Well it turns out that the main problem with the layer was that some sort of bug in P11 made it so that Metallic and other channels did not need texture masking when they were set to 1,000 which made me skip that step. This particular layer was a PBR metallic procedural texture with no additional masking.

The other issue was that Displacement mapping has probably been improved with P12 and now needs a much lower setting so that it calls for separate P11 and P12 materials for a product if I want to use that.

Since I am moving over to Substance texturing anyhow, I will be starting to use Normal maps more and those seem to render exactly the same in P11 and P12. So there is definitely a way forward!

Meanwhile, I have released one freebie update (hopefully there will be more for other products later) - for the above product. If you own that one, you can download the freebie here:

P12 Superfly Update for Fabulous Flares

The thing with highlights in Poser 12 is that the new version of Superfly, following some advancements in Blender's Cycles, is more mathematically accurate with Roughness calculations (from what I understand). Where before there was a range of roughness that you could barely define (it looked like either too much or too little), now you can define the increments more correctly.

Sadly it was a matter of chosing between breaking some older content or leaving the renderer more limited and incorrect. For me, improvement is always the right choice.

The good news is that it's not everything - just things that were unfortunate enough to have been set as too much instead of too little LMAO! We really couldn't tell before, that's why I have a bunch of freebies with corrected materials for my products.

At least we have established that I am seeing an intentional change and not simply a bug. I would hate to make and sell custom materials for a bug .... unless it's a bee or a butterfly or something like that. ;)

One concern though is we don't know whether things will stay fairly consistent going forward, I assume into Poser 13 ... or whatever it will be renamed to if they are superstitious ;)

I also have a question about normal maps - Is it confirmed that SF takes OpenGL (Y+) / MikkT tangent space maps like DS Iray does? Someone I know says that they can't get any type of normal maps to look right in Poser. I have been using them and thought they looked ok but we are doing very different types of products. This was also in Poser 11, perhaps there have been normal map bug fixes as well since then?

Y-Phil, that looks interesting. I haven't actually used the Cycles node at all yet. I have stuck to the root node for dual FF/SF materials (worked great in P11 for simpler materials). I have also used the PBR node, especially for layered metallics (which also worked well in P11 for SF only materials). Might look into the Cycles node, is that the direction things are generally going now?

So Rhia, you would be fine buying a product made for Poser 11 and then tweaking it? That is some good news at least.

What would be the interest if I were to release a couple of Poser 12 specific addon packs? I could try one to see how it does. In my experience, full products tend to sell way better for me than addons, not being a top vendor. However, it can also be good to have some smaller projects running alongside larger ones.

In fact, it was with the idea of creating an addon pack for an older product that I ran into these issues. I could of course make new P12 materials and make that into an addon. Just started with Substance Painter and want to test out viable pipelines for both DS and Poser. :)

I am thinking we can still do Poser 11 compatibility for the DS/PS-compatible props I am sometimes collaborating with on another vendor here as we tend to use simpler PBR materials for those. So at least there is that.

It's more the clothing that is going to have to wait. But then dForce is a lot of fun... I do want to create more complicated, hybrid dynamic clothing which dForce does really well.

There are a lot of technical limitations still for the cloth room to handle hybrid clothing well and I have given up on more than one ambitious project. With V4, I resorted to using a lot of tricks involving constrained areas but that tends to be unviable nowadays with LFs breast bones getting in the way. There are only so many options for free flowing, unconstrained clothing before one starts to run out of ideas. ;)

Just in case if you wondered why another Poser clothing vendor started doing DS clothing. There really are reasons other than just the sales.

Thank you.

Well this is really bad news - since it breaks all materials previously created for Superfly/Poser 11. Guess I should be glad a lot of people haven't upgraded yet. And at least all my current products only have Poser 11 compatibility stated so I won't be held liable by customers.

If I do create anything new for Poser, it seems I will have to choose between restricting compatibility to Poser 11 - or try to make new Poser 12 friendly materials - which are at risk of breaking again the next time something gets changed. Also, it will make products in my store promising to do the same thing (SuperFly) incompatible with each other...

Seems too risky so I will probably focus on DS content for now. A real shame. I have always supported Poser and was planning to release at least a few products in that direction. Good thing I tested this before getting started on anything new. Perhaps a few years and versions down the line when we can be sure that things are stable, I can make content for Poser again.

Hi, how does one create control chips in Poser Pro 11?

They look like this in the Hierarchy (La Femme):

They seem to be parented to the ungrouped bone, and have the icon for props.

