ttfn

John

(BTW, my renders came out dark the first couple of times till I rejigged the lights.  Still not perfect but better than P7 in the same scenes.  Then again, lighting is definitely a weak point for me. )

To me...guess there was something there about new figures.  I didn't pay it much heed cause I have  a good library of stuff so that wasn't what I was looking for.

One comment about a post above that said that the writer expected that the feature set in PP was what they expected in P8.

For what it's worth, I'm thinking that there will be two streams of Poser now, the Pro stream and the regular stream. That's not all that unusual in 3D software, I've noticed.

ttfn

John

Thing is, bagginsbill, that I don't recall any promotional material that promised new content in terms of figures.  Features, yes, content I don't recall.

But still, what's a new Poser release without a ton of complaints! :-)

ttfn

John

I am rather curious where the notion comes from that the base figures are the dough boy and dough girl   Sorry to disappoint you all but they're still Sydney and Simon G2.

And the purpose of the hated pair isn't production anyway, so it seems that a lot of attention is drawn to these two for no particular purpose that I can see.

Heck, the default workspace opens with good old Simon there with a two day growth of beard!

Blackhearted, yes there are rigging limitations in Poser which were faithfully copied into DAZ Studio.  For the moment they aren't going anywhere.  Too bad too.  But the focus on these two characters isn't going to get the developers to work on the rigging because no one is complaining about that.

The UI is awful to be sure.  Though I can't say DAZ Studio exactly screams UI heaven either.

Oh, and if you need it, the P7 content is a download away so no problem.

Now, onto one day of more or less playing with PP after a long download.

This thing loads lightening quick compared to P7 even on Vista.  OpenGL works just fine here.

Overall the program just feels faster and looks better with OpenGL actually functioning now.  Perhaps that's the on the fly gamma correction too.  It takes up the P7 runtime without a hitch.  It finally looks like switching between runtimes won't be a major pain in the butt to do and this is only 32bit.

Renders are quicker wtihout the lags that used to occur.  I sent a small one to the background and that felt really good to actually work on something else till it was done.

In one respect it's good to see people respond with such passion to a piece of software.  It doesn't happen that much anymore.  I've also been around long enough to remember, and have taken part in, doomsday threads like this one.  In spite of it all Poser is still here.

And, remember, this isn't P8, it was never intended to be.  The promo stuff released last fall pointed out that it isn't for everyone, it isn't an upgrade, it's a more professional version with more professional features that the developers have been asked for.  That's what they said they'd deliver and, as far as I can say with such limited exposure that's exactly what they delivered.  So far, so good.

It strikes me that if we want improvements in things like character rigging so that soft tissue, for example, behaves like soft tissue perhaps a thread for a wish list for Poser 8 should be started.  Now that ought to get the attention of the developers.

ttfn

John

It seems that we're back to the old DAZ bait and "more that makes it useful" comes later.

We went through this with V3 and I won't even mention DAZ|Studio where you have to fork over significant cash to get something as useful as Poser.

That said, I'm impressed with a lot of things in the package that do seem quite useful and, certainly, welcome.

I'm not impressed with the documentation, "tutorial" on DAZ's site and the lack of the morphs mentioned.

Oh, well.   So far so typically DAZ.

I'm waiting for the flood of add-ons to correct the stuff left out.

ttfn

John

As some people have commented that this reminds them of the art of the middle ages I thought I'd throw this one in. Just to be helpful, of course. :-) In what is known as either the Early or Low Middle Ages art was produced that had nothing to do with the perspective that we are used to. The scenes are set to show what is important either by lighting or by making the centrepiece larger than what surrounds it, whether that surrounding area is closer to the viewer or further away. In this sense the scene is highly reminicent of the art of that period. The perspective in the render is skewed and the centrepiece of the scene is held by the light shining on the crucified figure of Christ. In hindsight (and after agreeing with those who suggested that the artist add all kinds of rocks and vegitation) I'd now have to say that leaving the scene barren, exactly as it is, may have more emotional impact. Imagine for yourself the horror of watching someone you love and admire struggling for 6 hours on a cross before finally "giving up the ghost". My guess is that you'd be emotionally barren, regarding the world as an empty place, a place of nothing but pain, sorrow and emptiness. I'd say he's caught that quite well. ttfn John

