Howy2012 posted at 2:19PM Wed, 18 July 2018 - #4308816

I'd love to see something like that for the Mac.

Merging files manually is slow and if you make one tiny mistake, it wipes out everything with no option to undo. I know from recent experience. I guess I didn't hold down the ALT key long enough and it overwrote Data, People and Runtime.

Now I have to reinstall everything non-Daz store manually and that is going to take forever.

Gods forbid I make another mistake, or I will have to then start all over again.

Some day I'll write up a full tutorial on this, but for now this tip should be helpful to Mac users:

If you download and extract the zip file on a USB thumb drive or other external drive, you will get the option to "merge folders" (if applicable) when you copy a product's subfolders into the relevant folders in your Poser runtime. That way you don't have to remember to hold down any keys, nor do you have to copy items at the subfolder level.

For example, let's say I just got a new product by Cybertenko (and I already have several of his installed). From the unzipped download file (which is on a thumb drive), I would just choose the Cybertenko folder in Geometries and drag it to the Geometries folder on my internal drive. I'll get the option to "merge," and all new folders and sub-folders will be merged with the existing ones, with nothing deleted. Same with the Textures folder.

My Poser library is so heavily customized/organized that no automatic installer would ever suit my needs, and I also like to know exactly what I'm installing, so I do it manually. But I have a system worked out that makes it fast and fairly painless. The key (at least for Mac users) is to install content from an external drive, not from the same drive that holds your Poser runtime.

@3doutlaw: Regarding using Genesis in Poser, I found it easier to export Genesis out of DAZ so that I could bring the figure into Poser without the need for DSON. Netherworks' Creator's Toy Box has some tools to help clean up the Genesis CR2 for use in Poser. I did the same for clothes and hair so that I could also convert some items for V4 or M4, using Wardrobe Wizard. You'd need the Genesis support files for WW as well as for V4/M4 for that, of course.

I don't even have DSON installed in Poser since I wanted to avoid the slowdowns I'd heard about. I'm using Poser Pro 11.

AmbientShade posted at 6:31PM Mon, 04 December 2017 - #4318853

I'm not sure about sasha16, but as for all other figures I've used, simply scaling the figure down to 10% should be plenty sufficient.

I had originally made the fairy small through a combination of Lyrra's Height Dial and the Body scale on a Nerd3d WM version of V4. When I switched her over to the Sasha-16 version a few days ago, I used Sasha-16's "True Age & Height" feature to scale her down as low as that would go, and then used Body scale for the rest. I think that, along with some of Karina's suggestions re: saving poses, might work better.

And poses do save with the figure when you save a cr2 to the library. V4/M4 both have their feet posed flat on the floor when loaded from the library,

What I meant was that it would be impractical to save dozens of different poses as CR2's, since a CR2 file includes everything and not just the character's pose. As a way of "getting to know" the personality of each character (and how things will look with the body shapes I've chosen), I tend to put them in a variety of positions that might come up in the course of the story. Sometimes I spend a long time getting a pose "just right," and those are the ones I want to save to the Pose library.

To focus the camera on a character or any other object you can use the Frame Selected Object icon at the top right of the screen - 3rd icon from the left just past the area render button.

I use the "frame selected object" button in Cheetah3D all the time, but I don't use the one in Poser b/c it wants to spin the camera on the zOrbit axis, and I keep that axis locked to 0 b/c Poser also has a habit of randomly spinning all three camera dials by 180º. (My copy of Poser apparently has gremlins!)

Try scaling a standard V4 with clothing on and then pose her. If she works as expected then it may be an issue with the Sasha16 cr2.

I first created the fairy character using a standard V4, and I've also changed her over to the PoserPlace and Nerd3D weight map versions. While those were helpful in making shoulder, arm, and knee bends look better, that's all they did, whereas Sasha-16 comes with so many useful features that I've grown quite attached to her!

I wasn't necessarily having problems with the fairy character, but rather I wanted to know how other Poser users handle having one character be significantly smaller than all the others in the context of re-using the cast of characters for a graphic novel or webcomic. The fairy character is the companion of my main character, so they'll be in hundreds of shots together -- and I wanted to know if anyone had tips to share about handling the size difference in that context. But it could be that no one currently reading these forums has been in a similar situation.

Here's a draft render I did while playing around with having Sauscony (the fairy) make Sara (main character) laugh. They're so cute!

RedPhantom posted at 10:38PM Tue, 28 November 2017 - #4318659

Rather than saving your characters as pose files, try saving figures. It holds the scaling and everything else.

