AI is SOOO bad at hands and toes! :'(

Thank you Ghost!

Snarlygribbly posted at 3:49 PM Wed, 5 April 2023 - #2978537

Just thought I'd stop by and say hello - it's been a while :-)

How are you all doing?

All the better for seeeing you.

parkdalegardener posted at 2:34 PM Tue, 25 April 2023 - #4463374

Go to the Material Room

Open GROUND material

Tick Shadow_Catch_Only

Render and enjoy your new shadow.

That appears to have been fixed. It didn't work at the time I wrote this.

parkdalegardener posted at 5:18 AM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462326

I read it; but will happily ignore everything else you have to say. You have never used the software and thus your post on the function of Poser, and how to use and improve it; are completely useless similar to many of the other posts in this thread.

I respectfully disagree. If Bondware wants to Poser to grow, MazinKaiser is EXACTLY the kind of user they need to appeal to (as they made it clear with 13 that they are not really doing much to satisfy the hardcore user. Mazin articulated his (gonna assume a male) wishes for the program, from the perspective of someone using a rival program. He recognised that vibrant competition is good for both programs. Any company hoping to attract new customers, who ignores those potential customers when they articulate their desires, is missing a great opportunity for intel about the direction the future program should go.

DCArt posted at 12:29 PM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462164

@Acepyx:

Correction here.

Ambient Shade is correct. Face room, Hair room, and Cloth Room were introduced to Poser in Poser 5.

I stand corrected. I was going by the wikipedia entry.

vopehov506 posted at 12:05 PM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462159

Guess there is not a very high risk with that Investments Bondware made.

I didn't think of it like that, but lots of good points.

Rhia474 posted at 8:08 AM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462143

Buying Poser was a double edged sword.

I completely share your ambivalence. I am actually very fond of DAZ 3D, and not so much on Bondware, but I LOVE Poser far more than Studio, which I find almost wilfully inscrutable.
I'm glad/sad that I am not the only one experiencing a multitude of bugs. Plenty of hard crashes, loads of weird program states, etc. I feel that Bondware pushed this software out of the door with indequate testing. If just I alone, can catalogue perhaps a dozen or more program breaking bugs in a week, I can't help but wonder how thoroughly it was beta tested.

AmbientShade posted at 10:48 AM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462155

AcePyx posted at 6:04 AM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462139

Face room existed long before SM acquired curious labs/e-frontier. Iirc it was licensed from a 3rd party (like most everything else in Poser), and that's where most of the fees to add additional figure support came from. Also don't forget that Apollo Maximus had faceroom support, one of the only 3rd party figures to do so, and I highly doubt his creator paid such an exorbitant fee for it, just to later turn around and give the figure away. I'm more inclined to believe Daz declined the faceroom support because it would have (potentially) impacted sales of their morph sets.

I certainly don't trust that Bondware has the business nous and especially not the marketing savvy, to guide Poser, although the tech guys seem to be in a pretty good head space. Sadly the devs are financially constrained in what they can do.

Bondware is in the best position to know what Poser needs to move forward, probably more than any of its previous owners. They've been selling content for it for over 20 years so they know what the customers want. I think the biggest issue at this point is budget to make it happen.

Smith Micro bought Poser in 2008 and released Poser Pro and Poser 8. Faceroom was introduced in 2010 - Poser Pro 2010.

I don't recall Apollo Maximum support, but if that is correct, it only confirms what I am saying - that SM was trying to price gouge DAZ. At the time, I was on professional friendly first name talking terms with both companies, so I am familiar with the way that each of them presented their side to me.

Respectfully, I think your faith in Bondware is not justified, nor supported by the facts. The fact that they have made constant major marketing missteps since owning Poser, convinces me that that part of the company has room for improvement. As for their tactical decisions, it took them what, 10, 15 years to design a web site that wasn't awful, and they STILL got hacked. To my mind, it is still far from pleasant to shop in, and total crap to sell through. I have no idea how much Bondware makes each year, but if it does not run into the millions, I'd be quite surprised, but they have shown a consistent pattern of poor decision making, not least charging $250 for Poser. There is certainly an equation between how much they invest in Poser, and how much value it returns, but assessing that value, as they appear to, in terms of how many copies of the software they sell, rather than the less tangible increase in software sales and loyalty, IMO, is short term thinking in the extreme.

