Nice to hear that cool things might be incoming , let's hope also some enthusiasts with particular capabilities, these sure would be needed!

I should of droppend this 

Video

in here for a sample concerning auto rigging it might give a much better Idea, motivating some that plan to create some unique standalone " Creatures and Characters " in the future and not just Barbie outfits, morphs and Tex for existing Dolls as there are plenty of them. It may also show that the possibilities are not out of reach as one might think it is, getting some neat standalones into Poser in the future. Might even offer some future to poser rather then to be just fixed on that 1 Doll  expandable addon feature. It is like being stuck in a endless Loop in a 3D world of so many possibilities.

Might just be writing all this for nothing in a forum with just a few clicks but lets say , Hope dies Last.

If you are a little experienced , or well wish learning something you can 

Check This Out

"Not intended to make publicity for an other app" an Auto rig can be essential for a good work flow and basically save you allot of time. In theory you can even Rig a older Doll you have in a perfect way " Say V4 or La Femme ", naturally intended to end up back in Poser. You would not have all these bending issues and breaks like known in most or not all models rigged in Poser based on Triax and Capsules, Mag etc. After rigging your model correctly you actually need to bridge it to Poser Preferable as XNA/Lara resulting to have a sunning bendable Model with no breaks and bending issues. You naturally need a little experience on mesh building not to end up with a  Triangulate Mesh or split body parts that could break in Poser.

It is a way of Interpretation, a site is free to decide whom they like, whom not and remove accounts they dislike. Like JoePublic mentioned the forums are almost Dead, always the same People around making some little chat's but nothing really Improving. There were better times but guess they are just gone. Sure miss the Rdna forums and many others, also here it once was allot more productive. Concluding it is a waist of valuable time atm. There is no real interest for improvements, after two years Poser still is at prelaunch, actually a little sad thing to say, Like said it is all in your hands and up to you what you do with it .

For sure it is not alone up to the Poser Crew, as without any good Creators that present something valuable and new ideas, Poser is having little by no chance to survive. 

JoePublic posted at 10:34 AM Wed, 6 July 2022 - #4440821

Gee, folks, I'm tinkering around with Poser for 22yrs now.

I actually do now that Poser internally splits it's figure meshes along group borders.

I probably spent hundreds of hours in Wings3D stitching bodyparts back together at their seams which had split apart for one reason or another.

BUT for years we have easy to use tools now to work around this problem.

And the Morphbrush has gotten so good that I haven't bothered with an outside modeller in decades to sculpt anything.

*

Not to mention that proper edgeloopes are vastly superior over subdivided HiRez morphs, anyway.

If you build the mesh correctly, you do not need to subdivide the figure like crazy to add detail.

And if you wouldn't get so hung up over "physically correct" render engines (While 99% of the Poser content isn't "physically correct" in the first place), you could just use a displacement map to add any detail you want.

What I'm talking about is an everyday "workhouse" figure, something to be used by amateurs to play virtual dress-up with.

NOT something ideally suited for some elaborate "3D ART" project.

*

This is the amount of detail 35.146 polygons can give you, if you NOT follow that stupid "ALL QUADS, ALL REGULAR" mantra:

And despite all those "difficult to rig" edgeloops, I was able to weightmap him in a couple of days so he can do this:

Without using a single JCM!

*

Can you now understand that I'm a wee bit "underwhelmed" by the performance of all those Poser figures currently out there?

*

Now imagine a figure with double the polygon count, based on actual 3D scans. Rigged by a professional and not an amateur like me. Maybe sprinkle in a few(!) JCMs for "squishy" flesh deformations and for extreme poses.

*

But maybe I see all this the wrong way.

Maybe I just should not care.

Yeah, I think it's time to officially not care anymore.

If you're all so hellbent to invest your energy in anything else rather than creating better figures, then so it be.

*

In a week or two I'll do a final "official" post about my weightmapped M2 for those few veterans who still care, and then I'll go into lurking mode.