I always save my characters to the Figures (Characters) library, so that their clothing, hair, jewelry, etc. gets saved along with them. But CR2 files don't hold poses, only figures and props.

What I want to save to the Pose library for my tiny character are the dozens of poses I've put her into by adjusting the various pose dials on all the actor body parts. I don't use IK or third-party poses b/c they seem (to me) to create more problems than they solve. I prefer being able to create the whole pose myself.

However, thus far I have not found a reliable way to save the poses I've created for my tiny character -- and by "reliable" I mean that I can apply the pose to the character in t-pose and have it work just like the original pose. Even the PoseWriter Panel that comes with Poser, which has an option to save scale info, has not been reliable.

I haven't made any figures that small, so I don't know about the dial sensitivity, but you can adjust individual dial sensitivity on parameters pallet.

The only problem is: if you adjust the camera's dial sensitivity to work better for viewing the tiny character, it becomes awkward to use when viewing the full-sized characters!

Here's what I'm wondering now: is it awkward to deal with this tiny character simply b/c she's so small relative to the others OR does it have to do with the fact that she's a scaled-down V4 (rather than a figure that's natively tiny).

I appreciate everyone's responses, but I guess not many other Poser users have this "tiny" problem! :-)

I have Lyrra's Child Dials and Height Dials for both M4 and V4 (although I no longer need them for V4 now that I'm using the Sasha-16 WM version).

A while back I used Lyrra's V4 Height Dial to make my fairy companion character as short as possible, but that was about 4' (feet) or so -- and the fairy needs to be more like 8-10" (inches) tall.

As I mentioned, I can get her to that size using the Scale dial on the Body, but then it's a bit tricky to work with a character that small. The camera tends to zoom right past her, adjustment dials on the figure and on her clothes are overly sensitive, and I can't save any poses b/c pose files don't include scale info. So that's why I was wondering if there's a better way to handle a tiny character that's going to be used in the same scene with full sized characters.

@Penguinisto: Thanks for your reply. I suspected that the way an item was modeled (tris, quads, n-gons, etc.) might have an impact on how it performs in Poser, and you've confirmed that it does. I just wish I understood exactly how those factors impact performance, so that it's less of a trial and error process with various props and sets.

I'm willing to modify props and sets in my 3D modeler to get rid of n-gons and otherwise optimize the mesh (including deleting unnecessary polys). But to make good use of my time and efforts, I need a better understanding of what's causing an issue. Like why Poser would start to slow down b/c a model has n-gons or whatever. (I understand why those are problematic for sub-division, rendering, and smooth shading, but not why they might make Poser's parameter dials cease to function!)

So the next time I'm trying to choose between several props of the same type (say, desks or chairs), I should check the poly count AND the type of polys used. Anything else?

Is there a way inside Poser to check for n-gons, or would I need to bring the item into my modeler for that?

I'm deliberately not mentioning textures b/c I'm certain that's not what's causing the slow-downs I've been getting. I always optimize textures in the Advanced Material Room shortly after loading an item, I keep "hardware shading" disabled in Preview mode, and in scenes with more than a few items, I put many of them (like hair) in wireframe or flat shaded display mode.

Re: reducing polygons: I've had mixed results using Poser's "Reduce Polygons" tool on various props and sets, and I suspect that's generally easier to deal with in a modeling app.

I also wanted to comment on the issue of quality. For my purposes, what matters most in a clothing item is the object itself -- how it was modeled, rigged, and morphed, which determines how well it will conform to a variety of shapes and how it will hold up to a variety of poses.

The textures the clothing item comes with are of far less importance to me, although I do appreciate UV mapping that makes it easy for me to apply my own textures without having to do all kinds of contortionist tricks in Photoshop to get a weave or pattern to lie the right way on a sleeve or collar.

Learning to make your own textures for clothing is pretty quick and easy, while learning to properly model, rig, and morph a clothing item takes a lot longer and requires much more skill, knowledge, and attention to detail. So that's the part I would happily pay the vendor's asking price for (rather than waiting for deep discounts). But, unfortunately for those vendors, I wasn't able to identify who they were until I'd already bought and messed with so much clothing for M4 that I just didn't need any more!

For what it's worth: I'm only interested in conforming clothes b/c I put characters in way too many poses (and fiddle with the poses in each shot way too much) for dynamic clothing to be practical.

Here's my take, as a customer who's using V4 and M4 to create characters for a Young Adult Fantasy graphic novel set in the present.

