SatiraCapriccio posted at 12:18PM Sun, 14 July 2019 - #4356886

I think it's important to know whether it was feature difficulty or missing features that led to those content providers abandoning Poser, as well as the last version of Poser they used.

I abandoned Poser shortly after P11 Pro came out; I had been excited for it and then, after using it for a while, I left it, disappointed. In my case it was a lack of features and because some things were needlessly complicated, and because the improvements I had hoped for hadn't happened. I admit that all these things that were dealbreakers for me do not affect the average user, but they did affect me as a content creator.

For example, not being able to select and edit multiple items in one go (material zones, dial names and settings etc.). Not being able to assign custom hotkeys in the way I needed them. Not being able to set up a realistic material without having to search the forums for examples by "shader gurus", and then not being able to implement the Cycles tutorials I found in Poser because of missing nodes. Not being able to easily replace morphs or subtract deformation (essential for making JCMs). Not being able to update the geometry of an already rigged item on the fly. After adding morphs to the figure to make the clothing fit better, having to jump through hoops to make it distributable. Not being able to save out and re-load a combination of clothing items + figure settings. Not being able to swap UVs on the fly. Convoluted process for creating JCMs in clothing. Having to spread one set across several folders and subfolders because of the restrictive library system. And that Poser still chops the mesh into groups (that has been mentioned by others, too).

To be fair I have to admit that I used to do certain steps of my development for V4 and M4 in DS already, from 2008 on when the Content Creator Tools were released. Most of my clothing sets for these figures wouldn't have been possible without those tools. I'd been waiting for Poser to catch up but it didn't happen. And yes, I did know Poser rather well at that time so I know what I'm talking about. I also am aware that over time there came 3rd party plugins that addressed some of the difficulties, and I used most (perhaps even all?) of them, but they were only workarounds and didn't work as smoothly as an integreated, built-in feature would have done. And plugins more often than not were broken with each major software update. Since I'm doing this for a living I need reliability, and ease of use ( i. e. getting things done quickly) is a hugely important factor to me. If I were in retirement and this was only a hobby for me I wouldn't have minded, but for professional work you need professional tools.

I've mentioned these lacking features to the developers over and over again, but each of my suggestions was declined or put off. Instead of adding tools that would have made it easier to create characters and clothing they added tools for text tool and measurements. So cool.

Add to that the fact that after my first steps in Superfly I had raided my savings account to get a Titan X video card to render faster. When the new card was installed I did some test renders: in Superfly I saw an increase in render speed of only 25% while in Iray I saw an increase of 400% - and that, together with all the other things mentioned, decided it for me.

So if you want to know what I would like to see in Poser, refer to the list above: I'd like solutions for these problems. I do not say that Poser needs to work like DS. I can, even should, follow its own way. But content creation needs to get quicker and easier. That a thing can be done in some way is not enough. It must be quick and easy, useably in a professional context.

I used to love Poser. It has some features I thoroughly enjoyed and which I miss in DS. But right now the issues mentioned above outweigh everything else. If the developer team manages to get those fixed I'd be happy to give it another try :)

I don't like the massive font size for the titles either, but that's probably a matter of personal taste.

However, I have two major issues with the forums as they are now, which are so serious that they significantly reduce the usefulness of the forums to me: 

1. All references to Renderosity forum threads that were posted elsewhere don't work anymore. If you try to follow those links you end up at the forum topic list.

2. The search is completely broken. Just recently I tried to search for threads on Poser materials, using the search terms "gold" and later "water", and ended up with a long list of completely irrelevant threads, and the ones I was looking for didn't turn up. 

The render speed depends very much on what you have in your scene.

I noticed a drastic increase in render speed for a still life that uses IDL and SSS for props. (And that was for real, the timer script doesn't lie ;) )

Another render with 2 Vickys with clothing, hair and EZSkin was still faster than in 2012 but not as much as the still life.

Another user said that his tests with a scene with a lot of transparency, reflection and refraction showed more or less the same render times.

So it seems that some things render faster and some stayed the same. That explains the different render times for different people - we all use different scenes.