JoePublic posted at 1:43 AM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462129

But I stopped "believing" into Poser's continuing success the moment DAZ issued a figure with Studio only features (V4), but my fears were summarily dismissed.

Sorry, but I find the native Poser figures since Poser 6 COMPLETELY unuseable. Some of them I made "beareable" with a lot of work (I've even managed to "un-ugly" Alyson), but for the most part they aren't worth my time.

So, unless I see a really professionally made native Poser figure, I continue to just "use" Poser because of, well, yes "inertia".

But I don't "believe", or better said, "trust" in it anymore. Sorry.

Good post. The downfall of Poser actually happened sooner. It all came down to arrogance. Poser was on the second iteration of Face Room. At the time, it only supported native figures but they wanted to support DAZ figures. They offered DAZ the opportunity, but they wanted a ridiculous fee to do so. DAZ declined, and that was the cause of a terminal rift between the two companies. DAZ was already uncertain about Poser's future because they saw that the company was being run by morons (Smith Micro), so they had already started working on DAZ Studio as a vehicle for their multi, multi-million dollar yearly figure sales. Unlike Bondware, they had the wisdom to recognise the program for what it was - an engine to drive sales.
Smith Micro overvalued inclusion in Faceroom, and while it was perhaps fair to request a reasonable contribution towards their costs with the now defunct Faceroom, the amount they wanted was enough to fund development on the whole program for a year. Even then, as now with Bondware, they also overvalued the quality of their own figures. As you say, "Unusable," and now they're also playing technology catchup with Genesis' clothing and hair fitting multi-compatibility system. Even back then, when it was Michael and Victoria 2, maybe 3, without DAZ, Poser would quickly have faded into obscurity.

I certainly don't trust that Bondware has the business nous and especially not the marketing savvy, to guide Poser, although the tech guys seem to be in a pretty good head space. Sadly the devs are financially constrained in what they can do.

AmbientShade posted at 12:42 AM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462123

Poser and studio come with a crap-ton of ready-made content

And all of that is aside from the steep learning curve Blender requires. It's UI is nowhere near as newbie friendly as Posers or even studios. I use blender pretty extensively, I even went to school for 3D animation and even I have issues and frustrations with blender's UI. I

This is the story in its totality.  I pay for 3D studio Max each year, and I STILL use Poser. There are tens of thousands of users, just like me, who want to get from idea to scene as quickly as possible, without having to go through weeks or months of additional, unrewarding effort. I consider modelling (and worse so, UV mapping, rigging, lighting and developing clothes), to be the equivalent of a pianist spending long boring hours practicing scales - a tedious means to an end, with the real goal being to make music/art.
I get so bored with people constantly raising their nose at Poser/DS and saying ""Just" learn Blender!" I can make a great outdoors scene in Poser right now. To do the same in Blender would entail at least a year; maybe even several, to attain the competence to do so. My art is mediocre at absolute best, but I consider Poser scenes to be a sketchbook of my ideas, not a perfect reproduction of life. Yes, that would be great, and Bondware can DEFINITELY do better, but I want to go from idea to reality quickly, and in the background, I can plug away at learning other software.
And while we're at it, why are all the Blender people wasting time with that program? "Just" learn 3D Studio, and those 3D Studio people - wasters - learn Maya, and why aren't the Maya people writing bespoke 3D programs! I'm being facetious - Blender is a wonderful program that has democratised 3D but you can always use that elitist argument upwards can't you?

Rhia474 posted at 2:06 PM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462059

EzSkin has a version that works perfectly in P12 and well in P13 (runs in P13 just fine, may need manual adjusting ). If you look at the thread here with Snarlygribbly announcing their return,  the link is in their sigline to the site with all the free scripts.

Glorious! Thank you.

JoePublic posted at 2:10 PM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462061

But I use Magnet Mirror, an old Ockham's Bungalow script quite a bit.

Oh wow - LOADS of useful scripts on that site!

JoePublic posted at 1:51 PM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462057

Some new Python 3.0 scripts are available that can finally replace a few of my most beloved Python 2.0 scripts, so that's not that much of a problem, either.

May I ask which scripts you are referring to? EZ Skin and EZ Dome have sadly both stopped working on both P12 and 13 for me.

Rhia474 posted at 11:13 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462034

I appreciate the balanced and calm approach  you have,  @AcePyx in your review and throughout this discussion.

Thank you so much so much Rhia.