I didn't actually get M4 until about a year ago (after finally acknowledging that toons like Krystal and Kyle weren't going to work for my project), but it didn't take long for me to acquire a large and versatile collection of clothes for him. Most of it was PC+ stuff from the DAZ store that was on sale at even lower prices (under $1), but I also downloaded lots of freebies and bought a few outfits at Rendo that filled specific wardrobe needs.

As I went through all my M4 clothing to see what I could use for my characters, I found that I could put together just about any kind of outfit I might need, esp. if I mixed and matched from different sets, used my own textures, and adjusted styles as needed through custom morphs or trans maps. I'm now at the point where I don't need any more clothes for M4, which is good news for my wallet but not so much for vendors.

So that's one reason why clothes for males might not sell: given the fairly simple nature of contemporary men's clothing, it's not hard to amass a collection of basics that will serve most needs, with a few customizations.

Here's another reason: some outfits for M4 are priced kinda high ($10 or more) and never seem to go on sale or be eligible for coupons. If such an item is on my wishlist for more than 5-6 months with no change in price, I usually just remove it from the wishlist and instead see what I can come up with using my existing M4 wardrobe or using Poser figure content or Genesis freebies converted to M4.

For what it's worth: the only reason I ended up buying more clothes for V4 is that it was harder to find decent "basics" that would be appropriate for a PG-rated story. I can't tell you how many times I've bought what looked like a cute shirt, only to discover that there was no way to release its tenacious grasp on every inch of V4's breasts -- and that's just NOT the look that my teenage characters are going for!

You might want to take a look at some of the procedural materials on ArtMystique's Free Shaders page. In particular I'm wondering if the AM Shine set might work for creating the look of gels or candy, depending on the prop they're applied to.

@ironsoul: Yes, I think you're right that I'm experiencing some kind of performance problem that has to do with using Poser on a Mac. I've tried all the solutions I could find online, so I may just need to contact Smith Micro support.

For the benefit of future readers of this thread, I want to recap what I think was the answer to my original question: does the poly count of a posable figure like V4 have a greater impact on Poser's performance (in Preview/posing mode) than the poly count of static objects?

The answer appears to be "yes" b/c posable figures have other elements that impact performance in addition to poly count, such as morphs and rigging. So that's likely why some people complain about V4's "high" poly count, despite the fact that so many accessories and props have even higher poly counts.

But here's the question that remains for me: how much of an impact does the poly count of non-rigged props have on performance in Preview mode?

I understand that large textures impact performance, but that's easy enough to deal with through various Preview settings that don't reduce the quality of an actual render. It's much harder to reduce the poly count of items like earrings, handbags, or furniture without reducing their quality in a render, so it's not even worth trying unless the poly count of those items really does slow down Poser's performance. Or maybe it's not poly count that's the issue so much as how those objects were modeled? That's the part I don't yet understand.

Many thanks to all who've contributed to this thread thus far! I appreciate your help.

I think I've identified a possible reason why the rider/horse pairs came into the new scene slightly out of position. It has to do with the dreaded "keyframe drift."

I always leave everything in its default location/pose on Frame 1 and do all my posing on Frames 2 and up (depending on how many shots I need per scene). After I set up the Parks & Trails set in a new scene file, I loaded one rider/horse pair from the figures library, which came into Frame 1 already posed. Then I loaded the other pair via Import/Poser Document (b/c I hadn't saved them to the library), and they came into Frame 1 in default poses, with the riding pose on Frame 2.

I used Frame 2 to translate the rider/horse pairs to the right spot on the trail, and then I think I must've advanced to Frame 3 to fine-tune poses. What I forgot to do was to copy Frame 2's keyframes to a point further down the timeline (like Frame 5) and to set the keyframes to Constant. So the reason their hands were no longer properly gripping the reins on Frame 3 was most likely that their bodies were starting to drift along a Spline path back to their default poses. (And I started fixing that before I thought to check hand positions one earlier frames.)

I'm pretty far off of my original question by now, but since it's just come up: is there a way to make Constant the default type of interpolation for all new files? I've gotten myself into more than one crazy posing mess due to the way Spline interpolation works!

PS to 3D-Mobster: I never use IK for anything and always have it off, both b/c I prefer to pose w/o it and b/c it messes up how poses get saved. I did try using it to keep the riders' hands connected to the horses' reins, but it didn't work as intended. Neither did using "add constraint" or parenting, probably b/c the reins are part of the bridle figure rather than being a separate prop. (And I'd lose all the helpful morph dials if I converted them to a prop.)

Here's an aspect of the scenario I described above that I still don't understand: why didn't the horse/rider pairs I'd so painstakingly posed and saved to the figure library load into the new scene file in precisely the same poses?