Hi CyberStretch I strongly suspect that Poser is written in C/C++ with maybe some assembler code thrown in to speed things up a bit. A 3-D app written in an interpreted language like VB would crawl on even the fastest of systems. :-) The idea of GUIs, at least initially, was to hide the internals of a machine or even an OS so that a coder could simply call the GUI and it would do the neat things like make windows, set up menus and all that trivial stuff. In theory the C/C++ code should be easy to port..make a few changes to the GUI calls and you're done. In practise it's a bit more complex than that, of course. The real killer in a port is assembler. That may have to be recoded at length to get it from Windows to Mac, for example. Now the trick with porting it to *nix once its done in OS X is that there is a compliler that will take that code and convert it to LSB Linux, BSD (which OS X is), Sun or IBM. For Linux it will target either KDE or GNOME and use thier calls. The trick with a port to *nix is that the GUI portion could port that way but the assembler couldn't. The assembler is written for Intel chips in the Windows version but PowerPC for the Mac. With luck the Intel version is OS independant which should, in theory again, make the port fairly simple if not trivial. It would be nice to get a *nix version and I'm sure it will come in time. Maya already sells one and there are rumours about others. I've heard rumblings of 3DS Max and Bryce versions on the way. So perhaps CL won't be far behind. Until then megalodon is right...Lindows should help or perhaps even Codeweaver's Wine. ttfn John

I should preview my posts. :-) I qouted Megalodon a couple of times there. The citations didn't come through. Sorry about that. :-) ttfn John

Sadly all your post did was throw more gas on an overheated fire. Welcome to the wonderful world of customer relations, Nosfiratu. :-) I agree with all of those who say that the copy protection will barely last out the week after P5 is released. Heck, it may not last 24 hours. Serious crackers take this stuff very personally and they are some of the best code slingers out there. On a personal level challenge/repsonse systems are a PITA, but then so is the AVS system that seems to want to do everything it can to prevent me from ordering P5. We won't even mention the obsene shipping charges to Canada, which I know aren't under your control so it isn't your fault. All that said I will order it, somehow. For those who think that activation takes but a few minutes..give your heads a collective shake. Getting the activation code on a preinstalled XP system on my Sony Viao took well over 6 hours to accomplish, most of it on ignore in M$'s voice response system after the internet activation failed. I won't go into why here because it isn't relevant but it certainly soured me on activation and challenge response systems. Jaqui... with all due respect, you can't really believe that CL will port to Linux? Where is the market? Poser is already a small niche market and porting to Linux would give them how many more sales out of that niche market? Actually as the Mac X OS is based on BSD which is very similar to Linux so a port to Linux should be fairly trivial and the POSIX market is hardly a small niche when you take UNIX into account. Yes, it's inconvenient - tedious only because you have so many apps that require authorization...it's one more bit of aggravation - but it's such an incredibly SMALL bit of aggravation compared to what you're getting in return. Sigh. Okay..with one app it's a small aggrivation with a number of them plus an intrusive OS it becomes a major pain juggling them all. Remember when Bill Gates said using computers should be easy? It's a bit of a joke now. Let's also be honest here...a lot of the resistance to activation codes comes from bitter experience with them with M$ product when their version of it is, essentially, spyware. I TRUST CL not to do that. So I'll accept it. I could live without it in a perfect world. And, until we have some other company come along that can do what Poser can without this kind of copy protection I reaaly don't have any choice. Still..don't tell me I have to approve of it or be happy about it. {VENT OFF} ttfn John

I have brought software across the Canadian US border to the charmed and beautiful land known as Vancouver by 2 means.

One, is to have the shipper use UPS/Fedex/etc/etc/etc/Air Canada. Your comment regarding the hit at the border is correct as the above named companies do not separate out the value of the software (no duty) and the printed docs (duty). Also you are guaranteed to get stung with GST and PST.

The second has been to have them ship by the fastest method possible in US Mail. I get to deal with Customs and they seem quite happy with a 95% no duty 5% duty cut in most things. Also, I dodge the PST, which may or may not be legal so I really didn't say that. :-)

Incidentally, the record is that the stuff generally arrives faster and to my door with US Mail as opposed to slower and having to drive miles to some seriously ugly industrial park way out in the burbs to pick up my package.

Of course my main whine with CL is that they use an address verification system for credit card orders, for secutity I understand. My issuer won't do that, also for security reasons. (I might be able to talk them into it if I notify them ahead of time.) I'm hoping CL will start using the 3 digit security number thing on new cards and bypass the adress verification but I'm not counting on it. So...it will be off to buy a money order if everything else fails cause I'm gonna get this come hell, high water, Canada Customs, credit card issuers who won't respond to address verification systems and vendors who insist on using them. :-)

Oh, and with the above, if CL would put on thier customs declaration a breakdown of the value of software and the (lesser) value of docs that would help no matter which carrier hauls it across the border into the land of the 60 cent dollar. :-)

ttfn

Dave-so I'm glad you're so excited. Me too. But you keep posting this enough and you'll have said it all for the whole community (well, those on Windows anyway). So you be excited..but can I do the drooling? :-)

Okay...it's announced. When can I buy it? :-) I love the pricing, the product looks fabulous and my credit card has just enough room left to let me buy it if I talk to my issuer nicely. Now I can safely go to sleep, drool a whole lot and dream. :-) BTW..the site looks great too. Great work to all at CL. :-)

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