This is a perfect example of why we really need more work on the cloth room to make it more intuitive and user friendly. I second the Morphing Tool suggestion, the morph brush is something every Poser user should get familiar with: it can solve a lot of the common Poser problems.

I don't understand why render time is such a big worry for people?

Render quality should be of primary importance. Superfly can produce renders far superior to anything that ever came out of Firefly. It's an unbiased renderer so naturally those results are going to take longer, especially when you include things like refraction/caustics, strand based hair, etc. Superfly isn't "slow", it's just that Poser users have gotten used to using heavily biased renderers. People had the same complaints when Firefly came out, even though it was light years ahead of the P4 renderer.

Your typical workflow should be:

Create a small preview size, Render Dimensions: Fit in Preview Window, turn on Render Settings: Progressive Refinement and use that to do some quick preview renders of your lighting/scene.

If your preview looks good, zoom in and doublecheck areas like eyes, etc with Render: Area Render, rendering only that small area.

When everything looks good, crank up the render dimensions, increase the samples and let it render while you go do something else. If it's a complex render go watch a movie, or let it run overnight while you sleep.

Superfly is actually Cycles which is an excellent unbiased renderer that can go head to head with professional renderers costing $$$$. Keep in mind that it's still relatively "new" to the Poser community (uptake in the Poser community runs like molasses, people are still using P4 ffs) so people still have a long way to go to coax the best out of it. Firefly has been around forever so people have learned to squeeze some amazing results out of what is actually a technically inferior renderer.

This is done with Cycles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-rmzh0PI3c

And here's an old comparison of Cycles vs some other top industry renderers: https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/render-engine-comparison-cycles-vs-giants

It fares pretty well in that test (and keep in mind it's from 2015, since then Blender has been evolving at an exponential rate), and the results are subjective. Personally I preferred the look of cycles in a couple of those.

Performance will also increase exponentially as more people upgrade to current GPUs.

SamTherapy posted at 2:38PM Fri, 16 November 2018 - #4310375

Said it before and I'll say it again...

Get Blackhearted convinced it's worth his while to make the figure. Pay him anything, just get him on board. Whatever it costs, the results will be worth it.

wimvdb posted at 3:22AM Sat, 27 January 2018 - #4323129

Personal attacks in a public forum are against TOS at Renderosity.

Apart from that it is a very one side view of what happened. There is a free base figure on both Rendo and CGB, The simultaneous release of the final figure on both Rendo and CGB might still happen,

I have no problem Blackhearted expressing his concerns about erogenesis business ethics, but I do have a problem with him repeating this again and again without taking this to email or PM.

"I have a problem with your ethics" is not a personal attack. Meanwhile we're on the third page of personal attacks against me.

There are only two things that get me riled up after spending nearly two decades in this community. One of them is copyright infringements, the other is unethical behavior. And I'm willing to take a stand on either of them, alone if necessary: if someone calls my behavior into question I can answer it myself instead of contacting the long list of people I roped into this product to come defend my actions. Several of the people slinging insults at me in this thread have a direct financial motive since they're involved in the project or developing content for PE.

Hi bantha,

This has nothing to do with me. I was on the beta, I looked over the figure and decided I'd wait until I was sure the mesh/rigging/uvs were finalized -- I planned on starting on a morph pack for it to be ready when it was released. The only reason I haven't is because there were still changes being made around Christmas, so I moved on to other projects while I waited for everything to be 100% finalized. This is totally normal and wouldn't ever upset me in the slightest, it's just the way projects work sometimes.

My issue is with how he's conned stores and vendors for support and to take advantage of their staff, resources and marketing with the "we all have to work together on this or we're going to lose the Daz war" pitch, alluded to joint releases and made promises that a fully functional base figure will always be available for free (I specifically asked him to clarify this in the private PE forum that Renderosity staff set up for him). Meanwhile he's had an exclusivity agreement with CGBytes right from the start, and he's admitted that the demo figure he is releasing is intended to funnel traffic from Renderosity to CGBytes.

So again let me clarify: I have no problem with people making profit. I have no problem with PE, I'm happy every time something new is released for Poser. I do have a problem with the lack of ethics.

movida posted at 6:35AM Thu, 25 January 2018 - #4323000

I've come back after years away from Poser. I've seen the posts from many over the years. Some "vendors" go off the deep end when they view any work that might compete with their own or which they perceive as being at least as good as what their ego tells them is the absolute greatest (theirs) or that might take attention away from them. PE is a wonderful new figure, a move in a direction supportive of Poser which I perceive is a good thing. glad I bought her:)

I'm charmed that your first order of business upon returning is to sling insults at me, but I'd like to point out that I've never criticized anyone's work (unless it was a proven copyright infringement, in which case they deserved to be crucified).

My problem isn't with PE but with the shitty ethics and behavior of it's creator.

"work hard and sacrifice time to make something for the greater good"

I'm not sure how creating a for-profit product has anything to do with sacrifice for a greater good? You're a vendor, drop the Mother Teresa act already.

ssgbryan: it seems you have quite a lot invested in this, your post reads like an infomercial.