These forums are dead, anyway.

I won't close my account, so I can still be reached via PM, but other than that, it's goodbye Rendo.

It was fun while it lasted.

Cool !  That already could replace many new releases by 100 times :)  ... Very true about the Dead Forums , not only that also Dead experienced Creators the leftovers start from scratch .

Here a animated sample of one of these Caterpillar these are very Old models, just to see what was already possible and got lost meanwhile.

Animated Track

You might remember Ontarget ( Store Closed )... Creators of WW2 Tanks boy these are mind-blowing , the artists figured out a way to make these Cata-pillars work like real , sure if you know the code no problem but the head that was behind it figuring it out !  Full respect ! Users would of said , that is just impossible as the Caterpillar are static built on the model , but it worked, the sad part of all this is that there are almost none left that are capable of such great Ideas and mind blowing effects what remains is sold Tanks with static Caterpillar and artists that might just say " Impossible to make it work "

DCArt posted at 5:51 AM Wed, 6 July 2022 - #4440807

>>> I also thought this new "unimesh" system is something completely different from the "old" unimesh system?

In a manner of speaking, yes. When you import a completely welded (aka "unimesh") OBJ into Poser and then convert it into a figure, Poser splits the mesh apart at the group boundaries. If you export that OBJ back OUT from Poser, you have one of two options. If you don't weld the mesh each of the body parts will become a separate OBJ, and trying to morph it in a third party program will be difficult because the group seams aren't welded and they will become separated. 

But let's say you tell Poser to weld the OBJ during export. It welds the OBJ together at the group boundaries, but for some odd reason leaves one set of the vertices still inside the OBJ, floating and connected to nothing. If you try to bring this OBJ into your sculpting software, each app handles these floating vertices differently. Some allow you to weld the vertices together by choice, others do it automatically. No matter which way, the end result is the same .... the vertex order of the OBJ file changes, and when you dial the resulting morph in Poser, it "explodes" and doesn't work as expected.

Geting the vertex order back so the morph works properly isn't always easy. Some apps have ways to fix it, others don't.  Where this becomes most problematic is, if you do a "copy morphs from" to copy morphs into clothing, and then want to export one of the morphs to clean it up in your modeling software. It ends up being three times more work than it needs to be. 

Back when Poser was first written, it broke the mesh into individual groups to make it easier on system resources. Now that computers are more powerful, Poser can be updated to work on the mesh as a whole. But there are years of code to dig through and update to make it happen. And as someone has already stated, the fixes go deep and touch almost every aspect of Poser.

As far as the FireFly vs SuperFly thing, I far prefer SuperFly because it has PBR (physically based rendering) capabilities. You can use something like Substance Painter or an equivalent to create PBR maps with metal-rough workflow. All of the magic is done with texture maps (usually a minimum of diffuse, normal, and roughness, but also transparencies, metallic, emission, and others). No fancy node tricks ... and the maps you create work equally well in Poser SuperFly as they do in Daz Studio IRay.

So really, associating the "Unimesh support" with "better Genesis support" doesn't touch the heart of the issue. "Genesis" is more than just a unimesh, it also deals with other features that work in conjunction (auto fit, auto smooth, etc etc etc) 

One part can be an agreement , but if you look at the few renders I posted , these figures are Unimesh no breaks, saves in poser the way they are as CR2 remaining as Unimesh ( Bodyparts are not split ) From this point you can Transport these to any other external Program edit the Rigging send it back to Poser save again as CR2 no Loss. They are multi compatible. This works with Poser 2014 Pro - Poser 12 with no restrictions. Actually was already built in Poser 2014 just that no one ever started using it . 

The only restriction you will get is that if you plan using the setup room on such Changing or adding  Groups your model might explode, Poser can not handle it any further these depend on a external program like Blender or whatever. This would only concern Groups other things you can use the normal way. But The model will not be split apart when creating this type of Figure .

