Hi,

what I want to achieve is to combine Bagginsbill's Parmatic with external renderers.

With the OctanePoserPlugin, it is possible to store Octane material information inside a Poser material (it creates extra nodes for that, so it does not impact the Poser shader).

I have written a small script which can modify the scaling of the color, bump and displacement channels, based on additional disconnected nodes.

Now my idea was to feed in information from dials (the Parmatic approach). Parmatic uses a single node type only, so I will still be able to achieve that for that special case, but a general solution which would allow to hook in arbitrary node trees would be preferrable, of cause.

Best regards,

   Michael

I have the following code:

        scaleNode = NodeByName(previewMat.ShaderTree(), prefix, actor.Name())
        if scaleNode is not None:
            # extract the Preview material's scale and apply it
            xScale *= scaleNode.Inputs()[0].Value()
            yScale *= scaleNode.Inputs()[1].Value()
            zScale *= scaleNode.Inputs()[2].Value()

The nodes look as follows:

The scaleNode.Inputs()[2].Value() method returns 1 (which makes sense), but I want to get the value of 5 of the math_add as well, in order to compute the effective parameter of the node input.

Best regards,

  Michael

Quote - Finally I have downloaded and installed everything. The most convoluted an idiotic installation I ever experienced. Is it safe now to uninstall the Download Manager and move the install files to a better place? (And not on my precious SSD hard disk which the DM placed everything giving me no choice! grr)

Can I still reinstall or move Poser Pro 2014 to another computer without the Download Manager? Can I have all the install files in one folder?

Hi,

I wasn't happy about the DL manager as well, but in all fairness, it does offer the possibility to specify where the downloaded files go.

On the positive side, it downloaded installers which were pre-patched to the current revision. With earlier Poser releases you had to install the original distribution and then patch manually.

Best regards,

   Michael

Hi,

the hair and displacement mapping is a big big plus of the 2.0 release. Of course additional features mean some slowdown. Anyone doing software development will know that. There are additional conditionals to evaluate.

I was always missing the displacement feature in Octane, so I'm really really happy now. 

Thanks a lot to Paul for making the plugin upgrade available so fast! I'll play with it this weekend.

Best regards,

   Michael

Quote - None for PP12? o.O

Laurie

Hi,

I'm wondering as well.  Either they're still working on it, or not enought people have submitted a bug ticket.

Best regards,

   Michael

Hi,

in order to fix poke-throughs, try to use magnets instead of the morph tool. My impression is that magnets allow an easier adjustment, because I had lots of problems with the morph tool (I heard it got better in P10 / 2014, but I'm still on 2012).

Magnets would affect all mesh parts (additional settings might be needed if more than 1 body part should be covered).

Best regards,

   Michael

Hi,

thanks for the tip with the USB port. This indeed could happen, and the TV has only one port. On a PC, there's usually a second (I even have 4!) USB for backup.

Luckily I don't have to worry about 4k right now ;-)

I noticed that the Fuji dual lens camera (Real3D W3) is about 1/3 of the price now compared to when it was released 3 years ago. I'm not sure if it really takes the pictures at the same time or just in a short sequence. I'm considering getting one, it think it could as well be used as a playback device (it has a HDMI connection, according to the specs).

Concerning the complex procedure I described above, I think it could be simplified a lot, as Stereophotomaker has an automatic procedure for that (justage automatic / Alt-A). At least it seems to deliver very similar output.

Best regards,

    Michael

Hi,

oh yes, with interruptions, I'm using Poser for 7 years now, starting at 5, now at Pro2012, and I still experience the occasional "Hey, I didn't know that!". And this excludes even areas I have not looked at at all (or just a few minutes), like animation, memory dots, face room, toon shaders, plus things I don't even know about that they exist.

On top of the program itself, there are so many graphics fundamentals which are not specific to Poser (I don't have an artistic training to base on), some of them I'm catching up, and some I may miss forever.

I hope it stays like this, the moment I think I don't have anything left to learn, I would look for a different hobby. ;-)

Best regards,

   Michael

Hi,

displaying 3D images on a TVC via MPO format files on an USB stick did not work for my TV when I bought it (and I was very disappointed about that), but it looks like some firmware update now changed this. On my TV, I can now view 3D images. Time to spend some time on rendering some...

After some initial tests which worked fine if the objects were not too close, I experienced major ghosting for closer objects, when only moving dollyX. The results were better when I rotated the camera a bit.

After some googleing, I found this interesting article: http://paulbourke.net/stereographics/stereorender/ 

About 2 thirds down, there is a description of the "correct method". I think the "asymmetric frustrum" cannot be achieved in Poser automatically (unless you do manual "area render"), but that still leaves some black borders.

The procedure I have now successfully tested is:

1. increase the width of the target image a few pixels (from about 1% if the focus is far away to about 5% for a very near focus plane; as an example, I changed from 1920 x 1080 pixels to 2020 x 1080 for a very close focus plan).

2. render the left and the right image, using dollyX - 0.032 m for the left and dollyX + 0.032 m for the right (giving about 6.5 cm for the distance between the human eyes).

3. In gimp (or whatever you like), use the left portion of the desired target resolution (in my example 1920 x 1080) for the right image part, use the right portion for the left image part.

4. Use stereophotomaker to combine the two PNGs or JPGs into one MPO.

I will try to post an example, but I think the gallery does not allow MPOs...

Best regards,

   Michael

Quote -
I'm wondering if a scene of that size and complexity could have been rendered in Octane or not, or whether it would have been too big.  My curiosity stems from the fact that that's about the size and complexity of scenes that I currently top out at (I don't do anything with 100 M4s for example, but it's not terribly unusual for me to have 2 or 3 V4/M4 characters with some lower-poly background people in the shot).  I'm just trying to get an idea of whether a scene like that could easily be done in Octane at the moment.

Hi,

with complex scenes, you could indeed run into problems. The limiting factor at the moment is the number of different textures. (144 color + 68 greyscale). I never hit the video card RAM limit so far with my current graphics card (GTX 680).

So if you either use the same textures, or spend some time tweaking (or use tools like texture atlas) you could go quite far. Without tuning, I usually hit the limits at about 3 or 4 M4s/V4s.

Best regards,

   Michael

Hello,

thank you for the information. I certainly think the plugin will be relevant and not be abandoned quickly. I have used Carrara a few years ago, and Poser, and since the Octane Poser plugin is there, I'm almost only using that for rendering. 

I have a couple of Howie Farkes' environments for Carrara, and would love to use them in Octane. 

Best regards,

   Michael

Hi,

my box is working again!

I did not run a full restore but rather went to "history" of windows update, selected the IE 11 update, and uninstalled that. After a reboot, it showed "IE 10"  in update history again and now Poser is working again. For safety, I installed ie11blocker as well now ;-).

I haven't used IE anyway.

Best regards,

   Michael

Hi,

same issue here, after the update, PoserPro2012 (64 bit) / embedded library no longer works, crashes on startup.

I'm backing up my HD now, then will try the suggested workarounds.

It would be interesting to learn about the configurations of the users without issues.

Best regards,

   Michael