You can launch as many snide personal attacks at me as you want in defense of PE: after nearly two decades of this your post wasn't even worthy of an eye roll. What you don't seem to be grasping is that I never said anything about the product itself, I clearly stated that I'm glad Poser users have yet another option for their Runtimes.

I take issue with all this "I've sacrificed years of my life to create this, my gift to the Poser community" and "we need to get everyone working together on this otherwise DAZ will win the war" bullshit in order to take advantage of support from staff and developers and then at the end it turns out to be just another run of the mill offsite 3rd party figure cash grab. Which would have been totally fine if that was how it was presented from the start, but then of course a fraction of the developers and testers and vendors wouldn't have jumped on board.

Poser needs a high quality free (possibly even open source) base figure to get it out of it's current stagnant situation. I would devote a lot of my time to such a project, and so would many other vendors and Poser stores. This shared enthusiasm to provide a remedy to the Poser figure situation is what was very cleverly manipulated in a marketing ruse to get support from stores and vendors who would have otherwise given it a wide berth.

I wasn't referring to you ;)

It's charming that he got some of his cronies here to support him.

Let me make something very clear: I'm glad that there's another poser figure out there, because we sorely needed one. I have no beef with Erogenesis, in fact until a few months ago I had no idea who he was. I do have a problem with someone making certain promises and representations and then turning around and reneging on them.

There is a huge difference between how this little project was presented to Renderosity staff and potential supporting vendors and how it actually materialized. Erogenesis presented this as some sortof boon to the Poser community, a project of passion that he intended to release for free. He got a lot of vendors interested because of this, and made several clear guarantees that there would be a free base figure available for simultaneous release at Renderosity and CGBytes. I asked him for clarification in both email and the Project Evolution forum that the Renderosity staff took the trouble to create for him that he wouldn't just release a stripped down version to funnel traffic to a $30-40 paid version on CGBytes and he assured everyone that this wouldn't be the case. I hate to say I told everyone so, but it is.

He took advantage of both the Rendo staff and merchants to support a product that he presented as a "passion project" and "gift to the Poser community" which actually turned out to be your typical 3rd party figure money grab. Which would be totally fine if that's the way it was presented from the start, but it wasn't. If he would have been honest and stated "This is a for-profit third party figure that will be released at CGBytes, would you like to create supporting products?" then he wouldn't have gotten a fraction of the support. I have no gripes with capitalism, only with duplicity.

You should really drop the martyr act, it's childish.

I specifically asked you for clarification on these points, and you did several times in both emails and in the forum. "I admit I am not the world's greatest planner" is not an excuse for making promises to merchants to get support for your product and then switching things up in the last minute.

"Also, PE for me was always an effort to make a nice figure available for the Poser community. I didn't hold back and neither should you. Go for it. Don't wait!

For now she will be available at CGbytes. I have obligations there, especially since they had a direct hand in her creation and they supported me for years. Its a fine and reliable store, nothing wrong with it. A release at Rendo is always possible of course, it is on the table, but I'm not going to make any promises just yet."

Except that you've already made promises.

This entire project was just a bait-and-switch to get vendors jumping on-board to support a figure that you stated would have a fully-functioning free version distributed at Renderosity with "Add-ons sold separately". Instead you took advantage of Rosity staff and vendor support to change things up at the last moment and release a $30 figure at a competing site with whom it turns out you had a financial arrangement all along, and a totally stripped down demo here that will just funnel buyers to the other site. Honestly I'm shocked Rosity is even allowing it after what you pulled.

I honestly feel bad for those you fooled. I can't say I didn't see this coming, but then I've been burned too many times by third party figures in the last 15+ years.

Hi there,

Anastasia is for the Poser default figure, Alyson 2. AFAIK she ships with Poser 11 as well.

GND4.2 is the one for Vicky 4.

Currently most of the older crop of textures/shaders dont work properly with the new Superfly renderer, so GND4 and Anastasia owners should just render her in the Firefly renderer for now.

I'll likely update both in the coming weeks.

EldritchCellar posted at 2:29AM Fri, 27 November 2015 - #4241133

Looking back a little bit in the thread in response to Lyrra's comment about a backward compatible Pauline... Lyrra, if you're serious about creating such a blank rig that'll work going back to Poser 5; dump the body handles completely (delete the bones and dependencies or whatever), get rid of the weight maps and have just legacy spherical fall offs. WMing came in at Poser 9, capsule fall offs (Miki 3, Creech and a few others are the only figures I've seen with this) Poser 8. A truly open, flexible blank .cr2 wouldn't have extraneous bells and whistles nor version specific features, it would be a canvas that any Poser artist regardless of version could work on.

Poser 5 is ancient. At this point IMO theres no reason to go further than 3 versions back to support the handful of people using 13 year old software. There are plenty of figures that are compatible with Poser 4-8. The main weakness of Poser is realistic figure bending and weight mapping is a huge improvement in that area.

That said, I would dump anything that is Poser 10-11 exclusive and make it available to anyone with Poser 9+.