It took me forever to get each rider's hands positioned on the reins in a way that resembled the way my friends and I hold reins when trail riding, but when I loaded the horse/rider pairs into the new scene, neither rider's hands were actually touching the reins. Their feet were also no longer properly placed the stirrups but a few inches below or to the side of them. And one of the horses had her mane sticking straight up, instead of split to the right as I'd saved her with.

I swear if I didn't already have so much time, money, and effort invested in creating my graphic novel with Poser, I'd just ditch the graphic part and write the dang thing in words!

@3D-Mobster: Thanks for the tips. When I work with more than two figures at a time, I turn off hardware antialiasing, hardware shading, and mipmaps, on the theory that that should help with performance. But now that I think about it, those settings only apply to textures, not to other aspects of the figures, and I don't think textures are the cause of my issues. I delete all bump/disp maps and use simple procedural shaders whenever possible, and I keep items with transparency in wireframe mode. I suspect the performance issues have more to do with how Poser is handling poly count, morphs, and rigging. (FYI: I never use subdivision on anything.)

@ironsoul: Thanks for your reply. Yes, Poser will start to lag when I'm setting up a scene with lots of props, but it takes a lot longer to get to "unusable" (or a crash) compared to when I'm working with figures. Over the past two weeks I've been building my main character's bedroom, using a room I created in Cheetah3D as well as a variety of props I modified and/or re-mapped and textured in Cheetah. Cheetah has no problem handling the room with all props visible AND all texture maps applied in .PSD format, for as long as I want to have it open -- and I can even open and work in other Cheetah files at the same time. So I try to do as much setup as I can there, but of course the lighting and texture display aren't exactly the same. When I'm ready to see how things look in Poser, I export the props as OBJs and the textures as JPGs and load everything into a new Poser scene file. But Poser can only handle them for about an hour before it stops responding to my dial turns.

Macs have an Activity Monitor that shows real-time CPU, RAM and disk usage, but the only time I've noticed Poser using close to 100% of the CPU is when I'm rendering, which makes sense. Macs also have a Console tool that displays a variety of system and app logs as well as crash reports, but I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how to interpret those. I'm enough of a techie "fiddler" that I often study Poser crash reports, hoping I can somehow make sense of them, but apparently my glasses don't have "Magic Decoder Ring" technology :-)

I will fiddle around some more tomorrow to see if I can activate some kind of logging that will give me some insight into what's happening as I work with a file like the one with two V4s, two horses, and a park.

Thanks to everyone for the replies and esp. to ironsoul for running those tests of V4 as a figure vs. an object.

It makes sense that several aspects of figures might slow down Poser in ways that aren't applicable to props--such as morphs and conformers. I only have what I consider the "core" morph packages installed (Morphs++ and Aiko/Hiro), plus a few individual Faerime face morphs depending on the character, and I removed all of Sasha's KV stuff. So I don't think I can trim down any further there. As for conformers, I need way too many different poses (and I fiddle with poses too often) to use dynamic clothes, but I can experiment with making conforming items invisible until I'm mostly finished with posing to see if that helps.

Yesterday I was working on a scene with two V4 characters, each riding a HW Horse along a trail in 2nd World's Park and Nature Scene. I set up each horse/rider pair in their own scene file, parented each rider's hip to their horse's abdomen, and saved each group to the figures library. My thinking was that by the time I added them to the scene file, they'd already be posed and I would only need to translate the horses a bit to get them to the right spot.

But after I loaded them, I saw that both V4s had weird poke-through in their shirts, their feet had moved out of place in the stirrups, and their hands were no longer holding the reins but hovering above them. In other words, much of the work that had gone into posing them in separate files (and using the morph brush on spots of poke-through) had been for naught, as I had a lot more work to do. And the posing was incredibly tedious b/c by then Poser was barely responding to turns of the dials (even though the only items visible in the scene were those necessary for posing). It was maddening!!

I understand that textures and shaders can also slow down Poser's performance in Preview mode, but I had Hardware Shading turned off, Preview Texture Size set to 512, and items with transparency (hair, manes, tails) set to wireframe display. So shouldn't that make textures less of a factor while in Preview mode?

I bought a new top-of-the-line MacBook Pro specifically to make it easier to work with Poser, but other than Firefly renders being much faster, there's no real improvement over my 2013 MacBook Pro, which is certainly disappointing. I use Cheetah3D for modeling and texturing, and it can handle WAY more stuff than Poser before there's any impact on performance, so I wonder there's something about Poser that's just not optimized for Macs?