But how are they actually created? I can't find anything in the menus under Figure, and nothing in the Editing Tools in the Setup Room... so does it require importing a small mesh plane .obj or are they supposed to be able to be created directly in Setup somewhere that I missed?

Anyone know? Thanks,

// Frequency

@VolcanicMink: The spinning is due to the Main and/or Hip Y rotation settings on some poses. You need to check both. Before doing this, I would turn off the Camera animation, since sometimes this can be what really is rotating. Since the rotation has no maximum or minimum setting, you can then deduct or add 360 degrees to that number. This fixes most issues, although sometimes there are issues with the Hip having X or Z rotations as well. You will see that the charater wobbles through the animation in that case.

Something for pose creators to consider!

3Dave mentioned setting the the interpolation between zero pose frames to straight (orange). I havent tried this, Might that help with the hip X/Z wobble issue?

Interesting. My take on this is more from a presentation point of view. How to sell and present these things properly without disappointing customers?

I have some thoughts on this... hopefully something constructive.

Everyone is right! There ARE tools and they could be used more. But at the same time it is true that mismatched customer expectations and complaints/demands for returns are a big waste of time for most vendors. And many customers are not prepared to put in any extra work without warning. So it is important to be very, very clear with what you are selling.

So.. what I would probably do if I was a character vendor and I really wanted to make a custom sculpted body morph... would be be to provide more than one option AND try to educate the customer at the same time.

So what you could do would be to provide both a bland/morph dial spin shape (fits all clothing, just something quick) and a PRO sculpted shape (advanced users/must read the instructions/morph brush skill/fitting room skill required etc.) Call it something like PRO/Advanced etc to make it stand out in the right way. Make this VERY clear already in the product description, this is important. Then provide a detailed tutorial to go with the product on how to fit the clothing/work with the morph brush or what have you.

The main issue as I see it is that it is super important to tell the customer clearly what to expect from your product, and what skills might be required. I run into similar issues often when I have to give a refund to a DAZ only customer even though I have made it clear that the product only works in Poser. A waste of both their time and mine plus extra work for staff. Now I am putting 'Poser' in about 5 places (including the thumbnail, and it finally seems to work. ;)

Now that I am thinking about it, this all inspires me to put something like 'Basic knowledge of the Poser Cloth Room is recommended' on future dynamic products...

Finally I have to say that the Poser Morph brush tool is underestimated! It is fantastic for creating clothing morphs and more powerful than a lot of people realize.

Just a thought... cough perhaps the people asking for very detailed body shapes would be those who use a bit less clothing (or none) on their figures... in which case it wouldn't be much of an issue. I just think vendors want ways of making sure not to get returns, tons of questions or bad reviews. ;)

So if staff have ideas on how to best present ANY products that may require certain user skills/tools, or only work in certain situations, this would be very helpful of course!

Strange - a quick Google search on "tangent space basis" and Iray turns up nothing... You would think that NVidia at least would have some sort of online documentation. And we need this information for all 4 render engines, that may differ. Important for anyone wanting to make cross-platform content. We may need more than one set of normal maps.

I will do some tests when I have time, to figure out some reasonably safe options, and perhaps which settings to avoid altogether. :)

Sorry, if this was off topic with mentioning DS, but I think a lot of vendors at least wouldn't mind a list that covers correct normal settings for both programs/all the render engines. :D

I am wondering about the tangent space standards too, for both Poser and DS.

I will try to make some sort of list here, based on information from Preferences in 3D Coat:

3Ds Max: Eric Lengyel's Space

Maya: Maya (Space)

Unity: Unity Space

Blender: MikkT Space

Unreal Engine: MikkT Space

Substance Designer: MikkT Space

ZBrush: MikkT Space

There seems to be some other settings in the program presets that may or not play in also, namely: Normals Calculation Method (5 different options), Normal Maps Export (can be 3DS Max/LW or Maya/Blender) and Triangulation Method (can be Simplest or Delaunay).

I also have Quixel and there are many export settings there.

So it would be really useful to know which normal map export settings to use for Poser and DS! I willl be back to fill in the list once I find out more,

Poser (FireFly) ?

Poser (SuperFly): MikkT

DS (3Delight): ?

DS (Iray): ?

Oh well.. he will learn. :P

Hey Tipol: I was just given a tip at Facebook by someone who also had the problem. They had contacted Smith Micro and SM suggested to save the secene just before simulating. Apparently this worked. So this might be something to try. :)