This method offers you mixing hard shell , Mechanic Movement with Stretchend muscular movements without distortions, brings us back to the point that you need the bridge and not a big change in Poser .

In 2006 I bought a pretty amazing set of mechanical toys for poser , Really amazing articulations with Spring effects a mix of bendable and Mechanics, as I loaded the model it was a Prop  in one piece , I was so surprised ! A static Prop but articulated , one of its kind. The artist made a few of them . Hell I tried to rip it apart as it was Genius trying to replicate how it was done. But I never figured it out  how it was done . Same like Easy - Pose who would of thought at the time that such a stupid error could be possible generating such movements in one Chain, and even giving the option of Gravity in combination with IK's. All was already in Poser, users were just not aware of it , and still aren't . 

Rhia474 posted at 4:57 PM Mon, 4 July 2022 - #4440727

I think the people you describe @JoePublic, are the ones who don't get the new versions no matter what, because they're happy with the basics. Thus, it's no market loss because they already are 'happy with what they got' and would buy nothing else as assets anyway. Those who'd like to have 21st century features for a price they can afford, the new generation of users, need the new tools and will get them if Renderosity provides. If not, they will go and use the Other Software, as simple as that.

I think allot of people would jump on new versions, you need to give them a reason, a good reason. They also would spend on new creations as the 5-20$ are often well worth the time one would need to spend making it them selves. If you bring out mind blowing models they jump on it , it does not even necessary need to be masses but they need to stand out. A Collector is never happy with what he's got , he cant get enough !  Right now releases seem rather to be a little like the ones Content Paradise was offering, you even find better quality poser freebies at  ShareCG then the store here has to offer. To be honest most promo renders of offered products fell back a decade or more . Artists were even making better stuff at the time of V3 or even at the time of the Poser 4 Doll . Not that Poser got worse , the artists vanished that were capable of using the potential of Poser. 

It is not Firefly, Superfly or the Poser 4 render engine as you can make with all of them outstanding renders, it is not the Poser Crew that writes the codes, it is the artist that is just not capable anymore to use Poser.  People think I hit a button and get the cool result , but it is not the way it goes. So there is no reason at all blaming the Poser Crew.

The first step is to be made by the artist that sales the Product. If it is top notch, great Promos, then sure these who think they got em all would spend some buck on it, often they do not by the product they by the Art, the promo , they just want that great thing even if they do not have real use for it . If it looks like something made in 2004 well then there will never be allot of interest as Poser 4 could already do better then Poser 12

From what I know all the features of Unimesh are already in Poser for quiet a while , I think that most users just do not know how to use these. Poser already offers a wide range of compatibility it is just not right in your face, like a little button. 

From what I know about  bridges it even enables cross compatibility between Poser and Daz Studio, and I am not talking about the en-bedded features like exporting as CR2, it is sure possible to use any Genesiss model in Poser just like all the other mentioned formats NickKelly mentioned without any restrictions. If you know about Cad Exchanger so you can imagine what I mean ( A communicating cross Platform ) able to send a Mesh from one application to another. I have to ask my self why asking for something that is already in Poser just because you do not see it or you are not aware of it , this naturally makes it very difficult for the ones who work on Poser to Improve it and sure might break something if you try adding something that is already there.

What I am trying to say is that Poser actually already got it all and it is working just fine, the thing that is missing is the experienced user that knows how to use it and may be some cross Platform. These type of Platforms were releases in masses at the time as little apps or Pythons. So actually my opinion would be the need of more skilled creators that could offer these and not a bunch of members that always try restricting there creativities, 

Poser members are way to fixed on the idea that Bondware needs to add features that already exist. Causing that there are not enough creative heads left that could offer these. I remember times of this Community when People worked together to figure out solutions not just rejecting them when they came from other places. 

It could be excused as most Poser communities Closed or gotten crushed by the big ones, but you can see what is left . You are no winner if you end up to be alone.  