Will do :)

As a workaround @Stonemason:

Could you perhaps add the AO to all the materials that need it, leave it off for those that don't and tell the users to use light sets without AO?

I was told that it wasn't a good idea anyway to use AO in the lights if there is already AO in the mats. And it's quite easy to switch off AO for the lights so it wouldn't be too unreasonable a request, I think...

This might be related to another shadow issue I've been complaining about for ages.
Mine is about ugly shadows on the skin when semi-transparent fabric like lace is a little distance from the body.

I'm going to dig that bug report out, may I link this thread?

Good to hear it is still alive! :)

I don't use it every day, but when I do it's absolutely essential. There is stuff that can't be done in any other way. It is a must-have for me; actually, I think it is for any content developer who creates stuff for Poser.

If I had known that earlier, it would have saved me a LOT of problems...

But it seems I'm living behind the hills, never noticed this script before people started mentioning that it would be reworked for P9+ g

Colorcurvature, you're my hero :thumbupboth:

I'm especially interested in the morph loader. I heard it allows to import a morph target onto a posed and/or morphed figure. I really hope that's true because I was so missing this functionality in Poser!

Please keep us updated on your progress, I'll definitely buy it as soon as it's available :biggrin:

Quote - Esha - now I'm wondering what your system is if you've had this with OBJs not related to Poser?

It was a Dual Core, 2GB RAM, Win XP Professional. And I had no obj file at all, only a terrain with a painted-on ecosystem, but not very dense.

Now I have a Quad, 6GB RAM and Win 7 64bit, and I'm really hoping that will help.

I don't want to download something from wherever, I want to use a certain hair with a certain figure. I supposed that a program in the price category of Vue Infinite which advertises that it can import Poser scenes would read those files correctly.

And I really don't see what is so convoluted about a clear path pointing to a specific object and a specific texture... ;)

Besides, I've also had crashes without any Poser objects in the scene. And it was not a memory issue, it crashed despite having enough free resources. And e-on never fixed those issues, all they did was releasing new versions we customers have to pay for - without knowing if those bugs would be fixed or not.

Quote - Actually, Esha - Vue doesn't have a problem with Poser because of "high-res textures" at all.

Well, in my case I think it does. It crashes even when I import a single hair figure that has one single body part, so it's not a case of dependencies. When I reduce the resolution of the textures everything is fine.

I just don't want to have to edit all the texture maps, backing up the originals and restoring them after having done my Vue render...

Yeah, and I wonder how they did it.

I tried to import V4 with some hair and Vue Inf. crashed. Can't handle high-res textures. That's why I wanted to upgrade, because I really can't work with that bug collection that is called Vue Infinite 7.5

If I had the Pro version of Poser 12 and then "sidegraded" to a newer version 13 that was a lite version, I would not expect any of my Pro files to load into the lite program.

But those plants aren't pro files per se. They don't need advanced functionality, they work perfectly well in the "smaller" versions. Just because they were part of a bundle now they're limited to that bundle - and there was never any hint at this limitation to be found anywhere.

Anyway, when an offer from E-on sounds too good to be true, it's never true.  Trust your instinct next time.  E-on is very ambiguous on its web site.

Sadly, this is true. Not the best way to get new customers and keep the existing ones.
If Carrara had a more logical UI I'd have ditched Vue long ago.

How about installing both version on same pc? You created files with those plants in 7.5 infinte, then re-opened and rendered them in 9 complete?

Doesn't work, unfortunately.

What irks me most is this:
When I bought the Infinite version some time ago, I nearly decided to get the smaller version and buy the plant pack extra. If I had done that, I could have the plants unlocked for Complete 9.
Since I opted for the Infinite 7.5 after all, I spent more money AND have to spend another bunch of money to get the plants which I would have had without additional cost if I had opted for the less expensive solution.

Does this seem fair?

It's not about functionality. I don't need the additional features Infinite has over the Complete version.

All I want is to be able to USE THE CONTENT I HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR.

I don't want any new plants, so I don't see why I should be forced to pay again to get the same files which I already have. It's only a matter of registration, after all.

Could you imagine having to re-purchase all your Poser content after you switched to a different version?