To understand it correctly what NikKelly is proposing to the community is to achieve is a possibility importing Ported models in a easy way or rigged models in Blender to poser keeping the quality 1:1 being able to pose these in Poser. (MDL+VTF) and XNA/Lara ( .MESH.ASCII directly, re-exported if XPS or .MESH, plus any textures) MMD's PMX oh and psk

Renders made with xps Articulated models in poser firefly

This sure should not be a big magic for all these professionals in here after over two decades of Poser experience.

AmbientShade posted at 1:09 PM Mon, 4 July 2022 - #4440713

Productive discussions on how to get Poser content working properly in Blender and other software has never been grounds for banning here. If that were true then Poser never would have attempted implementing FBX, Collada, etc. There are still several forum threads on the subject that are easily searchable.

I think that it was asked on how to Import into Poser and not export into Blender. Export naturally can be found , but NikKelly was asking to get rigged figures properly into poser, something that sure would be helpful. This is exactly what is missing in these forums and what is getting blocked due possible copyright violation.

Rhia474 posted at 12:56 PM Mon, 4 July 2022 - #4440712

 I don't recall people being chased away because they offered to help. I remember people being told that copying models without permission is copyright violation.

 If one would have to ask for every Artwork he makes, that might be something that already is existing then Renderosity would have to close there Doors, How about DA with all there Derived Art ? Or do they have to ask permission at renderosity market leader of 3D, or ask permission at the members of these forums ?

 

Would be interesting to know if one of you would have the skill to figure out what  NikKelly proposed, would end up sharing it with a community that right away tell that copying models without permission is copyright violation. NikKelly just indirectly asked for a Bridge and not a model, so what he might do with it is up to him as end-user.

This is exactly the Problem that is preventing Poser and the community to evolve, blocking it's potential because some unskilled members think that they need to give Permission. Even if it is just a Import plugin that has nothing to do with the model it self.

Not a Model it is on how to bridge between the different 3D formats, this naturally needs visual 3D samples, I do not believe that any 3D samples were ever offered, the bridges were offered, the skills, so it is up to the end user what he will do with it not the one who offers the Program.

Checked and found an alternative to the WW in case you do not have it . Instead of using the steps of the WW just go to Figure and create full body morph after setting up your model using the existing morph dials, it will recognize the changed dials adding them to a new master Parameter. now you can copy the new morph into your outfit , then activate the the fallow origins in the properties of the outfit before conforming it to your model. after this step it will also fallow the new generated morph you made in your figure.

instead of a custom morph like WW generates you will have the individual morphs integrated into the outfit, a fast and simple method integrated in Poser it self. This will adapt any of your outfits on any of your doll setups with just a few clicks.

hborre posted at 6:14 AM Sun, 3 July 2022 - #4440671

WW is no longer offered because PhilC has retired from the scene.  And even if the software was available you would need a La Femme license.

After a closer look at the tutorial it does not need any Licence, it seems to use Dials to single Morph, a feature that will spawn changed dial morphs on any model merging these to one single custom morph dial no matter what type of model it is. This feature sure seems to be very usuell as it might replace hundred of dial settings into just one Dial, you do not need to search through your whole model what dials have been changed. Phlic sure did a fine job on that Python The only other app that I know of that could do this is either the Binary Morph Converter or the Binary Morph Editor , but they are external and not built into Poser making it more complicated to use. 

Hydra posted at 7:57 PM Sat, 2 July 2022 - #4440667

I have been using Poser since I bought Poser 3.0 off the shelf of a best buy in the mid 90's.  Poser 12 seems to be the most unstable version of Poser ever released.  Are there any plans/progress for producing updates that fixes all the problems that cause it to crash constantly?

Also, I have had no luck with getting tight fitting clothing to work with La Femme and the various La Femme character packages available from rosity.  So I am still using V4 for the most part.  Any suggestions on how to get clothing to fit La Femme in Poser 12?  

There is a tutorial on the Net on how to fit outfits to the model, it should also work for la Femme. It seems that you will need to have the WW , not sure if it is possible using it in P12

Tutorial